Depending on who you speak with, the current situation facing the film industry is either incredibly dire, with theaters losing money and studios struggling to find a way to distribute films on the big screen, or the situation is glorious, with a ton of avenues to release your work and companies forking over big sums of cash to help you bring your ideas to life. Well, in the case of actor-turned-filmmaker Edward Norton, who is out there promoting “Motherless Brooklyn,” he is firmly in the latter camp.
Speaking to the Daily Beast, Norton pulled no punches when talking about the current state of the film industry. He doesn’t subscribe to the idea that the industry is being threatened by streaming services and outside forces. Instead, he sees an unmatched time of prosperity and blames other folks for the death of the theatrical experience.
“Because to be super clear, I would say that today, as a creative person who’s interested in telling stories, there has never been more opportunity to get original and diverse visions of a narrative across to other people—ever, in the history of American cinema, television, whatever you want to call it,” he explained.
Norton goes on to say that the ‘90s era of Miramax and the rise of films like “Magnolia” and “Being John Malkovich” was a great time to be a filmmaker, but even now, in 2019, with streaming and prestige TV, “it’s easier than ever to tell complex, long-form, character-driven stories.”
The actor-filmmaker actually applauds Netflix and says he disagrees with people like Steven Spielberg, who claims the streaming service is ruining the theatrical experience and killing the industry.
“Netflix invested more in ‘Roma’ theatrically—theatrically—than any boutique label at any studio would have by a factor of five,” Norton explained. “They put a Spanish-language black-and-white film all over the world in theaters. Hundreds of theaters, not just a few; as many as Sony Pictures Classics would have done. They put more money behind it, in a theatrical context, than anybody would have. You can’t tell me there’s a whole lot of people making black-and-white Spanish-language films and putting that investment behind them. And you can’t tell me that there’s a lot of places making five-part documentaries about the Central Park Five.”
He adds that if he wanted to make “Motherless Brooklyn” with a streaming service, not only would he have gotten a deal “in five minutes” but he would have been able to increase his budget and not ask actors to work for scale. The only reason he chose to go with the traditional distribution method is because he wanted to make a film that was similar to the older films that influenced him.
As for the death of the theatrical experience, Norton blames the actual theaters instead of streaming services. Why? It’s all down to the presentation of films and the actual bulbs the multiplexes use to project the images.
“A lot of filmmakers and cinematographers that I know that have really started to look into this say that more than 60 percent of American theaters are running their projector at almost half the luminosity that they’re required by contract to run it at,” Norton said. “They are delivering crappy sound and a dim picture, and no one is calling them on it.”
He added, “You want to train people. Like, go get your money back. If the movie looks dark, it was—go get your money back! I think we should rally around that. I really do.”
We’ll have to see if people heed his words and decide to take theaters to task for crappy presentations of films, including his own, “Motherless Brooklyn,” when it arrives in theaters on November 1.