Malaise and Blue
The News tries to explain why student film societies at Michigan were first forced to show Monty Python and porn to stay afloat, then phased out entirely. But most of the explanations don’t seem to hold up — the rise of the VCR and Monday Night Football, for instance. When we were an undergrad (post-VCR, in fact) there was a thriving student film organization, as there are at most of the campuses we’re familiar with.
We’d blame a general culture of malaise on this campus instead. Sure, it has a reputation for having lots of cultural events, but most of those are art and music-related, and of course Michigan has excellent art and music departments. But journalism? There’s no journalism school here, and we have about one or two student publications that publish on a frequent and regular basis; starting a special-interest magazine (pace Matt Mulder’s attempt at a Maxim clone for Michigan students) or competing newspaper just because it’s fun and exciting doesn’t seem to appeal to undergrads here. (Wisconsin, on the other hand, has two daily papers that compete fiercely.) The same probably goes for film screenings.
I haven’t RTFA, because MLIVE is the most crufty, shitty site in the history of newspapers on the web, but I remember working at Current when the head of the Cinema Guild told us that he wasn’t going to list his events in our magazine anymore because too many people were showing up. He said that he had no interest in showing movies in a bigger room, so he just wasn’t going to tell us what the schedule was at all. (This was roughly concurrent with his snit over not being able to personally edit our descriptions of the films). The film editor told him to get bent, and that was that. Sorry to see ‘em go, I guess, but I always got the feeling that they were supposed to be these exclusive little glens of obnoxious film students who were more interested in saying that they had seen a Brakhage flick than actually sitting through one.
posted by js on September 27th, 2005 at 2:59 pmI attended just about every Cinema Guild show from the beginning of 2004 or so until the last one in August; Lou’s had a lot of problems keeping the group afloat, and some new administrative requirements may have been the last straw. I can’t speak for his relations with the Current, but attendance actually dwindled, probably because he had to show in places like basement classrooms of the MLB, which I personally liked but which many others may have found uncomfortable. Some may see it as a glen of obnoxious film students (sometimes obnoxious, but very few actual film students), but I am rather sad that my Sunday afternoons had to be freed in such a manner.
posted by Lazaro on September 27th, 2005 at 4:08 pmI went to another school before transferring to the U of M as an undergrad. We were a much, much smaller school (though with a notable film department) and our film society films were always very well attended (even for a Roots [{?} I almost feel like I’m making that up] marathon). There was a major difference, though — Small-U’s host town had nothing even remotely like the Michigan Theater (in fact, no theater at all within walking distance and few people had cars so it meant an involved series of bus transfers to get to a movie). I think we were able to sustain the film society because it was almost literally the only way to see decent movies. Ann Arbor may be flawed, but at least between the State and the Michigan, you still see most of the movies you might want to see (albeit weeks later than everyone on the coasts).
posted by Anna on September 27th, 2005 at 4:36 pmBut my favorite schools to compare things to, the University of Chicago and MIT, are both in urban areas and they both have well-attended student film series (although there isn’t really much of a theater in Hyde Park.) Would people really prefer to pay movie theater prices for the predictable, limited offerings at the State and Michigan to a decent student alternative that shows non-first-run movies other than Rocky Horror and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?
posted by ann arbor is overrated on September 27th, 2005 at 5:06 pmForced to show? Say what you want about the university’s lack of quality film culture, but don’t you dare bad mouth Monty Python and porn in the same sentence!
Just kidding, and I’ll see you at the next Rocky Horror showing… You’re the very convincing Riff Raff, aren’t you?
posted by FAA on September 27th, 2005 at 7:25 pmI was a sometime-member of the Ann Arbor Film Co-Op until its last semester of existence. People in the Co-Op did indeed blame VCRs, cable TV, and student (and professorial) indifference — one older member thought professors should require students to attend Co-Op films(!).
Another factor that nobody would point out was the “rebel” mentality most members had, the notion that the group had to show films which “challenged” the audience’s “prejudices”, which lead to screenings of films like Chickenhawk: Men Who Love Boys. I don’t recall if they actually got a NAMBLA member to speak at that one.
So even as the group was scoring some of its largest audiences (personal appearances by Bruce Campbell and Bobcat Goldthwait), it was also programming titles so obscure or off-putting that it was losing money on a regular basis until the semester-end porn show.
Oh, and I was the only nominal “film student” in the group.
posted by AAFC alum on September 27th, 2005 at 9:58 pmWow, I had a feeling that something like that might be the case. “The best lack all convictions, while the worst are full of passionate intensity” — I think Yeats had A2 in mind.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on September 28th, 2005 at 12:29 amI don’t know, I sort of got the feeling that it was really a result of independent films going mainstream, thus putting them more frequently in the arthouse theaters, and even sometimes in first-run theaters. The Michigan and the State both now have multiple screens; in an earlier time that would have been unthinkable for an arthouse theater. For several years towards the end, you simply didn’t need to go to the film societies to see an interesting film. Then the timeframe for releasing films to video shrank, and it was really over then…if you have to wait a year to see a critically acclaimed film, you might not wait. But if it’s only six months…or four…well, you just might wait.
