Tales of Cin­e­ma No. 2 – The Hot­tie and the Nottie

Inspired by Miguel Gomes’ tac­tic of sto­ry col­lect­ing for Ara­bi­an Nights, we set out in search of off-the-beat­en-path true tales in the hope of glimps­ing the soul of cin­e­ma today. These are sto­ries of obses­sion, acci­dents, gam­bles and mortality…

In the­o­ry, the new hori­zon of dig­i­tal film exhi­bi­tion elim­i­nates human error. No more old dudes with smoky fin­gers up in the pro­jec­tion booth who have neglect­ed the instruc­tions that come nes­tled in each can of film. The prob­lem of reels being shown in the wrong order is no longer an earth­ly con­cern, in that film can no longer be quan­ti­fied in reels – there’s only one way through a dig­i­tal file. Along with that, there’s no wear and tear on a dig­i­tal file. It can exist for­ev­er, or at least until it’s no longer com­pat­i­ble with the hardware.

Cel­lu­loid enthu­si­asts have stood by their cause and made the argu­ment that see­ing a film pro­ject­ed on film is equiv­a­lent to look­ing at an orig­i­nal paint­ing in a gallery. Watch­ing a film that has been pro­ject­ed dig­i­tal­ly is the same as look­ing at a soul­less fac­sim­i­le. Cel­lu­loid also adds the ele­ment of chance into the film view­ing process, as each pro­jec­tion of the film is going to be ever so slight­ly dif­fer­ent from the last. Dig­i­tal, con­verse­ly, is a uni­form process – every­one gets exact­ly the same expe­ri­ence, all films are made equal. Movies as cans of Coke.

The year was 2008, and cel­lu­loid fac­tion­al­ism did not yet have a rea­son to spring into exis­tence. All films that made their path through cin­e­mas were rou­tine­ly pro­ject­ed on 35mm film, though admit­ted­ly the tides were turn­ing. One review­ing assign­ment I was giv­en involved spend­ing an evening sam­pling a forth­com­ing title called The Hot­tie and the Not­tie, a com­ic star­ring vehi­cle for hotel heiress and some­time screen actor, Paris Hilton. Prospects for the film were dim, per­haps due to Hilton not hav­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly vora­cious fan­base in the UK. The release was like­ly the result of a con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tion. Yet, view­ers who ven­tured to that screen­ing were treat­ed to the full 35mm shebang.

Crit­ics were invit­ed ear­ly to invade the venue’s well-stocked bar, pos­si­bly in the hope that a few units of alco­hol might enhance amuse­ment for the work. We even­tu­al­ly took our seats and the red vel­vet cur­tains part­ed. Mag­ic time, as Jack Lem­mon used to say. Paris Hilton was, of course, cast as the epony­mous ​“hot­tie”, with actress Chris­tine Lakin cam­ou­flaged in pros­thet­ic facial warts and fake buck teeth to ful­fil her role as the ​“not­tie”. The con­cept of the film is that to get with the ​“hot­tie” you also have to put up with the com­pa­ny of her best friend, the ​“not­tie”. Our baby­faced hero, Nate Coop­er, played by Joel David Moore, attempts to slime his way into Paris’s biki­ni, though is con­stant­ly scup­pered by her repug­nant companion.

Aside from its dun­der­head­ed cel­e­bra­tion of body fas­cism, the film dis­played lit­tle in the way of wit or sophis­ti­ca­tion. Indeed, every punch­line sug­gest­ed that to canoo­dle with Paris, one must accept the odi­ous bag­gage of her unlike­ly entourage. Per­haps it was intend­ed as a bio­graph­i­cal metaphor in which Hilton requires adu­la­tion on more than a super­fi­cial lev­el? Suf­fice to say, the joke was lost on an audi­ence who were becom­ing uncom­fort­able in their seats. Some per­haps pon­der­ing whether they might be wit­ness­ing what could be one of the worst films ever made.

But then some­thing hap­pened. And it turned the entire sor­did affair into some­thing mem­o­rable, amus­ing and, dare I say it, rather beau­ti­ful. As Joel David Moore deliv­ered anoth­er line of banal dia­logue, the fur­ry boom mic became clear­ly vis­i­ble above his head. The shot reversed to Hilton, and as she spoke, there again was the boom mic hov­er­ing at the top of the frame. In the instant, my brain inter­pret­ed this image as a sign that the film was so awful, its mak­ers had neglect­ed to notice a mic clear­ly enter­ing into the eld of vision.

Sure­ly this was some kind of event hori­zon of atro­cious craft? Con­sid­er­ing the weak­ness of its con­cept, it made total sense that it would be sim­i­lar­ly slip­shod on a for­mal lev­el. I even con­vinced myself that I hadn’t seen it, that the mic was prob­a­bly just a pro­trud­ing lamp­shade or some­such. But 10 min­utes lat­er, dur­ing a scene tak­ing place on a lux­u­ry yacht, there it was again, inel­e­gant­ly dip­ping in from the top of the frame. And then for the remain­der of the film, every shot fea­tured the boom mic.

All of a sud­den, a piece of depress­ing dreck has been ele­vat­ed to a cine-lit­er­ate, self-reflex­ive satire on trash cin­e­ma. Just as a direc­tor like Jean Luc-Godard might cut through a scene of sin­cere dra­ma with a shot of the clap­per board as a reminder that what you’re watch­ing isn’t real­i­ty but a sub­jec­tive con­cep­tion of real­i­ty, so at that point did I think the mak­ers of The Hot­tie and the Not­tie has become wise to the absur­di­ty of their endeav­our and decid­ed to shat­ter the illu­sion of fantasy.

The fol­low­ing day I con­tact­ed a pub­li­cist to ask if the film had been pro­ject­ed incor­rect­ly, or whether we had actu­al­ly been par­ty an iron­ic intel­lec­tu­al exper­i­ment. Look­ing in to the mat­ter, she returned with the news that it has been screened in the incor­rect aspect ratio, and as such the mask­ing was off kil­ter. Mask­ing is the process of adjust­ing the out­er edges of the screen (the major­i­ty of cin­e­mas boast the capa­bil­i­ty) to the aspect ratio of the film. Because the mask­ing had also been botched, the audi­ence that night were able to see infor­ma­tion at the top and the bot­tom of each frame that was sup­posed to be con­cealed. This pro­jec­tion­ist doing his job bad­ly turned a night of poten­tial cin­e­mat­ic ignominy into a reminder of the glo­ri­ous, com­bustible qual­i­ty of cel­lu­loid. This tru­ly was a night to remember.