Why Revisiting MATINEE is so Important Right Now

An Editorial by Paul Farrell

Dedicated to the director of MATINEE, Joe Dante:

a man who has given this cinema addict and, indeed, 

the world, more gifts than any of us could ever deserve.

Thank you, sir. 

“It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it.”

-Roger Ebert

I don’t think I have to tell you, but it’s a shit-show out there.

The media has become a predominantly negative outlet. Social media, then, an avenue which requires even less credibility than any news aggregate to be a credited source these days, takes on the frighteningly important role of determining which national set-piece is worth bolstering and which is worth forgetting altogether.

  It’s easy to believe, when beholding all that we have set before us, that things have never been so bad. Easier still, when you click a few buttons on your computer and are faced with think-pieces, news articles, pundit videos and even the inane Tweets of the sitting POTUS.

      But that easiness to believe, that tug in your gut that makes the transition from fear to fact so simple, so obvious, is anything but new. Still, the vast social media landscape we have created has called attention to and amplified that deep-rooted, human instinct to turn terror into action.

  And, of course, adding insult to injury, buried within this melancholic societal despair, is the rejection of fear. The human tendency to defend confidence and radicalism as necessary evils, planned activations as opposed to the reactionary, antagonistic manifestations of the anxieties that they truly are. This methodology ends up being applied to all sorts of things, but, for the purposes of this article, we’re going to narrow it down to one, key element of our very complex connected world: entertainment.
      More specifically, the movies.

      “Horror is dead.”

      “The end of horror?”

      “When did horror stop being interesting?”

      “Why __________ isn’t a horror movie.”

      Two things tend to happen when the world takes a turn:
      1) The horror genre sees an influx of smart, edgy work that instigates conversation and, at times, very real social change.
      2) People notice.

Many of those that do the noticing, however, have not paid much attention to the genre for quite sometime. Therefore their reactions tend to be ones of shock, surprise and while often positive, lend themselves toward believing the picture isn’t really the thing that it is. After all, to the unconvinced mind, how could a “horror” picture be any good? How could it make them feel the way that it did? These sorts of feelings tend to spark conversation and lead to the types of articles and think-pieces quoted above.
      And, here we are, in one such time. A time of turmoil. A time of social unrest.

A time of great fucking cinema.
      Still, it can be difficult to appreciate that fact, difficult to separate the art from the minutia of the world around us. And, at times like these, it is important to be reminded that despite how it seems, this all has happened before… which brings me to MATINEE.

      Between October 16, 1962 and October 28, 1962 America entered into a 13 day confrontation with the Soviet Union. During these 13 days people in this country believed the end was near, coming by way of a blinding blast and followed by the destruction of everything they knew and loved.

  MATINEE is a lighthearted comedy regarding those 13 days.

      Well, sort of.
It’s a movie about the movies. A picture so excited about the essence of humanity, about the motivations of mankind that it can barely contain itself. The film features John Goodman as a William Castle-esque film producer, pulling out all the stops to showcase a fresh horror film (MANT! - a movie that is exactly what it sounds like) in a new, engaging theatrical model which he calls ATOMO-VISION. The character could have easily come off as loathsome or disingenuous if not for the fact that John Goodman infused every last spoken line of dialogue he had with childlike glee and reverence for the movies he so clearly loved and dedicated his existence to.

  But, why try to put this character’s passion into words? Here’s John Goodman’s (as Lawrence Woolsey) conversation with his young pseudo-protege to do it for me:

Lawrence Woolsey: A zillion years ago, a guy's living in a cave. He goes out one day, Bam! He gets chased by a mammoth. Now he's scared to death, but he gets away. And when it's all over with, he feels great.

Gene Loomis: Well yeah, 'cause he's still living.

Lawrence Woolsey: Yeah, but he knows he is. And he feels it. So he goes home, back to the cave, the first thing he does,

[Waving his hand on a brick wall to show cave-drawing of Woolly Mammoth]

Lawrence Woolsey: ... he does a drawing of the mammoth. And he thinks, "People are coming to see this. Let's make it good. Let's make the teeth real long, and the eyes real mean."

