
You have to beat the man to be the man - charliecurran
http://charliecurran.com/you-have-to-beat-the-man-to-be-the-man/
======
KaiserPro
There are several reasons why Y combinator is unlikely to kill hollywood.

The Author touches on part of the problem. To make a good movie you need:

1) an excellent script (if it reads like shit, its going to look worse, if the
pitch is "its like X but...." its a fail)

2) a significant amount of captial ($1million)

3) quality actors

4) ridiculously good organisation skills (you'll be organising 40+ people
hundreds and thousands of pounds worth of equipment for around 40 days (or a
lot more))

that's just first part. You then need to wrangle all the footage, and massage
it into a cohesive and flowing narrative, something most "film" buffs fail
cataclysmically ally at. (why do you think most youtube videos are only 3
minutes top?)

Once you've spent three years of your life doing that, you then need to get
your movie seen. That means persuading people who think you are worse than
dogshit to watch a movie that they really couldn't care about, much less
actually pay you for.

This will take you the next 3-6 years. It also costs a lot.

~~~
nileshtrivedi
You're assuming that the content has to have the same format as movies. Short
videos (like the ones produced by CollegeHumor) can have a good script and
quality visuals without involving a big budget. The market isn't "films". It
is "entertainment".

~~~
greenyoda
Exactly. Killing Hollywood doesn't necessarily mean beating them at their own
game. Killing Hollywood means that some competitor (or perhaps several
competitors) will take away enough share of the entertainment market to make
Hollywood's business collapse. For example, TV shows have taken a large chunk
of business away from the motion picture industry since TV was invented, but
they're not feature films. A similar example might be tablets killing the PC
industry: tablets are not PCs, but they've taken a large chunk of business
away from the PC market.

~~~
KaiserPro
[http://screenville.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/attendance-
history...](http://screenville.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/attendance-history-
world-cinema-stats.html)

cinema attendance has been growing for a while.

Not even netflix is killing hollywood at the moment.

~~~
r00fus
And Microsoft's revenues and profits have been growing in the past decade as
well... I don't think anyone can reasonably conclude they're nearly as
relevant as they used to be.

Large institutions don't get "killed", they slowly become irrelevant (and the
perhaps die), or change to suit the new market in a much diminished role.

~~~
KaiserPro
There is no concept of maintenance in consume movies (the closest is netflix
monthly fee) microsoft has years to sort out its problems, it is also highly
liquid.

if a movie distie has a run of bad movies, it will become insolvent, which
means that they'll not have enough cash to progress the movies in its
pipeline. (For example MGM went tits up and delayed james bond by years)

------
ChuckMcM
I thought this was a great read, clearly the author has thought through is
argument and does a good job of describing his reasoning about the challenges
the tech community faces with regard to Hollywood's livelyhood.

The only weakness for me was that it is hard to argue from a point too far
removed from the sources of your arguments. Specifically if you are arguing
the future of "entertainment" then Hollywood is but a piece, similarly if you
argue too closely to the source such as the future of "movies" then technology
is but a piece. So finding a place in the spectrum where one point of view and
dominate another isn't a very solid way of making your point. :-)

That said, it made me wonder if computer games will go through the 'star'
system (clearly some of that has happened with titles like "Sid Meir's
Civilization") or if it will be different for programs. At the 'top' (or most
diffuse?) point of the spectrum you can take examples from music, books,
games, movies, and television as ways people tease dollars from consumers. And
following that line of reasoning lead me to thinking about the fundamental
question, is it money or is it art?

There are two parallel universes in most entertainment systems, the one that
is designed to extract the most money (consumer focused) and the one that is
designed to express the artists intent most faithfully (artist focused). The
latter occasionally makes a lot of money, the former occasionally makes very
little money. The "space" is a blend of the two.

Many of the developers I know are "artists' where they have very strong
feelings about how their programs should work, and I believe we see a lot of
that here on HN. But I also know engineers who are focused more on the
"business" where they write code that makes them the most money, period. And
they are often harshly judged in fora such as this one.

So where does that leave us? I think it makes it important to fix the context
before we debate, as that affects the persuasiveness of the different points
of view. It also suggests that Paul's call to action could be interpreted more
literally to be "Work on the 'consumer focused' side of tech for entertainment
harder."

If you think of Entertainment as a giant pie of dollars, getting more of those
dollars can be achieved either by being better than other players in your
wedge, or by increasing the size of your wedge relative to the other players.
Looked at in that context, it isn't about "beating" Hollywood so much as
making Hollywood less relevant.

