By Anna Bak-Kvapil

One of the nation’s most acclaimed film critics, J. Hoberman has written for The Village Voice for over 30 years, and is the author of nine books. In a recent article in the Voice, “Brother Can You Spare $12: Why Hard Times Won’t Mean Good Times at the Movies Again” (Feb. 3, 2009), he reflected on the Great Depression, the current economic crisis, and the rising cost of both making and seeing movies. In our conversation, he elaborated on his predictions and thoughts about the fate of movies and moviegoing.

ABK: How do you expect the recession to affect the film community- both the studios and the film going audience?

JH: What’s going to happen generally is that all the studios are going to be hurt because people are not buying as many DVDs. If you see that there is a rebellion by the audience against paying so much money to go to the movies, the theaters will either lower their prices or some theaters may close. The most vulnerable exhibitors are in places that show more non-mainstream movies. I think independent production could suffer because that depends on being able to borrow money and studio production will probably be the last to be affected, because they must be borrowing money too, but you can’t tell where the hell they’re borrowing it from. They’re all owned by big conglomerates. Time Warner is a huge company. I know the magazine, the Times part of it, is really suffering now. But there’s no indication yet that Warners is suffering. In fact, they made a lot of money from The Dark Knight, though probably not as much as they thought they would make. So things will happen, but not everything will happen at once. You have to figure out where the audience is going.

ABK: What do you think about the success of 3D, which actually costs more money to see?

JH: Yeah, Coraline. I was shocked. I had to pay $15 to see that. Is that because you’re renting the glasses? The theory behind all these special effects things, going back to the 50s, like widescreen, stereo sound, 3D, is that it’s stuff people can’t get at home. And my guess is, it’s not just that people are renting DVDs and looking at them on TV monitors or cable TV- they’re renting them and looking at them on computers, on a really small screen. So when people go out to the movies, there’s a built in imperative to make it more spectacular. An article in the Times reported that the studios are all happy that people have been going to the movies a lot recently. But you have to think of what that might be instead of. It’s cheaper to take your kids to see Coraline than it is to see one of those Disney shows on 42nd street. People will still go out and want to be entertained. The question is, what will they spend the money on?

ABK: In your article,  “Brother Can You Spare $12”, you wrote “Movies are expendable. Folks will give up $12 tickets, cancel Netflix, and cut cable to save their high-speed Internet connection.”

JH: I had this vision of people living in shacks but keeping their high speed internet connection-what would be the absolute necessities, what will people hold onto the longest? The studios and networks are trying to figure out how to get their stuff online. They just don’t know exactly the best way. South Park making a deal with YouTube. Some other studios were talking about Hulu. I was being a little hyperbolic. I was essentially trying to make the point that the amount of money, the discretionary income is going to contract. And you have to figure out how that is going to manifest itself. The thing is, the studios are so smug now they’ve completely rewritten history. The idea that the movies, during the depression, were incredibly successful, that people went to the movies no matter what, just isn’t true.

ABK: That’s such a big part of the 1930s mythology at this point.

JH: The studios like it too. It’s very flattering.

ABK: Do you watch movies online?

JH: No, but I will occasionally watch one on a computer. I have a big stack of screeners.

ABK: So you watch movies at home because its part of your job?

JH: Yes.

ABK: But as a regular filmgoer, you’d go to the theater?

JH: I’d like to. I certainly wanted to see Coraline. It was worth it to me to go see it at the Ziegfeld.

ABK: What do you think of New Yorker Films going under? Do you think other distributors will have problems?

JH: I think Dan [Talbot] was stuck with a tremendous amount of debt and he was not in a position to pay that off. Maybe the economy didn’t help, but I think there was already a problem there. If similar places are suffering, something like Kino is probably the closest, but they have a better DVD/Video set up. Zeitgeist is even more of a boutique. And those are the places that really model themselves after New Yorker.

ABK: Do you think a recessionary climate will inspire a new underground film culture?

JH: It might. I like to think there’s an upside to the bad economy. Because at least in New York, maybe the rents will go down, then the city will become a more interesting place. It may be too late in Manhattan, but it’s not too late in the outer boroughs.

ABK: What about Light Industry, which shows avante garde films in a Sunset Park warehouse? It seems like a renewal of the underground film culture that you wrote about in your book with Jonathan Rosenbaum, Midnight Movies.

