Barry Diller Headed 2 Hollywood Studios. He Now Says The Movie Business Is Dead

I don’t know if an “at home anything” will ultimately recreate a live theater space but the innovations are such that the questions arise over whether or not that matters if the space you create is comfortable and free of distractions. Nothing will replace being at a live orchestra concert for example including the roar of the crowd at the end of a live performance...it is true that there is a “being with people” aspect that the best home music systems can never match.

Movies and cinema at home brooks a different question..at least in the sound reproduction department. Spartacus(the original Kirk Douglas) Looks different on the curved dimension 150 technirama type screens the film was produced for and I had the priviledge to see it in its restored glory on such a screen. The screens curvature gave one a sense of being in the center...no matter where one sat. Some of the widest Samsung TV at home curved screens could do that but that was mostly gimmicky.

The movie sound is another issue and the sound reproduction on home systems can be profound due to the ability to be tweaked for the home. In movie theaters you have to take what the projectionists gives you and sometimes the sound can be overly loud in dynamics when it doesn’t have to be. For me that is the number one reason I have prefered home systems and watching most movies at home.

I do like the James Cameron, Real 3d, and IMAX 3d processes for large public theater screens how ever...no more image collapses or head-aches.(even works well over my variable lenses i have for astigmatism) The 720 degree digital circular polarization processes have really take some three d movies to a new level and that is one thing you can’t see on a home system.(the 3 d tv thing is a joke).

I agree with your examples. But here are some recent counterexamples. It’s a wildly idiosyncratic list, heavily influenced by some ongoing discussions with history teachers about good films on the Cold War era. As you skim the list, my contextual question to you is how many of these movies had you never heard of — and why not? Good movies are being made. They’re hiding in plain sight. How can they be elevated? Here’s my discussion starter list:

Columbus (2017; Kogonada, dir.); Leave No Trace (2018; Debra Granik, dir.); The Florida Project (2017, Sean Baker, dir.), The Professor and the Madman (2019; P.B. Shemran, dir.); Mr. Jones (2020; Agnieszka Holland, dir.), Balloon (2018, Michael Herbig, dir.), The Way Back (2010; Peter Weir, dir.), Downfall (2004; Oliver Hirschbiegel, dir.), The Death of Stalin (2017; Armando Iannucci, dir.), The Dig (2021, Simon Stone, dir.), Journey’s End (2017, Saul Dibb, dir.), Dear Comrades! (2020, Andrey Konchalovskiy, dir.), Ashes in the Snow (Marius A. Markevicius, dir.), Within the Whirlwind (2009, Marleen Gorris, dir.), Conspiracy (2001, Frank Pierson, dir.).

Films move around the various streaming platforms frequently. Many of them are available for free on Kanopy, which was a recent discovery for me. It’s a school and library oriented system with a great deal of older, art house and international content. It’s worth checking out; I have free access through the DC Public Library, which is a subscriber, and all I need is my card number. If your local library participates, it’s worth checking out. If all else fails, once they’re several years old, they’re usually pretty cheap to rent.

These are mostly Cold War related with a few personal favorites — Columbus, The Florida Project, Leave No Trace, The Professor and the Madman — thrown in. Except for Conspiracy (about the Wannsee Conference; 90 minutes of men in uniforms sitting around a table talking, and it is riveting) and Downfall — of which I was aware because of the YouTube parodies, but had never bothered to watch — these are all within the last dozen years or so. If you go back further, the list is endless, but I suggest these to folks who think that the modern film industry is a wasteland. These are good films; a few will be classics, but all of them are high quality. And this list is just a few that I’ve caught through casual searching. The point is, films like these are still being made. The dominant marketing and distribution systems, however, seem oriented towards pushing a very different kind of product, which means we have to ferret out the good stuff. From my perspective, at least, the industry is hyping mass market junk and not putting its best foot forward. The streamers accentuate this; they’re oriented towards a lowest common denominator product intended for a global audience.

Reviews are important. Film festivals are important. I never paid attention to them before, but I do now. The festivals are run by film fanatics who may be insufferably elitist and moronically PC in their politics, but they are all enamored of the idea of cinema as a high art. They want theatrical movies, not television serials. They are generally down on spandex clad superheroes and mindless action flicks. Sexual content is still a battleground, but at the level of the major festivals, the pendulum seems to be swinging back somewhat from the excesses of the past. That war will never be over, but look at the films broadly. Most of them are not oversexualized. (There are some exceptions.)

Cannes is on point now. Most of the Cannes movie list leaves me cold, but I do want to watch After Yang and The French Dispatch (in both cases, mainly as a vote of confidence in their directors). I will pay attention to reviews, prizes and “best of” lists for further leads. The burden is on us to find the good stuff, but it’s there if we look.

Your description doesn’t fit any of the movies I listed. I largely shared your opinion, by the way, until just a couple of years ago. Then I came to realize that I was watching the wrong movies, mainly because I had never even heard about the good ones.

Have you seen any of the films on my list? Have you even heard of most of them? And again, if not, why not? Why is the marketing system breaking down in this way?

My broader point is that the domination of the streamers and the consolidation of the production studios has an exaggerated impact on marketing. Quality films are still being made, but they’re not what the streamers push on their landing pages. Nor do they receive the kinds of marketing campaigns that used to launch theatrical movies. Good films are produced, but mass audiences don’t hear about them. It becomes a challenge to find it.

This is important because, whether we like it or not, both social media and streamed content have huge cultural, social and political impacts. Cultural conservatives need to compete in this arena. An obvious place to begin is to find ways to elevate the good stuff.

Dialogue works perfectly well on the big screen. I’ll start the bidding with Casablanca and we can escalate from there. My larger point, however, is that good films are still being made and we should support them. The trick is finding them amidst all the sludge. They’re usually not on the streamers’ front pages, and if they are, it’s only briefly, in the “new this week” section. But they’re there, buried in the libraries. The first task is simply to learn that they exist; the big companies devote most of their advertising to lowest common denominator junk. The next is to figure what which service has them this month, as they do move around.

I’ll make a point to see the good films in the theaters if I discover them in time (and nowadays, if they get a theatrical release at all). I’ll stream them if I miss them in the theater, and of course if they’re good enough for rewatching, I’ll stream them after their theatrical run is done. Unfortunately in today’s environment, many of the good films — many of which don’t get expensive marketing campaigns — are out of the theaters long before most people are even aware of them.

The current environment threatens to set in motion a Gresham’s Law of filmmaking, in which the bad drives out the good. I think that’s what Barry Diller was driving at. It may be futile in the long run, but I think we should try to support the good stuff while it’s still being produced.

Of the films I listed, you’ve seen The Death of Stalin, which indeed a worthy film. I take it you were unaware of the others. May I suggest that some evening, after you get tired watching the grass grow and the paint dry, spend a few minutes online on watch some trailers. I won’t challenge you to sit through all the movies I recommended, but a 2-3 minute trailer will give you a flavor. And if you are intrigued enough to actually watch three or four of them, that’s not a bad batting average for my list.

I read reviews. I pay attention to other people’s recommendations. I watch trailers. It’s not foolproof, and if a streamed film doesn’t grab me pretty quickly, I’ll move on. But once it becomes a habit, a bit of screening goes a long way. There are some great films out there, but we can’t rely on the industry to bring them to our attention.

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