Hollywood is trying to solve the problem of the attack of the killer turkeys. For some reason, a lot of movies are simply bombing. The Australian suggests that film companies now have to rely on merchandising and brand tie-ins to replace plummeting DVD revenues:
Like zombies who keep getting up, the turkeys of 2009 just won’t stop coming: Land of the Lost, Gamer, Surrogates, Funny People, Love Happens, The Taking of Pelham 123… This week, Walt Disney and Universal Pictures announced changes in their executive line-ups … Many believe such a shake-up is long overdue in an age in which merchandising and brand tie-ins must replace cash from lost Wall Street loans and DVD revenues.
At current costs of production, the film industry will be forced to produce fewer movies, creating even greater risks for the studios. Putting their eggs in fewer baskets will make them more vulnerable than ever. Some industry executives are now talking about cutting the going rates of pay. The Financial Times writes:
At Universal, Ron Meyer, the chairman who decided to dismiss Mr Linde and Mr Shmuger, has vowed to make cost control a priority when commissioning films. “We have overspent and underperformed,” he says of the films released this year. “We have to change with the times and look at the economics of today’s movie business.”
In an industry rife with bloated salaries, talent pay is the most obvious area to cut. Some stars receive astronomical fees for their work and the “20 and 20” pay day – referring to a $20m upfront payment plus 20 per cent of the film’s gross before the studio earns a penny – is not uncommon.
Universal’s new management team refuses to be drawn on star salaries, with Donna Langley, the new co-chairman, insisting there are other areas to consider, such as the rising cost of energy and materials.
Adding to the drama is the possibility that what is killing the movies may be a version of whatever is killing the newspapers; that whatever is stalking Disney is stalking the New York Times. Price Waterhouse Coopers recently published a study called the “Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2009-2013″. It’s message is simple. The entertainment industry is in the middle of the digital revolution and the audience wants to be in control.
The accelerated migration to digital technologies has reinforced and proliferated new consumption habits and “digital behaviours” as consumers seek more control over where, when and how they consume content while, more than ever, watching the pennies and seeking the best value from the choices they make. The advances in digital are enabling this with ease. …
Consumers are taking control in various ways. They are adopting “time-shifting”, using digital video recorders and video-on-demand to free them up from the TV schedule enabling them to watch what they want when they want. Increased broadband penetration is enabling them to get what they want from wherever they want while improvements in technology allow better downloading and streaming. Growth in mobile access is allowing consumers to access the Internet from any location and giving rise to the popularity of high-end devices such as smartphones, iPods, and the Kindle that combine mobility and access. The advances in digital music are also allowing consumers to purchase songs individually through digital channels (unavailable in physical format) and generating growth in sideloading, which allows consumers to buy music less expensively online, then transferring that music to mobile devices.
Tapping into the massive collective buying-power of online communities is an increasingly central focus of consumer marketing campaigns globally. However, companies are still struggling to adapt their current business models to ensure that they are monetizing their digital content and capturing the revenues.
We know that news flagships are rapidly going under. Can giant “blockbuster” films aimed at markets of millions survive in this environment? The Financial Times notes that finding a market with far fewer resources may be the key to future success. “After a summer bursting with expensive box office flops, a film made for a paltry $15,000 and starring an unknown cast is shaping up to become one of the year’s surprise successes. Paranormal Activity, a horror film in the mould of the Blair Witch Project, has been selling out midnight screenings in a handful of US cities and looks set to become a bona fide hit when it is released across the US by Paramount this month.” This cheap production contrasted sharply with the standard products whose production costs continued to increase.
The average cost of producing and marketing a studio movie has risen more than 6 per cent since 2007, according to The Motion Picture Association of America, while in the past 12 months profitable revenue streams, such as DVD sales, have sharply declined.
While it would be simplistic to conclude that Hollywood really is facing the same kind of business-model destroying forces that have savaged the MSM, the new digital age — plus the recession — probably means that business as usual for the entertainment industry is over. Something has to change and everyone is waiting to see how things adapt. But perhaps the carnage isn’t over. My guess is that the killer will hit the universities next. The current woes of higher education have been ascribed to declines in endowment and a much more competitive market for intellectual capital. People just aren’t willing to pay huge amounts of money for a credential that doesn’t give them real marketable skills any more.
Those are serious factors, but there’s a bigger threat. The process of knowledge exchange and mentoring is rapidly going online, not only through posted documents but over collaborative platforms. People are learning skills for which no degree granting course exists and without going to universities. I’ve seen projects formed, software built, meetings held and mentoring proceed apace without the participants ever meeting each other once in person. Sooner or later this process will reach a critical mass and begin to rival the formal schooling system, at least in certain spheres. How much longer before students begin wondering whether the Ivy League model will be ripped apart by the digital revolution?
The glue that holds a society together has always been the power of its myth, which hitherto has been the province of the cultural elite. This has been widely recognized through history. Mohammed is said to have believed that four things support the world: “the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the good, and the valor of the brave.” An even older source — Homer — described the ramparts of the Grecian universe in much the same terms in his allegorical description of the Shield of Achilles: layers of war and peace, work and festival and only lastly, the Great Stream of Ocean.
The digital age, as exemplified by the Internet, is wreaking havoc upon the pillars of Western society — the memes of the MSM, the shows of entertainment, and the wisdom of the academy, to use Mohammed’s metaphor — are all being shaken. The earthquake is potentially so far-reaching in effect that today’s political crisis probably can’t be understood without it, because the more general question isn’t how Hollywood, the MSM and the great universities will survive the digital age: it is what meaning elites will have in an online universe. How will it end? Who knows. The final reel hasn’t been shot yet.
Below, the ultimate Killer Turkey.
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Inglourious Basterds is a real turkey. Save yourself the money. Send the ticket money to Sarah Palin.
Being the capitalist pig that I am I would never begrudge a film star their 20 million and 20%. But having to listen to their anti-capitalist, anti-conservatism rants like those depicted on the Film Actors Guild I profess a tinge of Shadenfreud over the lot. Although I enjoy an occasional blockbuster, I have increasingly enjoyed foreign films because they rely less on mega CGI and more on good stories of human emotion and intrigue, though I love animation as a rule. Low budget movies require more artistic strengths to survive and Hollywood has evolved into a preachy Leftwing Industrial Complex. May they sow what they reap.
Ummm, maybe if they made movies worth watching and stop casting actors/actresses that suck the life of out of them (Wil Ferrel, Adam Sandler, etc) they wouldn’t be having this problem. Maybe if they made a real pro-American, pro-military film they might find audiences they’ll lost long ago. One centered around these two images:
http://mailmansbag.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/yon-pic.jpg
http://www.wanderings.net/notebook/Main/YoungBoyReceivesFlagAtFathersFuneral
A film about honor, heroism and love of country; and the sacrifices made to those ideals. 300 showed what the box office potential is for such a film. But the powers that be in Hollywood are too blinded by their ideology to realize it. And now they find their coffers bare and wonder why.
—
The soldier in the first photo ran out under enemy fire to pull this little girl out from the aftermath of a car bomb that went off in the middle of a crowded marketplace. The terrorists’ favorite trick is to set off car bombs in places where civilians gather and then have the area covered with snipers who pick off the rescuers rushing to the scene. The soldier, probably with a wife and kids back in the States, risked his life to try and save this Iraqi child. Unfortunately, the little girl died of her wounds before she could reach the medics. And we worry whether or not waterboarding a terrorist is torture. Meanwhile, they slaughter little children and dream of doing more.
The second photo needs no words.
Hollywood is leaving Hollywood and doing production in non-union venues:
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2009/10/china-beats-detroit.html
Unions kill everything they touch. Now about SEIU.
Ironically, Hollywood and the Mainstream Mastodons are not the only entities to be hit with this phenomena. The industry & people who made this possible are also being affected as well. Industrial revolutions do not come without cost.
I am an application developer and have been affected by outsourcing of my work overseas. One former client now only maintains a minimal onsite staff to coordinate between India and their shop. So I start to thinking about developing system programming/system admin creds. Well, I should know better as that is starting to be outsourced as well. In fact, I do it myself in my web development business — I do not have an actual system that hosts the production websites (not even test sites however, I do have a development systems up and running on my own boxes). All of this is made possible by the cheap long distance networking made possible by the Internet.
In fact, even tangible products are affected. Let us say artisan jam maker Betty Berry used to have a thriving business selling jams out of her (duly approved & fully food code compliant) kitchen. Formerly she had little or no competition in artisan jams. Now, I can go online and find all sorts of artisan jams available for purchase and shipment via the I’net.
Any industrial player in nearly any industry had better be ready to adapt to this and had best be thinking how they can join the game.
I am not very familiar with YouTube (most often I use it for a source of music) but I bet at the end of 5 years from now it becomes the video industry’s blog nemesis. A lot of up & comings who are looking to use YouTube to get into traditional video broadcasting/video production may eventually decide to stay put and not take offers from studios.
With all the other options, including Netflix as well as internet, why should I spend $20+ transportation, $10 for a popcorn and 2 drinks, and a babysitter, to see garbage? Esp if I have a 40″ screen at home and can watch virtually any decent movie of the last 100 years, for next to nothing.
As for the collective myths, well, myths provided by the kind of people who defend Roman Polanski and lecture me about global waring, we’re better off without.
Of course the possibility that their movies just suck with an infinite amount of suckitude hasn’t come to their minds. This is the result of the echo-chamber of Hollywood setting itself in opposition to everything that America stood for and stands for. See Polanski and Letterman and now, the unfolding Obama debacle, to see what I’m talking about. Hollywood needs to make more positive movies that celebrate what real people do without injecting any politically correct^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H dishonest, freedom bashing, anti-American horse$@!#.
y’know, it’s an indistry of entrepreneurs –individualists, risk-takers, meritocrats –everything of the classic right. only thing i can figure on the left wing garbage that ruins films and dims star power –is that there must be some sort of institutional memory of the Golden Age of Hollywood being the Great Depression, and so they line up with the party that’ll maybe give ‘em another one of each.
2. Annoy Mouse:
You are certainly correct when you attibute much of the film industry’s trouble to its content.
Wretchard is also insightful to suggest that Entertainment, the Old Media, and Big Education all face the same threat of growing obolescence and rejection by their consuming base. I think these two themes ought to be combined. Entertainment, Education, and News all suffer from the same fashionable leftism. To me, it seems the root problem we battle against is nihilism. I believe that Hollywood’s increasing attention to superficial special effects and shock at the expense of character and plot development are artifacts of this same nihilism and of the nihilists’ attempts to carry on amidst their own chaos, even as they continue to destroy. Not a silver age, but a silver-plated plastic age.
Blago Bloggo–
“suck with an infinite amount of suckitude”
LOL!!
Remember all the anti-Iraq movies ca. 2005-8, every one just died at the box office? One fair weekend in NY, LA, a few college towns, but then everyone who wanted to see them had seen them and the 2nd weekend always a disaster. But, they kept making them… ideology trumping financial interest
r/9; excellent! now that you mention it, that’s the diff between today and yesterday’s great movies –made by characters onscreen and off that seem never to have caught even a whiff of Nihilism the Enervator.
and look at the Coen brothers –two things stand out –their movies are in a class by themselves for entertainment and thoughtfulness, and they’re *about* nihilism –but not made by nihilists. they lampoon it –in the lightest blackest-comedic perfectly needling way –
kierkegaaedian performatists, they’ve been described as. Performatism, the name some modern philosophers hang on what they say is the antidote to PoMo ennui. It’s about learning to savvy your own framing of the world poicture, and acting to break it if it majes you feel bad. and replace it with not thought but movement.
A common thread between movies, MSM and universities is that the folks running them took their products for granted and thought that the paying customers didn’t have the ability (or the right) to judge the quality of what they were turning out. All three industries degenerated into self-indulgence where insiders cranked out vanity project after vanity project and reacted to criticism by declaring the critics politically motivated and culturally backwards.
Any other “industries” you can think of following the same path?
whew –does racing that editor countdown with addendums ever moider da spellink.
I’m reminded of one of Strother Martin’s lines in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
“Morons. I’ve got morons on my team.” (we ain’t got no gold going down the mountain)
How about putting out a movie or two without a plot that isn’t written by a developmentally challenged 12 year old? I just saw the online trailer for “2012″ yesterday and in just two minutes I saw a ridiculously overbudgeted piece of pure-D crap that would work better as a comedic parody of the worst, most bombastic disaster film ever made.
Go back and look at the scripts from movies of the 30′s and 40′s – not all great, but my god! You’ll find scripts with believable characters, clever dialog, believable human interactions, real emotions! I have pretty much quit going to any modern movies these days since they seem to fall into 4 categories:
1) how many non stop explosions can we use to hide the fact there’s no plot?
2) how much non stop sex and/or vulgarity can we use to hide the fact there’s no plot?
3) how much political correctness and audience browbeating can we shoehorn in to hide the fact that there’s no plot?
4) how many times can we pretend that fart and poop jokes are the highest level of comedy? (there’s that developmentally challenged 12 year old again)
When producers and directors can tear themselves away from those 4 fatal errors, I might start getting interested in modern movies again.
By the way, I thought “Slumdog” was great. NOT a Hollywood production.
Wretchard said: “How much longer before students begin wondering whether the Ivy League model will be ripped apart by the digital revolution?”
Interesting you should mention this. Gary Hamel, who is probably the world’s reigning strategy guru, published a fascinating book in 2000 entitled “Leading the Revolution.” The third chapter is entitled “Business Concept Innovation.” I’ve been using that chapter 9 years now in my strategy classes because it is without a doubt the best analytical framework around for understanding how to create new business models. He begins the chapter with a discussion very much along the lines of the comment quoted above. Here are his exact words:
“There are no more than a handful of companies that have even begun to build innovation systems that focus on creating a steady stream of new business concepts. In the chapters that follow you will meet some of the individuals and companies that have become masters at business concept innovation. But first, let’s get some practice
Gran Torino was great too. In some ways, better than Slumdog because it spoke of a simple dignity that went beyond Slumdog’s somewhat impossible optimism.
Wretchard said: “How much longer before students begin wondering whether the Ivy League model will be ripped apart by the digital revolution?”
Interesting you should mention this. Gary Hamel, who is probably the world’s reigning strategy guru, published a fascinating book in 2000 entitled “Leading the Revolution.” The third chapter is entitled “Business Concept Innovation.” I’ve been using that chapter 9 years now in my strategy classes because it is without a doubt the best analytical framework around for understanding how to create new business models. He begins the chapter with a discussion very much along the lines of the comment quoted above.
“There are no more than a handful of companies that have even begun to build innovation systems that focus on creating a steady stream of new business concepts. In the chapters that follow you will meet some of the individuals and companies that have become masters at business concept innovation. But first, let’s get some practice in thinking holistically about about business concepts. Let’s speculate about what could be. As a start, let’s imagine a radically new business concept-a cyber business school.
Maybe you’re mid-career and would like to go to business school but don’t relish the prospect of uprooting your family and putting your career on hold for two years while you attend a top-flight B-school. Or maybe you simply can’t afford the exorbitant fees charged by those Ivy-clad institutions. Could the way you buy business education change as dramatically over the next ten years as the way you buy books (Amazon.com), trade shares (E*TRADE) or get news (Yahoo!)? You bet. Let’s try a little thought experiment, one that will illustrate the kind of wrenching innovation that will destroy old business models in the age of revolution.”
Hamel then goes on to give the outlines of what a new business models for business schools could look like. He follows that up with a more general framework useful for application to any other industry. I have summaries, outlines, powerpoint presentations, lecture notes, etc that explain Hamel’s framework in more detail. Follow the link on my name to my blogspot profile and send an email if you want copies.
