Posted on 08/29/2010 8:13:05 AM PDT by abb
True, but amazingly enough....Wizard of Oz was a commercial flop in the cinema.
Hollywood still does plenty of experimentation, they just don’t want to do it in big budget pictures. There’s a big difference between throwing 6 million dollars into something you aren’t sure if there’s an audience for it and 100 million (or more). Hollywood will throw 6 million bucks at experimentation all the time, the Weinstein Brothers (creators of MiraMax and the Weinstein Group) built their entire empire that way, and gave us Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarentino in the process.
And you can even get them to fork over the big big money, but they need to believe you can find an audience. Inception has gotten mentioned a lot in this thread but there’s a good reason for it. It’s a VERY experimental film, with a HUGE budget. The reason WB was willing to give Nolan 160 million bucks to make a2 1/2 hour movie about dream theft is he’s developed a track record. Starting with Memento going through his Batman movies and even with that side trip of Prestige Nolan has managed to make complex movies with reality questioning themes PROFITABLY time and again.
See you can experiment without taking a chance. And the light of creativity remains bright.
People won’t stop watching, just stop watching what they have to offer.
I’ve said many a time, head on over to Fanfiction. You’ll read some crap but there are also writers there of enormous talent who have other lives, so don’t write for a living.
Imagine when they can actually put a movie on the internet and have others buy it. It will open a whole new world.
Good point - writers have to write what will sell... Is there a way around the producers? Or is that what the death of Hollywood is all about?
I love that movie, I love anything with Jane Powell in it. Just watched “A Date With Judy” last night. I also love the one she did with Jeanette McDonald and Jose Iturbi “Three Daring Daughters”.
Of course there is still lots of creativity and experimentation going on in Hollywood, but I would suggest that is more a function of just how big the AV industry is. The overall trend is towards more blandness, more formulaic, more accountancy team dabbling, more gee-whiz special effects and star appeal instead of honest to goodness storytelling and acting. You can tell that easily by looking at what they are producing. More remakes, more sequels, more poaching from other media and other countries. Yes of course really innovative stuff is still being made. But its getting rarer. And its getting more difficult to pitch stuff that is different.
Its like Netmilsmom says. The internet will eventually do to Hollywood what it is already doing to mainstream newspapers. It opens up the markets to smaller and more innovative producers. After all, the main power of Hollywood and its big studios (and also of the big network TV channels) is not the scale of their productions, but the stranglehold they have over distribution. The internet will break that (providing that a combination of well meaning liberal do-gooders and nerdy hackers don’t cause it be regulated into a strait-jacket).
Exactly!
"Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels."
Movies aren’t big budget to guarantee an audience, movies are big budget because they think they’ll get a big audience. You can’t guarantee an audience, but you can think they’ll be enough of them to justify a big budget.
One thing to keep in mind is that big budget movies are the exception not the rule. There tends to be a lot more attention paid to the 100 to 200 million dollar intended “block busters” but there’s really only about 20 of those a year, the rest of the 150 odd movies that come out every year are going to be in the 6 to 50 million dollar range.
I already responded to somebody else upthread about remakes and sequels and poaching. The reality is that Hollywood has ALWAYS been built on stolen ideas, from day one. I won’t retype it all, if you’re interested it’s in the 60s on the reply list.
Entertainers are also a major expense. Their paychecks add hugely to the production cost. Furthermore, the majority of these stars are becoming famous because of their personal lives and that overshadows the movie. Comedy is more disgusting than humerous, they use the same people day in and day out, and it’s all politically correct garbage and age inappropriate innuendo.
“Entertainers are also a major expense. Their paychecks add hugely to the production cost.”
Your summary statement is excellent and probably understated. This is why tv shows are mired in the so called reality shows and getting their rating butts kicked by the cable outlets.
However, one of my female inlaws, a bean counter, says that the cable shows often follow the same financial suicide road. Their successful shows start with one or a couple of leading actors. In a couple of years there are a half dozen or more regular cast members, who are fighting for screen time and more of the financial pot that often maxes out in about the same time period. The cost per show goes up to the point that they have to have hundreds of mini ads to keep the show going. Then, they lose major advertisers and have to depend on the filler ads re miracle products until you buy them.
Her examples are Leverage with Timothy Hutton and one of his past successes, Nero Wolfe. Wolfe was a success and the costs per production soared as Timothy brought more regulars onto the show and their salaries ate up the show. She feels that Leverage is entering the end stage like Nero Wolfe did with Hutton playing less of a role in most shows
and expanded face time for the other actors each week.
It’s too expensive to make a movie these days. In the fifties and earlier, they made great movies without paying the stars much to be frank. And then of course, there are the additional perks that celebs get that studios pay for. then of course the length of filming and I sometimes wonder if stars are showing up prepared and ready to do their job and do it well. They are getting paid too much upfront and I think that studios should instead pay them a couple million and then let them in on profit sharing. Not twenty million dollars in full. I tihnk that studios are going to start working with more unknowns. “The Young Victoria” was perfect because it used people who were not SO well known that their personal lives overshadowed the movie and actors who knew their parts and acted them, not messing up the accents or doing anything silly.
I don’t think that too many stars that are so established are really trying and putting in an effort. Then some don’t even bother with really promoting the film, they just act out and spout about their causes. It’s not the movie, it’s all about THEM. I wonder how long a lot of these ‘big names’ are going to last if quality products aren’t being put out. I watched “The Warlords” recently and it wasn’t distributed well in the US, despite it being a great movie. I am so SICK of the same thing and these days I just download the movies and shows I want and going to the movies is now pretty pointless.
To me the entire industry is on the verge of collapse. It’s too top heavy and too many people are doing too much of the work while the top enjoys all the benefits. Celebs are the French aristocrats, on the verge of being torn down forcibly.
These are two good actors and they are too underused. Both put in a quality performance and are not scandal ridden, but they aren’t as famous as their skeevier counterparts.
Writers should be the ones getting paid millions, not the actors.
” I resent their snobbery.”
Ironic since they have not done/accomplished something to be so snobby about.
Excellent summary!
So many of Follywood’s famous and formerly famous actors/actresses appear to doing a good job of destroying Follywood.
A major problem is that Hollywood now receives 65-70% of its box office from outside of the United States. As a result, we get dumbed down films that are supposed to have appeal from Bialystock to Bangalore. Even a blockbuster like Avatar had a weak script and dumbed down acting.
“Maybe the ‘sure thing’ is finding writers with traditional values...
In 30 years it’ll be ‘BatmanXX” (20) - and Spiderman 15? People I know are starting to drop premium movie channels because there’s so little worth watching.
How long can Hollywood live on 50 year old ideas?”
Some of us feel that Nothing new from Follywood isn’t worth even renting a DVD.
I posted this last week, and there are some excellent replies going into how you and I look at the reversions of movies.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2579586/posts?page=7#7
Thanks, I knew the $’s from outside America were high, but I didn’t know the % was that high.
A friend of ours before the worldwide financial meltdown used to travel a lot in Europe and Asia. He said the most popular tv shows abroad involved an American actor, entertainer or someone who wanted to be an actor or entertainer trashing America, President Bush and our military.
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