It’s time I come out – and admit that I no longer care about seeing films on the big screen at the movie theater. Horrible of me to suggest. No serious film lover could say this. Blasphemy. On and on.

Yeah, whatever.

I used to simply argue that of course, I love seeing films on the big screen like everyone else. I’d argue for anyone’s right to watch it when, where and how they want to see a film, but would always push for them to see it the “way it was meant to be seen” which was on the big screen. But I can’t anymore. The experience sucks. Staying at home and watching it is the better option.

I bring this up today because Anthony Kaufman, a critic whom I deeply respect, has a post on IndieWire about why viewers should only watch great arthouse films like Melancholia on the big screen.As he says: “Waiting to see a film in your living room is hurting that film, insulting it; it’s like saying to a good friend, “You’re not good enough to meet me for dinner; how about we just catch up on the phone, or via computer screen, instead?… Of course, there are plenty of films that should be relegated to such a space. Just not the good ones.” His is not the only article on this I’ve read lately – there’s been a spate of such articles lately, driven by (I assume) the huge shift from the importance of box office to the rise of VOD.

But here’s the problem I’m having: Film critics, film industry and almost every single person I know who is apoplectic about people watching films outside of the theater are missing a key point – that they don’t (usually) watch such films the same way that others do. Nope. They watch them in private screening rooms rented by distributors and publicists. Or they watch them at film festivals. A lucky few get to watch them on their own home/company theater screen. Many actually just watch screeners at home or in a festival/market room with banks of monitors, but that’s another story. This is not going to the movies.

Going to the movies is getting a crap, broken seat because you didn’t show up 20 minutes early. Or it is getting there 20 minutes early and watching crappy advertisements while waiting for the Regal train to start the show (why, oh why must all theaters show a train riding through popcorn on a film strip track??). It is watching an interminable amount of bad trailers for films I don’t want to see. It is sitting next to not one, but two crying babies, in the 10pm showing of Drive for chrissakes. It is watching the film projected through the wrong lens, too darkly, or the wrong aspect ratio, or with the curtains improperly adjusted. It is watching it in spite of the irritant of an usher watching me with a device to ensure I’m not pirating the film. It’s not having the heat, or the AC, properly adjusted. It’s not having my favorite adult beverage with me. It’s waiting in line for an half an hour because the theater is too fucking cheap to pay more than one kid the minimum wage to make me my popcorn (or even sell me my ticket). It’s hearing a subway train rumble through my film – in both the Angelika and MoMA. It’s sitting with my knees cramped like I’m in an airline seat while at Film Forum. It is getting to the theater and finding out that the film is playing on the smallest screen that theater has. It is all of this and so much more. The list of problems is not small.

None of these problems are encountered by those film-goers who get to watch most of their movies away from the masses in the fancy screening room or the film festival. Heck, you didn’t even have to pay for the show.

I used to put up with it, because you know, I am a cinephile and all that. But I’m a convert. I’ll sit at home and watch my films. I’ll try to catch the cinematic masterpieces at film festivals and private screenings when I can. But while I understand the argument for the big screen, I’m not necessarily sure I buy it even for the best of cinema.

I went to film school at Emory. While the professors did their best to get us film prints for most of our classes, the simple fact was that to watch the majority of film history, I had to watch it at home – off crappy VHS, Laserdisc and DVD. I watched Rules of the Game, Ikiru and Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors over twenty times each this way. It didn’t diminish my awe. Nope. I watched them again and again, and I’ve now watched each of them multiple times on the big screen. Did I love it when I got to see them on the big screen – sure, but I can’t honestly say I didn’t love them just as much before.

Most consumers today have pretty good home theater systems, and I’m willing to bet that the percentage of cinephiles, who would even care about this problem, with good set-ups is even stronger. Most of them are adults. You know, capable of making a decision as to whether or not they want/need to see something on the big screen. Trying to stop this trend is impossible and crying about it won’t stem the tide of change. Especially not when most (not all) theater owners are content to keep offering the same dismal experience over and over again. Kudos to places like Alamo, the Enzian and Night Hawk who are trying something different and make it worth my dollar – I’ll spend my money and watch a film on the big screen at their locations whenever I can. But for the most part, I’ll watch my cinema in my home, comfortable and with my cinema-conscience clear. It’s better that way.

