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February 21, 2006Back in the L.A. gravitational pull, a couple of e-mails and a few friends run into got me thinking about the nature of success in this business. Perhaps it is the same in any business, but somehow I think it is more of a conflict in an industry that is heavily involved with creativity and is loaded with high-risk circumstances.
I'm talking about the challenge of hanging on to who you are at the same time as you naturally want to evolve in the face of success.
On whom is there more pressure to do both than on someone who suddenly steps into a great success? Hollywood almost always wants more of the same. And the natural inclination to repeat success is strong. On top of that, the inherent power of most storytellers lays in one theme that has somehow, subconsciously or otherwise, driven them to the instrument of their success.
And yet, after a year or two or three or four or five, followed by a massive wave of people telling you just how wonderful you and your talents are, seems to inspire people to want to try - or at least feel as though they are trying - some new muscles.
If you are an executive at a studio, you are likely to have started out with the same inspired excitement of most of the people who get into this business. Yet, the structure of the machine does not reward inspired thinking… or, as senior execs might call them, flights of fancy.
The machine rewards mechanics, Bill and otherwise (though ironically, Bill Mechanic was brought down at Fox by some inspired choices that ended up making him vulnerable). Fox has had the best mechanics in the business, since Mechanic, in the last couple of years. Literally half of their films have been flops in both of the last couple of years. But they have also made as many hits as anyone and shown strength in pushing out many of those films overseas.
The mechanics at Warner Bros have had an even worse hits-to-misses ratio in the last couple of years. But they have had a few franchises and they have also become the premier studio for international distribution, especially leveraging movie stars worldwide, much as they did domestically in the Daly/Semel era.
But this little digression is only here to point out that success in these companies demand more of the same inside the studios. Are Spartan, Duma, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang going to be welcome at Warner Bros anymore? Can Warner Indie survive the exit of Section Eight from the big studio… especially now that the production department has been ripped apart? Or will Mark Gill soon be a producer on the lot, looking to be the deliverer the next Michael London-esque streak of small, respected hits?
Speaking of London, what about Fox Searchlight, the launching pad for Thirteen and Sideways? I would never think to assume that Peter Rice was doing anything other than exactly what he wanted to after a great run for a few years at Searchlight and an expansion underway. But with the weight of as many as two releases a month starting next year with the still unnamed family/genre label, what kind of quality control can he maintain with so wide a net? Steve Gilula might have an easier job, with so much product to push, holding a firmer rein over exhibitors. But can Nancy Utley, whose superstardom has been about an intense, deep focus on the pictures that have succeeded, be as good while spread thinner… even with additional help? And, as Miramax found out, with so much competition created by their success - as Searchlight has now created copycats all over town - prices rise and the quality of previously less competitive categories tends to drop. Searchlight's buys at Toronto and Sundance this last cycle would have been sure home runs at half the price… which was where the price would have been a year before. And now, these films are a little risky. Same with WIP's pick-up of the Michel Gondry film in just 4 territories.
But more on the side of the individual artists… six of the ten Oscar nominated screenplays this year are written by first-time nominees. One, Noah Baumbach, failed in his effort just last year with former Oscar nominee Wes Anderson. He found gold in telling his own personal story in The Squid & The Whale. But he can't keep doing that forever, I don't think. And when he is offered $2 million to write Scooby Doo 3, what should he do? Will he write the next great innovative sitcom for HBO or will he slowly bore his constituents to tears with the same quirkiness in movie after movie?
Bennett Miller went seven years between directing movies, with his documentary The Cruise blowing us away in 1998 and now, Capote. In the meanwhile, he became a top commercial director. But no cookie cutter guy he. And his process in creating a family on his Oscar nominated film included the involvement of near-family in high school pals Phillip Seymour Hoffman and screenwriter Dan Futterman. Somehow I doubt there were as many magnificently talented people in his college classes, but who knows?
George Clooney has managed to work with family as he has navigated the choppy waters of the film business. With Steven Soderbergh, he built Section Eight and with the exception of the Coen Bros movies, he's pretty much stayed close to home. And most impressively, he has stayed with his principles.
But while the seductions often seem absurd - see "the Scooby Doo 3 joke" - the reality is more incremental. It is a casting choice that you don't want to make. It is a political position that is too hot to handle. It is the payments on a new eight-figure property or the maintenance on a new perfect-figure wife (or husband).
Does anyone really not want the next Oscar nomination… the next multi-million payday… the rush of the next hit? What could be more dangerous to someone who has succeeded in a situation in which they had virtually nothing to lose than having something to lose?
Of course, all of these questions are relevant to journalism, too. One can't really blame Old Media for fighting for its traditions because the machinery is too big to support too much new thinking. Ad sales overwhelm principle because health care overwhelms bravado.
Success challenges the very best intentions. Beware the undertow.
January 3, 2006 - Reflections On A New Year
January 6, 2006 - Sundance Preview
January 5, 2006 - The Business Of 2005, Pt 1
January 9, 2006 - The Business Of 2005, Pt 2
January 11 - Munich In Sequence | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3
January 12 - V For Vendetta
