If Hollywood is so competitive, why are movies, TV so stupid?

Cafe Society
1

The conundrum occurred to me quite forcibly when I was reading another thread where a number of people were telling a would-be filmmaker that it’s very difficult to become a filmmaker as the work is so competitive.

I found myself agreeing – doesn’t everyone want to be a star, or a moviemaker? The money, the fame, the glamour, the creative nature of the work, and all that opportunity to score with VERY attractive members of the opposite sex … it just stands to reason that it’s a very competitive field.

So later I mosey on over to Cafe Society where I find one of several threads about stoopid things in movies and on TV and it occurs to me: if we’ve got this hypercompetitive situatin where only fanatically determined super-genyooses can be successful, why are so many movies and TV shows dog-stupid?

Now, I don’t mean just dog-stupid in the sense of pandering to a mass audience. I’m talking about technically stupid, mostly in areas like writing, dramatic pacing, characterization – the basics of good filmmaking that apply whether you are making a movie for the morons or the Mensans among us.

I’m not talking about nitpicky things either – I’m talking about really clumsy mistakes that make movies dull, unbelievable and actually unpleasant.

To my mind, logic dictates that either filmmaking isn’t as competitive as is widely assumed, or that factors other than ability in filmmaking are what’s important. I think the common response to this would be “Duh.” But if that’s the case, isn’t it stupid to go around telling would-be filmmakers that it takes ability to succeed in Hollywood when it fact it does not?

2

Stupid sells, and accuracy costs more than just writing down whatever you think but doesn’t translate into greater profit.

3

Hollywood abilities are one thing, and one thing only: the ability to make money.

We don’t need better filmmakers nearly as much as we need better audiences.

4

Part of the problem is that filmmaking is so subjective. If you can believe it, there are people that didn’t like The Godfather. What if the one person on the planet who wouldn’t like your movie idea is also the guy who decides if it lives or dies?

Hollywood is all about INERTIA. If someone makes a good movie, the producers decide that he’s golden, so they throw him into some crap. Then we have directors that are afraid to upset these superstars, so they get shitty direction. And in the end, the people that get the blame are the actors themselves, so there’s no accounting for the directors or producers.

5

It is my theory that those who choose what TV shows and movies (and CD’s for that matter) get made don’t actually watch TV or movies. They just read marketing reports and sales figures and try to predict trends. The creative people are not listened to, because they want to do…creative things.

You always hear about the little film that had such a hard time getting made. And if it makes a splash, there will be 10 rip-offs in production being made by industry hacks.

6

This is the problem. Most writers and directors are talentless hacks. There are, however, a few individuals who have fresh, creative ideas. When such a person emerges, the hacks jump on his or her work like Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh at a free all-you-can-eat buffet. This shameless plagiarism continues until another talented person pops up, at which point the new idea becomes ground zero for the feeding frenzy.

7

I really must disagree. Most writers, actors are directors are NOT talentless hacks; in fact, it’s kind of stupid to suppose they are. If they’re so talentless, why aren’t their critics pulling in $250,000 for their spec scripts? It’s easy to sit behind your computer when you’re home from your grim, low-paying job and say the people who made “Troy” are talentless hacks, but in my experience

  1. Everyone tends to think other people’s jobs are easy, and
  2. They’re always wrong.

Movies mostly suck because it’s the nature of moviemaking that bringing 250 people together, all with different visions, under a time and money budget, will always push the end result towards mediocrity. The film nerds would like you to believe that a movie is the work of one person, the director (“I enjoyed Verhoeven’s latest film”) but they really aren’t.

And having said that, really, how many movies are BAD? Most movies are reasonably entertaining and professionally put together.

8

I agree with you, Rickjay. I can’t think of a single movie I’ve seen that didn’t have SOME entertainment value. Flaws? Hell yes. But I guess I can take a greater number of flaws that most people.

I maintain that the problem with Hollywood is the business aspect. If making a Summer Blockbuster cost twenty bucks, we’d be seeing nothing but masterpieces of perfection. But when you have a producer who may or may not have any talent putting up $10 million, it’s quite obvious that he’s going to want to put some insurance in that he’ll make his money back (and then some)… so he hires a screenwriter not necessarily based on talent, but on his past record of writing flicks that made money. Same goes for directors, and actors that are box office draws.

