Film stock fires halt One Battle After Another screenings

While Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is a scorcher with cinephiles everywhere, it seems like screenings themselves are being set ablaze. As reported by numerous moviegoers, One Battle After Another may be having some difficulties in its projection.

Someone who caught a screening of One Battle After Another this week posted on social media that the film actually burned an hour in. The theater in question was the famed Vista Theatre in Los Angeles, owned by Quentin Tarantino since 2021. Responding to the news, Pulp Fiction co-writer and Video Archives Podcast co-host Roger Avary wrote, “Inglorious,” a nod to Inglourious Basterds, which climaxes with a theater being set ablaze via ultra flammable nitrate film. There’s no word on if any fascist dictators were slaughtered during the screening of One Battle After Another…

Of course, such instances are extremely rare for One Battle After Another and we’re not highlighting this as a warning by any means (by some accounts, one single frame was ruined). This is more so to showcase an anecdote for screenings while also pointing out the fragility of film itself, which we know can be an extremely fragile format.

While we weren’t at this screening of One Battle After Another, going off of another user’s post, the film was back up and running in less than 10 minutes, with the issue of film melting within the gate being resolved so the movie could continue. Of note, however, comes someone from another screening which halted after just 15 minutes due to the same issue.

But seriously, don’t let situations like this stop you from going to see One Battle After Another on the big screen — or, rather, the biggest screen you can find that’s showing it on film. As it stands, not only is it one of the best films of the year but it is just the sort that needs your support at the cinema. In fact, Leonardo DiCaprio has been making it clear that box office numbers will mean a lot, telling Variety, “I mean, Paul shot this movie in Vista Vision — cameras that have rarely been used since the early ‘60s. He wants people to have that immersive experience and make an action film that’s unexpected, tactile, realistic and something that is probably a lot different than what we’ve been saturated with. In that respect, box office is very important.”

Has this ever happened to you? If so, tell us about your experience in the comments section below!

The post Film stock fires halt One Battle After Another screenings appeared first on JoBlo.