Tag: Hollywood

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Socialism for the Rich

In the contest for dumbest government programs, state funding of Hollywood productions must rank near the top, along with sports stadiums.

‘After a state economist determined that “the film incentives represent lost revenue” and that their economic benefits were “negligible,” Michigan, which cut funding for the police and schools while facing a severe budget deficit, eventually decided to end its incentives.’

Now Michigan wants to restart the program. Because Georgia and Indiana do it and we must compete in this race to the bottom! Both parties do it while selling the myth that these productions generate local jobs and increased tax revenue. Clint Eastwood, hard core self-reliant pull-your-bootstraps up Republican, is more than happy to take advantage of this welfare program for actors and directors.

‘A recent report prepared for state auditors in Georgia estimated that the tax revenue returned on each dollar spent on incentives was 19 cents. A similar report from New York determined the return was between 15 cents and 31 cents.’

Socialism for the rich.

It is very disappointing, to say the least, that taxpayers who are outraged by this or that or everything completely miss the biggest spending scandals happening right in front of them.

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Don’t Cry for Me Wicked Witches

Universal Pictures, the film company, owns and produced “Wicked”, the Broadway Musical. You might think, why is a film company with much bigger fish to fry, dabbling in musicals? The answer is simple: “Wicked” is the most profitable venture in the history of Universal Pictures. Why? The answer is again, simple: how much did your last movie ticket cost you? Oh yeah? Well a ticked to see “Wicked” will cost you about ten times that amount. Multiply that times 3,000 a night, for, say 300 nights, and you have an idea of the scale of the venture. Even with all the dancers and musicians and make-up artists and set-designers and so on, you can make a lot of money.  Yes, we’re talking 50, 60, 70 million dollars.

So we arrive at the real why question. And that answer is also simple. Broadway aint what it used to be. Leaving aside the question of whether “Wicked” is more interesting artistically than “Oklahoma” or “All That Jazz” or “Mame”, the people who go to Broadway shows are largely tourists, in New York (no other location of a stage production has nearly the influence), who want something utterly remarkable and amazing which they can tell their friends about when they get back home to Peoria or Austin or Sioux City: we saw “Wicked”. It was FABULOUS. Oh, you gotta see it live: it just blew me away!

It is possible to produce a stunning Broadway show, nowadays, without any of the difficult artistic stuff involved. Well, all right: someone still has to write dialogue and music and learn how to play an instrument. Then you mic everyone and turn up the sound system and throw in a few pyrotechnics, and you have a hit.

Then why did “Spiderman” bomb? Okay, so even with all the resources of Broadway’s technical departments, you still need magic, the elusive unquantifiable indefinable thing that makes people want to rush home and tell all their friends they saw your production.

Right now, Broadway is dominated by “Bridges of Madison County”, “Bullets Over Broadway”, “Big Fish”, “Rocky”. There are plans to make “Animal House”, “Back to the Future”, Tootsie”, and “The Devil Wears Prada” into Broadway musicals.

Convergence. Towards the lowest common denominator. My wife and I saw “Hair” a few years ago, and “Godspell” last year, on Broadway. “Hair” originated on Broadway and became a movie. It was Broadway that had the courage and audacity to present a hippie musical on stage. More timid Hollywood wanted a proven success, which “Hair” was a after a few years on Broadway. Hollywood does not take risks. It almost never, lately, takes artistic risks. Want to see an artistic risk? Stop drooling over Leonardo Di Caprio– he never appears in an artistically audacious film, even if it is Martin Scorcese directing. Has Martin Scorcese directed anything as remotely daring as “Taxi Driver” or “Raging Bull” lately?

To see a movie that takes artistic risks, you need to check out the independent films like “Before Midnight”, “Blancanieves”, “The Artist”, “Moonrise Kingdom”, “The White Ribbon”, “Junebug”.

So all we need is for Hollywood to start running Broadway. But there is a reason a Broadway ticket costs about ten times as much as a movie ticket. It is because Broadway has a luster to it, a glow, a sense of marvel and authenticity and originality that most Hollywood movies lack. It is because Broadway embraces risk, and change, and real emotions. Hollywood, like a huge, ugly remora, wants to attach itself to this luster. But first it needs to eliminate the risk (and originality) and homogenize the experience (nothing with a genuine edge) and castrate it. Once Broadway is safe for Hollywood, there will be a lot of happy tourists who will get exactly what they expected and will experience the delusion of having seen something that can be mistaken for a Broadway production. And they will invariably say that it was better than the film version because they damned well paid ten times as much to see it.