~~~
araes
Or by doing something like Nintendo or Blizzard in the last gaming
generations, where you increase the size of the pie itself.

------
lisper
When I clicked on this link the anchor text was "Why Silicon Valley will never
beat Hollywood" (or something like that). When I came back, it had changed to
"You have to beat the man to be the man," which is the title of the piece. But
IMHO the original title (presumably the one written by the submitter) was much
better and more descriptive. I don't think I would have clicked on this link
with the current title.

There seems to be a lot of this headline-rewriting going on on HN nowadays.
IMO it's going a little too far.

~~~
MarcScott
Also, the title on the front page is different from the title in the comments.
I don't think I've seen this before, but maybe I'm just not very observant.

edit: They're the same now. Confused.

~~~
charliecurran
Hey, just came back to hacker news and noticed the change as well. Very
confused as I didn't edit the title after I had posted it.

------
betterunix
"At the very heart of the film industry’s longevity is the art of narrative
storytelling which has been refined continuously"

The overwhelming majority of Hollywood movies are terrible, shallow stories
with formulaic development that are designed to grab money from specific
demographics. There is hardly anything artistic left.

It may be what people want, but let's not pretend that great works of art are
what keep Hollywood profitable.

"you have to remember this is a sixty-five billion dollar a year industry that
has survived multiple world wars and the great depression"

The typewriter industry also survived those wars and the great depression, and
where is it now? Times change, and businesses that adapt poorly to a changing
market will be replaced.

~~~
dylandrop
People always enjoy escapes from reality. This is what makes Hollywood so
successful. And while artistic movies might not be the biggest money makers,
there are still plenty of respectable titles that earn a large amount of money
and are tasteful/fascinating to watch.

In regards to your second point, I think you didn't read the full article. The
point is that Hollywood historically HAS been a VERY successful industry at
rebounding, most specifically in the era of the TV (which is probably most
applicable here).

------
peteforde
Great article with sound reasoning. I love reading op-ed style pieces that
legitimately educate me on something just outside of my radar.

Two points to add:

1\. I disagree that Netflix can't win by trying to out-HBO HBO, because as I
understand Netflix' strategy is closer to Amazon Prime. Amazon loses money on
Prime shipping (although with volume, not as much as you think) but in
exchange they become the default place that customers come to buy just about
anything they need, which means that loss in shipping was actually a massive
reduction in marketing. They tilt the customer acquisition cost lower and the
LTV higher. If Netflix succeeds in creating content that most consumers can
only get in one place, it will dramatically increase the size of the iceberg
under the surface.

2\. One of the most interesting and successful tech/media hybrids I'm aware of
is hitRECord, which is spearheaded by the brilliant Regular Joe aka Joseph
Gordon-Levitt. This is a stunning example of crowd-sourcing and community
collaboration working. [http://www.hitrecord.org/](http://www.hitrecord.org/)
\- check out "Morgan M. Morgansen's Date With Destiny" on the Greatest Hits
page: [http://www.hitrecord.org/greatest](http://www.hitrecord.org/greatest)

It's silly to speculate whether YC will or will not fund the evolution of
entertainment. It's also not an interesting debate.

------
paulsutter
Charlie Curran's mistake is thinking the entertainment of the future will be
just like the entertainment of the past. pg's essay was a challenge to find
what the future will look like. He wasn't excluding any possibility. He wasn't
predicting the demise of every single aspect of Hollywood, or even, of any
specific aspect of Hollywood

pg was just pointing out that entertainment will continue to evolve, that
change is the only thing that's for sure, and that like all industries,
Hollywood is not immune to outside challenges.

~~~
lisper
Yes, but Silicon Valley's mistake (not necessarily PG's mistake) is thinking
that what will kill Hollywood is technology. It isn't. What will kill
Hollywood is the marriage of technology and the new content creation and
distribution models that the technology enables. Curran's point is just that
cute cat videos will only get you so far. It's what comes after that that no
one seems to have figured out yet. The current approach is desperate attempts
to access or reproduce Hollywood's content, and _that_ surely won't work.

~~~
nileshtrivedi
> cute cat videos will only get you so far.

Aren't we already spending more time watching videos on YouTube / CollegeHumor
and funny pics on Reddit than we do watching films? One might think that we
have solved the content / attention problem. What remains to be solved is
monetization.

