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Ava DuVernay: Real People Aren’t Seeing Most Movies

For our project on the future of movies, the director has harsh words for the industry. A theater “is not the reality of most people’s experience with film.”

DuVernay said she had the option to make “When They See Us,” on the Central Park Five, as a big-screen release. She chose a Netflix series instead.Credit...Ryan Pfluger for The New York Times

Ava DuVernay is one of Hollywood’s most prolific auteurs, toggling between television (“Queen Sugar”), Netflix (“13th” and “When They See Us”) and traditional film studios (“Selma” and “A Wrinkle in Time”). She founded the collective Array, which is focused on distributing movies by people of color and women, and she is developing “New Gods,” an interstellar superhero movie for Warner Bros. For my project on the future of movies, she spoke about her frustration with entrenched industry attitudes. Here are edited excerpts:

For a long time, theatrical distribution has been seen as the be-all, end-all when it comes to movies. In 10 years, how do you think that attitude will have shifted?

I’m trying to urge people to realize that their privilege-preferred presentation of cinema is outdated. You might want to watch a movie on 35 millimeter in a cinema that’s climate-controlled in your preferred part of town, but that is not the reality of most people’s experience with film, and that is not sustainable any longer. Some people are going to be stunned and shocked that their preferences aren’t shared and really don’t matter anymore.

The more that you talk about how to uphold these old systems and methods of presentation that were already excluding so many different types of people, and the more that you are so adamant to hold on to those things, the more you will lose when it all slips away. It’s going to be traumatic for you, but it’s inevitable — it’s going to happen. Open your mind, open your arms, and welcome more kinds of people and ways to express yourself.

There is an idea out there that moviegoing is as populist as it gets, but that hasn’t been the case for everyone.

Look, I say it all the time, but you couldn’t watch “Straight Outta Compton” in Compton, because there is no movie theater there. If you’re going to talk about this idealized idea of the theatrical experience, I’m going to sit you down and talk about the realities of exhibition and distribution.

I am a distributor. I understand what it means to take different kinds of films and get them into places around the country where movie theaters do exist and where there is no theater. I don’t want my niece watching my work on my phone, but I’d rather her watch it than not watch it at all.

My nieces and nephews don’t really care about produced content in the way that we do traditionally — my niece can sit there and watch IGTV for hours, which is on her phone, on Instagram, and it’s basically little clips of nothing. That’s why, when I hear people being so rigid and so strict about certain forms and presentations, it just reminds me of that “Simpsons” cartoon, “Old Man Yells at Cloud.”

As filmmakers, what is our goal with film? For me, it’s telling a story meant to be seen by many people, not just the ones who have a movie theater near them and can afford to go. I mean this stuff’s expensive! Fifteen bucks? You don’t care about real people seeing this. Half of this town doesn’t even pay for movies, they go to screenings or watch a screener.

It’s striking how streaming can reach an audience that would not otherwise be seeing these films. Barry Jenkins and I were discussing how Twitter lit up over Trevante Rhodes in “Bird Box,” asking “Where has he been hiding?” even though he had just starred in “Moonlight,” a best-picture winner.

“Moonlight” is the perfect example of the midsized, midbudget drama that has gone through the traditional theatrical system, played the best film festivals in the world, gone up the whole academy ladder, and yet real people aren’t seeing that movie.

They should, because the movie is extraordinary, but I know, because I talk to black people every day who haven’t seen the film. When I had Trevante in my Jay-Z-Beyoncé video, people were like, “Damn, who’s that?” And I’m like, “It’s Trevante, from ‘Moonlight’!” And they said, “Who? From what?”

So we really need to make it clear to the powers that be that if it’s not “Avengers: Endgame,” there’s a huge disconnect between the desire, capacity and need of people to consume films in the theater, or not consume them at all.

It may also be a wake-up call to the industry when it comes to the Oscars.

I’m sorry, but the average person does not care about the Academy Awards anymore. It’s all changed, and the academy has not kept up with that change. We can see from the dwindling ratings, and we can see from the fact that if you and I went out on the street right now and asked 10 people what won this year, the answer’s going to be: “I don’t know.”

This industry will not survive thinking this way. It will not. The patterns are already going in the opposite direction, and this is why you have people clinging to old systems that do not work anymore. I’ve been in some of these rooms, I’ve read some of this stuff that people are saying, and I say you are contributing to your own destruction. When you say that you care about the future of this space, this medium, this legacy, then you have to think about what happens next, and I just don’t think enough people are doing that.

So do you think we should untether the idea of traditional theatrical distribution from the Oscars?

For me, it’s really questioning the prioritization of [a theatrical release]. That is the mark of, “You’ve made it and you’re a real filmmaker” for this generation right now and maybe the generation right underneath mine. But already, there are filmmakers in my space and the generation ahead of me that don’t care. [Cary] Fukunaga doesn’t care. He really doesn’t.

I could never make another theatrical release, but I’m always going to make films. For me, I don’t need that, and I know there is a privilege embedded in that because I’ve had it, I’ve seen it, and I know what it is: It’s a lot of ego. I’m told by the system that this is what matters, but then you get there and people aren’t seeing your movies.

That’s been your experience?

Take the number of people who saw “Selma,” a Christmas release with an Oscar campaign about Dr. Martin Luther King — a huge figure where we don’t have to create awareness about who he is. Well, more than a quadruple amount of people saw “13th,” the documentary I made about mass incarceration and the prison-industrial complex, than saw the King film that was a best-picture nominee. If I’m telling these stories to reach a mass audience, then really, nothing else matters.

I had the opportunity to make When They See Us” as a theatrical release. I’m in a privileged position where that is on the table for me. The choice was easy. Let me put it on a platform where it can actually be seen instead of chasing a theatrical release where two years from now, someone’s saying, “What was that? Is it going to be on Netflix?”

Kyle Buchanan, a Los Angeles-based pop culture reporter, writes the Carpetbagger column. He was previously a senior editor at Vulture, New York Magazine's entertainment website, where he covered the movie industry. More about Kyle Buchanan

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