Honestly though, I always thought Soylent Green felt hella long. I mean, I hate to play to the whole "People today have such short attention spans!" stereotype, but it kills me how there's so many movies from the '70s always managed to meander along and make an hour and a half film feel like three hours.
In the 70's, there was exactly one way to see a movie: At a movie theater. There was no home video; no DVDs, no VHS... no one
owned movies. Yeah, they showed heavily edited, commerical-interrupted, formatted-for-TV movies on TV, but you weren't watching the actual movie; you were seeing something slightly better than a decent summary of it.
There were also no multiplexes with 8 or 10 or twenty screens. Screens were big. Fucking big. Movies were an experience. You watched the story unfold, it engrossed you, and you saw shitloads of detail that you don't get on TV, even in HD on someone's "big" HDTV. You think that HDTV even compares to the size of a movie screen in the 70's? You think "high def" even compares to the near-infinite detail of 70mm film? Heh heh, right.
Yeah, 70's movies took their time telling the story, because it wasn't just about the story; it was the whole experience. The scenery, the details, the acting performances. You hear people say all the time that they watched a movie for the nth time, and saw something they never noticed before. That's because it's harder to notice things when they're only two inches high on your screen, the camera angle changes every half second, and there's a fucking loud techno or metal track blasting you the whole time.
Also, it's generally true. People today
do have shorter attention spans. Congratulations on reading this.
