This weekend, Matt Damon returns to the big screen in the blockbuster “Jason Bourne.” It’s the character and franchise that saved the actor’s career after it went slightly sideways following “Good Will Hunting,” but he has always kept a healthy mix of mainstream and independent fare on his CV. However, the audience hasn’t always been there for those smaller efforts. “I’ve made a lot of movies that people just didn’t go see,” Damon quipped at the Golden Globes earlier this year, where he won Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical for “The Martian.” And surveying the landscape now, Damon admits the opportunities for making richer dramatic fare are shrinking, at least at the major studios.
“Just in general the movie, the $15-60 million drama, is gone. They just don’t make that movie any more,” he told Metro. “When we went to do ‘Behind The Candelabra‘ in 2012, we couldn’t get that movie made – and it had Steven Soderbergh directing it and me and Michael [Douglas] – and we couldn’t get $23 million to make the movie. And that would have been a lay-up 15 years ago, it would have been five places trying to woo you.”
“That’s gone now, and Steven said to me at the time, like he said, ‘Look, if we were making ‘The Informant!‘ today,’ he goes, ‘we’d be on HBO,’ ” Damon added.
The actor cites a dying DVD market that has cut into revenues, and the growing importance of global box office for the bottom line, leading to films that have less nuance, and are engineered for universal appeal. However, there is a ray of light on the small screen.
“Television is really experiencing this renaissance and they’ve got these incredible writers who have so much more power on television than they did in the film world and they’re writing incredible stories. So there’s still work there, but the indie movies you’re talking about, yeah, they’re tough to find,” he said.
Still, there are few things that can beat a great theatrical experience for storytelling, and according to James Cameron, the key for the survival of moviegoing — particularly at a time when there is such a threat from television and/or more readily available pirated film content — is to stay on top of technology and get even more ambitious.
“So, what’s going to happen with movies on the big screen? We’ve got to make them brighter. I think screens can be larger and fill more of the peripheral vision. I love 3D but that needs to be brightened up. You need high dynamic range. All of these things are possible, it just becomes a price point issue and the exhibition community knows they’re fighting for their market share and they need to spend the money to do it,” Cameron told Variety.
“The biggest hedge against piracy is still the sanctity of the viewing experience in a movie theater — when it comes to movies,” he added. “With ‘The Walking Dead‘ or something like that, that’s not what you’re selling, but if we’re talking about movies and theatrical exhibition, keeping it great, making it a special experience, is still the biggest hedge against that. Because even if piracy was totally legal and download rates were much faster, you’re still watching it on a small platform, and it’s not that social experience.”
And Cameron is right, in that regard. While there are more social tools than ever to connect movie fans at home, there is still nothing quite like watching a movie in a big room, with other people (provided they know how to behave, which isn’t always the case).
Thoughts? Are indies dead? Is the moviegoing experience on the way out no matter how many bells and whistles are added? Let us know below.