JH: There was a place like that in Williamsburg for a number of years, Galapagos, which just moved to DUMBO. The guys who program it, one of them was a student of mine years ago. But Light Industry certainly sounds like a continuation of something, the grassroots film culture, which is really healthy. There are a lot of places where it still exists. It still exists in San Francisco. And maybe that’s it. Los Angeles for some things.

ABK: In your article, you write about how the 1930s film industry that persevered through the Great Depression reflects on the situation the film industry is currently in. Are there any other periods of economic or political struggle that could be revisited now?

JH: The other period that I use as a reference is 1968-74, with the recession caused by the oil crisis. But it’s mainly because of the war, just general social chaos. I think that’s good for movies. Even in the period after WWII, which is the period I’m studying for my new book, there was enough money but the industry was in crisis and that created possibilities and confusion, which was healthy. And Hollywood forgets what bad shape they were in in the 60s. Studios were losing money. That was a bad time and it wasn’t even caused by a catastrophe. We’re now in a state where unemployment is now where it was in 1983 when Reagan came in, when there was inflation and all these things that put people out of work.

ABK: I’m curious to know a little about the book you’re working on now.

JH: I did a book called The Dream Life, [about film in the 60s] and this is a prequel. It covers the periods from after WWII to 1956 or 57. My feeling is that Hollywood came out of the war mobilized and stayed mobilized for a while, including through the Cold War. So it’s about Hollywood’s contribution to the Cold War, sort of the making of the Cold War. I’ll get very involved in the politics and the studio politics.

ABK: Are you researching the House of Un-American Activities?

JH: There’s a lot of that. I’ve been reading the transcripts. I think they’re very interesting. It’s dealing with films, at the same time, the relationship between the movies that were being made and what was happening in American politics. Hollywood still exists, but by the 60s, there’s something else. It’s more anarchic in a way.

ABK: What films are you specifically covering?

JH: The main genres are political thrillers, westerns, spectacles, Technicolor. For example, Hitchcock and Sirk were two great directors of the period- I’m really not that interested in what they’re doing. But Sam Fuller and Elia Kazan are important. Some other filmmakers, John Ford, Hawks, it depends on the genre. The Thing From Another World, yes. Land of the Pharaohs , yes. Monkey Business, no. Nicholas Ray also.

ABK: Bigger Than Life?

JH: That falls after. I’m ending with 1956/57. I think the zeitgeist changes then, with the Cold War, the counter culture really starts. That would work but it’s just too late. Rebel Without a Cause is the swan song of this book.

ABK: Do you think of the outcome of the Oscars was at all motivated by the economic climate?

JH: I think it’s still show business. They’re always responding to something. The thing that was the most striking was the unbelievable number of nominations they gave to Benjamin Button. I thought that was a touching show of support. The movie did better than I ever thought it would do but it’s so expensive, there’s no way it can make its money back. But it didn’t win anything. But sure, Slumdog Millionaire is fun. They outsourced their Oscars.

ABK: Let me read you an excerpt from an article in Film Journal on repertory movie theaters ["Reviving Cinema" Sarah Sluis, Dec. 19, 2008) - Film Forum’s repertory programmer Bruce Goldstein is quoted as saying, “Movies will survive. They survived the Depression, because unemployed people would go to the movies. It was cheap, and it’s still relatively cheap compared to other things you can do in New York…Young people are interested in seeing films they’ve never seen before, classics, in a theatre. Even if they can get the film on DVD, I think they’re really into going to see a movie in a theatre.” What’s your response to this optimistic viewpoint?

JH: He’s putting a very positive spin on things and I hope he’s right. He told me that they did incredibly well with their Depression films [the Breadlines and Champagne series this February]. And it’s tough: they’re not on DVD, they don’t show them anymore on Turner. It’s amazing stuff there and its great that people show up. What does Film Forum charge, also 12 dollars? That’s a lot of money, even for a double bill.

ABK: Even movies that are extremely popular on DVD get a big turnout at Film Forum.

JH: There’s still this communal thing, people still want to go to the movies to be part of an audience. And that hasn’t disappeared. But New York is an anomalous place. The movie culture here is not the same as even other large cities. There is nothing comparable to Film Forum in Los Angeles, where you think there would be revivals all the time. There are a lot of variables: the density of the population, the nature of peoples interests, and so on.

ABK: Does that mean the New York film community will weather the recession with a minimum of casualties?

JH: I’d like to think so. I’d like to keep my job. I think there’s a better chance in New York.