Near the end of The Devil’s Candy, Julie Salamon’s brilliant 1991 look at Hollywood’s misfired version of Tom Wolfe’s best-selling Bonfire of the Vanities novel, you begin to feel remarkably sympathetic towards Brian DePalma, almost in spite of yourself. He spent well over a year prepping the film, directing it on the set, supervising its editing, spending many, many sleepless nights along the way, and then a rough cut of the film is ready to be previewed for the first time in front of a test audience.
It goes badly.
Very badly.
As do subsequent test viewings. And while he can make a few tweaks, there’s not much than can be done at that point to salvage the film. The actors have all gone to their next gigs, the sets have been struck, and there’s only so much editing can do. But even knowing that very big icebergs loom ahead, DePalma still has to shepherd the production through the final stages of dubbing, recording the foley sound effects, adding the titles, mixing the background score, and all of the myriad details that make up a complex, multimillion dollar production shoot.
Nikke Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Website has a fascinating essay by Sean Hood, one of the four credited screenwriters on the remake of Conan The Barbarian, which died at the box office last weekend:
When you work “above the line” on a movie (writer, director, actor, producer, etc.) watching it flop at the box office is devastating. I had such an experience during the opening weekend of Conan the Barbarian 3D.
A movie’s opening day is analogous to a political election night. Although I’ve never worked in politics, I remember having similar feelings of disappointment and disillusionment when my candidate lost a presidential bid, so I imagine that working as a speechwriter or a fundraiser for the losing campaign would feel about the same as working on an unsuccessful film.
One joins a movie production, the same way one might join a campaign, years before the actual release/election, and in the beginning one is filled with hope, enthusiasm and belief. I joined the Conan team, having loved the character in comic books and the stories of Robert E. Howard, filled with the same kind of raw energy and drive that one needs in politics.
Any film production, like a long grueling campaign over months and years, is filled with crisis, compromise, exhaustion, conflict, elation, and blind faith that if one just works harder, the results will turn out all right in the end. During that process whatever anger, frustration, or disagreement you have with the candidate/film you keep to yourself. Privately you may oppose various decisions, strategies, or compromises; you may learn things about the candidate that cloud your resolve and shake your confidence, but you soldier on, committed to the end. You rationalize it along the way by imagining that the struggle will be worth it when the candidate wins.
A few months before release, “tracking numbers” play the role in movies that polls play in politics. It’s easy to get caught up in this excitement, like a college volunteer handing out fliers for Howard Dean. (Months before Conan was released many close to the production believed it would open like last year’s The Expendables.) As the release date approaches and the tracking numbers start to fall, you start adjusting expectations, but always with a kind of desperate optimism. “I don’t believe the polls,” say the smiling candidates.
You hope that advertising and word of mouth will improve the numbers, and even as the numbers get tighter and the omens get darker, you keep telling yourself that things will turn around, that your guy will surprise the experts and pollsters. You stay optimistic. You begin selectively ignoring bad news and highlighting the good. You make the best of it. You believe.
In the days before the release, you get all sorts of enthusiastic congratulations from friends and family. Everyone seems to believe it will go well, and everyone has something positive to say, so you allow yourself to get swept up in it.
Read the whole thing.
The new version of Conan cost $90 mil to produce, according to the LA Times. As James Lileks notes on his Pop Crush blog at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, studios are beginning to notice that box office returns are down, and cancelling some questionable future mega-projects. (Johnny Depp as the Lone Ranger? Ouija Board: The Motion Picture? Rejected! At least for now.) It doesn’t help that DVD sales and other ancillary movie-related products are down as well. (That’s good news, right James Cameron?) And with the economy in the dumps, and so few appealing products playing at the local multiplex, “no one wants to spend fifty bucks to take the family to some soulless CGI-infested 3D movie that beats you over the head and pokes things in your eyes,” Lileks writes. So what can the studios do?
They might ask themselves why these things are so expensive in the first place. I’ve seen plenty of good little-known Alfred Hitchcock films that were made for the modern equivalent of a million dollars, and while they didn’t have enormous spaceships or people running away from fireballs or anything, they made up for it with curious, old-school tricks like “Acting,” “Script,” and “Story.”
That seems like a level of introspection that’s far beyond a Hollywood studio chief’s capabilities.
As a writer, I’m told to work with an economy of words. It’s sad that filmmakers can’t work with an economy of economy.
I was watching the bonus extras on the DVD of “Sky High,” and noticed that in the unused clips one of the villains was clad all in green. So the costume the character had in the finished movie was really a CGI post-production effect. How damned silly is that? You can’t just make a costume and put it on an actor? Really? REALLY?
Filmmakers have become like politicians (interesting that the writer above links films and politics!) in that they think the money just comes flying endlessly out of a spring in the earth.
