WHINE, WHINE, WHINE
about the state of Hollywood

My buddy Alan puts my comments in my recent post about today's movies, "Corporations Corrupt Democracy CORPORATIONS CORRUPT ART," to the test in the Real Art comments section:

Whine, whine, whine. Ooh, the evil corporations are coming to get me! Okay, so I grant you corporations are generally evil; but in this instance, you're complaining about the quality of movie fare, which I think has far more to do with lowest common denominator viewership. Joe & Joeline Sixpack do not want to visit a Multiplex filled with artistic variations on Easy Rider, Amadeus, The Seventh Seal, and Eraserhead. They want to see American Strudel XV, Tomb Violator XXVII, and Gigli III: The Divorce. Or, is your stance that if only the studios would release nothing but "quality" work, the scales would fall from Joe & Joeline's eyes, & the world would be intellectually & artistically utopian. Ha! Real likely. Look, no one forces you to see major stdio releases. Have you sought out alternatives? They're there. If nothing else, get off your ass, grab a digital recorder & some editing software, and make your own masterpiece. Making a movie has never been easier.

Okay, these are some good points that need a response.

Alan, I think that you are falling into the trap of accepting the standard corporate defense of "we're just giving the people what they want." While I agree that average Americans don't always flock to see sophistated film fare in droves, you've got to admit that marketing plays a huge role in helping filmgoers to decide exactly what it is that "they want." In other words, I don't think it's fair to say that Americans aren't interested in better films; in this era of corporate controlled movie production, Americans don't really have much of a choice besides the endless stream of big budget craptaculars. I believe that people watch a lot of these films simply because that's what's showing. Even I am occasionally amused by some of the schlock coming from the Left Coast--I really liked the new Terminator flick, for instance, and I have a film degree.

The truth is that there have been countless great films that have entertained huge American audiences: Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Fantasia, Casablanca, A Streetcar Named Desire, most of the Alfred Hitchcock catalogue, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?, The Godfather, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The list goes on, but kind of peters out the closer you get to today. I believe that truly great art speaks to both the sophisticated and the simple, to the elite and the common. Great art is universal; Shakespeare proved it in the 1590s, and the Beatles proved it in the 1960s.

Hollywood has always released bad films, and many of them have made money. My point here is that the corporate mentality has resulted in a situation where we are now subjected to more bad films than ever, while the release rate of good films seems to be at an all time low. I don't really believe that more good films would create a utopia, but I do believe that movies play a very important role in our culture: film makes ideas come to life, makes them more persuasive--films make people think, for better or worse. It is my position that a corporate Hollywood tends to make American thinking worse, tends to make our lives more drab. I know that they're just trying to make money, but that does not place them above criticism: this is our culture that they're pissing on.

And maybe I will make my own masterpiece someday...

By the way, there is a documentary showing on the Independent Film Channel right now (to which, alas, I don't have access) that deals with some of these topics. Here is an excerpt from a Houston Chronicle review:

Filmmakers Richard LaGravenese and the late Ted Demme, and the prodigious talent they assemble, persuasively portray 1967-1977 as a golden age for American cinema.

Why that decade? Because not only was it a period of social unrest -- civil rights, Vietnam, Watergate -- but it also was a period of disconnect between the movie industry and the public. Artists surveyed the landscape around them and wanted to to speak out about it.

"Audiences started to say, 'I want to recognize my life in film. I want to see film reflect what's going on,'" said LaGravenese, screenwriter for such movies as The Bridges of Madison County and The Horse Whisperer.

Coincidentally, the model on which the movie business was built had gone kablooey. The "studio system," in which a mogul oversaw a company intent on controlling all facets of the movie-making process, had played out. Moguls were replaced by bankers who didn't know how to make a movie, who were willing to leave the creative portion of filmmaking to the artists.

This dovetailing of conditions created a "perfect storm" scenario for budding film auteurs wishing to make a difference in society. Taking a cue from their European counterparts -- Godard, Visconti, Rossellini, Truffaut, Bertolucci, Bergman, Fellini -- pioneers such as Robert Altman, John Cassavetes and Paul Schrader made movies about small human events in a fresh style (using handheld cameras, for example). They made films that "said something."

For the entire review, click here.

It's really not simply a situation of "what the people want:" business practices play an enormous role in what we get to see at the movies.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$