Summer Movies -- What Went Wrong
MC
+++
New York Times
August 24, 2005
Summer Fading, Hollywood Sees Fizzle
By SHARON WAXMAN
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 23 - With the last of the summer blockbusters fading
from the multiplex, Hollywood's box office slump has hardened into a
reality that is setting the movie industry on edge. The drop in ticket
sales from last summer to this summer, the most important moviegoing
season, is projected to be 9 percent by Labor Day, and the drop in
attendance is expected to be even deeper, 11.5 percent, according to
Exhibitor Relations, which tracks the box office.
Multiples theories for the decline abound: a failure of studio
marketing, the rising price of gas, the lure of alternate entertainment,
even the prevalence of commercials and pesky cellphones inside
once-sacrosanct theaters. But many movie executives and industry experts
are beginning to conclude that something more fundamental is at work:
Too many Hollywood movies these days, they say, just are not good enough.
"Part of this is the fact that the movies may not have lived up to the
expectations of the audience, not just in this year, but in years
prior," said Michael Lynton, chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment,
which had some flops this summer, including the science fiction action
movie "Stealth" and the romantic comedy "Bewitched." "Audiences have
gotten smart to the marketing, and they can smell the good ones from the
bad ones at a distance."
Even Robert Shaye, the studio leader behind "The Wedding Crashers," one
of the summer's runaway hits, shares the worry about the industry's
ability to connect with audiences. "I believe it's a cumulative thing, a
seismic evolution of people's habits," said Mr. Shaye, chairman of New
Line Cinema.
In previous years, he said, "you could still count on enough people to
come whether you failed at entertaining them or not, out of habit, or
boredom, or a desire to get out of the house. You had a little bit of
backstop."
With competition from video games, hundreds of television channels and
DVD's, that's no longer the case, he said. The problem, these studio
leaders and other industry experts seemed to say, was not only that a
steady diet of formulaic plots, too-familiar special-effects vehicles
and remakes of television shows has, over time, left the average
moviegoer hungry for better entertainment.
Marc Shmuger, vice chairman of Universal, said Hollywood has been too
focused on short-term box office payoff and not focused enough on what
he called "the most elemental factor of all" - the satisfaction of the
moviegoing experience.
"It wasn't like the last crop of summer movies were that much better
than this summer," said Mr. Shmuger, whose studio's recent releases
included the success "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and several
disappointments, including "Cinderella Man," "The Perfect Man" and
"Kicking and Screaming." "This summer has been as deadening as it has
been exciting, and there's a cumulative wearing down effect. We're
beginning to witness the results of that. People are just beginning to
wake up that what used to pass as summer excitement isn't that exciting,
or that entertaining. This is vividly clear in terms of the other
choices that consumers have."
The blockbuster hits of last summer, including "Spider-Man 2," "Shrek 2"
and "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," performed more or less
on the same level as this year's hits, including "Star Wars: Episode III
- Revenge of the Sith," "Batman Begins" and "War of the Worlds." But too
many big-budget movies, including "The Island" and "Stealth," flopped
entirely, while other films, from "Bad News Bears" to "Herbie: Fully
Loaded" to "The Great Raid," were disappointing.
The box office numbers have led to intense, broad-ranging conversations
across Hollywood about the implications. Many studios have commissioned
market research to investigate the causes of moviegoing behavior - or
the lack thereof. At New Line, executives have been talking about the
"sameness of everything" on movie schedules, one executive said. At 20th
Century Fox this week, a half-dozen top executives held an impromptu
brainstorming session at the commissary with a reporter, debating the
effects of gas prices and marketing missteps.
Tom Rothman, co-chairman of 20th Century Fox, was one of the few to see
no negative trend in the current numbers. "Everybody keeps saying it's
the worst of times; it seems fine to me," said Mr. Rothman, whose studio
has had some big-budget successes this summer, with "Mr. and Mrs. Smith"
and "The Fantastic Four." He noted, for example, that the advent of
DVD's has expanded the overall revenues of the movie industry. "For us
the business is healthy, but it requires management," Mr. Rothman said.
