Category: Interesting

Werner Herzog and Errol Morris sat down for a discussion last year at Brandeis University, where they talked about each others work including Morris’ latest film Standard Operating Procedure.

The Believer Magazine has posted a transcript of their conversation.

Here is a snippet:

WERNER HERZOG: Walking out of one of your films, I always had the feeling—the sense that I’ve seen a movie, that I’ve seen something equivalent to a feature film. That’s very much the feeling of the feature film Vernon, Florida or even the film with McNamara—The Fog of War.

Even there I have the feeling I’ve seen a feature, a narrative feature film with an inventive narrative structure and with a sort of ambience created that you only normally create in a feature film, in an inventive, fictionalized film.

The new film that I saw, Standard Operating Procedure, feels as if you had completely invented characters, and yet they are not. We know the photos, and we know the events and we know the dramas behind it. And yet I always walk out feeling that I have seen a feature film, a fiction film.

ERROL MORRIS: Yeah. The intention is to put the audience in some kind of odd reality. [To moderator] Werner certainly shares this. It’s the perverse element in filmmaking. Werner in his “Minnesota Manifesto” starts talking about ecstatic truth. I have no idea what he’s talking about.

But what I do understand in his films is a kind of ecstatic absurdity, things that make you question the nature of reality, of the universe in which we live. We think we understand the world around us.

We look at a Herzog film, and we think twice. And I always, always have revered that element. Ecstatic absurdity: it’s the confrontation with meaninglessness.

I was talking with Ron Rosenbaum, a friend of mine, who had just finished a book on Shakespeare. We were talking about the meaning of meaninglessness. Is there such a thing?

And I would say: yes. Werner’s work could be considered an extended essay on the meaning of meaninglessness.

WH: Thank you, yes. It feels good to hear that. [Laughter]

Read the full article over at The Believer.

> Werner Herzog and Errol Morris at the IMDb
> Official Errol Morris website
> Official Werner Herzog site
> Hear our interview with Werner Herzog about Rescue Dawn

Why does popcorn cost so much at cinemas?

Physorg has a post on why:

New research from Stanford and the University of California, Santa Cruz suggests that there is a method to theaters’ madness–and one that in fact benefits the viewing public.

By charging high prices on concessions, exhibition houses are able to keep ticket prices lower, which allows more people to enjoy the silver-screen experience.

The findings empirically answer the age-old question of whether it’s better to charge more for a primary product (in this case, the movie ticket) or a secondary product (the popcorn).

Putting the premium on the “frill” items, it turns out, indeed opens up the possibility for price-sensitive people to see films.

That means more customers coming to theaters in general, and a nice profit from those who are willing to fork it over for the Gummy Bears.

They go on to say:

Movie exhibition houses rely on concession sales to keep their businesses viable.

Although concessions account for only about 20 percent of gross revenues, they represent some 40 percent of theaters’ profits.

That’s because while ticket revenues must be shared with movie distributors, 100 percent of concessions go straight into an exhibitor’s coffers.

Edward Jay Epstein also wrote about the economics of popcorn back in 2006.

He observed that cinemas are three different businesses:

1. Fast food (popcorn, ice creams and nachos)
2. Movies (the film you see)
3. Advertising (those ads you sit through before the main feature)

He also makes the point that the popcorn, snacks and sodas you buy in the theatre lobby are a key part of how cinemas turn a profit:

This is an extremely profitable operation in which the theaters do not split the proceeds with the studios (as they do with ticket sales).

Popcorn, for example, because of the immense amount of popped bulk produced from a relatively small amount of kernels – the ratio is as high as 60:1 – yields more than 90 cents of profit on every dollar of popcorn sold.

It also serves to make customers thirsty for sodas, another high-margin product (supplied to most theater chains by Coca-Cola, which makes lucrative deals with theater owners in return for their exclusive “pouring” of its products.)

One theater chain executive went so far as to describe the cup holder mounted on each seat, which allows customers to park their soda while returning to the concession stand for more popcorn, as “the most important technological innovation since sound.”

But what about the choice between salt and sugar or even the gloopy butterscotch stuff?

There’s a reason for that too:

He also credited the extra salt added into the buttery topping on popcorn as the “secret” to extending the popcorn-soda-popcorn cycle throughout the movie.

For this type of business, theater owners don’t benefit from movies with a gripping or complex plot, since that would keep potential popcorn customers in their seats. “We are really in the business of people moving,” Thomas W. Stephenson, Jr., who then headed Hollywood Theaters, told me. “The more people we move past the popcorn, the more money we make.”

So there you have it – there’s more to cinema snacks than you might think.

> Find out more about Popcorn at Wikipedia
> More articles on Hollywood by Edward Jay Epstein

Some eagle eyed people have noticed that the opening scene of I Am Legend – in which a scientist played by Emma Thompson declares there is a cure for cancer – has a visual reference to a game between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots.

After this weekend’s NFL play offs the Giants and Patriots will indeed be facing each other in the Super Bowl next month. Some comments over at Digg have correctly noted that the scene is set in 2009 but, despite being a year off, the coincidence is still a bit spooky.

UPDATE: On the subject of the Giants-Packers game it seems Eddie Murphy predicted it 20 years ago in Coming to America 😉

With the release of Cloverfield imminent check out this video of producer J.J. Abrams speaking at TED about Lost, movies, technology, special effects, his love of Apple computers and the importance of mystery in his work:

Matt Reeves, the director of Cloverfield, has given a lengthy interview to LAist about the film.

Produced by JJ Abrams, it is the eagerly anticipated film about a monster which attacks New York and has created a lot of buzz with its extensive viral campaign.

He discusses the early trailer that spooked people out:

When it comes to modern trailers, a lot of the way that they sell movies now is to give you the whole thing right up front. This was a throwback. We knew that it was going to be on Transformers if we make it in time. We thought that it would be really interesting.

Here will be this completely under-the-radar movie being previewed in front of a movie that they were already anticipating there’d be a huge audience. I think that the real reason there was all of that crazy reaction was that the trailer was so widely seen and so completely mysterious.

I think that people began to project themselves into the mystery to figure out what it was, and that created this whole sort of engagement with the viewers. Anytime you’re confronted with a mystery, you immediately need to have answers, and we were just really lucky. We did not expect there to be this level of reaction.

He also explains where the film got its title and the connection with a YouTube video:

When we started the project there was going to be an announcement in the trades. In this case, they wanted to keep everything under wraps. So the movie was going to be made under this outside corporation that was basically a property of Paramount. That corporation had a name that I don’t know the name of. I think Clover was the first part of it. Maybe it was Cloverdale.

When Drew [Goddard, LOST writer] was putting a name to the project, there was supposed to be a name for the project like there was for The Manhattan Project. So he said, “I am going to use that weird mysterious thing,” and he misheard it. He didn’t even understand that it wasn’t Cloverfield, it was Cloverdale. Maybe that was because of the street by J.J.’s old office, but the truth is he just misunderstood it.

Check out the full interview here.

Cloverfield opens in the US on January 18th and in the UK on February 1st

> Official Cloverfield website
> That mysterious first trailer
> Find out more about the film at Wikipedia

I’ve heard of Chistopher Walken‘s love of cooking and here he is preparing a chicken at recipe sharing website I’m Cooked: