UnNews:Boxcar Bertha to be Scorsese's shortest movie ever
Sunday, September 1, 2019
HOLLYWOOD -- Martin Scorsese's 1972 film, Boxcar Bertha, is set to become the shortest film of the legendary director's 52-year career. While his upcoming, The Irishman, is a 3 1/2 hour De Niro-Pacino bloatfest that brings Joe Pesci out of retirement (because he's apparently too old to make another Home Alone movie), his earlier effort is a mere 87 minutes. But even that's too much for most modern audiences.
"Who the hell has time to sit through an 87 minute movie?" asks film critic and historian Leonard Maltin. "I can barely endure a 30 minute sitcom. Becker makes CSI feel like Lawrence of Arabia."
"It's ridiculous," concurs Richard Roeper. "I barely got through Lord of the Rings... and that's just the theatrical versions. When are people going to learn that nothing should ever take up more than five minutes of a person's time. Five minute movies, Marty, or you need to retire."
While movies theaters were brave enough to screen Boxcar Bertha in its full, unwieldy 87 minute run time, they passed on The Irishman, which will instead be streaming on Netflix with a few scattered theatrical showings.
"It just goes to show," says Maltin, "that movies have been becoming ludicrously longer since Fred Ott's Sneeze. Why did a movie in 1894 need to be five seconds? That's too damn long. The Galloping Horse got away with being 20 seconds long because it was a horse. Not to mention it was the first motion picture ever made. But a guy with a funny mustache sneezing does not warrant five seconds of anyone's time."
Sources[edit | edit source]
- Chris Lindahl "‘The Irishman’: At 3 1/2 Hours, It Will Be Martin Scorsese’s Longest Movie Ever" Indiewire, August 27, 2019
- Some asshat "List of Scorsese movies by length" Twitter, August 27, 2019