I posted this elsewhere on the Polanski kerfuffle, but I thought it appropriate here –
It is astonishing how much of a pass the great and good people of flyover country ARE willing to give these Hollywood people.
They CAN live in mansions with servants and daily massages while we cannot. They CAN collect 100 antique autos while we struggle to fix the antique that gets us to work each day. They CAN marry, divorce, marry, divorce, not marry, screw like jackrabbits, etc etc while we occasionally get to dream about that Playboy bunny, and then get on with the reality of our lives. They CAN live in a fantasy world, essetially playing cowboy and soldier and superhero in $100 million dollar sandboxes…. and get paid zillions to do so. They can do ALL of this more, and we won’t even resent them for it. Life ain’t fair, they won a lottery of sorts, I didn’t, that’s the deal. (Maybe my child will win a similar lottery, or achieve similar greatness on their own. That’s worth tolerating, and even fighting for.)
Oh, yes they CAN do it, and we will even be happy for them for it. And give them our money for just the privilege of a chance to peek through the fence once in a while. And we won’t complain. That is life.
And we ask one thing from them. One tiny little thing…. in return. Just one.
Do NOT treat us with contempt. Our lives, our spirituality, our values, our mores, our history, that which makes us what we are, down to our core.
Do NOT treat us with the rabid, drooling, unceasing, caustic contempt of Marie Antoinette when you look at us, we who literally pay for your cars, mansions, toys, and supermodels.
Treat us respectfully, and if you disagree, disagree. We can live with that. That is all we ask.
But just do NOT treat us with the contempt we are all now all too familiar with. Do not. That is ALL we ask of you.
And you know what? That is apparently too much to ask from Hollywood in the 21st century. It is just too much. They have to have their cars, mansions, toys, absolute sexual liscense, all of it…. AND they must repeatedly shout from the rooftops just how loathsome the rest of us unwashed, unenlightened proles are, and they must do so on a daily basis. For them not do so is just too much of a sacrifice for us, the masses, to ask of them.
And so we must turn our backs to them. And we are.
http://www.newser.com/story/67427/stars-bomb-at-the-box-office.html?utm_source=syn&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=tag
And I am certain the eternally brilliant lot of them have not the foggiest clue why.
–
And let me just add….. Hollywood culture, big journalism…. the universities…. all in free fall at the same time. It’s almost as if there were some common trait to them that might be playing a role here. Some common trait…… something….. something…..Hmmmmmmm…..
Nope. Drawing a blank. An eternal mystery, I guess.
Education is going this route too — we will see how long the teacher’s industrial complex (TIC) can fight this off.
Not too long ago the TIC sued a SE WI school district over its internet education program. The district and the state educational oversight body were named as defendants. Not surprisingly (after a moment’s thought), the state educational oversight body filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of the TIC. A quick google shows the TIC prevailed in court.
A guy who was running for election to head up this educational oversight body was slamming the suit and the department’s amicus brief and issued a warning that sooner or later education has to adapt since taxpayers are eventually going to start saying no to ever increasing real-dollar tax levies to fund that beast.
I’m very curious about the path of higher education, since I have a little and want to get a bunch more. (I want to study more chemistry)
I’ve noticed that Americans tend to not be well represented in graduate school and research labs in this country, though they do tend to fill all the admin positions.
I asked a post doc from Mexico what he thought of American students once. He said overall they were very poor, but he qualified that the ones who are good are the best in the world. He attributed this to having access to excellence. Those who cared had the best access to the most highly skilled mentors and as a result excelled themselves.
In some of my detours thorough life I’ve been involved with the distilling industry, where art and science blend. There aren’t schools to go to to learn these skills. However, the web now has forums where the noobs and the masters can put their heads together and learn from each other, have their conversations documented in a thread for others to benefit from and contribute to, and form collaborations that address issues that would not be possible in a traditional institutional or industrial format. I fully see what wretchard describes.
I think that the institutions of education will have to play on their strengths, facilities and technology, if they want to survive. I certainly hope our engineering and sciences survive without having to retreat to the monasteries. Our feel good esteem studies will probably die on the vine soon, since they don’t teach any skills, just perspective. The competition for resources is going to get alot more desperate and those who contribute nothing will not be tolerated for long.
When my son started going to concerts a few years ago, I noticed that the venues seemed to have gotten much smaller. Rather than playing 4,000-8,000 seat venues, most of the acts were showing up at large bars, holding 1,000, maybe 2,000 people. Rather than busses and semis hauling the bands and equipment, everything seemed to have been reduced to the carrying capicity of two or three large vans. These were nationally known acts he was going to see, but the scale and spectacle was much smaller than I remembered from my concert-going days in the 70s and 80s. The other interesting part of the phenomenon was that advances in technology allow most of the recording to be done at home rather than in a studio, let alone having to travel to LA, New York, or Nashville. Sure, there are still mega-acts playing the stadia, but the model seems to be experiencing a fundamental change. I have no data to support this other than personal observation, but I suspect this is a trend that will do nothing but increase over time in the music industry. I believe we are at the very beginning of a similar trend in the movie industry. Unfortunately, widespread access to improved technology and tools will not make for necessarily better products. As many have suggested here already, great movies must begin with great writing. Given the high production values of so many bad movies, I can only conclude one of two things: 1) Good writing is the rarest commodity among those resources required for making a movie. 2) The movie business is run by morons. Looking at the last two statements, I’m not sure it’s an either-or situation.
Tarnsman.
Good links. The kid wants to grow up to be a Marine.
Some years ago, Michael Medved claimed to have done the math and discovered that the G and PG films, which could be called “family values” films mostly make money, while the edgy, hip, vile films lose money. There, he said, is the triumph of ideology and groupthink over greed.
I wonder if I could enlist your help with an issue that was raised in the thread regarding Mad Men.
I have a couple of questions I would like to explore while I write an essay on one of the issues, and simultaneously trying to put together a fictional character who is believable.
My e-mail is raubrey@sbcglobal.net
Thanks.
wretchard,
I see the Giant Claw was attacking the UN. So maybe it isn’t all bad and we can arrange a meeting with its’ agent?
The social, sexual and political proclivities of most members of the Screen Actors Guild have not changed in 76 years. That is because it wasn’t founded until 1933. If the views of the actors haven’t changed then what has?
In the Golden Age Hollywood was run by studio executives, who were often Republicans. The Anti-trust case, US v. Paramount of 1948, is the gift to America’s enemies that keeps on giving. Control passed from the businessmen, film making was an industry like any other, to the lawyers agents and actors. The big losers have been the public and the members of the craft unions. The later lost a source of quality culture and entertainment while the later lost jobs. In effect money was diverted from the many employed in the old system to a handful of actors in the new system.
In the movies produced by the studies the executives saw to it that the focus was on the audience. The writers and actors might want to insert their messages but as Sam Goldwyn said “Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union.” Noel Coward and Cole Porter never expected people to pay good money to hear about the concerns and interests of Coward or Porter. The wrote about the interests concerns loves and wars of their audience. They did so with the wise and knowing eyes of affectionate outsiders.
Their current heirs have contempt for the audience but expect people to either pay for their fantasies criticizing the struggles the audience faces (Redacted, Syriana) or focusing on their own subcultures. This is rampant on Broadway where of 37 plays open, most are revivals, often with reinterpretations that stick a knife into traditional culture and others celebrate the disaffected.
On Broadway they have depended for years now on getting an audience to come for lavish musicals, think Andrew Lloyd Webber or Elton John, with plots that have little emotional resonance for the people sitting in the seats. In effect people are paying to see the advertising and watch the money being spent. Plays can do this for a while as they draw a select audience to a limited number of places but the costs are killing them too. That can not work over time and it certainly can not work to support the film business. How many would pay to see a big budget production of the recently closed Rent if it becomes a movie?
“It’s message is simple. The entertainment industry is in the middle of the digital revolution and the audience wants to be in control.”
It think this is insightful, but I think it misses the mark on the issue of control.
“A film about honor, heroism and love of country; and the sacrifices made to those ideals. 300 showed what the box office potential is for such a film. But the powers that be in Hollywood are too blinded by their ideology to realize it. And now they find their coffers bare and wonder why.”
Its not the format for dispersal, its the content, and the audience if not taking control, they are taking it BACK.
The audience USED to be in control, in the sense that Hollywood used to produce a decent number of films which were MEANT to be audience pleasing, instead of indoctrinating and contemptful. It was about getting butts in the seats, not following the PC narrative of the world.
The audience had control because what they wanted to see, and what they would pay for, was important and a studio that failed to pay attention to that suffered. So, the audience controlled the output with their dollars. Hollywood could still make its controversial, “art” films, but they were did not attempt to rely on them, especially at the cost of the mainstream ones.
Hollywood, however, at some point decided their primary role was to “enlighten” rather than “entertain”, and whole swathes of thought and viewpoints and subject matter were moth-balled out of political correctness. Patriotism? Good and Evil? Heroism? American Exceptionlism? Please! Bourgeois concepts all. We’re all Post-Modern, baby!
If a film is not outrightly hostile or contemptful of the values the audience wants to see, it is a watered down, neutered version of it, which Hollywood thinks needs only more jazzy special effects to placate the trolls.
Not surprisingly, then, the audience turns to other media to get what they want, even if they have to create it themselves, and they are damn well doing it. If you can’t find a hero in a movie, or a good war film, play on on your X-Box, or find a obscure film on the internet which has not been tainted by Hollywood chic.
The BEST part of this whole thing is that I think movie stars are in for a rude awakening as their cache drops precipitously.
WG
Wretchard’s points about the digital age’s influence are well-taken. But the key is the degeneration of all 3 of these “institutions” as a result of a materialist theology and its associated nihilism. There is no way for this to lead other than down, down, down. The movies emphasize stimulation and cultural rebellion when not celebrating outright perversion.
This is somewhat a product of our wealth and materialist impulses, a traditional trap most of us fall into, but the destruction of American/western culture was an explicit goal of the Soviets and the left in general. Many of these recent threads, including this one, center around the messy death of the left and the associated detritus.
One way to look at this is that, for whatever reasons, including the increased awareness of many of us due to exposure to alternative sources of information, we are OUTGROWING the MSM, leftist artists, and the universities that teach a paradigm that is a half-century old and fully discredited. Kind of like we often outgrow our friends.
Here’s a good example of how it is happening. My daughter went to Hampshire College, where she had a great experience and met her wonderful husband and many wonderful friends. But the minute I saw the place I knew it was doomed. How stupid is the business model that attracts and caters to those who are explicitly anti-capitalist and countercultural in their orientations. I used to laugh at the contrast between their endowment (Thank God for Ken Burns) and that of Smith, where my other daughter went, and which had more than a century under its belt of producing women who married great and productive men when they weren’t being productive themselves.
Hampshire, of course, is increasingly on the ropes and is scrambling to make changes to correct for its initial mistakes. But the poison pill of leftism has been digested and permeated the system. It cannot survive and will be classified as a suicide, like Antioch College before it.
Content producers must adapt to the digital-age distribution model. The film industry sees the writing on the wall, but like a great vessel they are slow to turn. And as the cost of content production technology falls, (anybody can film/edit true HD nowdays), they are going to face an ever-increasing competition.
Regarding education: since education is subsidized by the Government, (guaranteed loans, grants, etc.), it will take longer for it to collapse. But it will collapse because both content and distribution can no longer be monopolized. Primary education lags the rest of the world in product quality and secondary education is priced out of line – so these two are ripe for a changeover. If we allowed parents to decide where the education tax dollars were spent, (vouchers), I believe we would see a revolution in primary education. And if we dropped some of the protectionist certifications and stopped Federal subsidies, we would see a huge decline in the cost of secondary education. By the way, it is morally obscene that student must still purchase $400 Anatomy & Physiology Textbooks.
I stumbled across an outdoor film set this last winter. A Japanese production being filmed in new Zealand. It was some sort of blizzard scene, set in a real blizzard in the hills of the south island. We weren’t expecting to see anyone that day. The fresh snow was over a metre thick. I was aghast at the 100 plus coldish people milling around seemingly doing nothing. It was an eye opener, me not knowing squat about the movie making business. Maybe the stars were cloistered in their star caravans adulterating. The ridiculous number of people helped explain why movies cost so much, increasing the splash when they belly flop.
weary g – I hope their cache drops AND their cash drops!
to wow&flutter – you gotta admit that the arena rock of the late 70′s got way overdone. I remember a good friend who went to see the Rolling Stones in the Astrodome (I didn’t go, don’t know how many thousands of people were there) He told me “yeah, with the binoculars it was almost like being close to the stage!” Now that’s just pathetic.
btw, I got tickets to see Lyle Lovett at Bass Hall in a couple months and that is going to be one heck of a show – always is.(Lyle Lovett and his Large Band, it’s not Big it’s Large)
The 300 – yeah, the message was clear, but even there the film technique used was agonizing at times. Did Xerxe’s throne *really* have to look like the winning entry at a Gay Pride Parade? What was wrong with something a little closer to, oh say what it actually would have looked like??? I shouldn’t have to be embarrased to tell people I kind of liked the movie, and I am with The 300.
Re: Gran Torino – yeah, awesome movie, and I had to see it if for no other reason than that my very first car all my own was, yes, a Gran Torino. My only disapointment was that the car had such a small part. (heh) Clint Eastwood has turned into one of the most thoughtful and thought provoking directors of modern times – who would’ve guessed 30 years ago? But through age and work he has found wisdom, and he knows exactly who he is and exactly what he wants to say with his work. And he has the skill and respect for his audience that lets him tell his message in an extremely effective way.
*That’s* the clarity of vision that is missing in so much of what is slapped out of the studios these days.
Given the proclivities and public pronouncement so celebrities of late, I find I think a bit more before putting down 7 to 10 dollars to watch a movie. A movie which is usually best viewed in the trailer. I have noticed, especially on Monday morning, there is always a news report of the weekend’s box office take usually reported in the tenor of the report on the report of a local sports team. That a lot of money was made is reported like our local team winning. Hooray! Hollywood got you to foolishly part with more of your money! I find I cannot bring myself to support an actor who has publicly stated disapproval or disdain for those values and mores I hold dear. I view such comments and remarks especially in the context of my day to day life in the support of myself and my family. These remarks more often than not are couched in the course terms and vernacular of the Hollywood pop culture. Given that many of these remarks are barely articulate and peppered with predictable talking points, it makes these people to be more of the bad actors they are already. A good example of this obtuse outlook was demonstrated in Rush Limbaugh’s appearance on Jay Leno’s show where Jay asked if executive salaries are excessive. This question from an entertainer who himself a millionaire many times (in excess of $30 million) over and who owns somewhere between 84 and 100 cars along with 70+ motorcycles. I have no objection to entertainers having and articulating an opinion on topics which affect them as Americans. I do however have a problem when I hear another entertainer pop off posing as a spokesman or very public proponent and do so in a proselytizing manner intended to denigrate or demean the views of the public. A public these people expect to get money from in viewing their “art”. These are times when the option to read a good book is a better use of my time.
The content problem reminds me of an interview article with Greg Gutfield of Fox’s Red Eye program. He stated that when he worked for CQ magazine he came to realize that they wrote for other magazine editors not their readers. I also remember a comment from some Hollywood type that he didn’t care if a movie got a large US viewer ship in the US, they would make their money back on overseas and DVD sales. Apparently that’s not working out anymore.
I was watching a Korean made movie with sub-titles via Netflix. It was something of an over the top bloody crime drama, but the craftsman ship in the editing and every thing else was better than most of the current US made movies I’ve been seeing. IIRC it was “Lady Vengance”
Just my opinion but if Hollywood doesn’t get it’s act together the the entertainment center will move overseas also.
