
The Day the Movies Died (or, why Hollywood can't make good films anymore) - hernan7
http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201102/the-day-the-movies-died-mark-harris?currentPage=all
======
InclinedPlane
You hear this every year. And it's still true. Hollywood is wall-to-wall
sequels, IP translations (games, comics, tv shows, etc. to movies), remakes,
and the remake's newer cousin the "reboot".

Yet even so good films are still being made. The Social Network, True Grit (a
remake even!), Toy Story 3 (a sequel!), The Fighter, Black Swan, How to Train
Your Dragon, and Inception were all great films from 2010 (I haven't seen The
King's Speech or 127 Hours yet but I hear those were good too). If this is
what the system pumps out while it's horribly broken, I'm ok with more of the
same.

There's always going to be a ready supply of churned out pap in any medium.
Just go to a bookstore and look at all the crap that they keep pumping out.
But that doesn't necessarily stop truly excellent works being published as
well. Some of my most loved books have been published in the last several
years. And with the internet it's easier than ever to sift through the dross
to find the gems.

~~~
asr
I don't think you're really disagreeing with the author--I think his point is
that there are fewer original ideas with the potential to redefine genres,
push boundaries, etc.:

"I don't mean that there are fewer really good movies than ever before (last
year had its share, and so will 2011) but that it has never been harder for an
intelligent, moderately budgeted, original movie aimed at adults to get onto
movie screens nationwide."

To stretch an analogy, the Googles and Facebooks are still creating great new
features, but the startups are in trouble, and even though Google and Facebook
are dynamic in a lot of ways, it's just not quite the same.

~~~
BrentRitterbeck
Hollywood is a business just like any other business. While many movies have
been made at microbudget levels, most movies are going to cost a studio at
least a couple million.

Sequals, movies based on other media formats, etc. offer a built-in client
base. The studio will probably at least make their money back, and if they are
lucky, they might turn a large profit.

Now, I love movies. I've even dabbled in trying to write my own screenplay
(never getting far, but I've tried). I always enjoy seeing something new. But,
again, Hollywood is a business, and it's going to act like a business.

------
edw519
_With that in mind, let's look ahead to what's on the menu for this year: four
adaptations of comic books. One prequel to an adaptation of a comic book. One
sequel to a sequel to a movie based on a toy. One sequel to a sequel to a
sequel to a movie based on an amusement-park ride. One prequel to a remake.
Two sequels to cartoons. One sequel to a comedy. An adaptation of a children's
book. An adaptation of a Saturday-morning cartoon. One sequel with a 4 in the
title. Two sequels with a 5 in the title. One sequel that, if it were inclined
to use numbers, would have to have a 7 1/2 in the title._

Was he talking about Hollywood or Silicon Valley? Hard to tell anymore.

~~~
WalterBright
Oh, for the good old days when the only movies Hollywood made were westerns,
cop shows, and slasher films.

~~~
api
That's a pretty good counterpoint. I remember when I was a kid in the early
90s and every single movie had a one-liner that started with "A tough cop..."

------
api
I have recently rediscovered the book. (Well, mostly eBooks via Kindle
apps...)

I read a lot when I was younger, but for some reason kind of stopped for a
while. Now I read quite often again, and I love it. eBooks make it easy too.
Click, boom, done, and if the author publishes directly or has a decent
contract they get 50-70% of my purchase price.

There is a ton of very good literature out there: smart dramas, mysteries,
sci-fi, quirky stuff like Gaiman's American Gods, classics I've never bothered
to read, etc. The field is a lot larger, due in part to the fact that the
capital requirements are essentially nonexistent. Anyone can write a book.

I'm not holding my breath on Hollywood. If movies have hope, it's from the
indy scene doing interesting things on small budgets.

~~~
defroost
> I'm not holding my breath on Hollywood. If movies have hope, it's from the
> indy scene doing interesting things on small budgets.

Yes, and foreign films from some of the worlds great directors like Pedro
Almodovar, Michael Haneke, Claire Denis, and Fatih Akin. Some of the best of
cinema is coming from as you mentioned independent projects, and foreign
titles like A Prophet (Un prophete) and Dogtooth (Kynodontas).