You could also put some of the blame not on VCRs, but on the combination of DVDs (especially those with commentary tracks) combined with home-theater equipment. Large-screen TVs have been around for a while, but affordability of large TV sets is a fairly recent thing, as is the affordability of theater-quality sound systems. Theaters have responded by building bigger and installing stadium seating; film societies can’t do that (though I guess the Nat Sci auditorium is sort of stadium seating…much less comfortable, of course.) And the availability of DVDs with commentary can give anyone the sense that they know something about a film, or about film in general, without having to show up to discuss it with other cineastes at the film society showing. And then there’s the Internet…why go to the film society when you can just chat about your favorite film online, on a fan site that specializes in just the kinds of films you like (blame Harry Knowles?) All these things began to converge in the mid- to late-90s, and by the millenium I think it was basically over.
posted by Mike on September 28th, 2005 at 1:33 amI used to work for a competing magazine, and until all the writers dropped out and I was left as “editor” with no way to access the bank account or any of the previous layouts, it was great. Then an annoying little child decided to take the name without permission, and asked me for my permission later, and then decided not to take me on as a writer. Good times, good times.
I’d be down for starting something else. I found my old copies of an alternative student paper from Ithaca College I picked up when I was there, and not only were the articles great (they had one about going to the Ann Arbor Film Festival, even), but they covered damn near everything in whatever subject they loosely used as the basis for that issue.
Why haven’t I bothered to try to start it again? Lack of time, mostly. I’m not LSA and don’t know how to manipulate MSA for funding, since my student organizations go through UMEC for most cash advances. But hell, if anyone reads this and is down, I’ll share my semblence of expertise and we can go to town. streetlightintheghetto@gmail.com would be the anonymous email I throw out all over the web.
That said, my roommate last year was involved in the film showings (M-Flicks, I think, he was in) and apparently they got good numbers for some showings. Although, save Film Farm, I think they were mostly mainstream things. The Japanese and Korean departments tend to show the only free movies I’m ever down for attending.
posted by Jen on September 28th, 2005 at 2:31 amDisclaimer:
If you’re interested in starting a publication, and the word “progressive” comes up in your idea description, I’m not gonna help. Not that I don’t agree with many of the viewpoints that those who label themselves as “progressive” have, it’s just that usually those people fail to consider any sort of alternate viewpoint, or bother to consider the reasoning behind those who oppose them. And that’s just ineffecual.
‘Course, when I explained this to the kid-who-took-name-of-previous-magazine, it didn’t really get through.
posted by Jen on September 28th, 2005 at 2:36 amActually, after reading these comments, especially AAFC’s and Mike’s, I take back what I said earlier. We have an art-house theater here and it doesn’t stop our students from having an active film society.
posted by Anna on September 28th, 2005 at 9:36 amI saw Bruce Campbell way back in the day when he premiered Army of Darkness in Ann Arbor. Hail to the King, baby! As for man-boy porn, I’ll skip that.
posted by Dave on September 28th, 2005 at 10:00 am“The Michigan and the State both now have multiple screens; in an earlier time that would have been unthinkable for an arthouse theater.”
posted by js on September 28th, 2005 at 1:32 pmAside, you know, from the Ann Arbor 1&2, where Oz’s is now. Which was an arthouse with two screens.
While I agree we could use more films on campus, I don’t think the argument about publications really holds water. Besides Wisconsin, what other University has two daily newspapers? Many cities can’t support two. I also question whether a J school leads to a more vibrant or higher quality campus journalism scene. As a former staffer (albeit 16 years ago) I hold a soft spot for the Daily despite its flaws, but I also wonder how many of the most prominant college papers are tied to J Schools (from what I understand the Crimson, the Yale Daily News, the Daily Bruin, the Daily Pennsylvanian are not associated with J Schools)? My sense is that papers run by journalism schools are more polished in their layout and copy editing (given the professionals assisting the staff), but also less adventurous and interesting to read.
posted by PeteM on September 28th, 2005 at 1:43 pmBeing a J-school dropout, I’m pretty sure that it doesn’t help in general. But it might at a school like Michigan, where it seems like there’s a real dearth of creativity for its own sake that’s not tied to things that can get you ahead in your field of study.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on September 28th, 2005 at 1:59 pmHm, that’s true about the old 1&2…but when did it adopt that format? It must have been by ‘91…but I think it was a first-run theater back when you had such things downtown (like the original State, and the old Campus…) OTOH, it did go out of business once the new State opened up, and the Michigan built the screening room, so maybe it’s better to say there’s a limited market for independent and art films, and the film societies may have fallen victim to this as well.
posted by Mike on September 28th, 2005 at 6:15 pmHeh, I’m an engineering student in an advanced poetry class. If anything, I should be concentrating on primary field of stuy more.
But I do agree with you, AAiO. I see exceptions here and there but they’re rare. It translates to the grads too, though - I had a English GSI for a combination fiction/poetry class who “didn’t do poetry”. … yeah, that was fun.
PeteM - I’d go for a every other week type thing than daily. We really don’t need two papers competing for AP filler articles.
posted by Jen on September 28th, 2005 at 9:57 pmMike: It was actually an art-house before the new State opened up, and tapered off into those large-run indies afterwards. But it was started in the late ’70s by film geeks, and showed things like the Ann Arbor premier of Blue Velvet (though I’m not gonna front like I was old enough to be going there at the time).
posted by js on September 29th, 2005 at 1:49 amI did, however, catch the last film ever at the 1&2, which was Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam.
