An elegy for TCM and film lovers everywhere
a toast to one of the last and deeply beloved bastions for classic films and film history and a rebuke of the would-be king hellbent on razing it to the ground
In the relatively short history of filmmaking, I feel certain David Zaslav—the latest CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery who has so far overseen the corporate swallowing up of critical/audience darling HBO and now the dismantling of the leadership of beloved cable mainstay Turner Classic Movies—will be seen as one of the worst things to happen to the artform alongside the venture capital vultures who have gamified every industry they can get their grubby claws on into profit-driven businesses. Zaslav and many of his fellow overly-paid execs are the same bunch who are also refusing to pay writers fair wages; all-but-confirming their absolute hostility for the artform and the workers who create it as well as the audiences who watch it. If you know anything about film history—and for many of us, that journey either began with and/or has been enriched by Turner Classic Movies since 1994—you can say what you want about notorious studio heads like Jack Warner or Louis B. Mayer, but you cannot say those guys didn’t know and love movies. Based on his recent actions, the same cannot be said for Zaslav.
“The art of cinema is being systematically devalued, sidelined, demeaned, and reduced to its lowest common denominator, ‘content.’ As recently as fifteen years ago, the term ‘content’ was heard only when people were discussing the cinema on a serious level, and it was contrasted with and measured against ‘form.’ Then, gradually, it was used more and more by the people who took over media companies, most of whom knew nothing about the history of the art form, or even cared enough to think that they should. ‘Content’ became a business term for all moving images: a David Lean movie, a cat video, a Super Bowl commercial, a superhero sequel, a series episode. It was linked, of course, not to the theatrical experience but to home viewing, on the streaming platforms that have come to overtake the moviegoing experience, just as Amazon overtook physical stores. On the one hand, this has been good for filmmakers, myself included. On the other hand, it has created a situation in which everything is presented to the viewer on a level playing field, which sounds democratic but isn’t. If further viewing is ‘suggested’ by algorithms based on what you’ve already seen, and the suggestions are based only on subject matter or genre, then what does that do to the art of cinema?
Martin Scorsese for Harpers Magazine, 2021
For almost 30 years, Turner Classic Movies has been a de facto film history class, a source of comfort for all ages, and a testament to the power of human curation over algorithm-based viewing. While you can look up the schedule of movies online, the most pleasurable way to watch the channel has always been to just flip over to it and find yourself happily immersed in some obscure 1930s comedy or 1950s Technicolor musical that bombed at the box office but has a crackerjack performance by some stalwart studio player who’s the featured star that month. Beyond the movies, there are archival interviews with artists from those earlier years of cinema, engaging intros, and little featurettes about artists both in front of and behind the camera. There is always something to learn, a new favorite star or film waiting to be discovered, an out-of-print rarity you often can’t see anywhere else. This is a place for movie lovers BY movie lovers; a passion and respect for the artform permeates the channel and its extremely loyal fanbase (including filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Paul Thomas Anderson who organized an emergency call to Zaslav about the fate of TCM).
While I didn’t grow up with cable, every time we stayed at a hotel on vacation, I’d immediately look for TCM on the TV in our room. If they had it, I’d be watching it to fall asleep or first thing in the morning before we left for the day’s activities. I couldn’t care less about fancy robes or soap or room service; being able to watch TCM felt like true luxury to a middle class kid like me. When I moved to New York over a decade ago and had to start paying for cable to watch literally ANY television, I always tried to steer my roommates toward the package that had TCM. When my fiancé and I decided to cut the cord on traditional cable last year, we wound up subscribing to YouTube TV (which is still just cable via the internet) so I could still flip to TCM whenever I wanted to. To me, it’s still a luxury I cannot bear to be without.
Except that art—and especially movies, which since their inception were meant to be for the masses initially because of the lower ticket prices—shouldn’t be a luxury in society. Nor should art be peddled as a commodity (though in a Capitalist society, everything is eventually commodified). Art is a necessity; an important lens through which we understand ourselves and others and the world around us better. We are entertained by art but even the lowest forms of every genre and medium have the capacity to teach us something if we allow it. The birth of motion pictures wasn’t just a technical achievement and an artistic evolution, it was also a cultural equalizer, broadening the accessibility of art. Many of the early silent films were centered around popular vaudeville performers in larger cities that folks living in the far reaches of the country would never have had access to. But for a few cents, they could have a front-row seat to the greatest entertainers in the world hundreds of miles away. Instant human connection.
The movie industry faced its first existential crisis during the television boom in the 1950s when suddenly you didn’t even have to leave the house for entertainment. Thanks in part to the intros on TCM, I learned that Hollywood responded to that existential crisis with new technologies meant to enhance the movie-going experience and draw audiences back to theaters such as 3-D, Smell-o-vision, Technicolor, Panavision, Cinemascope, VistaVision, etc. Some of these innovations faired better (3-D, large formats like Panavision) than others (RIP Smell-o-vision aka 4D that is now basically only used for theme park attractions). The movie industry did recover somewhat, adapted, and by the late 1970s, the blockbuster was born.
