12 January 2008

David Lynch on watching movies on a phone

David Lynch: “Don’t watch movies on a f*#%ing phone!” I thought this was pretty funny. Of course, it’s easy to miss the bigger picture with these kinds of technologies. The marketers trying to sell them can even be the worst about that. I’ve been laughing for a while now at the commercials trying to sell me mobile phones with video. Sure, a few people will sometimes watch a movie for the first and only time on their phone. Probably not any great artistic opus, but perhaps. The world is different today, however. A movie isn’t only a one-time, start-to-finish, at-the-theater, full-catharsis experience. Hasn’t been in a long time. The role of the viewer in co-creating and re-creating the experience is growing. And that’s just talking about bringing together the old medium and the new technology. Perhaps David Lynch should be asking himself, “How can I leverage this new technology to express myself—to communicate with my audience—in a way that wasn't possible before?”

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