It’s a testament to the hold movies have on the public that the 15-year decline in the quality of filmmaking has only started to undermine the bottom line in recent years. We so desperately want the promise of a movie to come true that, time after time after time, we plunk down our money, hoping against reason that an obvious piece of crap won’t be.
If you look at the box office this year and especially DVD sales, you can see how the overwhelming number of bad films is finally coming home to roost. It’s a shame things had to get to this point, but if Hollywood can stop kidding themselves by blaming it all on piracy and Redbox, this could finally be the incentive needed to turn things around.
The other thing hurting Hollywood is the long, slow death of the movie star. For some reason this industry thought they could get away with what would kill any other industry. If Mr. Whipple called you a racist teabagger, would you buy Charmin? Of course not. And yet you have one Hollywood spokesperson (actors) after another assholing away their goodwill on a daily basis.
The recent poll showing that Hollywood’s approval rating is lower than George W. Bush’s when he left office should’ve been a wake-up call.
A 33% approval rating has nothing to do with piracy or Redbox, does it?
We’re just hating these people back, and now it’s costing them millions.
In an astonishingly blunt appraisal of the health of Hollywood, the revered director said there were “not a lot of films” that he believed to be worth watching.
The 64-year-old, responsible for epics including Schinder’s List and Jaws, revealed that few films since what he believes to be the the golden age of the 1950s and 1960s, have inspired him.
Instead he said he relied on his pre-production ritual of watching four classics: Seven Samurai, The Searchers, Lawrence of Arabia, and It’s a Wonderful Life, to help ensure the success of new projects.
In an interview with The Sunday Times he said: “There’s not a lot of films I’d watch that are made over the past 20 years, because I’m much more of a romantic.
[…]
Attacking the prevalence of film franchises – movies based on toys, or video games, that are intended to sell a product as much as they are to entertain – Spielberg said: “I think producers are more interested in backing concepts than directors and writers.
“I don’t think that’s the right way of making a decision about whether you’re going to back a film or not, but a lot of these hedge funds – these independent groups that are coming up with the money – are looking at the big idea more than who the director or writer is. And of course, they all want the guarantee of a big actor.
“My whole career has survived without big movie stars. Yes, I’ll do movies with Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks, and I enjoy that, but most of my movies have had unknowns in them. And they’ve done pretty well.”
Full story here.
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