‘The earthquake is potentially so far-reaching in effect that today’s political crisis probably can’t be understood without it, because the more general question isn’t how Hollywood, the MSM and the great universities will survive the digital age: it is what meaning elites will have in an online universe.’
A true crisis for the (self proclaimed) enlightened. They are losing control and they know it. what response to it all? see also wounded animal cornered.
I’ve been going to the movies at most 2 to 3 times per year for years. Why is that? Because most of them are trash. And almost none of them are worth $10+ and the hassle of driving to the theatre. Most of them aren’t even worth the $1 at RedBox. The few times I see them, I wonder, how can they spend tens of millions on a movie and have a plot this bad? That plus the political correctness and anti-Americanism is enough for me. Good riddance; I hope they fail. The same goes for the garbage on TV.
The best metaphor I can think for the movie business is the following: Michael Moore’s anti-Capitalist propaganda film being touted by a Capitalist. The man seems completely unaware of his own hypocrisy. The same is true for celebutants in Hollyweird. Michael Moore’s movie bombed, despite raves from the MSN. I wonder why…
Cowboys and martians.
Devo “Whip It”
wws: There are other factors in the decline of movie making.
1. Black and White films were the norm until the mid fifties. B&W is a surreal medium which, by it’s nature, requires the audience to use it’s imagination. Imagination is participatory, active. Having everything graphically portrayed creates a passive experience.
2. The audience for those films listened to the radio for entertainment at home. Their idea of drama was people talking to each other; relating to each other. And again, the listeners were used to filling in the details of the action with their own imagination; being part of the creative process.
3. Censorship. The movies operated under strict rules of what could be said and what could be shown. This forced the creators to suggest and imply rather than display in graphic detail. Sensuality rather than overt sexuality; anticipation rather than culmination; reaction to the unseen (but imagined) rather than rubbing the audience’s nose in effects and make-believe gore. You cannot use the imagination of the audience if you have no respect for it.
4. There were no film schools. Men and women learned how to tell stories with film by doing it. What was important was the story. The technique facilitated and enhanced but was secondary to the story. Which was told by adults to adults.
5. Reading. The film makers were readers. The number of film school grads who matriculate without having read anything but “graphic novels” (aka comic books) is staggering. Visuals and production values rule. And as for imagination and thought…those things stimulated by the written word? Unnecessary if you have the right attitudes which they breathe in with the air of an American university; unearned cynicism and liberal contempt (without examination) for the non-politically correct.
6. Dumbness in general. You can’t spend four decades dumbing down your children and be surprised your society begins to be stuck stuck on stupid everywhere you turn. When self esteem trumps critical thinking, solipsistic narcissism (I know, redundant) will become the rule in an industry that is prone to self-celebration.
I won’t subject myself to the incivility of the mob; pardon me, audience to see any of Hollywood’s best. I wouldn’t watch if they paid me. I’d much rather read a book.
There are no more John Wayne heros. Those actors who loved this country, were patriotic, believed in God, etc. are long gone. A few, very very few actors are worth watching. The subjects of the movies made today are anti-American, pro-gay, anti-God and praise the terrorists type. Who wants to watch that garbage. I buy old DVDs. I haven’t watched any of the new movies and don’t intend to.
To the tune of Hooray For Hollywood:
Hooray for Hollywood
Just goes to show the damage folly could
Do to a magic image enterprise
No surprise
Watch them just disintegrate before our eyes
Hooray for Hollywood
Where each and every single dolly would
Command a ransom just for showing up
And throwing up
A double barreled stinker that was blowing up
The studio execs
They’re stunned and don’t know what is coming next
Is it the end for all their magic dreams
So it seems
Taking alka-seltzer ‘cause they’re so darned vexed
Hooray for Hollywood
We surely have to say by golly should
We be concerned that they might go away
Let us pray
That they see their lefty movies do not pay
Hooray for Hollywood
What made Hollywood, originally, was the abundant and dependable sunlight of Southern California. The giants of the trade moved away from the East coast for practical reasons: It was a matter of elementary photography: More light, less aperture, greater field of depth, shorter exposure, better rendition of motion, fewer clouds, less scheduling headaches, simple as that!
Today’s electronic cameras don’t need as much light as was required by the chemical photography of yore. You can produce good footage in Scandinavia, indoors, without spending huge piles of money on lighting.
Same thing for distribution, you can cast your work on the web!
The digital revolution is the electronic tentacle of democracy. In relative terms, it means the quality of creative talent is a bigger slice of the pie when it comes to the value of the work.
The loss of Stardom is not a catastrophe for most of us.
The base problem with Holly-weird is they forgot, don’t crap on your food.
Charlie Chaplin was not an American. He was a British subject who grew up in the east end of London. He was a leftist who probably did have Communist sympathies. Charlie Chaplin made no secret of his distaste for Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech. Yet, his audience was largely American because that’s where the money was.
I would argue that Hollywood’s anti-Americanism is not driven so much by ideology as by money. Anti-Americanism sells among a small enclave of Americans, but more importantly it sells in the rest of the world. I think Hollywood executives have made a strategic decision to badmouth America to foreigners so their movies will sell outside of the United States. And more importantly, get awards at the Cannes Film Festival.
So, the next time you look at anti-Americanism in the movies, ask yourself how it sells in Mexico. Or Brazil. Or France. Or Egypt. Is there more money to be made from a pro-American message or an anti-American message? Look for the scent of money, for that’s where the bias of the most cold-blooded movie executives will be.
Hollywood has much in common with the MSM’s business philosophy. Say whatever they want, because they have a monopoly.
The MSM is loosing readers and viewers to more conservative sites – or othing at all, but they continue with their leftist rants. Despite the fact PG movies make more money, they keep releasing R movies (artistic license you know.) They have their reward – they say whatever they want, and no one gives them money. pity.
If you go to the list of “5 Awesome Cases of The Internet Owning The Mainstream Media” at:
http://www.cracked.com/article/87_5-awesome-cases-internet-owning-mainstream-media_p2
you’ll notice that #1 is “The Internet Might Just Force Hollywood to Make … Good Movies”
Since I live in Hollywood and know more than a few entertainment types I’ll throw in my two cents:
There are several layers of problems in the entertainment industry; some have been mentioned previously. For me, one of the biggest is this: Film and TV types are always bemoaning the lack of good stories, yet the politically correct culture of Hollywood purposely avoids the biggest and best stories of our time; those that involve our current wars, terrorism and the real conflicts brought about our culture’s politically correct blinders. There are endless variations of nuanced conflict, tension and drama and just plain ol’ good stories from Iraq, Afghanistan and many of the backwaters where real terrorists lurk. Hollywood’s groupthink has averted it’s gaze from these tremendous stories almost entirely. These are where the stories that define our time are. To not tell them, or tell them falsely, eventually compromises one’s credibility and integrity.
In the creative process, when honesty is lost and the exploration of the obvious is stifled, those involved begin to lose their edge, their intensity and their integrity and it shows in the product they produce. That is what has happened to Hollywood. It’s creativity is dying, and it has been killed by Hollywoods self imposed political correct mindset.
“The glue that holds a society together has always been the power of its myth, which hitherto has been the province of the cultural elite.”
While it is true that the glue that holds a society together is the power of myth–a major component of Native American culture is communicated through storytelling–successful myth tellers are successful because they tell the myths their audiences want to hear.
A story about Coyote told to the tribe will only hold its audience captive if the myth uses imagery the tribe understands and reaches a conclusion that the audience agrees with. The same can be said of Mohammed: the four pillars that support the world are common elements that predated Mohammed, and even Homer’s stories are remembered only because they resonated with their audience by touching on themes that pre-date Homer.
Myth has power over an audience, in other words, because the audience allows myth to have power over them. The story tellers are engaged in a conversation with their audience–and good story tellers use non-verbal cues from their audience to learn what aspects of their story works and what doesn’t. The story evolves to reflect the audience.
Unfortunately many of the media elite both in Hollywood and New York have come to believe that the Power of Myth is not a conversation but a mechanism of control: a one-way pipe by which they can shape society without being shaped by society. And so Hollywood keeps on shoving stuff out the door (such as the whole line of anti-Iraqi movies and tripe like “Fame” and “Final Destination”) that is poorly written and has an agenda that rubs the viewing public the wrong way.
Hollywood, in other words, has come to believe in the notion that they are arbitrators of our cultural heritage. And because they are no longer listening to their audience–they no longer even believe their audience is worth listening to or even remember that they should listen to their audience–they are failing miserably.
I would love to go see a good movie. The problem is that they arn’t producing anything. The writing sucks, the actors suck, the audience sucks (constantly on their phones), the price is too high. You can go on and on. We need to socialize the industry and control cost. After all, we are guaranteed pursuit of happiness. (ps. get rid to all the big name actors and actress in the US, they don’t know their craft).
wws–No, I’m not mourning the passing of arena shows. However, just as there are still some arena shows, I don’t think the big-budget vehicles of Hollywood will ever become a thing of the past. Rather, they will become a smaller part of a much larger, more economically sustainable model for the industry overall. Just as the music business has metastasized, offering a wider variety of things to listen to, I believe we are on the cusp of all kinds of different offerings from movie makers. Sooner or later movies will be made with sympathies for what we might call traditional western values. As others have pointed out, I don’t think we’re too far away from the day when those products can be profitably distributed in ways that circumvent established outlets. Though, that distribution will probably be to smaller audiences than we’ve come to expect with the current system.
I wonder how much of Hollywood’s problems are driven by loss of their intellectual property, i.e. copied movies?
In the beginning we had to go to movie theaters or watch television if we wanted to see a movie. Under that system, Hollywood still had complete control over their intellectual property but a limited market. Then VHS tape came out and Hollywood started selling their intellectual property. However VHS tape had a limited shelf life and degraded with every copy. VHS tapes were expensive to manufacture and the content quality was not the best. Hollywood responded with the DVD. Unfortunately for Hollywood, it was possible with a DVD to make perfect copies. Hollywood thought that Content-Scrambling System (CSS) encryption would protect their intellectual property. However hackers on the Internet quickly cracked CSS and it became trivial to make perfect copies of DVDs. Hollywood then responded with High Definition (HD) media in the form of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray that both initially used the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) encryption system. Again the hackers got busy and cracked AACS encryption used by both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray but had only partial success with the BD+ encryption that is used exclusively by Blu-Ray. BD+ is impossible to completely crack because it’s a moving target, i.e. it runs as a virtual machine on the Blu-Ray player and can be reprogrammed when one watches a Blu-Ray movie with an updated algorithm. Hollywood responded to the success of BD+ by abandoning HD-DVD and going only with Blu-Ray. If one goes to a Blockbuster video store, there is a definite trend towards bringing in more Blu-Ray and phasing out DVD. This is reminiscent of the earlier process of phasing out VHS with DVD. I suspect that easily copied DVDs were killing Hollywood and they’re now trying to repair their earlier error by phasing out DVDs with Blu-Ray.
to prof Guvinoff: what you say about production moving away from so-cal is true – even Hollywood is moving it’s production away from there. Most people would probably be surprised to learn how many current movies are being filmed in Shreveport, La. Shreveport, you may ask? How on earth did that happen?
No one intended for it to, which is the most amusing part. Some years ago the Louisiana legislature was, as always, looking for ways to spend state money to prop up New Orleans city finances. A couple movies had been filmed there (the Big Easy) and they decided it would be a great idea if they could attract a bunch more, because New Orleans had managed to tax most of it’s other businesses out of the city. So, they passed a phenomenal tax cut and financial incentive package to anyone who would make movies in New Orleans, and they got generous and let the rules apply to the entire state, since they all knew that New Orleans was the only place anyone would go.
And then Katrina hit. No one could even think of setting up studio lots in New Orleans in the chaos and wreckage of that fiasco. (and the governmental fiasco on the state and city level was worse than the actual storm) BUT the tax and financial incentives were still in place – and filmmakers noticed that Shreveport had lakes, rivers, forests, in fact everything they would need for a wide range of movies – plus it had a relatively cheap and plentiful labor base, and it wasn’t bogged down with a lot of union rules and problems. The city government was actually overjoyed to have a new industry with new jobs, and bent over backwards to make things easy for them. They were amazed at the treatment, so different from the near-extortion they’ve gotten used to in so-cal. Now filmmakers are there to stay.
Shreveport, the new “Hollywood of the South.” Funny how things like that work out.
Alexis, the american movies that get more attention here aren’t typically Hollywood’s ones, but underground’s, or foreign coproductions, but more often, our country can make attractive movies for any audiences, UK’s, Germany’s, Spain’s, and also we have latin America, such as Brazil’s, Argentina’s, that win prices in european festivals.
The problem with Hollywood now, their movies are stereotyped, the plot is always the same, characters, idem, only change decors and actors.
Let it die. Hollywood, over priced, too much power, too gawdy, too old. Let it die. Like the big banks, big insurance, big oil, big education, big government. Let them all die. Then it will help generate great enterprise and more freedom for all of us. Let them die.
I do so hate that term “politically correct” because I agree it has done so much harm to America and continues to harm America and everything in America. If movies concentrated on the TRUTH people would watch. Unfortunately, academia has for the last 30-40 years produced too many young people who do not know the TRUTH about wars, politics or anything else. Sad, Hollywood used to be admired and people anxiously awaited the next movies coming out. Clint Eastwood has done some amazing movies so I congratulate him. When terrorists are portrayed its usually in a way that wants people to feel sorry for them and of course the leftist beliefs are always interjected along with as much sex and violence as they can get in.
Poor Citizen said:
“Let it die. Hollywood, over priced, too much power, too gawdy, too old. Let it die. Like the big banks, big insurance, big oil, big education, big government. Let them all die.”
I think your wish is being granted. Unfortunately we may all end up dying along with the rotten system.
Gran Torino was a good movie. A good movie. A good story with a kicker ending and good characters, good writing, good acting.
Only howler was showing somebody being interested in Lions season tickets. Just a little local color without asking the locals.
Has it occurred to Hollywood to ask how come Harry Potter and LOTR did well?
Didn’t think so.
It was said of Reagan that he was an actor when Hollywood professionals sweat bullets trying to make movies that would have the audiences feeling good about themselves–by identifying with the characters who did the right thing–and their country.
When you can’t identify with a good character doing the right thing, you identify either with nobody in the film, or a victim, or a bad guy. None of which are particularly attractive.
What if Hollywood tried to do West Side Story, Oklahoma, Camelot, Showboat, South Pacific, Sound of Music, again? Could they do better than the originals? They could do different, but better? Not likely. They couldn’t summon up the original spirit, which is what made these huge hits–and perennials for high school musicals–so terrific.
What I love is the hypocrisy of the Hollywood elite. They will sit there and bemoan someone who went to school, worked their way up the ranks, and now makes a fantastic salary running a company. They will tell you how unfair it is that these people make so much money while the “workers” make so little.
They will tell you all of this while they make millions while the “workers” who make their films happen make so little. They will tell you this even if their film flops and the studio loses millions. I don’t remember hearing a story where an actor/actress returned the money they received from making a film when that film failed to make money, but they expect the same from others.
Don’t misunderstand, I do not begrudge them for being able to make that kind of money. I just can’t handle their hypocrisy, and this is but one example of it.
Pixar generally does a good job.
What Tarnsman said up at comment #3.
The msm (or simply, the leftist media) and hollywood can blame new technology or come up with any other excuse that they like, but I think it’s clear that Americans are voting with their wallets. We’re tired of being portrayed as the bad guys, the wrong guys, the stupid guys, the greedy guys…
This is a great country with a great history, with a foundation and culture built upon the rock of Christianity-oriented family.
We should offer no apologies or excuses.
We have an opportunity to share a great future, if we can reverse the tides of anti-Christianity, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-democracy that this same leftist media, hollywood, and academia (and the big unions, and the ACLU) have been purveying and forcing upon us for the last 50 years.
