Bend Down And Pick Up The Money
You gotta admire the doggedness of Michael Medved. He keeps making the same argument, whether it fits or not. The latest iteration of his main meme--that the movies' lack of mainstream morality is hurting the bottom line--is found in yesterday's USA TODAY editorial.
It's true this year has seen a slump in Hollywood's domestic theatrical revenues. Conventional--and correct--wisdom blames two reasons above all:
1) 2004 had three huge hits--Shrek 2, Spider-Man 2 and The Passion Of The Christ--each one making the all-time top ten list, while no other year places more than one. (One huge hit alone is a significant part of the annual gross. Futhermore, 2004 started out enjoying a large portion of the gross of another top ten hit--The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King) In particular, Passion was an independent film coming out of nowhere early in the year, so it's been hard for this year's grosses to match it. In fact, if you just look at the grosses of the big studios so far, and ignore independents, I believe they're higher this year than last.
2) Second, and more worrisome, since it's a longterm trend, is that people are getting more and more used to waiting for films to be available in a different format, particularly DVDs. It's cheaper and more convenient to watch a movie at home, so the theatrical audience is dwindling. This trend has, if anything, been speeding up lately, though higher ticket prices help camouflage it. (Some claim making films that appeal to an older audience, and less to the 12 - 24 crowd, would help--perhaps, though it's hard to say if going after the people abandoning you is worthwhile.)
To Michael Medved, of course, the cause of the slump is obvious. Say it with me: Hollywood has not learned its lesson and is ignoring the values of the common folk. Now the trouble is, Medved claims Hollywood has had this problem every year since the late '60s! So how can he say this perennial is causing something new in 2005? His answer to this challenge is so lame it's hard to believe.
Medved says "Something clearly changed between 2004 and 2005." What could it be? The election! We voted in Bush (again). In other words, decades of Hollywood giving regular folks the finger didn't do it, but making fun of a President trying to get re-elected, that was just too much, time to stop seeing movies in theatres.
I will now say what I say to every person who believes he's found a multi-billlion dollar inefficiency in the market: bend down and pick up the money! If the solution is so obvious, and people are panting for Medved's values on the silver screen, there will be plenty of conservative venture capitalists who will be glad to front some money--a chance to make a profit while enriching our national culture! In fact, I bet you could find backing from rich liberals who like making money more than they hate family values. Go to it, man. You'll become super-rich while improving the country's moral tone--you'd be crazy not to!
posted by LAGuy @ 12:20 AM
5 Comments:
Well, you would know.
Thanks for the encouragement and feel free to spread the word.
Yes, Medved is stupid for the reasons you point out, but he's also wrong in saying that Hollywood is steadfast in its liberal values. Hollywood IS trying to bend down and pick up red state money.
Some examples;
I was talking to a TV development person who said they were only interested in family sitcoms. No workplace sitcoms would be considered, no matter how strong.
I was talking to a film executive who said they were only looking for family comedies. The type of film he used as an example? The Pacifier. That's what they're shooting for.
Despite the politics (or alleged politics) of the film, articles discussing the BO success of War of the Worlds point to a man fighting for his family as being integral to the appeal of the movie.
Articles discussing the non-failure of the Fantastic Four describe it as "fun," getting away from "Batman Begins darkness" (which I don't think it will catch).
I'm not saying all of these are true "values" but they're being played as such.
Hollywood is always chasing after a bunch of trends at once because it runs on money and fright. For years they've been tamping down films to get that desired PG rating, but now that Wedding Crashers in a hit, expect a bunch of R comedies to go into development. Right now they're going broke trying to duplicate the success of Gladiator--though that trend may finally be dying out.
As to the particular stuff you not, there's always been a big market for a film with "heart," which can mean a family's involved, but I don't think that's what made WOTW a hit since Cruise's family was one of the more annoying things in the film. And the dark Batman Begins is, of course, doing quite well--it's got more legs than any other superhero film this year. (On the other hand the humanistic Island sure has flopped. There's about fifty lessons to be learned here, I'm just not sure which ones to pick.)
As for family sitcoms over workplaces sitcoms, that's beyond stupid. The funny thing is in hourlongs, they tried to make copies of Desperate Housewives but they were so awful none made it onto the new schedule--instead we've got what looks like a bunch of Lost knockoffs, each one worse than the last.
Also, there's the emergence of blatently religious, value-based production companies in Hollywood like Cloud Ten and Bristol Bay.
I think that's the way it should be. Let a thousand flowers bloom. More choice for the public, and more niches filled.
Of course, there's always been a number of specialty markets, though, I suppose, the religious market has always been too huge to be considered a mere specialty.
(I walked into a bookstore last year when I was in Utah. It was not only a religious bookstore, but a specifically Mormon one. There was some big Mormon film they were promoting at the time, though I don't recall hearing much about it after I left Utah, though.)
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