Hollywood Babble On & On #1242: The Sin of Wages

A reader asked me this question:

Recently I was reading articles about Jennifer Lawrence and Amanda Seyfried getting significantly less money than their male co-stars. 

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/movies/amanda-seyfried-says-she-was-paid-just-10-per-cent-of-her-male-co-stars-salary-for-film-role/story-e6frfmvr-1227442353893

The argument was that this was a result of sexism but surely isn’t this more the fault of their management/agents?

This is a tricky question, because we don't know the specifics, and the devil is hiding in those details.

The problem with Seyfried's case is that the reports are pretty vague on the details. We don't know the film, we don't know the co-star, the respective size of their roles, and, as my reader mentioned: the comparative competence, greediness and clout of their respective representatives.

If you don't know the details, you can't really, with any accuracy, determine if sexism was behind the difference in salary.

It's a lot like the oft-repeated trope that women make 77¢ for every $1 a man makes. If you look at the surface of the arguments that use that statistic you have no choice but to think that male bosses do nothing but complicate their accounting as well as leave themselves open to lawsuits and   maybe even criminal prosecution because their sexism outweighs their need for survival.

However, if you look at the details, you get a different picture. It's not, as many politicians and activists claim, cases of, let's say, a male sales clerk getting paid more than a female colleague despite having the same job and seniority because of the secret "penis bonus." The statistic comes from an overarching study of all occupations held by men and women irrespective of the nature of that occupation and how that affects salary.

If you totally believe the politicians, then sexism must be the only reason a 37 year old male oil rig roughneck, with 16 years experience, makes more money than an 18 year old female sales clerk working part time at an Orange Julius while she's going to university.

However, sexism isn't the only reason, in fact, it's likely that it might not be a reason at all. Those reasons include, the roughneck's seniority, the greater value put on delivering massive amounts of oil over small amounts of orange juice, and the greater probability that a roughneck is far more likely to have limb ripped off on the oil rig, than a counter worker is at the Orange Julius.

Artist's depiction of the Committee For Deciding Salaries

A close study of the details shows that on average women are more likely to accept lower paying jobs that can guarantee a certain quality of life over more lucrative jobs with high rates of death and dismemberment.

That's not to say that no women ever take those kinds of jobs. Many do, however, they are nowhere near enough numerically to make up the discrepancy in salaries when all are piled together to create the 77¢ statistic.

Which brings us back to actress salaries.

As I keep repeating myself, the devil in this issue lies in the details. Jennifer Lawrence was paid a lot less than her male co-stars on American Hustle, despite her box-office/Oscar status putting her on a more equal footing with them. We don't know the full details. 

Lawrence has a good working relationship with director David O. Russell and might have volunteered to take an up-front pay cut to help get the movie made. That's not uncommon in Hollywood, especially if the project can only help boost the prestige and star-power of the actor in question.

However, I'm not going to just let the people who run Hollywood off the sexism hook.

Why?

Because Hollywood is run by people, and all people carry petty little prejudices and idiocies. It's what bonds us all as a species.

In Hollywood though, such prejudices and idiocies can be exacerbated because many in Hollywood think their sins don't count. Many in Hollywood honestly believe that it's perfectly okay to have a carbon footprint bigger than a Third World country as long as they support the correct politicians and get seen at the correct fundraisers. It's not hard to believe that it's the same with how they treat women.

Also Hollywood's behind the scenes history is loaded with sexist behavior, and I'm not talking about the notorious casting couch. During the Silent Era there were many female directors, and film editing was an almost exclusively female. However the coming of sound was used as an excuse by the unions to squeeze most women out of the director's chair and the editing room.

Which means I should probably get around to the point I'm trying to make.

I don't doubt that some, possibly many, people in positions of power hold some sexist attitudes that they think they can buy off with politically correct indulgences. However, if we're going to stop sexism in business, we need to conclusively prove sexism in business, because just accusing makes people feel good, but it really gets us nowhere. We need to know the tedious little technical details, because that's where the line between sexist piggishness and misunderstandings hides.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1241: Got A Billion Dollars?