Why remake “The Taking of Pelham 123″? Why remake “The Manchurian Candidate” or “Day of the Jackal”? Did those remakes bring anything new to the table? Sure, John Carpenter remade “The Thing”; but he went back to the original source material (“Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell) which was unfilmable at the time the original movie was made (due to technical limitations), and made a very good movie.
Why make a movie out of a forgettable TV show like “Car 54, Where Are You?”? Was there a huge base of fans clamoring for it?
I see that they are going to remake “Highlander” and “Red Dawn”, and make a movie version of “The A-Team”. Anyone want to make a prediction about the quality of those projects?
The studios try to claim that talent prices are the culprit, but the real problem lies with the many layers of overpaid studio employees, the low intelligence and dubious taste of said employees, and the lack of accountability for their decisions.
Hollywood never fails to go to their default villain: the Nazi. There are other evil beings besides Nazi’s for more contemporary times, but Hollywood has blinders on & all they can see are Nazi’s. The Nazi’s can be actualy Nazi’s, skinheads, or other white supremacists. This is a worn-out rag of a story. I throw my worn-out rags away, yet Hollywood keeps recycling sh*t.
How many Nazi movies have been released in the last few years? One is too many.
But the minute I saw the place I knew it was doomed. How stupid is the business model that attracts and caters to those who are explicitly anti-capitalist and countercultural in their orientations.
-while i tend to agree that the universities are, sooner or later, going to face some serious re-valuation of their credentials, let’s not forget that for years they have made good money by catering to all manner of romantic or countercultural orienations. In a modern culture where we have moved beyond formal ritual initiations for youth, young people have had to go through their own staging of trials where they learn about the system in which they are going to have to one day compete, by first opposing it. While most academics remain formal “rebels” to appeal to their young audience (while becoming bureaucratically commonplace in other respects), most students don’t remain lifelong students but join the non-academic workforce, sooner or later.
We need some respect for the paradox that the capitalist system thrives on opposition to it. Just take scientists, for example, arguably our most productive people. SOme of them are well-socialized and conservative in nature, but a lot are not and can’t stop thinking of themselves in terms of the Galileo myth.
What is new today is that opposition to the system seems no longer to be productive when that opposition attempts to reject the system in its entirety, i.e. to organize around only a few competing centres/narratives that style themselves as the alternatives to the present system. The various intellectual possibilities and the scope and scale of unquestioning romanticism have been played out, for reasons under discussion. BUt the new possibilities we can look for in a less centralized marketplace will continue to develop the paradox of making the system more productive by opposing parts of it. The winners, I expect and hope, will be those with a less Utopian cast of mind but they will have to have resentments to motivate them in attempting something new.
Hollywood makes movies that resonate for people who live within LA, or NYC, not for the rest of us. Thus, what to them is a compelling storyline often is seen by the rest of us either unfortunate or reprensible.
They are dying. Right now, the writers, tradesmen and executives are squabbling over a shrinking pie.
New Mexico has had several movies produced here that did well. They got out of SoCal and found out that they could hire cheap, both in terms of property rentals and non union hard working staff, have year round good weather, and half the crew on their westerns could already ride horses.
Personally I get a kick out of recognizing the scenery of my haunts. In 3:10 to Yuma it was filmed between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. It sure didn’t look like Yuma, but it sure was pretty. Beerfest was filmed around town in ABQ, including the German-American club and on a roof downtown. The childrens hospital gives it away in the background. No Country for Old Men has him hunting in “Texas”, but I run hounds in the hills on the horizon SW of ABQ. I guess I get a little local thrill out of such things.
The only bad part of the film industry transplanting itself here is the celebrities who walk into the middle of nowhere and expect to be treated like royalty. People here just don’t bow and scrape.
Hi Richard,
European socialists after WWII talked about capturing the commanding heights of the economy. These included steel, coal, oil and the railways.
Eventually, the unregulated portion of the economy got so large, that the commanding heights weren’t as commanding as they once were. They sold off those enterprises about the time they became irrelevant. Living organisms have a tendency to work around dead spots in the system. That is why a society eventually must become capitalist – or totalitarian. People try to squirm away as you grab them.
In the US, socialists took control of our commanding heights through stealth. By coincidence, those are the pieces you are talking about, the universities, the press, the schools and the culture.
As in the old soviet union, they can feel themselves losing grip on society, and are trying feverishly to fix it. Unfortunately, the new methods increase individual power at the expense of the organization. Even if they could make money by endorsing new methods, it wouldn’t have the ideological satisfaction of the old ways.
James
Isn’t it called “Indy”, or is that just a Hoosier thing.
James, so too with some of the other studios. That’s why I for one–and for totally selfish reasons–would have some regrets to see Hollywood go belly up.
I’ve been using shows to teach my organizational behavior courses to undergraduates for a number of years now. This semester the line-up includes several episodes of shows appearing on the major networks (The Office, Prison Break, Arrested Development, Lost, My Name is Earl, Ocean’s 11, Monk, Ugly Betty, Better of Ted, 24, CSI, and House) along with reality shows (The Apprentice, Hell’s Kitchen, The Real Hustle, American Chopper, Deadliest Catch, Start-up Junkies, Ax Men, and Extreme Makeover Home Edition). For all the duds that they surely produce, Hollywood does produce compelling content, compelling enough at least that I can get 20-year old students to watch and from which they can more easily learn than with the textbook alone.
Why remake “The Taking of Pelham 123″? Why remake “The Manchurian Candidate” or “Day of the Jackal”? Did those remakes bring anything new to the table? Sure, John Carpenter remade “The Thing”; but he went back to the original source material (”Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell) which was unfilmable at the time the original movie was made (due to technical limitations), and made a very good movie.
Why make a movie out of a forgettable TV show like “Car 54, Where Are You?”? Was there a huge base of fans clamoring for it?
Today, it seems like most movies are remakes of old movies, old comic books, and old TV shows. When a truly original movie comes along, it’s almost a relevation. A big reason why I’ve quit watching new movies is that they’re all derivative. Why pay money to see something I’ve seen before? How entertaining is it to watch a movie when the outcome is predictable within 15 minutes.
Make something original and maybe I’ll see it. Make a movie that doesn’t insult me and the odds of me watching will increase. Otherwise, I have plenty of better things to do with my time and money.
“I see that they are going to remake “Highlander” and “Red Dawn”, and make a movie version of “The A-Team”. Anyone want to make a prediction about the quality of those projects?”
Highlander, feh. The first one was fairly entertaining – do you remember the moral of the 2nd Highlander movie?
“HIGHLANDER – THERE SHOULD ONLY HAVE BEEN ONE!!!”
I had thought so many made for tv nails had been driven into that coffin that it couldn’t ever crawl back up from the slime. Guess I was wrong.
How about a trivia break?
What rifle was used to break the eggs of the Giant Claw? The “gun that would stop anything.”
This was probably the first product plug I ever saw in a movie.
For over 20 years Hollywood has looked to male writers under 30 to give them the material to make blockbusters. Anyone not in the highly prized 18-24 age group who likes these movies has stayed home. Staying home has become a lifestyle, instead of the lifestyle that once was going to the movies at least one time a week and often more. The price of the ticket, parking, popcorn and babysitters has made the movie experience a non-starter when if you wait 6 months it’ll be out on DVD.
Then there is always the fact that in the early days of Hollywood Sam Goldwyn loved being an American. Uncle Carl Laemmle couldn’t bring his relatives over from Germany fast enough. They made movies that praised American values, soldiers were revered, a life of crime was punished not glorified. Today Hollywood hates America and what the rest of us stand for. So we have simply chosen not to support them. Oh boo hoo hoo they’re failing. It’s not our fault, it’s theirs, and we should not bail them out.
In my own project (the life and times of a small area in western Scotland), I am finding that a LOT of old books and archival sources are being digitized, and available on the ‘net. Like, books I would have to borrow from Harvard’s library, are out there, and I can copy and print them for my own use! (eg, the book Sir John McNeill wrote back in the 1830s about Russia’s plans to dominate Persia)
This is reality: universities are built around libraries. Without a library, universities as we know them, are simply not universities. Accreditation of these institutions are dependent upon the number of volumes in their libraries.
Well. What happens to the dreaming spires when the ‘libraries’ are on the net (and I include digitized copies of such as the Lindisfarne Gospels)…
The one thing left to universities is the status attached to the ‘experience’ of attending their ‘halls of learning.’ And they are in the middle of destroying that too, by embracing ‘affirmative action’, where Obama can be ‘editor of the Harvard Law Review’ without producing anything of ‘scholarly’ value. OK, there are the ‘contacts made’ while there. But how long are those ‘contacts’ valuable in the workplace, and when are they replaced by the even more valuable ‘contacts’ made by one’s working life?
James said:
“Pixar generally does a good job.”
Pixar is amazing. All of their movies are excellent. I don’t think they’ve made a turkey yet.
Larry J said:
“Today, it seems like most movies are remakes of old movies, old comic books, and old TV shows. When a truly original movie comes along, it’s almost a relevation. A big reason why I’ve quit watching new movies is that they’re all derivative.”
I’m a big fan of science fiction. There is a huge reservoir of excellent science fiction novels and short stories that could be made into first rate movies but almost none of those movies have been made. Examples are Larry Niven’s “Ringworld”, Joe Haldeman’s “Forever War”, Robert Silverburg’s “The Man in the Maze”, Alexi Panshin’s novels, the list is almost endless. I was amazed at how badly they screwed up “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. The original was a top quality movie but the recent retread was a complete woofer. What idiot turns a classic movie into a woofer?
One retread movie that was interesting but didn’t do all that well at the box office was “The War of the Worlds” staring Tom Cruise. In that case, I think the retread was better than the 1953 original. The tripods were very interesting and utterly terrifying. I think the retread “The War of the Worlds” bombed because it followed too closely after “Independence Day” which was another excellent movie.
I think this piece has some good points but I think its missing alot of points as well.
Hollywood has produced crap movies for some time now… not only crap but over priced as well. This has lead to most ppl simply avoiding spending money on movies because the chance that the movie will be good is slim. Then enters netflix… netflix is where everyone now turns to to pay the reasonable prices to see movies. This combo has done alot of damage to movie theaters. Then add in things like how the MPAA is trying to screw ppl who buy DVDs and such with things like DRM and preventing ppl from fast forwarding through previews and a host of other things.
Ppl have revolted against the clearly overpriced and borderline abusive actions that the MPAA and also the music business have done.
The problem for them is 2 fold. First ppl can either go somewhere else/or not at all or they can get it free via file sharing. I was never a big fan of downloading stuff for free.. a few movies some porn some music but I often bought the stuff after downloading… never again for that.
After reading how groups like the MPAA are setting up DRM and other programs to basically create a “leasing” system where when they feel like it they turn the DRM and none of your movies or song work anymore and you have to buy them again… and this “system” would never be listed on what your buying so you would never know until they turn it off… SCREW THEM. I will never buy music or movies from either group ever again.
The second problem comes in the fact that you can produce, edit and promote/sell movies very easily and very cheaply via the internet. They aren’t needed any more and they(unless obama gets his way) can’t stop ppl from creating they’re own movies and such.
Don’t even get me started on colleges. Besides the fact that around 60% of colleges should just be closed straight out. All federal funds for colleges should be cut and any college that gets state funds should be required to meet all of the following.
1. All “standard” courses(such as your english, math etc 1st/2nd year course) must be standardized. All colleges that get state/local/taxpayer money must accept free of charge any credits transfered from another funded college.
2. All above college must offer the chance to test out of all “standard” courses as well as 75% of all course offered in a 4
year program. They can only charge 10% max of the course cost for taking the test. The test must also be given to the students taking the full course and it most be the most “weighted” of all tests given. (This will help prevent them from creating completely BS tests on things they won’t teach or test for in class).
By putting in these 2 simple rules your cut the cost of a college degree by over 50% plus reward ppl who study and learn for themselves instead of being forced to waste time going at a slower pace.
23 LOTM
Since you’re a Claw fan, I was wondering if you’ve read the writeup at badmovies.org. Pretty good stuff.
Movies and music industries need low costs because they inevitably have to produce a bunch of junk to get to excellence.
And a particularly perverse result of high costs, which require more hands on by the investors/managers, is that they wouldn’t know a good movie if it slapped them across the face. What is produced mirrors their world view. Which, frankly, is boring, pedestrian, shallow and uninteresting.
Hollywood is making movies which mirror themselves. And no one wants to watch.
Funny really.
Derek
I can only conclude one of two things: 1) Good writing is the rarest commodity among those resources required for making a movie. 2) The movie business is run by morons. Looking at the last two statements, I’m not sure it’s an either-or situation.
Good writers are NOT hard to find. Well, good writers ARE hard to find if you want to pay them peanuts and kick them in the shins constantly. Hollywood’s corporate culture treats writers as second or third class citizens. Directors and Actors are the big shots, writers are generally treated as semi-skilled hired help who fill in the minor details of someone else’s artistic vision. So, you get pretty stars and dramatic images coupled with hackneyed plots and styrofoam characters.
Hollywood has produced crap movies for some time now… not only crap but over priced as well. This has lead to most ppl simply avoiding spending money on movies because the chance that the movie will be good is slim.
Sounds like the “Market for Lemons” from a couple of posts back.
Speaking of Zombies:
MAX BROOKS has just published
“The Zombie Survival Guide – Recorded Attacks”
Brooks prepares us for future attacks, reminding us that if we don’t learn from history, we’re bound to repeat it.
Knowing that successful societies consist of well organized, informed citizens, in future attacks Max recommends we keep our heads while cutting off theirs.
The Zombie Survival Guide – Recorded Attacks
From the Stone Age to the information age, the undead have threatened to engulf the human race. They’re coming. They’re hungry.
Don’t wait for them to come to you!
This is the graphic novel the fans demanded: major zombie attacks from the dawn of humanity.
On the African savannas, against the legions of ancient Rome, on the high seas with Francis Drake . . . every civilization has faced them.
Here are the grisly and heroic stories–complete with eye-popping artwork that pulsates with the hideous faces of the undead.
Organize before they rise!
Scripted by the world’s leading zombie authority, Max Brooks, Recorded Attacks reveals how other eras and cultures have dealt with–and survived–the ancient viral plague.
By immersing ourselves in past horror we may yet prevail over the coming outbreak in our time.
About the Author
The New York Times bestselling author of The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z, MAX BROOKS has been called “the Studs Terkel of zombie journalism.”
Ah for the days of The Monster From The Black Lagoon.
Ah for the days of The Creature From The Black Lagoon.
You can say that again.
I hate being reduced to a hoary cliche but the fact is that what most people want to see when they go to the movies is something life affirming. Hollywood isn’t providing that. Because Hollywood can’t provide that. When our entertainment providers have all, with the rarest of exceptions, sworn their allegiance to a death cult, they are incapable of projecting genuine uplift because it’s been leached out of them. Which is not to say that Hollywood’s sausage product won’t continue to be served up to us indefinitely. Postmortem effects can go on a long long time.
I’m not paying $$ to support actors who enable those who rape 13 year olds. Screw Hollywood. If tomorrow, it was blasted into a valley of glass, I would cheer.
It would be nice to have an American film industry somewhere.
Eggplant – I’ve always loved the sci-fi genre myself. “Bladerunner – Director’s Cut” is way up there on my personal list of best movies ever made. Starts off pretending to be a typical cop chases the bad guys movie, and then turns into one of the most thought provoking analyses of morality ever put on film. Not to mention the sheer poetry of “all these moments will be lost – like tears in rain.” The ageless fear of death we all feel summed up in a single line.
“Gattaca” is a little known film, relatively low budget, no special effects, incredibly thought provoking script. Too much thought and too little action for many. I loved it.
