A Russian director doesn’t want you to get your popcorn ready for his films.
Director Andrei Konchalovsky has directed many interesting films in his career, including such titles as Gloss and House of Fools, as well as Tango & Cash, which is a unique film for him considering most of his works are more serious in nature. He wants that emphasized because he has spoken out against a staple of movie-going: he doesn’t want popcorn served at any future showings of his films.
“My films are not for those who eat popcorn,” Konchalovsky told Russian news agency TASS, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “I’ll try to make sure that popcorn is not sold at screenings of my films.”
This isn’t a low-profile guy, as Konchalovsky’s latest movie, Paradise, made the shortlist for Best Foreign Language Film at the upcoming Oscars. That came two years after another interesting move, where he denied himself potential filmmaking honors by refusing to release The Postman’s White Nights to theaters, presumably because popcorn crunching would lessen the significance of the film’s symbolism. He’s been on this high horse for years, probably as a statement decrying Hollywood’s penchant for popcorn movies, or something like that. He did work in Hollywood in the 1980s, so he does know something about it.
Whether Paradise wins the Oscar and Konchalovsky changes his opinion on popcorn remains to be seen. Guess we’ll all find out together in February.