You know what’s up when you hear people involved in stage productions talk about how important it is that the audience not leave the theatre disappointed. You get the feeling that the disappointment they are talking about is exactly that: “I paid ten times as much as for a movie ticket and I couldn’t even understand the damn play! What a waste!” And so long to “Who’s Afraid of Virgina Woolf” and “Equus” and “Cabaret” and “All that Jazz” and “The Book of Mormon”.

The irony of all this, of course, is that Broadway itself tends to play it safe lately, and the really daring, original Broadway productions almost always originate off-Broadway, or in London, or somewhere else. Broadway has its own cult of celebrity and a play often does poorly once the famous star moves on. Where do stars originally come from? They come from off-Broadway productions, independent films, and, so it appears, home-made porn films.

What if Hollywood had this great idea and decided that they would establish a street in Los Angeles and they would put on stage versions of their films and charge over $100 a ticket? They would never do that. No one would come. Because it wasn’t “Broadway”. They will fix that.

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The Mirth of Hollywood Money

(Paul Schrader says…)

In the case of Bringing Out the Dead, I was opposed to Nick Cage because the character I had written was about 27 years old and Nick can’t really, plausibly be less than 35 on the screen. I thought that this was really a young man’s thing going on here.

But it was a very tough story, in terms of Hollywood. Scorcese likes to take his time. He likes to spend money shooting. Last night they were doing a shot that I would do in a hour, and they were spending six hours on it.

That shows up on screen, but it costs money. So, a film that I could have made for 8-9 million dollars here in New York, they re spending 30-35 million. So financial justifications come into play, because you have to justify that 35 million dollars. Nick Cage, at the moment, gets around 20 million dollars a movie and he’s one of the highest paid actors at the moment. He s had a whole series of successes. But Nick read this and the idea of doing Schrader and Scorsese and a night in New York again – he agreed to do it for a million dollars.

That protected Marty. He knew that once he had Nick in his pocket for a million bucks, nobody would touch him. There wouldn’t be no studio interference, there wouldn’t be talk about changing the script, talk about having a different ending, or whatever.

So he opted to go with Nick, so that he could make the movie he wanted to make. If he went with an unknown, he would have had a lower budget or he would have had to make some script changes.

Paul Schrader, from an interview at Euroscreenwriters.

Some people don’t believe me when I tell them that I believe that the only reason Leonardo DiCaprio– the worst “name” actor of his generation– got a certain role in a “big” film like “The Revenant” was because his name, attached to a project, brings in millions of dollars of investment from the movie studios. Do I seriously think the movie studios would hire a bad actor for a good part in a movie by a great director because they want to ensure a return on their investment?

Well, when you put it that way.

Leonardo DiCaprio is not popular and famous because of his great acting ability.  He does something that always looks like acting but never actually is.  He grunts and moans and moves his mouth but he reveals nothing about the character he is playing that couldn’t be derived from a comic book drawing of him.  He certainly doesn’t reveal character the way Christian Bale, or Robert Duvall or Joaquin Phoenix or Meryl Streep or Cate Blanchett does.  He is popular because he projects the kind of anesthetized de-sexualized appeal of gay men that adolescent girls adore and don’t feel threatened by.  He and Andrew McCarthy and Johnny Depp and Elijah Wood and Tobey McGuire are better actors,  I suppose, probably, than the cast of “The Brady Bunch”, but they really aren’t in  the same league as the others I named.  Watch DiCaprio with the alluring Kate Winslet in “Titanic” and ask yourself this: if I was Kate Winslet in this scene would I be worried about what Jack Dawson might do to me?

It’s a giggle.  He’s completely harmless.

All right– a certain segment of the population says, “no, I wouldn’t be worried, because I would want Jack Dawson to make love to me”.  But that is because the entire scenario, a rich, cultivated, young British woman, offering, in 1910, to pose naked for a strange little American boy, in an exclusive cabin, in the first class section of a ocean liner, is preposterous.  I’m not saying you couldn’t make it work– a real writer absolutely could– but James Cameron doesn’t have even remotely the skill required to do it.   Unless you accept the rest of awful cartoonish melodrama of Cameron’s “Titanic” as worthy of seriousness.

But DiCaprio is immensely popular with a large segment of the movie ticket buying audience.  He is so popular that his presence in virtually any professional production guarantee’s tens of millions of dollars in revenue.  Thus DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover, as Howard Hughes, as Hugh Glass.  That’s why people refer to his character in the movie not as J. Edgar Hoover or Howard Hughes or Hugh Glass but as Leonardo.  Did you see when Leonardo fought with the bear?  Did you see when drew the portrait of the naked girl?  Did you see when he invented that big airplane?   Did you see when he nearly drowned?

