Replies

The 'Old Code' was geriatric by then. The market now decides what's appropriate not men in a dark room with a checklist. BTW the movie that did it in was 'Who's Afraid of Virgnia Woolf' something that couldn't work without the lnaguage and themes it had to use.

"They awarded Midnight Cowboy the Oscar and forfeited their mass market for the niche they now have. They never recovered the numbers they gave up in the 1960's."

Niche? The average annual box office per year has been climbing steadily since the 1980s. Even if one accounts for inflated ticket prices, that niche is greater than the audience used to be. DVDs and tapes didn't exist in the Midnight Cowboy era, either, nor did cable or pay per view. Considering that people who stopped going to theaters after a certain age have readily-available access to movies they didn't have when only networks played them, the audience for movies is enormous.

This is the exact problem with Hollywood, Politics. Around, as early as the 60's, Hollywood elitists thought they could dip their hands in how this economy should be ran. You've all heard of the "Not in our Name" petition going around? This is ridiculous, these people are not politicians, half of them don't even have political science degree's or the likewise.
Art is made to inspire and splurge extraordinary thought, this can bleed into government value. But the problem isn't just with the entertainment world, it's everywhere. Homes, business, the government. We don't parent our children anymore, instead we befriend them, we don't work for the goodness of positive production anymore in our jobs, and our government hasn't worked for the "people" in 50 years.
The film industry, yes, is slightly to blame for the jargon they produce to the masses, but people still attend because it's what they want to see. This is how we're entertained. But has it not always been this way, if not gotten a bit better? What about Rome, Gladiators. At least now we don't enjoy real life massacres. Even boxing shortened the maximum amount of rounds a fight can last because 15 was to many for the fighters health. So there are some perks to our moral of entertainment. The problem is everyone expects someone else to do something about it. Yes we shouldn't block our first amendment, but there needs to be a line that should be drawn not just by parents for the kids, but by this nation for its "kids".

Yes, Borges, I am very disappointed in the Cap Alert. They seem to think Hollywood should just make 50's Disney movies. Audiences have moved beyond the kind of cotton candy world they seem to want.

The Hayes Code was dead by 1965. Audiences were ready for heroes who shot first. Culturally, the audience fragmented as the country did between Right and Left.

In Hollywood studios, I suspect a major reason the Left won is that the Right tried in vain to recreate the success of "The Sound of Music" by blowing money on lame big budget family musicals while the Left made harder, edgier films with generous amounts of nudity. Nudity is the cheapest special effect and the most cost effective (they didn't have VCR's or cable soft porn then). The "family market" couldn't support money pits like "Hello, Dolly" or "Paint Your Wagon" and just about any woman taking off her top was more entertaining than "Song of Norway".