Posted on 03/08/2025 8:47:36 PM PST by Rummyfan
The Golden Age of movies coincided with the Hays Code, in effect from about 1934 to 1966. That code was largely the result of the Catholic Church threatening boycotts of movies with prurient sexual conduct against Hollywood. At the time, the Catholic population of America was largely concentrated in large industrial cities in the Northeast and Midwest. Loss of box office revenue in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other major cities forced Hollywood to impose restraints not only on sexual conduct but also on foul language and nihilistic themes.
Hahahah, I listened to Mel Brooks autobiography a few months ago, and when he was negotiating with the studio to make “Young Frankenstein” they all grudgingly eventually agreeing, lowballing the budget but agreeing and the contract was signed,
As he left the big meeting he stopped at the door and turned to the room full of executives and said as an aside (after the contract was signed):
“Oh, and I am going to film the movie in black and white!”
Then, the room erupted as they all began yelling at him at the same time.
As he scurried down the hallway to escape, Mel Brooks (who is Jewish) looked back and said “I was being pursued down the hallway by fifteen Jews, all yelling at me, saying I couldn’t do it, they were going to cancel the contract!
When I was in the 7th grade in the 1970’s, the Drama Club was recruiting. It just seemed full of queers and deviants. I wasn’t wrong.
She would have been in her 26th year if they let her.
She's going to desperately write now about what she knew was wrong for 25 years in a desperate attempt to sell her brand to those who oppose Hollywood. May her tripe disappear along with the Hollywood she so supported.
Thanks. The linked article is interesting.
I knew the roster of eligible Academy voters is bloated, to the point that most of the voters have probably never watched most of the films they’re voting on, which is why campaigning is so important. But I didn’t realize that so many foreign voters had been added. That fundamentally changes the dynamic, but it probably dovetails perfectly with the streamers’ strategic vision. The streamers run global platforms that are in the subscription business, not the movie business. All content originating with the streamers gets the studio massage with an eye towards generic global viewers, not American audiences. Indian cricket and top tier men’s soccer translate into more subscriptions than Academy Award winning movies. Of course the quality of movies has been declining; the big bosses don’t really care about movies.
When the streamers do roll out a high quality theatrical movie, it was probably something produced by a mid-major or independent studio and picked up for distribution. I’ll allow for the scattered exceptions, but by and large, that’s where the saving remnant of good films are coming from.
The one place I would disagree with the author is in her dismissal of what she calls niche movies in which no one is interested and that play to empty theaters. My wife watches a lot of old movies. So do a lot of freepers. When you stop to think about it, many of great films of the past that we have on our GOAT lists are small, character driven dramas with nothing oversized, no huge investment in CGI, simple settings, etc. They are intelligently, sometimes brilliantly, written and they feature great acting and direction. They were not expensive to make unless a studio spent big bucks for a hot actor or two. Take your pick. Casablanca? Rick is running an expat bar/restaurant with a pianist for entertainment and a pretty open illegal gambling thing going on in the back room. You could rent such a location pretty cheaply in any city of any size anywhere in the world, and the most expensive “special effect” is an airplane taking off at the end. A hero of the French Resistance walks in and we’re off to the races, but in framing and execution, it is a “small movie.” A lot of those involved thought it was probably going to be a flop. And then lightning struck, and it became a classic.
Those kinds of films today struggle to get the big studios attention, and then struggle to get a theatrical release. The author perhaps overlooks that because her career has been Awards Watch, so she’s been Oscar focused and big studio focused for most of her life. But these kinds of films are still being made, and it’s encouraging that so many of the top stars still seem to gravitate towards them. The best ones seem to want to actually do serious acting, not churn out endless generic “content” for Netflix or squeeze themselves into flying spandex suits for big paychecks for the next cash grabs.
FWIW, while I’ve never paid a LOT of attention to the awards shows, my sense in recent years is that the SAG Awards are worth looking at — much more so than the Oscars. For the SAG Awards, it’s actors voting on acting. They actually care. It shows.
I also look at the Independent Spirit Awards. Those are quirkier and sometimes get a little weird, but the whole tone is defiantly anti-establishment, anti-big studio. I would not be surprised if they have a closed session before they let the press in and turn on the cameras, where they all join hands and chant, “We’re not Netflix. We’re not Disney. We’re not Apple or Amazon or the streamers.” The Independent Spirit Awards are held in a big tent on the beach in Santa Monica. Dress definitely leans casual. It would be a cultural landmark if the local Chik-fil-A did the catering (Chik-fil-A would have to add fruit trays and green stuff because of the fanatical dieters), but that’s the feel of the event. They do dress up at the SAG Awards, but there is very little of the outlandish bizzaro designer stuff that now infects the Oscars. At both venues, the vibe is peer-to-peer, and the big studios with their 37 layers of bureaucracy and endless interference are the problem (sometimes the enemy); these are movie people who are serious about making good movies, not ROI and DEI checklists.
