The Economics of Too-Long Films
I went to see Public Enemies last night. It’s pretty good. Stylish, elegant, well-acted, but a bit on the dull side—for some reason Michael Mann seems obsessed with trying to drain the excitement out of pitched gun battles. But even that wouldn’t be such a problem if not for the fact that the movie just seems way too long.
This is, it seems to me, a surprisingly common problem with would-be summer blockbusters. And it’s a problem I have a lot of trouble understanding. After all, movie studios would seem to have a strong incentive to make movies shorter. With a shorter movie, you should be able to pack more showings into a given day and sell more tickets and popcorn and such. And yet I feel like it’s way more common to walk out of a theater feeling that a movie was too long than to walk out feeling like I wished there’d been 15 more minutes. I don’t think I’m alone in this feeling. So what’s going on?
77 Responses to “The Economics of Too-Long Films”
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July 4th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Uh, because in the summer, it’s more about air conditioning than content?
Now, explain why the title of this film is sitting in the crotch of the featured character.
July 4th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Studios do frequently seek to cut down the running time of movies, I think for the reasons you cite, maybe for saving a few more pennies on film stock.
But the leverage of a studio to call for cuts to a film can be limited if the director/producer is a well known figure with an outsized ego. Frequently they’ll negotiate clauses in their contracts restricting the studio’s hand in the editing of their films. This can be a good thing since several movies that might have been watchable are butchered in post production, leaving them an incoherent mess. But it can also become a curse, when the directors become overly fond of their own work, evidenced by the frequently disappointing “directors cuts.”
July 4th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Yeah, it was pretty long. Although, like restaurants, I simply think blockbuster directors and producers feel like they have to give people there money’s worth. How many people would feel satisfied with an 87 minute blockbuster…seriously?
k1
July 4th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
nthing Zed. The influence of the director over the studio, it would seem to me, is the reason that these things get longer.
July 4th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
I vividly remember my youth and having many movies that would have benefited from fifteen to thirty more minutes being cut down to a tidy 88 minute run time. This changed quite dramatically; I think the turning point was Titanic. After that, studios got more interested in longer movies. And this went really well for a while, but I think you’re right that lately, movies that would have benefited from a brisker pace have been left to trudge along.
July 4th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
“So what’s going on?”
Simple.
The two biggest grossing movies in history, Titanic and Gone with the Wind (adjusted for inflation) are both like eighteen hours long.
July 4th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
I think this ignores the multiplex effect. Running the math in my head, if we assume a blockbuster was 120 minutes long, with a 30 minute rest period, you’re looking at about 6 screenings during a workday (assuming 10:00-AM to Midnight as screening times allowed). At 90 minutes, you get 7. Conversely, buying an additional screen lets you show it 12 times in the same period – which is probably higher profit, especially if you’re dealing with front-loaded-all-profit in the first week films.
The additional screens probably make the length irrelevant, since you’ve also got a selection of also rans you can cut as you need.
July 4th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
My understanding also is that the worry is that for a major dramatic film, anything less than two hours these days and the audience will feel like it got ripped off. In fact, I’ve heard this specifically applied to third acts, meaning a long (bordering on tedious) third act is the expectation these days.
Now of course maybe they are talking themselves into something stupid, but it wouldn’t be the first time for Hollywood.
July 4th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Directors and studios don’t trust their material, so they stuff, stuff, stuff. This is particularly a problem with comedies. Judd Apatow makes some hilarious movies (and some not so hilarious), but most of the movies he’s involved in are about fifteen minutes too long.
July 4th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
“No good movie is too long; no bad movie is short enough.” — Roger Ebert
I remember thinking Men In Black could’ve been longer. Upon first viewing, I thought the climax was, in fact, the end of the 2nd act, with our heroes faced with an impossible clean-up situation. Afterward, I realized that MIB was intended as a comedy, not an action epic, and therefore had to be under 90 minutes (half as long as Titanic later that year, incidentally).
July 4th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
I go with the Director’s Ego explanation. King Kong is another example of a film that would have been improved if there had been someone around to say no to the director. We did not need to see a ten minute ice skating interlude in the middle of Kong’s rampage across New York.
July 4th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Just to add a dissenting voice: I didn’t think Public Enemies was too long. Oh, maybe 4 or 5 minutes could have been cut here or there, but I wouldn’t have wanted to lose more than that.
