Warning labels applicable to virtually every MSM Newser
Posted on 08/29/2010 8:13:05 AM PDT by abb
JOEL SILVER stands on the Warner Brothers lot and points to the remnants of a house where he filmed parts of four “Lethal Weapon” movies. “We blasted a toilet out of that window,” he says, smiling proudly. “Over there, we drove a car straight into the living room.”
Ah, the glory days.
Behind Mr. Silver, the flamboyant producer of some of the biggest action hits of the last 30 years, is the modest set for one of his current films, an R-rated comedy with no stars, almost no budget and — for now — no title. Not that Mr. Silver was ready to call the production small. “It’s a little movie, but it’s a big little movie,” he says.
And therein lies Mr. Silver’s challenge: How does a larger-than-life, free-spending producer fit into a movie business that has been tightening up — and cutting some of its more grandiose characters down to size?
In the new Hollywood, stars count for less, whether in front of the camera or behind it. Financial firepower and technological wizardry matter more. And a generation of producers — whose principal assets were their industry connections and a remarkable degree of personal force — are having to adapt.
Mr. Silver, 58, has been a dominant studio moviemaker for over three decades, delivering blockbuster franchises like “Lethal Weapon,” “Die Hard” and “The Matrix.” The 59 movies he has produced have generated almost $10 billion in ticket sales, adjusting for inflation. The money he has made for Warner alone has won him lavish treatment from the studio — not just in compensation, but also in perks. To make him happy, Warner once went so far as to send movie props to his Brentwood mansion for his son’s birthday party.
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(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Warning labels applicable to virtually every MSM Newser
Hollywood isn’t in the mood, but the movie going public is. In hard economic times, people want escapism. Some of the best movies ever made came out during the Great Depression: GWTW and The Wizard of Oz, for example. People wanted an escape from their dreary existence.
I did some work for a writer who worked on many successful movies since the 70’s. He is having a hard time finding work now and was complaining about DVD piracy and studios not hiring older writers anymore. I felt a bit bad for him, but I’m sure he wasn’t very wise with most of the money he made.
It’s always been about the distribution - the ability of creators to get the content to those who would read/see/hear it - more so than creative skills.
Hollywood, Big Newspaper, Networks, Magazines - they all thought they were superior writers and artists.
They ain’t and they never were.
All they ever had was the ability to control how much and when that content was distributed to the customer.
It’s the same with political punditry. Here at FRee Republic there are hundreds of folks who can write better and more incisive political commentary than those who appear on the Sunday talk shows.
They can’t tell interesting stories anymore because of political correctness.
1. Christians are evil.
2. Women are to be valued only for their cleavage.
3. Traditional gender roles are artificial but feminism and homosexuality are government-protected lifestyles.
4. Self-esteem is paramount; government must undertake to guarantee each citizen-victim self-esteem no matter the cost.
5. The ACLU is good, because destroying religion and silencing believers are protected by the Constitution and the First Amendment; The NRA is bad because it defends the Constitution.
6. Standardized IQ tests are racist; racial quotas and affirmative action are not.
7. Conservatives are racists; everybody knows that Black people can't make it on their own without big-buck government assistance programs and Hollyweirdos to proselytize the message 24/7.
8. Abortion is a natural right. The Founders just forgot to put it in the Constitution.
9. Normal sex is perverted. Threesomes, bestiality, necrophilia, homosexuality are just new ways to get a thrill.
10. Moral indignation is a liberal's standard strategy for endowing our output with superiority.
11. Victimization is our basic belief by which we blame and find others responsible for our own personal failures, then expect taxpayers, deep-pocketed individuals, or the courts to bail us out. It feels good to be in the throes of "victimization" and either A) causing victims, B) concocting victims, C) playing victim, D) commiserating over victims, or E) creating another class of victims to bleed over.
12. It's a liberal's duty to treat Middle America in the manner of raising mushrooms, that is to say, keep them in the dark and feed them lots of horse manure.
13. Capitalism creates oppression; government creates opportunity.
14. The traditional family is archaic, constricting, with no redeeming value. Parents that try to guide their children's choices are restrictive. Kids need to be "free".
15. Don’t hire an actress who won’t act naked. Male stars can refuse to take off their boxers.
Be on the look out for the new Video ,,,, Runaway Slave ,,,, that ought to get Hollywierd gasping for air .
"I'll do anything for a part."
Movies are dying because the 90-120 minute format of storytelling is dead.
The best writing and stories are on the cable network series: Sopranos, Mad Men, Dexter, Burn Notice...
Hollywood does not know how to tell stories anymore.
I watched “The Wolfman” last night, I could see the money and the souped up special effects, but I had no idea what the movie was about or who the characters were, or why the script ever made it on the screen, nobody seemed interested in seeing the movie making process from the vantage point of the audience and the finished product. It was as though every individual division , writers, special effects people, stunt people, the individual actors, make-up, were all on steroids and strutting their little area of expertise, but to no common goal other than to make everything bigger and more expensive than the 1941 version.
All I could think of was how superior the old Wolfman movie was, and how much torment and anguish that Lon Chaney Jr could reveal with a simple shot of his face.
Special effects and technology, or even an updated script doesn’t replace a well told story that draws the audience into their own imaginations.
Hairspray made huge money.
Broadway took the John Waters story and made it mainstream, then added music.
Adam Shankman happied it up to the 12th power and BOOM successful musical.
I think that there actually is a market for big happy musicals when people are depressed.
God forbid! I can just imagine what they’d do to those classics! They’d have Dorothy sleeping with the Tin Man! And anyway there aren’t any “triple threat” talents in Hollywood anymore, like Astaire and Kelly, who can act and sing and dance.
>>From what I’ve heard from conservative insiders, “Atlas Shrugged” will not only be massively disappointing, but it will be massively boring.<<
That’s sad.
Although I have to confess that there were very many parts of the book that I skimmed including Galt’s 60 page manifesto.
Dagny’s sexual habits bored me and really the only character I cared about was Eddie.
So I may not be the person to judge the whole thing.
You can keep Avatar too. Much better use of 3D in Alice in Wonderland, where it continued through the film in very subtle ways. Like seeds or dust floating by. We see a lot of 3D/IMAX. We have a screen within walking distance of our house.
I think the point of the story is that Hollywood will now make a “Speed Racer” over a “Twilight” because money is tight. In the studio’s eyes, there are “sure things”, even if they are wrong.
YOU are SO right!
I figured it out when I saw “The Ring”. “Ringu”, the original Japanese movies is one of my faves and actually scared the crap out of me. With no gore, with no huge crescendos of soundtrack, just looks on the faces. Americans screwed the pooch on that movie.
“Atlas Shrugged” is an independent film and I don’t think I’d call it a “sure thing.”
Yeah, there’s little that’s new. The last really good movie I saw was INCEPTION. I’ll admit, I loved that. I went back and saw it a second time, it was so good. But it’s rare. I can only name about 20 movies that I think are worth the price of a DVD, and I’m talking “since the beginning of Hollywood.”
first rate!
Come on - Batman? Atlas Shrugged? Those are ideas from the 1940's and 1950's. Current hollywood writers write for the 20% of people who are hard core liberals or teenage boys who like soft porn and violence. Kind of like selling water to a man dying of thirst... For the rest of us? Not much. Let 'em go under...
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