Hollywood Babble On & On #1262: Quo Vadis American Crime Story?

Glad to back my loyal readers. I hope you're still out there.

*crickets*

Sorry it's been soooooo long since I last posted. Things have been busy lately. One the up side, I signed a contract with a publisher in Los Angeles for a mystery novel, and my work as chief caregiver for my parents has been taking up most of my time lately since my mother's knee surgery.

Anyway, enough about me, let's talk about movies and TV.

If you've been missing American Crime Story: The People vs OJ Simpson, you've been missing a treat. It's been wildly entertaining, and stacked with tons of Emmy worthy performances from the entire cast. I haven't seen a single false note in the acting, and more than a few moments of pure performance bliss.

(The scene where David Schwimmer as Robert Kardashian lectures his kids on the emptiness of fame without virtue is pure brilliance. I had to rewind to revel in its satiric glory)

But what to do with Season 2?

Well, it seems that the show's driving force Ryan Murphy wants to take the show in a different direction in Season 2. He wants to take it from covering a true crime story with the sort of intense detail that only a TV series can do, and do a fictional story about people living in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. So basically a variation of David Simon's Tremé from HBO, which came and went with some good reviews, but not much in the line of impact.

This seems to be in keeping with Murphy's modus operandi to create a show, deliver really high quality in the first season, then begin whittling away everything people liked about the show in subsequent seasons to diminishing returns in audience satisfaction and ratings. I witnessed this with Murphy's biggest mainstream hit Glee, where my twitter feed went from fans raving about the show, to fans complaining about the show, to fans ignoring the show. The same has happened with his other anthology series American Horror Story, which got raves at the beginning and then faded into a mess of loose narrative strings and steadily declining viewership.

I don't know what happened in the case of Horror Story, but it seems that Crime Story is the victim of a fundamental misunderstanding of the show's success. The people behind the show seem to think that the show's success hinges on issues of race in America.

Like in the real case of O.J. Simpson, race is more of a distraction and an excuse for some decisions than the real heart of the issue. The success of American Crime Story is that they're telling a true story where literally everyone knows the ending so well that it's compelling to watch.

I think there's a market for more true crime, and that Murphy and ACS are fools to just give it up when they've already set themselves up as the gold standard.

Let's look at some cases they could adapt that would be better ideas:

Harry Thaw & Stanford White.  In the 1900s White was a brilliant architect, top dog of New York high society, and an unrepentant lecher. Harry Thaw was the son of nouveau riche industrialists who had the paranoid belief that White had blackballed him from high society, this obsession grew even stronger when he married model and dancer Evelyn Nesbit. Nesbit had been White's mistress when she was a teenager, and may have even been raped by White. This put the already mentally unstable and violently abusive Thaw over the edge and he murdered White in the middle of a nightclub in front of a hundred people.

The trial and its aftermath pretty much birthed the tabloid and scandal culture we have today, and is loaded with so many myths, deceptions, and half-truths it could make compelling viewing. 

Stephanie St. Clair: The Queen of Harlem. This is the story of a woman who came to control the "numbers racket" in Harlem. While Queen she held off the mobsters like the psychopathic Dutch Schultz and became a thorn in the side of corrupt and racist policemen by using her resources to promote civil rights and political reform.

And if business and activism wasn't enough trouble for her, she ended up in a disastrous marriage to a  political activist turned cult leader with messianic and hitlerian tendencies that ended with a gunshot.

The fact that she survived and thrived in these conditions would make a fascinating television show.

You could even cast Travolta as Dutch Schultz, Sterling K. Brown as her right hand Bumpy Johnson, and Courtney B. Vance as St. Clair's charismatic but erratic cult-leader husband Sufi Abdul Hamid who was dubbed the "Black Hitler" by the press.

The Murder of William Desmond Taylor. I wrote a review of the riveting book Tinseltown and I said then that it would make a great series, and I still do.

Anyway, these stories are true and I think they'd really rope in the viewers far better than just another social realist drama about how life is hard in New Orleans.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1250: Deserving Better Than A Remake?

Here's a great video about Remakes from Good Bad Flicks (h/t Nate Winchester):

Which is a good segue to today's topic, which is the news that MMA fighter Ronda Rousey will star in a "re-imagining" of the 1989 Patrick Swayze vehicle Roadhouse for MGM.

When I heard the news my first thought was that she should beat up her agent.

Why?

Because if she's serious about a movie career would remaking a movie that marked the death knell of the 80s action movie golden age that started with The Terminator.