You also run into real issues of coherence and pacing when you cut. Matt’s post is based on the assumption that the product (a dramatic film) is basically elastic. It *could* be any length, and it’s just a question of what length is most profitable. But there really are some inherent constraints. A 90-minute tragedy would not be a tragedy, it would be an case of bad luck.
July 4th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Mr. and Mrs. Smith could have cut the last 45 minutes out.
July 4th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
I agree with Ted. It’s refreshing and exciting to watch a movie that takes the time to tell its story well and completely. Patience may not be a virtue for every audience member, but it still has a role to play. Being a patient and exacting artist with respect for the work is different than being an egomaniac. A full Shakespeare play can often run almost four hours. Accountants concern themselves with popcorn sales, but great creative talents are rarely motivated by bottom line sales.
July 4th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
DTM says: My understanding also is that the worry is that for a major dramatic film, anything less than two hours these days and the audience will feel like it got ripped off.
Along with the influence of A-list directors, this is probably the key reason so many films could stand some editing. Going out to the movies cost $10-11 pp, plus snacks, people need to feel they got their money’s worth if they’re going to drag their asses off of the couch.
20 minutes of trailers/commercials is not seen as part of the movie dollar value.
July 4th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
13: Mr. & Mrs. Smith is a perfect example! Not just because it’s long, but because the movie seemed to reach the end and just keep going. After I saw it (and thinking of other such movies), I wondered if the four-act picture is starting to take over.
July 4th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
I like the Roger Ebert quote Grumpy posted. That’s how I feel. If the movie is good, there’s no such thing as too long. You shouldn’t want it to end.
I look at a movie like Casino, one of my all-time faves, and I imagine that it would be criticized for its three hour runtime if released today. But I loved every second of it and wouldn’t ask Scorsese to change a thing (except maybe that comical Ace Rothstein car explosion with the dummy).
If you think it’s too long then the director wasn’t doing something right.
July 4th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
14: To say that movie needs ample time to tell a story well presupposes that the story is worth the telling. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t see much Shakespeare in Public Enemies. Hell, I didn’t see much Ben Jonson.
You can’t assume that a 2-3 hour movie is all lean, tight storytelling with no extraneous fat, such that it would be rendered incomprehensible if five minutes were cut. (For one thing, it was probably incomprehensible despite the presence of those five minutes.)
I’ll always take quality over quantity. King Kong, mentioned above, would’ve been a much, much better film if Jackson had the discipline to cut an hour’s worth from it. The same for all three Lord of the Rings films, actually.
July 4th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
In India, the movies are all between 2.5 and 3.5 hours long, and there’s an intermission. The moviegoing experience there is mostly about air conditioning and escapism, so the length is a feature, not a bug (as are the dance sequences).
I wouldn’t mind long movies like that in the US, but the intermission is key. Let people get up and move around!
July 4th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
I just wish that someone would bring back the old-fashioned intermission! If a movie is going to be 3 hours, then own it! Program a 10 minute pee break, please.
July 4th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Forrest Gump could’ve lost 142 minutes.
srsly, I vote for “People who spend $10 on a ticket want to feel like they’ve got their money’s worth.”
July 4th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
I think Mike Collins got the economics part right. Also it should be remembered that more showings make more money only if more total people end up going that day. Going from 6 to seven showings could only be expected to allow more people to go if the existing showings are less than 10-15% empty.
I think the real problem with Public Enemies was not the length, but the lack of much dramatic momentum. It was very episodic with no particular sense of how things were building, so each heist or shoot out or escape was more or less interchangeable.
What was odd also was that although they had some very specific details correct, they greatly altered the timeline of the deaths of pretty boy floyd and baby face nelson. Why I do not know, except for some reason perhaps wanting to make Dillinger seem like the last hold out. Also with all that length I was surprised they left out Dillinger’s dramatic return to his hometown to visit his dad in the middle of the heat of the manhunt as well the attempts at plastic surgery.
July 4th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
I think the thing with Public Enemies is this: the plot is mostly fixed. It’s a biopic, and it’s a story that a lot of adults already know a bit about. So plot is not going to be what makes the movie worth watching. If it’s worth watching at all, it’s going to be worth watching for the grandeur of the way the thing is carried off: the performances, the art design, the gritty sense of period background.
So if you want to debate whether PE is too long you really need to ask how long it takes to develop those aspects. Personally, I thought it was beautifully done, but I can see arguments either way.
