# How do really bad movies get made? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 1, 2003, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997 "2003-01-01T04:31:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997/21 "2003-01-02T05:53:56Z")
I think drive-in theatres used to be a ready market for schlock films. Really, I think it’s just economics. Make a movie cheaply enough, and you can make your money back fairly easily. Video rentals, specialty TV networks, bad movie festivals, overseas sales, whatever. ---
**Author:** ![beajerry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@beajerry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beajerry)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997/22 "2003-01-02T21:51:57Z")
What about the crew making the movie? Is there a syndrome where when they are making an obviously bad movie, like Scooby Doo, that they realize it right off and the ‘creative energy’ quickly turns to mud, thus ensuring an even more sucky movie? I just cannot picture any of the crew enjoying making Scooby Doo while knowing it sucks chrome off a trailer hitch, unless everyone was paid up front. ---
**Author:** ![seal\_cleaner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@seal\_cleaner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/seal_cleaner)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997/23 "2003-01-02T22:10:41Z")
Anyone who enjoys MST3K is familiar with very low budget (almost home made) sci-fi stuff. One in particular (Werewolf) appears to have been filmed sporadically over a period of months (hair color, body shapes, etc change between scenes). I 've always thought they had to film around people getting time off from day jobs and occasional infusions of cash from bake sales. It was probably fun for the people who made it and, hey! they got to be in a **movie!** ---
**Author:** ![Padeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@Padeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Padeye)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997/24 "2003-01-02T22:17:48Z")
Watch the actually quite good biopic _Ed Wood_ to get a glimpse of how he made some of his extremely bad movies. ---
**Author:** ![detop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bcef8e/32.png) [@detop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/detop)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997/25 "2003-01-02T22:18:02Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by sleeping \* > **Anyone ever seen _Teenage Space Vampires_?** If it’s the Rumanian-American co-production, I have it and I payed $ 8 bucks CDN for it. And yes it is bad. ---
**Author:** ![RadioWave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/91b2a8/32.png) [@RadioWave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RadioWave)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997/26 "2003-01-03T17:10:01Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by beajerry \* > What about the crew making the movie? Is there a syndrome where when they are making an obviously bad movie, like Scooby Doo, that they realize it right off and the ‘creative energy’ quickly turns to mud, thus ensuring an even more sucky movie? I know a lot of people who work behind the scenes and have participated in making some god awful films. They all knew it was shite when they were making it but their attitude was 1. It’s a job. 2. It puts food on the table. 3. People in the industry can still notice a diamond in a turd. For instance, they’ll say _Pearl Harbor_ was horrible but the extra casting or the lighting was pretty good. All in all, it increases their chances of getting another job in the future so they work pretty hard at it. ---
**Author:** ![Bongmaster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Bongmaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bongmaster)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997/27 "2003-01-03T17:43:21Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MadScientistMatt \* > \*\* It seemed like he wanted to make that movie as a tribute to L. Ron Hubbard, who had allegedly lost his marbles by the time he wrote Battlefield Earth. \*\* He was a psycho long before he wrote that, the man was a monster. ---
**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997/28 "2003-01-03T18:22:48Z")
This is a really interesting question. Now can someone tell me how Ralph Fiennes and Bob Hoskins were lured in to the steaming pile of… celluloid waste… that was **Maid in Manhattan**? Was it the money, or did Bob and Ralph really think they had a good script in hand? No, I’m not bitter at all about that film. Not one bit. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997/29 "2003-01-03T19:24:09Z")
My favorite film about film making is Truffaut’s [Day for Night](http://us.imdb.com/Title?0070460). Not only does it show the difficulties of making a film but it also includes a great speech by Truffaut about how hopeful he is at the beginning of filming but by the end he hopes to be able to just finish. Reality can destroy a lot of dreams. ---
**Author:** ![toadspittle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@toadspittle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toadspittle)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997/30 "2003-01-03T19:55:18Z")
People have the mistaken notion that movies get made because they have some merit. Rather, a lot of movies are made through sheer willpower. Some guy wants to make films. He writes a horrible, horrible screenplay, because he’s a horrible writer. He lures other people into helping him, possibly for money, possibly for the allure of participating in making a film. Then he shoots it like crap, b/c he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Some of these miracles make it to video. Others are held in DuArt’s developing vault for years until the producer can scrape up enough money to pay for the film he’s already shot and had developed. (I know many, many filmmakers in this boat.) Outside of big-studio Hollywood (which is fraught with its own horrors), filmmkaing is a free-for-all, and nobody has to be properly qualified to try his hand at it. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997/31 "2003-01-03T21:02:29Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by beajerry \* > **What about the crew making the movie? Is there a syndrome where when they are making an obviously bad movie, like Scooby Doo, that they realize it right off and the ‘creative energy’ quickly turns to mud, thus ensuring an even more sucky movie?** The crew doesn’t always know. The British techies on the set of _Star Wars_ thought they were making a Grade-Z “Doctor Who” knockoff. The folks on Michael Mann’s _Ali_ no doubt thought they were making a groundbreaking blockbuster biopic. Until the footage starts coming together in the editing room, it’s impossible to know what the movie looks like. > [@](#): > > _Originally posted by Sofa King_ > This is a really interesting question. Now can someone tell me how Ralph Fiennes and Bob Hoskins were lured in to the steaming pile of… celluloid waste… that was Maid in Manhattan? This is a no-brainer. They were probably fully aware that the movie wouldn’t be worth a shit, but consider: Hoskins (to some degree) and Fiennes (definitely) mostly work on low-budget art-house type productions, movies with lots of artistic payoff but not much box-office value. In order to keep up marketability, i.e. the power to get difficult movies made at a slightly higher than zero-budget cost, an actor has to maintain public awareness and interest. There’s actually a statistic for this; it’s called Q-Rating or something. So Fiennes, I surmise, is getting lectured by his agent: “You really want to do that Canadian movie about the schizophrenic dude with the crazy mother, I know. The backers don’t think you’ve got the movie-star thing, so they aren’t going to pony up the extra million the director needs. However, if we can get you into a big, glitzy, surefire Hollywood project, we can stoke your fires a little bit, and that other movie is more likely to be made. Let’s see what’s out there. Okay, there’s this romantic comedy, it’s going to be directed by Wayne Wang. Yeah, the guy who did _Blue in the Face_ and _Smoke._ Plus it’s going to star Jennifer Lopez, so we know it’ll at least make a profit and get lots of airplay. And it’s a glossy romantic-comedy Cinderella story; those always do well with idiot viewers, no matter how much they suck. Plus it’s shooting in New York, so you get an all-expenses-paid vacation in the Big Apple when you’re not on set.” And sure enough, _Maid in Manhattan_ is #1 at the box office its opening weekend, and in a few months we’ll see Fiennes in Cronenberg’s _Spider._ Caveat: The actual connection between _MiM_ and _Spider_ is my own conjecture. However, it’s a reasonable supposition, and can be extrapolated therefrom. And from that perspective, Fiennes would have been stupid _not_ to take the opportunity when offered, purely from a long-term economic viewpoint. Yeah, as an individual movie, it’s a waste, but look at it as career management. ---
**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997/32 "2003-01-03T21:20:03Z")
Thank you for that thoughtful answer, **Cervaise**. As usual, you are too modest to toot your own horn, so please [allow me](http://www.moviegeek.homestead.com/). To sum up, I suppose one could say that for every _Schindler’s List_, there has to be a _Lost World_. ---
**Author:** ![Governor\_Quinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d26b3c/32.png) [@Governor\_Quinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Governor_Quinn)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2003, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997/33 "2003-04-27T15:09:51Z")
If we’re talking about Grade-Z cinema, quite often, the money to make it comes from either 1) the makers of the film (which often results in films that take forever to make), or 2) from the likes of car dealers and restaurant owners, whose thought process is along the lines of “My $60,000 could result in me making millions”. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2003, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997/34 "2003-04-27T15:45:31Z")
Heh, heh… my own single degree of separation to the schlock-movie world is my friend Leanna, “star”(haw!) of Don Dohler’s _The Harvesters_(“They want your body… parts!”) and [_Stakes_](http://www.joebobbriggs.com/drivein/2002/stakes.html). Essentially in the case of _these_ productions it was a matter as mentioned earlier, of keeping people credited in _anything_ bigger than a commercial for Mr. Ray’s Hair Center (or in anything AT ALL) in the last 2 years, lest they start losing skills, start hearing “Joe who…?” and give up completely and just dedicate themselves to making it to the top in the county building inspector’s office. And who knows, someone may at some point say, “hey, I saw some flick that had a fair-looking severed hand, and we need that for this scene” or “look at that actor – he’s just perfect for our big-dork-on-campus bit character in episode 13 of our sitcom!” . ---
**Author:** ![slipster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@slipster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slipster)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2003, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997/35 "2003-04-28T02:25:07Z")
**Anthracite’s** answer is on target. Often as not, when people talk about tax write-offs, they are getting ready to talk nonsense. There comes to mind the old _Seinfeld_ episode where Kramer tells Jerry that doing something-or-other won’t cost the post office anything because they will “just write it off”. The U. S. Post Office, of course, does not pay income taxes. Nevertheless, there was a time when it made financial sense for Hollywood producers to release films which lost money. From time to time people find anomalies in the tax code which cause the tax system to work contrary to economic sense. For instance, there was a time when a person could donate a phonograph record to a public radio station and deduct the cost of the record from their taxable income as a charitable deduction. There seems nothing wrong or misguided about that, but it turned out a person could also make a recording of their phonograph record, donate it, and deduct the cost of their phonograph