Film in a Box: TV Series Challenge Cinema Art

In November, 2017, at the Camerimage film festival, where director David Lynch was presenting the first two episodes of his TV series Twin Peaks Season Three (aka Twin Peaks: The Return), he described the work as an 18-hour movie. An article about the event, published in Variety, reported: “‘Television and cinema to me are exactly the same thing,’ Lynch explained. ‘Telling a story with motion, pictures and sound. It ended up being 18 hours,’ he said, but each hour is just a part of the whole, which could also be taken in in one marathon sitting.”

Ever the innovator, Lynch has made a serialized 18-hour movie, a continuation of a 27-year old TV show which was, itself, both serialized and a wry parody of the one TV show format most dependent on serialization: the soap opera. If some of the greatest film directors today are creating work for television in addition to, or instead of film-making (artists like Martin Scorsese, Lars Von Trier, David Mamet, David Fincher, Steven Soderbergh, etc.) what does this say about the future of film as a medium? Perhaps more importantly, what does it say about the nature of film as a medium in comparison to serialized television? My experience watching some of the cream of serialized TV over the past two decades has changed my perception of the capabilities and limitations of the feature film format, a change in the way I think about film that I wouldn’t have thought possible in the ’70s, ’80s or ’90s.

The Golden Ages of Television

Just as the original Golden Age of Television (from approximately 1949-1959) was distinguished by literate fare crafted by creators who also excelled, or would excel, in feature films (Paddy Chayefsky, Horton Foote, John Cassavetes, Sidney Lumet, George C. Scott, etc.), the current (or recent) Golden Age (beginning in the late ’90s) has similarly excelled, with serialization being the crucial difference. Whereas much of the most artistically ambitious ’50s TV was relegated to self-contained stories (often with a 60 or 90 minute span), more recent stories can continue for eight years or more. This new way of watching TV could be a good argument against the idea of ever-diminishing attention spans and has certainly allowed for greater artistic freedom, providing characters, situations, plot-lines, actors and ideas room to breathe, grow and flourish. One has to wonder why serialization was, for so long, not accepted by TV executives as a viable means of storytelling.

Serialization: The Slow-building Coup

Serialized TV was a slow-building phenomenon. The daytime soap opera serials, descended from radio, eventually spawned nighttime serials, beginning with Peyton Place in 1964. Though the series lasted five seasons, it didn’t promulgate more evening serialized series until the ’70s, with the soap opera satires Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and Soap. More “serious” evening serialized soap opera shows followed: Dallas, Dynasty, Knots Landing, etc. The opportunity to create more in-depth stories must have seemed appealing to creators and execs because the format then began creeping into evening dramas: Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, and Homicide: Life on the Street. The short-lived but bright success of Twin Peaks in the early ’90s was remarkably influential; it proved that visionary, contrary work could be created in the format of evening serialization. The next step in this evolution had to be near-complete artistic freedom, outside the jurisdiction of network Broadcast Standards and Practices, and cable TV, reliant on user subscriptions, provided the commercial-free venue.

Although Tom (Homicide: Life on the Street) Fontana’s 1997 Oz was the first HBO dramatic series to usher in the current Golden Age, David Chase’s The Sopranos revealed what could be attained with the freedom to build long, complex, nuanced character studies over what turned out to be 86 episodes over six seasons. Chase, who always incorporated autobiographical elements into his work, had originally dealt with some of the same sorts of criminal characters in his ’70s episodes of The Rockford Files. The concept for The Sopranos was, ironically, originally created to be a feature film. Chase’s manager, Lloyd Braun, convinced him to submit it as a TV series instead, thus laying the foundation for a work far more artistically (and financially) successful as a series than it would have been as a feature film. Chase was able to craft what could be looked at as an 80-hour film, even getting away with a controversial, ambiguous ending still debated and discussed today.

Television Series Find Freedom on Cable

The Sopranos opened the gates for many creators, many of whom had, for decades, chafed under micro-managing mainstream network executives. Author and police reporter David Simon’s The Wire, which has been compared to the work of Charles Dickens for its character-based dissection of various interrelated levels of society (in this case, Baltimore), was in part an extension of Homicide: Life on the Street, which Simon had worked on, and the earlier HBO series, The Corner. Vince Gilligan, a writer and producer of The X-Files, conceived of Breaking Bad as a vehicle which could take advantage of serialized cable’s freedoms: “‘Television is historically good at keeping its characters in a self-imposed stasis so that shows can go on for years or even decades,’ he said. ‘When I realized this, the logical next step was to think, how can I do a show in which the fundamental drive is toward change?'” Shawn Ryan’s The Shield, created for FX, was an exercise in suspense, bringing a complex tale of corrupt cops to an excruciating, boiling conclusion, over seven seasons and 88 episodes (he was also co-showrunner with David Mamet of the partially-serialized, network show The Unit). Like Breaking Bad, The Shield is a good example of the culmination of the serialized TV format: it was structured to run for as long as it needed to run, with a end in mind planned for and executed winningly.

The 19th Century Equivalent of Binge-watching

A long, complex, continued story created over time and ending when it needs to: this also describes the most similar antecedent to shows of the Golden Age: serialized 19th century novels. Just as The Wire, for example, helped pioneer serialized TV, Charles Dickens, in his The Pickwick Papers (1836), helped popularize the serialization of novels. For some authors, like Henry James, the serialization of novels as chapters published in magazines like The Atlantic Monthly was an economic necessity; he preferred his novels to be read in as close to one sitting as possible (the 19th century equivalent of binge-watching). One could argue, though, that a large section of James’ readership preferred reading his work one chapter at a time; that reading the work this way reflected James’ process in creating the work (just as one reads a continued printed or web-comic episode very shortly after it’s created); that the work being published in periodicals brought James’ work to a larger audience than it would have otherwise, thereby creating more followers of James as author; and that the serialization of novels, literary or otherwise, developed more of an audience for novels and fiction in general.