And yeah, I remember when the State was a first run theater and had all of the space where Urban Outfitters is now for their screens…
PeteM: What’s the other daily on campus? I can’t think of anything else I read that’s not infrequent (the Review, the E3W, The Record…?)
posted by js on September 29th, 2005 at 1:51 amI must have been fully indoctrinated by Ann Arbor, because I always thought that AA 1&2 *was* a regular first-run theater, both before and after the new State opened up. The new State, when it opened, was an inexpensive second-run theater for a dollar or two… it often showed things the AA 1&2 showed a month or two later. There wasn’t usually much overlap between what was playing at the Michigan and what was playing at the AA, at least back then.
posted by Anna on September 29th, 2005 at 8:32 ammy hazy recollection from the 70s: if you wanted to see the new truffaut flick, you would go to the fifth forum. if you wanted to see an old truffaut flick, you would go to one of the three student film societies, all of which were thriving.
of course, these days, you go to netflix or liberty video for truffaut flicks, which explains the demise of the art film houses and the student film societies.
(it doesn’t explain the film festival’s current troubles, which i attribute mostly to abandoning 16 mm ideological purity.)
posted by peter honeyman on September 29th, 2005 at 10:33 amJen: Is the publication you’re talking about the Michigan Independent?
posted by Zach on October 1st, 2005 at 7:09 pmWhatever the reasons for the film societies’ passing, I’m sad to see them go. I grew up in Ann Arbor in the 70s, and MLB, Angell Hall, Nat. Sci. etc. were the only places where we kids could see PG and R rated movies. I received my first exposure to movie violence seeing “The Godfather” at the Art & Architecture auditorium. I remember shaking in my seat during the execution scenes (I think I was 10 or 11 at the time). A few years later, when I became a little pot-smoking junior high student, my friends and I would get high and see movies on campus almost every weekend. I saw movies semi-regularly during my college years, and I can’t exactly remember why I eventually stopped going, though it didn’t have to do with alternative media sources, since I never even owned a TV (and no, it wasn’t the dope smoking either - I quit that in high school). Anyway, those were different times…
posted by Crusty A2 Guy on October 1st, 2005 at 9:51 pmI’m Lou Goldberg, the present Programming Director of Cinema Guild. I’ve lived in Ann Arbor since 1981, have been a member of Cinema Guild since 1984, and I have a number of opinions and experiences regarding this topic.
But first I want to address the editor for the Current guide who wrote in above. For many years I regularly wrote the blurbs describing Cinema Guild and other films for what was then the Michigan Cinema Guide (now the Current Guide). I typically had a sidebar which I signed and on occasion wrote a full column simliar to the one Louis Meldman now writes for Current. I worked with some great editors such as Ken Garber and James McHenry and tended to have carte blanche to write, in some cases, very experimental blurbs, my favorite being a blurb for STOLEN KISSES which read: “Out of the army. Reading Woolrich as a night watchman. A kiss in the wine cellar. The siren’s song. The waiter who disappears in a jump cut. Colette’s face. Paris, 1968.” These guys respected me and left me alone to try this kind of approach as did SGI’s publisher/editor-in-chief. In 1994 I became the film columnist for the Ann Arbor Observer, a post I held for about a year until friction with the editors there led to a You’re Fired/I Quit resolution. I also wrote articles for the Michigan Daily and the Detroit Metro Times, but my dislike for editors and their tampering keeps me from writing anything for publication any longer.
However, I still needed to get the word out about Cinema Guild films. The editor from Current who writes above was new to the job and really reworked the blubs I would give him. Often typos would go unnoticed which changed the names and dates of films. He added quirky remarks which I considered detrimental to the blurbs and he would shorten blurbs for space and take out key information while leaving behind lesser information. I told him I’d be willing to rewrite blurbs he needed to cut so that they could still reflect what I considered crucial. I said I could take a look at blurbs in their final state to proofread them for errors. He told me to screw off. I could give him the info but after that it was out of my hands. I’m sure he thought I was a nit-picky jerk and in return I thought he was sleeze. I could have gone over his head to SGI’s editor-in-chief but I decided to let him have his way. Instead, I decided to stop submitting blurbs and I told him I wasn’t going to use Current to publicise Cinema Guild any longer. When he asked why, I concocted the story about not wanting too much publicity. It’s true that I did use a small room to show films in, but it seated 35 people and the average attendance for films was between 8-20 even with publicity. I made the story up in order not to call him a jerk to his face. Now, I don’t care so much, he no longer works there and slams me in print here besides. I feel his replacement at Current, AS, is much better but I still don’t always get my way. However, they are superior to the Ann Arbor Observer whose editor once told me, “I’m a reporter, not your press release. You give me the information and I write the blurb.” I told her I wasn’t going to submit information to her. She went and found my schedule and wrote about Cinema Guild films without my having given her any information. I told her to stop writing about Cinema Guild films altogether and that she could also kiss my rear. And that’s why you will not see listings for Cinema Guild films in the Observer calendar.
So, if you want to know what Cinema Guild is showing, you have to visit the web site or be on my e-mail list.
Now all of this may sound like having a my-way-or-the-highway attitude is shooting my interests in the foot by limiting the scope of the organization, but the truth is that even with this extra advertising, I didn’t get that many extra people in to screenings or find many people who found out about it in this manner and then became regular attendees as a result. So it wasn’t that big a loss and it relieved me of a big headache.
As for film societies being these elite star chambers of cultish initiates, nothing could be further from the truth. People from the very young to the very old attend, some students, mostly townies. We’re very friendly and welcoming and I like to think that attending a Cinema Guild film is like sitting down with a group of friends to ‘hang’ with movies and talk about them. I’ve often described the current Cinema Guild as a coffee clutch.
Now what’s going on on campus and did the News article get the story right?
I think there are a lot of reasons for the decline of film societies in Ann Arbor and I think the article caught a lot of them. To begin with, there is no University sponsored film society, one whose operations the Univeristy pays for as Cornell University pays for its leading film group. Without that kind of budget, it’s just near impossible to lure filmmakers to campus for visits or program a lot of expensive but unique films. Cornell film schedules are the envy of every college because the University pays out to get interesting films and filmmakers to show up there. Anything I could try just pales in comparison.