Just about everywhere else, though, the concern is palpable - and
understandable, not only because of the performance of this summer's
movies, but also because a decline is discernible over time: overall
movie attendance, a figure not affected by inflation, has slid to below
where it stood in mid-August 2001. DVD sales, while still robust, are no
longer rising exponentially, and some analysts say that a poor box
office performance this summer will lead to poor DVD sales this winter.
With billions of dollars at stake, nerves are growing understandably
frayed. Last week, John Fithian, the president of the National
Association of Theatre Owners, accused Robert A. Iger , the incoming
chief executive of Walt Disney, of leveling a "death threat" at theater
owners for having suggested that the lesson to be drawn from the slump
is that moviegoers want films to be accessible in theaters and on DVD
simultaneously.
"The structure of the industry is sound," said Mr. Fithian, who believes
in maintaining a distance between the theatrical release and the DVD.
"We just need a few more good movies."
Mr. Iger had observed that studios ignored consumers at their peril. "We
can't allow tradition to stand in the way of where the consumer can go,
or wants to go," he told analysts this month, warning that "the music
industry learned this the hard way."
Mr. Iger's conclusion - that consumers want the choice of seeing movies
in their homes at the same time as in the theater - is being reached by
others in the industry as well. But it remains contentious, resisted not
only by the owners of theater chains. Mr. Lynton of Sony was adamant
that the theatrical experience should be protected, while Mr. Shaye said
he was still "on the fence" on the subject.
Warren Lieberfarb, a former Warner Brothers executive who was a main
advocate of the DVD in the early 90's, warned that going to the movies
had become too expensive over all, given the excellent quality of home
theater. "It's not just the DVD. It's not just the DVD window," he said.
"It's the flat-panel television and the sound system, with the DVD
option, that has radically changed the quality of the in-home
experience. The home theater has arrived." As a result, he said, "you
have to change the business model of the movie business."
With the task so large, and so very complex, Hollywood is still
grappling with how to broach solutions.
Mr. Lynton said he would focus on making "only movies we hope will be
really good." At Fox, executives said they are looking to limit
marketing costs. At Universal, Mr. Shmuger said he intends to reassert
"time and care and passion" in movie production. Some of his own summer
movies, he conceded, should never have been made.
He declined to name them.
--
"If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."
--Elmore Leonard
Skipper
<cope...@mapca.inter.net> wrote:
> Turns out it was the shitty movies that got greenlit... who knew?
I am stunned at the people who simply cannot appreciate the sheer
poetry of Jessica Simpson in a pair of tight cutoffs talking about
something crawling up her cooter.
--
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has
solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
-- Calvin Coolidge
Paul Mason
MC wrote:
> ..."I believe it's a cumulative thing, a
> seismic evolution of people's habits," said Mr. Shaye, chairman of New
> Line Cinema.
A cumulative, seismic evolution? huh?
> The box office numbers have led to intense, broad-ranging conversations
> across Hollywood ...
> ...executives have been talking about the
> "sameness of everything" on movie schedules, ...
> ..."We just need a few more good movies."...
> ...focus on making "only movies we hope will be really good."...
Wow! What insight! These guys are like geniuses. I predict once the
'really good' and not 'samey' movies start to hit the theatres we'll
see a gradual explosion of steady growth in movie going.
MC
Skipper <skipsp...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > Turns out it was the shitty movies that got greenlit... who knew?
>
> I am stunned at the people who simply cannot appreciate the sheer
> poetry of Jessica Simpson in a pair of tight cutoffs talking about
> something crawling up her cooter.
Oh, certainly. But it's hardly a match for a *penguin's* cooter, now is
it?
Skipper
<cope...@mapca.inter.net> wrote:
> In article <dei19c$5ir$1...@reader2.panix.com>,
> Skipper <skipsp...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> > > Turns out it was the shitty movies that got greenlit... who knew?
> >
> > I am stunned at the people who simply cannot appreciate the sheer
> > poetry of Jessica Simpson in a pair of tight cutoffs talking about
> > something crawling up her cooter.
>
> Oh, certainly. But it's hardly a match for a *penguin's* cooter, now is
> it?
Maybe almost as cold for Nick Lachey lately. :-)
nmstevens
Jacques E. Bouchard wrote:
> MC <cope...@mapca.inter.net> wrote in news:dehump$sk1$1
> @reader2.panix.com:
>
> > Turns out it was the shitty movies that got greenlit... who knew?
