Simple.
Regards, Ivan
Posted on 07/23/2005 4:31:17 PM PDT by MadIvan
‘You can take Hollywood for granted like I did,” says a character in F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon. “Or you can dismiss it with the contempt we reserve for what we don’t understand. It can be understood too, but only dimly and in flashes. Not half a dozen men have ever been able to keep the whole equation of pictures in their heads.”
If that was true decades ago, it is truer today. I have yet to find any American grown-up who disagrees with the notion that Hollywood movies today are unprecedentedly bad. But nobody quite understands why.
It has always been true that Hollywood put commerce before art. It has always been true that celebrity often drove casting, and that sex drove celebrity. But none of that glorious sordid American reality produced movies as bad as the ones we now have to endure.
Take the two films that a wonderful actress, Nicole Kidman, has starred in over the past two summers. Last year she appeared in a remake of The Stepford Wives. The original was a campy, creepy 1970s feminist screed. The Kidman version was an artless, humour-free, dumb-as-a-post sitcom with a logic-free plot.
This summer she starred as Samantha in another painful, universally-panned remake, of the cheerful early 1960s sitcom Bewitched. What exactly was an actress of Kidman’s calibre doing anywhere near it? Perhaps the most concise answer is money. The old studio system was geared toward raking in the dollars, but it also kept costs down. Stars were contracted to studios and were unable to leverage up to $20m a movie or a cut of the profits. Expensive visual effects were yet to be invented. The massive Lucas-Spielberg formula for the summer blockbuster — with advertising and marketing budgets to match — was in the future. And so, as the film critic David Thomson points out in his new book The Whole Equation (yes, he cites the Fitzgerald quote in his title), more movies were made.
In its prime Hollywood used to churn out up to 700 a year; now it’s 200 tops. With fewer and far more expensive movies you tend to take fewer risks with any individual one. And so you tend toward bankable celebrities and concepts that will guarantee sales.
A couple of years ago Thomson related the problem in an interview with the journalist Robert Birnbaum: “Someone comes along and says, ‘Look, Tom Cruise is a secret agent. Goes all over the world. Beautiful exotic locations. Lot of very high-tech machinery. Four or five beautiful women. Two or three major supporting actors as villains. Do you like it?’” The script, the storyline, the characters, the photography are almost afterthoughts.
And so you get something like this summer’s War of the Worlds. It’s another remake; its script is risible, the effects are amazing (but no better any more than most state-of-the-art video games), the characters are cartoons, and the acting rarely gets beyond movie-of-the-week quality. The ending was so corny and contrived the audience I saw it with burst out laughing.
And this was Spielberg! We know he’s capable of at least competent film-making. The producers must have known it was dreadful, because they organised an absurd series of advance publicity explosions to create interest. But watching Cruise bounce up and down on Oprah’s sofa declaring his new love for a Hollywood starlet was about as interesting as watching him disappear in the movie into what looked like a giant alien posterior. (The latter, at least, got a cheer when I saw it.) There is a reason why this year Hollywood has seen almost every week’s take decline compared with last year. The audiences are catching on. They know that imaginatively exhausted dreck is now the rule.
Other factors count. As Joseph Epstein observes in the current issue of Commentary, most movies are aimed at niche markets, mainly teenagers and young adults. Intelligent, challenging adult films are no longer the mainstream. The global market also favours easily translatable special effects, crass plots and minimal dialogue.
The best comedy is now on television, and usually in cheap cartoon form — South Park, The Simpsons, (yes, still) and The Family Guy spring to mind. The kind of intelligent middlebrow of Hollywood’s past is now more likely to be found on HBO: Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, Oz, Deadwood, or even the innovative comedy of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Every now and again something in this genre makes it to the big screen, and when it does critics are so relieved and overjoyed they tend to overhype it. Sideways struck me as a classic example of this. The ecstatic reviews were more about the deluge of dreariness the critics usually have to sit through than the flawed, slow movie itself.
So why don’t the big newspapers and critics simply ignore the big movies and refuse to review them? Aren’t critics in some way supposed to check commercial mediocrity? A few of the old school still do. The New Republic’s Stanley Kauffman simply refuses to review much that Hollywood produces. But The New York Times cannot. Its advertising income is heavily dependent on Hollywood blockbuster hype. And so, day after day you read critics who grew up on Fellini and Scorsese finding new and inventively ironic ways to describe The Fantastic Four.
Money also traps. Stars paid a fortune find it hard to accept modest sums for more interesting work. Recently I found myself watching Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman in a film called Meet the Fockers. It was the sequel to the intermittently funny family comedy Meet the Parents. Hotel Rwanda was funnier. But watching Hoffman and De Niro tart themselves out for millions they do not need in a script whose awfulness defied belief was, well, a bummer.
Will it get better? No. Will some great movies still get made? Of course they will. At some point long after they have been distributed you’ll find out which movies they are. And that’s what DVD players were made for.
Simple.