As a student organization, Cinema Guild has to pay its own way and that means paying the University to rent auditoriums, projectionists, and equipment. The University could hand this to us for free but they refuse (actually they did for a while and then had to tighten the belt). They help out by given us a small classroom for free and that’s where on TV or with a video projector we run our films. It’s not as attractive as showing 35mm in one of the campus auditoriums but it’s something. We do it out of love for movies and we’re attended by people who come out of love for movies.
If more people came out and were willing to pay an admission price, we could break even, but in general, the only way films on campus are attended is if they are offered for free. Put an admission price on a campus film and you have an empty theater. Even the free films show to just a handful sometimes. In the end, it’s not the costs that have killed campus film, it’s that no one is willing to come out and pay those costs.
Second, students aren’t as eager for the kinds of film that the societies like to show. The average student was born in 1985. They’ve grown up with a post-STAR WARS style of media. Movies mean adrenaline rush, not a place to contemplate basic truths of existence. Put a 20 year old in front of a slowly-paced, black and white, depressing Swedish film where they have to read the subtitles, and this just isn’t their idea of fun. What they want are car chases and explosions and ‘Megawattage!’ A film student told me they showed Ozu’s TOKYO STORY, a film regularly sited on the Sight and Sound top 10 list of films, in her film class. I asked her with an eager smile, “Did you like it?” She replied, “I feel asleep.” And this is only one of many film student horror stories I’ve personally encountered. There was the film student who didn’t know who Francois Truffaut was and another who told me they wanted to work in movies to become famous. This is where their heads are at.
Now you may counter by saying that foreign films do quite well at the Michigan Theater and that people are renting all sorts of neat films out of Liberty St. Video and you’d be right. Ann Arbor is still a minor type of film town with people who are interested in watching film but only as long as they can do it at home or do it at the Michigan and its a new release. To visit campus and see the works of film heritage isn’t attractive enough.
And, subsequently, when you look at film schedules from Detroit and Chicago, you’ll see a ton of great films that will NEVER play here. Ok Chicago is a metropolis of 6 million, but since when should the DIA in Detroit top Ann Arbor by showing SAMURAI REBELLION, PHANTOM INDIA, and MASCULIN-FEMININE while we do not.
Garrison Keeler once summed up Ann Arbor as “a place where people discuss Socialism but only in the finest restaurants.” I think he really caught the ironic hypocrisy of this overrated town. This town poses as some intellectual haven where we’re all so much brighter than the rest, where we can all be seen reading Chaucer at the bus stop, but when the chips are down, the Madstone Theater can show ELOGE DE L’AMOUR, BREAKFAST AT TIFFANYS, and a slew of quirky independant films here and finds it has to close its doors after a few months. Films flow to where they are wanted, to where there is money and support, and in this respect Ann Arbor is not really a big film town.
Now maybe that’s no big deal, we don’t have to be a big film town, but in better “glory” days the situation was different. I think the News article is correct in saying that when there was a counter-culture and Ann Arbor was a counter-culture town, films were a part of this. But what counter-culture is is a group of people who think it’s more important to be culturally enriched than financially enriched and I think the average student is more interested in drinking, f-cking, watching sports and LOST, and finally becoming a lawyer or middle management suit, than give all that up to live a life rooted in service and in knowing history, literature, film, and philosophy.
In this respect, I think the “malaise” theory is correct but in a much wider and much deeper respect than just locally, than just a lazy U-M student not caring enough to put his headphones down, get off his duff, and come watch an old movie on campus.
posted by Lou Goldberg on October 22nd, 2005 at 3:02 pmLooks like I misunderstood JS. I thought he/she? was the editor who told me “to get bent” but is not. I actually tried to be as nice as I could to the guy considering he was just hired and was a jerk. I didn’t go over his head when I think I could have and probably had my way because I didn’t want to complain about him one month into his term. But in the end my (obviously intense) personality didn’t mesh with his (and that’s not uncommon between me and editors). I guess, the least I can say is that I’m a lot more easy going than Harlan Ellison who physically threatens editors who change so much as a comma of his work.
As for JS’s feeling that the film groups were little glens of poseurs that wanted to be cool by saying they were into avant-garde esoterica but who didn’t actually watch or understand it, I have to answer BS. It’s not that this type of person can’t be found here in Ann Arbor or anywhere. It’s just that it’s an unfair assessment of both the audience and the people running the societies. Cinema Guild, the current Projectorhead group, and the groups from the past that no longer exist, were all about love for a wide range and variety of film. I can’t speak for every audience attendee or society member, but in general, we were not being artsy but truly loving art and we wanted to share our love for movies with people and we fed the town’s culture while the town in turn wanted us to.
Now some of this interest is still here in town (if it wasn’t the Michigan would be closed, we wouldn’t have the Hollywood Video mega-store out on Stadium, and Liberty St. would stock nothing but Reese Witherspoon movies), but it seems to have shrunk, it exists here either at a much lesser level or has eveloved into a form that can’t sustain the campus film group.
Now the Michigan Theater will show from time to time ROBIN HOOD, BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, or CASABLANCA, key titles of the basic repetoire on their very large screen. They’ll even show silent films with an orchestra in homage to the fact that it was originally built as a silent movie palace. And it’s great that they do this but the experiences that people have seeing these films there don’t register in a way which teaches them that, even if they can rent or buy DVDs of say VERA CRUZ, CARMEN JONES, or FRENCH CAN CAN and watch them anytime they want, that they are still missing a greater experience of those films by never seeing them projected on a screen (another point the News article raised). Seeing PSYCHO at the Michigan doesn’t translate into a demand that campus groups exist in strength and show FOREIGN CORRESPONDANT, MARNIE, or LIFEBOAT on the screen in Angell Auditorium A. Why not?
