BIG SCREEN, SMALL IDEA : An Audience Choosing a Movie’s Plot? What Happened to the Art of Storytelling?

Steven Spielberg gets millions for directing movies.

Joe Eszterhas gets millions for writing movies.

And now I’m supposed to pay three bucks for doing their jobs?

Uh-uh, not me. Forget it. Call my lawyer. No, call my agent.

This little notion is being marketed as “the interactive movie.” (“New Coke” had a snazzy sound, too, and look what happened there.) It is not yet being marketed here, however. The first interactive movie opened in New York not long ago and is coming soon to a theater not near you; clearly they didn’t have the brass to premiere it in Los Angeles, where we know from movies.

For your $3 ticket, the short film “I’m Your Man” allows you, the audience, to select from 68 plot lines by pushing buttons at specially designed seats. Those votes determine what happens to the characters and how the movie ends.

The film’s writer-director--whom we won’t name here in case his mother lives in our circulation area and still believes he has a real job, like assistant manager at Wal-Mart, and we don’t want to break her heart--the man who wrote and directed this said he expects the audience to holler and chatter during vote breaks.

Lord of Hosts, does this man have any idea how long it’s taken to break movie audiences of hollering and chattering? I’ve watched movies through a tearful marital breakup, severe disciplining of rowdy children and recriminatory revelations of a sexually transmitted disease. I still don’t know what those movies were about.

Vote tallies are instantly put up on the screen and the film proceeds along the course of action chosen by the audience. “It acts like an icebreaker,” the writer-director said, apparently quite pleased about this. “When the lights come up at the end of this movie, instead of a bunch of strangers, it’s a group of people who all know each other.”

Oh fine. That’s what I go to a movie for. More names on the Christmas card list. More people asking to borrow the futon. More people calling me up at midnight to sob about some horror they couldn’t confide during the movie because they were too busy deciding plot twists. If I want companionship, I’ll go to a 12-step program, thank you.

And another thing. The California job market is bad. In solidarity, who am I to steal bruschetta out of Hollywood mouths? I write for a newspaper. They write for movies. Division of labor.

Would I go to a restaurant, take my own order, cook my own meal and then pay myself at the end of the evening and probably stiff myself on the tip?

I’m not hidebound, truly I’m not. I went to “Tamara” once. I liked the exercise. I enjoyed “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” wherein we, the audience, were asked to decide whodunit. But only because Dickens didn’t live long enough to do it himself. I go to a movie for the same reason I read a book--to surrender to the stimulus of someone else’s storytelling.

If you still think you want to try it, here’s an interactive movie scenario. (It won’t cost you three bucks or put you in a situation where you find yourself having to back away from some deranged kid who looks like he got expelled from a Stephen King fan club and is now standing in the aisle screaming: “I can’t believe you morons voted for him to rescue that guy instead of eating his flesh! “)

First, write down a random sampling of people. Your in-laws. The grinds in your aerobics class who work out every night. Guests on the “Sally Jessy Raphael” show.

Now put them in a movie theater and imagine what could happen to classic, brilliant films with their fingers on the plot buttons:

Scarlett gets Rhett back. Or worse, marries Ashley.

Ilsa reveals that she and Capt. Renault have been carrying on, and they run off with the letters of transit and Rick’s bar receipts.

Ronald Colman chickens out in “A Tale of Two Cities.”

Ali MacGraw goes into remission in “Love Story.”

Thelma and Louise surrender to authorities, and that fab car gets sold at police auction.

JFK turns out to have committed suicide.

Vox populi --why don’t we leave it in the voting booth, where it can’t do any real harm?