9

I’ll give you two out of three, but CDs are a different beast entirely. TV and movies tend to be pretty conservative because they’re expensive to make. Off the top of my head, I know that Babylon 5 ran about $1 million per episode, which is considerably cheaper than a movie.

Compare that to Therion’s latest two albums, Sirius B and Lemuria. The two were recorded at the same time and involved the core band of four people, about ten guest musicians, an entire orchestra, and a (roughly) 40-person choir. You gotta figure that’s expensive as albums go, but it was recorded inside a $75,000 budget.

Most creative music tends to be less expensive than that, so there’s a lot more leeway for people to do whatever the hell they want to. It just doesn’t tend to get widespread recognition at all, because the music-buying public is even more mainstream-oriented than the movie-going public.

10

Joel Silver, producer of such films as Lethal Weapon and Die Hard, once told a reporter from Premiere magazine “If you want to talk to me about taste and style, let me show you my lamp collection. Movies are a busines.” (I’m paraphrasing; if someone has a more accurate recollection of the quote, I’d appreciate it.) That pretty well sums it up.

In the last decade of his life, Ed Wood was able to get 18 of his scripts produced as movies (I think he directed five or six of them.) Orson Welles, in his last decade, got maybe three. Merit and produceability have no discernible reationship in the movie business.

11

You guys aren’t getting my point. I am not talking about movies that pander to stupid audiences. Such movies can be made well or badly. Frex, I would consider Dumb and Dumber and Something About Mary to be two very well-made films that appeal to dumb audiences. Me included. I liked both – once. Porky’s is a well-made film designed to appeal to dumb audiences that I didn’t like even once, but I know what it was.

Independence 4 is a well-made dumb film. Well-made dumb films tend to do VERY well at the box office. They tend to be characterized by fast-moving plots, shallow characterization and great visuals. I got nothing against well-made dumb films.

Most dumb films are very badly made. Roger Corman has made a host of them. They are dull, plodding, things with poor visuals.

Lemme give you a specific example of what I’m talking about, the Corman stinker called “Where Evil Lies.” It’s your basic updated white slavery tale in which strippers at an L.A. strip club are drugged and kidnapped and sold to a white slaver who plans to ship them to Botswana.

Yeah, it’s a dumb movie all right.

It follows the usual plotline for such stories – a stripper gets kidnapped, her best friend gets suspicious, investigates, gets kidnapped, too, and their boyfriends look for them. Will they find out what’s going on before their girlfriends are shipped to Botswana?

It’s a pretty straightforward set-up for suspense, but it’s totally botched. The most basic mistake: no clear deadline. The audience is never told when the women will be shipped off to Botswana, so we have no idea how well things are or aren’t going as the boyfriends lurch toward figuring out what’s going on and where they are. If we’d been told at some point that the slave ship sails at 8:14 p.m. on June 14th, then it would be easy enough to generate suspense as the guys blundered around and 8:14 p.m. loomed ever closer.

It’s a very old, very simple technique and they didn’t use it.

But you’re thinking, “So what, it’s obviously a sexploitation flick, the plot doesn’t matter.” Well, actually the plot does matter to the extent that it exists, and it exists a LOT in “Where Evil Lies” because there’s not much sex in this sexploitation flick. Basically, there’s just two breif strip scenes with the stripper/kidnappees, and that’s about it.

And there’s a bondage theme in “Where Evil Lies” but there’s no bondage in the film, missing out on that sexploitation angle, too. (Telling point: the video cover is airbrush art of a group of half-naked women shackled hand and foot in a cell – no such scene exists in the film itself. The marketers of the film knew what its appeal was, even if the filmmakers themselves did not.)

A few scenes where some of the captives are taught/forced/invited to do the naked, sexy things they’ll be forced to do in their future lives as white slaves would have added greatly to the sexploitation factor and also added greatly to the suspense factor, since the audience would have a much better idea what was in store for them. But there’s no such scene, the captives aren’t kept naked or hassled in any way, just kept in a holding pen. The filmmakers totally screw up these rather obvious opportunities to crank up the sexy and the drama at the same time.

Even done well, “Where Evil Lives” is basically a cheesy sexploitation film. The audience for this film are horny teens or their adult equivalents. It’s a stupid film for stupid people, stupidly made, but it didn’t HAVE to be stupidly made. My point is, its possible to do any kind of film well or badly, and most Hollywood films are done badly, even major mainstream films.