The investor cluster that owns the once powerful and feared Miramax Films is considering putting it up on the auction block, and they're asking for…

ONE BILLION DOLLARS!

Now I only have one reaction to that price…

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Okay, that's a little mean, I guess a more accurate reaction would be:

But seriously folks, let's take a look at what the company has to offer which is mostly the film library of 700 titles.

Libraries have value, because movies don't really make serious money until they are licensed to what are called the ancillary markets after their theatrical release. That means home video, television, and online streaming services.

A lot of money can be made this way, and the bigger the film library, the more money you can make. In fact, a lot of studios view the box office earnings as just gravy, and that the real money is in those ancillary markets.

However, there's a catch.

Several catches to be exact.

700 movies may sound big, but in the grand scheme of things it's actually not that big, especially when compared to the majors. The major studios literally have thousands upon thousands of titles in their libraries and regularly churn out new material by the pound.

Miramax has been more of less moribund for years, only sporadically putting out a handful of new films under the current ownership.

That's not good.

Because having seven hundred films is fine and all, but any film library, even if every film is as evergreen in popularity as Casablanca, your company is going to reach a point when the outlets you're selling to will say: "What else you got?"

And that's if every film in your library is as perpetually popular as Casablanca, and Miramax's stable is pretty light on films like that.

A lot of that has to do with how the company was run under the Weinstein Brothers. Under their reign Miramax had two business models; one was to acquire independent films for a theatrical release, and the other was to acquire independent films for the sole reason of keeping other distributors from getting them.

That means that for every movie Miramax released during that era, there were several that haven't been seen by a living soul since their Sundance Festival debut in the 1990s. This practice brought the company to the brink of collapse before being bought up by Disney, and it's what made Disney force out the Weinsteins a few years later.

Even if all of the films in question are brilliant, it's next to impossible to sell, for a decent price, rights to a flick that no one can remember, and many of films in the Miramax library are not brilliant at all.

That means that out of the 700 films in the library, maybe about 200, at most, are sellable.

That ain't healthy.

"But what about remakes?" you ask, waving your hand and hooting like Horshak. "Couldn't you remake Miramax movies into big blockbusters?"

Well, you could do remakes of some of the films in the library. But remaking the Oscar winners would offend fans, and remaking the unknowns would just befuddle people. You might as well just make an original film from a script no one has heard of because at least then you could avoid being entangled with…

The Weinstein Brothers.

You see, as both the producers and studio bosses of those pictures they made sure that if anyone wanted to do a remake, reboot, re-imagining or sequel would have to involve them.

The problem is that if you're 90% of people who have done business with them in the past, you are far less likely to want to do business with them again.

So, is the business really worth $1 billion?

I'm not even sure it was worth the $600 million the investors gave to Disney back in 2010.

Anyway, that's what I think.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1240: There Is A Good Reason No One Likes Gawker

If you've been living in a cave I will give you a little update.

Gawker is a website that specializes in three things. One is gossip, they love anything that might embarrass someone famous, no matter what. 

The second thing is nastiness, if they can couch their gossip in the most petty, childish, and insulting terms, they will do it.

The third thing Gawker specializes in is outrage. They love to find something said by someone that might be construed as offensive or politically incorrect, and then marshaling the forces of social media to destroy the alleged "offender's" employment or life. Now usually Gawker prefers if the outrage is aimed at the people they choose to be outraged at, and preferably over subjects they deem fitting for outrage. (They are reportedly masters of double standards)

However, lately that outrage has been aimed at Gawker itself, and Gawker ain't happy about it.

Here's a quick summary: An executive at Condé Nast was being blackmailed by a gay porn-star/escort. The executive is in the closet, is married and has a family, and the blackmailer told him that if he didn't pay up, the story will go public.

