Box Office Blahs: Blame It on (Fill in the Blank)

Washington Post (WashingtonPost.com) ^ | December 30, 2005 | William Booth

[RayChuang88]

LOS ANGELES -- Hollywood ticket sales took a little swan dive in 2005. Why? The consensus hypothesis appears to be that the movies were -- brace yourselves -- not good.

The industry and its observers are also variously blaming DVDs, video games, iPods, cellular phones, HBO, crying babies, $10 tickets, Chinese pirates, big screen plasma TVs, an aging demographic, liberal bias, video-on-demand, annoying pre-feature commercials and the Bush administration's energy policy.

The Great Box Office Slump has been covered by the entertainment press with a kind of giddy obsession ever since the summer proved blockbuster-deficient. Each week, the prognosticators sought deeper meaning in the weekend tallies for undercooked turkeys such as "Stealth" and "The Legend of Zorro." There was hope in the Hollywood press that "King Kong" might "save the day," but alas, the big ape has so far "disappointed," if it is possible for a $66 million opening five-day gross to disappoint (which it is, since Peter Jackson and Universal spent $220 million making the monkey movie).

[Arizona Carolyn]

We started watching Alexander on HBO Saturday night -- all I can say is the media totally underplayed how much Gay stuff was really in that movie -- it is truly one of the top ten bad movies of all time (JMHO)...

[Arizona Carolyn]

I enjoyed Kong, like Narnia more.

[dalereed]

They can't blame it on me since I haven't been in a movie theater in 50 years except to build or remodel them when they weren't showing movies.

[RayChuang88]

The problem with Alexander is that scholars are still arguing whether Alexander the Great was actually gay or not. I think people forget that the ancient Greek definition of close friendship is quite different than the modern definition.

[RayChuang88]

I think the big issue with Brokeback Mountain is that they could have toned down the explicit homosexuality of the movie quite a bit and it would still not lose its emotional impact.

[earlyamerican]

Why won't Hollywood do the Rick Rescorla story?

[mattdono]

The target of my comment (i.e. filmmakers) was, perhaps, the only inaccurate part of my comment. The artsy-fartsy writer that wrote the story was, I'm certain, aware of the allusion to the Good Sheperd and the mockery that 2 gay sheperds might have for a Christian.

And, don't kid yourself, I am certain that the filmmakers "got it" too.

If you tell me, all the filmmakers did was completely recreate the short story, fine.

If you tell me, that no one involved didn't happen to think "let's write a story about 2 gay sheperds" and not notice/be aware of the historical reference of Christ as the "Good Sheperd", then your dumber than you already sound.