“Pitch Black” is an extremely well done sci-fi horror story, set in one of the creepiest worlds ever imagined – and then in the last 5 minutes it turns into an examination of Redemption by Blood, which is astonishining when it shows up. People who think it’s just an action/horror show often miss that entirely. (too bad the sequel stunk so bad, but that’s par for the course.)
And to round off my favorite sci-fi movies, I’ve got to mention Alien and Aliens, the first two in the series. 3 and 4 stunk so bad that they just about ruined the franchise, so I won’t watch those anymore. But the first two are absolutely perfect, and if anyone wondered what Space Marines vs. Big Bad Monsters would look like, you can’t do better than Aliens.
Dishonorable mention to Starship Troopers, Verhoven destroyed a great work by Heinlein because he had absolutely no respect for the subject matter. The bugs were cool, but overall that movie was a travesty.
And of course I’ve got to mention my all time favorite from the Golden Age – FORBIDDEN PLANET! Any film that can remake Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” while inspiring the entire Star Trek franchise in just over 90 minutes absolutely deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.
And relevance? Just look at the world today – “Monsters from the Id!” indeed.
This article makes some very valid points!
-And…
Now that the average Joe & Jane can be movie critics and write their own reviews, people are not left to merely rely on leftist movie critics and this also can effect a movie’s success or lack thereof.
There have been plenty of times I’ve chucked the idea of seeing a movie because of the local reviews on the Fandago website. The same goes for DVDs. Some get such bad ratings they are not even worth putting them on my NetFlix queue.
This also goes for Amazon.com purchases. Even if I’m going to purchase something locally instead of on the internet I’ll often search amazon.com first to check out what other people’s opinions and suggestions are regarding a product.
What was the world like without the INTERNET again??????
What is scarey is entertainment and computers are the only things left this country is known for.
We don’t make anything anymore.
So what you’re saying is the computers are killing the entertainment industry.
So in the end we will be reading blogs that won’t have newspaper reports to feed them and watching cable with no new sources of entertainment.
Ultimately we will be eating either solent green or very expensive imported food, and watching the only surviving network, Turner Classics which will have gathered all the repeats.
All this time, Ricpic, I thought they were filming it’s manufacture, not the final product.
Eggplant #72:
The fact that they keep on making remakes is a remarkable indictaion of their lack of talent, but what is even more amazing is how they change the basic ideas behind the original films.
Rarely is this a good thing. In the case of Independence Day, it was done well and cleverly, parallelling the original George Pal film closely in some ways and yet developing a basic difference in the story (victory went to “the littlest things” but Man made them and not God.)
In the case of The Day the Earth Stood Still they took the original idea and made it into the extermination of the human race for a whole different reason. It is ironic, because we know now who sent Klattu and Gort – it was the intergalatic version of the UN or EU – the people who turned over their enforcement of laws to machines because they could not trust themselves. If they wanted to do a remake, it should have been one where we whip their butts and tell them it is time to take responsibility for their own lives.
So perhaps the real problem with remakes is not just that they lack imagination, but that the people who make them invariably see things differently than those who made the earlier versions. So we end up with the equivalent of Casablanca as a musical with an all-gay cast, or 30 Sec Over Tokyo with women pilots who refuse to drop the bombs.
I remember having a conversation with an Iranian refugee. He said that after he got to the states he really grew to hate Hollywood because the movies he saw in Iran produced by them, were nothing like what he found the US to be. I wonder how much damage those punks have caused over the years?
What is scarey is entertainment and computers are the only things left this country is known for. We don’t make anything anymore. So what you’re saying is the computers are killing the entertainment industry. So in the end we will be reading blogs that won’t have newspaper reports to feed them and watching cable with no new sources of entertainment. Ultimately we will be eating either solent green or very expensive imported food, and watching the only surviving network, Turner Classics which will have gathered all the repeats.
What’s killing those sunset industries is their inability to use the new methods, not the other way around. The Internet has generated a huge amount of original content at an extremely low cost and done it so successfully that it has destroyed the monopoly rents of the old systems. The old systems used vast amounts of resources to produce marginal products. An MSM investigative report on cars or featurette on food can cost used to cost vast amounts of money. As long as they were the only game in town, they could charge for it. The old systems have to adapt to the new methods of working. There should be a lot of action in inventing ways to monetize this, creating markets for the new services that have emerged; getting stuff to work and produce more for less. That is where a lot of the money, I think is at, or should be. But building these markets will ipso facto create a revolution. Which is what we’re seeing now.
One reason things are so critical in the US is the simultaneous block obsolescence of so many industries in which it formerly led. The worst thing that can happen is to hold on to the past. What should be recognized is that the places that are on the leading edge of failure as a new paradigm takes shape are also at the leading edge of potential success because is where the replacement opportunities are. But I think there’s a lot of inertia in the system. They’re going to be rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic for a long time before if finally dawns on them that they should have gone by air.
Hollywood never fails to go to their default villain: the Nazi.
Well, Sebastian, the Nazis are Hollywood’s perfect villains – white guys.
In comparison, scant attention has been paid to the horrific crimes committed by the Japanese in occupied Asia. Hollywood doesn’t want to dwell on the uncomfortable truth that non-whites can be brutal and imperialistic too. To say nothing of the fact that knowing something about the atrocities committed by the Japanese makes hash of the leftist position that dropping atomic bombs on Japan was far worse than anything they did.
Of course, the Japanese troops made sex slaves of many thousands of women in occupied Asia. A Hollywood producer’s reaction to that is probably: “And that’s a bad thing? Why?”
“But I think there’s a lot of inertia in the system.”
—
California,
The NEA,
and dysfunctional homes
all stare us in the face with the failure of big government led, top down “solutions” to situations that were far less problematical before the cure was applied.
The solution?
Double down, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!
Ladies and Gentlemen
Please excuse the interruption.
On the recent thread “The Power of Legend” I recommended a book on Samuel de Champlain and referred to it simply as “Champlain.” I was in error.
As “The Power of Legend” is now closed, I offer the correction here.
The title is “Champlain’s Dream” and is authored by David Hackett
http://www.amazon.com/Champlains-Dream-David-Hackett-Fischer/product-reviews/1416593322
My apologies for both the error and the interruption.
Heyyoukids
Most movies are dreck. The action flicks like the new James Bond was bad because of bad filming techniques. So choppy the audience was left behind. The director obviously thought that was so neat. Some times actor and such get so involved in being neat instead of a good story and and how to show it to the audience.
Other action stuffs is all blood and revenge.
However we had good movie the New Star Trek retelling the story of Spock,Kirk and all, was very well done and made us feel good.
300 was good but I always skip the junk scenes like the foolish sex and weirdos in the Persian camp. A straighter rather than fantasy would have been better.
What made 300 good was the story. Heroic men of valor even if they died. Plus it was a true story.
Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan can give us lots of stories with the proper elements. But those element of heroism, even with questions that haunt men’s souls may not resonate with Obama’s anti hero agenda. Remember that Hollywood has spent most of the last 20-30 years destroying the values that mankind values like decency, sacrifice, heroic valor. Man can win. Americans are the good guys.
Hollywood during the Depression made movies that were good escape and entertainment and made people feel hopeful and happy.
This depression, people are being cautious on what they spend money on.
The TV entertainment shows are awful. It has been difficult to know when a favorite show was being run and people stopped trying. Hulu is a great alternative. I watch shows I like when I like.
So if I do not have the time to watch when it was scheduled even if I knew the schedule I can watch it later. I have done that this last year.
In #72, concerning “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, I said rhetorically:
“What idiot turns a classic movie into a woofer?”
In #88, RWE gave the answer:
“So perhaps the real problem with remakes is not just that they lack imagination, but that the people who make them invariably see things differently than those who made the earlier versions.”
This of course was exactly the problem with the remake of “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. The idiots who wrote the screenplay were moonbats who would like to see the human race punished (exterminated) for not believing in Global Warming. These idiot moonbats were so focused on their political message that they forgot to make the movie entertaining. To be fair, the people who wrote the original movie also presented a left wing message. Fortunately the writers for the excellent original movie were sufficiently professional that they saw the importance of doing a competent job rather than simply shrieking politics.
Interesting bit of trivia: The original version of the movie had a professor writing some equations on a chalk board that were later corrected by the alien visitor. I own the DVD for the original movie and checked those equations. They’re actually valid equations describing the time-of-flight problem for a parabolic orbital trajectory (eccentricity = 1.0). The people who made that movie must have actually asked an aeronautical engineer to provide them with some valid equations that an extraterrestrial would need to know.
Interesting thing happening here in LaLaLand. The Coen Brothers have a new film that opened last week, “A Serious Man”. Early reviews are raves: “Better than ‘Fargo’.”
These are the same Coen Brothers as are responsible for Fargo, Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski, No Country For Old Men — M A J O R big ginormous Hollywood money-makers. Not to mention multiple Academy Award nominations for many people in lots of different categories.
Yet … there have been no billboards around town, no ads on the sides of buses. I’ve seen a couple of two-page ads in magazines announcing that a new Coen brother was opening, but none of the usual foo-farah. AND, this is what’s really bizarre — it opened in TWO theaters in all of Los Angeles. A COEN BROTHERS MOVIE — in two lousy theaters. A colleague who lives in Anaheim says it’s not playing at all down there.
I don’t understand what’s going on or what that means. I suppose maybe it might have been affected by the recent head-chopping at a couple of the studios but you’d think that even a headless studio would do everything in its power to make sure a certain money-maker would open in as many theaters as possible. ‘Tis a puzzlement.
BTW, the bellowing Obama fans from last November are also complaining about the lack of any good movies the last several months. So even the liberal progressives are fed up with Michael Moore and his ilk. I have a feeling that movie-making has been in just as much hot water for just as long a time as the newspapers have been — they’ve just been better at hiding it. What can it say about the whole movie system if Disney (for God’s sake!) is in trouble?!?
RAH said:
“What made 300 good was the story. Heroic men of valor even if they died. Plus it was a true story.”
“300″ was an excellent movie and King Leonidas is one of my heros. I also liked the movie even more because the moonbats hated it.
The story concerning the Battle of Thermopylae needs to be re-told to every generation.
Los Angeles City Council candidate Christine Essel has endorsed Instant Runoff Voting (IRV).
Essel has 30 years of experience as a business and community leader.
“We are thrilled to have the support of Christine Essel,” said Gautam Dutta of New America Foundation. “By saving tax dollars and making the voting process easier, IRV will help new leaders make LA a stronger, more vibrant city.”
Essel has served California and the City of Los Angeles as an appointed commissioner on numerous boards. She was chair of the California Film commission from 1999-2007, serving as the lead representative for LA’s entertainment industry in Sacramento.
The Los Angeles special election for District 2 will be held on September 22, 2009. If no candidate wins a majority, a runoff election will be held on December 8, 2009.
—
—
While she was chair of the California Film commission, she is on the record in Florida, Alaska, and elsewhere giving advice to those communities on how to better compete with LA to have flicks filmed there instead of Hollywood.
Seemed to have more to do with her position as VP @ Paramount Studios than her responsibilities at the Commission.
During that time, Hollywood has witnessed the exodus of Tens of Billions dollars worth of production work.
She’s now running a massively-funded carpet bagging campaign to join the already corrupt council.
Of course content could be a minor issue and increased audience sophistication. When you watch shows from Hollywood it become so obvious how they interweave their agenda into the story line. Sometimes it’s so obvious you wonder why they think, in 2009, a Bush joke is relevant in a drama. Better to go read an e-book.
What will obliterate Hollywood will be computers. In a few years you’ll be able to create persona on the “screen” so life like you won’t be able to tell them from a flesh and blood actor. Effectively this eliminates actors, sets, all those “best boys etc. Then anyone with a bit of time, some writing and creative talent and the desire will be able to produce major films. And likely better and more original than the current lot.
I refuse to contain my schadenfreude, oh, schadenfreude…
Hollywood – Those inglorious basterds are dying an inglorious death. Good riddance.
Nice collection of classic films after depiction of Obamanation @ 1:40.
Contributed by Trish.
Under Pressure
Were you present for that Atlas malfunction, RWE?
Wretchard — it is a mistake to think that on a simplistic level “the internet killed newspapers/tv/movies/magazines etc.” As I blogged in the past on the LAT, that newspaper peaked in circulation in 1988, and went downhill very fast afterwards. Long before the internet, Craigslist, and other things.
The internet makes things worse for legacy media, but does not by itself create the problems. And for example, the WSJ does well by providing specialized business news (though lately they have ambitions of being a general purpose newspaper hence their fashion and sports mini-sections). Even in the digital age.
What happened was not cost structure, which can be fairly quickly changed, or new media content, but rather the massive social divide between the “cognitive elite” or the folks creating content in newspapers, radio (except for talk radio), TV, movies, magazines, etc.
For example, in 1984, the LAT had columnists Jack Smith and Jim Murray, who appealed to … MEN. The primary readers of newspapers. This created VALUE to readers who would pay for it. By the mid 1990′s, the LAT was employing sportswriters who would go on to become sex change operation trans-sexuals, and columnists such as Al Martinez who were transparent PC enforcers. Older White males, the backbone of the readership, fled. BEFORE the internet.
Newspapers are so handy, so innately desirable, so easy to read, in any situation, so potentially full of information, entertainment, and comfort, that it took massive elitism, feminized attitudes, disdain for the readership, and constant status mongering to take generations of readers and turn them off newspapers. Fortunately, today’s editors, writers, and reporters are up to the job! The NYT for example puts “diversity” (despite the fact that readers are mostly older White men) as it’s number one focus.
The same is true for Hollywood — the last gasp of guys like Cannell, or John Hughes, or John Carpenter, was in the 1980′s. Now you have the JJ Abrams or Joss Whedons, second or third generation Hollywood producer/writers. Incapable of connecting with their audience because they have contempt for them.
Ultimately it is the people, the maintenance of a network of elites, who don’t live and die by feedback mechanisms from the audience. At least popular authors know that if they piss off their audience, they won’t sell as many books. There is no feedback mechanism in the current legacy media to correct for inevitably second/third generation hereditary elitism.
There IS in the internet (ad views/page views) and the issue of money always dominates. Media is more populist when people affect how creators get paid. When there is no direct link, elites seeking hereditary advantage and poisonous elitism run wild.
Wife & I have made the dicision that we will never go to any movie where the actors have made anti-American, or any anti-troop, statements. Also, why go to a movie that is only a remake of a previous movie?
Another thing that sets the Hollywood of old apart from its present incarnation is the fact that people who made the old movies – I’m thinking here especially of actors – had some experience of life apart from making movies. A lot of the old character actors worked at other kinds of jobs before getting into the movie biz, whereas today you have people who’ve never done anything but go to film school. The older films resonate with us in no small measure because we can relate to the people on the screen, even though the old stars were unapologetic about glamor and contemporary actors make a fetish of their supposed “realism”. No matter how talented today’s performers are, most of them have a certain artificial gloss, a kind of sheltered look that suggests they’ve never really done anything. I find that distracting in many cases.
The dearth of reading, as other commenters have already noted, is also painfully evident. And when they do get hold of a piece of classic literature, (“Troy” and “The Scarlet Letter” come immediately to mind) the tendency is to twist it out of all recognition in the effort to make it “relevant”. I’m not talking about making changes to the story in adaptation, which is a necessary part of the process. You can’t present in two hours something that takes twenty hours to read. “Doctor Zhivago” and “Last of the Mohicans” both made significant changes to the stories they were adapting, but remained true to the spirit of the originals. Same with “Lord of the Rings”. And the entirely failed business of remaking classic movies has, with one or two exceptions, been even worse on that score. Why they keep doing it is beyond all reason.