To get back to the OP: this stuff isn’t rocket science, far from it, and I don’t see why it would cost a bit more in terms of expense and effort to do the thing right. Given that it’s just as easy to do it right as to do it wrong, we have to assume that the people who are making the movies have no idea what they’re doing, as I don’t think the moneymen would care much either way so much as they get their product on time and under budget.

If there was much competition at all for the job of filmmaker, you’d have to figure the people who got these coveted positions, even in the case of sexploitation B-movies, might be a tad more competent at basic storytelling techniques. But the films generally reek of ignorance and incompetence, as if someone’s drunken cousin were in charge of most such projects. Competitive? I’m sure there’s something going on out there, but that’s not it.

12

I’ll gather you’ve never seen “The Beast of Yucca Flats”? :wink:

13

Who are you? Martin Scorcese?

I’m impressed that movies are made at all. Even blockbusters that kind of suck still have a high production value. I’m not in the movie biz or anything, but it seems to me that it is very difficult to basically create believable world for 2-3 hours on screen out of nothing. Someone has to think up a story. It has to be interesting and engageing. It has to fit into a 2-3 hour block of time. There is a limited budget. Every single detail from the crap on the captains desk to what kind of car the hero drives to the lighting has to be storyboarded, built and shot. All that footage has to be edited together in a coherent manner. The actual acting can’t absolutely suck. Every single person involved has their oppinion. And at the end of the day, it has to pass the scruitiny of a million dorks who have nothing better to do than pick out minor continuity errors.

While Hollywood is a competetive business, it’s also a highly subjective one. Like most competitive professions, part of it is talent, but another part is playing the industry game.

Another thing, technical accuracy and realism does not always make for the most entertaining films. If it did, Jerry Bruckheimer wouldn’t have a job.
Also, there’s a reason why you only see Roger Corman films at 3:am on Cinimax.

Rocket science is easy. You don’t have several hundred rocket scientists all with their own vision of how each part of the rocket should look, act, feel, whatever. The only “motivation” a rocket needs is rocket fuel. No one cares if the rocket lauch looks “cool” or “believable”. It just has to go up in the air.

14

From what I hear from real rocket scientists, landing is another fairly important point.

15

They are also not the ones who decide what gets made and what doesn’t.

16

Easy.

I worked for a studio for many years. Here is how it works.

You write the greatest script of all time.
You find an agent (no easy task).
After negotiations, and lots of re-writes, the script sells.
It sits in limbo (sometimes for years, sometimes forever).
At some point, ir you are lucky, it is picked up.
It is sent to a committee of writers.
They decide to make the main character a man instead of a woman, and it should happen in LA instead of Paris. They will add a sidekick, maybe a racial minority to get that audience…plus they will make it present day, add two children, and change the ending to make it more upbeat/funnier/geared to teenage boys.
They make the film.

You, the author, go to see the film.

It is horrible and although you are relieved to see your name has long since been removed, your family is horrified you wrote such crap.

The studio makes 6,000 copies of the film, as it is opening wide, and from the mis-leading previews, it actually tops the charts that weekend, only to fall 82 percent the following weekend but goes on to do decent video sales and cable repeats due to the huge marketing budget.

You are then “hot property” in Hollywood, and…well, ready to do another script?

17

Even though The Player is flawed, it does give interesting insights into the process, as does Get Shorty. I haven’t read Leonard’s book, but suspect that it’s even more biting than the film.

And I agree with DMark. In big budget Hollywood, agents ruined art. From the actor perspective, some flunkie at William Morris will call up Warner and say that Tom Cruise is in the market for a good drama, which should render him a nomination for an Academy Award. Warner (which seldom produces films, they distribute) check in with some production companies: Village Roadshow, Spyglass, Revolution, to see if any of them have a script that’s floating around that could suit Cruise. Of course, when the project is greenlighted, Cruise’s own production company gets involved. Paula Wagner get’s producing credits in all his movies. And should Spielberg direct, Imagine Entertainment - his production company - gets involved too.

All in all, too many egos, writers, producers, agents, actors. Sometimes I think the old studio system worked better to the advantage of movies as art. I heard that one problem with the infamous Ishtar was that Hoffman and Beatty both had final-cut approval in their contracts.