However, I suspect that most of the people complaining that this movie is too long are really wishing that it was a different sort of movie — a tightly paced, twisty action thriller. Which is not actually the genre it’s in. It’s somewhere between The Godfather and The Aviator. It’s not trying to be Usual Suspects.
July 4th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
@22: good points about the timeline and plastic surgery. I think it boils down to an attempt to make Dillinger a more romantic figure, and also focus attention on the love story. In reality there were other girls, but they ignore that because — like the plastic surgery — it tends to diminish him.
I did think I saw some subtle scars on Depp’s face in the final part of the movie, tho.
July 4th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
GET OFF MY LAWN!
Having got that geezer moment out of the way. Maybe my timeline is too long but there was a time when you would spend an afternoon or an evening at the movies which often enough meant a cartoon plus a double feature, that is with an A and a B movie. Meaning that your ticket bought you around three hours of entertainment. But at the same time this worked against an overlong A movie, it kind of had to come in less than 90 minutes. And even after the heyday of the double feature you had to worry about keeping the movie short enough so you could adapt it for TV meaning cutting out enough space for the commercials in the 90 minute TV movie timeslot. These days I don’t think the major networks even run things like Friday Night at the Movies in prime time, if you watch a movie on TV it is overwhelmingly likely to be on some cable or on demand channel or as a tape or disk rental.
So maybe it is as simple as the lack of the narrow box of time slots imposed by drive-in movies and weekend TV, there being no financial penalty for running an extra 20 minutes.
July 4th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
“I think the real problem with Public Enemies was not the length, but the lack of much dramatic momentum.”
Michael Mann is a really weird director. None of his movies have much dramatic momentum, yet they’re all pretty watchable.
July 4th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Now, explain why the title of this film is sitting in the crotch of the featured character.
FYI: It’s a film about John Dillinger.
I don’t think I need to explain any further.
July 4th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Saw it last night. Its problem isn’t length – it’s focus. Whose story is Mann really telling? Neither Dillinger nor Purvis are that compelling as characters – Johnny Depp is compelling, Dillinger not so much. There are hints of ambivalence on the part of Purvis, which are never really played out. The most interesting character is Special Agent Winstead, as played by Stephen Lang.
Better film-making than it is a film.
July 4th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Box office is not where the money is anymore, rather its in DVDs and merchandise. People are probably more willing now then in the past to watch long movies because they can watch them in more confortable seats and pause them when necessary. Also there is a niche factor. The people who will buy Public Enemies may be those who really like it and those people want it to be long.
July 4th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Mr. and Mrs. Smith could have cut the last 45 minutes out.
Pooh. “Honey, don’t undermine me in front of the hostage”? And the recommitment in the garden shed is sweet, always brings a tear to my eye. (It’s a date movie for guys.)
July 4th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Yes, intermission! Everyone loves those. In fact, my favorite part of Lawrence of Arabia is the scene that leads into intermission:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sppPQogIhxs&feature=player_embedded
July 4th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
I’d add that Public Enemies isn’t a traditional summer blockbuster, it’s a summer prestige picture, ala Gladiator. Filmmakers seem to think such movies need to be long to get their points across (their point being to get Oscar nominations).
July 4th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
I remember Manhunter and Last of the Mohicans as having pretty good dramatic build.
@24 I agree they were making it more of a love story, which pushed it in certain directions.
I think the biggest problem though was that they sort of made Dillinger a guy who just wanted some time with his girl but was overwhelmed by diabolical forces beyond his control.
With a biopic I think you ought to either track and recreate why the person was fascinating the first time around or revisit in a larger context what about the society made the person seem fascinating.
Dillinger’s devotion to his girlfriend or that Dillinger was the last outlaw standing finally betrayed by sinister forces beyond his control ain’t it.
July 4th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Is MY saying The Godfather should be cut down? How about Godfather II? I remember feeling cheated by the most recent James Bond flick. Why? Because the first thing I said to myself upon exiting the theater was about it being so damn short. And if that is obvious to me, that is a problem.
July 4th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
I think others have added to my explanation well. But someone mentioned Shakespeare taking 3-4 hours, and I feel a need to clarify on that point. If you look at the prologue to Romeo and Juliet it’s billed explicitly as a 2 and a half hour play. These plays take so long nowadays because we talk so much slower.
July 4th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
These plays take so long nowadays because we talk so much slower.
Y’all must be hirin’ too many southerners as achahs.