You see, by 1989 Hollywood was worried that action movies about cops, soldiers, and secret agents were passé and tried to reinvent any occupation that might throw a punch as some sort of ninja-combat master.

Which is how we ended up with a movie about a ninja-bouncer taking on a small town gangster whose whole operation looked like it came from a rejected script from the A-Team.

The film fizzled at the box-office, but gained a cult following on home-video and cable by those who watch cheesy movies to enjoy them ironically. It also marked the beginning of the end of mainstream street-level action movies that went on to become more and more dominated by special effects and eventually superheroes.

This has given MGM the delusion that the general audience is hungry for more Roadhouse, ignoring that they already had a 2006 sequel that came and went on DVD without even the studio noticing.

I think shoving her into an over-priced un-imagining of a film that left most of the audience cold when was first released is a big mistake when it would be so easy to come up with a catchy original premise for her to star in, that would be hers and could mark the beginning of a new franchise.

She's young, attractive, and can kick ass with extreme prejudice. Coming up with starring vehicles she can call her own would be the easiest thing to whip up.

To show you how easy it is I will pull some out of my ass right here, right now:

THE LONG DROP: Rousey's a rookie detective sent to pick up a witness working in a half-completed skyscraper. The witness is the only one who knows where a fortune in laundered money is hidden. When she arrives the place is crawling with hired killers, gangsters, and thieves, all out to find the missing money, including her own partner.

Ass-kicking, rescuing, and dangling from great heights ensues.

There, you got everything you want to kick off a good two-fisted action franchise without the baggage and nonsense associated with a remake.

THE STARLET: This is more of an action comedy premise which would depend heavily on her comic talents. Rousey plays a seemingly harmless and slightly klutzy actress who is targeted by crooks either to be kidnapped for ransom or because she has or knows something they want. What the crooks don't know is that, despite appearances, she has a devastating punch and a knack for foiling their schemes even unintentionally.

Naturally, lots of slapstick insanity ensues.

See, two very different and lively original premises that are guaranteed to work better than remaking some old nonsense.

Plus, my premises are for sale. 

Cash up front please.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1249: An Open Letter To International Audiences

Dear Movie International Movie Audiences.

Stop it.

You know what I'm talking about, if not, here's a little reminder from the twitter feed of Exhibitor Relations, the service that monitors the global movie box office:

TERMINATOR: GENISYS has scored $82.8M in China in 8 days. Int'l total: $320M, $400M+ worldwide. That's the magic #, folks. — Exhibitor Relations (@ERCboxoffice) https://twitter.com/ERCboxoffice/status/638118978741739522 August 30, 2015

PIXELS is now the highest grossing Adam Sandler film of all time overseas with $115M. Real nice, foreigners, real nice. — Exhibitor Relations (@ERCboxoffice) https://twitter.com/ERCboxoffice/status/638118367719653376 August 30, 2015

Now do you see what you've done, or do I have to rub your nose in it?

You took two movies that North American audiences had the good sense to spurn as one would spurn fly-laden dog turd and you made them, not successful, but given them the APPEARANCE of being successful.

You see, Hollywood operates along a philosophy of appearance over substance.  

But to understand it, you have to understand how films make money.

It's next to impossible for a major Hollywood movie to profit in the theatres. It just costs too damn much to make and release a so-called blockbuster these days. Even including the international markets doesn't help, because the studios don't have as big a share of the box office, called "The Rental," in Asia and Europe as they do in North America.  

If the film is going to turn a profit it needs to be seen as worthy of repeat viewing either on DVD, Blu-Ray, or licensing to television channels and video streaming services like Netflix, or Amazon.

To key is the licensing deals. They are where the profits lie, but there's a catch.

The people who run TV channels, and streaming services will only pay the big bucks to license hits, or, what look like hits.

That means that the studios can now take a dropped deuce like Adam Sandler's Pixels and say: "Look, it was a huge success internationally, you show things internationally, so give us some big money."

Then there is message the international audiences give studios, filmmakers and stars.

Companies that went under after making
a Terminator movie.

In the case of Tyrmynatyr: Gynysys it means that producers won't take the franchise off the life support it's been on for 20 years, and will keep grinding out more installments, regardless of quality, or how many producers go bankrupt.

In Adam Sandler's case it means he'll just keep on squeezing out the lazy, tedious, and unentertaining movies and not stop and buckle down, and put his nose to the grindstone to do something that might actually be entertaining.