I’m a frequent speaker on panels at film festivals and conferences. I just spoke on one at IndieMemphis and I’m about to speak on two more at the IFFS Film Festival Summit. I’ve run festivals with panels, and I’ve produced a conference of panels. So it is with full cognizance of my hypocrisy that I state – they are worthless and it’s time to kill all panels.

They are the zero-sum game of every festival and conference. Why? Because the only knowledge that can be gained from them is accidental, as in when someone accidentally says something they shouldn’t say, self-aggrandizing, as in learning that yes, indeed you are smarter than all the experts they’ve assembled on-stage, or misanthropic, as in when you lose all faith in humanity when the moderator democratically opens the mic to questions from the audience and the first question isn’t a question but rather a pitch for the film the questioner just made or some product they’re trying to sell. The best you can hope for is getting all three in one panel.

Most panels seem put together for one obvious reason – to make the festival look better. Bring in a few key industry players, put them on a panel and take photos for the catalogue and tout the educational benefits in your next grant application. Step back for one second though and ask yourself how educational these panels are? How different are these panels/conferences than the ones held at a Ramada every weekend “teaching” you how to make millions from flipping real estate? How much can I learn from a panel of five “experts” who each spend most of their time trying to talk about how great their company is at doing X thing? Especially when each “expert” has about five total minutes to say anything of value.

Okay, I’m being overly harsh here to get this started, but seriously: We need to rethink the purpose of and usefulness of these panels.I’ve met many festival staff and none that I’ve met are hucksters trying to steal your cash – really, most of them truly want to help filmmakers learn more about the business, or help audiences to learn more about the subject of the film or about the people behind or on the screens. They work hard to put these panels together, but let’s face it – most of these panels don’t work.

Ostensibly, we hold these panels to teach some audience members something they might not know. In a good panel, this remains true, and what makes a good panel is probably a sliding scale dependent upon things such as how knowledgeable is the audience in attendance. Not that I know everything, but when I went to my first film festival panel I knew a lot less about the film business than I know now, and I learned a lot more.

But, when I think back to the earliest panels I attended, I find that most of what I learned came from just one panelist – there’s usually one person telling it like it is and sharing the real knowledge that most people just gloss over. I’ve learned a lot from one on one sessions as well, where a well informed interviewer speaks with some person from the biz (though I learn less when this person is a famous actor/director…hmmm). I’ve learned a lot when the panel isn’t about film, but what’s covered in the film – where the speakers were experts on the topic and we could delve deeper. Again, however, I find that because of politics, these panels tend to have the director, two producers and one expert and I’d learn more from a good moderator and the expert alone.

You may see a theme emerging here, and it’s because I do as well: less is more. I think what we need are less panels with 4, 5 or even 15 panelists (yes, at Sundance two years ago they had that many people on stage!). We need more one on ones, more panels where two people debate (or agree) on a topic. Let’s hear just from the expert. Let’s talk just with the director. Let’s hear what the entertainment attorney thinks for one solid hour. Let’s hear what the DP learned on set for one hour. Let’s hear a talk between just two festival programmers. Sure, we might not get “well rounded” discussions, but we’ll get more in depth discussion.

I’ve participated in a couple of such panels lately, and they worked much better than the usual system. I know this is nothing new – I’ve gone to such panels at SXSW for years, for instance, but I am saying they remain the rare exception to the usual boring panel where the only value is often putting a face with a name to meet them later at the bar.

So, we need to shake up the format a bit. We also need to change how we integrate the audience. I don’t have an easy answer here, but what should be the most democratic, interesting part of the panel usually becomes the most unbearable. It’s not that the audience is dumb, but somehow, we tend to get the worst questions from the floor. I’ve attended a few panels where questions are submitted to the moderator via slips of paper, email and even Twitter and the moderator picks the best ones. This seems to work better, but while the anonymity helps some people ask better questions, I’m sure it upsets others who want their voice to be heard. Some of my favorite panel moments have been when an audience member (usually well informed) attacks a speaker and they engage in a debate, and who would want to stop that? I’m not sure how to make this part better, but if you have ideas, please suggest them in the comments.

