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July 1996, Week 2

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Subject:
From:
Dennis Bingham <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sat, 6 Jul 1996 22:05:48 -0500
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I loved this pre-screening message.  I too went to many New York
pre-screenings at this same time (1980-81) and believe it's the best way
to see films. Like Jeff Apfel, I very much miss it. I was attending NYU
while writing part-time for an out-of-town magazine. And I was also at
the famous Tuesday afternoon HEAVEN'S GATE screening. I remember hearing
really non-committal comments at intermission--e.g., "Love that Western
scenery, don't you?"--that seemed quite hilarious in retrospect. I've
also never forgotten that during the opening credits, when we were all
innocent of being part of cinema infamy, the audience applauded David
Mansfield's music score. Little did the audience know that this would be
the last time an element of the badly mixed soundtrack would be clearly
audible. Oddly, my feeling at the end of the three-and-a-half hours-plus
was that I had seen a confused failure, but not one without a certain
grandeur. I didn't even think it was anywhere near the worst film I'd
seen in '80. So I was a little taken aback by the ferosity of Vincent
Canby's NYT review the next morning. Incidentally, I thought 1941, which
I had called in a review, IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD WAR II, was far
worse. Spielberg can do irony of a sort (the Indiana Jones movies) and
whimsical humor (E.T.), but not slapstick farce.
 
My experience with pre-screenings often taught me how far from the
mainstream reviewers and audiences my impressions were. I thought the
following to be dismal duds: KRAMER VS. KRAMER, PRIVATE BENJAMIN, and
ATLANTIC CITY, ARTHUR, and SUPERMAN II. They were of course smashes. I
thought ALTERED STATES
and the remake of THE POSTMAN RINGS TWICE would be great successes (They
weren't). But undoubtedly seeing films free of prejudice is a way of
letting the film speak for itself, and I still try to go to special
screenings and sneak previews whenever I can, since having returned from
the fleshpots to my heartland roots.
 
Dennis Bingham
Indiana University-Indianapolis
 
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