~~~
nemothekid
Except YouTube hasn't solved the content problem. Monetization is a complete
afterthought here. Tarantino doesn't sit down and write a movie with the goal
of maximizing revenue. If you have great content, the money will follow.

The problem with YouTube's content is almost all of it is either completely
forgettable, not brand safe, or just plain crappy. Ask yourself if you would
pay $5/mo for access to YouTube's content. The big brands hardly want to be
seen next to "cute cat videos" which is exactly why YouTube is heavily moving
to have more premium content. Which connects back to the OP, its not solely
about the technology - its about creating great narratives using this new
medium.

Hollywood isn't about raw attention. Facebook, Google Search, News, Banner
Ads, and Billboards are all about selling ads through raw attention. At the
end of the day however, you wouldn't pay to use Facebook, you wouldn't pay to
look at Billboards, and as we have found recently, people don't want to pay
for news. Hollywood and Premium Content are about engagement. Its about
creating an itch, and generating hype. You "need" to watch the next episode,
you "need" to watch that next Spielberg film, you "need" to see Scarlett
Johansson. That is the biggest difference Hollywood and YouTube. No one is
tripping over themselves, or camping out to watch a YouTube video.

Lastly, you can now see how this problem cannot be solved solely with
technology. How do you quantify the difference between a Spielberg film and a
cat video?

------
guard-of-terra
"the basic formula of pairing known stars with compelling stories has not and
will not change"

Didn't it change with the advent of the modern TV Shows?

How big were Schwimmer, Laurie or Cranston as stars before their show made a
hit? Laurie was locally known but not that much.

With modern show, you have select good actors for their role, not stars from
an universal pool, and that's what changed.

And I fail to name terribly many films in the last ten years that can be
compared to the best TV shows which are a plenty.

~~~
sliverstorm
What applies to TV shows doesn't necessarily apply to movies. The thing TV has
going for it? A pilot is twenty minutes long, instead of a hundred and sixty.

To me, as far as actor career trajectory, TV seems to be like a minor league
that some actors use to help launch their overall career.

~~~
guard-of-terra
We no longer have to care about actor career. We care about whether the show
is good as a whole.

Movies are subpar compared to TV shows with a tiny number of exceptions.

------
hayesdaniel
This article seems to ignore one of the biggest, most basic issues facing
hollywood right now - the demise of innovation in the VFX industry. Studios
have carefully orchestrated an incredibly hostile working environment for
people creating the biggest cash-cow it has left. For profit colleges are
pumping out scores of young people every year with just enough training to get
a low-paying job in whatever tax-incentive location is paying the most at any
given time. Then you work 80-100+ hour weeks for a few months and are kicked
back out on the street to start over in a new city (or country) at a new
company, probably for even less money. It's a HUGE crisis and causing a
massive exodus of mid and senior-level talent, myself included. Check out
www.vfxsoldier.com or effectscorner.blogspot.com for more info.

All the while, film budgets go up, ticket prices go up, profits go up.

My point is that there IS a huge potential for disruptive influences in
filmmaking, television and VOD, but it will likely come from the people that
have been straddling the line between innovative technology and entertainment
for longer than anyone - the VFX people. It's happening already.

