Why the media might be to blame – The Hollywood Reporter

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When is a standing ovation actually over? Does it come down to the last person applauding or a vague tipping point when most of the audience seem to have returned to their seats? Such questions have taken on a bizarre urgency in 2022 thanks to the growing prevalence of an increasingly hated niche reporting practice in the industry: the timing, reporting and social media amplification of duration” precise” standing ovations after film premieres at prestigious film festivals.

Long a staple of Cannes coverage, where the Standing O is an institution, the practice has spread to Venice, Toronto and elsewhere in 2022, causing consternation on Film Twitter and IRL. Critics hate it because it supplants their nuanced opinions with a single mystifying data point. Artists, studios and publicists aren’t fans, because it gives them all the more reason to panic as their film finally meets its first audience. But mostly, no one seems to like it — except, perhaps, the star who just basked in a particularly long standing ovation — because the length of the applause at a premiere tends to mean precisely nothing.

Premieres are usually filled with an odd mix of glamor-focused European socialites, journalists, hangers, and the big crews of people actually responsible for creating the movie – how long that particular slap gets to clap on any given night you says very little about artistic achievement on screen (especially when Brad Pitt stands in the audience, waving his arms and encouraging the crowd to keep roaring, as he did at the Venice premiere of Andrew Dominik’s biopic Marilyn Monroe, Blonde, which Pitt’s Plan B produced).

Could 2023 be the year the industry finally gives up the standing ovation clock? THR is open to a negotiated ceasefire if our business colleagues come to the table.

This story first appeared in the December 16 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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