~~~
paganel
Also, don't forget South Korean and Hong Kong cinema. For example Scorsese's
"The Departed" is a (inferior) remake after a Hong Kong trilogy.

~~~
visakhcr
I disagree!

The Departed was based on the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs. It has a
prequel as well as a sequel too. I don't understand Chinese and had to rely on
subs.

But, I had watched Infernal Affairs before Departed came. Martin Scorcese was
awesome, Walhberg and Damon are my favs, but still, I liked the original more
than the Hollywood adaptation.

I think you watched Departed first and then the original, which would have
caused the original to look inferior with the Hollywood one.

------
keiferski
As Hollywood wanes, indie filmmakers rise. Don't forget that a decade ago, a
HD-quality camera was out of reach for anyone but Hollywood directors. Today,
you can get one for $1,000.

Bad times for Hollywood film? Yup.

Good times for the art of filmmaking? It's never been better.

~~~
danac
So movie-making is becoming more geographically and capital diverse, good for
us! Note how little Monsters costed (under half a mil), or District 9 in 2009,
for that matter. Some cool movies made outside of Hollywood and released last
year: [http://www.dailytitan.com/2011/01/01/the-best-little-
movies-...](http://www.dailytitan.com/2011/01/01/the-best-little-movies-you-
didnt-see-in-2010/)

------
api
Reading more...

 _The Top Gun era sent the ambitions of those who wanted to break into the biz
spiraling in a new direction. Fifteen years earlier, scores of young people
headed to film schools to become directors. With the advent of the Reagan
years, a more bottom-line-oriented cadre of would-be studio players was born,
with an MBA as the new Hollywood calling card. The Top Gun era shifted that
paradigm again—this time toward marketing. Which was only natural: If movies
were now seen as packages, then the new kings of the business would be
marketers, who could make the wrapping on that package look spectacular even
if the contents were deficient._

I see the same thing happening right now in tech. I see a lot of fairly vapid,
not very innovative ideas being driven by a lot of marketing and salesmanship.

Top Gun : Movies

Twitter : Tech

When you put marketers in charge of everything, you get a culture of pandering
and recycled old ideas. That's what we have.

~~~
InclinedPlane
I will put this out there:

Top Gun is a good movie (even if it is pretty shallow).

Twitter is a good technology.

------
WalterBright
The percentage of good movies coming out of Hollywood has always been low.
This idea that there was a mythical time when movies were great is nonsense.

The problem is, we tend to only remember the handful of great movies made back
when. Nobody recalls the acres of dreck.

The other issue that Hollywood can't recognize a hit in the making was always
true. Nobody ever thought Casablanca would be anything other than a throwaway
time filler. Star Wars was a completely unanticipated hit, even by the people
who made it. Etc.

~~~
ojbyrne
Completely disagree with "always been low"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hollywood>

~~~
Egregore
Most of the movies filmed in that era are too slow for the current taste.

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yummyfajitas
Of course, even Inception was based on earlier works.

[http://www.cracked.com/article_19021_5-amazing-things-
invent...](http://www.cracked.com/article_19021_5-amazing-things-invented-by-
donald-duck-seriously.html)

~~~
api
It seems like nearly all of today's pop culture is based on earlier works. We
are doing almost nothing original, at least in the pop field.

You _can_ find original in the indy world though, but you have to dig a lot.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Shakespeare's plays were almost exclusively based on earlier works. Pure
originality is mythical and overrated. What matters is quality, not
conformance to some particular checklist of artistic purity characteristics.

~~~
rtghjnmhng
But even he didn't sink to

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern : Assignment Miami Beach

------
VladRussian
The basic misconception is that Hollywood is in the business of making good
films. Nope. Hollywood is just in the business. I.e. making money, profit. The
sequel 7 1/2 is an evolutionary developed model for that. Note: there is no
contradiction with the fact that some years ago doing good films was good for
business.

~~~
jonnathanson
This, more or less.

A couple of additional notes:

1) It's been demonstrated, statistically, that most studio development
executives perform worse than random chance at picking hits.