Now if only I could find some time to work to work on that side project...

~~~
hayesdaniel
Here's another awesome breakdown of where we're at by former Digital Domain
CEO Scott Ross - [http://www.awntv.com/playlists/scott-ross-
fmx-11-presentatio...](http://www.awntv.com/playlists/scott-ross-
fmx-11-presentation-future-vfx-industry)

------
lists
I don't think the author is responding to Graham appropriately. Graham's
argument is against the power structure of Big Media, not the enduring value
of narrative. Hence Graham's post beginning by pointing to the industries'
push for SOPA signaling that they're running out of ideas, not on how to
entertain people, but to constrict people to being entertained on _Big Media
's_ terms. This has a negative effect on _quality of narrative_ , as many have
noted.

I think the nature of the confusion is that Graham hints at his personal
preferences on how people should spend time ("It would be great if what people
did instead of watching shows was exercise more and spend more time with their
friends and families" [0]) right besides endorsements for products that shift
demand for screen narratives ("new media", "things... that have little in
common with movies and TV except competing with them for finite audience
attention" [0]).

But even with that said, Graham's view is ultimately inclusive of Curran's.
Graham:

>"There will be several answers, ranging from new ways to produce and
distribute shows..." [0]

Curran:

>"The internet has paved the way once again for a vertically integrated system
of production and distribution, and we know that today’s youth is hungry for
stories that matter to them. Whomever is the first to put that together will
win." [1]

Screen narrative was never in question.

Edit: Forgot to add links

[0]: [http://ycombinator.com/rfs9.html](http://ycombinator.com/rfs9.html)

[1]: [http://charliecurran.com/you-have-to-beat-the-man-to-be-
the-...](http://charliecurran.com/you-have-to-beat-the-man-to-be-the-man/)

------
wj
I think many, if not most, of the people in this conversation really are
forgetting that taste is subjective. What you view as a terrible film is often
what millions of people enjoy. What you view as great cinema millions of
others would find boring.

As an antidote most people I know do not share the same tastes as me (I find
the 30s-50s as my golden age of cinema and love Humphrey Bogart) as I with
them. While my wife can't stand black and white movies (with a few exceptions)
I also really dislike most modern romantic comedies (with a few exceptions
such as Love Actually). Of course she says she enjoyed the black and white
movie that I made. :)

This also holds true to television as well. I don't want to keep up with the
Kardashians or see which C-list celebrity has the best dance moves. Other
people didn't want to watch Rubicon or don't want to watch Portland Timbers
soccer. (I also think I'll be much worse off with unbundling of cable channels
as the niche channels are often included in packages with more popular
channels and will likely die off without enough interest and pricing power to
sustain the programming.)

John August, a screenwriter with a great blog and podcast and a geek at heart,
has made the observation that talented writers are starting to prefer working
with TV (channels such as HBO, Showtime, AMC, FX, etc.) as they're given more
latitude to tell their stories than they are in a feature length film for a
studio. So, if you were to ask me for a prediction (and you didn't), that is
the way I imagine the industry going with Amazon, Netflix, etc. picking up
some of those shows as well. Those, along with live sports, will continue to
draw audiences as they provide topics of conversation for the majority of
society. (Obviously you and your group of friends are too sophisticated for
that and discuss philosophy and indie rock but you're a small segment of
society.)

You can never please everybody. And you'll likely go broke trying.

~~~
wj
Also, I forgot to mention that everybody looks at the past with rose-colored
glasses. There were plenty, PLENTY, of films in the whatever era you view as
the greatest that you would consider terrible. You're not aware of them as
they died the death of irrelevance.

------
kumarski
Netflix was started in Los Gatos, California. Silicon-Valley-ish. Gumroad
sells documentary films. They've grown. Funded by Silicon Valley Kleiner
Perkins VC fund.

------
thinkersilver
I disagree with Paul Graham's notion that we need to find a better way to
entertain ourselves. The narratives of films are powerful and are not always
fun and entertaining yet people will go watch them; even if they walk out a
bit disturbed. Hollywood creates content. I think to beat Hollywood, would
require a platform that enables the film production process to happen outside
the Hollywood system. Youtube, Netflix already have the distribution end.
Movie stars are not a requirement for a good film, they can be replaced with
good upcoming talent, (visit any major drama school). A large budget is not a
requirement either, principal photography has never been cheaper. So what does
Hollywood have that makes it special? It has the network which connects and
coordinates all the key players (actors,writers,cameramen,animators etc).
That's the problem that Silicon Valley needs to solve (not entertainment).
It(we?) need to provide a platform to streamline the process of making film.
Perhaps Paul Graham should have thought of an Incubator for Filmmakers. Demo
night could be a short film.

------
rdxm
i like this post/article/statement. it reminds me that as technologists we
tend to want to reduce things to algorithms.

that just doesn't work when you get to aesthetics and the human side of the
equation.

------
charliecurran
Hey everyone, I just got out of the editing bay and was really happy to see
such a well thought out discussion playing out amongst the community. I wanted
to take a moment to clarify my argument and respond to some of your comments
in the hopes of furthering the conversation.

The major criticism I noticed was that I somehow misunderstood Graham's
argument or that it functioned in such a way that subsumed mine. As I
understood Graham's call to arms to kill Hollywood, he was soliciting
entrepreneurs to start thinking about how to disrupt Big Media's grasp on the
entertainment market. While I am whole heartedly against the practices of a
Hollywood we all can agree is in a current rut (e.g. SOPA, DMCA takedowns,
etc.) I do not believe that Hollywood has peaked, nor that his prescriptions
for hastening its demise are feasible. I took his call as soliciting two
options for responding to Hollywood:

a.) By creating more entertaining offerings that would create a zero-sum trade
off with Hollywood's offerings ultimately rendering their products irrelevant.

b.) Leveraging technology to create alternate production and distribution
mechanisms including new media and interactive programming offerings.

