I know that Joe has the right principles at heart, and - reading between the lines - I think he agrees that the Marathon is NOT a Zero-Sum game. You definately lose something tangible when you just toss in a bunch of recent films to try and make the Marathon more appealing to a potential newbie -
misguidedly, I'd emphasize.
Joe Neff wrote:
...
2. Playing well-known classics tends to be an exercise in walking that mythical fine line. But the reaction to them can often be heartening and surprising: witness the warm ovations that Frankenstein and Psycho received last year. Ultimately, watching something like Psycho fifty times on video and seeing it on the big screen with this great audience are two wildly different experiences. And longtime Marathoids (myself included) can often forget that there are large chunks of newbies or short-term attendees who have never seen genre stalwarts like Evil Dead 2 or Re-Animator, let alone in a theatrical setting (Raimi's film, especially, plays much differently with an audience than at home).
The guiding principle that I've followed in any Marathons that I've organized (or co-organized with Bruce) has been to keep the lineup varied, but also to sell the event as a whole. It's been a principle that has been at the heart of some of the best Columbus SF and Horror Marathons since 1987. This includes everything from the decorations to the intermission music to what we show on screen in-between films. The lineup can sometimes feature films that most of the audience has seen before, but their role in combination with 10-11 other films, along with everything else that goes into the event, can often outweigh any problems with familiarity...
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