hes not saying you cant watch a movie on a phone, hes saying if you watch a movie on a phone youre not really watching the movie. its 2 different experiences. and i have to say i completely agree with him. sure, some of us have less time to devote to movie watching and when (and if) you watch a movie on your phone, you are sacrificing something...if you cant admit that, then "you dont get it"

I think as I consider the question more, it depends on the film. Some I will wait and watch on DVD, a very few I will actually make use of a rare childless evening to actually invade the multiplex for.

If I look through the videos I have on my Moto Q, my Zune or my Eee 701, they all come under one of the following headings: TV episodes, favorite films I have seen many times before or shlock. I don't need the movie theatre experience for watching any of those, I just need a long bus ride and a pair of good headphones.

Would I watch a serious, quality film on a phone the first time I saw it...probably not. However, that usually leaves me unable to see it at all. So which is better, a suboptimal experience, or no experience at all?

As for desiring the true movie theatre experience, I completely agree however there aren't many true movie theatres left. Most films are screened these days at the 24 screen multiplex down at the mall...and if I have to choose between watching a good film in a broom closet with seats, or on my phone...I think I'll take my phone.

Well, knowing David Lynch, perhaps this was just a film as well.

i totally agree with lynch and frankenbike.

its impossible to get the full experience from a phone. the screen is just way too small and you will lose on a lot of the detail that the director wanted to show. its like listening to a beautiful piece of music on a cassette player with crappy $2 headphones. trust me, you will not get the full experience and music that you thought sounded good will not sound good on a cassette player with $2 headphones.

i think that some things can be watched on phones like simple cartoons or evening news or maybe even a sitcom.
but to watch a david lynch or any other great directors movie on a 2.8" low resolution screen is sacreligious.

He's right though. Completely right. If the only way you experience a film is on your phone, you'll never get the total experience of that film. Not in a million years, unless the screen plugs into a headset that lets you view the film with a large portion of your vision.

You can get the story. You can get the plot. But you can't get the subtlety of acting and facial expression, you can't see the details of the film, and you don't get the immersion of a film that takes up most of the visual landscape.

I can't even believe there's any argument on that.

I don't even feel like watching a film on my 52" flat screen TV gives me that experience.

Watching a film on a device with 320x240 resolution, or even 600 x 400 or thereabouts? Are you kidding? It's not about the darkened room, or the sound, it's about the size of the screen and how much visual information it contains, and how much of your vision it's occupying.

And I'm no different from a lot of you. I think I saw one film all year, because I don't have time and don't like crowded theaters or theaters where people bring their children to a pg-13 or R rated film.

But I'm not stupid. I'm self aware to know that what's convenient is a patently inferior experience in this case.

There's no catching up on his part to do. Lynch is right. It's not hurting him, however you want to view films. We're only hurting ourselves, cheating ourselves. We have our reasons, and they're good ones, for not going to theaters to watch films. But that doesn't make us right about equating watching films on small screens to watching them in a darkened room where the screen takes up most of our vision. Not at all.

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FB

It's a matter of focus. I don't have to be bombarded by overly loud surround sound, in a darkened room, to be "engaged" by what's going on in a movie.

If you can't block out what's going on around you to focus on what you are watching, or doing, then you are going to have a difficult time with the world today. There is just too much going on and too much that needs to be done.

People don't have two hours to waste sitting in a theater, at someone else's schedule instead of their own schedule.

Ah, he probably just needs it explained to him.

I mean, really, he's 62 years old, and has spent decades working in a long-standing medium. Of course he's going to be resistant to changes in the way people are viewing his work.

After all, a master chef would understandably bristle at the idea of people packing up his finest new culinary creations into styrofoam containers and eating them on a bus, and Frank Lloyd Wright probably wouldn't have appreciated his most powerful and ambitious designs being rendered as minute scale models.

Give the old guard a chance to catch up.

If you don't want to put in the time to fully immerse yourself in a movie, there's no point in watching it. Film isn't a storytelling medium, it's an atmospheric medium, and particularly as Lynch does it, it's about surrendering yourself to a consciousness altering experience. So, to watch any film on a phone, distracted by the world around you is to fail to truly engage with the movie. If you've seen a movie on a phone, you haven't really seen it.