Huh. “Brokeback Mountain” was that long ago? Maybe that was what turned people off when you see how the viewership went down and never really came back up (See my post above)
I found the concept of the movie “Brokeback Mountain” personally disgusting and resolved not to see it.
But all of this I suspect is a result of the forced hyper partisanship of the Left that began in 2000. That hyoerpartisanship element existed before, no doubt, but to me, 2000 is when it went on steroids.
In that light, last night I watched an excellent movie with my wife: “Juror #2” which was released in November 2024, directed by Clint Eastwood.
It is reputed to be Clint Eastwood’s last movie he directs or acts in.
The movie was excellent, best I have seen out of Hollywood in a while, and at the end, we talked quite a bit about it becuse of its premise and moral conflicts which were very powerful, and she was puzzled (as was I, once she told me) that the movie was not only never released to theaters, but had zero advertising from the studio (Warner Brothers)
My wife checked it out from our library network.
I had an excellent cast who played their parts very well, and Clint Eastwood was the director. It should have been a huge hit and up for awards, we both thought.
And granted, it had some similarities to the old movie “12 Angry Men” which my wife reminded me, most viewers today won’t remember! But it was NOT just the same movie remade, it had some fascinating moral twists to it that engaged us both.
We both wondered why this excellent movie received this invisible treatment (similar to what happened to the movie “Idiocracy” which was suppressed by its own studio) and when I searched the Internet for “Why was Juror #2 not released in theaters” I got back pages of returns asking the same question.
Apparently, Warner Brothers thought it was going to be a dog and decided to not spend any money on it.
I don’t get that after watching the movie (Although it is fair to say that the executive talent level in Hollywood is so woke they couldn’t see past the end of their noses when they reviewed it at the studio) so I wondered if there was something political behind it, with Clint Eastwood’s well deserved reputation as a conservative in Hollywood.
And just this week, I watched ANOTHER movie I thought was excellent, and may even buy that one: “Reagan”. Just a fantastic movie. So there are some sparks out there, but for the Academy Awards which are tripping all over themselves to give Oscars to movies about prostitutes, transvestites, and other sordid themes, it is likely anathema to them to even consider movies like “Reagan” or “Juror #2.
If you were a true Freeper, you would have posted something that clearly indicated that you had NOT read the entire article before posting about it. Then, someone else would point out that you obviously hadn’t read it.
You know who else doesn't think Jews are white? Nazis.
Shouldn't we be rolling up these categories instead of expanding them anyway?
Thanks, it proved to be very interesting.
I haven’t posted my “(reasonably) recent conservative movie” list in some time, so here it is.
I’ve not kept this up to date because 2024 was such a dismal year for movies, but I do keep tweaking it a bit from time to time. The last thing I added was Tropic Thunder (2008), which I finally got around to watching. Now I’m kicking myself: why did it take me this long?
This started as a deliberate hunt for RECENT conservative movies, but I quickly blew past that narrow definition. But they are all definitely non-woke. Many are surprisingly conservative, whatever the intention of the filmmakers might have been. I think all of them could have been shot under the Hays Code, or could be made Hays Code compliant with under 30 seconds of editing. Beyond that, it reflects various rabbit holes I’ve dived into over the past five or six years.
All of these films are better than what most of the big studios are churning out nowadays. They lean towards low- to mid-budget indie character dramas that depend on writing, acting and directing. Several I would never have found except for freepers’ recommendations. A couple will probably strike you as weird choices, but I would argue that they will impress you if you stick with them to the end. A couple are there because of ultra-low production budgets; Primer is not a great film, but it is serviceable, is outstanding in its use of technobabble, and was shot for $7,000, most of which was spent on film. Several got Oscar nominations, with a few winners here and there, and more of them deserved a nomination.