And thus, Scorcese.

It is so common a practice, to give a prime role to celebrity actor rather than someone with real talent in order to lock in a big budget, that I look for it at the beginning of every big, serious Hollywood production, and even some independent films, even when the director is someone like Terence Davies, whose work I generally adore. We just watched his “House of Mirth”. Even with Gillian Anderson and Eric Stoltz in lead roles, it’s a gorgeous film, beautifully directed and scored; it’s thoughtful, delicate, subtle. And it has Laura Linney, a terrific actress, in the part of Bertha Dorset.

I really had no expectations about Gillian Anderson in the lead role. I thought, you never know– someone famous for her work on a slightly interesting but formulaic TV drama might turn out to be a good actress. Might. But she didn’t, and while it looks like she’s giving it everything she’s got and it looks like Terence Davies does wonders with what he’s given, she ends up reminding me of Lucy Ricardo.  And then you watch Laura Linney  for a few minutes and wonder why the hell she wasn’t playing Lily, and why Gillian Anderson was even in the movie. And the answer is obvious: Gillian Anderson was a huge star at the time the film was made (2000); she was a celebrity. She brought the money for an expensive movie.

She was at least serviceable in “House of Mirth” and the movie survived her shortcomings. Not so with Leonardo DiCaprio in “J. Edgar” or, ridiculously, “Aviator”. How far can Hollywood push the idea of using a celebrity to play parts for which they do not seem remotely suited? DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover?  Are you fucking kidding me?  As Howard Hughes?  Are you nuts?  Why not Churchill? Why not Jesus?

(Oh my god! I just discovered that they have actually cast DiCaprio as the lead in a remake of “The Great Gatsby”. Wow.)

Renee Zellweger as Brigit Jones? Can she even do the accent? Can she even handle a role that is as light as a feather in a film that consists mostly of gas?

Tom Hanks as anything? (Although, he is at least improving as an actor, as evidenced in “Cloud Atlas”.)  We all love Tom Hanks– I want him to be my neighbor.  But he cannot act.  Ringo is a better drummer than Hanks is an actor.

This is the Hollywood disease. Actors are chattel: an investment, a product to be promoted and placed where-ever opportune, and exploited for as long as possible, even when you have to have a 70-year-old romancing a 20-year-old.

Well, that’s not entirely unrealistic: I just a picture of 82-year-old Robert De Niro holding his 18-month-old daughter.

God forbid you should have to go through the expense of introducing a new actor, promoting him, getting him onto the talk shows and into the gossip columns, getting his picture out there, his story, his rugged perpetual 5:00 shadow. It’s an investment, like fork-lifts and aprons and saucers and pig-iron.

As for real acting: it’s something best left to young, independent directors to uncover, in young, unknown actors.   Watch the film “Winter’s Bone” with Jennifer Lawrence before she was famous.

Watch her now.

It’s sad.

 

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The Pernicious Influence of Joseph Campbell’s Mythological Insights on Hollywood

[this article is still in the “thinking aloud” stage.]

Firstly, let’s get one thing clear: it’s the influence that is pernicious– not Joseph Campbell, the author.

Campbell argued that all stories are essentially variations of the same basic archetype, the hero sets out on a journey, undergoes some arduous trials, is challenged and almost fails, encounters a mentor or inspiration, re-engages the challenge, succeeds, and lives happily ever after, or dies like Jesus Christ.

All right– I’m playing with that a bit.

Which not to say that I am particularly dazzled by Campbell’s work. Some people write about him as if no one before him had ever written thoughtfully about the essential elements of tragedy. In fact, the Greeks did, long before Campbell came along, and Shakespeare himself seemed to have the formula down pat.

No, no– my problem is that I don’t like the concept of a “hero”, and even if I did like it, I don’t believe that there is any real-life correspondence to the idea– it’s all fantasy. It’s all usually male fantasy. It’s all sometimes a bit fascist, as in “300”.

It would be more interesting– but far less popular– to identify the delusions the general public demands from hero-worshipping tales.  Firstly, that all other characters must defer to the hero; secondly, that his acts of violence are palatable because it is established that his enemies are unworthy or have sex.  Thirdly, that people worship heroes even though the actions of the “heroes” in real life highlight the deficiencies in the rest of us.