Now any other publication, print or web, would look at the story being given to then by the blackmailer and ask: "Hmmm...by publishing this story, which isn't exactly newsworthy, wouldn't we become part of the extortion and hence be open to all sorts of moral and legal ramifications?" Then they would pass on the story, and possibly call the police.

Not so at Gawker.

Gawker ran with it.

They claimed it was newsworthy because it involved a man, a senior executive at a major publisher, being unfaithful to his wife in a particularly salacious manner since it involved the man being a closeted homosexual.

Now, when someone is "outed" against their will, those who do the outing usually follow a certain criteria.

1. Usually that person must be, if not famous, at least so prominent in their field that they are considered a 'public figure.'

2. That public figure must be involved in political or social activities that is seen as being anti-LGBT, and thus their status as both "closeted" and unfaithful being a sign of great moral-sexual hypocrisy.

The executive was not a public figure. He's essentially a chief number cruncher, he didn't go around condemning homosexuality, infidelity, or any other moral, sexual, or social issue, and his attitudes had no apparent effect on Condé Nast's editorial stances or content.

That means that his life, especially his sex life, wasn't remotely newsworthy, and was henceforth HIS OWN DAMN BUSINESS.

As for infidelity, then that would be between him, his wife, their lawyers, and their children, not Gawker, and definitely not the general public.

Gawker Media, the site's parent company is already embroiled in a pretty pricey lawsuit from wrestler Hulk Hogan over them releasing a sex tape of him fooling around with a friend's wife. Though I am surprised that it's only Hulk Hogan suing them and not a class action from Gawker readers who were traumatized by finding out a Hulk Hogan sex tape exists.

Artist depiction of Gawker founder Nick Denton

Anyway... back on topic. Gawker Media now has another lawsuit looming over them like the grim specter of death, and are on damage control. So they folded faster than Superman on laundry day and pulled the story from the website.

It's too little, too late, the damage has been done, but if all you have is a gesture, then you make that gesture.

But wait, as the late Billy Mays would say, there's more.

The editorial staff at Gawker responded to the story be posting this statement:

Our union drive has expressed at every stage of the process that one of our core goals is to protect the editorial independence of Gawker Media sites from the influence of business-side concerns. Today’s unprecedented breach of the firewall, in which business executives deleted an editorial post over the objections of the entire executive editorial staff, demonstrated exactly why we seek greater protection. Our opinions on the post are not unanimous but we are united in objecting to editorial decisions being made by a majority of non-editorial managers. Disagreements about editorial judgment are matters to be resolved by editorial employees. We condemn the takedown in the strongest possible terms.

Yep, the Gawker editorial staff is unionizing to protect the journalistic integrity of a publication that  ran a story that was devoid of all journalistic interest, let alone integrity. It was pointless scandal mongering.

Also, it's like the crew of the Titanic going to the Captain as the ship slips into the icy depths of the North Atlantic and saying: "We've decided to unionize because you opposed us driving into that iceberg. Oh, why are my shoes suddenly wet?"

Now I'm not a prude, and I don't think that there isn't a place for gossip. People love their tittle-tattle, however, Gawker's brand of toxicity may have finally reached its saturation point.

Of course, within days of Gawker's destruction or neutering, something else will pop it to take its place. It's the internet's circle of life.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1239: Random Stuff.

HERE'S A QUESTION:

An anonymous reader, who according to policy, shall be called Dirty Dingus McGee, asked me this question:

Can it be otherwise? Is it possible to have a movie industry that has honest accounting, reasonable wages for stars be they actors or directors or producers, and modest budgets for G-rated films?

Short answer: No.

You see Hollywood has been run poorly for such an unbelievably long time, but has grown so unbelievably huge during that time. That means that you would have an extremely hard time finding experienced people in the industry who have the ability to envision being able to run it another way.

Shoddy business practices have become dogma in Hollywood.

