im saying that movies have more trouble being failures and theatre is good at that. movies are good at magic and theatre is good at reconciling the fact that in the real world magic doesn’t exist and we’re all going to fucking rot in the ground one day. that’s why romances are for film and dramas about the impossibility of actual communication are for theatre
what i mean by this is it’s easier to see the wires in theatre and to see the means of production and i think that lends itself to more reflection on the way the world actually exists which i think lends itself to more pessimistic readings of things? and film obviously can have the same sort of thing if it plays with convention (think the swelling music and the dream sequence at the end of the florida project) but even in that you still don’t see the process of the creation of it, yknow? theatre is so great at making you aware of the effort going into creating the illusion for you and film is often more seamless because it’s not assembled right in front of you. there’s just obviously an incredibly different relationship that the audience has to the piece in theatre v film. and i like seeing the thing be created for me because it feels a lot of the time like an act of generosity, like a gift, because the giving party is there. im thinking specifically of the last scene of wakey wakey by will eno, the last scene of everybody by branden jacob jenkins, the last scene of appropriate by branden jacob jenkins, the antipodes by annie baker, where the very means of production begin to fall apart and show the strain of creating this thing. and the only way this can really be achieved in film is like…. if you burn through the celluloid every time you screen the film yknow. its just different because theatre has to be created anew every night and people age and there’s passage of time and the real world constantly creeps in at the corners. im not explaining myself well beacuse i don’t even know what i’m saying, this isn’t like a fully formed thought
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