Cinephiles and Younglings.

So according to Yahoo! Movies, they showed a 35-year-old film (my all-time favorite film as it turns out) to ten young people, and not all of them liked it. This is news for some reason. This shocking "new discovery" that not everyone is going to like the same film quickly sparked another outrage amongst my fellow cinephiles toward young people and their refusal to watch anything that existed before they were born, as if this is exclusive to the current generation. 

It always gets lost that there are as many people OUR OWN AGE just as disinterested in the past--be it entertainment or actual history--as there are young "millennials." I've met industry professionals older than me who proudly say, "I don't watch anything that came out before I was in kindergarten." An indifference to the past is nothing new so stop singling out younger generations like an angry Walt Kowalski. 

I was a young kid who thrived on the films and television that came before me, and I know I am not the last of a lost species. I've seen a theater full of teens sit silently all the way through Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO… except for the parts when they screamed. I've seen a theater of kids marvel at the 100+ year old films of George Melies. And I've heard a 60 year old woman sitting behind me complain mid-film about the length of Michael Mann's HEAT.

There is no guarantee that everyone will enjoy the same movie, no matter how close you hold it to your heart. There is only one guarantee, and that is that great cinema will always endure.

(By the way, I'm willing to bet studios are using more than ten opinions to gauge the quality of their upcoming releases.)

READ ABOUT THE "STUDY" HERE: Is HALLOWEEN Still Scary 35 Years Later?