If it’s Bank, it’s Good
By Adam Leipzig
According to E-Online (screenshot above), “Tangled overcame Deathly Hallows.” What more is there to know?
Whether you are a small theatre owner or a highly paid film studio executive, you are facing calculations of the marketplace and creative work, and these forces are often at odds. As a film producer, I can work on a movie for years, deploying millions of dollars and investing thousands of hours in time. I can fall in love with the film, the director, the actors’ work and the story.
Then one day, a Friday, the film opens to the general public. At that instant, the criteria for success changes: no longer is quality measured in terms of creativity; it is measured in terms of dollars, per-screen averages and competition in the multiplex marketplace. Forever after, that film will be judged as a success or failure based on its profit, not its art.
But who’s made this shift in judgment? Not the general public, who just came to see and enjoy a movie. Instead, this shift was made and publicized by the mass media’s sensibility for naming “Top Tens” and “Winners” in numerical terms, which tells us nothing, of course, about any values other than those of the marketplace.
The problem’s immediate and it also affects our future. The movies, books, music and television shows that become cultural influences – and will determine what projects get “green-lit” next – are those that make a lot of money. In our current climate, if Avatar hadn’t made a ton of cash it would not have been able to shape the next generation of filmmaking. We’ve allowed dollars to become our aesthetic gatekeepers.
When art becomes commodity, with success is measured only in dollars, the system fails, as it does in any other industry that has only a financial bottom line.
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Comments (3)
jack grapes
December 6th, 2010 at 1:37 AM
Saw THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER again. It was a colossal failure at the box office. Charles Laughton never directed another movie again. Funny, but when I was younger, I don't remember reading box office accounts. Now, it's all SHOW ME THE MONEY. I had a discussion about a year ago with someone about certain films, and it was like we were on two different tracks. I talked about the film from a critical standpoint, he talked about how much money it made. His assessment of the film had nothing to do with the intrinsic worth of the film, but it's worth at the box office. Lori and I saw LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS, BLACK SWAN, and another film I can't even remember now. All good films, okay films, nice films, big box office. Then we saw ANTON CHEKHOV'S THE DUEL, and the film still has a hold on me. It's not even a GREAT film, it's just a good film, but the substance there was deeper and more lasting. For the artist, especially the filmmaker and the screenwriter, we're in a pickle. But I used to marvel when I was a kid at how sprigs of grass seemed to grow from the cracks in the sidewalk. All that concrete, and the grass found a way through. I hear many of my students struggle with the plots of their teleplays, trying to conform to the demands of the show their writing for. It's all concrete, and the sprigs of grass that should be sprouting from their hearts seem tamped down, forgotten. Somehow, despite all the shouts and murmurs of the marketplace, true artists have to have faith in the flower within themselves, and have the courage to let it grow. Sometimes, aiming for the box office is easier. Just as fickle as the heart, but easier. Here's why I have hope. My son, who is in his second year of college, has three movie clippings on the wall of his room. One for Sweeney Todd, one for La Strada, and one for Children of Paradise. Those are his three favorite films, the films against which he measures every film he sees. Oh, and the Bicycle Thief. No clipping for that one, but I know the film is lodged in his heart, and will be there always. My son knows what's true. We have to have faith, in the long run, that our children, this new generation and the one to come, will find its heart and the heart, like that sprig of grass, will out.
Garner Simmons
December 6th, 2010 at 3:03 AM
Having just returned from seeing "…Deathly (S)Hallows," I fully agree that Harry Potter is dead. What was once a poignant and magical tale for the child in all of us has been corrupted by the Warner Bros. money machine. The story is completely overwhelmed by pointless VFX — the "wouldn't it be cool if…" school of filmmaking. But then what can we expect when those who run the studios believe that success must be measured, as Adam notes, in box office receipts.
Yet the one true measure of worth is what a culture chooses to cherish and preserve over time. That's the meaning of the term "classic" — something that, once created, is so timeless that it speaks afresh to each new generation. The reality is: Few great films turn out to be huge box office successes.
Every year I knew him, Sam Peckinpah would show me the statement he would receive from Warner Bros. showing that The Wild Bunch was further in the red (i.e., the studio continued to post charges against the film to make certain it could never turn a profit since, if it did, they would have to pay Peckinpah on his points). Yet last year, 40 years after its release (and 25 years after Sam's death) people lined up around the block for an anniversary screening of the film in downtown LA that eventually saw several hundred turned away for lack of seating. Fittingly, Sam Peckinpah and his work are still remembered long after the studio executives he fought with while making it have long been forgotten.
The bottom line: never create for money. Create out of your passion and the need to tell the truth as you see it. As an artist, money is a byproduct of what you do, not the reason you do it.
Still the question remains: how does one survive in such a world? Perhaps the answer lies in Emile Zola's novel Nana — the story of a girl who sells her body but preserves her soul. In truth, there are some things I write to pay the bills; and some things I write that I refuse to sell unless I can be part of the creative team that makes it (though sadly sometimes even that is not enough). Creation is an irrational bet on yourself. Or as Winston Churchill once noted: "Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm."
Amara
December 10th, 2010 at 5:57 PM
Still, you have to admit that box office success is related to the amount of people going to watch a film. That number's definitely affected by how viewers are affected by advertising, and doesn't have as much to do with how many people go to see the film AFTER word gets out about how worthwhile it is. But the point is that box office success is then definitely related to what is relevant to the public at the time. And maybe that has nothing to do with whether it is "good" or whether it is "art." And maybe mainstream movies have much more to do with appealing to what the public wants to be entertained by than what filmmakers FEEL audiences should be exposed to.
The problem isn't mainly that projects are green-lit based on success – projects should be green-lit based on their ability to connect with an audience, which is related to the film's success.
The problem is what the public is most interesting in thinking about.
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