The Russo Bros. Discuss The Evolution of Watching Movies Saying the Idea "That Theater Is a Sacred Space, Is Bulls**t"
Back when I was a kid, the movie experience was that you went to the theaters every time a new movie came out. You saw it, you waited a few months, then it was released to buy or rent at the video store. Then maybe a year or two later, it might appear on TV, but as those of us who didn’t grow up with HBO know, when they’d show the movie, it might have scenes cut out (or added), and bad words were dubbed with funnier words that didn’t really make a lot of sense.
So you held out for those free movie channel weekends, or you’d rent the movies you wanted to watch, or your mom would tape them off the TV, and you’d have to watch Can’t Buy Me Love and Terminator 2 on the same VHS tape with McDonald’s Moon Man commercials cut in. Just a guess. But I digress.
Now our experience is that we hardly rewatch movies once we’ve seen them because we have so many series, and movies are constantly being released not only in theaters, but across all the streaming platforms. Some in the film industry feel that film viewing at home dilutes the experience, but two of the biggest names in the business say that’s rubbish.
In a recent interview with THR, Joe and Anthony Russo, also known as The Russo Brothers, who previously directed episodes of beloved series Community and Arrested Development, and the Marvel Captain America films as well as the epic Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame before moving to the Apple Original drama Cherry, sat down to talk about the film world and theatrical viewing versus in-home streaming, with Anthony saying:
“We love everything about classic cinema, but we’ve never been precious about that in any way, shape, or form. What has always excited us most is [the question], how do you move it forward? This is part of our philosophy in terms of not being precious about theatrical distribution. How do you get away from the old models? How do you reach audiences that haven’t been engaged before? That’s all the most interesting stuff to us.”
Joe went on to say:
“Auteur filmmaking is 50 years old at this point. It was conceived in the ’70s. We grew up on that. We were kids, it was really important to us. But we’re also aware that the world needs to change and the more that we try to prevent it from changing the more chaos we create. It’s not anyone’s place to reject the next generation’s ideas. We’re in crisis right now because everyone’s at war with each other. It’s sad to see, as guys who grew up loving film. A thing to remember, too, is it’s an elitist notion to be able to go to a theater. It’s very fucking expensive. So, this idea that was created — that we hang on to — that the theater is a sacred space, is bullshit. And it rejects the idea of allowing everyone in under the tent. Where digital distribution is valuable, other than what I said earlier about how it pushed diversity, is that people can share accounts; they can get 40 stories for the cost of one story. But having some kind of culture war about whether there’s value in that or not is fucking bananas to us.”
It’s actually overwhelming sometimes how much we have to watch. But it’s honestly better than even when I had my kids over the last 14 years. I feel like when I had an infant I had to miss out on the movies I really wanted to see when they came out because I wasn’t ready to leave my baby yet. But now things are coming out on streaming exclusively or simultaneously, and the people who can’t venture to the theatre often or at all are not excluded. I appreciate it, and I dig the Russo Brothers’ vibe.