That said, I love movies, and while nowadays I tend to wait for the DVDs, there’s really nothing to compare with seeing them on a big screen in a theater filled with other people. One more thing passing away into the myth of a lost America
Back in 1987, Stan Davis described the phenomena we’re all facing at faster pace, in his book – Future Perfect. So 22 years ago, he said:
the value of a deliverable = information / mass
(it reads better as a formula)
He called this process demassification…getting all the “atoms” out, replaced by “bits.”
Combining an increase in the available information above the line, with elimination of the mass below the line creates the potential for an infinite improvement in the value of the deliverable. The Web has begun to validate Davis’ predictions on how the information society would operate. In the no-mass model, the quality of the information then directly determines the value of the deliverable.
Apply the Davis formula to newsprint, or studios. The amount of information is limited, no matter its quality, and more information requires more mass. Davis also forewarns: Beware the no-mass business model, because your competitor can offer for free, exactly what your business depends on for survival.
Soon with tools like uTube (in HD) 100s of thousands of alternative videos will be on-demand and free. Who’ll then spend the money to go to the movie theater to see studio clunkers like “the Claw,” over and over? Vendor-neutral personal-video-recorders seem to validate Prof Davis’ postulates. And for $12, I can buy enough popcorn for 50 movies at home.
Shumpeter called it creative destruction…the incumbents are always doomed, whenever you care to look – past, present, future. The only salvation for the status quo is legislation. Ayn Rand clearly explains monopolies are only made possible by laws restricting competition.
Bleak economic outlook w/ really high taxes w/ rising energy costs (more taxation) means everybody becomes more value conscious.
Outbreaks (even scares) of N1H1 and woe be unto the malls. Telecommuting becomes “temporarily” mandatory, but once proven, becomes dejure.
BTW, the Federal Trade Commission is having a conference in WDC (Dec. 1-2) to discuss how to subsidize certain types of journalism.
Switching over to NPR to get my thinking aligned.
I’m learning to hum. Mmmmm…mmmm…mmm.
I’ve never understood the whole approach to remakes. If a film is great, the odds against doing a better version are astronomical. If it’s a classic, honor it. If, however, there’s a B or C movie that can be an A movie if done right, that would seem to me to be the project to attempt. The classic John Houston “Maltese Falcon” was the third version of that book. The previous versions had scripts that had “improved” on the novel. Houston had the unique idea of sticking to the original story and characters as Hammett wrote them. Crazy, huh?
A great movie is, to a large extent, an accident. The right combination of script, cast, editor, producer and director crash together and we have a miracle. The process is usually messy and chaotic and almost never easy. And when it’s done, you can’t imagine how it could be anything other than what it is. And it almost never can be. The only exception I can think of off hand is Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven. I love them both.
Sebastian #60 and Donna V #91– Nazis make such great villains because of the gorgeous uniforms. Come on, don’t you want one, too?
“Why make a movie out of a forgettable TV show like “Car 54, Where Are You?”? Was there a huge base of fans clamoring for it?”
So that decaying boomer leftists can pretend that they are still young and relevant, of course.
@71 heathermc
You may find the following article interesting. Like you, I am delighted at the availability of so many historical resources on the internet. But this article raises some red flags, not least among them the internet’s potential for compounded errors.
http://tinyurl.com/ybltrvo
Google Books: Is It Good for History?
By Robert B. Townsend
“The Google Books project promises to open up a vast amount of older literature, but a closer look at the material on the site raises real worries about how well it can fulfill that promise and the potential costs to history scholarship and teaching.
This past spring I spent a fair amount of time delving into Google Books for a research project on the early history of the profession, and from a researcher’s point of view I have to say the results were deeply disconcerting. Yes, the site offers up a number of hard-to-find works from the early 20th century with instant access to the text. And yes, for some books it offers a useful keyword search function for finding a reference that might not be in the index. But my experience suggests the project is falling short of its central promise of creating an accessible repository of the world’s literature. Instead, it is piling mistake upon mistake with little evidence of basic quality control. The problems I encountered fit into three broad categories: (1) the quality of the scans is decidedly mixed; (2) the information about the books (the “metadata” in infospeak) is often inaccurate; and (3) the public domain is narrowly and erroneously construed, sadly restricting access to materials that should be freely available.”
“So we end up with the equivalent of Casablanca as a musical with an all-gay cast, or 30 Sec Over Tokyo with women pilots who refuse to drop the bombs.”
This is the reason terrific SF stories from writers like Niven should wait until this era of Hollywood passes until they are made.
Imagine one of the characters of “Integral Trees”chaining himself to an integral tree, or another character refusing to eat the turkeys because they are “people too”.
Or a remake of any of the Known Universe series making excuses for the behavior of the Kzin, and blaming humanity for their violence in the same fashion the left blamed the U.S. for the 9/11 attacks.
That’s what you’d get out of Hollywood today.
I would venture to say that hollywood’s biggest problem is an inability and/or unwillingness to take a chance on making a movie with a good story. I don’t think I have seen anything out of hollywood that is worth camel spit in the last 15 years or more. Meanwhile there are a lot of foreign and independent film makers who are creating some very good films. Hollywood’s business model needs to begin with quality stories and quality acting. They should also stop treating the public like children.
Alvin #107
Yeah, he sounds a little weird, but he is onto something, albeit probably inadvertently.
It has been discussed here and elsehwere how Hollywood seems to have as its only villains the fascists when leftist societies like the USSR and Communist China were guilty of rape, murder, and oppression an order of magnitude larger and they are the subject matter almost never.
That is a legitimate area of discussion and inquiry.
Even a blind Hollywood pig finds a truffle once in a while. After the surprise success of “High School Musical” I and II, Disney made a higher production value “High School Musical III” for a modest cost. Here are the results:
Cost: $13M
U.S. gross: $246M
International gross: $307M
Total ross: $546M
The first two productions cost peanuts, but Wikipedia doesn’t have the income numbers for those.
All BC members should, if only for cultural study reasons, watch these feel-good videos. They’re lots of fun. If you have teen or pre-teen daughters, I’m sure you’ve already been subjected to them at length.
Even a blind Hollywood pig finds a truffle once in a while. After the surprise success of “High School Musical” I and II, Disney made a higher production value “High School Musical III” for a modest cost. Here are the results:
Cost: $13M
U.S. gross: $246M
International gross: $307M
Total gross: $546M
The first two productions cost peanuts, but Wikipedia doesn’t have the income numbers for those.
All BC members should, if only for cultural study reasons, watch these feel-good videos. They’re lots of fun. If you have teen or pre-teen daughters, I’m sure you’ve already been subjected to them many times.
You could tell all you needed to know about Hollywood in its response to Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” I didn’t think it was very good, though I admired his attempt to deal seriously with a Christian film. But the movie, not even in English (!), made a small fortune. Any savvy businessman would look at that and realize the vast corpus of Christian story and legend that could serve as film fodder for years on end (just think of all the tales of Saints). Yet the Hollywood response to it…. nothing but contempt and aggressive attacks on Gibson and those who went to see his film. And many of those people were folks who went to see almost nothing else produced by Hollywood. An untapped, vast new audience ready for the taking. Hollywood spurned them.
Let them croak.
If you’re desperate for good films, visit James Bowman’s site.
http://www.jamesbowman.net
He uses a simple three point system. No stars – Junk. One star – good. Two stars – great. Go to his list and pick any one or two star movies. You won’t be disappointed.
Pardon my enthusiasm, but there are soooo many books that could be turned into great flicks, yet they sit there, ignored, while the movie producers tread the same tired ground over and over.
Has anyone made a flick of Orwell’s “Coming Up For Air” or “Burmese Days”? No, yet each would be a gem, if done properly, and not expensive to produce.
Why no flick based on Philip Kerr’s Berlin Noir trilogy, about the Gestapo detective Bernie Gunther, a “good” German before, during and after the war? Kerr has written drek scripts for Hollywood, why not put these wonderfully atmospheric books on the screen.
In Australia, we subsidise art-house movies about homeless lesbians on the mean streets of Sunshine and wonder why audiences don’t turn up (are you listening, Anna Kokinos?). Yet there is material aplenty.
Shane Maloney’s novels featuring Murray Whelan are made for the screen, but only one has been produced. At the very least they would make a first rate TV series.
And if you want disaster, then the new book, Inferno, about the Black Saturday fires, has everything, including explosions, courtrooms, tragedy, weddings, hospitals, heroism and an insanely incompetent state government. Bought the book on Saturday and couldn’t put the book down. A movie would be similarly compelling.
No mo uro #112– it’s the uniforms I tell you! Compare the fabulous Nazi uniforms with the drab, dull communists. Nazi Germany was a grand pagent of villainy. Compare Speer’s architecture with Stalin’s dopey Warsaw wedding cake. Wierd?
I lost interest in Hollywood about 15 years ago. Basically, when you pay $10.00 for a movie ticket you are indirectly contributing to the ACLU, and other left-wing causes.
Just how bad are the movies coming from Hollywood? God awful bad. I have 25 premium movie channels, and 95% of the movies they show are not worth watching. Also, my netflix queue is empty because the new releases are total garbage.
A few modest additions:
89 Toad Excellent point. Anyone who has travelled overseas and watched whatever American entertainment was available on TV can recognize what a horrible ambassador Hollywood has become. And since most people around the world can’t or won’t visit America in person, the propagation multiplier has to be huge.
It seems also like Hollywood went thru its Schumpeter remake in the 70′s led by films like Star Wars. Anyone remember how bad the film industry was in the late 60′s/early 70′s?
Lastly, it is very encouraging to see so many quality posts from names new to me at BC. It is great to hear from you all.
Heyyoukids @93
Thanks for the headsup on David Hackett Fischer’s Champlain’s Dream. I have already added it to my birthday wish list, along with John Keegan’s American Civil War. Any Belmont Clubbers who have not read Fischer’s Washington’s Crossing or Albion’s Seed should go out right now and get them, even if it isn’t your birthday.
Walt
peterike: I don’t know if the Hollywood execs have the wit to figure it out, but Gibson did something unrepeatable with Passion. Many people used the film not for entertainment but as a religious exercise; trying to make real for themselves the Savior’s pain. It wouldn’t be at all the same for the lives of mere saints.
There seem to be duplicate James’. I’ll try to use a different nym.
Alex, how about “All of the Above” for 400?
1) There are a lot more entertainment choices today. North American video game revenues in 2008 were $21 billion. Hollywood box office revenue for 2008 was somewhere around $9.0-9.5 bn. Admittedly not the whole picture (you would have to figure in TV shows & DVD sales and rentals) … but clearly the old content paradigm of the Hollywood movie or TV show is not the 800-lb gorilla anymore.
How many views did that YouTube video of “Lions vs. Crocodile vs. Water Buffalo” get? How much did it cost to produce? The point is NOT “what was its box office revenue,” but how many people watch small vids like that for free, in the comfort of their own home, instead of going to all the hassle and expense of going out to a movie at the nearby megaplex.
When the entertainment value derived is in the same ballpark, free content will trump non-free content every time.
2) I can attest that, as powderburns @ 28 states, yes, a movie set does in fact qualify as one of the Top 5 Most Mind-Numbingly Boring Sites in the Universe. Having only about 10-15% of the personnel on the set actually working at any one given time, but still paying everyone from call time to wrap time, is a monstrously inefficient way to produce something. Imagine a brontosaurus having, errrr, a bodily function replete with massive straining and groaning, and finally managing to squeeze out a raisin … now imagine this happening every time, and you will have a pretty good idea of the Hollywood process. All that work, all that effort, on set and in studio and in the agencies … hundreds of thousands of man-hours … all that moolah … all to bring forth … “Mamma Mia” … “Hancock” … “Norbit” … “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.” etc. ad nauseum
3) Why all the remakes, sequels, prequels, and movies based on toys? Well, young Winthrop, a studio creative exec has never gotten fired for turning down the right idea. But plenty have gotten canned for saying yes to the wrong idea. Playing it safe, therefore, is the generally accepted best method of avoiding having to clean out one’s desk. Better still when one can play it safe by saying “yes” to a pre-sold product (remakes, sequels, prequels, movies based on toys, etc.), because the pre-sold aspect is like an insurance policy. Not a failproof guarantee (“Polar Express,” anyone? How could Tom Hanks in a Christmas movie based on a best-selling kids’ book go wrong? Oh, let us count the ways!) … but an insurance policy, nonetheless.
4) Old Hollywood turned out a lot of junk in addition to what we now recognize as the classics. The studios’ output in the 1940s was about 500 movies a year, and around 80 million tickets were sold each week (out of a nation of 150 million). But there’s junk and there’s “junk.” Not even the stoopidest film from those days could even begin to plumb the depths of the bottom-dwelling sludge (h3ll, even the surface-skimming semi-dreck) of today’s fare. Back then, take your 10-year-old to a grown-up movie and the worst that could happen would be little Johnny would grow bonking-off-the-seats fidgety, or he would fall asleep. But he would not be exposed to (a) saturation f-bombing, (b) graphic simulated sex, (c) gratuitous nudity, and (d) bodily function jokes galore.
Nihilism was confined to the occasional super-dark film noir, but even most of those had a “point” to them. And if they were based on something Raymond Chandler wrote or had Bogie or Mitchum in them, so much the better.
At worst, the junk from old Hollywood was, culturally speaking, pretty innocuous. Celluloid Twinkies. Not celluloid arsenic … which is the problem with much of today’s junk. Ingesting it is not harmless; it is suicidal.
5) There may be a small cause for rejoicing if my prediction turns out to be correct, that film schools will be one of the first casualties of the coming higher ed implosion. N-O-T-H-I-N-G they teach is something that cannot be learned elsewhere or via other methods for a lot less money, esp. the craft of filmmaking itself, esp. as the costs of filmmaking come down with digital production and post-production, and distribution costs (again, YouTube, anyone?) are virtually nil if what one wants is exposure (as opposed to a villa on the French Riviera).
6) In old Hollywood, the ratio of patriots & friendlies versus genuine America-haters was probably about the inverse of what it is today. The content of both eras generally reflects that ratio. When entertainment ceases to be, by definition “popular” and instead becomes a medium for the elites to talk to and about themselves, well, what do you *think* will happen to revenues?
A movie ticket was about a quarter in 1940. In today’s dollars that’s about $3.80. So the price of getting dumped on with contempt and obscenity and noisome mindlessness at the movies these days is about twice what it used to cost to go see something pleasant and occasionally inspiring. People are not stupid. Even in flyover territory.
Kage Baker’s Empress of Mars was a recent book I felt could be adapted to the big screen rather easily. One of the book’s phrases – “Beer for the workers!” will forever stick in my mind.
Science fiction, adventure, capitalism, and sticking it to the man, all in one book. Great fun and great reading!
O/T–for Whiskey
The Pill
Damnable modern medicine, has ruined both politics, and movies, too.
Okay, nobody bit on my trivia question, so here’s the answer!
The “gun that would stop anything” mentioned specifically by name in the movie was the .378 Weatherby Magnum. I always felt that this was due to Roy Weatherby providing said (expensive) rifles to the producer or director.
To 104. marymcl
I agree with you on the fact that many in hollywood have zero “real life” knowledge. They often grow up in a leftwing bubble of college, hollywood or “victimism”. Many of “old” hollywood came from a wide range walks of life and many were soldiers from WW2. This helped them greatly understand the life and death reality that ppl live in instead of often self imposed victimism of places like the ghetto.
Any Belmont Clubbers who have not read Fischer’s Washington’s Crossing or Albion’s Seed should go out right now and get them, even if it isn’t your birthday.
I’ll second that. And thanks to the “interruption,” I’ve made a note to look for Champlain’s Dream as well.