Tropic Thunder (2008); The Way Back (2010); The Death of Stalin (2017); Arrival (2016); Brooklyn (2015); Mr. Jones (2019); Chernobyl (the miniseries, 2019); Leave No Trace (2018); Columbus (2017); Downfall (2004); Balloon (2018); The Professor and the Madman (2019); Lost in Translation (2003); Paterson (2016); Ashes in the Snow (2018); Dear Comrades! (2020); Within the Whirlwind (2009); The Dig (2021); Lore (2012); Conspiracy (2001); CODA (2021); On the Rocks (2020); Old Henry (2021); The Most Reluctant Convert: The Untold Story of C.S. Lewis (2021); Montana Story (2021); Drive My Car (2021); I’m Your Man (2021); After Yang (2021); Free Guy (2021); The Lost City (2022); Montana Story (2021); Petite Maman (2021); Another Round (2020); Compartment No. 6 (2021); Jockey (2021); Belfast (2021); See How They Run (2022); The Banshees of Inisherin (2022); Living (2022); TAR (2022); To Leslie (2022); Never Let Me Go (2010); Mr. Turner (2014); Nefarious (2023); Eternal Winter (2018); Sound of Freedom (2023); Oppenheimer (2023); The Florida Project (2017); Love at First Sight (2023); American Fiction (2023); Coherence (2013); Ladyballers (2013); The Holdovers (2023); Past Lives (2023); Primer (2004); Godzilla Minus One (2023); The Zone of Interest (2023); The Promised Land (2023); The Outrun (2024).
Probably the most seen by freepers are Tropic Thunder, The Death of Stalin, Chernobyl, Old Henry; Sound of Freedom, and Oppenheimer.
Since Sean Baker just cleaned up at the Oscars for Anora — which many freepers reject out of hand because of its subject matter, but several have watched and liked it — watch The Florida Project, which I would argue is a profoundly conservative film. I don’t think that was Baker’s intent, but he was rooted in the reality principle, and when that happens, truth shines through. It is one of Willem Dafoe’s best performances, in a major supporting role.
P.S. Note that every movie on my list was shot since 2000, and most since 2010. I recommend watching a few to all those freepers who insist that the film industry hasn’t made a good movie since the last ice age.
Although the hatred of "Normal" and the centering of the freak has been going on longer then she thinks.
I have seen some of those movies you listed:
Have you seen "Reagan"? I may buy that one as well. That seemed to be the most accurate portrayal of Reagan from all I have read, seen, and heard about him. The portrayal of him as a dumb, senile, washed up actor was a total Leftist construct.
4 thousand other award shows, the Oscars just aren’t special anymore. Doesn’t help the the Academy has always been the weirdest voting body in the awards business with lots of oddball “rules”, like how you can’t win any of the Big Five your first time nominated, which makes it the least likely to give the wins where they should be going.
I haven’t seen Reagan. I probably will at some point. I do keep track of freeper recommendations. Free Guy is a good example. I would never have looked that up except that several freepers insisted that thematically it is quite conservative. And it is. I’m glad I watched it, but it’s still not my kind of movie.
We will have different genre and style preferences. And most of us are getting older. My preferences have certainly changed over the years. Many of the movies I loved long ago I find tedious and sometimes unwatchable today. And I enjoy stuff now that I would have rejected out of hand back then.
I’m not well versed on the intricacies of nuclear disasters and the handling of radioactive isotopes, but I am inclined to agree (if this is your point) that the series is melodramatic, having been made by the kind of people who would probably go for the hydrogen monoxide panic and join the crusade against chemicals in the next county. The dominant theme, however, is the pervasive culture of lies that was the old USSR. That is what grabbed me.
If you liked Downfall, have you watched Conspiracy? Two hours of men (mostly) in uniforms sitting around a table talking, and it is riveting. Stanley Tucci, Kenneth Branagh, Colin Firth and an outstanding supporting cast. Kenneth Branagh’s Heydrich is charming, civilized, brilliant, and pure evil, one of the greatest portrayals of a Satanic character ever filmed.
“I am a Freeper. I read the entire article.”
Then you are no FReeper! I mean, whaddaya trying to do, ruin our reputation??
[sphinx wrote]: The streamers run global platforms that are in the subscription business, not the movie business. All content originating with the streamers gets the studio massage with an eye towards generic global viewers, not American audiences.
This trend began more than twenty-five years ago, even before streaming, as NAFTA and satellite globalizing of communications began making it possible for studios to court sizeable markets in China, India, etc. When catering to the largest audience-- twenty-something males, studios learned that nuanced cinematic views of the finer points of Western culture did not carry as much appeal as whack'em smack'em adventure, aggressive body language and violence, augmented by CGI and deafening sound effects. Whether overdubbed or subtitled, dialogue hardly mattered to carry the action forward. And this was still in the days when Americans were still eagerly awaiting the Blockbuster release six months after the theater premiere. So your observation is the logical follow-on as comms tech burgeoned.
