I’m an old fashioned kind’a dude. I make tea with leaves. I drive cars with petrol. And I watch films on a cinema screen. In fact, I’m a fucking dinosaur. So I was shocked on Sunday when I heard from two people in the space of a few hours that they’d both watched ‘The Irishman’, the new Scorsese Movie with the biggest cast of superstars since… since FOREVER!!!

Both of these guys are age contemporaries of mine and yet chose to watch a film… at home!!! A new, multi-zillion pound/dollar/lira/zloty film, made for the BIG screen, and they streamed it on Netflix, who produced the movie, and watched it at home. Probably on their TVs but possibly on a computer, an iPad, or worst of all, on a fucking phone. You can’t even fit Robert De Nero’s shoulder pads on the new iPhone 11 (with a big screen). You can’t get the mania of Joe Pesci concentrated into a device designed for taking pictures of Joey. You might catch some of Al Pacino’s acting but you’d miss all that trademark over-acting, which we love and revere.

“Do you get Spurs playing Liverpool in your back garden??” I should have asked but lacked the speed of thought. Or in Jonathan’s case: “do you get Arsenal playing Ujpest Dosza in your back garden??” Do you go on holidays to the travel agent’s office?? Go to work on a cycling machine which is fixed to the floor of your man-cave???

It’s all a matter of ‘the experience’. I love going to see movies because you have to make an effort. And the popcorn’s better. But a bit more expensive. The only films I watch on tv are Terminator (1 and 2) and Kill Bill (1 and 2). Because they’re so fab that compromising the medium is acceptable and enables me to re-live the cinematic version I experienced the first time I saw them.

But the reality is that everything changes. People on the tube sit there watching recorded tv shows, films, sport, on their phones, I see them every day. Whilst Dinosaur Man sits there doing a crossword puzzle on his broadsheet. I should wear a bowler hat.

And thus movies ‘evolve’ into a more multi-media framework. And as a lot of people already stream movies and watch them on dvds this is just the logical extension. Which is why this is the first movie, despite the director’s pleas to the contrary, NOT made for the cinema screen. In fact Netflix chose to ignore the long-standing ‘window’ of exclusivity for movies to be shown on screens before releasing them on other media. This one went ‘straight to stream’ other than a measly 2 weeks. Because if a film isn’t shown in the movie theatres it can’t be nominated for Oscars. This was a film whose massive investment was never intended to be recouped by the normal ‘bums on seats’ model. This one was made to increase subscriptions.

Where will I go to see films when all my lovely cinemas have closed due to inactivity? I’ll have to find a phone box that sells popcorn.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx