There Must Be Intermissions in Cinemas
Movie theaters are a nightmare. They are expensive, they are loud, but most importantly, I cannot start and stop the movie. At home, I rarely watch a movie without pausing at least once to eat and rest. Already alone makes renting a house is better than a cinema, MoviePass or not . One thing could change my mind: the intermissions in the theater.
In the late 90s, the average film length exceeded 120 minutes and has not dropped below that level since. The movie theater tries to sell you a large Coke and then asks you to sit still for two hours or more. In the end, your back hurts, your eyes get tired, and you cannot evaluate loans and calmly contemplate what you just saw, because everyone rushes to the bathroom queue.
The problem is so common that there is even an app called RunPee that suggests which scenes you can skip while you dive and pee . Regardless of your argument against intermission, you have to admit that “skipping a portion of the movie so you don’t wet yourself” is not the best status quo.
In the previous golden age of cinema, when films got longer, intermissions were added. Epics like Ben Hur , Lawrence of Arabia , Gone With the Wind, and Seven Samurai were smashed – sometimes in all shows, sometimes only during early screenings – so they could be hefty but not grueling. But even though three-hour epics are back in vogue, intermission is not. Only a few films have added intermission in the past two decades. Quentin Tarantino stuck with one of them in the early Hateful Eight , but not the wider release. Obviously, it takes a four-hour movie like Gods and Generals to earn the intermission.
I’m not the first to suggest returning to intermissions. Slate culture critic Aisha Harris and screenwriter Nathan Hartman have comprehensively argued this in 2014; San Francisco Chronicle critic Peter Hartlaub asked for this back in 2010. As all these professional moviegoers have noted, intermissions are not just good for the audience; they are also good for theaters that get another round of concession sales. The owners of the theater confirmed to Hartlaub that they would like to have an intermission. But they are not allowed; Only the studio can decide whether to show the film with a break or not.
Intermissions will not spoil either the immersion or the plot for the audience. They didn’t ruin The Sound of Music or 2001 A Space Odyssey . (One critic argues that the intermission in Seven Samurai is an integral part of the story .) They do not destroy the concert theater, where intermissions are the norm for any performance longer than 100 minutes. Unlike the constant TV commercial breaks that break the show into insane large-scale action, the intermission simply splits the hippo into two manageable halves. Consider watching sequential episodes of Game of Thrones or Westworld ; HBO would not have thought that one or two episodes would transition to another without a couple of minutes of respite.
But simply adding intermissions at arbitrary times can cause problems. The plays are written with intermissions in mind; so were the epics of the old days. It is the same with Bollywood films, which still usually include “spacing” (as they are called in British English). As screenwriter Sampada Sharma explains, Bollywood films are two-part, like in live theater and unlike the typical Hollywood three-act structure. Writers and directors will need to plan their story around the interval. This is a huge question! But also demand that everyone sit in the dark for two and a half hours, because you refused to cut another scene. And this does not mean converting entire sites; this means adjusting one or two beats out of a dozen closer to the middle of the movie.
Imagine the added benefit: Constant texting can finally put their damn phones down if they know they are on hiatus. Viewers can talk about the first half of the film and prepare for the second. Everyone can stretch their legs so that the film doesn’t look like flying on an airplane. Sure, people can sneak into other films halfway through, but it’s not like they can’t do it anymore. People will need to save space – good, of course. It all worked in the 60s, and everything can work again.
And maybe all of this could lead to more people returning to theaters instead of waiting for it to hit Netflix. Maybe this will convince me to buy MoviePass and go to the theater once a month instead of once a year. It might even convince me to buy popcorn. Intermission can do what the industry desperately needs that 3D and IMAX have failed to do: make “going to the movies” feel special again. Let’s all go to the lobby to treat ourselves to.