However, there is a way to reform Hollywood, to be the Hollywood version of Martin Luther nailing your 95 theses on the front gates of Paramount.

Be a multi-billionaire who owns their own media conglomerate.

Then you could initiate the reforms and lead by example, but it will only work if you are unbelievably successful, putting out more hits than a short tempered Mafia don and in every medium and genre.

Then maybe, you might inspire reform in the other studios. But your rivals have decades of precedent to back them up

And now a word from our sponsor...

HOW TO GET A HEAD IN THE MOVIE BUSINESS

But seriously folks a person or persons unknown has violated the grave and stolen the head of legendary filmmaker FW Murnau.

Murnau is most famous for his silent horror classic Nosferatu, which was a copyright violating adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. However, he also made Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, one of the most powerful romantic melodramas of the silent era. Sadly, he died at the age of 42 in a car accident in Santa Barbara before he could make much of a dent in the burgeoning sound era.

Now I think I can give you a pretty good profile of the skull thief or thieves. Probably some Goth kids who saw Nosferatu and picked up some BS from the Internet and thought that they could use the skull for black magic.

All I can say is:

GIVE BACK THE SKULL AND SHOW SOME RESPECT!

All you're going to get out of it is a good chance of an unpleasant infection from handling dead body parts with, I suspect, little thought toward hygiene.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1238: Who Is To Blame?

If there is one thing most people agree on, it's that the movie business is in a sorry state. Too many sequels, remakes, reboots, re-imaginings, and the sequels to the re-imagined reboots of the remakes.

Even Dustin Hoffman, one of the most successful and respected movie actors of his generation thinks the movie biz is in the worst state it's ever seen.

I guess he finally got around to seeing those Fockers movies.

Anyway, some like to blame the executives who decide which films get made, I am one of those people, and some like to blame the audience who they think is getting dumber by the day.

Actually, the blame is more widespread and more complicated than we previously thought.

So let's break it down into something easy to read and give it a swift kick in the listicles:

1. THE PAIN OF THEATRE GOING. The days of the neighbourhood bijou within walking distance of the average North American home is long dead. For most North Americans getting to a movie means getting in a car, driving down to the mall or downtown, finding a parking space that you'll probably have to pay for, buying your tickets, buying your snacks, and finding a decent seat where you can see the screen and not have your head blown off by the sound system.

Now imagine doing that with a spouse and kids.

Basically what used to be just a casual stroll, and the spending of some loose change, is now a major expedition requiring transportation, hassle, and a hell of a lot of money.

That means that people are more likely than not to just stay home and watch TV unless the production is some sort of massive event/experience that simply can't be duplicated on a home-size screen and sound system that the whole family can enjoy.

Couple that with...

2. THE HIGH COST OF MAKING & SELLING MOVIES. Hollywood's business practices, which I call the "self-fulfilling idiocy" had given the industry an inflation rate not seen outside of Zimbabwe or Weimar Germany. It just keeps getting worse even though new technology has made the ability to make professional looking cinema cheaper and cheaper.

It's not just the large scale epics that were busting out budget wise. Genres that were once reliably affordable, like romantic comedies, straight-up comedies, mystery-thrillers, and small scale action films were beginning to cost more than they could possibly deliver on screen and at the box office. 

It's not just production. The "synergy" promised by the mega-mergers of the studios with media companies only succeeded in hiking the costs of advertising upward to ridiculous levels. Plus, try to sell a smaller, mature, movie that's R-Rated and you're in for a struggle with the media outlets, many of them refusing to carry ads for R-Rated movies, even if their own sin was dropping one too many "fucks" in the dialogue.

To stay in business Hollywood realized that they needed...

3. FOREIGN MARKETS. If a film is going to have a chance of at least breaking even it's going to have to do well internationally in non-English speaking markets. Now the smug cineastes love to lecture about how foreign films are so much better than the dreck Hollywood puts out. But many of those art-house films they like the bloviate about are not the everyday entertainment the locals enjoy. Most of those foreign language films that play in art-houses in North America usually play in art-houses in their home nations.

