On Wed, Jul 23, 2014 at 2:46 PM, Tom Wolper <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 23, 2014 at 1:19 PM, 'Dave Sikula' via TVorNotTV < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> I would argue that it the format than the people. If Siskel and Ebert >> were still alive, I'd imagine the show would still be going in some format. >> The problem was that, once Gene died, Roger was never able to find someone >> with whom he had any chemistry. The people who did end up with the job were >> all just bland and merge (in my mind) into one gooey >> and uninteresting mass. When he did have the chance to pick bold critics >> (Wesley Morris and Elvis Mitchell come immediately to mind), Roger passed. >> > > If Siskel and Ebert were still alive and still had a show, it would be a > hollow shell of what it once was. I don't know if Ebert kept his stature > with a younger generation of moviegoers and I think he and Siskel would > skew too old to be sustainable. Hollywood decided years ago to go after the > teenage audience in a big way because they will go to more than one > screening of a movie they like and they have no memory of when movies cost > a quarter or even $5 and don't question whether a movie is worth the cost > of admission. And they are not waiting for the recommendation of S&E. > > The movie business has also changed. By the time S&E would air a person > interested in movies should have enough information to decide if the movie > is worth seeing so an S&E show would be outdated at airtime. > I'm not so sure about all that. Ebert had/has a very nice web site, and if he and Siskel were alive and active I suspect they would have managed to have a pretty effective online presence - perhaps tweeting headlines of reviews, posting clips of reviews and discussions of specific films even before they aired on the show. But more than that, at least in my case, I never watched Siskel & Ebert before deciding to view a film (and I still do not read reviews of films before I see them). I never saw S&E as a kind of Consumer Reports to help me decide how to spend my film dollar. Instead, in college and grad school, S&E helped me find ways to get more enjoyment out of films, by teaching me what to look for, and and how to have a conversation about important issues using films. My friends and I would go to Westwood on saturday night, watch a film, and then have long and animated debates about both the quality of the film and its meaning over pizza or burgers or enchiladas. I think there are still plenty of folks who would continue to rely on S&E in that way today - even young people - though maybe it would have had to go back to PBS - all the better, IMO. Siskel and Ebert worked because of the skills, character and relationship of those two guys. I don't think those are the only two people who could make it work, but it is not a format-driven kind of thing, and you can't just throw any two people, even knowledgable critics, in front of the camera and expect it to work. -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
