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August 15, 2005What's wrong with the movies?
I hate to say it… but you know… it's kind of true… we got old.
My friend and colleague Anne Thompson proposed earlier this season that the failure to court adult audiences was a significant problem in the Year of the Slump.
And she is absolutely right that the adult audience is not a niche well serviced by Hollywood. However, that niche is also far less pliable and reliable than the teens that are courted so heavily. Getting past the false notion that Cinderella Man underperformed - Ray did about $5 million more in wide release before the Oscar season than C.M. has already done - there is another reality… it did half of what Seabiscuit did. It was Seabsicuit that set the budget range for Cinderella Man… and audiences didn't show up in the same numbers, even though it was from the same cookie cutter. But Fantastic Four made almost $150 million despite being a floating turd (albeit a not grim turd) with no opening-business names.
We'll see if "the adults" show up for The Constant Gardener in a couple of weeks. But in the meanwhile, it's time to acknowledge that for we media types in the 35-to-65 range, the film business only cares about what we write, not about what we want to see on the big screen.
When we all got into this insane game, we were young and full of hope. And as we get older, our perspective changes as surely and as shockingly to us as the changes in our bodies that don't seem to match how we feel about ourselves. It would be unnatural for a 50 year old to like the new Star Wars movies the way they loved the old ones when they were in their 20s. It would be equally bizarre if teenagers wanted to see a drama about a depression era boxer.
Fear is the Number One commodity in Hollywood. If we wanted to have a telethon for what Hollywood really needs… well, how many million does perspective cost?
With all the talk of the "ruinous summer" and how things have forever changed, I found myself challenged to get some perspective too. So I looked to some others…
"Wall Street, with its ears to the ground… is investing in production but it considers exhibition an increasingly poor risk." - Hollywood Trade
"Without our DVD sales we would be in the red." - Studio Owner
"If the movies try to lick DVD, it's the movies that will catch the licking. The two industries can quite naturally join forces for their own profit… motion pictures people need to discuss how to fit movies into the new world made possible by DVD." - Studio Owner
"The worst thing that ever happened to the business was Titanic. That film stimulated everybody into making expensive films." High Profile Director
"If far-sighted opinion is accurate, motion picture stars are fast approaching the day when their luster might end. For several years now, each successive season has witnessed larger salary demands from the men and women of the screen. No matter how great the drawing power of a star, it is fatal for a producer to sacrifice the production as a whole just to include them in the cast." - British Trade Magazine
And here comes the perspective. The Hollywood trade magazine quoted is Variety… in 1957. The studio owner is Fox's Spyros Skouras, quoted in 1957, and he was talking about television, not DVD. Also talking TV was Sam Goldwyn, circa 1949. The high profile director was Alfred Hitchcock in 1969 and the film wasn't Titanic, but The Sound of Music. And there was no sourcing of which Brit trade wrote it, but the quote is from 1917.
My, how things have changed!
I pulled these quotes from one of my favorite books on the film business from the early days, David Puttnam & Neil Watson's "Movies & Money." If you haven't read it, you can take all the recent books on the business and trade them in at the used bookstore, praying that they will take them in trade for this little 1997 quality paperback that puts them all to shame.
I specifically have not used any of the author's positions, since those are subject to interpretation. Just quotes.
In the 1920's there was this unattributed quote: "With foreign markets already representing as much as 30 or 40 percent of their revenues, the studios had good cause to fear…" This was regarding the fear of talkies making American product less viable overseas.
In 1961, the MPAA reported, "Without the more than 50 percent earnings which accrue in foreign markets, there could be no American motion picture industry."
Perspective.
Want to talk about how the studio system has screwed up the movies compared to halcyon years like 1939 and 1974?
"About six producers today pass upon 90 percent of the scripts, and cut and edit 90 percent of the picture… there are only a half dozen directors in Hollywood who are allowed to shoot as they please… I would say that 80 percent of the directors today shoot scenes exactly as they are told to shoot them without any changes whatsoever, and that 90 percent of them have no voice in the story or editing." Frank Capra, 1939
And…
"There's a natural war in Hollywood between the businessmen and the artists. It's based on drives that may go deeper than politics and religion: on the need status, and wrring dreams."
"It is tough for a movie that isn't a big media-created event to find an audience, no matter how good it is. The businessmen have always been in charge of film production; now advertising putts them, finally, on top of public reaction as well." Pauline Kael, 1974
Damn that Star Wars!!!
But at least the movies were more family friendly back in the day. How can we live with kids sneaking into Wedding Crashers?
"The fact that these (theaters) are patronized largely by school children, and that the subjects in 90 percent of them are far from moral is now being investigated." Now Defunct Chicago Paper, 1907, talking about nickelodeons.
Yeah… but the corporations… movies weren't always about money…
"The straight talk about picture-making - who might star, who might script, who might direct - is laced with conversations from a different planet - conversations about charge-offs, depreciation situations, 27 ½% depletion allowances, exploration expensing, spin-offs, Australian sheep ranches and Swiss corporations."
Little did this unnamed 1950's journalist know that Rupert Murdoch could someday own Fox, FoxTV, DirecTV and a newspaper empire… even if his son is going back to the Australian sheep ranch.
Of course, not everything is analogous. The studios did take a dive in the late 60s. Television and DVD are not the same, especially since the power of Home Entertainment this come by expanding the film business, not threatening it. But I think you get the point.
Things change. People don't listen to radios in their homes very much anymore. But they do... and they want music in their cars… and their offices, etc. Unlike the music business, movies really don't belong in the background. But ironically, the biggest earnings for musical performances are still live appearances… much more expensive, much more inconvenient and much lower in quality of tone and precision than CDs. But they still go, just as people will still go to movies.
Now, as revered as Bobby Short may be, he does not make the kind of money in a year that a Britney Spears can make in one night in one stadium. One is for adults… one is for kids.
As a friend often comments, if every person who saw Rent or The Producers on Broadway shows up for opening day at the movies, the films will still be many millions away from a strong opening weekend, much less a total gross.
The cupcake store in Beverly Hills that I wrote about in the blog the other day… it's a cash cow… for now. People are willing to pay $3.50 for a cupcake if they feel its special. But as Krispy Crème has found out the hard way, as your product becomes less special, your business success can slide like a Malibu hillside.