2) In absence of any proven system for picking winners, studios have entered a
game of risk mitigation rather than benefit maximization. What does this mean?
Fewer gambles on unknown IP, less new IP all around, and so forth --
essentially, fewer chances taken on unknown commodities. More bet-hedging on
sequels and reboots, and more rehashing of formulaic content.

~~~
VladRussian
unsurprisingly, your statements are generalizable on the whole MBA population.
New Kettle cereals, now with 25% more of lemon scent and soft texture!

------
aamar
tl;dr: Marketers control Hollywood production and are risk-averse gatekeepers.
A bubble in independent/boutique production disrupted that side-channel.

It's not a complete picture; why doesn't the independent/boutique side fire
back up? I think a better explanation is technology/distribution, i.e. HDTV +
cable/internet. TV's mentioned in the article, but only as kind of a silver-
lining; really it seems more like a classic disruptive technology. Shows like
Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, Breaking Bad are highly visual and would until
recently have been better as movies; now plenty of people have nice TVs, and
they work fine there.

So the movie theater's niche is now reduced to material which needs to be huge
in size, enormously loud, 3D, or seen primarily by people who refuse to or
can't buy HDTVs. Everything else seems transitional.

------
tomkarlo
This article comes down a difference over the view of what constitutes a
"good" film:

* Studios: Economic -- low risk, popular, high profit * Writer, reviewers: Aesthetic -- plot, visuals, acting

The mass-market movie model just doesn't lend itself to making high quality
product. It compliments high-marketability products - known franchises,
sequels, etc.

In movies, you do a big marketing campaign where you spend tens of millions of
dollars before opening day, then hope the movie makes that back in its first
two weeks.

In television, with multi-week runs, you can hope to build audience, get good
buzz, etc with a quality product that you didn't market a ton. See: The Wire,
Mad Men, Sopranos, Breaking Bad, etc. The niche audience seeking quality will
find the product.

This is why we are seeing movies move towards huge, low-risk, low-intellect
tentpole movies targeted at non-discerning teenagers, and increasing success
of relatively intellectual, high quality, long-form television series that
create massively loyal followings, lots of rewatching and good DVD sales for
years.

(And I'd argue it's a reversal of the 60s-70s, when you saw great,
groundbreaking movies like Bonnie & Clyde while most of the TV stuff on
networks was middle-of-the-road dreck.)

------
rikthevik
Movie theatres have an important place for North American society. It's a
place that teenagers can go and mostly stay out of trouble. If they want to
watch shitty movies, they're welcome to that. :)

I'm fine with this situation. If creative people make TV and movies for adults
and they do it on HBO or AMC, that's fine. The cable channels have changed the
rules the game - you can be creative without Hollywood.

These days, I think the theatre experience is negative for most of us. We'd
rather be at home watching on our flatscreens anyway.

It's similar to what Conan did by moving to TBS. It shows that the existing
power structure, (network TV) can be circumvented using other means. The web
makes it possible for word of mouth to travel quickly, I can watch Conan
online for free, he gets ad revenue just like he did before and everyone's
happy except an irrelevant NBC.

------
goof
The infantilizing of movies has been very disappointing for me personally. I
seem to have a lot of friends that only want to see CG movies, usually from
Pixar or Dreamworks. Sit them down to watch a live action drama and in fifteen
minutes the iphones come out to play Angry Birds. Very frustrating.

------
kin
Didn't everyone know how awesome Inception was going to be the moment it was
announced? Though I agree with some of his points, I don't know where his
evidence is coming from. Another thing to point out is that it's really hard
nowadays to come up with a truly original idea that feels refreshing to people
since Hollywood's gone such a long way. People should really focus more on
execution.

------
sdenheyer
Right on the money for why over-25's with kids don't go out to see many movies
any more. And this goes double for dramas - a moderately priced home theatre
will easily approach what you get in a multi-plex, quality-wise. If I'm going
to deal with the logistics of going out, I'm going to choose the movies most
enhanced by a huge screen and sound system - and that means comic book movie
most times.

So, here's my stupid suggestion: make prestigious straight-to-DVD dramas, work
out a deal with distributors to charge a little more (to separate out your
movies from the garbage straight-to-DVD releases), and effectively do an end-
run around the theatre system, which you'll never beat in a world with DVDs &
home theatres anyway. This also may take the stigma off releasing NC-17
movies, if they're marketed right.

* Please add "& blu-ray" everytime you see "DVD"

------
kragen
This article points out that movies are now excessively marketing-driven, and
suggests that the reason is that the generation born in the 1960s suffers from
"arrested development" — i.e. psychological neoteny — to a unique degree, and
that they now control Hollywood. Although it does not offer any evidence to
support either of these propositions, it suggests that _Top Gun_ or the Reagan
administration might be the cause of the neoteny.

In reality, marketing-driven movie are nothing new. In the 1960s, they were
called "exploitation" films; "exploitation" was the 1960s movie-biz term for
"marketing". The crucial question is, why is so much of the movie business
organized around exploitation films today? And an unsupported psychological
hypothesis doesn't cut it as an answer.

Here's an idea that seems at least as good as the answer proffered by the
article. The internet makes word-of-mouth travel a lot faster now. It used to