They’re working from the idiotic assumption that if they get whatever they want then they’ll be great artists. But art needs limitations. Limitations force you to think in a new way. They break your “My vision is always right” attitude, and consequently, make a better artist out of you.
Case in point: I remember seeing Danny DeVito on the big screen back in the ’80s and being disappointed with his constant use of profanity. I thought, “He was funnier in ‘Taxi,’ because the writers were tasked with creating the rudest man in NYC… but without using profanity.” The limitation made his lines cleverer and funnier.
I fought like hell to get in the movie biz (never made it), and now I’m a novelist and playwright. I have some friends in the movie biz, and all they ever do is stupid garbage that they shrug at and say, “It’s dumb, but at least I’m in the big time!” (Some of it is big-name stuff, but all of it rubbish.) I’ve grown to like the limitations of the stage, because I’m forced to think. I like to see if I can do an entire play in one room. Fun and interesting!
I find myself watching fewer movies each year. I suppose a big part of it is that I’m in my 50s and no longer in the target audience. I honestly don’t remember the last time I paid to watch a movie in a theater. Here’s a clue, guys. Make movies that people want to see and you’ll increase attendance.
It seems the industry is out of good ideas and keeps rehashing the same ones over and over, substituting special effects for a plot and explosions for acting. When I do watch a DVD, I like watching the bonus materials, especially when they include the behind the scenes activity. However, I’ve seen too many examples where they have dozens of people working for days to weeks on a scene that might last 10 seconds. That’s just wasteful extravagance.
The old time movie directors had to comply with speech codes and censorship. They showed a woman can be fully clothed and sexy as hell. They could terrorize and audience without showing gore. And they could convey any emotion without need for gratuitous profanity or violence.
As I told someone all enthusiastic about “Avatar”:
–You got to see it!
–Why?
–The 3D effects! It’s just like being there!
–And how’s the plot?
–Stupid.
–Why would I pay money to feel like I’m right inside a stupid plot? For *that*, all I need to do is wake up…
I saw “Avatar” on DVD. The best summation of that movie is “Dances With Wolves…In Space!”
Problem #1: They spend so much making a movie, they can’t risk it on anything but a known commodity. So if a writer comes to you with an odd, quirky, interesting idea that’s NEW… well, that’s too risky. Better go with a remake of something or a movie version of something that previously existed as a cartoon or something. The title has to be instantly recognizeable.
Problem #2: No one goes to movies multiple times anymore. It’s once, then “I liked that! I’ll get the DVD.” (I saw “Capt. America” twice and that was the first time I’d done that in AGES! I loved the film, and I dragged my wife to it so I could see it again.) Everything is done on the first weekend. If you didn’t get big numbers on opening weekend, it’s over. There’s no more waiting around for a movie to “grow legs.” No word-of-mouth is going to save a film ever again.
Problem #3: The only way to make a big-budget film pay off is international sales. So everything has to be boiled down to something everyone on earth understands: being chased by giant robots, stuff exploding… and boobies. (“Capt. America” is a difficulty with this because America is hated and envied far and wide, so he’s being sold as “Avenger Man” or something like that overseas.)
So why not make smaller films? Because the decision-makers in the industry want to be ga-zillionaires. The glitz, the limos, the booze, the champagne… that’s what people get into the industry for.
I do not have high hopes for the future of film.
I hated “Avatar.” The humans were SOOOOOO EEEEEVILLLL, and the “blue Indians” were SOOOOOO INNNOCEEENNNNT! Not a smidgen of complexity to the situation.
If a writer has a point to make and it’s legitimate, he shouldn’t have to stack the deck to such a ridiculous extent.
Also: Its metaphor was stupid because the blue Indians could actually connect with their planet through a magical tree. What would the story have been if they were just dirty cavemen who superstitiously THOUGHT they were connected to their world, which was nothing but another big rock whirling in space? Would blowing them up have been as bad? Hmmm…
>>>>>>while they didn’t have enormous spaceships or people running away from fireballs or anything, they made up for it with curious, old-school tricks like “Acting,” “Script,” and “Story.”
As I told someone all enthusiastic about “Avatar”:
–You got to see it!
–Why?
–The 3D effects! It’s just like being there!
–And how’s the plot?
–Stupid.
–Why would I pay money to feel like I’m right inside a stupid plot? For *that*, all I need to do is wake up…
While the new Conan flick was a big disappointment, it probably didn’t help that, at least in local theaters, there were so gorramed FEW showings! On opening Saturday, just TWO showings of the non-3D version, and only a few more than that of the 3D version. This patter repeated through all the local cinemas (which also made it very inconvenient to schedule a viewing time which fit within my schedule, that day).
