Having more is not always better

The movie had subtitles.
And as we watched it, I wondered how many other cable subscribers or satellite surfers in Jay County were watching it with us.
Today’s target demographic doesn’t much care for subtitles. Many young movie-goers don’t much like black and white films.
And for some, anything that doesn’t involve a car chase/crash or a gun battle isn’t really considered entertainment.
(A few years ago at a baseball game, I heard a young man boast that the oldest movie he had ever seen was “Die Hard II.” He hadn’t even seen the original. And he was bragging about it.)
Maybe that’s a function of our media-saturated age.
Time was, seeing a foreign film was an adventure, a rare experience, something that made you feel a little bit cosmopolitan, even if he lived in the middle of a bunch of cornfields.
The predecessor of what is now Arts Place actually began as a foreign film series. A group of young professionals, hungry for something beyond the limited menu of movie options available to them, convinced Skip Mallers of the Hines Theatre to book a handful of foreign films. They sold tickets, called the thing the Portland Society for the Arts and had some good fun for a few years.
To understand their hunger, one has to understand the menu they were faced with at the time.
No first-run movie played at the Hines in Portland or the Main in Dunkirk or the Key in Redkey on a timely basis. Months could go by between the initial release of a movie and its screening before a small town audience. And some — many, many — movies never made the small-town moviehouse at all.
Their release was limited to the biggest cities. Even Indianapolis had trouble supporting what was then called an “art house,” a movie theatre that showed films beyond the usual Ma and Pa Kettle series from Hollywood.
Though I was younger than the crowd that established the film series at the Hines, I deeply understood the hunger.
A small group of us would read avidly about the latest releases, wondering about their titles, finding them incredibly exotic and knowing that we’d have few chances to see them.
I was luckier than most.
On a business trip with my dad when I was about 8 or 9, he took me to an “art house” to see a revival of Charlie Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush.” He’d loved the movie as a kid and wanted to share it with me when I was a kid; I’ve never forgotten that night.
He also imparted a bit of wisdom: When you’re in a big city, don’t go to a movie you could see at home. Go see something that will never make the screen in a rural community.
Several years later, I took his advice to heart. Taking the bus from Portland up to Fort Wayne, then the train to Chicago, I traveled solo up to see my older brother during the fall vacation that was known in those days as “Teachers’ Institute.”
Once in Chicago, I’d spend my days in the Loop or my night’s on Rush Street, seeing movies that would never get a screening at home.
Sure, I had to lie about my age to see “Divorce Italian Style” with Sophia Loren. But I think that’s a forgivable sin.
Did I learn to love subtitles? You bet I did. It was the mark of a movie with an international flavor, something to be savored.
And though I savored it again a week or so ago on cable TV, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit sorry for those folks who have avoided the experience and stayed with what’s safe and known and familiar.
The old saying is that “less is more.” But when it comes to mass media, sometimes I think that more is less.