Here’s Johnny

I missed the 2/3 train at 14th street at an embarrassingly late hour last night because I was taking a faux toe of the Public Enemies poster for this blog. Naturally, I left the house (”  “) today and forgot to bring the cord for my camera, so I will have to post said-picture at a later hour. Incidentally, probably after I get home from the midnight showing of that same movie tonight.

Public Enemies happens to incorporate all my favorite things: The Great Depression, Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Billy Crudup, Marion Cotillard, and Elliot Goldenthal(!), who wrote the score. Now, I don’t expect The Great Depression, Elliot Goldenthal, or even Billy Crudup to be featured on the ads, but Christian Bale? And Marion Cotilard, Academy Award-winner? The posters in New York are JUST Johnny Depp: Johnny Depp’s upper body, and the words “Johnny Depp” over the words “Public Enemy”, I believe with the July 1 release date somewhere in smaller print. I have nothing more to say on this exact subject, except I think it’s an interesting choice: does Johnny Depp really carry that much more star-power than both the rest of the cast and, essentially, everything else about the movie?

And typing of movies, I’ve been working with a gaggle of very talented publicists on an upcoming film called (UNTITLED), for which my client David Lang wrote the score. There were two screenings of the movie in the city, and when I sent the Grand High Publicist my press list, I included David’s name on the lists for both nights. I just figured he’d want to see it on a big screen, and I always like hanging out with David. In response to my list, I was told very nicely, “No problem – but, I don’t think it’s a good idea for David to attend the press screenings.  It makes journalists uncomfortable when they are sitting in a film with someone affiliated with it.”

Fascinating! It never occurred to me that writers wouldn’t want to be watching something alongside “someone affiliated with it”, because with the exception of those reviewing CDs, the journalists I work with are always in the same room with the artists they are reviewing; the soloists are on stage, and the composers are usually in the audience, often sitting in the same section of the orchestra as the critics. This led me to wonder what, if any, the psychological differences are between film critics, who are watching flat things on screens in dark rooms, and live performing arts critics who are reviewing artists in the flesh. Are performing arts critics, then, kinder? More compassionate? More affected by the reactions of those seated around them? If they hate a piece and then see the composer at intermission, does it soften them?

Thinking about it, I’ve never read a film review that included audience reactions, and yet music, dance and theater reviews incorporate the audience all the time. I remember a Bernard Holland Times review of the Chiara String Quartet from a few years back that was bascially all about the Quartet’s interaction with and effect on the audience:

The excellent young Chiara String Quartet played at Rose Live Music in
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Friday, seated in the center of what must
once have been a ground-floor railroad flat. To the players right was
an outdoor garden of Friday-night drinkers; to their left a lively bar
scene opening onto the sidewalk.

The space, curtained off but
still the only thoroughfare for waiters and patrons on the move, was
perhaps the size of two living rooms. I counted eight tables and about
30 people, most of whom were Friday-night drinkers as well. Clinking
glasses and distant good cheer from the bar created a steady
background. Maybe this is what chamber music means. At any rate, I was
thoroughly enchanted.

Did any film critic note that I blurted out laughing when Remy the Rat was asked if he was a chef in Ratatouille? When I was hysterically sobbing at the end of Far from Home: The Adventures of Yellow Dog ((not my finest moment))? When my friends and I sat in the dark theater for a full 20 minutes after Memento ended? No, because I don’t think film critics see movies with the rest of us. They get “screeners” in the mail (I keep putting “screeners” in “air quotes” in my e mails to the movie publicists, like allegedly that’s what they’re called), or they go to screenings with other critics. So that’s another interesting difference: performing arts critics are reviewing what I saw or could have potentially seen, in the same atmosphere I saw it, while film critics are seeing movies sans Junior Mints and plebeians.  Maybe that movie a critic ripped apart would have been better with Sno-Caps and strangers laughing. Maybe it would have been worse.

The dichotomy of screenings vs. screeners is interesting to me as well. If a critic can’t attend a screening, the studio sends out a screener, so are film critics supposed to review the full-screen experience on their own small screen? (UNTITLED) doesn’t have special effects, so the screener/screening issue isn’t as relevant here, but I wonder if screeners were sent out for Star Trek? For Transformers 2?  It would seem unfair to have a review of Transformers 2 by a critic who was sitting on his couch.

I wonder when music critics will start reviewing concerts streaming live from their computers. The Met HD broadcasts are already reviewed like “real” productions in non-New York markets, so it’s only a matter of time. And if/when live performing arts do start getting reviewed on movie/TV/computer screens, how will the critics’ treatment of the art forms change when there’s no risk of running into the composer in the bathroom at intermission or the soprano at Fiorello’s after the performance?