Michael Moore did not win an Oscar last night for Sicko, which may only mean that the Academy’s overwhelmingly left-leaning voter base are, like most rich people, far more concerned with the moral and historical implications of the current wars (and, particularly, the way we’re fighting them) than they are with the everyday lives of poor people here at home. But that’s okay, because even Michael Moore has stopped working the health care issue, at least temporarily. He’s too busy trying to Save Documentaries.

Moore made a speech at last week’s International Documentary Association awards, in which the filmmaker announced a plan to declare Monday nights Documentary Night at theaters across America. Mondays are traditionally the weakest night of the week for exhibitors, so, says Moore, with the right marketing small non-fiction films could match the typically low numbers produced by most studio films on that night. He’s essentially calling on studios to devote resources to, as the indieWIRE story on the matter puts it, “a consortium of PR and marketing people at the studios who would support and promote documentary, bolstering the work of smaller companies with limited resources.”

When this story broke last week, it was generally reported without comment, positive or negative (although AJ Schnack did take a small swipe at Moore for showing up at the IDA reception when he had something to promote, after failing to make an appearance when the body honored his career last year). But
Agnes Varnum is now asking some real questions about the plan, in this post. She suggests that a plan such as this might in effect marginalize documentaries further:

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Talk is brewing on Nikki Finke and Jeff Wells‘ sites of promoting a movie theater boycott over Thanksgiving weekend as a show of solidarity with the striking writers. The concept, says a commenter calling him/herself “writer/producer”, is simple: “All you have to do is stay home and spend more time with your families…Thanksgiving is one of the biggest weekends of the yeah and lowering the box office take that weekend will really hit the studios hard. Hard core fans could even picket their local movie theaters if they wanted to…”

For his part, Wells says he’ll support a boycott if it happens–”Hitting the producers and studio chiefs where it hurts is pure Frank Capra, but I love it”–but maybe he should take minute to think it over. Another Finke commenter says advocating such an organized show of solidarity would be illegal: “Secondary Boycotts are illegal Big-Time! While it might help a lot to boycott the theaters over the thanksgiving weekend it is very illegal to advocate that, especially on Nikki’s board which would surely be closed down when the first Studio Mogul secretly objected.”

A couple of hundred potential ticket buyers picketing on CityWalk would certainly cause a media-friendly ruckus, but I seriously doubt such a boycott could happen on large enough a scale to make any real difference. The fact is, there are five major studio films opening that weekend, many of them family-friendly films with aggressive ad campaigns. It seems hugely unlikely that anyone outside of New York or LA with plans to take the whole family to see Enchanted or This Christmas is going to care enough about a labor issue (especially one that they perceive impacts rich people) to stay home.

Austin film lovers (and SXSW loyalists, like yours truly) have been eagerly awaiting the opening of the new Alamo Ritz, which replaces the old Alamo Drafthouse on Colorado Street as downtown Austin’s Mecca for people who like to simultaneously watch movies and drink beer. The Ritz had its grand opening last night; bloggy reactions after the jump.

photo via Austinist.

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CinematicalIndie has a lengthy interview with Arin Crumley of Four Eyed Monsters fame, and in an unusual twist, Arin has made a video of his side of the conversation, which Cinematical’s Erik Davis has posted alongside a partial transcription.

Arin and Erik cover a lot of ground–an explanation of how Arin and Susan racked up so much debt, the pros and cons of putting your feature film up on YouTube, the dynamic between Arin and Susan’s business relationship and thier personal relationship–but I was particularly interested in this segment, where Arin talks about the potential role for social networking sites in the distribution/exhibition process. (I swear, I’m not excerpting this just because Arin has a lot of nice things to say about Spout):

If you look at Spout and the way their site works … one of the ways I use is I kind of organize the films I plan to see…Netflix is no good because that’s just if the film is available on DVD, and some are not available yet. So what I do on Spout, there’s a button next to every film, you search that film, you find it, you hit the button that says I want to see this film. So if you project ahead to either their site, or other sites, or who knows who might build this tool…but the concept of being able to store and publicly share your interest in movies–and if you can also be publicly sharing your location, which of course changes from time to time–there could be an intelligent system that knows what people want to see. And because of digital projection, you could really be showing anything on a screen, you’re not limited to what film prints were mailed to you…theoretically, you should be able to have a theatrical jukebox, where anything can be shown there. It’s just a matter of, “Well, what do people want to see?”

