Peter Greenaway: Remote Controls Killed Cinema in 1983

The death of cinema has been blamed on many things, a lot of them related to home viewing. First it was the television, then it was the VCR, now it's the internet. Somewhere in between the latter two, though, is the real killer: the remote control. This is what filmmaker Peter Greenaway (The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover) believes, anyway, and he's talking specifically about linear storytelling in cinema (or, "old fashioned ideas of a narrative, sit-in-the-dark, Hollywood-centered, narrative book-shop cinema"). In an interview with Dutch TV he gives the exact date as September 31, 1983, when the couch potato aid was introduced into homes.

Wait a minute, there is no 31st day in September. What is Greenaway trying to pull here? To tell you the truth, I have no clue what the filmmaker is talking about. Something about his current interest in non-linear, interactive multimedia, such as "the VJ/DJ phenomenon" (you can see him VJing here). If you want to attempt to understand the interview, check out the YouTube clip after the jump ...

Greenaway, a self-proclaimed "eccentric filmmaker, once upon a time British," who kinda resembles Anton Ego from Ratatouille (here, anyway), has a new movie coming soon titled Nightwatching, I don't know if it will be non-linear, but I'm very much looking forward to it. It stars Martin Freeman (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) as Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn and Emily Holmes (Snakes on a Plane) as Hendrickje, his controversial maidservant-turned-lover/common law wife. Also in the cast is Toby Jones (Infamous), Nathalie Press (My Summer of Love) and Michael Teigen (Severed). The film will focus around a famous work by Rembrandt titled The Night Watch, which was painted around the time the artist's wife died. Eva Birthistle (Breakfast on Pluto) plays the wife, Saskia. The film is currently in post-production and will hopefully hit the States at least in early 2008 after playing at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.



[ via Movie City News ]