am i the only one that dosn't care about numbers? the question "what did a film do?" used to be answered by a hopefully measured, intelligent response, but at least by a knee jerk reaction like it sucked or it was cool or something of that ilk. now the answer to that question comes in the form of digits, generally lots of digits. oh, sex and the city did 75.345 billion dollars over the weekend. indiana jones did more than the gross product of the actual indiana. im over that noise. who cares what a movie made in terms of money. i dont know the top 10 highest grossing movies of all time off the top of my head, but im willing to bet that they are well made, high production value, pieces of burning shit and that the majority of them suck. seriously, grosses act as a better indicator of a pr firm's prowess than of a films. my hat is off to the people who did pr for the film 21 for getting me to choose to see that flaming turd.
really, did anyone get into movies to talk about numbers? i sure as hell didn't. if i wanted to punch numbers all day, i would have been an accountant. like steven spielberg.
so the next time someone asks you what a film did. answer about yourself and yourself alone. give at least a nice gut level instinct feeling. i will give you a short example:
q: troy what did the film leatherheads do
a: they did about 10 bucks off of me...and sadly that's about it.
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Troy that is how people role. We equate high dollars with success. Much like a blog for example, what is a blog worth that no one reads? To get validation in writing you must have "hits" these hits represent the dollar figure. I would say 34 hits is like $.13 much less the Indiana's GDP. Now that does not mean the quality is shit it just means not a lot of people read the article, much like cinema today. Numbers get people interested in films and that drives more movies. If studios did not get these 100 mill pictures they could not fund the art product we know and love. Think of it like a symbiotic relationship.
sadly, this blog has yet to even do thirteen cents as it might be the greatest blog in the history of the world. what can i say, my public relations department is severely lacking.
if 100 million dollar babies are producing the films that i want to see, they sure arent bringing them to me as i generally have to see them on dvd released in a shitty print edition by some bullshit distribution company that probably went bankrupt halfway through production of the dvds. iron man aint putting funds in the pocket of andrew bujalski.
I would argue AB is not asking for the money, or wait a minute... check out this head line "he is working on a screenplay adaptation of Benjamin Kunkel's 2005 novel Indecision for Paramount Pictures." I guess that Iron Man (Paramount Pictures) money my come in handy.
my bad, perhaps i should have used another example. but the argument remains the same. hollywood made better product in the time before the idea of the blockbuster became the driving force behind the majority of films made and sent production costs spiralling out of control. guys like sirk and cukor and wyler and hawks couldn't work today. the studios wouldn't give them money. do you think hitchcock with his lack of explosions and 20 minute car chases would get his stuff released by a major studio into a multiplex. you are kidding yourself. jon favreau probably couldnt get money for another film like swingers, so he does zathura and iron man. personally id rather have swingers...or made for that matter.
I blame "Titanic" for all of this.
Studios used to make hundreds of movies a year, and many of them would be theatrically released. Every now and then, you would have a huge-budget film made - but they usually just broke even at the box office.
Then, "Titanic" happened. It was a huge-budget film, that made huge returns. For the last ten years, production companies produce less films and give bigger budgets to the fewer films.
Generic Theoretical Stats
Pre-1998: 50, $2 Million Dollar budgeted films.
Post-1998: 5, $20 Million Dollar budgeted films.
"Titanic", I totally blame "Titanic"...
It started with Jaws. Thats when the studios realized how much money there was to be made in the movie business. It has snowballed ever since. With new tentpoles to hit along the way, Star Wars, Et, etc. Titanic was just another flag down the ski slope.
i agree, spielberg and lucas really fucked things up for everyone interested in movies where people dont outrun anything. my main complaint is the fact that pirates 9 opens on 7 screens at the local theater and doesnt move for 10 weeks therefore leaving less profit driven exercises to languish away on the studio cabinet because they arent as economically viable as the 9th screen of lord of the rings. i mean shit,give fateh akin one screen, give apitchiatpong one fucking screen, is that too much to ask?
Now, you would be taking profit away from the theatre chain itself. You know that Theaters want to hold big movies longer because on that 10th week the box office spilt is like 60 percent to the theatre. What is the motivation for anyone to run indie films during the summer? Understand I am talking about mega and multi-plexes. And I would disagree that Jaws was the downfall, Jaws gave the theaters and studios exactly what the needed, money. The point of any business is to make money and without these tent pole films they would not exist. Now, you may think perfect, the utopian film society would finally exist. In-fact you would be wrong. Studios have to make money to distribute films across the world and that costs a lot of money. That is why, even art product still gets 100 prints made. Without studios and big dollars you would never see, maybe a small portion of any art film. Grass roots advertising only goes so far. It is a little paradox, as an artist you greatest asset is your vision or story and to get your film produced you would have to compromise that value and allow someone else to have control. That is the decision.
I'm not saying Jaws was the end of civilization. In fact Zach you agreed with the point I was making, which is the movie business as we know it started with Jaws, not Titanic. Which was the only point I was trying to make. Yes, 30 plexes make more money on the 17th week of their 12th print of this season's Will Smith I have a vaguely sci-fi premise for an action movie. The comment Troy was making about wanting to see Edge of Heaven or Syndromes and a Century or whatever was aimed at the theatre I work at and rightly so. We are playing way more mainstream movies because there are way less mainstream dramas with 50ish aged actors which appeal to 50ish plus aged viewers, which were mainstream movies that played in multiplexes 20 years ago. Because dramas only exist in 2008 to win awards. Anyways, the only mainstream movie we have made serious money on is Sex and the City, which the only reason we are even doing business on it is because we happen to have a bar. For us, we are not going to make money on Indiana Jones for the exact reasons Zach is talking about. We are only really picking up spillover audience from other theatres and by the time we would get more percentage on Indiana Jones we won't still be showing it. In fact, one mainstream film we played this summer did so poorly, that its distributor said we were lying about our grosses. In this instance, any movie Troy wants to see would have made more money. I can't speak for Troy, but my complaint about 10 prints of the same movie means less consumer choice.
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