July 4th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
I worked in Hollywood for a long time, and I can tell you that the shorter movies are not in fact cheaper to make. What makes an action movie expensive is all of the big set pieces, like the final battles / major explosions, etc. These are what draw people to the theater (or so the execs believe, at any rate), and don’t really determine the length of a film. Way more footage is shot than could ever be used, and the length of a film is mostly determined in the editing room, where they will cut (or not) to actually make a finished product. On a monstrous film like, say, Spider-Man 3, they shot enough footage to make the same film 5 times over without reusing a single cut. So chopping of 20 minutes from that film (easy to do with competent editing…) wouldn’t have saved a dime.
So when you see a really long film that could have been much shorter, it is mostly a result of the director’s ego / poor editorial. Directors think everything they shoot is brilliant, and they can’t stand the thought of leaving out anything. I mean, if you really believe that the $10M explosion sequence is the emotional heart of a film, and everyone will love it, then you may have a hard time cutting it down from a ridiculous 20 minutes to a reasonable 5 (see, e.g., Michael Mann, John Woo, Michael Bay, James Cameron, George Lucas, etc. etc.).
July 4th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
I worked in Hollywood for a long time, and I can tell you that the shorter movies are not in fact cheaper to make. What makes an action movie expensive is all of the big set pieces, like the final battles / major explosions, etc. These are what draw people to the theater (or so the execs believe, at any rate), and don’t really determine the length of a film. Way more footage is shot than could ever be used, and the length of a film is mostly determined in the editing room, where they will cut (or not) to actually make a finished product. On a monstrous film like, say, Spider-Man 3, they shot enough footage to make the same film 5 times over without reusing a single cut. So chopping of 20 minutes from that film (easy to do with competent editing…) wouldn’t have saved a dime.
So when you see a really long film that could have been much shorter, it is mostly a result of the director’s ego / poor editorial. Directors think everything they shoot is brilliant, and they can’t stand the thought of leaving out anything. I mean, if you really believe that the $10M explosion sequence is the emotional heart of a film, and everyone will love it, then you may have a hard time cutting it down from a ridiculous 20 minutes to a reasonable 5 (see, e.g., Michael Mann, John Woo, Michael Bay, James Cameron, George Lucas, etc. etc.).
PS: Wanted to say good post!
July 4th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Longer movies win Oscars. If Jackson had cut the eight superfluous endings from Return of the King, he would not have walked away with Best Picture.
July 4th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Adding to the above I think it’s just that most modern directors have forgotten how to tell stories properly, even Spielberg has trouble ending his films these days.
I read something years ago that said all aspiring young directors should be asked to remake ‘His Girl Friday’ and if they couldn’t bring it in under 90 minutes they wouldn’t be allowed to make another movie.
July 4th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
While I haven’t seen this one yet, but I really have to disagree with Matt about Michael Mann as regards large gunfights. Unless, of course, he found the second half of Heat to be boring. If so, well, I think we may just have different ideas about the genre, and possibly film in general.
As to the second point, I think, (for once) economics has little to do with it. Directors, writers, and non-studio producers have gained more power, nominally a good thing. However, when they get too close to a project and lose perspective, it is much more difficult to tell them they’re making the wrong choices. I think it’s a good thing that the ahem artist’s have more say in the final product, but with that come some of the excesses of art. Such is life.
July 4th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
ummmmm, their getting paid by the frame?
July 4th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Two different questions here:
1) Why are movies “long” (more than 90 minutes)?
2) Why does a given movie (of any particular length) FEEL too long?
Question 1 is an issue of studio economics. You’re correct that historically studios and exhibitors have preferred shorter pictures, in order to maximize showings and revenues. (It’s not so much a question of whether or not you’re playing to a full house every showing as that a maximum number of showtimes allows you to accommodate the maximum audience that day.) If you look back at the heyday of the American studio system, I think you’ll find that most production really was done on a virtual stopwatch method, with many more pictures, including epics and prestige productions, clocking in at or near 90 minutes on the nose. It’s not that way any more because studios no longer have that level of control, and final cut has become an epic tug of war involving studio, producers, director, and major stars regarding what goes and what stays. As other posters note, there is a countervailing marketing need to persuade the ticket buyer he or she is getting value for money. For a very long time, 90 minutes has been all but engraved in stone as the minimum acceptable length for a movie. More recently, we seem to expect a”serious” picture to be around 2 hours. In addition, “epic” now apparently means “long,” so if you’re going to market a picture as “epic,” then by God it had better be at least 2 hours. (And so what if My Darling Clementine clocks in at only 97 minutes.) However, if you push 3 hours, the studios and distributors really start to squirm.