My argument takes a historical approach to examining how Hollywood has
previously addressed similar disruptions citing the emergence of television
and the rise/collapse of the studio system to begin thinking how one might
approach “eating Hollywood's lunch”. Against alternative forms of
entertainment and distribution mechanisms, one thing has remained consistent
and that is the power of cinema be it in episodic television content or
feature length material to consistently survive industry transformations and
reorganizations. I think this historical pattern is owed to the nature of the
medium itself which satisfies a very human need which is the transmission of
stories. I believe that film more than any other medium has refined this
craft, and in many ways developed the visual language through which we
understand contemporary storytelling. Other mediums will of course tell
stories, but I think only filmmaking for the foreseeable future will have the
ability to tell stories with the richness and complexity we've evolved as a
species to receive and share.

I think it's misguided to place a technologist's view of industry disruption
before an examination of the medium's history because I believe it discounts
the power of narrative and how we've found ourselves in this particular
position. Despite Hollywood's current rut the market for film exhibition has
only grown with foreign markets and alternative distribution mechanisms
expanding the potential reach of Hollywood's content. I think what is needed
now is a leveraging of technology to push film to its inherent potential to
tell meaningful stories, what Hollywood once understood, rather than view it
as a tool to destroy an industry.

A few of the comments that I thought particularly interesting/pertinent to
respond to.

@Nileshtrivedi

I am assuming that the basic format of narrative television and features will
remain a constant, due to the historical evolution of the form into its
current iteration. Initially conceived films were exhibited at nickelodeons
which served up customers short form content though it failed to evolve beyond
a mere novelty that soon went through its own bust. It was Adolph Zukor,
founder of Paramount Pictures, who championed the format as we currently know
it drawing on his understanding of how storytelling dating back to Plato,
Aristotle, and the great play-writes of yesteryear stumbled on a nearly
universal structure for telling effective stories.

@KaiserPro

I absolutely agree the current pipeline of monetizing Hollywood's offerings is
fundamentally broken and has to be done away with. Theatrical distribution
demands enormous costs guaranteeing that we will only see low-risk content
that has proven to be Hollywood's undoing. The internet and Video on Demand
offers a chance to remove these costs in many ways and generate riskier fare
delivered straight to the consumer.

@Walshemj and Djloche

Coming up through film school witnessing the rise of crowdfunding and the
widespread adoption of digital filmmaking and editing, the costs must and
absolutely can come down. These film's budgets assume a pipeline that requires
enormous spends on development, production, distribution, print/advertising,
and studio overhead. I think Vice offers a great example of how low-cost
content paired appropriately with relevant niche markets can provide
compelling entertainment alternatives to Hollywood's current offerings.

@Paulsutter

I am not by any means ruling out the inevitable evolution of entertainment
offerings we'll see over the next twenty years, but I think to assume film
will go away is a hard position to defend. I think it's far more likely that a
medium which has demonstrated serious lasting power will evolve and adapt
rather than be dismembered by dying conglomerates or new media offerings which
will be in their infancy. Far more likely I believe we'll see something
similar to the era of New Hollywood in the sixties and early seventies repeat
itself.

@Betterunix

The claim that the vast majority of Hollywood's movies are terrible is really
a subjective view. For every Transformers there are independent alternatives
and risky studio films that sneak through the development pipeline. However, I
do agree that the current system of exhibition necessitates a system of tent-
pole event films that will inevitably sink the industry if left as it exists
now. Look no further than what George Lucas and Steven Spielberg had to say
about the sustainability of the current Hollywood model.

[http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/is-hollywood-
model-d...](http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/is-hollywood-model-doomed-
steven-spielberg-and-george-lucas-think-so-20130815)

@Guard-of-terra

Absolutely, the star system underwent a fundamental shift with the
introduction of television though its ability to adapt to the new pipeline I
believe displays its lasting power. A really great read on the transformation
the star system underwent with the introduction of television is “Gods Like
Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame,” by Ty Burr. A short excerpt that might
address your comment.

