It was their old watering hole. A place where, after they'd get off work at the local warehouse, they would shoot the shit about a variety of subjects. Mark and Peter were friends for going on six years having first met each other at the warehouse they worked at. First hitting it off when stuck together on a team pf pickers who fulfilled orders. Both came from working class backgrounds and were use to these types of jobs.
The trick was to fill the monotony with talk about culture. There was enough in common between the two so they could hold their own on just about any topic that was brought up.
Hours of discourse and a seemingly endless supply of alcohol was spent dialoguing, discussing, debating everything from what their favorite Happy Meals toy was as a kid to the merits of Freddy Vs. Jason.
Fall was nearly over and winter was rapidly approaching. Wind licked the streets Mark was driving on.
Pete had arrived at the bar a half hour before Mark. It was usual for him to arrive before him. He had anxiety about being late so he thought it better to be early to an appointment or scheduled meeting. So when Mark walked through the door, he figured he'd find him hunched over a table with a glass. Sure enough he did.
After meeting up, Mark went over to the bartender for a tall glass of Miller Lite.
"How was the ride over?"
"Oh it was good. Construction on LaGrange caused a delay getting over here. But I'm here."
"You ever get that feeling when you're on the road and you see the headlights of an oncoming car. The urge to just jerk the wheel and drive right into the approaching vehicle?"
"You're starting to sound like Walken's character from Annie Hall"
Mark starts to affect a Walken impersonation "Sometimes at night when I'm driving on the road at night, I see two headlights coming toward me..."
"Ok, Ok, Ok. Due back on planet earth."
Mark laughs.
"Speaking of movies. Can I confess something for real?"
"Sure."
"I think I'm going to give up watching movies for the year."
"You're fucking with me right?"
"OK look. I've been thinking about this a lot and my problem is I want two things at once,
One part of me wants to watch as mamy movies as possible. This intertwines with wanting to read reviews, film analyses, engaging in debates across multiple platforms on social media. This goes for television as well. A much more time consuming effort.
The other part wants to unplug from every piece of social media and television and go out to a cabin, surrounded by books, and just read. By the end of last year my movie loving self and book loving self were satisfied. Both appetites satiated. I had read more than I did the year before which was a goal accomplished. I also watched a lot of movies I had wanted to get to for a while.] But I do wonder: what would a year look like where I just shut out all movies and dedicated it exclusively to books."
Mark: "But you can't just give up. Think of all the new stuff you'll miss. From directors you love. Or the immense back catalog of films. The dopamine rush when sitting in a theater and the lights dim."
Peter: You're starting to sounds like Nicole Kidman. Next thing you're going to tell me is heartbreak feels good in a place like this.
Mark: No but seriously. Remember that time you told me about watching Zodiac and leaving the theater in such a daze you forgot where you parker your car? Or how your 200th viewing of Aliens was every bit as enthralling as the first time? It's this specific high you continue to chase.
You won't last. I mean, think about the films coming out in the theater. You often said, seeing a movie in the theater is one of your favorite things to do. The pull of something that big is just too overwhelming. You're just gonna go cold turkey?"
Peter: "I go to the theater for the filmmakers I really love. Given the state of cinema, will I be missing much if I opt out from going regularly? Even with a film I love and plan on seeing, I will still have to sit through the hot garbage juice they try to sell me in six to eight trailers. And even then, if I'm lucky, I won't have to sit by disruptive moviegoer number 1 who is constantly checking his phone for missed messages or disruptive moviegoer number 2 who won't shut the fuck up and has to add his essential commentary to what is going on in the movie."
Mark: "OK you got me there."
Peter: "Well for example, I was addicted to Pepsi. I couldn't go without drinking at least 5 cans a day. Then one day, my dentist said it is ruining my teeth. I went a month without it. Then two months. Two months turned into a year. My drink of choice has now become coffee. Cracked open a can a couple weeks ago and the taste for it just isn't there anymore. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I only see you shutting out all media having such an effect to the point of you giving up the game altogether."
There is a pause.
Mark: "You know, Ebert once said that film is an amalgamation of all the art forms: reading, painting, music. The purpose for civilization and growth is to reach out and empathize with others. Movies are generators of empathy."
Pete: "And books are not? Because books allow a better perspective and look into the thoughts of a character. Both movies and books are peeks into the point of view of a character that allow us with people outside of ourselves. It teaches us how it feels to be in someone else's skin. Only I'd argue a book can go even deeper.
Catcher In the Rye is basically a collection of Holden Caulfield's thoughts. The best a movie can do is convey the book's character is through acting, lighting, sound and editing. To capture the mood of a novel, one that specifically focuses on a more esoteric plane than a genre based plane, the translation of page to screen becomes that much more difficult."
Books can allow readers to participate in a story in ways a movie cannot. When a character is introduced we create in our minds a visual representation of that character. If the book had been adapted, then it is incredibly difficult not to imagine the actor who played said character. It's hard to read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and not imagine Jack Nicholson as Randall P. McMurphy. Try reading Silence of the Lambs and not imagine Hopkins, Foster or Levine as those characters."
Mark leans back, sipping his beer, watching Pete with a dry, shrewd, pursing of the lips, not quite a smile, with narrowed eyes.
Mark: "Both of those adaptations are better than the book. The Godfather and Jaws are two more. Find the right screenwriter, director and actors and they can transform a good book into a great film."