>
> @%$^@#$ thing about simple, first-grade dramatic structure.
>
> I was hired to "fix" a show that had no structure, and things are going
> from bad to worst. The creator doesn't want to throw anything away, the
> director left in charge while the producer is on vacation has no clue
> about things like "conflict", and I'm left trying to fit square pegs
> through round holes because that's what they're asking me to do.
>
> About twice a day I feel ready to explode and scream at them: "Why the
> hell did you hire me to fix the show if you insist on leaving it exactly
> the way it is?"
>
> The show is never going into production, it's a muddled confused mess of
> antagonists without protagonists, protagonists without stakes, and
> stakes without conflict. At this point I'm just worried about getting
> all the money they promised me, and possibly getting my name taken off
> the project.
>
>
>
>
> jaybee
You should have heard the conversations I had when I was up to do the
rewrite on "Snakes on a Plane" (Strangely enough, I didn't get the
job).
NMS
MC
"nmstevens" <nmst...@msn.com> wrote:
> You should have heard the conversations I had when I was up to do the
> rewrite on "Snakes on a Plane" (Strangely enough, I didn't get the
> job).
Too bad. We had you in mind for "Mouse in the Kitchen" but then we heard
you were more trouble than you're worth. Always wanting things in the
plot top make sense -- that kind of thing.
Skipper
> Jacques E. Bouchard wrote:
> > MC <cope...@mapca.inter.net> wrote in news:dehump$sk1$1
> > @reader2.panix.com:
> >
> > > Turns out it was the shitty movies that got greenlit... who knew?
> >
> > Shitty movies get made because producers and execs don't know the first
> > @%$^@#$ thing about simple, first-grade dramatic structure.
> >
> > I was hired to "fix" a show that had no structure, and things are going
> > from bad to worst. The creator doesn't want to throw anything away, the
> > director left in charge while the producer is on vacation has no clue
> > about things like "conflict", and I'm left trying to fit square pegs
> > through round holes because that's what they're asking me to do.
> >
> > About twice a day I feel ready to explode and scream at them: "Why the
> > hell did you hire me to fix the show if you insist on leaving it exactly
> > the way it is?"
> >
> > The show is never going into production, it's a muddled confused mess of
> > antagonists without protagonists, protagonists without stakes, and
> > stakes without conflict. At this point I'm just worried about getting
> > all the money they promised me, and possibly getting my name taken off
> > the project.
> > jaybee
The William Goldman tell 'em what they want to hear then write what you
want approach might work - assuming they probably can't read.
> You should have heard the conversations I had when I was up to do the
> rewrite on "Snakes on a Plane" (Strangely enough, I didn't get the
> job).
>
> NMS
I heard it's cause you don't speak the Samjackson dialect.
mary...@rcn.com
mary...@rcn.com
MC
"mary...@rcn.com" <mary...@rcn.com> wrote:
> Once he asked, "Does it have to be snakes?" the deal was *over*.
That too is funny.
You're on a roll, Bones.
MC
"mary...@rcn.com" <mary...@rcn.com> wrote:
> Oh, and MC? I thought we changed the title to Mouse Arrest.
Rats.
wcmartell
They keep pointing to STEALTH band THE ISLAND, two films by directors
who are notorious for not respecting writers, and having things
rewritten to it their ideas (even after every writer in town tells them
that the ideas suck). So why doesn't Hollywood put those two guys on
probation - they can no longer have any input on the script.
Seriously: I think we need a single strong producer to oversee each
film - and tht producer has final say on *everything*, they rule over
the director, writer(s), stars. They make hits, they keep working. They
make flops, they get their budgets lowered. Make someone responsible
for the film. Now, everyone can point fingers at everyone and
everything else. The guys who paid mid-six for Snakes On A Plane or
Toads In A Toilet continue to make films without being responsible for
what they make.
- Bill
ov...@aol.com
> At Fox, executives said they are looking to limit
> marketing costs.
Ooh, great idea! Spend millions on a movie, but don't ask anybody to
watch it!
