OTHER TECH

Knowing that things aren't going to get better anytime soon, Sonnenfeld did what a lot of people do: he built the best home theater he could. And it earned high praise indeed. "Spiely" - that would be Steven Spielberg - "told me it was the best-sounding room he'd ever heard." Sonnefeld talks with co-writer Jamie Sorcher in his screening room. The impressive 8-foot-tall chair looming behind them was made by his 10-year-old daugther Chole as an elementary-school project.

But Sonnenfeld is between home setups at the moment, having recently sold his house in East Hampton and still planning the theater for his home in Telluride, Colorado. As we sit in the screening room of his office, where he does most of his DVD viewing these days, Sonnenfeld is showing symptoms of some serious home theater withdrawal.

"When we built the house here nine years ago, we put in a really amazing screening room so I could work on my films. It was never my intention to watch movies there because I thought I would go to the theater to do that. But the only reason to go to one now is to have the experience of watching something with 40 other people whose sneakers are melting."

While Sonnenfeld wanted the best possible viewing conditions, he didn't want his home space to be too sterile. "All the walls were a series of cylinders, and the ceiling had indents, so there were no straight lines. But the designers were very upset that we had a fireplace in there, because it created a flat, hard surface." Sonnenfeld also broke with videophile orthodoxy by not having gray walls. "It was a semi-dark green. You don't want it too white, of course, but when you watch sports in there, you don't want it too dreary and dark either."

Did he have tiered seating? "No, we had couches, and chairs with ottomans. I didn't want it to feel like a theater." Having informal seating made the room more comfortable for his family. "There was nothing better than having my daughter lay out with a blanket and fall asleep while watching some movie I directed." Scene from Sonnefeld's controversial comedy, Big Trouble

Before outfitting his home theater, Sonnenfeld talked to the sound mixers he works with on his movies. "I wanted to find out what equipment they mix with and use similar gear myself" - which is why he decided to go with JBL speakers all around, including three tower speakers positioned behind the screen, like they would be in a movie theater. The image was supplied by a Sony front projector with 9-inch cathode-ray tubes. "Sony's going to stop making tube models," he says, "which I think is a real shame."

Since Sonnenfeld gets to start from scratch with his Telluride home, he's going with a DLP (Digital Light Processing) projector this time. "The rapid progress that's been made is amazing. My Sony CRT model is great, but you have to readjust it every six months - especially out here, because the humidity level changes dramatically between summer and winter."

He points to DLP as an example of how home theaters are starting to have an impact on movie theaters. "Texas Instruments set up a screening in a Santa Monica theater to show filmmakers that digital projection is nothing to be afraid of. And the black levels and contrast ratio, which had been a problem, looked fantastic. But even though they were showing stuff from various films, it looked like the best video you've ever seen. That's because our minds are used to seeing flicker when we're in a movie theater."

Sonnenfeld wanted to have plasma TVs in Telluride but found that he couldn't. "At 10,000 feet, there's so little air pressure that the TV ends up looking like a very bad neon sign, and you hear this terrible buzz. Every four months, a manufacturer will tell me they've solved the problem, and they'll bring their new model up there and turn it on. And three or four days later, it will start to hum."

Since Sonnenfeld began as a cinematographer, shooting such well-known movies as Raising Arizona, When Harry Met Sally, Throw Momma from the Train, and Big, we ask him if he's more concerned with images than audio. "My films do tend to be visual, but what interests me more and more is sound."

Sonnenfeld is particularly fond of subwoofers - he refers to the ".1" in "5.1" as the "manly" channel - and he knows that they're crucial to the experience of his movies. "When I talk to the sound mixers, I'll say, 'Don't help me with the comedy, help me with the manliness.' They'll come here and set up their equipment, and I know things are working well when I'm in another room with the door closed and I can feel the sub in my stomach."

While subwoofers are usually associated with things like explosions, crashes, and raging storms, Sonnenfeld knows they can also be used subtly. Big Trouble revolves around a large metal case containing a nuclear warhead that everybody mistakes for a garbage disposal. Sonnenfeld uses deep bass throughout to emphasize how absurdly heavy the case is. "By having it make that big a sound when it's put down, you're saying that it weighs a lot - there's something funny in there. So, yes, subwoofers can be very funny." In his commentary for the DVD, Sonnenfeld even tells viewers who don't have surround systems that the movie is a lot funnier with Dolby Digital.