Do you know what the plebeians in those foreign language markets like?

For the most part: Tits and Explosions.

Plus, a lot of foreign audiences don't mind plot holes that you can drive a truck through as long as what they're viewing is visually exciting and has some sort of hook that'll keep them interested, like having a familiar "branding" associated with it, like it being a sequel, a remake, or part of some pre-existing franchise.

Gee, they sound a lot like what people think of North American audiences, don't they.

But since the average return on a ticket is about 25¢ from every dollar the studios are going to need more than just the world buying tickets, they also need to dominate...

4. HOME VIEWING. The studios need you to buy or rent Blu-Rays, downloads, or streams of their movies, or to watch them every time they appear on cable, so the cable channels will keep paying to air them. This is where they make their real profits over the long term and make it possible to stay in business.

The studios hope that by sticking to big budget franchises the fans for those franchises will repeatedly see the movies, as well as buy the merchandise.

But there's a...

5. A BIG FAT PARADOX. Actually, there are many big fat paradoxes that are making things worse for the movie industry. So let's have a list inside our listicle...

• The dependence on mega-budget franchises, reboots, sequels, etc., is turning off a lot people who just plain give up on going to movies, and stay home and watch TV.
• The TV channels and streaming services whose license fees have been the profit margin of the movie biz are getting more and more into producing their own original content. Content that's often far better than the stuff playing in theatres.
• The foreign markets all have their own domestic film industries, and thanks to the affordable technology, are starting to produce their own domestic content that can compete directly with Hollywood without the dubbing and massive expense.
• Too many movies, just aren't worth the repeated viewing. They're based on fear, ignorance, and greed, not on a desire to entertain, and they will eventually just gather dust on the shelf.

And that's just a few of the reasons why movies are in the shape they're in.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1237: NBC To Trump - "YOU'RE FIRED!!"

I'm not posting a picture of Trump so here's Ivanka instead

Donald Trump, real estate heir and TV personality, is running for President, and decided to open his campaign with a rant about illegal immigration using all kinds of inflammatory language setting back the cause of immigration reform back about a decade. 

In response, Univision, the Spanish language TV network, ended their relationship with Trump's TV endeavours. In response Trump was loud and boorish, and then NBC cut all ties to the man known as The Donald.

This makes Trump's campaign just one of the most expensive publicity stunts he's ever pulled.

And that's what I think his campaign is, it's just another publicity stunt from a man whose entire life is built on publicity and spin.

Trump's greatest successes, outside of his daughter, who beyond her aesthetic qualities, seems to have a capable head on her shoulders, is his ability to sell myths about himself.

Trump sold the myth that he was a self-made, up from nothing, entrepreneur, when he actually just walked into an already successful real estate business built by his father.

He named a casino after what was supposed to be a tomb

Trump sold the myth that he's been an unqualified success saw a business genius, even though companies in his casino empire have gone bankrupt 4 times.

Think about that, his companies have gone under 4 times in a business where people just walk in to give you money, on land he bought for pennies on the dollar from the Atlantic City government.

Which brings me to my next point, he's currently selling the myth that he's a Republican. I've been doing a little digging, and the more serious conservative outlets do more than consider him a joke, they consider him an opportunist Democrat. I even heard on pundit describe his campaign as how a liberal Democrat imagines a Republican candidate to talk and act.

Despite occasionally registering as a Republican, and endorsing GOP candidate Mitt Romney in 2012, most of Trump's political donations, endorsements, and stances are firmly in the orbit of the Democratic Party.

In the past, Trump has financially supported, endorsed, or actively campaigned very un-Republican causes like strict gun control, government run health care, and the expansion of eminent domain.

"What is eminent domain and why does Trump support its expansion?"

Eminent domain is when the government forces a property owner to sell their property to the government at a discount, sometimes at an even deeper discount if the government decides the property is considered "blighted." 

