Notice something off about the photo above? You may be thinking,
"Sure, something doesn't look right." And AMC Theatres will be thinking,
"Gee, looks great to me."
Who's right? Well not the people with eyeballs in their skulls,
I'll tell you that much.
There was an earlier Phoenix
screening of the stop-motion animated film ParaNorman.
I think it was Tuesday, but it was in the morning, a difficult time to get out
of the office to make a drive to Downtown Phoenix or further to watch a movie. So
I missed it and instead chose to go to a Thursday night press screening. No, my
review wouldn't make it in our Friday paper, but I already had my Sparkle review running so I figured we'd
hold ParaNorman for my Tuesday Volume page. Besides, holding it for Volume would mean we get to have some fun with the design and you know how I love stop-motion.
The screening was at the AMC Arizona Center, right next door to
the Arizona Republic, where the
still-wet tears of dismissed journalists were glistening on desktops or perhaps
on spiral-bound copies of the AP Style
Guide (2008 edition). The Republic
has nothing to do with this story, I just thought I'd mention how journalism is
a lost art in Arizona .
Anyway, I've always loved AMC's screen presentation. They're much
better than Harkins, whose projectionists thread films wearing catcher's mitts.
(They've improved slightly now that they've gone all digital.) This night,
though, AMC was off their game big time. First of all, the movie started late. Then came
the screening stalkers, the regulars who stare at the press section and plead with the studio
representatives to let them sit in those open special seats in the area they think is
reserved for "VIPs." Ha, me a VIP?!?! Meanwhile their seats are just as good, if not
better. And then when some radio station intern gives away a T-shirt they claw
the faces off newborn babies in an attempt to get the lamest shirt on the
planet. (My favorite part is when they wear the shirt to the next screening.)
These screening groupies that make up a tiny fraction of any
press screening weren't the theater's fault, but I feel it's worth mentioning
that if you ever get a free movie just smile to yourself and repeat the
sentence, "I won't complain because I received something free today."
And eyes front.
Finally, the movie starts and it's clear something is not right. ParaNorman looks like an old-fashioned
3D movie, the kind with the offset red and blue image. There are two images up there ... now three ... now four. Oh, and the blurriness!
I felt drunk as the image galloped to and fro from within varying stages of awful
focus. It seemed to get blurrier whenever the 3D effect was more intense. As
zombies, or maybe they were RVs with extended awnings — the blurriness made it
difficult to tell — descended on the screen it was obvious something was severely
wrong a whopping two minutes into ParaNorman, a movie I was rather excited to see.
I shifted my 3D glasses on my face. At one point I even flipped the glasses around, as if there was some MacGyver polarization trick that only I (and MacGyver) knew about. A colleague next to me
rumbled in his seat. We exchanged glances, "It's not just me that's
experiencing this distorted picture, right?" Soon audience members started
yelling, "FOCUS!!!! IT'S OUT OF FOCUS!!!!" One woman stood up and
said, "Raise your hand if you think this is messed up?" Hands shot up
all around the theater.
Surely someone would come in and address this issue, right? Or
maybe they would just go upstairs and fix the problem, and the film would be
magically fixed without any formal apology or boring speech from some theater
manager. Nope. Nothing happened. The movie just kept playing and playing. And
the picture never changed. I think it got worse. At one point I took the 3D
glasses off so I could watch the movie better. (And just like Roger Ebert
always says, the picture was brighter. I knew this already, but I always think
of Roger when I tilt the 3D glasses up to peer at the 3D image all naked and
exposed.)
This went on for maybe 10 more minutes and by then I had enough.
I hopped over the railing and out I went; "I'll pay and see it tomorrow on
opening day" is what I told myself. Out in the hallway, at the mouth of
the theater, an AMC manager was opening new boxes of 3D glasses. "It's the
glasses," someone said. I snagged a new pair and went back inside. Nope.
Same problem. But this didn't stop others from wandering out into the hallway
to try a new pair.
I started heading for the door, the ones that lead out into the
non-blurry world, but the studio rep told me to hang tight because she was
going to kick ass and set things straight. After waiting in the hallway for
about five minutes, she stepped off an elevator in defeat. The manager was not
far behind her shrugging his shoulders. "Everything is set up correctly,
so I don't know what the problem is," I heard him say.
This whole time the movie is running. It was at this moment an
image flashed in my head: a pilot and co-pilot talking about a problem on an
airplane while it flies at cruising altitude. They're discussing the problem from
the very back of the plane as the cockpit sits empty, the flight sticks bobbing up and down lightly as the plane blindly flies itself. Then another image hit me: an inflatable projectionist like the autopilot from Airplane!
While I waited on a bench in the hallway trying to decide if they
were going to start the movie again or not, several people came out complaining,
but most people stayed put and watched a crappy version of a what might have
been a spectacular movie. At least they took my imagined advice: "I won't
complain because I received something free today."
More than a half hour into the movie, I was heading for my car. I
couldn't watch a movie presented in that way, especially one I was supposed to
be reviewing. I can imagine the review: "From what I could see through the
blurry picture, ParaNorman was
great." It was shocking to me that the movie wasn't stopped. There were
hundreds of people in that auditorium, and dozens of Phoenix critics. People leaving a movie
unhappy — be it from a mediocre script, poor film presentation or just a farting customer (it's happened!) — is
never a good marketing device. Apple has some loyal fans, but I never once heard
of Steve Jobs showing off a smashed iPhone at an Apple event. You just don't
let people walk away with a bad taste in their mouth. It's bad for business.
And then here was AMC shrugging its shoulders and twirling a
finger in its ear, "Duh, I reckon they'll just have to watch it this
way."
