One can easily call Bright Lights Film Journal a revolutionary film magazine… and much more. From interviews with some of the best filmmakers to intense film reviews and saucy articles about the unspoken, Bright Lights is one of a kind in the world of digital media. A jewel in the stormy and crowded World Wide Web, Bright Lights will steal your interest in less than a second. Gary Morris, the editor of Bright Lights talks about how this journal came to be and where it is now in the world of online entertainment.

"The online movement is toward the democratization of art – “everybody’s a star” with YouTube and MySpace" - Gary Morris

F.A: How did Bright Lights Film Journal begin back in 1974 and what kind of contextual and stylistic changes have been made to the journal since then?

G.M: Bright Lights was born when I finished college with a B.A. in English Lit and realized I didn’t want to teach. I was always a rabid film fan, and had done some ‘zine publishing as a teenager, so doing Bright Lights allowed me to combine my interests. Fortunately, I had a job as a typesetter, with access to professional equipment. Equally important, I had moral support from friends – students and teachers – in New York and at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. They inspired me and helped me find writers (in addition to myself). They also gave me access to their (large) personal collections of 16mm movies, as well as film stills and posters to illustrate the articles. I originally envisioned the magazine as an auteurist polemic, pushing the director-as-creator theory in the same way some of the French magazines had done starting in the 1950s. This included an American first – an all-Douglas Sirk issue in 1977, published in conjunction with the first major Sirk retrospective in America, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

However, the magazine has definitely evolved over the years. My ongoing interest in leftist politics, alternative subcultures, and mixing popular and academic voices has expanded it beyond the early auteurist slant, though director studies remain important. The most recent issue (#58) is typical, with a broad mix of articles including “The Wages of Skin: The Irrepressible Rise of All-American Smut,” a witty history of “wallpaper in the cinema,” a long interview with art-house fave Zhang Yimou, close readings of Ford’s The Searchers and Welles’ Lady from Shanghai, a discussion of whether Superbad is “too gay” or “not gay enough,” and plenty more. I try to make Bright Lights informative and fun.


F.A: What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of being an online magazine? Was there a noticeable change in your readership after the shift from print to online publishing?

G.M: If you’re willing to forego the tactile/fetishistic pleasure of holding the magazine in your hand, there are no disadvantages to web publishing that I can see. I say this as someone who was early on the web – 1996. It’s immeasurably cheaper than publishing the glossy magazine that Bright Lights used to be. It’s much faster to produce. The distribution is instantaneous and vast – I now have readers everywhere from Iceland to Argentina to Israel, and even Iran, where Bright Lights is, technically, banned. The hits show a far greater readership online (300,000 hits per month on average) than with the print version (about 1,500 copies printed per issue). It’s also much easier to correct mistakes than with print magazines. Contact with the readership is as easy as somebody sending me an email with a question, praise, or attack. Finally, there’s no more dealing with bookstores and distributors, some of whom wouldn’t pay or went out of business.


F.A: How does online entertainment — from online magazines to web TVs — affect today’s entertainment industry? In your opinion, can the new media bring new and permanent success and opportunities to artists?

G.M: We’re surely in a paradigm shift, one that mainstream entertainment industries like movie producers/distributors and record labels have been slow to grasp or respond to. They’re clinging to ancient delivery media like the CD and the DVD, both of which are declining in sales. People are increasingly favoring online entertainment – there’s a huge buzz around it. Part of the appeal is in sharing a video clip or a song with a friend – which horrifies the old-school companies that own the material because it takes it out of the realm of commerce. If it’s possible to “bring new and permanent success and opportunities to artists” – and I’m not sure it is – it will be up to today’s younger generations to figure out how, because they aren’t fettered by old, proprietary notions of having to buy every bit of audio/video bit that they want to experience. The online movement is toward the democratization of art – “everybody’s a star” with YouTube and MySpace. If the trend continues, it may eventually blur the separation between artist and consumer, with the consumer bypassing the artist to make his own art.

For further info on Bright Lights Film Journal, please visit www.filmannex.com/BrightLightsFilmJournal

Interview by Eren Gulfidan - www.filmannex.com/Eren%20Gulfidan