We also need to rethink panels in light of technology. No, not just “hey, we can put these up on the web,” but how does this fundamentally change things? Like showing a film in a movie theater, panels have existed because they are the most economical way to get a lot of butts in the seats to see what has been assembled. Like watching a movie in a theater, panel attendance won’t go away entirely, but it might be time we consider whether pulling together 10-100 speakers to speak to an audience of hundreds to low thousands still makes sense?

I don’t want the monotony of presentation styles it represents, but I’d love to see a TED-like phenomenon for film. Sure, the attendees get to network (and pay a lot to do so), but the rest of us can learn a heck of a lot, from some of the smartest folks not-really-in-the-room, for free. You could duplicate this year round pretty easily and have something pretty interesting for the field. This doesn’t make sense for the small, regional fest, but it would for some others.

I would be missing one of the biggest festival problems if I didn’t also bring up – they are usually very white and very male. This one seems obvious – we need more diverse speakers up there. I don’t know what will finally change this, perhaps all white men must refuse to speak on panels unless they are more diverse. I’ve written about this before, and it’s brought up over and over, but I bring it up again here because it can’t be said enough!

I definitely don’t have all the answers here. I’m attending the IFFS Film Festival Summit next week…to speak on two panels…and I’m hoping this might spark some conversation with other attendees there. I’m hoping to hear some ideas from my (small) audience here in the comments and elsewhere. What would make a better panel? How can we better include audiences? What would a fest panel look like if we started over today?

In the middle of writing this post, I saw a tweet from Matt Dentler saying “Fact: 85% of film festival panels around the globe are a waste of time.” I retweeted that and so did a few others – it’s obviously on many people’s minds. I got one interesting response from Randy Finch: “Paradox? I know (+ respect) u from film fest panels. #wearethe15%”

I agree with Randy – I’ve met many great people as a result of these panels. So, perhaps we shouldn’t kill them. Instead the question is: How do we re-imagine them in a way that keeps the good (networking, education) and gets rid of all the bad?

I was on a phone call today with a well-known and liked film industry person who remarked to me “You know we thought that the digital world was going to cut out the middle man, but it’s actually created more than ever.” Worse still, we decided that not only are their more middle men, but they’re doing less actual good for the creators than the previous middle men – at least the old middle men knew how to market your film, for example.

Sad, but true, state of affairs in the film industry. Creative people are creating more brilliant stuff than ever before. The profits accrue to a handful of aggregators in the middle who aren’t adding much value, and the consumer still has a heck of a time getting what they want (when they want it) either.

The more things change…

If all goes as planned, I’ll be joining many others on Wednesday November 16th for Internet Censorship Day. That is, if I can figure out how to paste code correctly to this site…UPDATE: I couldn’t get the code to work. I stink, but I still support this cause!

What is it? Well, it’s a protest against a bill being considered in the US Congress that would be very detrimental to the future of the web. It’s an attempt to curb piracy, but it could have a much bigger impact, and it could be bad. I could explain it all here, but the campaign site does a good job, and the video below does it even better.

What this video and join the cause:

I’ve been helping filmmaker Jane Weiner launch a Kickstarter campaign for her new film, a work-in-progress called RICKY on LEACOCK on the legendary documentary filmmaker. I’ll be posting a lot of updates here on the campaign – how it’s going, what we’re learning about raising money this way, other ways you can help. I’ve helped many filmmakers with Kickstarter campaigns, but this one is a bit different to me – I’m supporting her with my work and my donation to the campaign, not just because I like Jane and her films, but because I want to be a part of honoring his legacy – to documentary films, but also to the field more broadly and even to the “amateur” filmmakers posting videos online today. I’ll be writing more about this soon, but if you too are a fan of Ricky Leacock, please consider supporting this campaign, by making a donation on Kickstarter or by simply helping us to spread the word. Thanks!