[Animated sequence of roaring Woolly Mammoth, squashed at end by Woolsey's hand]

Lawrence Woolsey: Boom! The first monster movie. That's probably why I still do it. You make the teeth as big as you want, then you kill it off, everything's okay, the lights come up…

Horror is special because it taps into our subconscious, eliciting an emotion that is historically reserved for the worst case scenarios. The above story showcases our innate desire to turn our biggest scars into our most engaging stories. Get any group of people around a table late at night, pour a few drinks and what will happen is… stories. Tales infused with emotion, pain and, often times, laughter. After all, catharsis is often made possible through levity.

More than a love letter to genre filmmaking, more than a poignant homage to a bygone era of theatrical culture, MATINEE is an exploration of the dichotomy between life and motion pictures. Truthfully, one often does ape the other, but harmlessly so - maybe, helpfully. Watching an atomic monster wreak havoc on screen, allowing those deep rooted fears and anxieties to manifest in the dark theater and dissipate as the credits roll, can be more than therapeutic. At times, the process can be necessary.

Fear begets damnation, in that it suggests the fearful will not be saved. Art, however, removes the risk of destruction, replacing it with the promise of conclusive narrative denouement. An ending, yes, but one the viewer gets to walk away from. Talk about. Explore.

      The process then invites revisiting, a feeble attempt to recreate the strength and visceral realism of that first, immediate terror.

  It’s the artists, the filmmakers, their crew, those who put on the show, the many individuals that make the whole thing possible that end up responsible and a part of that feeling. There’s an accountability there, a reverence that makes showing even a picture like MANT! important and momentous.

  Again, to quote Mr. Goodman as Lawrence Woolsey in the film:

Lawrence Woolsey: I know some of you have never been in the motion picture business before, and some of you have been at it a long time. But I want all of you to look at the faces out here during this picture. There's gonna be room in their heads for only one thought: "Don't let it get me!" They know we can't hurt 'em, but they're still gonna be scared half to death. And all of you, when you thread the projector, when you tear the tickets, when you sell the jujubes, you're all a part of it. And just when it gets the worst, when they're sitting there and their hearts are going like trapped animals out here in the dark, we save them. And they say, "Hey, it's all right! Thank God! Hey, can I see that again?"

The motion picture is then a communal experience, mirroring that of a real life tragedy or event. A visual art form that can be experienced collectively, amplified by way of that group’s reaction and altogether uniquely impactful from town to town. The movies allow us to discover what lies within and, yet, still hold a sense of wonder about it.

The people in this film are faced with anxieties both fabricated and very real. Our young protagonists grapple with hormones and making friends, but they also deal with a world on the brink and a father in the Navy who may or may not come back from the mission he’s been dispatched to. Yet, at the forefront of the story is MANT!, a low budget creature feature in which an ant bites a man while being X-Rayed, something goes wrong and, well, you get the picture. Seeing this show, being a part of it, matters more to this boy in this narrative than almost anything else, because of what it represents:

A fabricated world which will allow him the very real ability to deal with that which he fears the most. Mortality. Loss. Rejection. Life.

The world is a difficult place right now. There is plenty to be concerned about. Every day there’s news of an atrocity, stories regarding something terrible, something unforgivable, which flood our senses. It is easy to allow the fear that those stories manifest to become something worse, to alter us in some way as to let go of the one thing which can help us all collectively move forward: hope.

My ask is this:

Don’t let that happen, just watch MATINEE instead.

The world may be a shit-show, sure. But as long as there are pictures like Joe Dante’s MATINEE, we’ll be able to reflect and see that, more than likely, that show will end. The reels will change. The genre might shift. A new picture will start. And, at its core, will be the human condition, one we can all relate to and revel in, if we allow it to show us how.

After all, as I quoted Mr. Ebert at the top of the article, sometimes the ‘how’ in life, far outweighs the ‘what’.

Howard, the Theater Manager: The country is on red alert. People are already scared.

Lawrence Woolsey: Exactly! What a perfect time to open a new horror movie.