Lois
Michael
you do and hope to hook up at some stage). Following the Palme d'Or for
the Dardenne brothers, much air has been blown about why Belgian
audiences don't go to see Belgian films. This issue of total
unaccountability must be one of the reasons. Most movies there need
some form of public funding. That's cool at one level, but it does
favour the creation of movies that are made for the director rather
than for the audience (which is perhaps at the root of what you're
saying). So large parts of what is produced is, in the eyes of many
Belgian cinema-goers, totally uninteresting. I must point out that I
have not seen "The Child" yet, so I wouldn't like to comment on it
specifically. I know lots of British cinema-goers had similar qualms
about Brit movies too, although the situation (ie, the balance of
movies that are made with an audience in mind) is improving.
Yet there is still a large part of the business that seems to get by
without being held to account for what they have done. Weird. There is
also a basic feeling that to help Belgian cinema, they must give money
to directors as if they are the sole custodians of movie-making. This
is patently not the case, and I'd "yay" your comments about reinforcing
the role of the producer, particularly in Europe where their role is
often closer to that of an accountant than an active member of a
creative industry.
So, yay!
M
nmstevens
Michael wrote:
> Gosh, you should come to Europe (OK, a rhetorical exclamation as I know
> you do and hope to hook up at some stage). Following the Palme d'Or for
> the Dardenne brothers, much air has been blown about why Belgian
> audiences don't go to see Belgian films. This issue of total
> unaccountability must be one of the reasons. Most movies there need
> some form of public funding. That's cool at one level, but it does
> favour the creation of movies that are made for the director rather
> than for the audience (which is perhaps at the root of what you're
> saying). So large parts of what is produced is, in the eyes of many
> Belgian cinema-goers, totally uninteresting. I must point out that I
> have not seen "The Child" yet, so I wouldn't like to comment on it
> specifically. I know lots of British cinema-goers had similar qualms
> about Brit movies too, although the situation (ie, the balance of
> movies that are made with an audience in mind) is improving.
>
Say not that they are made "for the director" -- but rather for a
different audience -- and that's the audience consisting of whatever
small group of government functionaries gets to decide who gets the
government funding -- because, surely, there are many more potential
projects -- each with its own director dying to say whatever the hell
it is that he wants to see (audience in the theatre notwithstanding)
than ever see the light of day.
The projects that get made are the ones that satisfy whatever aesthetic
and cultural criteria the *funders* consider to be important -- not the
audience -- and only incidentally the filmmakers who get picked.
NMS
Mysti
enough."
This was being said A LOT in 1979-80, and right after that an indie
film renaissance occurred (I can't spell either of those last two
words)...
PLUS, as america grows more diverse, the common denominator gets lower
and lower, thus films must either accept niche marketing or get really
freaking stupid.
The fact that many studio employees with greenlight powers have never
had any production experience is just icing on the cake, I think...
paradigm shifts are always ugly in the first part...
Skipper
<hardboi...@aol.com> wrote:
> "Too many Hollywood movies these days, they say, just are not good
> enough."
>
> This was being said A LOT in 1979-80, and right after that an indie
> film renaissance occurred (I can't spell either of those last two
> words)...
>
> PLUS, as america grows more diverse, the common denominator gets lower
> and lower, thus films must either accept niche marketing or get really
> freaking stupid.
You mean like "They Saved Hitler's Brain" or "Them" or umpteen other
Jim Crow time 1950s movies? ;-)
Suzy Charnas
> PLUS, as america grows more diverse, the common denominator gets lower
> and lower, thus films must either accept niche marketing or get really
> freaking stupid.
An interesting point; thanks for that.
Suzy
Hercule Platini
"Paul Mason" <late...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:dei25f$qhg$1...@reader2.panix.com...
What I like about those quotes is the sense that the executives are
apparently quite happy to make "samey" movies that they *don't* necessarily
hope will be any good - it's only when the public decide they don't want to
see them that they start to panic.
--
Hercule Platini
Michael Dines
> PLUS, as america grows more diverse, the common denominator gets lower
> and lower, thus films must either accept niche marketing or get really
> freaking stupid.
Is America really more diverse now than when Hollywood started out?
nmstevens
I don't think that America is more diverse, but due to competition from
TV and other sources, the number of movies that are made has gone down
drastically. Fewer movies made at higher prices means that to maintain
the same level of income those fewer and more costly movies have to
make more money by appealing to larger and larger audiences.
