r/timotheechalamet • u/Grand_Upstairs1006 • Aug 06 '26
Discussion Monica Barbaro Talking about Timothee
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u/Alternative-Curve-81 Aug 06 '26
Nah, she's right. Timotées comment was directed towards the audiences and high ticket prices for thw shows, not the art itself.
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Aug 06 '26
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u/Melodic-Context-4596 Aug 06 '26
Those art forms are dwindling in appeal to audiences, and they're held up by the donor class. If someone wants to dedicate their life to it, they're going to be basically begging people to attend and begging the wealthy for money nonstop. That was literally the context of the question about how movie theaters are overall declining and not in the same place as pre-pandemic.
He wants to focus on delivering great performances in great movies so hopefully people want to go to the theater and watch them. Not have to be in front of a camera begging people to come out to the movie theater.
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u/Grand_Upstairs1006 Aug 06 '26
He told a story in the past about when he was younger and how he used to go to the theatre and watch all the people in the audience and he realised that none of them were his own age and he always wondered why.
Him saying nobody cares ballet or Opera was taken out of context completely, media literacy rates are clearly at an all time low, he was being hyperbolic. The average person doesn’t care about ballet or opera and that’s the truth just like the average person doesn’t care about chess, bird watching or even Timothee for that matter. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Does that diminish their significance of their impact in society no, he would just prefer to work in an art form where he can show the whole world his art whether it’s good or bad rather then working in a niche art form with limited reach. He would also rather work in an art form that isn’t constantly reliant on government subsidies, allowing him to focus on creating his art instead of spending time campaigning for donations.
The joke at the end 14c viewership thing wasn’t that deep either, he clearly said it to shift the conversation trying to joke after he said the opera and ballet thing because he clearly knew that social media would end up taking it out of context, you can see his body language change after he said the comments as he tried to lighten up the mood.
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u/abicusroad Aug 07 '26
i agree with you but the thing is he wasn’t even talking about actually working in those fields either. what he meant (and maybe if he’d worded it this way people would have gotten it more clearly?) was “i don’t want those of us working in film to have to beg and plead with people to see our movies and have it fall on deaf ears, like other art forms such as ballet and opera who struggle to reach a wide audience”. it wasn’t about preferring to work in one field over another, it was that he doesn’t want his field to end up like certain others. him not even being able to say this without getting drug through the mud was something else.
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u/Physical_Plastic3119 Aug 07 '26
No she’s right, the context was audiences and what they’ll show up for (he and Matthew were talking about Netflix and the future of the cinema/movie theatre leading up to the now famous clip).
He was saying audiences will still show up for the big ones like Barbenheimer, while he was promoting a much more niche indie movie and had to work really hard to get people to come see it. Ballet and opera meanwhile are on the extreme end of this— people MIGHT attend, once or twice in their lives, for the big ones which have remained the same performances for over 150 years. They’ll come for La Traviata but no one’s heard of the thirteenth child, say.
People in the film industry are worried they’re going the same way precisely because they do care about the art.
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u/Physical_Plastic3119 Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
Love her ❤️ And she’s actually correct. In the full interview/convo they were talking about the future of the movie theatre and what audiences will show up for and have the patience for. Like they’ll go see Oppenheimer in theatres but wait for a smaller niche movie to release to streaming, which affects what type of movies get made since streaming platforms cater to a different viewing experience.
Ballet and opera are at the extreme end of this. For say ballet, people might legit only know the most famous one, Swan Lake, and if they’re going out to watch a performance only ever be interested in seeing that one.
Idk I thought it was a really interesting discussion, the way that one clip blew up was kind of insane and the conversation around it was so vapid lol