Now in this respect, the campus auditoriums, even if they can project 16mm, 35mm, and video onto a screen, cannot rival the large screen size the Michigan has, the even larger screen size the now-torn-down Campus Theater once had on South University, or the stadium seating-sized screens put in over at the Showcase. On campus you can still get a movie theater-ish experience but it only gets so large and no larger. But it’s somewhat pointless to even discuss screen size and experience since the auditoriums are empty every weekend and the only people to ever see films projected there are film students whose classes show films in those rooms during the week. You would think that people, students and townies, would want to come out and see films on even a moderately-sized screen than see them on their TVs and laptops, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.
Whatever the reasons are, student malaise, cultural ignorance, changes in taste, a glut of other things to do, watch, or read, a list of better places to go, the cost of a babysitter, or the desire to just stay home instead of trying to find parking downtown, they’ve all in total effectively boarded up the place.
And I for one, who love the cinema with passion, frankly miss it. I often think of moving to Chicago or even Detroit so I can live in a film town where the uncut BABY FACE will show on a screen rather than keep plugging along here in what’s more or less a former film town. What does bother me are the smiley-faces who suggest that Ann Arbor is still this great film town (and maybe a great town in general) when I’ve been on the front lines in the battle to keep it from becoming a hick town and have lost. I know what a great film town looks like because I get their film schedules in the mail and this ain’t it.
But for now, because of the small band of brothers amongst the students and townies that keeps Cinema Guild going, I’m committed (or commitable, I’m not sure which) to continuing Guild’s 55 year existance as the 2nd oldest US college film group still operating. Maybe I’m a fool waiting for Godot who never shows up, waiting for the pendulum to swing back to where the 60s return when they won’t, but I don’t see what else I can do.
posted by Lou Goldberg on October 22nd, 2005 at 9:16 pmi saw FRENCH CAN CAN with a few thousand parisians on the steps of the sacre couer last summer. THAT is the way to see FRENCH CAN CAN!
(i am not a film buff … vicki got those genes.)
posted by peter honeyman on October 23rd, 2005 at 1:24 amPeter–We have never forgotten that Vicki was a Cinema Guild member.
posted by Lou Goldberg on October 23rd, 2005 at 2:43 pmGod, I’m writing even more on this subject–This is the first time I’ve ever written anything for this site but you can tell that I’ve an already built in complaint about Ann Arbor.
Now, I know an older gentleman who has lived all over the world: India, Israel, California, and maybe many other places he hasn’t told me about. He says that of all the places he’s ever been, Ann Arbor is the best place he’s ever lived in. I’ve lived here close to 25 years myself and when asked in the past I’ve always supported this town. However, to me, what was the leading attraction of the city was that you could attend some worthwhile cultural event without having to get onto a subway to do it. In other words, you could have the culture of a big city while still living in a small one.
I had a friend who’s big into status and oneupmanship. He felt it was a personal failing that he couldn’t get into Michigan and had to go to MSU instead. So to bolster his feelings of inferiority, he would always tell me what a superior place East Lansing was (better restaurants, prettier co-eds & they were easier to get into bed, and a ton of events at the Wharton Center that put our venues to shame). I never could completely agree but I could see from what he showed me that Ann Arbor had its faults and lack. Some neat event would come to the Wharton Center, be a 90 minute drive from Ann Arbor, and skip coming here before or after. Similar events I discovered around the Midwest made it clear that Ann Arbor wasn’t the central magnet that all these things were flowing to. To catch a lot of worthwhile culture, I found one had to do more than just get on a subway, one had to drive, take a train, or even fly out of town to reach it.
The leading attraction aspect of this town has dwindled in the last generation, not increased, or even remained the same.
True, one can’t expect your small little town, even if it does rate a yellow blotch on the road map, to be a stop-off point for every exhibition to tour the country. That’s unrealistic. Not even New York gets everything. So, ok, you can’t have everything, but I began to see that we were missing a lot of what we hadn’t missed before and shouldn’t be missing now. Not just in films, but in a wide variety of media.
The name of this blog site is Ann Arbor is Over-rated. Now, you can’t be over-rated unless people are saying things are better here than they actually are either through ignorance, denial, or pretense. But in a world of advertising spin and false-front facades, you get people who are always putting things in the most positive terms because they hope that approach will magically erase any conflict: “Sure we live 10 miles from a Nuke plant, but none of us glow-in-the-dark.” No, not yet. “Yeah, and the toxic Gelman Sciences plume is underground so it can’t hurt me there, right?” Uh-huh. To use an old cliche, you can sugarcoat a crapsicle but when you bite into it it still tastes like sh-t.
Puffery may be a defense that works in nature and human societies by making things seem bigger and better than they are, but eventually the little kid comes by and says the Emperor is naked. Then there follows laughter, embarrassment, and derision. Besides questions of integrity, you not only avoid all this letdown by sticking with the truth, you can be more effective by facing situations head-on if you do.
