What is Movie Magic? Is it Dead? Can it Make a Comeback? by Craig Hammill

A light bulb popped on a few months ago. Since then the idea made visible has been the guiding illuminating concept of where I think Secret Movie Club needs to go.

We (the movie industry, movie lovers, movie makers, movie writers, the movie community in all its facets and myriad forms) need to re-vitalize and re-affirm the movie magic feeling.

It hit me that some things die not out of an overwhelming malice or an intentional decision to throttle it in its sleep. Sometimes things die slowly, from a thousand cuts, unintentionally.

Decision after decision, step by step, something once so omnipresent, electric, tangible as the movie magic feeling you get watching a film in a theater or at home dissipates, dilutes, disappears. And you’re left with the no brown sugar, no fruit, bland version of oatmeal.

The multi-faceted whammies of streaming, Covid, studio caution with any original projects combined with the steep increase in the cost of going to see a movie have largely snuffed out the movie magic feeling we all use to have on Friday and Saturday nights going to check out the newest, most exciting, most promising picture.

Of course great movies are still being made and released in theaters. Movie magic hasn’t been totally been extinguished. And many great rep theaters around Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Austin, and around the world are fighting the good fight by programming exciting work.

But for movie magic to roar back and again become a day to day experience we have alone, on a date, with the family, with friends, we’re going to need a whole series of systems to re- invest, re-affirm, and re-start the gears necessary to create the buzz, the hum, the pulse, the purr.

Okay. . .here’s what I mean.

No one thing can be fixed to fix the movie theatrical experience. At least twenty things need to be fixed simultaneously.

It seems to me that so many issues we want to tackle are really the result, product of numerous different but inter-related systems.

With movies, we may need, at minimum, a model that can allow for reasonable ticket and concession prices so movies can once again become the go-to preferred date-night art form for the couple working on minimum wage. We need better and more varied movies.

Francis Ford Coppola's independent film studio, American Zoetrope

That means a re-investment in mid-level and low budget level original works that just might surprise, start new trends, cultural conversations.

We need film writing, conversation, discussion that can be consumed across today’s preferred modes of information reception (social media, blogs, podcasts, reddit, etc) to start, kindle, flame debate, buzz, clashes, controversey.

And we need the movie theater to feel like a singular place again that can’t really be replicated at home. The problem with many movie theaters right now is that they essentially feel like slightly larger versions of a rich person’s living room media set-speakers, digital projection, lazy boy chairs, martinis.

There’s more to it than this of course. And I’m not even offering this up as some kind of “I’ve got it figured out” recipe.

These are just musings, thoughts that have been bouncing around in my thoughts like electrons and molecules for the past few months.

Maybe most succinctly, we may need a whole new series of DIY studios willing to make the movies nobody is making right now and then hurt, bleed, learn, and lead on how to distribute them, get the word out about them, get the audience in to see them, to talk about them.

It’s so easy to write this down. But so hard to commit and test out the ideas. But the ideas have to be tested.

It’s a scary time right now. Streaming, AI, mergers and budget reductions and layoffs making studios more and more hesitant to try anything other than a proven commodity with a near guaranteed return all add to a sense that movies and movie magic are in the doldrums right now.

But for those (crazy? talented? visionary? Entrepreneurial?) folks out there willing to take a chance, this may also be one of those moments in movie history where those willing to take a risk, experiment, try, learn, improve might just re-invent and re-vitalize the industry.

It’s oh so much more complicated and harder than this. But for those willing to re-examine, re- define, and re-discover what movie magic is today, the next few decades may be their wild wild West.

Craig Hammill is the founder.programmer of Secret Movie Club.