“The essence of the broadcast revolution is simple: it offered a literal home
theatre. No longer did you have to go out to see the stars and be entertained.
Now they came to you. This affected the kinds of stars who were created from
the 1950s on, in the sense that the people you let into your house are
different from the people you pay to see in a theatre. They're more like you
and me, for one thing, which also means you and I are more like the stars. For
decades – until, arguably, the arrival of nighttime soaps in the 1970s and
'80s – the most celebrated figures on the small screen evoked not glamour but
ordinariness. They acted out comic and dramatic versions of our own dilemmas,
or they filled history with life-sized personalities rather than the bigger-
than-life stars of film.”

@Hayesdaniel

While I absolutely feel for you and everyone I know in the Visual Effects
industry who has been clearly mistreated in the current system of studio
filmmaking, I don't believe that the resolution of that issue is the most
fundamental problem facing contemporary filmmaking. I think it's a symptom of
larger ills that will need to be resolved. Ultimately I believe if we can't
disrupt the model in its current form collectively secured bargaining rights
and organization similar to how other industry groups such as the
Screenwriter’s Guild or the Directors Guild of America could go a long way
towards negotiating fair pay for visual effects studios and subsequently their
employees.

@MaysonL

I didn't by any means set out to ignore the success of the video game industry
or Pixax, but for my argument I didn't believe them wholly relevant. I think
that Pixar offers a really great example how well crafted storytelling above
all can be film's savior. They go to incredible lengths to develop and protect
their stories, and it shows. However, I don't think that they are the answer
to saving the industry either. I have a real fondness for everything Pixar is
doing, one of the best storytellers I had the chance to know at film school
now works there, but I think the trend of Pixarification of films is actually
a threat to the kinds of film that will ultimately usher in a new era of
Hollywood. You might enjoy what Danny Boyle recently said on this point.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz6W0h3r30k](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz6W0h3r30k)

I know this will be a controversial statement, as I get into this argument
with my friends who are game design majors on a regular basis, but I do not
believe that video games will supplant film as the highest form of narrative
storytelling. The industry is relatively young and as such most likely won't
create its own Citizen Kane for quite some time. I think far more likely is
that a reinvigorated hollywood will become far more intertwined. Looking to
Microsoft and Spielberg's recent collaborations I think is telling of where
these trends will head with narrative filmmaking supplementing and expanding
upon franchises, and video games working more closely with Hollywood to infuse
their games with the level of storytelling audiences have grown to expect from
their entertainment.

~~~
chalst
I found your essay a bit hard to follow, I think in part because it was a
fusion of two (very interesting) essays, a historical primer on how Hollywood
works and an argument about why Y Combinator can't incrementally fund entities
that take away Hollywood's lunch.

I'm still confused as to what the latter argument is, in essence. Before
reading what you wrote above, I would have said it was that you thought that
you can only beat Hollywood by emulating GAHVI (the Golden-Age Hollywood
Vertical Integration), and that this can't be done in the Y Combinator model,
at least not through the kind of start-ups PG described in his essay. But the
talk of narrative in the above suggests to me that is not really your argument
at all.

------
teeja
Great, provocative thinkpiece.

I'd add that considering the number of expensive flops this summer, the
audiences' responsiveness to the massive CGI-spectacles and remakes of recent
years might be beginning to wane. To make film No Country for Old Men again
might require not 'beating' the man but replacing spectacle with heartfelt
passion. Pay more attention to why gay-rights are unstoppable.

------
cmbaus
I'd consider NetFlix to be a prototypical Silicon Valley start-up and they are
showing the way forward with House of Cards, which I thought was fantastic. It
might be a Hollywood formula, but they are bypassing traditional distribution
channels.

------
charliecurran
Lets play devils advocate - How might VR change the nature of narrative
storytelling, and what would that evolution look like?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6280754](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6280754)

------
gergles
The real reason a VC company isn't going to kill hollywood is because there's
not enough money in it. The author throws around $65 billion industry as if
that's some sort of impressive number. FB alone is worth $100B. We could
liquidate FB and buy the entire industry and shut it down if we really wanted
to. Compare that to LNKD, EBAY, GOOG, hell even CRM. We have hit after hit
after hit that are worth more than the entire film industry after a few years'
worth of nurturing.

No, the reason that a VC-funded company won't kill Hollywood is because
there's _not enough_ money there - not because Hollywood has some sort of
monopoly on how to entertain people.

~~~
Alexx
Revenue and Market Cap aren't comparable. I don't know where the figure of $65
billion is from, but Disney alone has a turnover of $45 billion, so I suspect
it is an order of magnitude off the total hollywood economic value - which is
worth vastly more than the box office total.

