We gotta question, and while I'm a tad sleep deprived due to illness, I will attempt to answer it. I'm letting you know that in case I start babbling about aliens eating my brain.
Anyhoo, let's get started:
Arthur Brandoch Darwin Petersen asked...
Mr. D,I've been reading for a while, and you always make a lot of sense. But I have a question:
You frequently present the idea, as in this post, that producers should hire creators that actually like the source material, or actually like the genre of entertainment they are supposed to be creating. That makes sense to me (and I want that to happen).
However, do the suits at the top have plausible reasons to not do so? I.e., doing so is always a gamble, right? Is that the dilemma? Could you elaborate more on why the execs don't let those who love the actual genre/source material do the jobs?
Because the Hollywood hiring process follows two reasons.
1. COMMERCIAL: They think the person they're giving the job to will make it a hit regardless of their relationship to the source material.
"Does Joel Schumacher know a thing about Batman?"
"No, but his last couple of flicks made money, so he must be totally perfect for the job!"
2. POLITICAL: Now this has nothing to do with who voted for who, at least not normally, but follows a definition of politics that I once heard David Mamet use. He said something like "politics are all the nonsense that gets in the way of accomplishing the task at hand."
Political reasons range from protecting or promoting your career, to the really trivial like getting past the velvet rope at the hot nightclub where the drug dealers and the starlets gather… basically stuff that has nothing to do with the source material or who cares for it.
And that's why you get filmmakers assigned to projects that make about as much sense as this picture:
I hope I answered your question at least semi-coherently.
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