18

Ishtar’s main problem is that people reviewed the price tag, not the film. It was very expensive for the day, and the expenses didn’t show up on the screen with lavish sets, etc., so everyone assumed it was bad. The few who actually reviewed the film at the time noted that it was a pleasant comedy with some very good sequences, and others that didn’t work. If it had been made for half the cost, it would never have even been considered a bad movie.

Back to the OP:

Part of the issue is that Hollywood can never be sure what will work. Bad and poorly made movies have been big hits; well-made films have flopped like a fish. In addition, the cost of moviemaking makes it hard to be creative. It’s easier to get money for a known quantity, so films are usually pitched due to their similarities to previous films (“It’s Star Wars meets the Godfather”*)

Also the cost issue means that marketing is the key, and the biggest movie demographic is teenaged boys, who are happy to see a film they like over and over and over. So the more money you need to spend on a film, the more you need to hit that demographic – and much of that audience is interested in the thrills, not the plot or characters.

Before Star Wars, the audience went to a movie once during it’s first run. Thus, you could make movies for any particular audience and have a shot at making a profit. After Star Wars, it was discovered it’s better from a monetary point of view to aim for the audience that would go multiple times.

As for the studio system being better – that’s the “Filter” fantasy. Movies made under the studio system were of varible quality, and there were many whose quality was as low as any film you can point to today. But it’s been over 50 years since the studio system has been in place, and the real stinkers they put out – and they put out many – are completely forgotten. They’re not on TV any more; and they aren’t mentioned anywhere other than in the IMDB (consider these titles from 1936: Silver Spurs, Sinner Take All, Sky Parade – I doubt anyone here has heard of them before, and it’s likely they weren’t all that good). So the perceived quality of any art seems improved as time goes by (as it seems improved by distance – which is why some people believe European films are all better than Hollywood, since they never see the stinkers).

About the only advantage the studio system had was the fact they owned the theaters. Thus they needed product and were willing to put out films with many themes, as long as they were cheap. But that was declared illegal in the late 40s.

And ultimately, no matter how crappy the film, the filmmakers honestly believe they have done a fine job. (Ask John Travolta about Battlefield Earth some time.)

*Hmmn. I just made that up, but, you know, it just might work.

19

I’d just like to point out that rocket science isn’t easy, you actually do have several hundred rocket scientists with their own vision on how the mission should be. It’s not like a lone scientist walks up to the committee and says “launch my rocket” and they all say “ok.” A mission plan is concocted by a group of people, it’s then decided whether the mission is worth doing, as opposed to or in conjunction with many other mission plans submitted by other groups. Then it’s given a budget, and on its way through various committees its given various changes and tweaks to fit its budget. While a rocket launch doesn’t have to be “cool” or “believable” it does have to be “efficient” which is just as if not more involved than making a movie.

20

The biggest problem with the current marketing of movies is the obsession with being number one the first weekend. This is a shared problem with the studios and the audiences. There is evidently a huge market of people, who demographically skew young, who make it a habit to see a movie in its first weekend and will go to see anything at all. This is even aside from the maniacal compulsion to see LotR or Star Wars or the Matrix at a Wednesday midnight showing after standing in line for six days.

The studios picked up on this tendency and have encouraged it through massive ad campaigns and marketing and created movies to fill the need. Never in my memory have there been so many movies aimed at this demographic. I won’t comment on their quality because, frankly, I never go to any of them. The reviews are seldom overwhelming, but the reviews don’t count because this first weekend audience doesn’t care much about reviews. The movie is an event in itself. What happens to it the next weekend is of little interest.

Or used to be. This is the interesting part. DVD sales are changing this first weekend mindset. First weekend DVD sales now sometimes are larger than first weekend theater grosses. This translate to fewer people, since a DVD still costs twice as much as a movie, but the numbers are so huge that the studios are shifting to cashing in on the aftermarket as much or more than the initial run.

The downside is that they’re doing in with bells and whistles extras rather than any changes to the quality of the movies themselves, but it’s way too early to tell what changes this will bring to the movies that get picked up to be made. They may be a fundamental shift in what movies get made because of the aftermarket, just as there were fundamental changes at the realization of the growth of the TV market, the cable market, the foreign market, the number of multiplexes, and the first weekend paradigm.