On October 30th I attended a once in a lifetime screening of Night Trap, a Sega CD FMV (Full Motion Video) game that was incredibly controversial for its depiction of teenagers getting slashed up in a medium often seen as “for Kids”. This Blog Post is not about that though.
Just before the theater was presented with the amazingly cheesy Horror Game, the audience was presented with the exact opposite phenomena, Instead of a video game that uses prerecorded clips of what is essentially a movie that the player has to interact with to try and win, this is instead a Sit down movie played in theaters (and was actually the first interactive film [Interfilm] on DVD) where the viewers were able to use their TV remote to alter the plot of the movie much like “choose your own adventure” books that were also popular in the pre-digital age.
This movie was called “I’m Your Man” and it follows three main characters that the viewers could flip between once every about minute: Leslie- a woman working to take down the villain Richard, Richard- who had been involved in a money siphoning scheme, and Jack- the comic relief loser who Leslie mistakes as “her guy”.
Naturally, with the realization that Jack was fucking hilarious and a bumbling, self-preserving fool, the members of the theater would yell out “Jack” nearly every time his name appeared on screen and put him in the most goofy predicaments. In one particular scene with Jack he asks if he should Run away, Jump across the roof of the skyscraper he is on to another roof, or pretend to be an FBI special agent like Leslie wants him to be.
I believe the remote actually started glitching out in this scene and the movie defaulted to the FBI route where Jack ended up being able to talk to all of the women at the party he attended (awesome) but it made me wonder how the film would have turned out if one of the other options was selected… Or what if Leslie had hidden in a different spot of the apartment, or what if we followed Richard’s route entirely- would he have won?
All of these questions can of course be answered with a google search now adays (and I actually found a flow chart on reddit with literally all of my questions answered) but in the Nineties my questions would have been answered by purchasing another movie ticket if you saw the movie in theaters and hoping that everyone wants to view the same route as you.
The moment I realized this it became clear to me that aside from being one of the silliest gimmicks in theaters next to 4D, Interfilm was an incredibly badass way to try and make a ton of money from the film industry. Because it gamifies the action of seeing a movie, an already social event usually.
Through the creation of multiple routes and endings (something usually associated with being skillful in a games by either achieving 100% completion or simply by making plot decisions) and removing any aspect of skill, the medium becomes accessible to anyone watching the movie, it is also the perfect way to maximize viewer retention (which actually explains why there was a resurgence of interfilm style decision making in some youtube spaces where video end cards would present the viewer with multiple options for a plot) and creates conversations about the different routes, thus creating word of mouth and more incentive for viewership.
End cards of “QUEST- A Choose Your Own Adventure” by Cinemattox on Youtube
While Interfilm ultimately flopped for being too gimmicky and being a pretty obvious grift to increase ticket sales the idea creates a lot of space for creativity, discussion, and replication in other fields such as “TellTale” style decision based Games, VR Games, and Digital Indie produced Youtube Videos. In the state of modern films having to having multimillion dollar budgets to be even noticed in theaters something like a true InterFilm will likely never be replicated in theaters due to having to essentially double or triple filming times and budget depending on all of the potential decisions.
Hopefully in the future when Movie theaters are completely replaced by VR Headsets like a shitty silent disco interfilm can make a comeback.