The film scene was once great. Now it is less great. It’s good. Maybe still better than other places. Certainly better than in Tecumseh. But it’s really only so-so. That’s an accurrate assessment of the situation. You can face that. You can ask why and investigate. You can find out the reasons. Then you can see if you can better things or not. Maybe you can. Maybe you can’t. The investigation discovers that nobody cares, you’ve got a town of too many cultural illiterates to stem the tide. You’re got crap instead of clay on the potter’s wheel. You can try to make a vase but it’ll collapse. Ok, that’s the situation. Now what? Well, you can tell the truth. You can say: This is just a so-so film town and allow people to respond to that. “Well, that’s ok.” Or, “It is? I don’t like that, is there anything I can do to alter that?” And it alerts people who want to live here: “Ok, well I’m looking for better than that, I’ll take a job in Chicago or Detroit.” Or: “Ok, a so-so film town will suffice for me. The Michigan Theater is more than I’m used to and more than enough to make me happy.”
But you see what happens when you lie and puff things up is that people come in fooled and with high expectations and eventually find out the truth anyway. Then they feel lowballed and frauded, they become pissed-off and resentful, and the next thing you know, they’re on-line telling people that the town is over-rated, that it’s blown their confidence and can’t live up to the reputation it tries to have. And that’s just an additional problem with the place on top of any it had to begin with, maybe an even worse one because instead of being just a so-so film town, it’s now a nest of liars.
In that respect, even if the News article on this subject wasn’t daring or honest enough to come out and suggest or say that we’ve lost our film scene because we’re just a bunch of cretans, it was atleast honest enough to avoid a bunch of boosterism and obfuscation to further hide that fact.
posted by Lou Goldberg on October 23rd, 2005 at 4:00 pmthis lou goldberg guy is sounding more like blaine with every post.
posted by peter honeyman on October 23rd, 2005 at 10:37 pmPeter: I think not. Lou actually makes a lot of sense (okay, the post was long, but he’d never done this before).
Lou: We’ve probably discussed this before, but even as a Cinema Guild patron, I watch “Lost” and think Truffaut is overrated.
posted by Lazaro on October 24th, 2005 at 4:07 pmyou measure by weight, i measure by volume.
posted by peter honeyman on October 24th, 2005 at 6:45 pmPete–I don’t know who Blaine or any of the regulars are at this site (and don’t care). This is really the only topic I have any interest in contributing to. Also, I’m just naturally long-winded. If I have a lot to say about something, I say it. And, arrogant or not, I usually think my posts would lose something if I tried to condense them down to a few sentences.
Laz–As for watching LOST or disliking Truffaut, that’s perfectly all right. Everyone has their own tastes, likes and dislikes, including me. It would be pretty closed-minded, elitist, and downright fascistic of me to say that the only people who rate are the people who share my tastes and everyone else is a nimrod.
Not that some people don’t do that. A snobbish critic like John Simon might have no problem there. If he were to look in on what I watch and read myself, he’d poo-poo it immediately as trash. And what would I do in response? I’d tell him to buzz off. We all want our freedom to do as we please, watch what we like, and feel comfortable at the end of the day. If I shake my finger at students and say to them they should come see old movies and they say “get bent old man,” well, that’s just the way it is and probably should be.
Now Laz is a regular Guild attendee. He may like LOST and not like Truffaut but he shows up for Guild films. And that takes an effort on his part because the Guild screenings aren’t as enjoyable in the MLB basement as they would be if they were showing on the much bigger screen over at Lorch Hall.
Part of the reason why Guild films don’t have more regulars is rooted in this fact. However, the reason why Guild can’t afford to move into the nicer surroundings which would attract and keep a few more people is that there aren’t enough people overall to support the costs of that move.
And, while there is nothing wrong with the average student’s lifestyle per se, it just doesn’t seem to put culture first as it once did. And that kills the student film group.
For example, as part of the effort to get students to join Cinema Guild, someone I know sent an e-mail out to 5000+ U-M Honors students asking them to look into joining. Out of that number, I got one response. One. And it wasn’t even to join, just to ask for some background info. When I mentioned this to the person who sent the e-mail, he said that unless it involves studying or career-building, it’s next to impossible to get the Honors students to get involved in anything else. But, there’s nothing wrong with that–they have one-track minds and that’s just who they are.
Other students on campus are out and about Saturday nights at bars or parties or Greek events or they’re at home watching TV and they represent another kind of one-track pursuit. Some are at the Michigan Theater watching the very sorts of films I go to and approve of myself but that still doesn’t help me because it means they aren’t on campus watching SYLVIA SCARLET, MY NAME IS IVAN, or TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER. [God, I love to name-drop movie titles.]
I would like it if students came to campus because that means I could continue to please audiences with the kinds of films I consider important to show and watch but there just seems to be some unbridgable gap between your typical beer-guzzling student and the films of Vittorio DeSica.
The moderator at the site, ever quick to diss Ann Arbor, considers the death due to “a culture of malaise” here on campus. He seems to think there are other campuses that have avoided that malaise and still have thriving film scenes so that the problem is more local to Ann Arbor or U-M, but I think the malaise is much more wide spread than that. A lot of campuses that show neater films don’t always have the audiences to support them, they just have patrons in university departments that pick up the tab.
However, I’m not saying locality isn’t a factor. Maybe people here don’t care as much about movies as people elsewhere do. Still, I’m more inclined to think the malaise is more generational rather than just regional.
In any case, finding what the reasons are to explain why U-M has no film scene any more isn’t easy and they also don’t come down to one or two easily identifiable and easily fixable causes. Meanwhile, the end result is the same, that I can only name-drop film titles instead of show them.
posted by Lou Goldberg on October 24th, 2005 at 8:15 pmLou, I really didn’t know a lot about ‘interesting films’ (a Philistine?) until I was introduced to them by a high school English teacher who was getting a degree in film and NYU and somehow convinced the school to let seniors take film study as English class (?!?). I would bet that there isn’t a massive generational difference (aren’t older generations *always* saying the subsequent generation is worse — less polite, lazier, stupider, etc.?). If anything, I think more art/independent films have made it into the main stream than used to precisely because people are demanding more from films now.
