Is Netflix Really Saving Cinema? 

‘The Irishman’ and ‘Marriage Story’ are Oscar-worthy films that screened in theaters first. That sounds familiar.

There were supposed to be newspapers and phone booths in the downstairs lobby of the Belasco Theatre, the 112-year-old Broadway showplace on West 44th Street that Netflix rented and repurposed to premiere Martin Scorsese’s new film, The Irishman. Scorsese’s 3-hour-and-29-minute (with no intermission) mobster epic tells the story of labor leader Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance. It takes place over six decades, with the film’s stars — Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci — digitally de-aged and pre-aged to play the characters over the years.

Netflix, which has spent many millions to alter how those actors look on screen, had similarly, I’d heard, re-aged the Belasco for The Irishman, placing 1950s-style phone booths in the lobby across from the concession stand. In each booth, one of the film’s stars or Scorsese would speak to anyone who got in and picked up the phone. Not live, of course, but via dialogue repurposed from the film or, in Scorsese’s case, in a special prerecorded message.

Next to the concession stand, where playgoers usually buy wine and beer, Netflix, I’d also heard, had placed large stacks of newspapers they’d printed to look the way newspapers used to look, with a much larger trim size. I’d seen photos of these papers on social media. The headline blared, “WHERE IS HOFFA?” but my question tonight, before the movie started, was where were the newspapers? I didn’t see any in this lobby, with its beautiful rococo murals lining the walls. The papers seemed to have gone the way of the phone booths.

As I began to ask about this at the concession stand, a classic crotchety old man burst in, taking the pressure off me as a reporter by barking at the concessionaires, “Where’s these newspapers? What happened to the phone booths?” The only thing the Belasco employees behind the stand knew was that morning Netflix had moved the phone booths to “the next place” and had not restocked the papers. There were only two copies of The Irishman Daily left, one for the old man, one for me.

Eyeing each other suspiciously, we each grabbed a paper, then exited up the stairs into the theater — a packed house, all thousand seats filled. The whole month-long run of the movie at the Belasco was sold out. Online, scalpers resold tickets for $150. I got in only after going through four layers of Netflix flacks who, I learned, have little experience dealing with film critics.

The audience at the Belasco was almost evenly divided between two groups: people in their early hundreds (about 50% of those in the room), and everyone else — people who had apparently decided to forego streaming the film and pay the equivalent of a month of Netflix in one night. A wise decision, it turned out, as Scorsese’s film is more than worth it. And its presentation at the Belasco was the optimum way to see and hear it. As its non-Netflix-approved title, I Heard You Paint Houses, scrolled up the huge movie screen, Robert De Niro appeared with digitized blue eyes. He looked strange at first, but soon a tactile feeling took over, reinforced by scenes featuring frozen sides of beef and brown leather jackets, once-living reminders of a nondigital world.

Source: Is Netflix Really Saving Cinema? – GEN