Give me a rundown of some of your favorite films.
It’s A Wonderful Life, TheGrapes of Wrath, Casablanca, Jaws, and Singin’ in the Rain. E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Guns of Navarone, Bambi, Cinema Paradiso, The Man Who Would Be King, The Godfather, Il Postino, Summer of ’42, The Graduate, The French Connection, Marathon Man, The Verdict, City Lights, My Darling Clementine.
The original King Kong. Goldfinger. Dawn of the Dead. You have to break them down into genres. I love action-adventure. I love Hitchcock films. Rear Window is my favorite Hitchcock. I love North by Northwest. I love the Sean Connery James Bond films. I love the original Frankenstein, American Werewolf in London, and The Sound of Music. If I’m going Westerns, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, High Noon, Once Upon a Time in the West, TheSearchers, Westworld -- there’s a guilty pleasure.
With the growing popularity of things like Netflix and video on demand, do you think we’ll see a continued trend away from people seeing movies in a darkened room with strangers?
The movie houses and distribution houses are going to have to respond to home entertainment centers like they did with television when that came out. What’s going to happen -- and I know James Cameron, and Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas, because they seem to be the guys who are really reaching forward, forward-thinking people -- you’re going to start seeing films closer to the IMAX level, where they are three-dimensional films.
Cameron is talking about the next films he’s doing are all going to be three-dimensional. I don’t even think it will be a gimmick. I think it will be part of the experience, and whether or not you start to get the smell or the taste or the feel, the audiences will demand it. Otherwise, distribution houses won’t be able to compete, theaters won’t be able to compete, and you do want to have that shared experience, especially with films like comedies. There’s a difference when you see – Caddyshack [laughs] -- certain films you want to have shared experiences with.
I know there are other films, like Schindler’s List -- I didn’t want to go with anybody. I wanted to go see it by myself, not talk about the film afterwards. There are some films, clearly, you can see by yourself, have an experience, and there are other films that are totally shared experiences.
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Ian Donnis: idonnis@phx.com