be that the box-office receipts of a stinker movie would decline over the
first few weeks after its release. Now, they decline even during the opening
weekend. (I haven't verified that, but it seems like it ought to be easily
verifiable.) People tweet about how bad the movie is even before they've
finished watching it.

In turn, this word-of-mouth heightens the winner-take-all nature of the film
industry; hit movies take home a bigger share of the total box-office receipts
of the industry (unverified, but should be verifiable), with the result that
more movies these days fail to even make back their production costs
(unverified, but should be verifiable). In short, film production is a riskier
investment than it used to be, and there's less that marketing money can do to
rescue a stinker.

An economically rational response to this situation (assuming I'm correct!)
would be to work harder to figure out which films are going to be hits and
which are going to be flops, make the hits bigger hits, and spend less on the
flops. For example, you could do any of the following:

• Value talent more highly. Talent can't stop a flop from being a flop, but it
can make the difference between a hit and a mega-blockbuster.

• Don't spend _anything_ on marketing. Release films in a single theater or a
single city. If it takes off, print more copies. If GQ is to be believed, this
would cut the cost of filmmaking in half, which would mean you could make
twice as many movies.

• Release movies to audiences in episodes; start by releasing a half-hour
pilot, and if it takes off, call the actors and director back to make another
hour. This could cut the cost of filmmaking by more than a factor of 2,
especially if the first part goes easy on the special effects, the music, that
kind of thing. (In a way, that's what's happening with the sequel craze that
the article is complaining about, but the difference is that you need to have
the story arc planned out: _Dune_ or _Star Wars Episode IV_ or _Babylon 5_ ,
not _Fast Five_.)

• Instead of a first episode, release an abridged version, maybe a half-hour.
This has been done unintentionally and on a small scale for many years; think
of _Blade Runner_ and _Blade Runner: the director's cut_. The difference is
that you can actually _save money_ by _not shooting_ the parts of the story
that you leave out. Maybe instead of showing it in theaters, you can show it
on Lifetime or HBO or something, or just on your web site.

• Instead of a pilot episode or abridged movie, do the first installment of
the movie as a comic book. Comics have a lot in common with films: they're
intensely visual and powerfully immersive, they even use cinematographic
techniques, and a "graphic novel" is a lot closer in length to a movie than it
is to _War and Peace_. These days, online, maybe you could even add a
voiceover to your comic book. (Admittedly, filmstrips never really took off as
a dramatic medium.) Again, in a sense, studios are doing this already; they're
just not funding the production of the comics in the first place. They ought
to. If there were ten times as many graphic novels coming out every year,
they'd have a much better selection of audience-proven storyboards.

• Post trailers and teaser episodes on BitTorrent before you're done filming
in order to see if they take off. It's no guarantee — lots of people will be
willing to watch the movie for free even if they wouldn't shell out for a
ticket — but if it flops there, it'll probably flop in the theater too.

• Cancel more films before they're even finished shooting. If your early
indications are that it's not going to work out, don't try to rescue your
investment by sending good money after bad, hiring a famous film editor to try
to salvage something from the wreckage, nonsense like that. You need some kind
of interim feedback on quality, of course, which is impossible to do reliably,
although some of the approaches above might help. The big returns are going to
go to the mega-hit films. Invest the money you would have invested in
finishing the film in something that has a chance to be a mega-hit instead.

• Leave room in filming budgets for expansion. If early feedback (from the
first episode, or just during screenings) is that the film is good, double the
special-effects budget. Splurge on ADR and better music.

• Make more films, which means making a lot of low-budget films.

• Diversify your film investments; we should see more multi-studio films, just
like we see lots of multi-VC-firm startups.

• Share the risk with the fans. Sell nonrefundable opening-night tickets
before you're finished shooting, in order to raise money for the film. Give
them cash back if the movie is a hit. Or sell the advance tickets in groups of
four. (If the movie's worth watching, they can treat three of their friends
for free.)

However, although as I said above, the studios are using some of these
approaches, we're mostly seeing something else entirely. When you're used to a
certain level of risk, and that level of risk goes up, your natural
inclination is not to figure out how to take _advantage_ of the new risk; it's
to try desperately to _push the risk back down_. So, instead, we're seeing
stupid moves like these:

• Release the film initially in _more_ theaters, not less. That way, if it
sucks, you might still make your money back before everyone sees their friends
tweet about how it was so bad they walked out of the theater.

• Make films that people will want to see before they hear from anyone who's
actually seen them: sequels, comic strips, toy brands. This is a necessary
complement to releasing the film in a lot of theaters at once.

• Spend _more_ on pre-release marketing instead of _less_. This slashes your
maximum possible return on investment, but you have to do it if you're going
to get people into all those theaters on opening weekend instead of a week
later.

(The author's grudge against comic books is pretty embarrassing. Are you going
to tell me _Watchmen_ was infantilizing, not aimed at adults?)

Now, I admit I know little about business and nothing about the business of
movies. So maybe these ideas are stupid.

