Yes, but “Wedding” wasn’t really an indie. Small budget, but not an indie. I’m not talking about indie - I’m talking small budget Hollywood - enough money for a talented writer and director - and actors who can act - and production values and marketing - but not so much money that anyone gets paid $20 million to make the movie. There are a lot of small budget movies that are pretty good - that make up their production costs very quickly - while there are big budget movies (Gigli, Hulk) that will make up their production costs - but it takes longer. Its the difference between $109M to make Fellowship (not a lot of money given the scale of the film) and $170M to make T3.
Stars don’t necessarily sell a film (Gigli or the God Awful “Two Weeks Notice”). Nor does formula. Nor do special effects (Hulk). Why not take a smaller risk for a potentially big reward, rather than taking a big risk with a big budget for a potentially big reward? Reese Witherspoon wasn’t a big star when Legally Blonde came out - it cost $18 million to make. (Wedding cost $5 million - not exactly an “indie” budget - El Marachi - a true “indie” cost $7k - Gigli - an example of Hollywood excess - $54 million). The budget for Men in Black II - $140 Million.
For sequels, unless a sequel was planned in advance (like StarWars or
Harry Potter) it’s not surprising the scripts are bad. The need for the movie exists before the script, and there is usually a time constraint.
Then, as that excellent article mentioned, the script gets mauled by person after person. (The name on the movie is determined by Writers Guild guidelines and agent negotiations - it has nothing to do with who actually wrote what shows up on the screen.) Imagine how much your average novel would suck if it went through a serial team of writers. (“Hairy feet? Ugh. And we definitely need a love interest for Frodo.”)
Finally - 2 words - Syd Fields. If any of you have taken a screenwriting class, you’ll know the way you’re supposed to write a screenplay is to have certain plot developments on certain pages. Robert Towne did it in Chinatown, that was a great movie, and everyone has to copy the format.
Oh, and of course anyone who knows how to use a word processor thinks he is a better screenwriter than the real ones.
As the old joke goes - the starlet was so stupid that she slept with the screenwriter.
One of the biggest differences between old and new hollywood is that in the old studio days, the people who made the movies and ran the studios actually liked movies themselves. The old chiefs took pride in their product, they had an intimate relationship with moviemaking. The new guys are mostly executives who ONLY care about the bottom line. They are usually not people who like movies or know much about true moviemaking, let alone the rich history behind all of it.
May I suggest two more fabulous books? If you want to understand where the new blockbuster-crazy, take-no-risks Hollywood comes from, these two books i have found to be a revelation:
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind shows how the new movie brats(Altman, Coppola, Scorsese, Speilberg,etc) helped bring about the new conglomerate driven business through much of their own reckless egotism.
Final Cut by Steven Bach looks at how Cimino’s “Heaven’s Gate” debacle brought down United Artists and what that meant for the rest of the industry.
I think it’s important that we understand that the current state of affairs has a history-there are reasons it has evolved into this.
This page has some wonderful audio interviews with Pauline Kael, where she describes the new scene, as well as other stuff:
Exactly. Jerry Bruckheimer doesn’t exactly produce high art. But he does have a knack for making fun big-budget action films that entertain.
Because it is counter-intuitive. The mindset seems to be “lets take movies that worked and keep remaking them bigger and louder.”
It’s not necessarily a bigger risk to do the blockbusters. The opening weekend is the big moneymaker and after that, no one cares if the movie sucked. They know a certain number of people will come to see a sequal to a hit movie regardless if there was even a point to making a sequal.
Personally, I think sequals are pointless unless they are telling a story that spans x number of films (like American Pie, The Matrix or Star Wars.) Otherwise it’s just “lets see how many ways we can retell a story about cloned dinosaurs, Egyptian mummies or a pair of undercover cops”.
Even when you have a good story, sometimes a movie is so in love with it’s own special effects that it detracts from the movie (I’m looking at you Matrix: Reloaded).