There was a time when people went to the movies every week -- and it
really hardly mattered what was playing, because movies were just about
the only game in town.
Those kinds of attendance levels will never come back again. From one
year to the next, audience attendance may go up five or ten percent or
drop five or ten percent -- but it's not abruptly going to go up fifty
percent or a hundred percent. People aren't going to suddenly start
attending twice as many movies as they once did.
But personally, I've never bought into this "gourmet" analogy in
respect to movie or art -- namely that there are "gourmet" movies --
the really good ones but they're too sophisticated for the usual
chuckleheads and only appeal to a select audience of cinephiles -- the
"movie gourmets" -- while Hollywood, on the other hand, is too crude
for such sophisticated gourmet fare -- it's just putting out movie
"junk food" for the masses -- because, as we all know, those masses are
a bunch of fucking idiots who just want to eat at MacDonald's and drink
beer all day.
Frankly, for people working in what is an unabashedly "mass" medium,
that is an attitude that is just a bit too snobby for me.
There is no reason why you can't make an excellent movie that appeals
to a mass audience -- a movie that is both economically successful and
also a good movie.
And if you say, "But look at all these big overbloated Hollywood movies
that are crap" -- well, a lot of those little artsy movies are
unwatchable crap too. At every scale, good movies are hard to make and
can't be manufactured according to any reliable or predictable process.
NMS
Mysti Berry
Well, California is more diverse. In fact, if they'd passed the "English
Only" laws here, we'd all now be required to speak Spanish as the state
language!!!
Wisconsin is more diverse.
New York is more diverse.
I don't have stats on the other states, but this is a pretty good sampling.
Mysti
Mysti Berry
> There is no reason why you can't make an excellent movie that appeals
> to a mass audience -- a movie that is both economically successful and
> also a good movie.
Well, there's one really sucky reason that stops a lotta guys--they
don't know what makes a good movie. So reaching low is their only option.
Mysti
Michael Dines
I thought that 'when Hollywood started out', which I'd define as pre
World War I, America had waves of migrants coming in from Italy, Russia,
Poland, etc. They didn't know much English and that's what made silent
movies such a suitable mass entertainment medium.
Of course, now all those migrant families have learnt English and
assimilated into your society, do they still count towards its
diversity, or is it more diverse because of yet more waves of migrants -
Koreans, Indians, etc?
MC
michaeldines@NO_SPICED_HAMblueyonder.co.uk (Michael Dines) wrote:
That's a really good question. But even if the first generation
immigrants arrive without much English or cultural assimiliation, their
kids adapt *really* quickly -- so in as little as 10 years you have a
new generation of people who *look* Korean, Indian and so on, and who
may well retain a lot of their culture, but who are insdistinguishable
from other Americans in other respects. I suspect that process is much
faster than it was in WWI.
--
"A talent for drama is not a talent for writing,
but is an ability to articulate human relationships."
--Gore Vidal
myria...@mac.com
1. How MANY different ethnic groups there are in the country.
2. How BIG the percentage is of people without western european
ancestry.
3. How patterns of assimilation have changed given 1 and 2. They are
not the same melting pot example as in previous generations, though
assimiliation certainly does occur, of course.
One simple example, there are over 80 different languages spoken as the
primary language in the los angeles unified school district. An entire
community of people speaking a Central American language that linguists
thought was totally dead were discovered living in L.A. somewhere,
several generations of folks.
And none of this takes into account the geekification of our culture,
pockets of people deep-ending into very narrow interest groups. But
that's just a theory of mine, so I'll leave it for now :)
Creating quality content for diverse audience is not an unsolvable
problem by any means, Hong Kong for example has been creating deep and
powerful films intended for many nations speaking many languages for
decades. But it requires a different mindset, and so far I see the
trend of studio development people NOT changing or learning from the
experience of Asia, instead they seem always to be reaching for the
lowest common denominator. They don't want to figure out how to retool
their studios to be able to make a profit on 10 $10M films instead of
one $120M film. No worries, humans tend to believe whatever strategy
brought them success will always continue to, right up until the point
they've stripped the land of nutrients and fished the seas empty.
I'm not totally discouraged. Soderberg, Alexie, plus a whole generation
of kids cutting their teeth on HD tape will show them how it's done.
Content is king.
Mysti