So, yeah, box office take would have been low, even if the film was everything that the previews promised. But it certainly didn’t help that it kinda stank. =’[.]‘=
In defense of the blockbuster mentality, I think it’s worth pointing out that Hollywood is simply playing to its only remaining unique strength: spectacle. Hence, the 3D, the special FX, things exploding right in front of your nose, etc. You can find plenty of low-budget entertainment on TV and, increasingly, on the Web. You can tell a good dramatic story through these smaller-scale media, and you can certainly enjoy a good cinematic story watching it on DVD or streaming video on your TV at home. So why leave the house at all and go to the theater? For razzle-dazzle that only the big screen can provide.
But otherwise, Ed, James Lileks and the commenters here are right: If you neglect the basic virtues of the craft, you’re sunk one way or the other. The problem is not so much the spending of major bucks to produce movies, it’s wasting that money because you’ve forgotten the foundation on which any movie, great or small, has to be built.
I don’t watch any of these movies because of the actors disdain they have for my and my fellow americans. Why would I spend my dollars on something that is so full of social engeneering, and stupidity?
Hmmm – sounds like the remake of “Conan” was based on Conan O’Brian instead of the Robert E. Howard character.
it really is the story. my daughter’s favorite movie right now is a bizarre little video on youtube with these “littlest pet shop” plastic characters- you can see the girl’s hand moving them around (!) and doing this voice- over. But it’s about the first day of school, and the anxious little fish making friends. She says it’s the best story, ever. Since, hey, she’s heading to school for the first time. This story has a teacher, and a conflict- a mean cat- and solving a problem. it has desks, and lunch, and I’m not sure what else. All her little friends watched it, and shared it- they can’t write, they asked the moms to e-mail it to each other- as their ‘getting ready for school’ film. It has mom plastic critters talking to their little plastic critters. It has a good story that they can relate to, and they can tell each other ( that word of mouth thing) and a complex enough plot and events, and a happy ending, with a personal growth arc. I think she’s watched it about twenty times. her friends watch it. They ask us to call their friends- too young to know phone numbers- and they talk about the plot and characters.
I don’t know that she’ll ever come across a more perfect movie in her life.
“Anatomy of a Murder.” Black and White. 160 minutes.
Starts: James Stewart, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara, Arthur O”Connell, Eve Arden, Kathryn Grant annnd George C Scott
Music: Duke Ellington
Dir: Otto Preminger
1959.
It’s all about the story, and the characters. There are no fiery balls, no car chases, no sex rassling anywhere. The sets are very 1950s when people lived much smaller than we do now. And, who actually beat the girl anyway?? It’s GREAT!!!
The Conan remake was as unneeded as the upcoming Spiderman reboot.
FWIW a friend of mine chatted with Jason Momoa (the new Conan actor who was actually pretty good in TV’s Stargate Atlantis, and Game of Thrones (in a nearly nonspeaking role) at a Con several weeks before the release. Without getting into because of an NDA of course, he more or less let on ‘I’m sorry, don’t blame me.’
The reason these movies fail, in addition to the ones posited here, is simple:
There are no stars in them any more, or the stars they do pick are past their expiration date, and ridiculous.
Colin Farrell as Alexander the great? With Angelina Jolie just a year older than him as his mother? Ryan Reynolds as the DC hero arguably more powerful than Superman, with a climactic fight in..an empty aircraft hangar?
Say what you will about Schwarznegger, but at the time he made Conan, people were starting to be intrigued because he was something new, visually. Even Steven Seagal, in his own way, made people take notice in Above the Law: it jumped off the screen that ok, this is a dangerous guy for real.
Damon made a splash in Bourne because he and Paul Greengrass understood the story was about seeing Bourne barely stay ahead of the chase, and paced it accordingly.
Name me one non-Arnold movie guy that anyone today (besides Momoa’s mother) is clamoring to see as Conan.
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
The Hollyweird above-the-line set, despite an immeasurable explosion in the amount and speed of content and distribution methods available to them and to the audience, remains more cloistered than ever.
Can’t wait for the next trailer for “2013: Dustin Hoffman as Kareem Abdul Jabbar in Dunked: 3D!”
The present day Hollywood is producing what they want us to see and not what we want to see. Have any of you noticed what genre has turned into the biggest un-American product of all times? It is the modern war movie where the Americans are the bad guys! Has anyone seen a Hollywood movie depicting Muslims as terrorist and their brutal actions against the innocent? Hell no! Have any of you ever seen a movie where anyone at the FBI or CIA are actually good descent Americans that care about their country? If it weren’t for Bruce Willis we would all be dead! Every liberal, anti-American war film made has been a failure except “Hurt Locker” and that was vilified by the REAL explosive expert that the story was about. It seems that Hollywood just can’t except that Americans are actually good people with very few exceptions. They only make movies about those exceptions and then wonder why we don’t go to see them. The bottom line is STORY, actors and director. It seems like we have gotten the list backwards in the last twenty years!
I’m sick to death of good-guy vampires, good-guy Mafia and good-guy pirates.