Think about a mother who neglectfully allows her baby in a stroller to roll into the street.  The “hero” sees the baby and rescues it and returns it to the mother.  In the Campbell story, the mother is eternally grateful and worships the hero for his timely act.  In real life, the hero’s action is a rebuke to the mother for her carelessness, something she will not want to highlight or be reminded of.

Real life is far more complex than Campbell’s mythic delusions.

And “Star Wars” is a crappy “B” movie that accidentally became the object of millions of people’s fetishistic enjoyment.  They are happy they get it.  Unlike “A Space Odyssey” and “Blade Runner”, it is immediately comprehensible, and just as immediately ridiculous.

More on “The Hero With a Thousand Faces”.

 

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Meryl Streep Can’t Sing

There have been shameful moments in Hollywood history this past decade– events and appearances and speeches that made a rational person cringe with revulsion and consider changing the channel to a preacher of faith healer or Fox News or anything… Hugh Grant. Halle Berry’s Oscar speech. Michael Moore chasing an elderly Charlton Heston down the walkway of his home. Chris Rock’s mockery of Jude Law…

And my nomination for the lowest of the low: Meryl Streep “singing” “Winner Takes it All” in Mama Mia. Performed in one take, according to the bedazzled talents behind the camera. And in interview after interview, the actors in the film admit that they never respected Abba back in the 70’s but now that they have been paid, they can see that they really were musical giants– and did you see Meryl nail it in one take? Suddenly, Bjorn Ulvaeus is the Swedish Bob Dylan.

This self-aggrandizing, cloying, critics-be-damned attitude is supposed to be lovable on some deeper level than I can ever imagine, like Sarah Palin’s leadership qualities or the expressions on the faces of Secret Service agents. But what if it is just as it appears to be: a massive, slobbering wet kiss of desperation: no, I don’t have any real talent, but because I am a celebrity, you may stand back astounded at my generosity of spirit, that I would be so silly on purpose. Because it’s just fun.

No it’s not. Real fun is the Beatles’ “Help”, “The Pink Panther”, and Abbie Hoffman threatening to surround the Pentagon with meditating hippies and levitate it (the generals announced that they would stop him). Abbie, not ABBA.

As Dr. Seuss once observed: this “fun” proclaimed by Meryl Streep is the wrong kind of fun. She has confused her own singing with the careful talent that Richard Lester applied to his films, and Peter Sellers to his, … when it is actually the kind of fun you do in your bedroom with your girlfriends during a sleepover.

The first lesson is the hardest: it’s not nearly as amusing for those watching as you think it is.

Abba Babble

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DivX

If you thought the world’s fat-cat corporate copyright holders had a problem with Napster and MP3’s, you can bet they are about to go into cardiac arrest.

A few years ago, some companies tried to foist a new video standard on a largely unsuspecting, but not entirely stupid, public. It was called DivX. The basic idea was this. Here were all these huge, fat, rich Hollywood companies and here were all these movies that they owned and here were all these consumers– that’s what we are, after all, “consumers”– buying copies of these videos and watching them over and over again after only paying for them once.

Now, if you’re not a lawyer, you probably don’t often think about that situation and think things like, gee, how can we get them to pay for it every time they see it? And why shouldn’t we? Again, you have to be a lawyer…

So these people got together and decided that when the next generation of high quality digital video came out, they would rectify that situation by providing disks to people that would only play once or twice. And then, pffftt! Unless you paid again.

Just what the consumer was demanding at that time, as I recall. Yes, yes, we want to give Viacom and Warner Brothers and Disney Corporation and Bruce Willis and Robin Williams even more of our money!

Anyway, the system was called DivX. And, of course, the hacker community looked upon DivX and just hated it. They hated it for both good and bad reasons. They hated it because like everyone in the world they hate to pay more than they need to to get what they want. But they also hated it for a good reason. The good reason is that these big Hollywood companies and actors already get way more money than they deserve for foisting their disgraceful products upon us. They already annoy us to death with product tie-ins, commercials, outrageous prices for food at the movie theatre, and deceptive advertising.

So the hackers set to work.

It’s not very clear to me (or anybody, apparently) where DivX 😉 (the “;)”, a winking emoticon, is part of the name) came from. It is rumoured to be a hacked Microsoft product. In any case, what DivX 😉 is is a “codec”, a computer process whereby video is compressed into small files so it can be downloaded and copied from computer to computer. It is a very good one, though not necessarily the best, nor the most readily available. But it is good enough to make it reasonable for people to copy movies off of DVD players and distribute them– illegally, of course– through the internet.

The lists of movies available tell you something about the kind of personality involved. You’ll find “The Matrix” and “The Cell” and “Terminator” and “Star Wars” on many sites. You won’t find many copies of “The Sound of Music”… yet.

