Feb. 28--A few days ago, it was announced that former Chicago improviser Tina Fey's new TV show, "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," would not air on NBC like her colossal hit "30 Rock," but would be available for streaming on Netflix. It was further announced Tuesday that Netflix will begin production on a new "feature film" featuring the character of Pee-wee Herman, titled "Pee-wee's Big Holiday." Herman, you'll likely recall, is the alter ego of the 62-year-old former Los Angeles improviser Paul Reubens, whose career was stymied in 1991 after a scandal involving an adult theater, a modest transgression as these things go today.
"Pee-wee's Big Holiday" was announced by Netflix as an "on-demand movie," a phrase that logically could be applied to any film, when you think about it, but Netflix fans know what that customer-friendly label means. Actually, "feature film" also is another redundant term, given that its origins lie in multiple bills of dramatic fare at old movie palaces. There are no double features anymore. Netflix is deftly using the term purely for reasons of retro prestige.
What might one make of these developments? One might first marvel at the fast rise -- and surely future dominance -- of Netflix, a very savvy enterprise that figured out, far quicker than most, the new device-agnostic world and the widespread preference of millennials, and no small number of older folk, for nixing their out-of-control monthly cable bills and watching the newest product at a time and place of their own choosing.
To some extent, the cable industry's longtime resistance toward a la carte offerings and pricing is now biting those companies back, hard, just as movie studios are struggling to retain their long-established control of distribution and exhibition.
Taken together, the two announcements last week constitute a lesson in the perils of not giving the customer what he or she wants, as well as a lesson in how the world now revolves around the acquisition of high-quality original programming, as distinct from maintaining default platforms. The power base has shifted. Content providers are king.
Fey and Reubens' projects are not, of course, the first high-profile shows to debut on Netflix. At the 2013 Academy Awards, the actor Kevin Spacey showed up in character, reminding everyone in Hollywood that the Netflix series "House of Cards" was more interesting to their viewers than most of the movies competing for Oscars that year. Ergo, the most fascinating question of the week: Is there really any meaningful distinction now between such hitherto hard-and-fast categories as movies and TV shows?
Is Netflix a third way all of its own?
After all, the distinction between film and television was historically defined by their modes of analog distribution, modes now demonstrably outmoded. No wonder the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been forced, of late, to ask itself the question, "What is a movie, anyway?"
That is a more complicated question than it might first seem, but it is not going away.
Netflix is not necessarily claiming that its two new enterprises are on the same level: "Kimmy Schmidt" is a series of half-hour episodes, a show that might have been on NBC, and "Pee-wee's Big Holiday" is the kind of "feature film" you might have seen in the movie theater. It is logical for Netflix to maintain those distinctions. If you were Netflix, why would you confine yourself to one category of drama when you could dominate several?
Still, once you stream a half-hour series, you could argue it immediately ceases to be a half-hour series, at least in terms of the historical meaning of the term. And what is a "feature film" in the new world order -- one that happens to be shown first in theaters? Perhaps the distinction remains acute for spectacles requiring huge rooms, but it is hard to make that case for the rest of Hollywood's offerings.
Actually, you could argue that long-form storytelling is the ultimate manifestation of the feature film, and Netflix now is dominant in that arena too. Movie theaters and studios historically have run scared of excessive running times. Netflix, not so much. For Netflix has a fundamental advantage -- the customer can choose the duration of each slice of consumption. Self-service, long-form, you might say.
Is there an inherently qualitative difference between a Netflix movie, an HBO movie, a TV movie or even a really long podcast? Not much, anymore.
At this moment, distinctions hinge mostly on perceived prestige. This is also still true in the publishing world, where a printed volume is valued more highly than an e-book. It's fine to have an e-book, of course, just as long as you also have the physical publication. If I am being honest, it remains important to me that this column appear both in print and online. Quality control is important, and physical publications still are widely assumed to be more discriminating, even if that distinction is mostly symbolic, or purely associative. Still, as I write and you read, films for cinematic release retain a certain patina and, in theory, should thus attract better-quality actors, directors, writers and the highest levels of compensation for all of the above.
For now.
As Reubens said last week of his Netflix deal, as reported by CNN: "Judd (Apatow) and I dreamt up this movie four years ago. The world was much different back then -- Netflix was waiting by the mailbox for red envelopes to arrive. I've changed all that."
Well, not just you, Mr. Reubens. But point taken. It is changing all right. And there you are again.
There is an implication of past rejection in Reuben's pointed statement. Being rejected -- not funded, not published, not distributed -- has always been a powerful impetus to attack the gatekeepers and fuel creativity. Never more so than right now.
cjones5@tribpub.com