This makes you, the international audience, the equivalent of an uncle who greets his nephew, who is fresh out of rehab, with a celebratory crock of rum and a dime bag of heroin.

Is there a way to stop this?

Not really.

That's because Hollywood doesn't see that it has a problem, because the "international audiences" seem to love what they're doing, and it gives them the illusory appearance of not only success, but of being cosmopolitan and shrewd.

It's just that, an appearance, and it's a lie, but appearances are all that matters.

So if you're a member of the international moviegoing audience, and you're wondering why Hollywood keeps putting out so many bad movies, take a look in the mirror.

You're a part of the problem, please become more discerning, and then you'll be part of the solution.

Sincerely

--Furious D.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1246: Can Relativity Media Be Saved?

As a regular reader of this blog will know indie production company and distributor Relativity Media has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection because it has about $500 million in assets and about $1 billion in debt.

Can it be saved?

The answer is "Yes" but with caveats. It would have to meet certain conditions if it is going to have a second chance. 

1. Dump Ryan Kavanaugh. Sure, the Hollywood business press seems to love him, and he seemed to be really good at getting investors to pony up the dough for a while, but he still managed to rack up a hell of a lot of losses and debts in a whole variety of hare-brained schemes that were heavy on sales jargon but low on results. I know he's a major shareholder, but if former newspaper mogul Conrad Black can be forced out of two companies, one where he was the sole proprietor, on the basis of crimes that the appeals court ruled hadn't actually happened. If that's possible then you can get rid of Kavanaugh for driving the company into the ground.

2. Trim Fat/Find Money. One big problem the company has is that there isn't enough money coming in to service the debt and keep the company running. Naturally a selling off of assets will have to come. The sports agency, the "branded content" agency, and all the other schemes will have to be either sold off, or shuttered completely. Then there's the company's distribution capability. They may have to open themselves to even more distribution only deals with other independent producers than they already have.

3. Stick To The Core Business. Relativity was originally founded to produce, and eventually distribute, movies and television shows. 

Maybe it needs to do that and only that.

It should also avoid trying to compete with the studios for the massive blockbusters. The new Relativity should target the middle ground, smaller scale pics that the big studios don't seem to make anymore even though, back in the day, they were seen as the profitable backbone of the industry. They should also be budgeted tightly to decrease risk, and increase the potential for reward.

They should just follow this simple formula:

STORY > STARS + QUALITY > BUDGET

No more wacky schemes to produce only hits, no more "lifestyle brands" and no more BS, just stick with making stories people would enjoy seeing more than once.

Then Relativity might have a shot to live again.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1233: Will DuVernay Do Marvel?

There have been reports that Kevin Feige the brains behind the Marvel cinematic/TV universe wants Selma director Ava DuVernay to direct a Marvel superhero movie, possibly either Black Panther or Captain Marvel.

Naturally this sparked outrage about how racist and sexist it is of Marvel to consider a female African-American woman to direct either a female or African character.

Pretty nonsensical, because if they offered DuVernay Avengers 3 the same people would condemn Marvel for asking her to make a movie about a team that's mostly white and male.

It's literally a no win situation when it comes to the outrage of the perpetually outraged, but it could be a win-win situation for DuVernay.

Why?

Because there are three kinds of film every filmmaker should do at least once, regardless of their personal tastes.

They are:

1. Action film.

2. Horror film.

3. Comedy film, but not a vehicle for an established comedy star.

Why should they do these films?

Because they are challenges that brings out a filmmaker's real talents and prove their worth for all time.

If all you do are action films, you can coast on CGI and explosions. If you only do "important dramas" then you can coast on the quality of your actors and the script. If you only do comedies for established stars you can coast on that star's popularity and charisma. If you do only horror films you can coast on gore and cats jumping out of closets.

However, doing a variety of projects can only help establish your credibility as a filmmaker.

DuVernay's background was mostly backstage in broadcast journalism, public relations, documentaries, and very serious dramas. If she sticks with that strategy she will expect to be the director equivalent of Sean Penn, someone whose career only exists for Oscars noms and internal Hollywood adulation. That can only offer diminishing returns because Hollywood people don't pay to see movies. After a while you risk reaching a point of no return, where even if you try to go more mainstream, you can't, the audience just isn't into you.

However, DuVernay is still relatively a new comer to the wider pop culture world. That means she can use the cachet she earned from Selma, to land a big mainstream action adventure gig, and if she does a good job, proving she can make commercially viable vehicles, then she can write her own ticket.