To compare directly, Facebook received $2.5bn in funding, last year turned
over $5bn and made loss of $0.5bn. Disney received no funding, turned over
almost $45bn and a profit of $9bn (Making it roughly as profitable as Google).

Not to mention if you couldn't liquidate Facebook if you tried, but say you
defied economics and did - you couldn't buy even a single one of the top
Hollywood studios with the proceeds - their market caps are all much larger
than Facebook. It wouldn't even make a scratch in the industry, let alone buy
it out and shut it down.

Saying there isn't enough money in Hollywood for VC's to bother with is a bit
like saying there isn't enough money in oil. This is an industry that will
happily dump half a billion into a single film and take cash write-downs that
would make VCs shudder. Hell, lots of the hollywood companies OWN VC funds.

~~~
maxerickson
What do you want to call Hollywood? Disney has revenues of $19 billion on TV
and $13 billion on their parks, while they only make about $6 billion on
movies. The movies have a profit of $722 million, TV $6.6 billion.

I guess I wouldn't be terribly surprised if Disney were making more money from
ESPN than from producing movies (I didn't look real hard if they break out
their various cable property revenues and such).

Perhaps that only weakens your point, but it seems like Google is maybe a
better business than making movies.

(This comment expanded after I finished writing it, I had accidentally clicked
submit...)

~~~
Alexx
Yeah, that's what I meant by the total hollywood economic value. Google makes
money from multiple services and products too, and in the context of new
companies coming in and taking a slice of the pie it makes sense to look at
hollywood as a whole. Content (TV, Movies, whatever) and Merchandise (Parks,
toys etc) got hand in hand. You can buy angry birds plush toys because once
any company establishes a brand they are going to find multiple avenues to
exploit it, and any companies coming into the market will be in that position
too.

Edit: And you're right Google is a 'better business' than making movies most
likely. But that doesn't mean it's not of interest to VC. After all, oil is
clearly a 'better business' than Google!

~~~
maxerickson
I disagree that oil is a better business than Google. Each dollar of gross
profit for a company like Exxon requires a lot more operations than each
dollar of gross profit for a company like Google (It's something like 50% more
now, even after Google has captured a significant majority of online
advertising and begun dithering around looking for more businesses to get
into). Microsoft's licensing power gives it a nearly silly position in this
comparison (but that has long since ceased to be a major growth industry,
disappointing investors).

Energy certainly provides an opportunity to establish a huge operation and
make huge profits, but it also requires a huge amount of capital.

~~~
Alexx
Tech has a higher profit margin, but is a smaller industry. So depends which
metric you want to use to define better- Efficiency or total profit.
Comparatively the largest pure tech (none hardware) company Google is valued
at $290bn publicly, and the Financial Times estimates the largest pure oil
company Saudi Aramco privately at $2000-$7000bn based on the size of it's
reserves.

It's a fruitless argument either way. I simply meant the fact industries with
larger figures exist, doesn't mean VCs just look at the random top-line
numbers and ignore an industry because it's 'not big enough' when you're
dealing with billions of dollars.

------
nawitus
>since the days of Adolf Zucker

I think he is referring to Adolph Zukor.

------
MaysonL
Of course, Mr. Curran totally ignores Silicon Valley's two major successes in
entertainment: video games and Pixar.

------
guard-of-terra
"instead we see Youtube desperately trying to go Hollywood, offering lucrative
contracts to production companies and celebrities to create branded content
for the site"

Last time I've saw the TV it had feature films about wild life and a lot of
youtube videos about pets but not one "celebrity" in sight.

The word "celebrity" makes me want to vomit. Can we please ignore that and
instead disrupt just that part of Hollywood and TV that doesn't make us vomit?
And don't touch the other part with 5 meter pole.

~~~
dasil003
That part that makes all the money?

~~~
guard-of-terra
Bundleware toolbars for IE that fake search engine choice make pretty money,
malware that steals money - too. Not a reason to enter this business.

You aren't getting that money until you shrug off what you have left of your
moral values, so the only feasible thing is that part that doesn't offer easy
money. Instead offering real product and real satisfaction.

~~~
anon1385
>Bundleware toolbars for IE that fake search engine choice make pretty money,
malware that steals money - too. Not a reason to enter this business.

Paul Graham disagrees:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5059806](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5059806)

