Posted on 07/26/2005 8:52:10 AM PDT by holymoly
The standard entertainment industry reaction to Hollywood's box office slump reveals the same shallow, materialistic mindset that helped create the problem in the first place. The left-leaning thinking that dominates the movie business follows a common liberal instinct to deny the spiritual dimension to every problem, thereby profoundly compounding the difficulties.
Tinseltown's recent setbacks suggest a crisis of major proportions, with a May USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll showing 48% of adults going to movies less often than in 2000. For 19 consecutive weeks, motion picture releases earned less (despite higher ticket prices) than the year before. Projected ticket sales for all of 2005 indicate a disastrous drop of at least 8% - at a time of population growth and a generally robust economy.
USA TODAY ran a headline, "Where have all the moviegoers gone?" under which insiders discussed their desperate attempts to rebuild the shattered audience: "The lures include providing high-tech eye candy through 3-D digital projection and IMAX versions of movies. ... Stadium seating, which improves views, is just now becoming standard. Other theaters are opting for screenings that serve alcohol to patrons 21 and older."
More balance needed
Revealingly, none of the studio honchos talked about reconnecting with the public by adjusting the values conveyed by feature films, and replacing the industry's shrill liberal posturing with a more balanced ideological perspective.
Something clearly changed between 2004 and 2005 to cause an abrupt drop-off at the box office, and the most obvious alteration involved Hollywood's role in the bitterly fought presidential election. The entertainment establishment embraced John Kerry with near unanimity - and bashed George W. Bush with unprecedented ferocity.
Michael Moore became an industry hero and the most visible symbol of the Hollywood left. Innumerable callers to my radio show expressed resentment at the strident partisanship of top stars; no one ever complained about the lack of 3-D digital projection or alcoholic beverages at concession stands.
Despite efforts by entertainer activists, a majority of voters cast their ballots for Bush. If even a minority of those 62 million GOP voters - say, 20% - reacted to Hollywood's electioneering by shunning the multiplex, it could easily account for the sharp decline in ticket sales after Bush's re-election.
Another values-oriented phenomenon of last year similarly contributed to missing moviegoers: The Passion of the Christ earned $370 million by drawing religious-minded patrons who had long avoided movies altogether. Amazingly, no major release in the 17 months since the opening of The Passion attempted to appeal to that huge, wary churchgoing audience. Walt Disney Co. hopes that the faithful will flock to theaters during Christmas season to see the adaptation of the Christian allegory by C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but that promised deliverance is still five months away - an eternity in show business time.
Meanwhile, conventional wisdom ignores all ideological considerations in explaining the sudden box office collapse, concentrating instead on purely material excuses (high ticket prices, availability of DVDs) that have, frankly, applied for years. This knee-jerk tendency to offer direct, physical solutions to deep-seated problems constitutes an unmistakable element in the liberal outlook that remains Hollywood's reigning faith.
Liberal tendencies
To combat threats to the family from out-of-wedlock births, for instance, the left offers birth control and abortion - though illegitimacy soared as "reproductive choice" became widely available. On crime, liberals stress gun control - despite statistics showing states with widespread gun ownership producing less criminal violence. To fight poverty, progressives want more funding for welfare and public housing - ignoring the destructive impact of a culture of dependency and the failure of government projects in every big city. On the core question of terrorism, liberals blame economic deprivation, suggesting foreign aid to dry up anti-Americanism - downplaying the depravity at the heart of Muslim militancy that draws its murderous leadership from the Middle East's most privileged classes.
This same habitual blindness to spiritual, substantive dimensions of every significant challenge continues to handicap Hollywood. Paramount Pictures recently announced that the first major thriller dramatizing 9/11, with Nicholas Cage as a rescuer attempting to escape the wreckage, will be directed by notorious conspiracist Oliver Stone. Aside from his recent drug busts and box office bombs (the gay-themed Alexander and his documentary paean to Fidel Castro, Commandante), Stone has compiled a vast collection of anti-American statements, including his 1987 declaration: "I think America has to bleed. I think the corpses have to pile up. ... Let the mothers weep and mourn."
Meanwhile, Tinseltown will continue to weep and mourn as long as its bosses depend on the likes of Stone to portray the worst terrorist attacks in our history. Americans aren't stupid, and we're not all apolitical; many (at least a third) are even self-consciously conservative in both politics and values.
In Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign, his staff kept focused with the help of a sign: "It's the economy, stupid." In their campaign to bring back disillusioned moviegoers, Hollywood's honchos ought to consider similar signs, reminding themselves, "It's the values, stupid."
There was Breaking Training Camp, and Goes to Japan. Couldn't find any financial for Training Camp, but Goes to Japan made 14 mil, not bad for the 3rd installment. And again you have to deal with the opening: 1103 theaters, Raiders got 1078. How can that be explained if nobody thought there was an audience for the movie? Answer: it can't, obviously they thought the movie would make bank. Now obviously they didn't realized how much bank since it then expanded to 1778 theaters, but no movie in that era they didn't expect to break 100 mil was going to get an 1100 theater opening, no way.