~~~
vorg
Releasing the film in more cinemas, and focusing on opening weekend, are also
responses to film piracy, rampant outside developed countries. If enforcement
gets harsher in the US, people can go for a "movie week" in some third world
city every year, and watch a year of good movies for free in a friend's
apartment. Realistically, the movie industry needs to focus on blitzing the
opening weekend.

------
Tycho
Hmm, I find it hard to feel so pessimistic. I don't go to the cinema very
often, but all the films I saw this year were outstanding (Kickass, Inception,
Social Network, Kings Speech, True Grit were the latest). Also, sequels aren't
necessarily going to be any worse than non-sequels. Often great art arises
from restricted subject matter. For instance all the paintings of religious
figures, or all the Shakespeare plays that were reworkings of popular
stories/dramas.

------
butterfi
In a sense, Netflix is making Hollywood compete with itself. If Hollywood
doesn't make anything new worth watching, I'll watch something worth the time
from years past.

~~~
mkramlich
This is why I'm not concerned with the percentage of new "good" films
decreasing, if that is in fact what is happening (which is up for debate.)
Because we can always watch the very best films of any year, at any time,
approximately speaking. If you want to see a recently produced film,
regardless of quality, Hollywood will provide that. If you want to see a good
film, regardless of when it was made, that's possible too. It's up to the
individual to choose. Onus on the chooser.

------
robryan
Weird that The Fighter wasn't mentioned, would be up there with inception in
terms of good storytelling.

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mkramlich
Sturgeon's Second Law applies just as much to the movie industry as anything
else. Which was the notion/observation that _"90% of everything is shit."_
Movies, books, songs, politicians, artificial foods, software, companies,
predictions, websites, etc.

------
visakhcr
I happen to search around for some marketing info about Inception and found
this: [http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/13/business/la-fi-ct-
in...](http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/13/business/la-fi-ct-
inception-20100713)

From LA Times, Warner gambles on an unproven commodity. Quoting the first
line:

"The studio and its partner have invested $160 million in 'Inception,' a film
that is not a sequel, adapted from a comic book or inspired by a toy. They're
hoping it follows the path of 'Matrix.'"

I have a couple of points to make.

1) Inception is a great idea .i.e. similar to Matrix, for which the entire
world fell at its feet.

2) But unlike Matrix, it's difficult to make a series out of Inception.

3) And last, Inception production cost was $160 million and Warner Bros spend
the equivalent amount in marketing ($100+)

So, even good films, those which are born out of new ideas, needs a good
marketing plan. The only thing is that the studios should believe in the
film!!

~~~
panacea
"a film that is not a sequel, adapted from a comic book or inspired by a toy.
They're hoping it follows the path of 'Matrix.'"

So they invested in it because they thought it could be a successor (a sequel
as it were) to The Matrix?

------
visakhcr
A question to all: When the nominees for this year's Academy Awards were
released, one film was missing out. Even, it was missing out from all major
film awards.

The Shutter Island.

It was a wonderful psych-thriller by master Scorcese, had some power packed
performance by Leo, but didn't make it to any movie awards. Any takes?

------
mkramlich
Didn't read the article, just the title, but I'd like to chime in to say I'm
pretty sure I saw around a dozen good movies in the last year. Subset includes
Inception, Social Network, King's Speech, True Grit, Star Trek (too far back?
not sure), and The Fighter.

