In flight entertainment

Last night, I was stuck at O'Hare International Airport for 5 hours. It was by far the most awful airport experience I have had. The airport shut down for four hours prior to my arriving there and all flights were delayed, cancelled, overbooked, you name it. Being a person who doesn't drink, it was charming to at first be surrounded by angry people, then by angry drunks. As people were dealing with hangovers and still not boarding planes, they became a little more calm and discussions broke out. Somehow, my field of profession came into the mix and a group of us started talking about in-flight entertainment. A suit who travels for a living mentioned that by 2015, all aircrafts should have the feature of purchasable cable TV stations (via satellite of course) with personal screens on the seat in front of you. All I can think is that it is about time this happened.

Films on airlines have been around since the 1920s, and the technologies have constantly been changing. While previously, 16mm prints were used (my personal print of Sweet Charity is an airline print-- letterbox with the titles flipped so that it could be projected from the rear of the screen), by the 1970s, 1" tapes were being used instead, with the open reel tapes running above the passengers heads. God bless cassette formats such as Umatic and eventually VHS, which made the in-flight entertainment portion of a flight much easier on the flight attendants, who also had to schlop out drinks and peanuts to the greedy customers while rocking back and forth in the air.

I remember being a child and watching many films on planes. Previous to television screens that dropped down in the aisles, there was one huge screen in the middle row of the plane that ran everything. A flight to Europe would start with your instructional video on how to be a good airline passenger, followed by the BBC news, a feature or two, a couple sitcoms, and finally a set of cartoons for the kids on the plane before ending with an instructional video on filling out the customs card. There were very few times the films weren't edited for content, which made watching a film like Scent of a Woman nearly impossible. As years have passed, I understand from friends at the studios that the films have been time crunched as well. I find this a little odd of course, as a film won't be run on any flights unless they are 4 hours or longer. Why bother time compressing a 2 hour film on a 4 hour flight? Lame.

One very unique experience I remember is flying Midwest Express back from Los Angeles to Milwaukee with my mom and sister. My mom was generous enough to pay the ridiculous charge (I think it was $7 or so) to let my sister and I watch a film on a portable player. Midwest Express had smaller planes at the time and could not hold the projection system needed for in-flight entertainment. So, one could order a portable player, which came with an attached Hi-8 tape machine, and watch a film on your meal tray on the seat in front of you. We of course rented Sister Act. It's PG and has nuns singing if you're not familiar:

My sister wanted to watch Straight Talk, but I was the youngest, so I got to decide. The flight attendant was so condescending when she gave us the machine. "To start the film, hit this big triangle. It's the play button. When the movie is finished, hit the square. It's the stop button. Then let me know and I'll take care of the rest for you, okay?" Please woman, I was 8 and my sister was 10. We were pretty familiar with home video systems at that age. At the end of the film, there is this huge number which my sister and I love. So when it finished my sister simply said 'let's watch it again' and rewound the tape. I was getting so nervous and started shouting 'No! You're going to get us in trouble!' She didn't care, and of course we didn't, but just goes to show you how I was the good seed and she was the deviant one.

Jumping back to last night though, the film was The Lego Movie, and I was surprised to see that the only 'modified from its original version' disclaimer that ran before the film was that it had been 'formatted to fit this screen', meaning it was going to be shown at 1.33:1 instead of 2.35:1. I figured I could stomach this. Well, the film was awful. I don't know who writes children films these days, but they're definitely not professional writers, and this was a good example of that. I ended up tuning out after 35 minutes. My interest peaked at a certain moment though, when the captain had to pause the film to let us know we were entering some turbulence. The film paused digitally, as if the source was a DVD. I bring this up because almost exactly one year ago to date, my mom and and I took a trip to Hawaii and saw an equally terrible film-- The Great and Powerful Oz. I had already seen the shoddy film in theaters, and while it was way too long, I didn't see why the film had a disclaimer that it had been edited for time and content, beyond reformatting for fullscreen. When the pilot paused that film, the format was a VHS. I remember distinctly seeing an analog pause and the heads eating away at this poor VHS tape of the film as he made the announcement and then hitting play again. This was the same type of plane, by the way, a Boeing 757. So, either VHS have been done away with in the last year on airplanes, as they should because the tapes we saw were in horrible condition from every time someone hit pause to make an announcement, or there are only some flights that are capable of showing DVD.

Nonetheless, it is so wonderful to hear that pretty soon there will be NO set programming for in-flight entertainment. I think it is wonderful that people can choose what they want to watch and flip through channels to catch a Nick at Nite Cheers marathon or something on Turner Classic Movies while waiting to go visit their grandmother in Utah, or wherever the heck they're headed. There is one downside though, which none of us have considered. Flying back from Milwaukee to Los Angeles on such a flight that offered the cable tv channels, I tuned in to see a Comedy Central roast, as it was a late night flight and TV-MA programs tend to run at these weening hours. I was enjoying myself immensely, watching something that was highly immature and offensive, but when I came back to my seat after going to the little passenger's room, I noticed that there were a few munchkins, ages 12 and under, tuning into this same adult program. Mom and Dad were either not on the flight or seated far away, and could not monitor what their child was watching. So while we once, as a whole audience of passengers had to, and still on some flights do, watch films censored for the minor eyes and ears of the flight, the new 'cable tv' option is opening a new world of inappropriate television for young'ns...all they have to do is get booked on a flight, and a standup comic can explain the birds and bees to them in a way their human growth and development classes missed!

Signed,
The Celluloid Avenger