Transcribing from YouTube is no fun, and the whole interview is really worth ingesting, so just watch it yourself (or, as Arin suggests, listen while you work–it is, after all, about 49 minutes longer than your average YouTube clip). And if for whatever reason you still haven’t signed up for Spout, go here, start a free account, and Arin and Susan will be able to subtract one more dollar from their mountain of debt.

Consider the following. First, Andrew O’Hehir, from the most recent installment of his Beyond the Multiplex column published yesterday on Salon (you’ll have to watch an ad to get past the firewall):

If there’s a specter that’s haunting Indiewood and Hollywood alike, it’s the shambling figure of some semi-shaved, post-collegiate 22-year-old watching movies on his cellphone. Now, I don’t know anybody who has actually watched a feature film on a telephone, and I’m not even sure it’s feasible. (The iPhone’s ads show people watching film trailers and YouTube videos, not entire movies.) But three different people in the film industry have mentioned the idea to me within the last week, and the question of its present-tense plausibility is clearly not relevant. What people are really saying is that a big, weird change is coming. They don’t quite understand it and they can’t do anything to stop it, but they’re worried that the whole business of selling $10 tickets to go sit in a dark room with some strangers and a movie projector is suddenly going to seem like Thomas Edison’s windup gramophone and its wax cylinders.

And then, a segment from this editorial by Cinematical EIC Ryan Stewart, sparked by that Transformers on Comcast rumor that didn’t come true:

I don’t think there’s anything in the world that beats a really good experience at the movies, but I’ve also noticed that over the past few years, the onus has been more and more on me to make that experience happen…Theaters have mentally checked out of the business of making sure you have a comfortable viewing experience, and in doing so, they’re contributing to their own demise…At the same time, I also have no interest in watching a movie on a Dick Tracy watch or any other device that can fit in my pocket — that’s the other extreme, that’s also unwelcome. But a quality home entertainment center with a great screen and great sound? That’s where it’s increasingly at, I think.

I don’t know O’Hehir very well (we had a very nice chat at Sundance this year, but I had not previously met him before nor have I seen or spoke with him since), but I would guess that he, like the indie moguls he references, is in his 40s. On the other hand, I do know Stewart very well: in the interest of full disclosure, he was the second person I hired when I was editing Cinematical. At the very least, I know him well enough to know that although he may be in his 20s, and he may have soured on going to the movies, he’s not going to watch a movie on his phone anytime soon. In fact, about five minutes before I came across O’Hehir’s Salon piece, Ryan sent me an instant message complaining about how he can barely use his cellphone to make and receive phone calls.

To be fair, O’Hehir isn’t trying pump tired box office slump dialectics–he freely notes that, multiplex ennui be damned, a lot of indie movies are doing very well this summer–and he doesn’t seem to be entirely disdainful of emerging technology. His column is ostensibly meant to draw attention to small and smallish films, so it makes sense that once in a while he’d feel the need to offer a “State of the Indiestry” before getting on with the business of reviewing. But I do think it’s pretty glib (and my use of that word is not meant to evoke thoughts of Tom Cruise AT ALL) to raise the spectre of theatrical doom, only to brush it away with a “But hey! These five Sundance flicks are making money, so everything’s alright!”

The truth is, it’s quite probable that “the whole business of selling $10 tickets to go sit in a dark room with some strangers and a movie projector” is on its way out, but Stewart’s post (and the many supportive comments it garnered) is some kind of evidence that it’s not happening entirely because us kids are enamoured with new-fangled gadgetry. Take it from a 20-something who has great affection for her cellphone, but who has no intention of ever using it to watch a feature film: if the traditional exhibition experience had not so drastically declined, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. It might seem like a step backwards for someone like Eamonn Bowles, who is actively in the business of closing the distribution window, but if the titans of Indiewood really *want* to do something to keep the theatrical experience alive, putting pressure on exhibitors would be a place to start. But the idea that we’re all going to abandon the multiplex for the super-mobile is nothing more than one generation’s fantasy of another. It’s sexy on a “let’s wallow in our phobias” level, but it’s also pretty reductive.