Hollywood's disconnect

Yahoo! News ^ | July 26, 2005 | Michael Medved

[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."

[discostu]

I don't think the slump is nearly the deal many want it to be. There are three big difference this year over last:
No Passion of the Christ, a serious bank movie with a February release is going to seriously skew the yearly totals especially early in the year
No Spiderman movie, the Spiderman movies are making serious bank, years without them are set to be weaker than years with them for the forseeable future (until the series finally winds down and stops being a license to print money)
Harry Potter back in it's November slot, last year's HP was in June which brought a lot of earnings forward and change the year-to-date between June and November, this year's HP is in November so expect a big recovery then

And even if there is the 8% drop off, that's still a fat pile of money for the year. Many industries would beg to be able to make that much money on an off year. Then, of course, you have to factor in how much of the industry's earning are no longer American theatrically based, most of the reports I've seen put the total revenue percentage that comes from American theaters around 25% depending on the movie, so an 8% shave from 25% of the total earnings is pretty negligible.

Don't rush too quickly to bury Hollywood, there's still plenty of money rushing in.

[Borges]

He said that people in other countries will probably see it that way. What was on screen was clearly a 9/11 parable. There are explicit references.

[Preachin']

Most movies really suck these days, and they cost way too much.

I go out and spend the money on my wife.

[holymoly]

Perhaps Hollywood will "get it" though I'm not hopeful.

I doubt it. They live in their own little world.

Everyone they know is a liberal. Their friends are all liberals. Their co-workers are liberals.

And so, they think their views and opinions are the mainstream, and they consider anyone to the right of them "extreme".

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Medved needs to get a life. All he does is rag on Hollywood.

[Heyworth]

Not counting The Passion, which was not a Hollywood film, Box Office grosses are actually up this year from last.

Shh. They're on a roll. What's really happening here is the decline of the movie theatre as a place to watch Hollywood studio productions. Bad for theatre chains (especially since they've done a lot of building lately), not so bad for studios. The theatrical box office only accounts for a third or so of their revenues, and that portion has been in decline for years, replaced by DVD sales and rentals, PPV, cable, etc.

I mean, just think about it, people. Is anyone arguing that entertainment in general is becoming less popular? You say people are staying home and watching TV? Who do you think makes TV shows? Hollywood studios. Read the credits. Are they listening to music? Who owns the record companies? The studios. Are they playing video games? Okay, that's a bit more independent, but not much, and most major action films have a licensed game.

Everyone rubbing their hands in glee that the summer box office numbers are down, and thinking that it's some long-deserved comeuppance to Hollywood for their multitude of sins just doesn't have a clue as to the big picture.

[dsc]

"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."

3D IMAX is great. I saw a movie about dinosaurs a few years back that was tremendous.

But I wouldn't go see trash just because it was in 3D.

As for alcohol...seems to me that has tremendous potential to further degrade the atmosphere for people with kids or who just don't like being around people who have had one too many bowls of loudmouth soup.

Besides, I always forget my earplugs, and end up having to stuff paper napkins in my ears.

But it's okay with me that the Hollyweird scumbags can't figure it out. A pox on them. I hope they all go bankrupt.

[TomGuy]

What movie are you talking about?

Last year, just prior to the election, someone made a movie of Kerry's life. It showed in some theaters. Some reports I read indicated that the audience attendence was, in most cases, under a dozen, and some as few as 3-6 per showing. It bombed.

I don't even remember the name of it, but it was mostly about Kerry's heroics in .... where else???? Viet Name, of course.

[theFIRMbss]

>Anybody who remakes "Dukes of Hazzard" is intellectually bankrupt

In the video
"These Boots Are Made For Walking"
(made to plug the film)

Jessica drives up,
opens the door and gets out . . .
Now, I never watched

"Dukes of Hazzard," but
wasn't a running gag that
the doors didn't work?

Don't the film makers
even watch the pointless stuff
that they're re-making?!

[Mr. Jeeves]

IMHO, what's killing Hollywood is the existence of the PG-13 rating. They try to squeeze every bit of sophomoric vulgarity they can into movies without hitting an R rating in the hopes of geting the 10 to 13-year-old crowd into the film. On they other hand, they think an R will hurt their box office receipts, so they neuter adult-oriented themes and make what could otherwise be intelligent films aimed at an adult audience into weak bastardized failures that bore adults and annoy concerned parents whose kids happen to see them.

R and PG needed to remain totally separate realms of filmmaking - PG-13 blurs the distinction, to the detriment of both types.

[Borges]

Here's an excerpt from Roger Ebert's column last week:

The most interesting thing about the "slump" is that there may not be one. David Poland of Movie City News has been calling the slump a non-story all summer. He points out that the grosses for 2004 were skewed by the performance of "The Passion of the Christ," one of the most successful movies ever made, which attracted enormous numbers of people who do not ordinarily go to the movies.

Even so, 2005 may end up as the second or third highest-grossing year in movie history. "There is no real slump," he writes. "If you think you are analyzing a real trend, but it can be changed by the actions of a week or two or a movie or two, it is not really a trend, it is a blip."

[Borges]

Oh you mean 'Going Upriver'? That was made by a miniscule indie. Not remotely Hollywood.

[dsc]

"replaced by DVD sales and rentals, PPV, cable, etc."

Okay, so how are total earnings looking?

[Sybeck1]

Every week lately seems to be another mindless horror movie! There are other genres people!

[holymoly]

That said, I am eagerly awaiting the Firefly movie, Serenity.

I see SciFi is running repeats of the series (Fridays).

(I assume this is the "Firefly" your talking about.) ;)

[Borges]

There was just an article on Yahoo about how all these horror movies are flopping. Bout time! There was a real glut of them aimed at the Paris Hilton crowd.

[NewJerseyJoe]

I lay down this challenge before Hollywood directors and producers:

=====================

I DARE you to make a quality movie with the following characteristics:

1. No nudity, near-nudity, or sexual situations
2. No glorification of promiscuity, drugs, or adultery
3. No ridiculing of America, Christianity, or morality
4. Parents portrayed as authority figures, not as bumbling sidekicks to their worldly-wise children
5. Minimum profanity (including NO religious profanity: G-d, J.C.) and no 4-letter words. Violence okay, if depicting good combatting evil
6. A quality story, with good acting and good dialogue

My prediction: not one director/producer would accept this dare. Why? Would it be because it's not possible to make such a film?

No, that's not the reason; American cinema has a fine history of such films. No, the reason they wouldn't accept the dare is because such a film would not advance their leftist agendas.

[Koblenz]

Fact is: if you are an entertainer and want to attract the largest audience, plain common sense dictates that you do not air your political, etc. laundry in public.

Lindsay Lohan did exactly that about a year ago: she refused to discuss politics, saying half her audience was Republican.

[libs_kma]

"1) i've boycotted pretty much every hollywood actor"

I'll second that. After Mel Gibson and Patricia Heaton the conservative crowd thins out pretty quick.

And if its not an actor, there's always the leftist scum directors like Stone and Spielberg to boycott.

[Borges]

Pixar films fall into most of those categories I would say. But those conditions would exclude a great deal of great movies. Not everything can be for children.