It's not that big a stretch. If she has at least one big box-office blockbuster under her belt, that she delivered on time and on budget, and pleased both fans and critics, do you think she'd have a problem raising financing for at least one smaller scale serious drama?

Filmmakers need to learn that the mainstream is like running water. It's where the water is deep, clean and makes the water running on the edges possible. There's no shame in swimming back and forth. In fact, it's probably a very smart strategy.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1214: All-Girl Ghostbusters - the Perils & Pitfalls

Well, it's pretty much all but official.

The long simmering all-women reboot of the Ghostbusters franchise has entered final negotiations with the cast Paul Feig wants to don the proton packs. 

Melissa McCarthy is signed on, and final talks are going on with Bridesmaids co-star Kristin Wiig, and Saturday Night Live cast-members Leslie Jones, and Kate McKinnon.

This event is being touted as the biggest victory for feminism since women got the vote.

But is it?

Think about it for a minute.

We're not talking about Hollywood developing an original, female-driven franchise.

What we are talking about is Hollywood tossing women a franchise that's been considered more or less dead since 1989, and even then it was only because the original cast was unavailable due to busyness, contrariness, or mortality.

To me that's not a victory, but more like getting the scraps of something unwanted by the people that Hollywood views as more important.

That's considered a victory?

I think it's a trap.

If the new all-women Ghostbusters under performs by any metric of comparison with the original, then Hollywood will  declare it a failure and use it as an excuse to not develop women-led franchise films.

I think a victory would be the creation of a new female-driven film with franchise potential and to let it fly or flop on its own merits without the baggage of a long dead franchise whose only sequel was considered a flop by everyone involved because it only made globally what the first film made domestically.

It's not hard to come up with a female-centric high-concept movie. Back during the more sexist Golden Age of Movies they used to put out "women's pictures" with great regularity and in a wide variety of genres and styles. They made the expected romantic comedies and weepy melodramas, but they also made female-driven thrillers, mysteries, broader slapstick farces, adventure films, and even horror films.

They didn't do that because people demanded it in the name of fairness, the studios did it because it was a practical business decision. Those films made money.

I demonstrated how easy it is when I whipped up a "women's picture" premise literally on the fly during a previous discussion of this issue.

Anyone can do it, and let's come up with another one and do it for this cast:

THE POOL: This is an action comedy set in the 1960s. They play a group of women who want to be spies, but, despite their training and talent, are trapped doing secretarial work for the National Intelligence Agency because the swaggering men running the place won't admit they're able. When they uncover a plot involving traitors selling the agency out to a super villain, they go out in the field, have all kinds of Connery-era James Bond style hijinks and settle the bad guys' hash and save the world.

Easy peasy.

Why won't Hollywood do it?

Because they think it's a "risk" because it involves both originality and women, two things Hollywood fears the most.

That's what I think.

What do you think?

Hollywood Babble On & On #1204: Dear Sony

Dear Sony Pictures.

I have to say that I've tried really hard to avoid reading your e-mails that were recently stolen and released by hackers. But sometimes I've been asked to comment on them, and they've become so ever present, they're just plain hard to avoid without cutting myself off entirely from the outside world.

I admire the gumption of studio CEO Michael Lynton in declaring that the hack won't take you down. That's very sweet. Also I noticed that the MPAA, the movie business's drunk uncle, has also expressed their support for you. That's also sweeter than honey dipped in sugar, but it's not stopping those same studio-related media outlets CNN (Warner Bros.), Fox News (Fox/Newscorp), ABC News (Disney), MSNBC/NBC News (Universal/Comcast), and CBS News (Viacom) from feasting on the fat and gristle of your corporate humiliation no matter how loudly you ask them to stop.

The one unescapable truth is that Sony Pictures and its subsidiaries, Columbia, Tri-Star, etc… are in a state of profound dysfunction.

The grey eminences at Sony's head office in Japan might accept Hollywood dysfunction when it's a  part of being in the movie business spoken only in whispers only by the people in the movie business. However, when it's very public and very embarrassing, then it's not acceptable at all, because it makes them look bad.

Which is why I'd like to offer a suggestion for a replacement to run Sony Pictures:

FURIOUS D FOR BOSS OF SONY PICTURES

Hey, you've tried the best, why not try the rest.

I even have a plan.

1. LET MARVEL HAVE SPIDER-MAN.

Why? Well, there are good reasons. The Spider-Man movies released by Sony/Columbia have been suffering from rising costs and diminishing returns. Sure the box office scores look good, but they cost so damn much you end up losing in the long run. 

