Set And Setting: Context Is Everything

How an excellent film and perfect projection ruined my weekend.

We are in an hallway to hell; we’ve gotta get out of this place, if the last thing, we ever do.

I saw my 201^st film of 2024 this weekend. 202nd too, but that’s another story.

I am on location prepping a film and I got a chance to go to one of Regal’s recent builds. Giant screen and projection. Excellent sound. Great sight lines. Easy to access and plenty of parking. Seamless ticketing and path to my seat. Clean facilities. All of that was just great.

I was also excited as they had programmed a movie I have been looking forward to for sometime now – and not to jump the shark -- but it did not disappoint. Tyler Taylor Taorimina is one of our most exciting new filmmakers. I was mesmerized by his first feature HAM ON RYE, and thrilled to learn that this new one CHRISTMAS EVE IN MILLER’S POINT had gotten into Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight back in the spring. I hadn’t followed that it had been acquired for distribution, so it seemed like a good sign that here it was in Albuquerque in a giant multiplex.

I don’t do reviews, and I am not going to do one here, but I really dug the film, and all the things that pulled me in with Tyler’s initial film are here and then some. They are also the very things that made me apprehensive about finding financing for it when Tyler and his producers had reached out to me to possibly help them. Yeah, those very things make this film pop; he’s got it down. It’s unique cinema, from a unique eye, with a command of tone and vision. It’s fun. It’s odd. It’s warm and it’s weird. But totally wholesome too…well, sort of. It’s refreshing that it is not trying to flaunt its “edge” like so many filmmakers seem to want to do. It is soulful and authentically awkward. It is both big and little, loud and quiet, detailed and comprehensive. If there are financiers out there who want to bet on artists with unique perspectives and creative courage and confidence, Tyler has proved himself that once again. Sign him up! If I had to bet on an American director most likely to deliver their own NASHVILLE soon, Tyler’s top of the list.  But that’s not why I am writing today.

I am writing today because as much as I dug the film and pretty much dug – or at least accepted with some admiration – the facilities, the experience still managed to be sub-par, and this is what our industry consistently gets wrong and could cost us the whole enchilada. Our shortsightedness is risking the loss of the audience and the art. We are fucking up. How? Let me try to count the ways. Eleven to start. Not good.

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How a “perfect” theater ruined my movie going experience