The Day the Movies Died

Excerpts from a very interesting read at GQ:
"Huh. Well, you never know" is an admission that, put simply, things have never been worse....
For the studios, a good new idea has become just too scary a road to travel. Inception, they will tell you, is an exceptional movie. And movies that need to be exceptional to succeed are bad business. "The scab you're picking at is called execution," says legendary producer Scott Rudin (The Social Network, True Grit). "Studios are hardwired not to bet on execution, and the terrible thing is, they're right. Because in terms of execution, most movies disappoint."...
The majority of studio movies are aimed [at men under 25], the thinking being that they'll eat just about anything that's put in front of them as long as it's spiked with the proper set of stimulants. That's why, when you look at the genres that currently dominate Hollywood—action, raunchy comedy, game/toy/ride/comic-book adaptations, horror, and, to add an extra jolt of Red Bull to all of the preceding categories, 3-D—they're all aimed at the same ADD-addled, short-term-memory-lacking, easily excitable testosterone junkie. In a world dominated by marketing, it was inevitable that the single quadrant that would come to matter most is the quadrant that's most willing to buy product even if it's mediocre...
The good news is that [this] theory of marketing may now be eroding. The bad news is that it's giving way to something worse—a new classification that encompasses all ages and both genders: the "I won't grow up" demographic....
Amen.  I'm glad to see some more originalish shows at least on TV.  And there are plenty of classic original movies that I have yet to see, so I'm not totally discouraged.  But it will be disappointing if our generation doesn't build up a better repertoire worth sharing with our posterity. 

1 comment:

  1. Nice post Lee. I just watched The Purple Rose of Cairo. You should check it out.