It was Monday night, the night after the Academy Awards, feeling tired but also thrilled we could stop talking about the same ten movies that I decided, yes, I wanted to watch a movie. When the pandemic started here in New York City four years ago this week, I started a list of “movies I’m embarrassed I had never seen.” According to Letterboxd, as I type this – since March 14, 2020 – I have watched 1597 movies. Of these, 1080 have been first-time watches. (This is not a perfect science. Sometimes I forget to hit the “I’ve seen this before” button. Also, a good percentage of those would be new releases.) I mention this because I’ve been pretty motivated to watch movies I’ve never seen before over recent years. Anytime I feel guilty about not having seen a classic movie, I tell myself, “You know, if I watch right now, that feeling will be gone.” It gives me a sense of accomplishment. There’s still plenty I’d like to see, and will, but it’s gotten to the point I’m running out of movies I truly feel guilty having not seen.
Anyway, on Monday night I watched Kindergarten Cop on cable, a movie I’ve seen at least a dozen times. I watched it because it was on. It’s still my favorite way to watch movies.
Five years ago I wrote about the impending death of the random cable movie. At the time, it certainly looked like streaming was about to make cable television obsolete. Then, once the pandemic happened, studios went all in on streaming. This was mostly out of necessity, but the gradual changes that were happening were implemented almost immediately with seemingly unlimited amounts of money of support and … the future of streaming looks a lot more unclear now. And cable bundled with internet service remains my most affordable option – especially with Max, Paramount+, and Disney+ all included with my subscriptions.
And for whatever reason, streaming hasn’t been able to replicate the feeling of flipping through hundreds of channels and then going, “Ohhh, Kindergarten Cop is on,” and it already being halfway over. What’s weird is, when I’m in a “whatever is on cable,” mood, I really don’t want to watch a movie from the very beginning. Wherever it happens to be is fine. Goodfellas plays on a never-ending loop on cable. At this point it’s not surprising Goodfellas is playing, the surprise now is, “Oh, what part are we at?” Because of this, sometimes I wind up watching a movie I’ve seen many times, but not in full in quite awhile, and the first ten minutes feel unfamiliar because I so rarely see that part. I bet the stats on how many times I’ve seen the beginning of Weekend to Bernie’s compared to the ending would be startling. I bet it’s something like two times to 50 times.
(Scorsese movies are always a good example of this. Goodfellas, Casino, The Departed, and even The Aviator, and Shutter Island are on all the time. As long as cable exists, these movies will never go away. If The Irishman or Killers of the Flower Moon were on cable, I’d watch those dozens of times, too. But they aren’t. And I’m never going to go to Netflix or Apple+, respectively, to watch either of those. Because if I’m going to go out of my way to play a movie, it’s going to be something I’ve never seen. The Irishman just feels kind of gone because it’s never “on television” and, now that the Oscars are over, I suspect the same thing will happen to Killers of the Flower Moon. They will both just live on one specific different app each on a device that has many, many apps.)
This all came to a head last September when I contracted the novel coronavirus. (Also known as Covid-19.) Yeah, it was pretty terrible. I had it once before and it was basically a cold. This time, it was the worst thing I had ever had in my life – which included ten straight days of a fever. (This is where, undoubtedly, anti-vax people start yelling at me on social media, “Um, if you’re vaxxed, why was it so bad?” The problem was I was long overdue for my booster, but the advice at the time was to wait for the updated booster that would be out in September that protected against the new variant. I caught it before the new booster came out.) Between the fever hallucination, I was in no real position to make decisions about my viewing selections (or anything, really). I just let cable television do that for me.
According to Letterboxd (I barely remember any of this) I watched: Young Adult, Leaving Las Vegas, Road House, Election, The Firm, White Men Can’t Jump, Dragnet, The Karate Kid, Stand By Me, Rain Man, Clockwatchers, and Good Will Hunting. You know what? Not bad! And even at the time, I remember thinking how happy I was that cable movies were still an option. Also, being in bed for a week and a half, being shut off from the outside world … it was strangely comforting to know I was watching all these movies at the same time as other humans. I don’t know why that matters, but for some reason it really did.
Going back to the piece I wrote five years ago, today I’m less sure it’s going away than I was then. It’s just going to be more scattered. Movies like Tombstone and the aforementioned Goodfellas will seemingly play on cable forever and, ergo, live forever. New steamer-exclusive movies like Killers of the Flower Moon and Maestro will disappear. Popular Warner Bros. movies will always pop up on HBO. Popular Paramount movies will always pop up on Showtime. And then movies like Oppenheimer and The Holdovers, both owned by Comcast (Universal and Focus) will do their run on Peacock, then be licensed out to cable, which is smart.
But I wish the streamers like Amazon and Netflix would license out their movies this way. If nothing else just to keep them in the conversation. If I’m flipping through channels and Killers of the Flower Moon were on, I’d get sucked in. Everyone would. Because as long as these movies play on cable, they stick around. All those movies I listed, that I watched while sick, will have a longer shelf life than the original streaming movies that are brand new. Because they are all available for us when we need them most … the day after the Academy Awards or when we are in bed sick for 10 days.
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