Posted on 12/28/2005 6:59:55 AM PST by bulldozer
These days, the film industry bemoans decreasing box office sales by crying about illegal downloads of movies. If all the major providers of peer-to-peer software had not been shut down, they might have a point.
Industries who think consumers are slaves to their products usually end up in this boat. The consumer goes elsewhere.
“Brokeback Mountain” has netted a paltry $4.9 million in box office sales, nearly identical to “Memoirs of a Geisha”. Both movies have been out for about two weeks. King Kong has earned twenty times more in only eight days of apish reincarnation.
Here is a wake-up call for Hollywood: Nearly one-fourth of viewers gave Brokeback Mountain an “F”, while 69.4% gave it an A, leaving no middle-ground. We can easily guess who these votes came from on both sides of this tin coin.
Golden Globe elites went into plebian parinirvana over the idea of two married cowboys rustling something more than livestock on the range. Monkeys go “ape” seeing themselves in the mirror, too. A “Gone With The Wind” this is not.
The business model for film distribution is changing rapidly in ways Hollywood is loathe to admit. With cable and satellite, viewers do not need to waste money going out to see movies they do not really want to see, out of sheer boredom. We can more easily surf cable to watch the best of the worst, in far more comfortable surroundings, with our favorite snacks just a few steps away. The box office and DVD rentals merely give us time to figure out what we really want to see.
Hollywood no longer has a monopoly on entertainment. The internet and video games are where celluloid ex-pats now reside.
Consumer dollar-votes are most instructive. The fish now know the difference between a real worm and a fake one with a hook on it. We are no longer addicted to seeing the latest insult to family values just so we can pretend we are hip while complaining about it at lunch.
Shock entertainment will be an increasingly marginal market. Those who wish to be successful in film and television will look to the great box office hits, shows, and the legendary acts for new foundations for the film industry.
David R. Usher is President of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, Missouri Coalition
Yet another troll. What is this, the 22nd zot of the new year?
*chuckle*
Sometimes you just have to smack the rodents around a little harder by yourself to appreciate a good clean thorough viking berzerker charge. -NiMH cat, abuser of voles.
Something like that.
I've lost track already.
The trll was guilty of malum zambonifactum.
*cheap tie in to first Undead Thread*
I don't know - all the static electricity fried the database.
It does much worse than that--it glorifies a lifestyle that is not only adulterous, but perverted. The selfish, nihilistic actions of the sheep boys are another attempt to seduce boys into that lifestyle, since homosexuality is a learned behavior.
Their argument that it is genetic makes about as much sense as saying pedophiles are born with a desire to rape babies. It is learned through abuse. Homosexuals are trying desperately to normalize their abnormal behavior and trying to make it macho.
Cool. I'd love to win an Oscar, have a world-class art collection, and be considered a legend. :)
I don't see it as glorifying that lifestyle at all -- the movie isn't some feel-good film, it clearly is bad for all the characters, men and women.
And there is *no way* a movie or any other media will convince straight men into "becoming" gay... I have no idea how you think someone could be seduced into being gay if they weren't already gay to begin with.
The whole "abuse" theory doesn't explain every gay person by far, and this is based on the gay people I know personally.
Sure, you can say gayness is abnormal or them having "broken brains" (which is an interesting phrase I read somewhere else in FR), even if I'm not so sure I agree with that yet (is being gay like being blind?). But seriously, if you know gay people, you'd realize that they aren't all in-the-closet married men who end up committing adultery, nor are they all AIDS-spreading hedonists.
In my opinion, a lot of the attempts to suppress gay people from being themselves seems to cause more problems that it solves. I don't see them as a whole hurting anyone.
This one does.
Has anyone on this forum actually SEEN the movie? I've been reading a lot of sniggering gay jokes worthy of the average eighth grader, and people talking about how the movie's box office performance doesn't match up to bigger movies.
Personally, I liked the movie. And the theater I saw at in (in the middle of a pretty conservative suburban area) was packed. I don't know what the sexual preferences of every single member of the audience was; my wife and I are both straight and we both thought BBM was a thoughtful, beautifully written, acted and directed film about two people caught up by something they can't understand.
Well, this movie now has made about ten times its then-current gross at the time when Mr. Usher penned this article, so I'd say this thread is a bit out of date.;)Obviously, people on the Right have "misunderestimated" its box office appeal. I admit that, while I thought it would do better than people were saying, I thought fifty million would be tops. Now it's about to pass fifty million. Clearly, America is more receptive to homosexuality then it used to be, but then look how the country has changed in twenty years.
Hi!
Yeah! I did, twice. FINALLY someone who has actually SEEN the movie.
My husband and i felt much the way you and your wife did.
Here is a link to a fabulous commentary:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11102003/
The movie will peak out at $83 million domestic box office and will wind up being the 22nd highest grossing film of 2005.
Moreover, the DVD has been in the #1 spot on amazon for 12 of the last 15 days (it fell to #2 behind Kink Kong for about 3 days). I imagine it will be there for many more days to come!
Incidentally, it is a GREAT movie.
4 weeks at #1 on amazon.com's DVD sales chart and still going strong! Hurray for Brokeback!
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