In bonus footage for “CNN & Variety Town Hall Event: Timothée Chalamet and Matthew McConaughey,” the two actors discuss how studios have begun to accommodate people using cell phones while watching movies and TV shows.
“In this day and age of shorter attention spans and 12-second spots, are we losing our patience for the first act?” McConaughey said. “Because that’s the first thing that gets cut. It’s the first thing that studios want to get rid of. I keep seeing the second act start on the goddamn 12th page[of the script]. What I’m watching is a 10-part series where the first act is longer than the opening episode, 32 minutes, and you get right into the conflict. It feels like it’s being shortened to me.”
Chalamet responded, “I saw an article about Netflix’s production guidelines. They don’t apply to every movie. I don’t want to sound disrespectful, but they want to put the biggest action set pieces up front. The old logic was to save the big action set pieces for the end of the movie. Save the fireworks for last. But now they want something to be brought forward.”
Chalamet was referring to Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s recent interview with Joe Rogan about the Netflix film The Rip, in which Damon revealed the streamer’s strategy for making action films. “The standard way that action movies are made, we learned, is that there are usually three set pieces: one in the first act, one in the second act, and one in the third act,” Damon said. “You spend most of your money on that piece in the third act. That’s the finale. And now they’re saying, ‘Can we get something big in the first five minutes? We want people to stick around. And if you repeat the plot three or four times in conversation, it’s not terrible, because people are on their phones while they’re watching.”
But Chalamet hasn’t lost hope. “I also think there’s kind of the opposite thing going on, where people are more patient and want things that draw people in,” he said. “I just saw another article that said Gen Z is a bigger movie-going audience than Millennials. ‘Frankenstein’ was a very popular movie this year. I didn’t think it was super fast-paced, but it drew people in.”
“Some people want to be entertained right away,” Chalamet continued. “I’m right in the middle of it, because I respect people who say, ‘We’ve got to keep movie theaters alive. We’ve got to keep this genre alive.'” And there’s another part of me that feels like if people wanted to see it, like, say, ‘Barbie’ or ‘Oppenheimer,’ they’d go see it and go out of their way to be loud and proud. ”
He concluded with a laugh. “I don’t want to work in ballet or opera and say, ‘Even though no one cares about it anymore, let’s keep this going.’ With all due respect to the ballet and opera people.”
Watch an expanded version of “CNN & Variety Town Hall Event: Timothée Chalamet and Matthew McConaughey” on Variety’s YouTube channel or the CNN app.