Which brings us to Question 2, why movies end up FEELING too long. On that, it’s all due entirely to the internal dynamics of the given picture. Grumpy’s Ebert quote is very apt. A movie should be exactly as long as is required to complete the full arc of a given story, neither more nor less. An overpacked, baggy film will obviously feel too long; but, paradoxically, so will one that has had too many of its essential elements cut out. A film that is objectively too short will actually feel too long.
Great story from Milos Forman on trying to edit One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest down from two hours and fifty minutes to two hours and four. The shortest cut turned out to be the one that FELT the longest.
Foreman: “I finally realized that when I’d taken out all the shots that didn’t directly advance the plot, I’d also gotten rid of the shots that worked on my feelings and drew me into the story, so I went and put back seven minutes of screen time. A lot of these shots were the early therapy sessions, which sketched the personalities of the minor characters and made them more real, more sympathetic… I screened this cut of two hours and eleven minutes and something amazing happened: adding seven minutes greatly shortened the film.”
On Public Enemies, I agree it felt too long. In my view, the single biggest reason for this is Christian Bale’s character, Agent Purvis. He is on the screen too much to simply be a supporting character (like Billy Crudup’s Hoover) but is not fully developed enough to give us a sense of a third major character with a story arc of his own parallel to that of Dillinger and Billie. We never go anywhere with Purvis as a character, so all the time we spend with him is just waiting to get back to Dillinger and Billie. Hence the drag. Whether this is a screenplay problem, a shooting problem or an editing problem, I don’t know. If you’re the producer paying Christian Bale, no doubt you expect a minimum amount of screen time; if you’re Christian Bale yourself, no doubt ditto. But then there’s pressure to get the movie in at under 3 hours. Maybe there’s a whole scad of back-story scenes on Purvis that had to be cut for time. In the end, as so often, you fall between two stools. We get too much Christian Bale, but not enough. A not untypical outcome due to the “longer, no, shorter” impulses and myriad interested parties fighting over the final cut.
( …and, yes, if I made this post shorter, it would in fact SEEM longer. )
July 4th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
The leanest crime story ever filmed: The Maltese Falcon (1941). It came in at 1 hr and 41 minutes. It’s as complicated a story as you could want and John Huston brought it in well under 2 hours.
July 4th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
do they tell you where the treasure is?
July 4th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
SPOILER ALERT
Actually “Heat” has some dramatic momentum that ends first in the bank heist and the following shootout, then another one in the climatic showdown in the airport.
Mann’s films are about details and procedures that rule the lives of the main characters. Sometimes that works well (as in Heat and The Insider), but sometimes can be a major drag (Miami Vice as a perfect example).
Mann is a good director, but he has his flaws. No director is perfect: Even Michael Bay has good technical skills, but he lacks serious storytelling basics. Transformers 2 is the living example of this. That movie didn’t deserve to be 2 and a half hours and it felt like it was three times longer. I swear it was exhausted after watching it and I don’t want to see it ever again.
Heat is three hours long but is just perfect that way.
July 4th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
@43: I have to agree. The Bale/Purvis story doesn’t actually go anywhere, and it’s a weak spot.
I understand what they thought they were doing. They started out with a book about the rise of the FBI — that was apparently the seed of the movie. And in truth, the doomed-outlaw story is a bit of a cliche, so I understand why you would want to freshen it up by looking more seriously/historically at the other side of the struggle.
Parts of the FBI story work: Crudup as Hoover provides comic relief. And the phone taps come across nicely as a newfangled sinister technique. But I just don’t know what they thought they were doing with Purvis. He’s conflicted: that comes through clearly. And torn between the old ways and the new. But in itself, that’s not a story arc.
July 4th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
[...] too long? July 4, 2009 Posted by Evil Bender in Film, arts and culture. trackback Matthew Yglesias asks an interesting question: I went to see Public Enemies last night…the movie just seems way too [...]
July 4th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Ebert’s right: a film should be as long as it takes to tell the story, and no longer.
State of Play was one of those paradoxical films, in that it botched the ending to keep things around two hours. I’m not sure if they’d have done better with 150 mins over 127, but the last quarter-hour felt a bit desperate.