What the movies, TV, actors, are selling is the “supension of disbelief”. The ability to have the audience, for a time, enter another reality and believe in it. This is a powerful thing when it works.
A certain political mindset has come to think it can use that power for their own ends. Use it and do so without affecting, changing that which they use. That is never the case.
The actions of actors in the real world make it harder to suspend our disbelief and enter the fantasy world presented in movies. Instead of seeing a character we see an actor, playing at being a character, their real world self showing through and pushing the character played into the background. The actor is no longer a means to make a character come to life. The character is there as a means for the actor’s own ends.
This article has overlooked the fact that the reason the socalled “main stream media” which inclues most of the major newspapers, television networks and hollywood are going broke is because they produce a lousy product. I would still be watching TV channels, attending movies and reading the NY Times if the product weren’t so horrible and worse than worthless and I would still enjoy the internet. Most thinking people have nothing but FOX news and the internet upon which they can rely for a decent product.
According to Internet Movie Database, here are the top 10 world-wide grossing films of all time:
1. Titanic (1997) $1,835,300,000
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) $1,129,219,252
3. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006) $1,060,332,628
4. The Dark Knight (2008) $1,001,921,825
5. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001) $968,657,891
6. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007) $958,404,152
7. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) $937,000,866
8. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) $924,232,058
9. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999) $922,379,000
10. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) $921,600,000
Note that all but one was within the last 10 years, and all but one is a fantasy/adventure/sci-fi flick. Going down the list one can see that the vast majority of the top 100 grossing movies are some variant of the action/adventure/sci-fi genre. Yet Hollywood continues to grind out those ridiculous liberal, political flicks out of all proportion to their popularity. Give the public more Batman, Aragorn and maybe–as a number of you have noted–real-life American heroes from Iraq and Afghanistan or (dare I say it?) fighting against ISLAMIC terrorists on behalf of Western (Christian) civilization!
OT,
Six Republicans, including Peter King and Ron Paul, vote to let Charlie Rangel off the hook.
From Red State.
Re#121; I do think that plenty of the audience of Passion was there for reasons other than their amusement; it’s one of the only movies that I ever had to stand in line for, and once seated was treated to absolute silence from the audience throughout. For me it was the most intensely personal movie experience ever.
I might pay money to see one or two releases a year, and only if there’s a special matinee price. It’s not that I’m worried about risking the price of a couple of tickets, it’s that the insult of having to pay money, and waste several hours of my life to be served generic crap is something I am free to avoid, so I do. There are a few movies that I am glad that I saw. Slumdog Millionaire, Ed Wood, most Coen Bros. projects are some examples. From Dusk till Dawn was a terrible movie, but I like it anyway. In fact I think I could use another fix soon.
Audiences made up of numbskulls like myself, who are at once easy to please, and also likely to be alienated forever must be a mass marketer’s nightmare. That Michael Moore and Will Farrell are successful is evidence, to me at least, that the people in charge have given up even trying. Maybe Hollywood is going through its ’73 Vega stage, and will enjoy consequences similar to those that GM is enjoying now.
We need a movie czar, a Hollywood czar, a no talent siliconized stupid actress czar, a left wing boring actor czar, a depraved writer czar, a 12 year old boy bathroom humor czar and a totally non deserved outrageous income for actors czar. Oh, Barack …..
Most of the entertainment coming from Hollywood is crap and an insult to intelligent Americans who want to see movies made for ADULTS. The graphic sex, the gratuitous political undertones, the actors are BORING. It’s the same old BS. One other thing: can Jennifer Anniston finally be put out to pasture? How many flops has she been in and why doesn’t anyone get the message: we are just not “into” her??
There is a rebellious streak in artists. The site Stuff White People like touches on it in numerous posts. In fact, one often hears in music snobs how they don’t like piece “X” where X is some popular piece of music (e.g. Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major) and since the only other pieces they don’t like are popular pieces one must conclude they are simply being contrary.
I think a lot of them understand the basic points a successful movie must hit, but they just do not want to make them. The people behind Abba had no problem turning out hit pop songs — they can turn out successful movies. Similarly food snobs will not go to The Outback because they view it as popular and they look with disdain on the tastes of the masses.
No doubt, modern information tech changes the game when it comes to making $ off of movie distribution — but I bet a lot of the movies such as Stop Loss and the like don’t even get pirated that much — they are too expensive even as freebies.
108. no mo uro:
That is the key to a particularly successful type of TV show — the decade reminiscing show. Happy Days & Laverne and Shirley were the first ones of those, The Wonder Years, and That 70s Show is yet another.
In addition, I think you observation is also a prime moving force behind AGW theory. “The winters were much more wintery when I was a young tot in 1961 — why not now? I miss my youth.”
There’s another link between the implosion of journalism and the implosion of film: professional schools. Both Journalism schools and Film schools are hotbeds of leftist ideology and are completely unnecessary to actually being good at one’s craft.
Also, one would think that the tech revolution would tend to reduce the costs to Hollywood. Cameras are cheaper, editing software and hardware is cheaper, etc. A small group can now make a near-professional quality short or even full-length feature for very little money. As the price of digital video drops, there will be more outside challenges to Hollywood. This also benefits native film industries, reducing the overseas revenue of Hollywood.
Finally, Hollywood is in some way a victim of its own success. Who wants to see the crap-o-the-week for $10 and burn a whole evening when you have a library of 100 dvds, 2 netflix movies to watch and 20 hours of TV on your Tivo? A movie isn’t just competing against the other released movies, but against the whole past library of movies, as well as tv, youtube, video games, etc.
49 Eggplant:
Blu-Rays are trivially copyable.
The problem is hard drive space. There is a lot more information on a Blu-Ray (25/50 GB) than on a DVD (4.7/8 Gb). You quickly run out of space if you have too many copied Blu-Ray discs. Also, at current (non-university) bandwidths pulling Blu-Rays off the Internet is a hassle.
AnyDVD-HD is a piece of software sold via Antigua (no DMCA, therefore legal THERE, not in the US/EU), but made in Ireland (IIRC), and designed to remove the anti-copy protections of DVDs, HD-DVDs & Blu-Ray. It is frequently updated.
And no I don’t copy Blu-Rays. I have neither the Blu-Ray player, HD space, nor desire to do such a thing.
I merely know that it is trivially possible.
Blaming hollywood is both cliche and wrong. The primary problem appears to be the audience.
I helped at a shop at a ren festival this summer. One of the fantasy product lines was steampunk accessories. The shop manager had a shorthand way of describing steampunk as ‘Jules Verne on crack’ which we all thought of as both humourous and appropriate. We in the shop then used this to respond to the inevitable ‘what is steampunk?’ questions from customers. The problem we ran into and didn’t expect was that 90 out of 100 had no clue as to who Jules Verne was. And that 90% varied in age from 15 to 50. You’d be astonished to know how many of the 50+ crowd had never heard of Jules Verne (how did they ever get ‘Back to the Future’ III?)
(You dopes ragging about the dumbing down of education are wrong if you think the ignorance was skewed to the younger crowd. The education system is fine.)
It seems silly to solely blame hollywood for poor content when the average citizen is a dullard. Of course hollywood types despise the audience — they’re uneducated imbeciles and quite proud of it. Is it really any wonder that puerile dreck like Transformers racks up half a billion? Whose fault is that again? So yeah, if I were a studio boss I too would be lining up the next comic book or attempting to novelise a toy franchise. It’s apparently at the IQ level of what the public can absorb.
EvilDave said:
“AnyDVD-HD is a piece of software sold via Antigua (no DMCA, therefore legal THERE, not in the US/EU), but made in Ireland (IIRC), and designed to remove the anti-copy protections of DVDs, HD-DVDs & Blu-Ray.”
I believe you are referring to SlySoft. I’ve never done business with SlySoft. According to Wikipedia, SlySoft has been stumped by the latest versions of BD+. I’ve played with Doom9 source code on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs that I legally purchased (fair use). I know for a fact that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray without BD+ can be decrypted and downloaded to hard disc using Doom9 open source code on a Linux box. However, base upon what I’ve read indicates the latest versions of BD+ are uncrackable.
And yet G.L. most people these days can add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Read and write. Unheard of in the Middle Ages.
BTW speaking of SteamPunk. Check out “General Fusion”. It is a design for a fusion reactor that runs on steam. It is for real – at least experimentally.
And G. L. the audiences of the 30s and 40s were not more educated than those of today. What changed was the sensibilities of the film makers.
After all – what was the market for the “Three Stooges” or “Our Gang” or “Andy Hardy” or “The Keystone Cops”? Classics maybe. High brow or cultured – not.
Eggplant,
Nothing done with bits is uncrackable. All you can say is “has not been cracked yet”.
GLA/139; re dumb ‘toon-based movies –i thought Watchmen boxed the compass on that –really a kind of minor masterpiece –
#139 GL Alston
“The education system is fine.”
Edcuation industry propaganda is so ugly, especially when it has no basis in fact.
I suspect that any steampunk author worth his/her salt (Sterling, Gibson, etc.) would look at this outrageous and obviously factually false claim and either laugh at you mockingly, call you out for a shill, or do both.
Your assertion tells us a great deal more about you than it does about the subject at hand.
Anyhow, while it is true that stupidity knows no age limit, it’s also true that if Hollywood made less nihilistic or infantile or leftist crap, the same stupid people you decry will still go to see the improved product and be better served, without a loss of revenue to Hollywood. If the major motivation for the average moviegoer is a night out and not content, that isn’t necessarily an indication of their intelligence level. And no matter what their intellectual prowess, they’d pay for quality, even highbrow stuff if that’s what was produced.
The ‘rural purge’ effect is real. Successful, profitable entertainment which is intelligent/wholesome has been peremptorily tossed aside by the entertainment industry in the past without much consideration of whether or not the audience was bright or dull, for political and even personal reasons. Do a little research on this if you must.
Those in charge in that industry are much more whimsical and insulated from market forces that you presume. The ridiculous notion that Hollywood produces crap because that’s the only thing that sells is simply not true. They could produce great stuff and it would still sell. People go to the movies for reasons other than content (a night out, no other hobbies, etc.). The entertainment industry CHOOSES to produce crap for various reasons, both personal and political, that have nothing to do with the IQ of the viewers, and that’s the truth of it.
@134: can Jennifer Anniston finally be put out to pasture? How many flops has she been in and why doesn’t anyone get the message: we are just not “into” her??
Oh I’m into her alright. I would never watch one of her movies, but I’m into her.
For Peterike:
“Oh I’m into her alright. I would never watch one of her movies, but I’m into her.”
In your dreams, buddyboy, in your dreams!!!
I find it interesting that almost none of the comments mention that the “stars” of Hollywood have as much to do with the current state of Hollywood as the product. I am not alone among those I know in my total contempt for those who Hollywood rewards the most for such sub-par product. When celebrities take to the airwaves to promote their political agendas and do so by denigrating every conservative in the country they lose appeal. I am not the only former movie-goer who is sick to death of psuedo-intellectuals calling conservatives “repugnant”. Somehow actors started to believe that they ARE experts in any subject because they were in a movie that touched on the subject. The old “I am not a doctor but I played one on tv” has become less a joke and more the basis for drama majors to suddenly become political science experts. I refuse to support these overblown children with my hard-earned money and I know that I am not alone. Newspapers are losing readers at a record pace because readers are tired of not getting what they hoped they were paying for – namely the news. If I want the opinion of the publisher or the reporter, I would turn to the opinion page. Stop slanting every single news story with your political bias. Report the news – period. Hollywood could learn much from the continued failure of written print. Actors and journalists need to stop thinking that Americans, in general, are a great unwashed mass of uneducated bumpkins who need someone to tell them how to think. We are tired of these outsized egos who believe that their 15 minutes of fame entitle them to dismiss our valued belief in family, faith and hard-work. Every time someone like Matt Damon or Julia Roberts takes the time to tell conservatives or Republicans how “repugnant” or “out of touch” they are, another consumer decides to protest the only way they can – by withholding economic support.
McCarthy was right! And he’d be saying “I told you so!” right about now. Venona proved how right he was about all the accusations. That’s why hollywood always bashes him every chance it gets. They need to circle the wagons. Their contempt isn’t just for our values and ethics, it’s contempt for our entire system. There are a few entertainers who are standing up for America, but they’re too few and far between. An excellent book on McCarthy, “Blacklisted by HIstory” (I forget the author) should be required reading for all high school seniors. At a minimum, that would give them a fightin’ chance at seeing the disgusting bias in most institutions of “higher learning”.
Whiskey @ 102 points out that the lean started before the internet, but it’s accellerating the pace (i hope!)
I beleive, as do others who only touched on it, that the whole thing would eventually break because of unions!
Keep in mind that the AFL/CIO got its start-up money from the Communist Party of America, which in turn got it’s money directly from the Soviet Union! “Workers of the World UNITE!” sound familiar. The whole, I hate to say, conspiracy has been bearing fruit for some time now, culminating in the Obamanation we have now. The old Soviets did a number on us, all detailed in a couple of books by the head archivist of the KGB who defected with suitcases full of docs. “The Sword and the Shield” and “The World was Going Our Way”. The latter being more germane to the “conspiracy” accusation.
We can no longer be cowed into silence by the ALinsky-style of debate as well as peacniks saying we aren’t suposed to fight. We can’t let our enem… er, opponents define the rules of the battl… um, debate! There’s a backlash comin’, and when the time comes to stand and… oppose the forces of subjugaion and tyranny, will you be throwing rocks, like the Persians?
(Sorry. Not my best screed. It’s late here and I’m tired.)
In no particular order, we need more movies like Rocky, The Godfather, The Sting, Apocalypse Now, Trading Places, Educating Rita, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Taxi Driver, Silence of the Lambs, Apocalypto, Goldfinger, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Liar Liar, Jaws, Dead Poets Society, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Little Miss Sunshine, and other films that I like.
Basically, I like smug actors, characters, writers, and directors. Attitude and arrogance beat self-immolating wistfulness at the box office any day of the week.
97: Eggplant, re: 300, retold every generation. The Doolittle Raid. Taffey 7. The two soldiers in Mogadishu who repeatedly asked to be dropped off. Countless others, some known only to a few that were there. “Come and take them” hasn’t lost it’s fans just yet, sir.
Speaking of cheap, homemade flicks, how much did the Blair Witch Project cost?
“I shall never understand the weird process by which a body with a voice suddenly fancies itself as a mind. Just when exactly does an actress decide they’re HER words she’s speaking and HER thoughts she’s expressing? … the piano thinks it’s written the concerto.”
- Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlow) in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “All About Eve“
The preceding clip (7/13) has the debate between Richards and Addison DeWitt on normalcy in the theater.
Can someone here who knows more about the business side of Hollywood please tell me how, in the last six years, there have been three movies that grossed OVER $1 BILLION each (see my list above at #130)–the final Lord of the Rings movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, and the Dark Knight–yet Hollywood is STILL running out of money?!
GL,
When I went through the speech classes and the writing classes we were always admonished to know your target audience. This notion applies to more fields than just writing & speaking. If Hollywood puts out a movie that is considered high-brow by movie professional standards and it flops then they have only themselves to blame. Sure, any person with years of experience making movies may see the movie for the work of genius it is but I would miss out on it and not like the story.
Calling the audience dunces and illiterates does not absolve anyone from not knowing their audience. When one commences on a project one has to decide the goals. In the case of a lot of movies of late the goals do not seem to very often put profit as a priority.
When one refuses to drink from the full water trough it isn’t the fault of those who supply the water.
