Quentin Tarantino is single-handedly trying bring film — actual projected film — back into cinemas this Christmas with his 70mm roadshow presentation of “The Hateful Eight.”
Say what you will about Quentin Tarantino but you have to admit he works hard to turn each of his films into an event. With “The Hateful Eight” he’s going old school and shooting on a format (Panavision Ultra 70mm) that hasn’t been used in nearly half a century, and that presents challenges.
“If I’m going to shoot in 65mm and release in 70mm, I’m not going to get 3,000 theaters to convert to 70mm even if they wanted to, which they don’t. However, we could do a roadshow version of such where we go in a 100 screens,” Tarantino said in an interview provided by The Weinstein Co.
Roadshows started in the late 1950s and became popular in the '60s. Tarantino confesses he was too young to have really experienced roadshows but that hasn’t stopped him from developing a deep and giddy affection for them.
“The whole idea behind them was really neat, was really cool because it made movies special,” Tarantino explains in a featurette promoting the idea of the roadshow. “What happened was they would do a 70mm print of a film, like 'Ice Station Zebra,' 'Battle of the Bulge,' 'Sand Pebbles,' then you would go in to see the film and you’d get a big old program, normally, there would be an overture, an intermission and 10 extra minutes added to the movie that you only get to see in the roadshow version."
That will be the case when “The Hateful Eight” hits screens in its road show format. Only three cinemas in San Diego will be screening the film in 70mm, Reading Grossmont, AMC Mission Valley and Arclight La Jolla (where the reserved seats are going fast for Christmas day prime screenings).
The first screenings of “The Hateful Eight” on film were plagued by problems that had some worried, but subsequent screenings have been problem free. Projecting on 70mm has posed challenges for cinemas that have gone almost entirely digital.
John Sittig is director of projection and sound for Reading Cinemas. The Reading Grossmont, with its 55-foot wide screen and 500-seat auditorium, is one of the biggest venues in San Diego (Arclight and AMC Mission Valley have slightly larger screens but smaller houses and I was not able to confirm if their largest houses will be the ones screening the 70mm).
“The Grossmont had 70mm, and it always has,” Sittig said by phone. “But it wasn’t in the particular auditorium [where the roadshow is screening]. So what the Weinstein Company did is they contacted a company called Boston Light and Sound, they also provided help with more than 100 70mm projectors basically from all over the world, and they purchased sound processors for a process called DTS, which is what the sound is on this picture, and they refurbished all of the equipment. There’s no new equipment [at the Grossmont], but they’ve refurbished all the old equipment.”
The biggest challenge Sittig faced was finding 70mm projectionists.
“I happened to have started when 70mm was still in theaters in 1973. So I know how to run it and I’ve been training staff at Reading including the Grossmont,” Sittig said. “The other thing is the cost of what a 70 mm film print is, it is 10 times what the cost of a 35mm print is. So everybody’s big pull is not to have anybody’s film spliced and scratched. It should all be about presentation and that’s really where the challenge of the training comes in.
"Projectionists need to know how to take certain parts of the projector apart to clean them, any place where film is going to be touching anything, like plastic rollers going from the platter to the projector, to clean those where they touch film with alcohol because there will be a little bit of wax buildup because prints have wax on them to help them run smoothly through the mechanics of the projector, and to get all that out. That’s one of the big things to do to help prevent scratches,” Sittig said.
Sittig appreciates filmmakers like Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, and Paul Thomas Anderson who have a passion for shooting and projecting movies on film.
“I happen to be 68 years old and I grew up with film,” Sittig said. “I think it is a grand experience and I don’t think film should disappear. Have I resolved myself to the fact that digital is here to stay until something better then digital comes along and film is never going to come back as the prime source of cinema exhibition? That moment has already past. But I personally like the look and texture of seeing a movie projected on film. But I’m probably in the minority. If you took a group to a theater and said is this on film or is it on digital? They probably wouldn’t know.”
But Tarantino's gamble may inspire others to try something similar.
Warner Brothers is considering releasing “Batman Vs. Superman” in 70mm prints in March of next year. But the studio is waiting to see what happens with “The Hateful Eight” roadshow. And J.J. Abrams shot “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” on Kodak film (something the film boasts in the closing credits) but there are no 70mm prints screening anywhere. Perhaps that was less a passion for the film format and more about keeping the film a secret. It’s hard to smuggle weighty film cans and unprocessed film out to pirate footage but you can fit an entire digital movie on a thumb drive.
Tarantino, however, is passionate about film as the best means of exhibition. His enthusiasm for the format and the special event of screening his film on 70mm in theaters is infectious.
“By shooting it in 65mm I am guaranteeing to some degree or another there will be 70mm film prints there in the world screening for people who care,” Tarantino said. "On film, there was a special magic on a set when you said action. To the point that the take ran and you said cut. And that was a special time, people stopped doing what they were doing and everyone settled down and this was money, this was the time, and that’s film running through a camera, and no one took it for granted and it was a thing."
Tarantino hopes that enough people will share his passion for a movie shot and projected on film to make “The Hateful Eight” a hit when it opens on Christmas day in select theaters.
There will be special early screenings on Christmas Eve. I will have a review of the film Thursday.