Peter: "No argument here. What I am getting at is the capacity for imagination is limited once the book is adapted."
Mark: "Kubrick said if it is written or thought, it could be filmed. One such example is Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Before he made Citizen Kane, Welles took a crack at adapting it and failed. It languished until Coppola and John Milius took it upon themselves to adapt it but use the Vietnam War instead of African colonialism as the delivery device of its themes. You can still maintain the spirit of a work even if you change the setting. It doesn't have to be 100% faithful."
Peter: "It definitely is a case by case basis. But let's look at how a movie is consumed. It is a passive activity. Insofar as everything in your imagination is presented in front of you. You press play and watch movement on a screen. It's a series of still pictures shown at 24 frames per second through a lightbulb that creates the illusion of movement. In books you have to construct a series of elements: settings, character, that kind of thing."
Mark: "I think it was Godard who said film is 24 lies per second."
Pete: "He did. Now take fiction, which, if you wanna be a good storyteller you have to be a good liar. The book is active, you are forced to interpret symbols on a page. You are more engaged."
Mark: "I'd wager there is a similarity, maybe. Though not in consumption but in the creation of a movie."
Pete: "Oh yeah? You're not gonna espouse the auteur theory on me now are ya? Because when it comes to down to it, it takes a small village to make a movie and another small village to watch it and recoup the cost."
Mark: "Well for the consumption of the piece, the communal aspect of watching a movie is something that the book cannot have. It's almost tribal in nature. Sure there are book clubs but don't they break off and meet up and talk about what they've read?"
"But think of the time it takes you to watch a movie vs. reading a book. It takes you, what, 3-4 days?"
Pete: "Depends on the text, but the average for me one year was about two a week. Now it's around one a week because of my movie watching. Even if I get off track, I at least try to devote 30 minutes a day to reading."
Mark: "You can get in so many of the movies you want to watch in the time it takes you to read a book."
Pete: "That's true. But what is more rewarding in the long run? Watching a few movies or being subsumed in the pages of a novel? I'd say the latter. Considering how finite time is for all of us, the books we choose to read are just as precious as the movies we choose to watch. For a voracious watcher or reader, we know our watchlist will never end. So we choose what are considered the classics, or canon. I know I'll never get through what is considered "the Western canon" of literature. But I also know what I like. So I'm not going to chase down the latest New York Times bestseller.
Mark: "Oh I'm picky with what I watch. I can't imagine how miserable it is to be on a film blog like slash film reviewing all the new releases that come out. Knowing that the time you could have given a movie you want to watch has to be given to a movie your job tells you to review."
Pete: "It's akin to being assigned a book to read in school. There's a quote from Hiruki Murakami's Norweigan Wood 'If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.'"
Mark signaled to the bartender for another drink. The bartender, polishing up a glass, approached him.
Bartender: Want another Roman coke?
Mark: I'll have a tall Blue Moon. It's all the same poison.
Bartender: Truer words were never spoken.
Mark: "I just think the idea of one artform greater than the other, how it requires a greater discipline, and so on...What about those who can't read?"
Pete: "I'm grateful I can read at all. There is a massive swath of people in the world that cannot. Last I heard it was 750 million. Of course many of those areas are impoverished but it's more common in developed areas than you think. Around one in ten people in the US can't read or write. Hell, our co worker, Stan Rabinowitz. "
Mark: "I remember Stan. Guy who walked with a slight limp because of the pin in his leg."
Peter: "That's him. I tend to get swept up in my sheltered self. But when I find statistics like that, I realize none of this shit matters. It's shocking how undervalued reading is."
Mark: "Is it shocking? It may have existed longer than movies, but they are not nearly as popular nowadays. It goes back to the people who went to the vaudeville stages or a cheap nickelodeon in the 1910s and early 20s. It's something for the common man."
Peter: "Are you suggesting an elitism toward book readers?"
Mark: "In a way. Movies are just more accessible to people. You scoff at them in the 'you press play' ease of experiencing them, but they are just as transportive as any fiction novel. They are just as capable of generating empathy as books. If a person who has gone through a traumatic experience and they decide to watch a movie that relates to them on that level, it can be incredibly cathartic.
They are of course a visual medium, so the visual learner is going to be naturally attracted to it. Has internet culture impacted attention spans? Absolutely. Everything is fast, on the go, 24/7. The landscape has shifted drastically. But there are still pockets of cinema that are thriving."
The group of patrons who sat at the table across from them got up and left. They figured it would be a good time to get up and leave just as well. A rain storm was expected to hit later in the night.
Peter cut the conversation short and signalled the bartender to their table. He knew by doing so right after Mark's point about movies would make it look like he had no counter and resigned his position. This didn't bother him as much in the moment as getting home was of more importance. He would compromise to the point of catching a movie here and and there but no the extent of how much Mark watches movies. This would last for six months until he'd devote what time he used to watch movies to writing short stories.
Mark went to the bartender, paid his tab. He knew he'd see Peter at work in three days. What he didn't know was Peter was planning on quitting the job. The plan was to let Mark in on it next time they hung out. Always a man who sought change and new challenges. He'd still make the regular meetings with Mark. The same bar. Different conversations, debates, and dialogues.
Both avid music fans, Mark continued to post on a blog called Between the Reels, a play on the Rush song Between the Wheels. Peter would start a blog called The Long and Winding Read. You may have heard the song it's based off of.
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