The Oscars (Or: why movies are so crap)
calendarlive.com: This year, the safe bets are off
Good article about how most of the Oscar front-runners are not studio releases. Instead they are indies with the money raised either by presales overseas or simply cash-rich risk-takers. The studios are simply acting as distributors, or coming in for less than half of the production cost.
It is easy and fashionable to gripe about "Hollywood" or the studios, and they certainly don't make life easy for themselves: who the hell needs a sequel to Duce Bigalow? And what kind of people can spend $80 million on Scooby Doo but refuse to spend less than half that on Million Dollar Baby?
There are a couple of possible defences to this. The first is that, unlike the cash-rich risk-takers, the studios have shareholders and thus are obliged to shy away from extreme risk taking. The sequel to Duce Bigalow is probably on the sheet because somebody has calculated that they can make a certain guaranteed minimum from overseas TV and video/DVD sales, plus a bit of U.S. box office. If the movie can be made for less than that, then they would be stupid not to make it: its close to a certain profit even if it does poorly at the gate. The artistic element doesn't come into it.
Also, if the risk-taker picks a bomb and loses a lot, where are you going to go next for money. Studios may be stupid at times, but they know the mechanics and thinking behind movies and audiences better than anyone else. We hear about hit movies that all the studios turned down, but we never hear about the ones that bombed after all the studios passed.
There is also the idea that the Oscars are how Hollywood rewards films it likes that didn't make money: cash in the bank is its own reward.
The other point is that, while it is easy to snark about studio movies not winning Oscars, it is too easy to forget that this is one year and not necessarily a trend. Every decade Sight and Sound lists it 20 greatest movies, from a poll of leading film directors and critics. Every decade, the number of these made by Hollywood studios remains constant at about two-thirds (the rest are usually foreign-language titles: I am not qualified to say if they were made by the French, Japanese or Indian equivalents of Fox or Disney). What is different is that they were made by the studios of twenty or more years ago. People happy to slag off "Hollywood crap" today go all misty-eyed when the theme to the Godfather starts to play. Even Citizen Kane was a Hollywood movie, made by one of those big, dumb, bottom-line obsessed studios (RKO).
I have to say that I would rather spend my time watching the products of the indie sector rather than the majors - there is more invention, more intelligence. But the studios are not as bad as they sometimes seem: the difference is that a bad indie title will not find a distributor, while a crap studio release will always be sent out to die a death somewhere.
Good article about how most of the Oscar front-runners are not studio releases. Instead they are indies with the money raised either by presales overseas or simply cash-rich risk-takers. The studios are simply acting as distributors, or coming in for less than half of the production cost.
It is easy and fashionable to gripe about "Hollywood" or the studios, and they certainly don't make life easy for themselves: who the hell needs a sequel to Duce Bigalow? And what kind of people can spend $80 million on Scooby Doo but refuse to spend less than half that on Million Dollar Baby?
There are a couple of possible defences to this. The first is that, unlike the cash-rich risk-takers, the studios have shareholders and thus are obliged to shy away from extreme risk taking. The sequel to Duce Bigalow is probably on the sheet because somebody has calculated that they can make a certain guaranteed minimum from overseas TV and video/DVD sales, plus a bit of U.S. box office. If the movie can be made for less than that, then they would be stupid not to make it: its close to a certain profit even if it does poorly at the gate. The artistic element doesn't come into it.
Also, if the risk-taker picks a bomb and loses a lot, where are you going to go next for money. Studios may be stupid at times, but they know the mechanics and thinking behind movies and audiences better than anyone else. We hear about hit movies that all the studios turned down, but we never hear about the ones that bombed after all the studios passed.
There is also the idea that the Oscars are how Hollywood rewards films it likes that didn't make money: cash in the bank is its own reward.
The other point is that, while it is easy to snark about studio movies not winning Oscars, it is too easy to forget that this is one year and not necessarily a trend. Every decade Sight and Sound lists it 20 greatest movies, from a poll of leading film directors and critics. Every decade, the number of these made by Hollywood studios remains constant at about two-thirds (the rest are usually foreign-language titles: I am not qualified to say if they were made by the French, Japanese or Indian equivalents of Fox or Disney). What is different is that they were made by the studios of twenty or more years ago. People happy to slag off "Hollywood crap" today go all misty-eyed when the theme to the Godfather starts to play. Even Citizen Kane was a Hollywood movie, made by one of those big, dumb, bottom-line obsessed studios (RKO).
I have to say that I would rather spend my time watching the products of the indie sector rather than the majors - there is more invention, more intelligence. But the studios are not as bad as they sometimes seem: the difference is that a bad indie title will not find a distributor, while a crap studio release will always be sent out to die a death somewhere.
posted by Toby Scott at 1/26/2005 03:37:00 PM
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