Plus you're ideas to keep the franchise out of Marvel's hands are getting kind of embarrassing.

Let Marvel have Spider-Man. Take a token payment, or some percentage of the first two Marvel Spider-Man projects and you'll be fine.

And then don't panic over losing it when you…

2. ADMIT YOU DON'T NEED SPIDER-MAN.

That's right, you don't need Spider-Man because you have:

James Bond is literally the grand-daddy of the action-adventure movie franchise. On the plus side he's hotter than ever, with both hard-core fans and casual movie-goers literally excited to see the next one.

You don't need anyone else right now. So ditch Spider-Man, Men In Black, and all the other properties that are more hassle than they're worth.

3. DON'T RELY ONLY ON BOND.

I know, I sound like I'm contradicting myself, but stick with me.

Bond is a great tent-pole picture franchise that you release every two to three years, and having one is nice, but it makes you ask yourself: What do you in the meantime?

Well, Universal turned out to have a real whopper of a year profit-wise by foregoing blockbusters in favour of smaller films with wider margins and reduced risk. Something I'd been preaching about on this blog for years.

4. PUT STORY OVER STARS

The days of the star system is over. It's been over for a very long time. So called "stars" don't sell tickets and home-viewings the way they used to. They are a hell of a way to kill off what could have been a decent profit margin and turn it into a loss.

Audiences want stories featuring characters that are worth their money and time. They don't have to be likeable, but they absolutely must be interesting.

And the beauty of it all is that story isn't expensive.

5. DON'T SCREW OVER THE PEOPLE YOU WORK WITH.

Hollywood lives in a conundrum.

Technology has made the physical process of making professional looking films cheaper than ever before. However, Hollywood's production costs have an inflation rate not seen outside of Zimbabwe.

There's a reason for this, and it's because everyone expects to be screwed. 

This means that everyone tries to get as much as they can up front, and those that have the tiniest smidgen of clout within the industry, go hog wild. So you get romantic comedies that cost over $150 million. Seriously, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS FOR A ROMANTIC COMEDY.

That should be an impossibility.

If a studio set a new practice of not screwing people, they might actually see costs go down. Then it might spread to the rest of the industry.

Sure, hiring an inexperienced unknown is a crazy idea, but at least I know enough to NOT put embarrassing stuff in a business e-mail.

-Sincerely

Furious D.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1197: Big Brother Is Watching You

Paul Greengrass, best known for shaking the camera a lot in the Bourne movies, has been tapped to adapt George Orwell's classic novel 1984 for Sony Pictures to be produced by Scott Rudin.

In case you've lived in a cave Orwell's 1984 is the story of Winston Smith. Smith lives in Oceania, a state in perpetual war and under the regime of IngSoc, or English Socialism, led by the enigmatic Big Brother.

Surveillance is everywhere, with devices called "telescreens" monitoring your every move while bombarding you with propaganda about loving Big Brother, hating Emmanuel Goldstein, who both might not exist, and if you stray from the ruling party's line, whichever that might be, you will be taken to Room 101 by the Thought Police, and "corrected" until you loved Big Brother.

Smith works for the Ministry of Truth and it's his job to rewrite old newspaper articles so any future history will reflect the party line. He's chafing under the repressive regime that dictates his every thought and action and rebels, by falling in love with a girl named Julia.

The book had been adapted several times, but only two films were ever released to theatres. The one people remember was the fairly faithful adaption directed by Michael Radford with John Hurt as Smith, that was released, fittingly in 1984. Artists Shephard Fairey tried to make his own version in 2012, but the project fizzled out in development.

When I heard Greengrass was directing, the first thing I thought of was of Big Brother complaining that all the telescreens were shaking in all directions. But my misgivings go deeper than that.

1984 is a book that is still relevant even 30 years after it's science fiction date, but it's very easy to misinterpret.

Orwell was a socialist, which means that he desired a system where everyone was equal in all things,   and worked solely for the betterment of mankind instead of personal greed.

However, Orwell was also an intellectually honest realist, he could see what was being done in the name of socialism all over the world. Pogroms, purges, massacres, and the casual mutilation of truth, which Orwell viewed as sacred, to fit the whims and factional schemes of the rulers. Orwell recognized that the fundamental flaw in any political system was that no matter what, ruthless people would constantly try to wrest control, and many times succeed. If ultimate and even intimate power was to be had, then the most ruthless people would claw their way to the top. That's why a die-hard socialist was able to write two of the most critical novels about socialism, 1984 and Animal Farm. 