The only missing piece right now is the equivalent of Napster to really take the whole thing mainstream. But it’s coming. Oh yes, you can bet it is coming.

One browse of the newsgroups devoted to topics like DivX;) and desktop video should be enough to convince anyone that a tidal wave of perverse ingenuity is at work out there and it is bent on completely destroying the entire system of copyright and distribution now in effect.

Is that a bad thing? I don’t know. The problem, as always, is how will artists get paid. On the other hand, the artists don’t get paid now. The lawyers and investors and accountants and manipulators and cheaters and liars get paid. They get paid enormous sums.

I do know a few things though.

In my opinion, all of this underground activity will not destroy either the music or film industries. Most people will continue to buy CD’s and DVD’s. Knowledgeable hackers and aficionados will use the technologies to access every form of recorded entertainment known to man, but most people still want to pop a video into the console and sit back and munch on popcorn and not give a thought to copyright law and fairness and justice for all.

The entertainment monoliths will have to be nimble and quick. They will have to keep coming up with improvements and enhancements that keep them a year or two ahead of the hackers. They will have to begin to offer CD’s and DVD’s at reasonable prices.

The only thing I’m sure they won’t do is take the high road or offer anything of value to anybody unless they really, really have to.

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Stealing Ideas and Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola just received $20 million from a Superior Court Jury in Los Angeles because they jury believed that Warner Brothers stole his idea of a live action version of Pinocchio.

Do you ever get paid for your ideas? I’ll bet. I’ll bet you never got $20 million. But then, this is Hollywood, which will spend $120 million on a movie about Kevin Costner riding sea-doos around an old oil rig.

So a jury decided that this idea– to do Pinocchio with live actors– was so good, so brilliant, so original, that it was worth $20 million. Suppose that just by reading this you got an idea. Suppose you thought, hey, why not do a remake of Bambi with live actors? Or how about a remake of “The Ten Commandments” with a live actor instead of Charlton Heston? Or how about a remake of “The Love Bug” with a DeLorean instead of a Beetle? Or with one of those new sexy Beetles that just came out? With all of the remaining Spice Girls stuffed inside? There– that wasn’t hard.

Now all you have to do is find a lawyer and wait for Hollywood to steal your idea. Wait– you might have to prove that they stole the idea from YOU in particular, and not any other person they might have had lunch with. The trick is, you have to have lunch every day in those exclusive Hollywood restaurants frequented by producers and directors and script-writers. As you’re having lunch, just talk loudly about your great new idea. Someone is sure to turn up. Be sure to keep track of who might be stealing your ideas. And believe me, it is a lot less painful than spilling hot coffee in your lap.

Well, Warner Brothers, hold on to your pants. Here are some ideas that I think are way better than Coppola’s idea about Pinocchio, or even my idea about “The Ten Commandments”.. But don’t try to steal them, or I’ll be suing your asses for more than $20 million!

1. The Three Stooges, in an all-new adventure: Curly, Larry, and Moe star as Microsoft software engineers. Starring Jim Carrey, Reg Varney, and Rip Torn as “Moe”. Come to think of it…

2. A lobbyist from the tobacco industry courageously fights prejudice and injustice and succeeds in bribing 50 Senators to vote against a restrictive tax bill that would deprive us of our freedoms and liberties and prevent gas stations from selling cigarettes to pre-teens. Starring Tom Bosley as Newt Gingrich.

3. A courageous high school student brings a semi-automatic rifle to school and is able to prevent a tragedy by shooting 13 fellow students who were all planning to shoot their class-mates and teachers. Starring Sean Penn, and Charlton Heston as the compassionate, understanding, phys-ed coach, who encourages the student to keep lots of ammunition in his locker since you never know when you will be called upon to defend your freedoms and liberties against encroaching atheists, communists, homosexuals, and unarmed liberals. Ellen DeGeneres plays the depraved lesbian sex-education teacher.

4. Let’s see: we’ve had meteorites, volcanoes, tornados, earthquakes… what else is left? What else? I know. A gang of rugged, individualistic, violent, unshaven criminals (all of whom are the only men who could possibly save the world from some stupid massive improbable disaster or psychotic super-killer)- – form a gang and decide to take over the world and require all soldiers and policemen to carry three-hundred pounds of weapons and work alone when confronting enemies. This would be a short movie– about three minutes, or as long as it takes for them to make up a set of rules for the new world order and then break them because “rules only get in the way” and kill each other. Starring Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, and Chuck Norris.