Publishing novels in segments didn’t harm the cause of literature but instead created a larger market for it, and the final, published novels in book form sitting on my shelves are as morally and aesthetically unscathed and unblemished from the embarrassment of serialization as a Breaking Bad boxed set. Both were initially created and enjoyed in “real time”, taking years to ultimately come to fruition; both can now be enjoyed as a whole by current and future audiences.

Among the many 19th century novelists whose worked was published in magazines was Anthony Trollope, who was dubious of writers having their work published before the ending was written. As every artist has their own unique working methods, that’s a hard rule to rally behind, but it is true that work structured to come to a conclusion both surprising and inevitable (as David Mamet recommends) is pleasing and desirable. At the same time, there can be something thrilling about consuming art which incorporates off-the-cliff improvisation, like an unpredictable jazz solo. The truth is, much of the best art incorporates both.

Television is the New Art-House

In the same Camerimage film festival mentioned above, David Lynch called TV “the new art-house,” saying that TV has taken over the role of creating art films from the movie industry. I believe this is largely true. I’ve witnessed, over the decades, less films for adults being distributed to movie theaters, less dramas, even less genre films like crime and westerns. What the Hollywood industry might perceive as having little audience in movie theaters is instead sustainable broadcast or streamed. While much theater fair is marketed to children and teenagers, most of the better TV programming is geared toward adults. The multitude of shows produced has also become staggering: 487 scripted series were made available in the year 2017. It would be impossible to watch even a fourth of them.

With less feature films being distributed to and for adults, movie theater attendance down, and the competition from TV programming grabbing part of film’s previous audience, where does that leave the film format? The demise of film, like the demise of comic books, has been predicted nearly every decade for seventy years. TV’s competition with film in the early ’50s, for example, seemed even more drastic than today’s. The advent of serialized TV, I argue, has created a new, more acute threat to cinema’s sovereignty: it’s made apparent feature film’s artistic limitations compared to more long-form work. Put bluntly, after twenty years of serialized TV, feature films seem the equivalent of short stories or novellas, while serialized series, especially those created with a definite end, have the distinct characteristics of long, immersive novels. As if by optical illusion, the experience (and expectations) of watching feature films has changed. Director Steve McQueen’s recent film Widows (2018) is a good example; while much about it was exemplary, its story seemed rushed, cramped, needing more room to breathe. No wonder. It was adapted from a nearly 12-hour British TV series wherein the stories and characters had that room to breathe. How can feature films compete with that? Hollywood is currently placing much of their trust in superhero (and other kinds of) tent-pole movies, gambling for very high stakes. As the TV content providers, with their new-found ways of holding viewers’ attention encroaches on the theater audience, different strategies should perhaps be considered.

Hollywood Needs to Hop on the Serial Train

I have a few ideas which, coupled with five dollars, will buy a Starbucks coffee. These have no chance I can see of being implemented, but I’m laying them out for discussion just the same.

1. Hollywood should consider creating short serialized content for theaters. Serials of many genres were a mainstay of theaters for over three decades in the 20th century. Put simply, they brought viewers back into the movie theaters week after week to find out what happened next. If TV can profit from serialization, why can’t Hollywood? George Lucas’ Star Wars was created in homage to movie theater serials he had seen as a child, but in the meantime the series has become a gargantuan, ultra-expensive monolith. Serials can be created much more swiftly and cheaply than that. All the studios need do is hire some creators with imagination.
2. Hollywood should consider creating more serialized feature films for theaters. One of my more memorable movie-going experiences was seeing The Red Riding trilogy as an all-day event at the Gateway Theater in Columbus, OH in 2010. Although originally shot for UK TV, the continued films created a very immersive experience, not unlike sitting to read a day-long novel. I see the trilogy as a template for how serialized feature films could be created and marketed.
3. Hollywood should consider making more kinds of movies, and smaller movies, with lower budgets. Movies like the 2016 Fences, based on August Wilson’s play, used source material perfect for a feature film and the intimacy of the theater. Looking at just one past year at random (1950), one can see there are large swaths of kinds of films no longer being distributed (except, in some cases, near Oscar time): smart adult dramas like All About Eve, In a Lonely Place, Sunset Boulevard, Panic in the Streets, Born Yesterday, The Glass Menagerie, Young Man with a Horn and Cyrano de Bergerac, modestly budgeted comedies like Champagne for Caesar and Harvey, modestly budgeted suspense and crime films like Side Street, Night and the City, Mystery Street, The Man Who Cheated Himself, D.O.A., The Killer That Stalked New York, and House by the River. These weren’t exorbitantly funded extravaganzas that would wreck a corporation’s finances – just commonplace, day-to-day, enjoyable pictures, satisfying on their own and perfect for their film length.

I don’t foresee movie theater chains going out of business wholesale, the buildings bull-dozed. Then again, there are many businesses I would never imagine being bull-dozed, which now are. The movie industry would do well to study and understand what makes serialized TV so successful and addictive if they want to stay in the movie content-providing business. Taking a good look at what brought mass audiences into the theater on a regular basis in the past is also essential. Otherwise, streaming a “film” onto your private screen at home, tablet or phone may eventually be the only options left. As for serialized TV, there may currently be a glut, but there don’t seem to be limits to this market. After all, however they choose to watch, viewers crave to watch.

—Michael R. Neno, 2019 Apr 08