Which brings us to heart of the problem.

Hollywood's idea of a political scientist and philosopher is Russell Brand.

When it comes to political/economic/social issues, Hollywood is a blend of ignorance, hypocrisy, political correctness, and self righteousness. They seem to believe that saying the correct things counts more than doing the right things. In Hollywood it's perfectly okay to have a personal carbon footprint equal to a mid-sized European country, or a business operation as ethnically & gender diverse as a KKK meeting, as long as you give money to the correct causes, campaign for the correct politicians, and get your picture taken at the correct protests and fundraisers.

In Hollywood, it's all about image, and nothing to do with substance or accomplishment.

Which is why I'm pretty damn sure that Hollywood will butcher any adaptation of 1984. They'll probably turn Oceania in Oceania Inc., Big Brother into a CEO, and drain any true relevance from the work, because they lack the intellectual depth and honesty to admit that a non-capitalist system can possibly be evil and oppressive.

That and the camera will jerk around so much it'll make me motion sick.

So just let it rest Hollywood.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1191: Eurowood?

Peter Bart, former Paramount executive, producer, and longtime mainstay at Variety, posted this piece about how many European filmmakers are trying to fill the gaps being left in the movie market by the major US studios.

He makes a good point. 

Look at the release schedules of the major studios and you'll see that they're chasing the mad pipe dream that it's possible to only make blockbuster mega-hits. This leaves many genres including non-comic book action, drama, and many types of comedy, horror, thrillers, mostly out in the cold despite having the potential to be extremely lucrative at a low cost.

Bart sees the biggest problem is connecting with a North American audience, and like many Euro-producers think "international stars" are the key.

Not quite.

If the European filmmakers want to truly connect with North American they need to follow some key rules.

1. DON'T USE HOLLYWOOD'S IDEAS OF STARDOM GUIDE YOUR CASTING.

In Bart's article they mention that a producer is working with Sean Penn in a movie that they hope will break through with the American audience. Better to just put their money in a big pile and set it on fire, because at least that way they might be able to cook wienies off the fire. There is an elite list of actors in Hollywood who are downright toxic at the box office, but still get major leading roles because Hollywood keeps telling people they're big stars.

The casting of Sean Penn, Nicole Kidman, Tina Fey, Russell Brand, and Ricky Gervaise can literally toss a film into box office oblivion. George Clooney is on his way to that status unless his agent can use black magic to convince people that his glorified cameo in Sandra Bullock's Gravity was the key to its success.

As accurate a headline as "Dewey Defeats Truman"

I call these people "Media Appealers" because their appeal seems to exist almost entirely within the Hollywood community and the media outlets that want to be in that Hollywood community. The problem is that they usually bag big roles with big fees despite being unable to sell tickets to the last lifeboat off a sinking ship.

What these producers need to do is to do the serious research needed to find out which stars are really worth the investment. Maybe do a variation of the sabermetrics that weighs costs (in both money & hassle) against how many bums they put in theatre seats. I'll bet you'll be surprised to discover who is worth what, and then you can base your decisions on that.

2. DON'T DO BUSINESS LIKE THE BIG HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS.

The biggest problem with the way the big Hollywood studios do business is that it doesn't seem to make anyone involved happy. Litigation is so common that it's not even considered news anymore, and it's affecting business. Since everyone is expecting to be screwed if their film's a hit, everyone with the slightest amount of clout gets everything they can up front regardless of real market forces, and that drives up costs, and drives down profits.

Treat people with a modicum of respect and honesty and you'll be shocked at how it will drive your costs down and your potential for profit up.

3. GET A DISTRIBUTOR WHO REALLY NEEDS YOU.

Form a partnership with a distributor who will treat you with the same modicum of respect and honesty that you will use on others because if they don't you'll go and leave them in the cold. That means avoiding the big studios and their shady practices.

4. AIM FOR QUALITY.

Back in the day a film had a week in theatres to make their money, and that was that. That changed thanks to the arrival of television, then the advent of new streaming and home video outlets. That's actually a good thing if a film is well made and entertaining because even if it gets lost among the crush of big studio blockbusters in theatres, it still has a chance to find its piece of the audience via other outlets.

It doesn't take much money to make a quality film. It just takes hard work and imagination which are both rarer than money, especially in Hollywood.

That's my advice.