Dearest Movie-Lover,

In a thousand years, when archeologists dig up our crumbled cities, and break through the vaulted roofs of ancient movie theaters, they’ll confuse them for churches, and they won’t be far off. They’ll claim we gathered there to escape chaos, conflict, heatwaves, hopelessness, and they won’t be wrong. They’ll marvel at the worn velvet seats, and determine that we were devoted worshippers, sitting for hours at a time, and for the devout observers, sometimes multiple times in a day. They’ll carefully dust off the holy shrine of Twizzlers and Peanut M&Ms and transfer the intact concession display case to the Smithsonian, concluding the sacramental-butter-flavored-industrial-lubricant found with the popcorn-ceremonial-offering-dispenser is what ended up killing us before the robot army could.

It will all make sense to them. The humans held onto this ritual of gathering for films in crowded celluloid cathedrals, even after global pandemics and online streaming services made it all so easy to dismantle. “They needed to hear each other laugh and cry and remember the collective consciousness meant they were never alone!”, they’ll say, before inserting a shiny new data center where the Hollywood Cinerama Dome used to be.

Okay, so it sounds a little dramatic, but it’s genuinely how I feel about movies. I don’t take it lightly that I get to participate in what I consider to be an essential part of our society: laughing at Seth Rogen falling down.

I come to you here as a representative of a large group of truly wonderful people who put their heads in a metaphorical meat-grinder to make a movie that made us have faith in movies again. The Invite is our humble contribution to the library of film that exists in your brain and heart, and we are delighted to take up residence in your consciousness, and hopefully make you feel less alone in the universe. I thought I might offer some of the reasons why we thought this movie was worth making.

First of all, comedies are real movies that belong in theaters. Comedies have always existed to remove a bit of despair from being alive. We need to laugh at ourselves, together, in order to keep going. The best comedies allow us to see how close pain is to pleasure, how connected heartbreak is to love, because it makes it all feel inevitable and therefore survivable. When Nora Ephron wrote Heartburn, which would be made into a perfect film by my lord and savior Mike Nichols, she slapped down her own broken heart as a sacrificial offering so that we could understand it didn’t kill her, and therefore might not kill us. Comedy about tragedy is catharsis. Laughing with strangers about regret, resentment, failure, and all the stuff that makes us feel shame, defangs said shame.

Making a comedy today means fighting to prove it belongs in theaters, because some sad, humorless corporate shareholder suggested they could make more money turning theaters into theme park rides and toss the comedies on streaming so people could watch them in 15 second clips on their phones while driving. Making a comedy on 35mm film means fighting to prove that these movies deserve to be just as good looking as “serious” movies, because the same humorless shareholder didn’t understand a joke that made everyone else burst into joyful laughter at the company clambake, and retaliated by making a studio mandate that no film stock shall be wasted on joy and laughter. I can’t be 100% sure this is historically accurate but it feels right.

I’m left now, feeling like a movie empty-nester, and I have loved even this part. The release is exactly that: a release of all control and a prayer that it’ll somehow make its way to real people. I’ve had the chance to travel around the country with the film, bringing our 35mm print (all six, gorgeous, heavy-as-hell reels of her) to different iconic movie palaces like The Castro in San Francisco, The Music Box in Chicago, the Coolidge in Boston, and of course LA’s own movie church, The Vista. I’ve met the projectionists who lovingly, and meticulously, thread the film into the sprockets and light the lamps that flood the image across the screens. They are, it occurred to me, the last members of our crew, as responsible for the experience of the audience as any other member of our team.

I started this letter by thinking about how much I love movies, specifically comedies, and why it was so important to us to make something worthy of bringing people together in a theater. I’m stunned by the chemical equation of film + viewer, and how really it’s a miracle of alchemy when a movie finds its audience. I am so honored to bring you The Invite, and hope you go see it with a big crowd and laugh yourself silly.

Love,
Olivia Wilde