Stop Timing Standing Ovations at Film Festivals – It’s Pointless Hype | FirstShowing.net

Stop Timing Standing Ovations at Film Festivals – It’s Pointless Hype

by Alex Billington
September 11, 2024

When did this become a thing? The movie news industry is stuck in a remarkably stubborn, pointless trend of counting the standing ovation minutes at major film festivals. Year-after-year at the Cannes & Venice Film Festivals in Europe, Deadline and Variety and all the other trades post Breaking News headlines about the standing ovation each film received and how many minutes people stood and applauded the cast before they stopped. It’s so incredibly dumb. This annoying trend is an example of the ridiculousness of clickbait culture, turning the most mundane and meaningless “news” into content that people just have to click and talk/tweet about. It needs to end. These ovations are really, truly meaningless (I’ll explain this later). They don’t mean anything, it’s all for the celebrities. They’re not a real measure of the quality of the film, they’re irrelevant metrics within cinema, and the “news” has no correlation with box office or success or anything. Let’s stop this. We need to collectively move on. It’s a waste of everyone’s time to continue reporting this as “news”… Editor’s Note: this post received a 35 minute standing ovation at the No One Cares Film Festival.

It’s frustrating to see this trend continuing and for the movie news sites to keep hyping up standing ovation calculations as important. It started 4 or 5 years ago and still continues today – despite complaints and eye rolls from nearly everyone in the industry. They might claim that this measurement matters, only because they’ve been deluded into believing in the relevance of this timing because it brings these outlets web traffic and helps pay the bills. Some celeb fans also think these standing ovations matter. Sorry, they don’t. They’ve also been hoodwinked, suckered into the depraved depths of celebrity obsession culture and clickbait mania by a meaningless metric which maybe just makes them wish they were there smiling & clapping & glaring at some celebrities, too. Perhaps it has something to do with the need to use hard data to measure and analyze everything these days. What is that film’s Rotten Tomatoes score? Is 98% better than 97%? Perhaps it’s also related to the growing dislike of film critics, thus the general public needs some number to instantly know whether a film is good or really good. But here’s the truth: all this applause if for the celebrities, not the film.

I’ve been attending film festivals around the world for nearly ~20 years. This wasn’t something that anyone cared about until recently. Real standing ovations do happen at festivals, but real standing ovations are rare. If they happen naturally, organically, it’s not something you can predict or measure. At the Sundance Film Festival every January, standing ovations are uncommon – because the audience is more critical and only willing to stand if it’s a truly sensation film. At Cannes and Venice, however, they’re a “tradition” as actress Tilda Swinton explains in an interview. At these festivals, the audience will stand up and applaud celebrities when they walk in before a film starts. At the end they’ll give them another standing ovation just because they’re there. Most people are so excited to have a famous person in the room, they can’t contain their joy which overflows into this burst of applause. They’re clapping for the people – and it happens at every single premiere because it’s not genuine. It’s not honest. It’s something that has to happen. How long it goes on is meaningless – maybe they really like these people or maybe they thought the film was entertaining, but so what? Should I start measuring how many minutes of credits I sit through before leaving if I’m blown away?

What does one do during a long standing ovation? “The Room Next Door” star Tilda Swinton weighs in. | Variety #TIFF Studio https://t.co/v3QDOdv6AQ pic.twitter.com/1y9yz4T7OL

— Variety (@Variety) September 7, 2024

The ultimate proof that standing ovations are dubious and insignificant is that at Cannes & Venice every major premiere gets one. Every time. It’d be big news if one didn’t get this. The idea of measuring how long they go on and how many minutes they last is a completely fabricated concept for these movie news sites to use for their gain. It’s something they invented as a form of measurement. Yes, people do clap and do stand up, but the rest is irrelevant. Why don’t we measure the loudness of applause? Or the loudness of booing? Why do we have to use some number as a measure of a film’s success? Why can’t we discuss the actual film, or discuss whether the audience liked it or not by how many people stayed through the end (walk outs are common in Cannes & Venice too but rarely get reported). I remember one time I was at a big press screening in Cannes for a major film and a reporter for the trades said it was booed loudly by a majority of the crowd. I was sitting in the middle of the auditorium and could hear everything clearly – some of the audience was applauding with a small amount of booing coming from the back corner. This journalist’s proximity to the small group of people booing meant they heard it as louder than it actually was. Attempting to measure this is futile and goes to show that as common as expressive reactions are at film fests – they don’t mean much.

Who is timing these standing ovations anyway? Do these film journalists who got into the premiere literally pull out a stopwatch (or more likely open up the timer app on their phone) and watch the clock tick as they stare at the overjoyed crowd slapping their hands together for 15 minutes non-stop? What do the celebrities do during this time as the minutes add up? Don’t they want to leave, too? Isn’t it awkward? Yes it definitely is… If you actually watch closely any of the videos of the celebrities at these premieres in the midst of the ovations, almost all of them start to exhibit a slight “WTF is going on??” look on their face. Even they know this is all bullshit despite the adulation. But that’s how festivals go. It’s how these premieres are supposed to play out. Let’s celebrate these people! Yes, that is possible, and they deserve to be celebrated – but we can do this without wasting time giving them endless standing ovations. I only give a film a standing ovation if it truly deserves it, and even then how long I applaud doesn’t matter. Letting these celebrities go so they can enjoy the rest of their night would be more respectful than holding them hostage with obsessive applause. ScreenDaily also posted an article this year with this great quote: “Measuring ovations is deeply silly.”

I hope this trend ends soon. I hope we all stop caring. But it seems these movie news sites are still obsessed with reporting these numbers, year after year. Indiewire even published an article back in 2022 saying “Stop Counting the Minutes of Film Festival Ovations” but it didn’t make a difference. Neither will this article, of course. Please don’t play into their game, don’t give these “news” stories clicks or justification by spreading them online. As cinephiles, as movie lovers, we all need to collectively ignore and forget this measurement. The rumors & gossip & celebrity news that comes out of film festivals is often so vile and voyeuristic anyway. Even the press conferences are mostly worthless (I’ll save this conversation for another day). Film festivals are supposed to be about the films, not celebrities. They’re meant to be beautiful places to celebrate cinema, including all of the filmmakers, but we can celebrate them by staying focused on the films above all else and intelligently discussing the art they’ve made. This is what matters much more than any amount of applause.

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