Occidental Jihadist,
The Wiki article on the Art Buchwald lawsuit links to a description of “Hollywood Accounting.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchwald_v._Paramount
“Wallowing in Misery for Art’s Sake” by A. O. Scott in the NYTimes on October 7, 2009:
Late in “The White Ribbon,” Michael Haneke’s black-and-white study of child abuse, class resentment and incipient fascism in a northern German village on the eve of World War I, one character, a baroness, expresses a wish to leave. “I can’t live in an atmosphere of malice, envy, cruelty and brutality,” she announces to her husband. In that case, the baroness has come to the wrong film festival.
… a festival that seems to have been organized in pointed opposition to the pleasure principle. The cumulative picture of the human condition that has emerged since opening night is dominated by sadism, guilt, violence and despair, a panorama of pessimism notable for its exhausting rigor and relentless consistency.
… Given the chance, our instinct will be to inflict pain, and we will justify our blood lust with appeals to reason, love and morality. … It is, rather, a pervasive, secular version of original sin, and as such the sign of a worldview, a set of assumptions shared by filmmakers of varying backgrounds and styles and by the critics who establish and sustain their reputations.
* * *
But the festivalist mentality does not simply rest on a taste for depicting or witnessing human misery — social, sexual, economic and psychic. Rather, the embrace of such harsh thematic content reflects a commitment to a dogma of artistic obduracy. T. S. Eliot said of modern poetry that “it must be difficult,” an imperative defiantly reflected in a program, harvested mostly from other festivals, that pushes the boundary between the challenging and the punitive.
… The constricted and forbidding program it offers is not — or not only — due to pusillanimous judgment. It is, rather, a symptom of the divided, anxious state of American, and indeed of global film culture.
M. Simon said:
“Nothing done with bits is uncrackable. All you can say is “has not been cracked yet”.”
We all know that a one-pad-key is uncrackable. BD+ is not a one pad key but it’s the next best thing.
Way back when, I read a book called “Murphy’s War.” So they made a movie out of it, and I went to see it. Naturally the director had to change the ending to prove how avant guard he was and make it “down beat” by killing off a character. The thing was the book had a down beat ending that was subtly made by having the character live. Apparently Hollywood has learned nothing from the Classical Age Greeks and they recycle the artistique of the last 60 years endlessly.
@156 Fat Man
Yesterday in his WSJ column James Taranto quotes the following description of a performance art piece from the Scotiabank Nuit Blanch arts festival in Toronto ~
“For Nuit Blanche 2009, The Apology Project will be staged in its largest scale thus far. A cluster of 55 people wearing large brown paper bags on their bodies will congest a public hallway and personally apologize to every person who ventures through them. The uncanniness of this human blockade will disrupt the regular flow of traffic and provoke reflection about passive aggressive behavior. Who are these people? Why are they here? Why are they wearing brown paper bags over their bodies? There is an enigma about what precisely they are sorry for and why they are choosing to continue doing something that they find reproachable. If it is their awkward presence in the space that they are apologizing for, why do they chose to remain there? Why not just stop an offensive behavior rather than continue to indulge in it and apologize?
In the context of Nuit Blanche, endurance will become a significant component of the work as these people will be standing in brown paper bags and apologizing for 12 hours. Time will become a device that at once tests the physical limits of the performers and also testifies to their will to be obnoxious and continue to maintain a disruptive posture even though they are physically exhausted.”
From the sublimated to the ridiculous!
marymcl,
2 trained shepherds, 30 seconds, problem solved for Art’s sake.
LifeoftheMind
I like it. Is there anything those wonderful creatures wouldn’t do for us?
LOTM
2 trained shepherds, 30 seconds, problem solved for Art’s sake.
Or just a pack of Sharpies (the pens, not the dogs) with which to write “Obama Voter” on the paper bags. At least then the people “disrupted” in trying to get through the hallway will know what the Nut Blanks are apologizing for.
PS: If there can be counter-revolutions and counter-reformations, can there such a thing as counter-performance art?
Stop blaming it on the digital revolution. Accept the blame for turning out dreck. As an aging baby boomer, I refused to see the remakes of “Car 54″ or “The Taking of Pelham 123.” I do not need to see endless “Saw” sequels, zombies, people and cars blown up, and characters too stupid to live. I turned on one of the movie classic channels this week and was excited to see people actually talking to one another-and saying something of import. Maybe producers should start looking backwards for a change.
“Of course the possibility that their movies just suck with an infinite amount of suckitude hasn’t come to their minds.”
About fell outta my chair! Thanks for that line.
It’s 100% correct!
I’m afraid there are so many filmmakers, performers, directors, etc. on my “no see” list anymore that the mere logistics make movie going all but impossible. We did see one movie this year–Star Trek–and except for the unfortunate Spock/Uhura romance, it was terrific!
I got tired of trying to remember which stars were wacko leftist liberals promoting their elitist agenda. To avoid paying them to see a movie, I don’t go anymore. It’s more entertaining reading the news to see which way our economy will go or watch really old movies online.
Hollywood establishment reminds me of staid old companies, entrenched in ideas that will make them cash cows, not innovative, creative product designers. The Hollywood glow has turned into a disgusting parade of perverts, drunks, drug abusers that no one wants to emulate. I am waiting for their mafia to try shake us down to subsidize them as we tune into YouTube.
The fact of it is that the most of the movies coming out are just awful. I haven’t seen a good one in a couple of years. Hollywood is going to continue to dump until they figure out that the person buying the ticket has the real power.
A list for the Hollywood elite!
Take the following suggestions to save your skins from going out of work.
1. Stop thinking you’re smarter than us. Your actions show how much you think this is true so we are not fooled.
2. Get back in touch with mainstream America if you can. That means moving out of Hollywood, your ranch, or your nice house in a high priced neighborhood and living in a normal house for a while.
3. Enough with the CGI. . . PLEASE!
4. Make movies that celebrates America. Go watch some old John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart movies to get an idea. If the thought offends you then just leave the country. Most of us aren’t likely to change to your views of America and you would do better in a European country.
5. Create three dimensional characters in your movie. Enough with the cardboard cut outs.
6. Make your good guys good and you bad guys bad. Enough with the ambiguity and moral shades of gray. Makes for a horrible story.
7. Stop making guys look like buffoons.
8. Don’t over do it with the female action heroes. How many real life female action heroes are there? I mean really?
9. We’re happy with unknown stars if they act good and the story is good.
10. STORY STORY STORY not EFFECTS EFFECTS EFFECTS!
11. Do not come out and defend convicted felons because they make great movies. You are not above the law because you can make a great movie.
12. Make movies we want to see, not ones you want to see.
Burn After Reading (spoiler alert) is the last theater trip i’ve made –and it was GREAT –dark & funny, and utterly savage on DC culture. And according to the wiki, Budget $37 million, Gross revenue $161,128,228 –seems pretty good, @ 4+:1 –if the [sales:cost of goods sold] ratio is a movie biz metric, which it may well be not.
Of course the possibility that their movies just suck with an infinite amount of suckitude hasn’t come to their minds.
Thufferin’ thuckitude. What a line.
@169 Frank
“6. Make your good guys good and you bad guys bad. Enough with the ambiguity and moral shades of gray. Makes for a horrible story.”
I disagree on this point. Moral ambiguity does not make for a bad story. Quite the opposite – it’s what drives the drama forward. The road to hell, as well we know, is paved with good intentions, and one of life’s great mysteries is the way in which evil can give rise to something good in spite of itself. Gollum is perfect example and in fact all of Tolkien’s work rests on this idea. And yet no one could ever accuse him of moral equivalence.
Lefty/artsy moral equivalence is so offensive not because has too many subtleties but because it chickens out of the dilemma altogether. It reduces flesh and blood moral choices to a set of neutral abstractions and refuses to take a stand. “Unforgiven” is a great movie, and yet the bad guys are good and the good guys are bad. “The Lives of Others” is another – it has plenty of shades of grey yet in the end there is no mistaking the difference between good and evil and who stands where.
My problem with flicks is the actors and casting.
Seriously, who casts runty Keaton as Batman? Why not Seagal, (he kicks butt and seems naturally a little disturbed) unless he wouldn’t cut his stupid ponytail? What, actors are actors because they were too runty to play football? Tom Cruise? Has he ever made a flick good? More manly male actors, please. When has Bruce Willis ever made a poorly grossing film? He used to be a bouncer. (Of course, Van Dammes films all suck, because his effete Frenchiness sucks out the manliness. Suckitude.) Nicholas Cage is a turnoff to me with those Bassett Hound sad eyes, but at least he buffs up for his roles.
How about Cameron Diaz? A second-rate Michelle Pfeiffer. Pfeiffer’s a lady, through and through, and it comes through no matter her role. Diaz is trampy. A cheap copy.
Barrymore? Anyone else notice that she is a Plain Jane verging on homely?
Idiots passed up Jolie for Megan Fox! WTF? Jolie oozes sensuality. Fox is a mannequin. The movie, of course, bombed. Younger is not always better, nay, is rarely better.
Same goes for music. It used to take forever to break into stardom. You really had to work at it and sacrifice. Starving artist devoted to your craft. You got educated in music. Many had doctorates. You were in your 30′s and 40′s. Now, if you’re in your 30′s and 40′s, you’re disqualified.
Stardom is no longer earned. It is anointed. Fame is earned. Celebrity is happenstance.
#139 Alston – Thanks for showing up. I thought we might, for once, have a thread with no trolls. We still have a perfect record. We’re #1! Trolls’R'Us.
First comment- Quit making remakes of remakes!!!!!!!!!!!!
I look forward each Friday to see what has come out at the movies so I can take the teenagers. The problem? There’s nothing I want to see out! Most of the comments here are dead on- Hollywood is being run by idiots who expect us to buy overpriced tickets to see a movie that slams their personal beliefs. “Milk”? Boo hoo- another homosexual feels discriminated against! Wahhhhhhh! The best movie I have seen all year was Slumdogs. No liberal propaganda, no homosexuals, no Democrats saving the country from the evil Republicans and not even a Nazi anywhere! Just an excellent story. Just expect Hollywood to be hitting up Obama soon for a “Bailout”.
Want to make some money? Try making some movies that don’t suck!!!!
Great movie? What about Groundhog Day? Funny, touching, good casting, uplifting story and a very low raunch factor.
And the snowstorm roadblock scene was filmed in Waukegan IL on the highway between downtown and Lake Michigan, a route I took to work for almost 10 years- except on the several days it was closed for filming some other movie.
Most of Ivan Reitman’s films are pretty decent.
#166 Sukie Tawdry-
I haven’t seen Star Trek but the comment about a Spock/Uhura romance is typical of one of the things that are wrong with Hollywood SF. In fact, the very existence of Spock is also typical. In fact, the very existence of humanoid (very humanoid, with minor changes in facial features) also is. Why?
Vulcans have green blood and come from another planet. Spock’s father (I forget his name) would be less likely to have a sexual or romantic attraction for his mother (and vice versa) than you or I would be to want carnal relations with a petunia. And if for some odd reason such an attraction did develop, the chance of it leading to any offspring would be even lower. This sort of nonsense really grates.
OJ, what you are forgetting is inflation. Here are the true US Domestic box office champs after adjusting (second number is their unadjusted totals):
1 Gone with the Wind (1939^) -$1,450,680,400 ($198,676,459)
2 Star Wars (1977^) $1,278,898,700 ($460,998,007)
3 The Sound of Music (1965) $1,022,542,400 ($158,671,368)
4 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982^) $1,018,514,100 ($435,110,554)
5 The Ten Commandments (1956) $940,580,000 ($65,500,000)
6 Titanic (1997) $921,523,500 ($600,788,188)
7 Jaws (1975) $919,605,900 ($260,000,000)
8 Doctor Zhivago (1965) $891,292,600 ($111,721,910)
9 The Exorcist (1973^) $793,883,100 ($232,671,011)
10 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) $782,620,000 ($184,925,486)
Makes for a very different list.
Box Office Mojo is where these numbers came from. Their notes:
Adjusted to the estimated 2009 average ticket price of $7.18. Inflation-adjustment is mostly done by multiplying estimated admissions by the latest average ticket price. Where admissions are unavailable, adjustment is based on the average ticket price for when each movie was released (taking in to account re-releases where applicable).
^ Indicates documented multiple theatrical releases. Most of the pre-1980 movies listed on this chart had multiple undocumentented releases over the years. The year shown is the first year of release.
Most pre-1980 pictures achieved their totals through multiple releases, especially Disney animated features which made much of their totals in the past few decades belying their original release dates in terms of adjustment. For example, Snow White has made $118,328,683 of its unadjusted $184,925,486 total since 1983.
The balance of the top 25 looks like this:
11 101 Dalmatians (1961^)
12 The Empire Strikes Back (1980^)
13 Ben-Hur (1959)
14 Return of the Jedi (1983^)
15 The Sting (1973)
16 Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981^)
17 Jurassic Park (1993)
18 The Graduate (1967^)
19 Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999)
20 Fantasia (1941^)
21 The Godfather (1972^)
22 Forrest Gump (1994)
23 Mary Poppins (1964^)
24 The Lion King (1994)
25 Grease (1978)
Tarnsman,
It’s interesting that George Lucas scored so well, i.e. 2, 12, 14, 16 and 19.
George Lucas hated Hollywood culture and removed himself from it after the
success of the original “Star Wars”. His original “Star Wars” is one of my
favorite movies. However almost everything that he’s done after “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace” has sucked. Star Wars: Episode II stunk so bad
that it was almost unwatchable and the last cartoon that he did “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” was completely unwatchable. It’s remarkable that Lucas has completely burned out after having been one of Hollywood’s greatest talents.
“However almost everything that he’s done after “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace” has sucked. Star Wars: Episode II stunk so bad
that it was almost unwatchable and the last cartoon that he did “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” was completely unwatchable. It’s remarkable that Lucas has completely burned out after having been one of Hollywood’s greatest talents.”
I used to be a Huge fan of Lucas, and now I loathe him. I am not sure what happened with him, but I have a couple of theories.
One, while he may have hated the Hollywood system and sought to separate from it, he became corrupted by the culture. He seemed to absorb the post-modern attitude in his films, in that he treated the last 3 Star Wars films as idiotic fluff without substance, except to put in boiler-plate liberal tropes.
Two, Lucas, when all is said and done, is not a very good film-maker or artist. He has talent, perhaps a decent imagination, but I am not sure what it is, beyond picking other talented people with imaginations as well.
How can I say that?
When you look at the Star Wars movies, all of them as a whole, you begin to see Lucas used the same damn plot in almost all of them, particularly the end sequence.
Battle in space to destroy something, large battle on the ground, battle between Jedi occurs occurs Star Wars, Return of the Jedi, Phantom Menace, and at least one other (I hate them so much I have only seen them once each, and they blur), which make it 4 out of 5.
Add to that that he got the whole concept of Star Wars from an old japanese Samurai movie, and…well, sorry, but as painful as it is for a former fan to say so, he’s terribly derivative at best.
WG
Something I first observed re the music industry but also applicable to an extent to film and TV–
the big money that entertainers and their hangers on are used to is a quirk of social and especially technological factors of the 20th Century. It didn’t exist before then and there is nothing that guarantees it to continue, and no moral basis for its continuation. It’s just a matter of tech and social arrangements. The entertainers (incl support people, etc) who lived then were lucky to live then, nothing more.
Trying to artificially keep it in the same model will not succeed any better than other attempts to freeze a dying industry in amber. The laws should NOT be further changed to favor them, their treatment is already more favorable than can be justified by a fair analysis; nor should teh productive industries of the future be taxed to preserve them. They should adapt or die, just as everything else has to.
Frankly, I suspect they could adapt. Someone linked to e report that despite his last clunker, Denzel Washington won’t come down on his $20M guaranteed salary for projects. Well, seems there’s plenty of room to cut costs on talent, and that alone might buy the industry teh years it needs to review its whole model and develop something more attuned to the 21st century.
If not, I won’t miss them.