But JP still runs into the problem of being dumb, it starts right off when they introduce the paleontologist and he tells the kids about the hunting patterns of velocoraptors, I know there's a lot of stuff to be learned from the fossil record but not hunting methods. Right there barely 5 minutes into the movie it is announced that they'll just be making crap up but don't worry because the special effects are gonna be great.
My point was it wasn't a sell out since there was no clear market to sell out to. They opened it wide because of his name. Why not go for the gold? And JP had a bad script. I'm not arguing there. The second half though was what SS does better then anyone. And what he did for nearly 2 hours in WOTW in a different key.
But there HAD to be a clear market to sell out to. They didn't open 1941 wide, they saw it didn't have a market. ET opened wide, must have been a clearly defined market.
The second half of JP was a festival of stupid special effects with no plot to hold them up. I'll grant you, that is what SS currently does better than anybody, but it makes for lousy movies that insult your intelligence and shouldn't be watched. Which again shows why I will never watch his version of WOTW, it's two hours of the worst part JP, I already saw two hours of the worst part of JP it was called Lost World, I ain't doing it again.
"My reasons for not going to the theater are:"
Ditto. But add the arrogance of so many jerk-
movie people, including Leonard DiCaprio, Sean Penn,
and the usual gang of suspects.
I was reffering to the mastery of dynamics and motion. If you want plot watch soap operas.
Thanks for the post holymoly. Michael Medved ping. Anyone want on or off the Medved ping list, please send me an FRmail.
My brother and SIL went to see War of the Worlds over the weekend. A large man walked in and my bro told his wife, "that guy will sit right in front of me." He said sure enough, the guy did. He also had two, what he believed to be lesbians, behind him, one of which was kicking his seat.
The sad thing about so many movies today is that I'd much rather see a terrific movie that I've already seen than most of what's out as "new movies."
For instance, I just spent $11 at Wally-World in their bargain DVD bin... For $5.50 each, I purchased Nicholas Cage and Shirley McClain in "Guarding Tess," and Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin in "All of Me."
I've seen both movies loads of times, and have no problems seeing them again, whenever I want. Other movies like that include "A Christmas Story," "Raising Arizona," and "The Princess Bride."
The only movies that are going to be coming out in the near future that I'm even the slightest bit interested in seeing are the new Harry Potter movie, and the CS Lewis movies.
Mark
Mark
I want to see the penguin documentary with my kids. Other than tha, I',m not interested in 99.99% of the movies out there.
Yeah, but then I heard that Jessica Simpson worked really hard to prepare for the role in that movie, and I may just have to force myself to go see it (once it goes to the $2.00 theater) to check her out out her acting abilities.
Mark
Well, remember that he started as a movie critic, and until recently, that was his main job. And he's still a movie critic.
Mark
Actually, KC has a theater like this, and children are not allowed. It's set up for couples out on a date. It's actually set up like a dinner theater, and there are waiters and waitresses (I've never been there, so I don't know exactly how that works once the movie's begun), but I know that before the movie you can order snacks, drinks, or even an entire dinner. It's sort of like movie night at home, but with first run movies, and a really big screen.
Mark
I finally saw "Hidalgo", a movie I wanted to see for the past two years, by checking it out free from the library. No royalties to Hollywood that way.
Well, I think that both Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc were both family movies, and perfectly fine entertainment for adults.
Mark
Two, perhaps three, years ago, Joseph Sobran worte an article called "The Bowdlerization of CS Lewis." Basically, the publishers and trustees holding the rights to Lewis' works (the holders themselves neccesarily of the same Christian mind as Lewis himself) were going to cash in in the Tolkien craze and Tolkien's friendship with Lewis by relaunching the Chronicales of Narnia AND "stories inspired by Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia.
He then related that the strong possibility existed that the new stories would very likely be devoid of any Christian-allegory content while the original works themselves might undergo some pruning.
I welcome a movie (or series of) based on _Lewis'_ Narnia, but I have a sinking suspicion that the new movie slated for Christmas will be something along the lines of Jacksonian or Potter-esque action-adventure. We'll see!
People are reading more, and only watching the films they really want to see. If they have no driving passion to see a certain film, they say, I'll wait for the DVD. That's the case of several friends of mine with "Cinderella Man" -- they listen to my comments that it's a great movie, then they say, I'll watch it eventually, I'll wait for the DVD. The desire isn't there to pull them into the theater-going experience.
"It's actually set up like a dinner theater"
That might be okay.
Geez, I suck. That should be:
...(the holders themselves NOT neccesarily of the same Christian mind as Lewis himself)...
"then I heard that Jessica Simpson worked really hard to prepare for the role in that movie"
Huh? I'm trying to imagine what that would involve. I mean, it ain't Shakespeare, y'all.
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