Was it last year that actors and writers went on strike to try to get a cut of the streaming revenues? IMO, you are correct in assuming that a bifurcation has taken place, with serious or aspiring "art" on the low-studio-attention track and internationally profitable dreck on the studios' mainstream. The artistry aspect of live performances moved from Broadway and regional theaters to Hollywood a century ago, and now must reimagine its market, which is not altogether a bad thing. With the excesses of Hollywood's heydey, moviegoers had to wade through a lot of incipient actor/actress scandal and moving-picture mind candy to arrive at the handful museum-quality films; the mind candy supported the studios so that the occasional gem could also be financed.
So new marketing opportunities now must be sought where the jilted audience for good movies has gone, which is that we are scattered like aerosol spray around a nation that no longer watches just three channels in the evening and patronizes the three or four local multiplexes. As your appreciation for the Indies and SAG communities indicates, the audience is out there, and new alliances need to do subtle marketing and actor/director appearances on podcasts, popular youtube channels, flyover universities, insta and chat; build reliable review sources on substack and other online journals instead of legacy media, and so forth.
I found it intriguing that the author/blogger, who says she is a middle-aged Jewish woman and mother, had apparently undergone a gradual red-pilling over a period of time before she was cancelled due to voting for Trump. The changes in the industry and its increasing hostility to normalcy ground her down, to the point where she migrated perhaps without recognizing it, as she also still identifies as a Democrat. But at some point she examined the business background of Steve Bannon, who has also produced movies along the way, as indicated by her allegory about the human biosphere that he was engaged to rescue. (I visited the biosphere in the 90s. Her use of its example is right on the mark.)
To rlmorel's comments about audiences searching out those older gems and unpromoted movies of worth, film artists' view of profits must also become long-term. The life of a good movie must not just aim for the awards season, but for a long word-of-keyboard, viral life where reputations on social media may be endlessly debated and overlooked nuggets may be rediscovered at odd moments. Idiocracy is a great example of a film's long half-life -- rarely a month goes by where it is not re-memed on this forum.
Art is usually prescient. When new situations occur, freepers routinely draw on impactful scenes from movies or television to illustrate their points. Surely many of these references also encourage a percentage of readers here to search for the original media, or give it a try when scanning a menu. Producers need to keep copyright timelines higher in mind rather than awards season.
Oh no...my point was not that “Chernobyl” was melodramatic...knowing something of it, I was horrified to visualize it in a movie, that’s all. I simply couldn’t watch it...and I do see it as, as you said, “the pervasive culture of lies that was the old USSR”.
Thank you for the recommendation of “Conspiracy”.
That’s dihydrogen monoxide in my #55. Me bad. But it’s still a chemical and obviously dangerous if mishandled.
One of the things that drew me to The Professor and the Madman was that it features Mel Gibson, who was on the personal redemption tour at that time, and Sean Penn. A more unlikely pair is hard to imagine, and they are both excellent. The movie is a fair adaptation of The Surgeon of Cawthorne, which is of course a true story.
All teachers should be aware that one of the key early contributors to the OED was a former doctor, obviously a genius, who was also a schizophrenic who had been sentenced to life in an insane asylum after killing an innocent man in the midst of a psychotic episode. This meant that he had lots of time on his hands, and books were one of the few luxuries he was allowed. And so the OED was born.
My only regret about the movie is that Sean Penn didn’t go full method and complete the surgery, as the good doctor had done. Hollywood would be a better place. But Penn is great in the movie, despite the half-measures.
"...The changes in the industry and its increasing hostility to normalcy ground her down, to the point where she migrated perhaps without recognizing it, as she also still identifies as a Democrat..."
This is a very strange aspect of Leftism. They are often so engrossed in it that they are unable to pull their head out and engage in some introspection.
IMO, they build up toxic levels of cognitive dissonance in their brains, where in their hearts, they have been getting input from their senses telling them what the truth is. But their conscious processes are so sealed off from what their unconscious is telling them what the reality is, that they end up like the woman you described-her heart knowing that She didn't leave the Democrat Party, it left her (as Ronald Reagan famously said) but her conscious thought told her she was still a Democrat.
And I think it is that level of cognitive dissonance we find so disturbing about Leftists, because we can see it in them clearly, but they cannot see it in themselves.
It is one of the flaws of Leftism-there is no such thing as introspection. To the Left, introspection is dangerous and is thus discouraged. Let someone ELSE decide for you what you should think.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.