I think that the problem is not that students don’t have an interest — most people don’t until after their few exposures — it’s that they aren’t given their first opportunity to get hooked. If UM doesn’t give your organization (or one run by students) the money that it needs for free showings, then it’s hard to convince people to go and pay, when they don’t know what it’s all about and don’t know if they like it or not.
Anyway, I was a student at the UM for almost ten years (undergrad and grad) and never even knew you guys existed. How is that? I remember vaguely that films used to show at NatSci, but I think they were always recent but not current main-stream films. It’s not because I wasn’t interested in good films — I watched them all the time and had a lot of friends who did, too, on our little TV monitor in the basement of Black Elk. We couldn’t easily afford to go to the Michigan, so if they were free, or really cheap, we certainly would have gone. It was an awfully long walk from Hill & Washtenaw to Liberty St. Video, but we did it even in the coldest months. That implies, to me, anyway, that advertising wasn’t very good. I used to read the Current and I used to get the Observer (sometimes, anyway). I didn’t use to really read the Michigan, and maybe that’s where I would have heard about your movies? But at any rate, you all need to get the word out, or students — even interested ones — won’t show. And students often have chaotic schedules, and lots of competing interesting things to do, so you need to hit them over the head, over and over, or they will forget you exist, even if they saw an ad once and thought, “hm, that sounds sort of fun, I need to see if so-and-so wants to go sometime” (if they’re anything like me).
Have you all tried advertising in ICC houses? Or East Hall ? The residential college kids were always watching independent films, and if you said “free” we would have been there in a second. And the admin of the RC are always looking for stuff for the RC students to do — have you tried borrowing their auditorium? There is one — i don’t remember ever seeing a film there, but we certainly had theater productions, and it probably has a screen and projector. Finally, I’m still not really sure — are you guys officially a student group? Because if so, I don’t understand why UM wouldn’t give you money? They are fairly liberal if you form an official club — a few years ago we formed an academic club just so we could get a cheap van from the University to take to a conference in Washington DC.
posted by Anna on October 24th, 2005 at 9:18 pmAnna–I think we’ve tried just about everything over the years short of running naked in the streets passing out flyers or leading people into screenings at gunpoint. I can’t say how many flyers I’ve made up, xeroxed, taped up, and passed out over the years. The information has gone out on-line, in-print, and over the air. I’ve gone canvassing inside dorms (which they restrict now) and I just had an e-mail sent out to over 5000 U-M Honors students without a single reply (turns out the one guy who e-mailed me recently wasn’t an Honors students as I thought and didn’t find out about us from that e-mail!).
We are still very much a student group and the University does give us money. But, it’s so little and we have to go through hell and back to get it. We have to submit paperwork 3 times & go to meetings where we beg like dogs for the cash no less than 3 times all for about $260 a semester, which is barely enough to pay for one screening in MLB Lecture Room 2 (the small room where Projectorhead also shows). I don’t know who gave you the van for your trip but they aren’t around the MSA office today.
The Program in Film and Video Studies foots the bill for Projectorhead or else they wouldn’t be able to show there as often as they do. All the other free film on campus is supported by departments like The Center for Japanese Studies. M-Flicks gets a budget from UAC. I don’t know how much it is but they usually use it to show sneak previews of brand new mainstream films and those films they think will appeal to the widest possible audience. Films show for admission on a big TV set in the Union or League. I see flyers for these but have never attended so I don’t know how well they do or not.
But realistically, all you have to do is look at Projectorhead to see the problem. Cinema Guild’s operations have limitations that Projectorhead doesn’t. They have a venue where they can project 16mm & 35mm film. They show the films for free. They show regularly every week in the same location. And they advertise the films in the Observer, the Current, and every other place that will take and publish their information including their own very nice website. And what happens? Well the News said they get about 25 people out to their films. And if you ask me I’d say it’s only for the newest ones they show. Otherwise, they are lucky to get 6. They have a nice venue, show a good line-up, and get the word out but have yet to turn people away and require a bigger room.
But let’s say they fill the room and get the full 70 people. We’ve got what? 20,000 students, faculty, and staff and the town has 90-110,000 citizens and while you can fill the Big House on a Saturday afternoon you can’t get 100 people to come watch a film on campus on any given night? I mean sure the Japanese & Chinese films get that number, but the Asians, film buffs, and language students who attend those series have interests different from the student body and town at large. The same goes for special events like the Banff Mountain Film Ferstival tour that comes to campus every April. Their screenings are packed but the same people who come to all those films will not go to other types of films on campus.
So I don’t think it’s lack of advertsing. Maybe there’s a glut of too much to choose from and the campus screenings are expendible. But in the end, and of course I could be wrong, I think it’s just plainly a lack of interest in sufficient numbers. And this is based on experience. For me and others who work at these groups, the result is constant: students might be at the Michigan nights but the university auditoriums are chilly little ghost towns where sand and tumbleweeds spin in the wind.