record, which they kept. This was upheld in a sort-of-famous case called Orchard. I was in public accounting while this was still good law, and a perverse twist occured to me. Public libraries often have extensive libraries of videotapes which are in the public domain, such as The 39 Steps and The Third Man. Could one not check out the tapes for free, copy them, and then deduct the catalogue prices when donating the copies to a public TV station? The IRS representatives with whom I spoke said you could, but I never had the heart to try it. The rules for assigning value to charitable contributions have since been revised. Two Steve McQueen movies, _Bullitt_ and the original version of _The Thomas Crown Affair_, were written by a tax attorney named Alan R. Trustman. In the late 1970s he wrote a cover story for The Atlantic Monthly in which he described how he had come up with a tax shelter for movie producers; using it, one could lose money on a movie and then deduct more money than one lost (in fact, considerably more) from one’s taxes. For the next couple of years I couldn’t look at ads for movies which looked bound to flop without wondering if they weren’t released with the idea of helping the studio save the money it made on a far more successful film which they would otherwise have to pay out in taxes. Most movies which flop, of course, were probably made in the sincere hope they would succeed. Ed Wood, it will be remembered, was serious about **Plan 9 From Outer Space** and his other epics. The same appears to be the case with the hapless independent film maker profiled in the documentary **American Movie**. If these earnest, sincere people can turn out bombs unintentionally, why can’t callous, shallow movie executives who decide to cast John Wayne as Genghis Khan? On the other hand, I once read a tax court ruling that held the producers of a low-budget horror movie were not entitled to a deduction. No kidding: the court held that the film was so lousy there was no evidence they had ever had any expectation of making money with it. ---
**Author:** ![Rex\_Fenestrarum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rex_fenestrarum/32/7265_2.png) [@Rex\_Fenestrarum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rex_Fenestrarum)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2003, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997/36 "2003-04-28T03:22:14Z")
> [@](#): > > This is a really interesting question. Now can someone tell me how Ralph Fiennes and Bob Hoskins were lured in to the steaming pile of… celluloid waste… that was Maid in Manhattan? Heh… Michael Caine used to be asked that question about some of the movies he’d made, and when asked, Caine would simply list all the things his salary form the film had bought. ---
**Author:** ![Valgard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/7feea3/32.png) [@Valgard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valgard)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2003, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997/37 "2003-04-28T03:39:03Z")
A friend of mine made a straight-to-video grade “Z” horror/T&A film called “The Box From Hell” when he was at Santa Cruz. He knew it was going to be bad, that was the whole point (example, there’s a bit in the film where one buxom lady turns to the camera and says something like “I think they guys who wrote this just wanted to meet some strippers”, cut to shot of friend and his cowriter sitting in chairs and shaking their heads very seriously). He spent evenings in strip clubs meeting girls who (a) don’t mind taking off their tops and (b) thought that being in a cheapy flick for low pay would be a hoot. Filmed in an abandoned house somewhere, they got power by tapping into the lines that run the streetlights, you get the picture. I think that there was one girl in the thing who was approaching it as a serious acting job. And it was funny. Sure in that really bad way but funny nonetheless. And it made him a lot of money from video sales and whatnot - the point about some stores just wanting to put boxes on the shelves sounds right to me, they’ll buy 20 copies of anything so that they can flesh out (he he) their “Horror” section. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2003, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997/38 "2003-04-28T05:39:09Z")
These movies get made for one reason - as a whole, they are quite profitable. They’re ‘bread and butter’. For every big blockbuster epic that a studio spends 200 million dollars on and takes three years to make, it can pump out dozens of small movies that are made for a couple of million bucks and shot in five weeks. Burt Reynold’s movies, as I recall, were largely successful financially. Smoky and the Bandit was a big hit. Even movies like “The Cannonball Run” and “Hooper” were profitable, if I recall correctly. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2003, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997/39 "2003-04-28T06:09:53Z")
> [@](#): > > In the late 1970s he wrote a cover story for The Atlantic Monthly in which he described how he had come up with a tax shelter for movie producers; using it, one could lose money on a movie and then deduct more money than one lost (in fact, considerably more) from one’s taxes. “It’s Springtime for Hitler and Germany…” 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Zardoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a8b319/32.png) [@Zardoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zardoz)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2003, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997/40 "2003-04-28T13:19:00Z")
I highly, highly, highly reccomend “Man of La Mancha”. It’s a documentary about Terry Gilliam’s epic-to-be about Don Quixote, a project he’s been trying to make for decades. Basically, the production starts of ok, if a little shaky, but one setback after another halt the production altogether after about 6 weeks of shooting. The insurance company took ownership of all the sets and costumes and even the Gilliam’s own script. Fascinating movie. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-really-bad-movies-get-made/145997.md?page=3)