Shadow Banker is, I think, on the mark here: look at Best Picture winners over the past 20 years, and you’re looking at two hours for the general rule. Crash came in leanest at 112 mins in recent years, but it feels tooth-pullingly longer than that; you have to go back to Driving Miss Daisy in 1989 for a film that doesn’t hit three figures. Three hours is either Oscar bait or blockbuster material.
In India, the movies are all between 2.5 and 3.5 hours long, and there’s an intermission.
And the double feature is not lost from living memory in the rest of the world.
July 4th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
In the Kingdom of Bloat, who can forget (or forgive) Peter Jackson’s “King Kong”. OVER 3 hours. 187 minutes compared to the original’s 101 minutes. 86 enervating, ego-padding vanity minutes. And there’s a 201 minute Director’s Cut! It’s not as soul-stealing as the kind of thing that makes it to The Soup, but it is its own little niche of Hell just the same.
July 4th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
I agree with Michael Collins about multiplexes changing the economics of shorter movies.
Director ego is definitely a problem, but “director’s cuts” are also about economics: the studio wants to get people to buy another copy. There really are only a handful of movies that merit a director’s cut (usually due to studio interference.) But nowadays movies that were cut just fine are being given director’s cuts and special editions just to sell more of them. They cram a few unnecessary deleted scenes in, often mucking up the pacing, and voila, they have a new dvd on the shelves.
July 4th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
The Ebert and Forman quotes are perfect (where can I find the Forman one?). The “too long” criticism of movies is usually off-base, and almost never enlightening as to why a movie doesn’t work.
When a movie is failing for some reason, we become aware of time passing. Our experience of watching starts to drag. It becomes easy to walk out of the theater and say: “you know what was wrong with that movie? It was too long.”
Why is that a problem? Because most of the time these days, the movie actually suffers from being too short. The scenes that would have made you care enough about the characters and/or plot to lose all sense of time are exactly the ones that have been left out. Often they get cut during the editing process with the specific intention of making the movie shorter. Hollywood has been doing this more and more in recent years. And the worst part is that they’ve been doing it because people complain that movies are too long. It’s a vicious circle.
An example (with spoilers): I saw Watchmen with a group of eight friends, of whom one besides me had read the graphic novel. She loved the movie; everyone else thought it was too long. As soon as the movie was over, I asked my friends how many knew from the first time Veidt showed up that he was the “bad guy.” Everyone did, of course–the movie used “bad guy” cues that date back 60+ years. But if you see Veidt as a “bad guy” from moment one, then a) there’s no mystery, which makes it painful to watch the “heroes” slowly bumble toward the answer that you knew two hours ago, and b) Veidt’s actions occupy much less of a gray area than they do in the graphic novel (because there, he’s set up as the best of all of them), which takes away the complexity that makes the ending satisfying. The movie will drag. Along similar lines, they left in some long sequences that were crucial to the graphic novel but weren’t set up enough in the movie for newcomers to care.
Here’s where Matt’s right: most of the movies that really are too long come out during the summer. That’s because the movies that are actually too long are usually the ones with extended action sequences that, no matter how much you may love them, do nothing to make you care about the rest of the movie. Transformers 2 is maybe the best example of this ever. Like I said, I haven’t seen Public Enemies, and it may well fit into this category. But the problem isn’t movies that are too long; it’s movies that waste time on stuff that doesn’t add to the story and/or leave out stuff that would have.
July 4th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
We need shorter movies because we need to check our cell phones, E mail, and tweet our review of the movie.
July 4th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Forman quote is from Turnaround: A Memoir. Very entertaining, lots of pithy anecdotes about his early days in the Czech film system and later ones in Hollywood. Doesn’t seem to be in print right now but looks like a fair number of cheap used copies on Amazon.
July 4th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Ebert is right, it all depends. Some great, long films (160-180 minutes) that aren’t boring – at least to me:
Das Boot
Fanny and Alexander
Reds
Godfather I/II
Nixon
Short Cuts
Seven Samurai
Schindler’s List
Magnolia
The Deer Hunter
Casino
Barry Lyndon
Camille Claudel
La Dolce Vita
Im Lauf der Zeit
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Heat
Tess
Scarface (de Palma)
The Good Shepherd
Once Upon a Time in the West
Munich
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Amadeus
Breaking the Waves
Zodiac
Pelle the Conqueror
Lolita
July 4th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
make that: 160-200 minutes!
July 4th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
AP nails it. “Too long” is a very unhelpful critique.
