With the world at our fingertips thanks to mobile phones, and thousands of TV shows, movies and more fighting for our viewership every night, it can be hard to find the diamonds in the rough. Often, after a hard day's work, most of us just want to zone out for a little while, and it seems that those in the movie industry have caught onto this habit.
Speaking with The Guardian, Poor Things and Nosferatu actor Willem Dafoe spoke about movie discourse culture today. He finds the fact that people watch more movies at home "tragic."
"The kind of attention that people give at home isn't the same," Dafoe elaborates. "More difficult movies, more challenging movies can not do as well, when you don't have an audience that's really paying attention. That's a big thing. I miss the social thing of where movies fit in the world. You go see a movie, you go out to dinner, you talk about it later, and that spreads out. People now go home, they say, 'Hey, honey, let's watch something stupid tonight,' and they flip through and they watch five minutes of 10 movies, and they say, forget it, let's go to bed. Where's that discourse found?"
Dafoe's problems aren't just with viewers, though, as he finds studios are also part of the problem. "They aren't making movies the same way they used to. They're being financed by toy companies and other entities, and they become the vehicle to make the movies, because they know how to do that. Streaming, they're becoming like a monopoly, they have the means of production and distribution. And so it's very complicated."
There will always be an appreciation for films among certain audiences, but perhaps Dafoe is right in terms of the views of the more general public. What do you think? Do you agree with Dafoe?