Woody Harrelson in my home town, my capital city, my london
Last night between the hours of 2am and 3.40am Woody Harrelson pulled off a seemingly impossible feat of simultaneously shooting a feature film and beaming it live directly into cinemas as a single unbroken 100 minute take. Don’t believe it? He did it. I watched it last night and have the bags to prove it. People bang on about the elaborate single take tracking shots in films such as Goodfellahs and The Player but neither of them even hit 10 minutes in duration. This was 10 times the length, entirely shot by one camera by one cameraman and he negotiated 14 location changes, car rides, 300 odd extras and multiple interactions without fucking up once. So much could and probably should have gone wrong but it didn’t. An incredible achievement in itself by the cast and crew but what was even more of an achievement is that it was completely engaging and you managed to forget for huge chunks of it that you were actually watching something whilst it was being acted and recorded.
I was lucky enough to have got tickets and be in the audience at the Picturehouse cinema in the West End as it was the only cinema in Britain to show it. It was also beamed to 500 cinemas in America at the slightly more sociable hour of 6pm. Even though we had to stay up all night for it, it was well worth it and knowing it was happening in the immediate vicinity of where we were sat watching it made it even more exciting. Its also very funny, especially the scenes with Owen Wilson and also tense & emotional in all the right places.
Harrelson must have been slightly nuts to have done it, and he must have balls of steel…especially as it was the first film he had ever directed. He not only got away with it, he delivered an entertaining story (based on real life events that happened to him) and wasn’t just worth seeing for its technical gimmick. The movie wasn’t perfect and you had to adjust as maybe a different viewing experience but in my mind, did a way better job than Birdman at running a plot through continuous action. And that wasn’t live either.
Although a single take single camera movie had already been done (Victoria – German film) it had not been live streamed in the process. It is essentially a new form of art fusing elements of both cinema and the theatre to create….cinetre? thenema?? (ok, we can work on the name in due course) and it will be interesting to see if creates its own genre of movie or will it just exist as this random one off? Who knows..it was just great to be a part of the ride and be present for this new cinematic experience.
Hats off to you Mr Harrelson – spectacular job.