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
And you said it in one sentence. Effective, but hard to fill twenty column inches. :)
‘You can take Hollywood for granted like I did,” says a character in F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon. “Or you can dismiss it with the contempt we reserve for what we don’t understand. It can be understood too, but only dimly and in flashes. Not half a dozen men have ever been able to keep the whole equation of pictures in their heads.”
If that was true decades ago, it is truer today. I have yet to find any American grown-up who disagrees with the notion that Hollywood movies today are unprecedentedly bad. But nobody quite understands why.
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Everybody but wHolyWeird knows why... your movies suck and are full of left wing agenda! lol
FYI..there was a story in the WSJ a few days ago..abotu the big hits that media stocks have taken if late..mainly because of terrible sales numbers for DVDs..As DVD players gained critical mass, people bought lots of DVDs..not they realize that it's stupid to do so...aso, the big looming battle over which format for the next generation..comsumers will sit on their hands and wallets, until it's resolved.
the effects are amazing (but no better any more than most state-of-the-art video games) . . .
This is why plot and characterizations will have to get better. The special effects
are too easy to replicate. If every movie has the same CG effects, somebody is
going to have to reintroduce literature. Indy films are already surpassing
Hollywood's remakes of remakes. A few bold directors wouldn't hurt either. Too
much of the good stuff gets left on the cutting room floor.
Well, at least The Incredibles was good.
The oldest kid walked out on WOTW, so I didn't bother to go.
War of the Worlds should of been more about the monsters and less about the bratty insufferable kids. I think the movie went way out of it's way trying to relate to the kids.
Nowadays I mostly go to the "second run" $2.00 places. Popcorn is way cheaper too.
If I see a movie I like I may buy the DVD when it comes out. A shame. Trite but, they don't make 'em like they used to.
My wife and I stopped going to see movies at the theaters after they added the advertisments to the 5 or six previews. Some genius sold the idea of ads as a stroke of genius, too bad for him.
You know what? Voting with your feet does have its privileges, and TCM does show some great old films. You can even watch some rented ones or buy the ones you want.
When those who make movies, including the very spoiled and very rich stars, make films instead of flicks you want to flick off your shoulder, I'll go. Patriotism, down-home, dignified, well-written, maybe even not so politically correct flag-waving religious themes that portray the best of American values, instead of glorifying American dreck, would be worth seeing.
Only one star makes these films now consistently: Mel Gibson.
Any future film studios that care to take on Desert Storm or Afghanistan or Iraq or Fallujah are on notice that there is a market out there for this.
The magic is gone, that's for sure.
My wife and I can't find anything worth going to tonight.
when americans stop going to hollywood movies, buying them, and renting them,
they might regain their republic.
Simple explanation: In the nineteen-forties 90% of Hollywood revenue came from USA consumers. Now, 70% comes from non-USA consumers. Hollywood makes films that appeal to Asian teenagers. If they like it, it's a hit. If not, not.
There is a British company who just completed War of the World where it takes place in 1889 (just like the novel). I think the name of the company is Pendrageon. It was suppose to come out in 2005 but Hollywood killed that prospect this summer. I heard that the British version stuck to the novel, and was interesting because mankind did not have the modern weapons to confront the Martian tripods. I think it will come out in Britain and DVD. I always hoped Masterpiece Theater would do War of the World. I think the future for good films will come when film making is low cost and decentralized. I think when animation becomes life like, a group of artists can come out with a human like animated actor/actress that will never age and will not demand huge salaries from studios. I think it is concievable within 10 years to use 3-D animation to produce life like films (all subjects, eras, genre) for less than $ 25M. I think this is possible, just look at the 3-D graphics on video games and how it is driving software, computer graphics, memory and speed. There are software for creating still 3-D human figures with skin texture, lifelike eyes and hair for $ 300. Using reference point photography, it can reproduce a 3-D image of your face and you can add it to the lifelike human figure created. Add another $5000 animated software program and $ 10 000 computer workstation, you can animate the figure where the clothes swirl naturally and the hair waves naturally. I would say if you spend less than 10 seconds glancing at the animation, you will think that was a live person on tape. Give it another ten years, and the actors of today will be looking for another line of work.
these people in hollywood are supposed to be the foremost authority on making movies yet, I could go to the library today and pick out a book that would make a wonderful movie in five minutes. in the last few decades movie makers have raised the bar and the viewing public EXPECTS excellent stories and special effects when they plunk down 50$ to see their movie. And honestly, for the kind of money the actors, directors and producers are making, they SHOULD be expected to hit the mark every time.
While despising most remakes, and while loving Gene Wilder as the original Wonka, I have to admit I liked Charlie and the Chocolate Factory a lot. Luckily they've bypassed remaking my favorite shows of the 1960's (The Prisoner and Man From UNCLE although those have been discussed). TV show remakes have always turned out to be awful (even going back a few years to big-screen versions of My Favorite Martian, Dragnet, Beverly Hillbillies, etc.)
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"WE WERE SOLDIERS" Starring MEL GIBSON
http://www.WeWereSoldiers.com
(The Paramount Pictures website)
http://www.lzxray.com/guyer_collection.htm
(The Photos)
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