Streaming—and now AI—along with the pandemic have caused another crisis for the movie industry. But I’d argue those crises lay squarely at the feet of greedy venture capitalists and execs like Zaslav, who, in their quest for more, have shortchanged the laborers who make the art, stymied creative innovation by way of existing IP, limited accessibility of older and rare films (many that have no physical copies and/or digital transfers), and have no respect for the diverse tastes of and the literal diversity of their audiences. There’s no courage, no willingness to let a movie stay in theaters for months on end to slowly but surely gather box office intake, no belief in originality. There is only “content” and “product” and “consumers.” When something original—i.e. not tied to an established franchise IP—does well at the box office, it’s now treated like an anomaly and not an indicator that, to quote one of my favorite original modern classics, Field of Dreams, “if you build it, they will come.” To say it is a demoralizing, depressing time to be an artist is an understatement. But who made it that way? The same bland suits and golf polo guys with zero to offer but hollow statements about studio and brand “legacies” who have done exactly nothing to understand how and who built the legacies they’re ransacking and running into the ground, who expect essentially free labor from workers but high paychecks for themselves, and who see art as nothing more than a line item on a budget that better balance correctly (which always means in favor of their next yacht or vacation home of course lol what else).
The inherent problem with only seeing art this way, as something commodifiable and easy to mass produce through aggregate shit we’ve all seen before (hello A.I. + the unending churn of IP), is that it is absolutely joyless. More than that, it doesn’t allow for what I think is one of the most fundamental functions of art and especially movies: wonder. Not to get all Nicole Kidman “Heartbreak Feels Good in a Place Like This” AMC Ad on you, but one of the last pleasures left in this world is going to a dark theater and finding yourself totally immersed in a world you’ve never seen before. The act of discovery is also one of connection; you allow yourself to connect with the artists, the environment, your own feelings. Maybe you learn something new. Maybe you just get to let your imagination run wild for a few hours. Either way, what a joy! What a thrill! Making a connection with someone or something, the past, the present, the future, history, imagination, that’s the stuff of humanity. No matter how many times these finance guys like to tell you “numbers tell a story,” it’s not true—storytelling is as old as the origins of humanity itself. You can show me numbers on a piece of paper, but it takes a human to interpret them, to tell the story.
What I fear is that places like Turner Classic Movies, who truly value the labor of artists and honor the history of filmmaking and express that daily via human curation, will become just as soulless as so much of the rest of the industry. It’s human connection and discovery at the heart of TCM; the channel is great to watch because their team of passionate film lovers spend time curating the films on the schedule rather than some algorithm trying to predict what everyone should watch next. Even when I’m watching Casablanca for the fiftieth time, there’s a new discovery, a new piece of information I’ve learned from a featurette or intro, a gesture I overlooked in a scene. But usually when I tune into TCM, I’m discovering a movie or star or director for the first time. What is a channel but literally a path connecting two or more things? TCM’s new slogan is “where then meets now,” and it’s an apt descriptor for what it does best: connection and history vis-à-vis its charismatic, knowledgeable hosts who act as tour guides and museum curators all in one. It’s the people who give the art context; when you remove the people, you remove the connection. Suddenly, art that wasn’t made in a vacuum is presented in one, and you have something closer to those numbers on a page: you only know how to read them if you already know the context.
I don’t think what’s happening at TCM is an anomaly; it’s a symptom of a larger cultural sickness where everything and everyone has been reduced to a monetary valuation, an investment opportunity, a “hustle.” Every palatial house owned by the people with the most power in every industry has white walls covered in soulless art that copies the work of better artists who, thanks to the greed of those powerful gatekeepers, will never be paid what they’re worth and never afford even a house a fourth of the size. On one of the many interchangeable, smooth-brained, bland home renovation shows Zaslav championed during his tenure at Discovery/HGTV that now is presented on the same playing field as artful, critically acclaimed HBO fare like Succession over on the blandly renamed Max app, you see his whole creative ethos play out: the owners of some charming, older home with lots of history and character watch as the bland veneer-toothed hosts either completely gut it or systematically remove any and every feature that made it special until it looks just as white-washed and interchangeable as every other house on the channel. It is a space devoid of context, history, or connection to anything other than what a bunch of numbers (the housing market) says is “valuable.” It makes sense the guy once in charge of a channel that pushed shiplap and white walls on everyone would only see art as “content.” The spaces he championed are literally ones devoid of anything resembling human connection or personality.
I don’t know what’s going to happen with Turner Classic Movies, but I’m grateful for the work they’ve done and the spaces they’ve created for connection to each other and the past. I’m grateful for the Writers Guild of America who are putting themselves on the line to ensure a better future for artists everywhere. I’m grateful for anyone and everyone who demands that art should be taken seriously, studied, and valued beyond numbers on a page. And I’ll leave you with a mantra by a champion of film history and preservation whom everyone in Hollywood could stand to learn from, Mr. Martin Scorsese:
“Study the old masters, enrich your palette, expand the canvas.”
You could even put it like “where then meets now.”
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I also didn't grow up with TCM and would always look for it when we stayed in a hotel (still do!). It truly is a luxury, but should be accessible to everyone.