July 4th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
How much of an effect does shortening the movie have on actual ticket sales? Yes, you can have more showings, but the only actual sales increase comes from people who are so supremely busy that they only have a 45 min window for a movie start time in a two-three week period. How typical is that?
July 4th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
For me, the best example is Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (I get exhausted just typing the title). There are two whole stories in there, one in the natural world, the other in the supernatural, and while there are elegant ways they are connected, they often feel like two separate movies. In fact, the second time I saw the film it was halfway over already and I assumed it was the new sequel — which I didn’t see until months later. I just couldn’t believe they had packed so much into the movie, and yet it seemed to go over quite well. Hunh.
Anyway, I never tire of saying how enlightening it was to take a graduate seminar in T.S. Eliot, using the Annotated Waste Land — Eliot’s original typewritten draft, as marked up by Ezra Pound. You can actually watch Pound making it a better poem — a masterpiece — by cutting away redundancy and other dross.
Woody Allen is famous for shooting much more movie than he needs, then creating the film in the editing room. It’s a bit like the M.O. of reality TV, actually.
July 4th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
““Too long” is a very unhelpful critique.”
Any two word criticism is going to be unhelpful, except as a generally indication of what’s wrong.
Mike
July 4th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
re. #53, yes we seem to have much shorter attention spans.
And Mike, #60, you’re being too cute.
July 4th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
I can’t believe no one’s yet brought up the size of the human bladder. If I was foolish enough to drink a couple of glasses of beer before a movie, 90 minutes feels way too long. On the other hand, in preparation for “Return of the King”, I dehydrated myself the whole day.
I actually liked the ice skating scene in “King Kong.” For me, it was all the dinosaur and giant bug crap that made the movie so tediously long.
One way to understand the director’s ego: when we make photo albums (if anyone here still does that), how many of you can really limit yourself to including one gorgeous photo of that gorgeous sunset? How many of us want to put in two or three pictures? After all, they’re good photos too, even if the subject is the same. The director and film editor are going through a quite similar process: you’ve got good work that as a short clip looks great, but when part of a whole photo album/ movie, doesn’t really add much.
July 4th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Re: If Jackson had cut the eight superfluous endings from Return of the King, he would not have walked away with Best Picture.
The so-called superfluous endings were part of the original book (the climax at Mt Doom comes about 2/3 into Return of the King) and Jackson did in fact cut out a lot out of Tolkien’s last chapters. But we did need to know that Frodo and Sam were rescued, that Aragorn and Arwen were wed, that the Hobbits got home OK and, yes, Sam’s marriage (which occupied maybe two minutes) and Frodo’s final journey belonged there too. The issue I had with LOTR’s length is the drawing out of the action sequences, something that too many films do nowadays as if the special effects guys get to dictate the screenplay. Thus at times LOTR felt like we were watching the Hundred Years War, not the War of the Ring. The fight scenes in Moria were especially over done. Tolkien handled this in about 4-5 pages, but Jackson gave them nearly 20% of the first movie.
July 4th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Quantum of Solace was 106 minutes long; very short for a Bond film. And it worked great, I thought — another half hour of padding would have really bogged it down.
Roger Ebert is pretty much wrong about everything, this included. Length is a hugely important artistic decision. A movie can be good overall but go too long; a movie can be bad in part because it’s too short.
July 4th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
Jonc #37: “Directors think everything they shoot is brilliant, and they can’t stand the thought of leaving out anything… (see, e.g., Michael Mann, John Woo, Michael Bay, James Cameron, George Lucas, etc. etc.).”
The perils of generalization. Take Cameron, for example: even Titanic had subplots and scenes deleted from the theatrical version. Had this notorious egoist really left in every inch of film, Titanic would’ve been much longer. (One could argue that he cut out the wrong things, or still left in too much.) The list of deleted subplots from Cameron’s movies is legendary (among Cameron fans, anyway): the wave sequence from The Abyss, Ripley’s daughter from ALIENS, even the twist ending of The Terminator. The King of the World has shown little reluctance to kill his babies, though he has often resurrected them on video.
July 4th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
Matt, you’re not alone.
I agree with those above saying directors’ egos are the problem. I don’t think it’s shorter attention spans as I think movies have definitely gotten longer over time, some old long movies notwithstanding. Ninety minute movies seem to have gotten rare.