You may think that if we just keep reminding people, keep pounding people over the head with it, over and over and over, it may come back to life, but we’ve done it, and done it, and done it. We could have built the pyramids twice over with the amount of energy we’ve put into these film groups, me and the other people I’ve seen involved over time. No, it’s like beating a dead horse now. There are a few people still dedicated to keeping things going at the levels they do, but all of us seem to lack the magic or know-how to invoke a full scale resurrection.
posted by Lou Goldberg on October 25th, 2005 at 4:12 amWell, you certainly know more about the situation than I do, but again, I’m telling you that I lived in Ann Arbor for ten years and have no more than a very vague sense that you guys may have existed. I like films. You guys wanted to reach someone like me, and somehow didn’t. Partly that’s because I was in my own world, busy with friends and studies and running, and I admit that I am suspicious of fliers because you never know who’s putting them up (sorry, I grew up in NY, if you respond to a flier there, you’ll end up in some scummy apartment with a guy trying to convince you that posing nude would be great for your acting career) but part of it was that my friends somehow didn’t think of you guys when we were looking for something to do.
You listed a whole bunch of incidents in which you alienated the major events advertising outlets in town. Maybe that was justified, but had I seen your listings consistently every week (even without blurbs describing the movies), I would have eventually popped in and if people were friendly, I would have made it at least a semi-regular thing.
P.S. I meant East Quad, not East Hall above. You want to reach RC students, they’re open-minded and looking for fun things to do — I don’t think that you really want to advertise to the honors kids, who tend to be pretty main stream and conservative.
posted by Anna on October 25th, 2005 at 10:27 amWell, as I said above, even if we were below the radar (and my guess is for the 10 years you were on campus we weren’t–before 2002 someone else was the program director and they didn’t have any of the issues about using the events guides that I do), a lot of other weekly free film events were shouting from the rooftops.
I’m not doubting that you would have come if we’d been able to connect with you somehow, but all the ten years you were here there was a lot of noticeable film on campus. It sounds like you were still trudging through the snow to Liberty St. Video. [Also, I don’t see you asking to be put on my mailing list now, all you have to do is click on my name for info, unless you don’t live in town.] In any case, even if there are many others like you who would have come had they known we were there, I don’t think there were enough of you then or now to re-ignite the campus film scene into a big, regular thing. That requires a large group of students who are really into film and into watching them on campus week after week and who are willing to pay for that and do much more than just passively wait for us to ring their doorbell with the information.
In the early 90s, I talked with the Program and Film & Video studies and because of that talk they instigated a free film series, Sunday nights at 7pm. It was kind of an earlier version of Projectorhead using prints owned by the Program. I didn’t run it or pick the titles, the selections were made by faculty at a meeting at the start of the term. I think it lasted 2 years tops. It was advertised regularly in the Current & Observer and the news was sent out via all the other usual channels like the U-M Events Calendar, etc. Why did it stop? Well, I remember going to a big auditorium to see Fritz Lang’s MANHUNT projected onto a screen. There were 9 of us. What can I say here? In a film town, a Fritz Lang movie on a big screen is supposed to be an event you come out for. When only 9 folks show up, that tells you you don’t have a film town there. And so after a while of that, the Program decided it wasn’t worth it.
The only reasons why they started again with Projectorhead is 1) because at some level they must feel like I do that it’s still important to keep screening film to a public no matter how small, and 2) because PH who works for the Program was an former AA Film Co-op member here as an undergrad and he has the spirit and connections to keep it going.
It seems to be true what you say about the Honors students, but there were 5000 of them, we had an opportunity to reach them, we took it, and it had NO effect at all. If you only have 20,000 students total and a fourth don’t respond when you reach out for them, it shows me that things are pretty much dead, even if the Honors students are conservative to begin with. Ok, I only need a fraction of that amount to make a thriving film scene, maybe 600 students who are really into it and come as a semi-regular thing so we can run a schedule, and you’d think they’re here, after all, the Michigan gets that & keeps afloat. But they aren’t here willing to come onto campus that I can see or root out.
I haven’t been over to the RC in a while. I remember talking with someone over there in the past and being told that unless I was a student in the RC or an RC instructor I didn’t have access to the place. But I didn’t recruit for members there. And, maybe the situation has changed to where it’s possible to use their rooms inexpensively now.
As for the ICC, I did contact them and I used the facilities at their Education Center for a term. Our events were listed in the ICC news that goes out to all houses and since the Ed Center is located behind a house, I often went right into the houses and told residents personally what we were doing and showing in the building behind them. One guess? That’s right. Not a single ICC resident ever showed up to any of the events we held there other than the one guy we already knew who helped arrange for us to use the building in the first place.
I like your suggestions and you may come up with a surprise I haven’t considered so I don’t want you to stop. One of them might be able to improve things a little more, but I’m not sure a little improvement will create the snowball effect needed to support an on-going festival on campus of great film.
posted by Lou Goldberg on October 25th, 2005 at 8:31 pmOkay, well, I guess you’ve convinced me… Ann Arbor isn’t a big film town. That is sad, though I guess not really surprising; I saw lots of changes in AA the years I was there (I’ve been gone a few years now — I guess I never heard about you guys because you didn’t exist back then). Anyway, as a side note, I’m surprised that the AA film fest is floundering. It was always well attended when I was an undergrad — I don’t remember it being under-attended when I was a grad student, but it’s the one thing from Ann Arbor (aside from the dog-o-mat, which I’ve sorely missed… if you have a huge dog you understand) I’ve wished was here in my current fair city.
posted by Anna on October 25th, 2005 at 11:44 pmWho the fuck makes a blog on how much they dislike a city. Just move you moron.
posted by Tardberg Wilson on August 13th, 2008 at 11:05 amThe webmaster did move on, Mr. Wilson.
posted by Colorado Sun on August 19th, 2008 at 6:01 pm