David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published July 13, 2004

The gap between widescreen vs. pan and scan is much more than 4.5 feet

There's very little gray area in some conversations. People tend to polarize themselves to one side or the other, and often those sides are fairly equally populated.

Take abortion, for instance. On one side we have the pro-lifers, and on the other side are the pro-choicers. Neither side can fathom the other's rationale, and when the topic comes up in conversation both sides feverishly poke holes in the other side's position.

despite these vastly different opinions, pro-lifers and pro-choicers live similar lives in most respects. The pro-lifer gets up in the morning, goes to work, enjoys a taco salad for lunch, finishes the day's work, drives home, watches a little TV, reads a book, goes to bed and starts the routine all over again the next morning. The pro-choicer does the exact same thing, although he might prefer a chicken sandwich for lunch. Not everyone likes taco salad, you know. If you let a taco salad sit too long, the chips get pretty limp. I don't care if you're a member of NOW or Right to Life, no one likes soggy tortilla chips.

There are other issues just as polarizing, too, and their proponents defend their positions adamantly. Granted, most issues don't have the gravity or seriousness of a topic like abortion or the Iraq war or gay marriage, but that doesn't mean they're any less contentious.

So I ask you directly, looking you straight in the eye and without blinking: Are you a widescreener or a panner and scanner? You can't be both. You must select you allegiance and stand under its flag. Traitors will be dealt with -- severely.

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, put down your rotary telephone, turn off your VHF/UHF television in the wood-grain cabinet enclosure, and press the stop button on your cassette player. I'll explain it.

A movie screen is proportionally wider than a TV screen. Movie screens have a width-to-height ratio of 1.78:1. That means a movie screen 10 feet tall is 17.8 feet wide, and a screen 20 feet tall is 35.6 feet wide.

However, a TV screen is a little closer to square. Its width-to-height ratio is 1.33:1, so a TV screen 10 feet tall is 13.3 feet wide. (I know, I know. No one makes a 10-foot TV, but it's just a matter of time.) As long as there are men, re-runs and Super Bowl parties, the Sonys of the world will make bigger and bigger TVs.

So the question, my apt pupil, is how do you cram a 17.8-foot-wide movie onto a TV screen that is only 13.3 feet wide? Use a really big shoehorn? Good idea, but no. You either shrink the entire movie image to fit the space, which leaves empty black space at the top and bottom of the TV screen, or you slice 4.5 feet off the movie's sides. If you like to see the movie, the whole movie and nothing but the movie, so help you God, you buy the widescreen version. If you'd rather lop off 4.5 feet so it can fully fill your squarish TV, you buy the pan and scan version, named after the method used to select what to show and what to cut.

And there you have it. "Thank you, Mr. Know-It-All."

Some people like to see the entire movie unchopped. Others can't stand those black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. And the debate rolls on.

A recent list of top-selling DVDs proves how divided we are on this hot-button topic. No. 1 on the list is "Along Came Polly," widescreen version. No. 2 is "Along Came Polly," pan and scan version. Hmmm. Whatever the version, it's obvious "Along Came Polly" is popular. I don't know who's in it or what it's about, but maybe I should check it out. Well, OK, I'll wait until I'm done writing this column.

Let's move down the list. At No. 3 is "Mystic River," widescreen. I wouldn't mind seeing it, but I'm in no hurry. Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laurence Fishburne -- I like all those guys, but my time doesn't flow as freely as it once did. Having kids was the worst thing that ever happened to my movie viewing. I'm sure I'll see it eventually. Other folks seem to be enjoying it. After all, the pan and scan version is No. 4 on the list.

You don't need to be an FBI profiler to spot the pattern at work here.

I feel like Casey Kasem all of the sudden. At No. 5 is "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King," widescreen edition. Would you care to take a wild stab at what No. 6 is? Well, of course. I won't even bother typing it. Great movie, by the way. You can't go wrong if you have good material. (Would someone please remind George Lucas of that?) So what have we gleaned from this little exercise, apart from the realization that Dave doesn't get to the movie theater as much as he'd like?

First off, both the pan and scan and widescreen versions are wildly popular. The top movies are high on the list, and it's just a matter of which format people prefer.

Second, it would appear from this particular list that widescreen is more popular than pan and scan. The widescreen versions are ranked higher than their pan and scan counterparts, which means that seeing the whole picture is more important to movie fans than simply filling the screen with a square field of view.

I am a widescreener. If I want to watch movies butchered and edited my some corporate yahoo, I'll turn on TNT on a Sunday afternoon.

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.