July 5th, 2009 at 1:54 am
The simple explanation is that he’s an older fella himself, with a longer attention span, and he’s got the clout to make movies his way. Those of us with longer attention spans like it just fine. I bet it’ll be successful enough, even if a handful of youngsters start to squirm in their seats before it’s over.
Terminator Salvation and other children’s movies are for the younger generations with shorter attention spans. Not every goddamn picture has to be aimed squarely at the most lucrative demographic.
July 5th, 2009 at 2:35 am
You can actually watch Pound making it a better poem — a masterpiece — by cutting away redundancy and other dross.
“b-ll-s” being one of E.P.’s more famous editorial marginalia.
Woody Allen is famous for shooting much more movie than he needs, then creating the film in the editing room
And Annie Hall was another of the very few Best Picture winners that clocked in close to 90 minutes.
July 5th, 2009 at 6:53 am
Indulgent directors can be a problem, sure, I’ve watched too many a director’s cut, either in the cinema when they were given final cut or on DVD, that was too long or inferior to the original edit respectively. That said, I’ve also watched a lot of films that have been butchered by the studio, and am glad that both director’s have had more power since the 70s and that when they don’t have that power, they can at least show their original vision of the film on DVD. It’s a double edged sword and, again, it all depends.
One problematic aspect with DVD releases is that customers have developed a weird attitude towards editing. Some don’t appreciate a good edit that tells a story in the time that is needed anymore, not more and not less, but have simply adopted a “more is better” attitude. They like the characters and the setting and simply want more of it: all those marketing ploys like “previously unreleased footage”, “from the cutting room floor” or “uncut version”, have led them to believe that editing is not an art, but simply a way of depriving them of footage that they have a right to view.
July 5th, 2009 at 6:53 am
oops – I meant: “self-indulgent directors”
July 5th, 2009 at 8:39 am
Just to add to the Shakespeare comments, American Shakespeare Center in Virginia keeps their (consistently excellent) plays to 2 -2 1/2 hours and they manage to pull in crowds five days a week, 50 weeks a year in rural Virginia. So it is possible to do Shakespeare well in that time frame.
July 5th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Matt, I’m surprised no one has brought up the fact that a movie studio doesn’t make very much in a theatrical run of a film, compared to how much they make in the home video/DVD and ancillary markets. Here are some variables I, a lowly sound editor, aware of:
directors, producers and actors often split an enormous percentage of gross theatrical take of a film.
The creatives generally DO NOT get this kind of deal on DVD or ancilliary markets.
Longer films increase the perceived value
Books, toys and video games benefit from the source material having more characters and story points, thus having a longer running time.
While a shorter run time allows you to squeeze in more screenings in a day, I don’t think, just racking my brain, there’s any negative correlation between run time and BO gross, or if there is, it definitley would point o a run length of 2 hours, maybe 2.5 hours if only the blockbusters of the last 5 years are considered.
July 5th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
The film was miscast, In real life and in the book, Melvin Purvis is the protagonist who hunts down the Public Enemies (plural not singular) Dillinger, Nelson and Floyd, among others.
What threw the movie off-kilter was casting the bigger star in a supporting role and then adapting a fascinating police procedural book into a half-assed Dillinger biopic.
Johnny Depp should have been cast as Purvis and Christian Bale as Dillinger to keep the focus on Purvis’s story. If Depp was insistent on play Dillinger, his part should been limited to a supporting role (like De Niro’s in The Untouchables) and not the lead.
July 6th, 2009 at 9:14 am
The Ebert quote is correct.
Public Enemies is 140 minutes, a chunk of which is the usual long set of closing credits. 140 minutes on its own isn’t an overly long amount of time. An NBA game is 150 minutes of air time. An NFL game is 180 minutes, with some of the best in terms of quality being longer.
The first Pirates of the Caribbean was 143. One can reasonably argue that the later two movies got bloated, but the first one was a surprisingly tight film given multiple storylines and lead characters being weaved together.
Obviously people can roll out the Godfather or Seven Samurai as movies being considerably longer yet great movies.
John
July 6th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
since when does Michael Mann make “summer blockbusters”?
July 6th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Ah yes, the intermission, enabling the movie goer to “go” and not spend the middle of the flick fighting the urge so as not to miss key scenes. You’d think the theaters would recognize the opportunity to sell more crap, the core of their profit margin, vs. cramming in another 90 min showing with the accompanying cleaning and advert delays.
I haven’t enjoyed an intermission since seeing “2001″ open in Hiroshima, 1968.
July 8th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
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