Moving Pictures

What is the first thing you want to do when this is over? What is that thing that's been disrupted that you can't wait to return to? For two months, I've been craving movie theater popcorn, that perfect combination of butter, corn and hot air, a cocktail that some describe as "a Nick Renkoski." I desperately miss going to the movies, an activity that is at once communal and sacredly solitary, both passive and active, what Gene Siskel called "an excuse to eat candy in the dark."

The concept of moving pictures is nearly 200 years old, starting with the zoetrope in 1834, a device that could project images onto a wall from a spinning base, giving the illusion of movement. The inventor originally called it "the Daedatelum" which means "wheel of the devil," a curious marketing tactic, that was quickly rectified with the name "zoetrope," Greek for "things that turn."

From the start, movies have had an interesting history with what they should be called. "Motion picture" appears to be the most official term, seeing as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences uses it in its name but the artistic set may say "film," which refers to both the movie itself and the material it is printed on (though, nearly all movies are digital now). "Cinema," a more European term from the Greek word for motion, kinetic, also does double duty, meaning the concept of movies themselves and the theaters they are exhibited in. "Movies," the most popular term, is a shortened version of moving pictures, a lexical logic that followed movies throughout history. When sound was added in 1927, they were called "talkies." When the first experiments with 3D came about in the 1950s, they were marketing as "deepies," which much like 3D movies themselves, never took off. So much so that when 3D tried to make a comeback in the 2010s, they were labelled "box office poison-ies." 

If you don't believe that the name of something has an impact on its market value, look at the sales of Corona beer right now. The Mexican brewer is in danger of joining an ignoble list of companies brought down by pandemics because of their name, recalling a weight-loss candy called Ayds that went out of business in the 1980s for some reason (say it out loud), despite changing the name to Diet Ayds and Aydslim. Johannes Gensfleisch, a German inventor in the 15th century, understood the concept of good marketing all too well. He was concerned that his idea of movable type would languish if he gave his invention his last name, which means "Goose flesh" in German, so he changed his name to Gutenberg and mass media, which has a throughline to the movies, was born.

But who invented the movies? Who took the concept of the zoetrope and made updated it to light projected through film at 24 frames a second? Not Edison, I'm afraid for all you guessers out there, though we'll get to him in a moment. In 1877, inventor Eadward Muybridge settled a bet with his employer, California Governor Leland Stanford, a horse breeder who believed that a horse lifts all four hooves off the ground when it runs. To prove him wrong, Muybridge set up a series of cameras on a racetrack with a wire connected to the shutter for each, as the horse ran through the wires, it engaged the cameras and took a picture of the horse in motion. Muybridge then projected the images through a zoetrope of his own design and created the first motion picture—and discovered that Stanford was right, horses do leave the ground entirely. 

Edison's laboratory invented a Kinetograph, a primitive movie camera that expanded on Muybridge's work, and a viewing device called a Kinetoscope, a large box that looked a little like a school drinking fountain in which people would pay to look into one at a time. At much the same moment in France, the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière created a projector that could throw light through film so that more than one person could enjoy the movie at once. Their exhibition film, Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat from 1895, is considered the first movie ever made. The story goes that audiences were so shocked by the images that they leapt from their seats believing the train would run into them. If you've had the misfortune of watching Bonfire of Destiny, Netflix's maudlin melodrama of a fire at a fin de siècle Parisian fair, you've seen this dramatized, but it's unlikely that it ever happened in real life. It makes for a good story, though, like bra burning, which also never happened. Feminist protesters at the 1968 Miss America pageant were going to burn their bras but were convinced by police that it would be dangerous on the wooden Atlantic City boardwalk. A journalist wrote about it but the headline writer called the protestors "bra-burners" and the rest is history. 

Speaking of history, obviously the sands of time favored the Lumière's projection system over Edison's single-use peep show but Edison was still a formative force in the history of the movies, creating the first studio in New Jersey and some of the first fiction films (a few of which were, uh, very racist). Like many of Edison's "inventions," including the lightbulb, he was either not quite the very first or took some (mostly due) credit from members of his laboratory. If there is something we can credit as a complete Edison invention, it is the word "hello," which he was the first to write in 1877. Edison proposed the word as a way to answer the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell, who didn't invent the telephone either but that's a longer story, wanted everyone to say "Ahoy, hoy!" when they picked up his device but Edison preferred "hello," a variation on "hullo," a word used for surprise (as in "Hullo! This is a delightful newsletter I'm reading!") and "Halloo," a word used for calling hounds that Edison liked. The first operators answered the phone by saying "Are you there?" "Are you ready to talk?" and the deeply existential "Who are you?" They so quickly adopted "hello" that the first recorded use of badges that say "Hello, my name is..." was at the first telephone operators' convention in 1880. 

Regardless of who is most responsible, movies remain some of my favorite things in the world. I am often accused of snobbery and contrarianism when it comes to my taste but I truly love movies of all kinds. My favorite of all time is Jaws, hardly the pet of the art house scene, and not just because Peter Benchley, who wrote the book the movie is based on nearly called his novel What's That Noshin' On Ma Leg?, a suggestion of his father's. 

I love art movies and entertainments, short movies and long ones, the funniest comedies and the saddest dramas. I even love bad movies, as Josh Dreyer knows all too well. Not only has he accompanied me to a showing of The Room, the greatest bad movie ever made but he reminded me last week of Out Cold, a truly terrible comedy from the early 2000s which I adored when I was in high school. Those who accuse me of "never liking" anything popular misunderstand the appeal movies hold for me in the first place. It's their diversity, the fact that a movie can be anything from F for Fake to V for Vendetta, that draws me to them. We need more different kinds of movies, not less. It makes me sad that only 25% of American movies are directed by women. Wait, that's not right, only 4% of American movies are directed by women. Women make 25% of the movies in Iran, a nation famous for progressive views on women. 

My concern is not that movie theaters will go the way of Diet Ayds and not open when we all go back outside, its that when they do, they will be so hard pressed for visitors that only tentpole, directed-by-committee spectacles will make the cut for what gets to be shown in a theatre, a severe blow to the diversity of films. The last movie I saw in a theater before I went inside was the delightful, quirky Emma, I hope there's room for her when this is over.