“Tom Cruise as Aragorn, Brad Pitt as Boromir, Hugh Grant as Frodo, Sean Connery as Gandalf”
Certainly not every actor in LOTR was well known. Orlando Bloom, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan were all unknowns. Sean Bean was unknown in the US. Viggo Mortensen has an impressive resume - as “that guy,” not THE guy that carries a movie - perhaps most telling that he could drop what he was doing on no notice to spend a year and a half in New Zealand - not what I would call “in demand.” Ian McKellan is a great actor - but was not a marquee name when they started filming. Remember the sound of “who?” when he got his Gods and Monsters nod? Remember, they started filming pre X-Men. I’ve never heard anyone say “gee, I can’t wait for that new Christopher Lee film.” John Rhys-Davis is a well respected character actor, but not a “star.” Lots of “well respected” actors, but not box office draws. Not one of those actors would have commanded a “star” salary (even Christopher Lee, despite his overwhelming ego). People talked about Sean Astin being in the movie with “remember?, the kid from Goonies.” Possibly the biggest star draw they had going for them when they opened was Liv Tyler.
The older movies really had to concern themselves with just the American audience not like today where if they are gonna spend a hundred million to make a movie they are going to make sure it is less dialog driven and more action and explosions so even if you do not understand the words you can at least in theory enjoy the movie no matter what language it is dubbed in for worldwide distribution
Another point I’d make is look at a movie like Dumb and Dumberer…can you imagine that script? While I am not as big of a fan of Jim Carrey as many that movie would of been just horrible without him…I never saw the sequel but I can hardly imagine it was any worse than the source and it tanked at least partially because Carrey wasn’t in it. So I’d say a bad script CAN be saved by having a bankable star…of course Jim Carrey could of been improvising all over the place and THAT is what made the first one better…I don’t know
BTW I kind of like those big budget summer extravaganzas like say Godzilla…I realize it isn’t the very best of monster movie but when there is little else to satisfy your craving for a good end of the world pic or rampaging lizard destroying a city you take what you can get and enjoy it for what it is…NOT an example of fine art but just an escapist movie
As far as I am concerned Godzilla did just what it attempted to do…it had cool monsters destroying things…worked for me
I’m going to disagree with this, HK action films are still a rarity outside of China, and the HK film industry has begun to stagnate (though they still make a few good movies a year). Part of the reason they haven’t penatrated well is bumbling by moron US executives in charge of distributing the films (the bumbling of Shaolin Soccer is a case in point). For studios that may challenge Hollywood, Korea is churning out many good films, and is fast becoming the new HK filmwise. And Korean films are protected by a quota system at the box office, so Hollywood can’t just crush them like they do in many countries. I do agree if Bollywood would get it’s act together it would be a real contender. I think Japanese animated films are the only true foreign penetrator into the US market, we’ve had more of them than HK films (thank you, Pokemon…)
And Godzilla was a failure. Gojira weeps at the thought of that abysmal movie.
regarding this, posted earlier by Sam Stone: "Making a big budget movie involves coordinating thousands of people, multiple locations, hundreds of millions of dollars, multiple people with creative control, and the demands of the commercial marketplace. It’s not easy. " - Watch the documentary Lost in La Mancha to see how crazy movie making can apparently be.
(I just saw it this weekend. It’s about how Terry Gilliam lost years of work on his Don Quixote movie and how it all went down the drain after just 6 days of filming. Looked like it would have been a really good movie, too - but where were the planning, the controls, the practicality? It made me admire the logistics involved with LOTR films even more.)
Back to the idea of the OP, I think the question is still a mystery - although that PT Barnum quote probably comes closest to the answer.
Several of you have mentioned Godzilla. I am fairly confident that the original script for Godzilla was not that bad, and I am certain that the screenwriters who wrote the first draft are not happy about the way the script was taken away from them, completely rewritten, and turned into a pretty darn bad movie.
That original writing team was Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott (whose other screenplays include Pirates of the Caribbean, Shrek, and Aladdin), and they have talked about the Godzilla disaster in this and other WordPlay columns.