Ben Spacek: I see a lot of "event" movies making a lot of money, but how many of these behemoths actually deliver? Has Tom Hanks ever been more dull than in The Da Vinci Code? Does any movie about pirates need to be two-and-a-half hours long? I'm not saying I haven't gotten any enjoyment out of these films, but it seems rare that the big tentpole pictures are that great. People flock to these things, but why? Are they just trying to kill time? Maybe they're desperate to get out of the heat, but when Little Man makes $20 million opening weekend, it makes me depressed that audiences aren't more demanding.
Matthew Scott Hunter: I don't mind that there are movies like Little Man. There will always be dumb movies and dumb people who rush out to see them. Frankly, I'd rather those people be forgetting to turn off their cell phones at Little Man while I'm watching something better. What bugs me is that I haven't seen anything better this summer—and I love disposable summer flicks. I think you're on to something with your Pirates comment. These movies are too damn long because self-proclaimed auteur directors insist on making bloated epics rather than tight action yarns. Summer action films should fly by too fast for me to notice how silly people look in blue tights.
BS: But does Little Man really need to be playing on 2,500 screens? My favorite movie of the summer is The Puffy Chair, which I saw at CineVegas and which was distributed on all of seven screens nationwide. It seems like the good movies slip through the cracks while the mega-budget films frequently disappoint. Couldn't we spare just a hundred of those thousands of screens to play a quality picture that may not have much, if any, of an advertising budget?
MSH: Well, if a studio thought The Puffy Chair would put more butts in seats than Little Man would in the same hundred theaters, they'd give Puffy Chair a shot. But I don't think that's realistic without an advertising budget. If this summer's box office figures prove anything, it's that a good script isn't nearly as important as a trailer cool enough to get downloaded a thousand times within an hour of hitting the Internet. I just wish the Coming Attractions didn't have to be the best part of this summer's movie experience.