Normally, eminent domain is supposed to be only used to build projects for the public good. Things like roads, bridges, hospitals, airports, etc…

Still won't post any pictures of Donald.

However, many local and state governments have broadened the definitions of public good, and blighted. Those definitions means that they can effectively take property from taxpaying citizens and give them to private companies for their private aims. They've also expanded the definition of "blighted" to basically allow governments to use taxpayer money to take to private property and sell them to their buddies for pennies on the dollar.

The Supreme Court declared the practice legal in the Kelo V. City of New London decision, a decision that Donald Trump has publicly declared he loves. The abuse of eminent domain is how he built those Atlantic City casinos who went through four bankruptcies.

A little known fact that I gleaned from my research is that while Trump loves the Kelo decision a lot of Republicans despise it. They consider it a combo of big government abuse on behalf of their cronies. It's unlikely that they will let someone who "loves" it get the GOP nomination without a brutal fight.

It's only a matter of time before Trump's many ideological differences with the party become a campaign issue, and the 50+ other Republican candidates jump on him like a pack of ravenous dogs.

Now let's get back to Trump being dumped by NBC.

First, Trump is not being "censored" by NBC. They are a private company, they are not the government. They are also not stopping him from speaking his mind, they are simply saying that they are not going to pay him to do it.

NBC is perfectly within their rights to do that.

Donald Trump is boasting that he will sue NBC for breach of contract and win.

I doubt that.

All showbiz contracts, especially television contracts, have what is called a "moral turpitude" clause. It basically means that if The Donald does anything that might reflect badly on NBC or anything associated with NBC, they are well within their rights to can his ass.

He did, and they did.

End of story.

Now, can we please stop talking about Donald Trump?

A Personal Note And Then It's Answer Time!!

Sorry for the long delays between posts. Had some family business to take care of in the form of taking my parents, both in the seventies for a trip. The plan was to visit my mother's sister in Ontario, then go visit my brother's family in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan.

The trip itself went well. Even saw the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, which I would recommend to anyone visiting the area, but the voyage back was another story.

We booked our return tickets to Canada on an airline based in the USA that shall remain nameless, because it looked like a good deal.

Looked like.

Our first two flights on last Tuesday were cancelled. One was due to bad weather, but I'm not sure why the second one was cancelled.

We had already checked out of our hotel by then, and had to book new rooms at an airport hotel to make our new 6:00 AM Wednesday flight to New Jersey to make our connection to Halifax. (This required being at the security checkpoint by 4:00AM)

Our 6:00 AM flight didn't take off until around 7:30 AM because they didn't have the right weather paperwork from the right government agency.

By the time we arrived in Newark our flight was half-way across New England.

We were put on a new flight, but that flight had been oversold by one ticket.

They decided that my mother, who needs a wheelchair to go long distances, was the passenger to get bumped, and wait 8 hours until the next flight.

My Dad and I couldn't abandon my Mother in New Jersey, nor could I trade my seat to her and leave them stranded in the Halifax airport until the wee hours of the night waiting for me, so we all had to stay.

The 8 hour wait turned into a 9 hour wait, but then we finally got on an airplane to Nova Scotia and checked into another hotel at 1:30 AM Thursday.

When we landed in Halifax, we discovered that the airline lost our luggage.

It literally took us 3 days to accomplish 3.5 hours of flying, and then we had to wait until Saturday to get our luggage.

That was then followed by a stream of hassles and problems both petty and major, that had to be dealt with before I can deliver the answers you crave like the salivating dogs that you are.

LET'S GET THE BALL ROLLING!!

Rainforest Giant asked... 

Howdy Furiousness,

With all the new superhero themed shows out this would seem to be a golden age. Especially, since most of the show runners have shown respect to the original material.  

Are we entering a true golden age like the Westerns did for nearly fifty years or is this a passing fad? Is fantasy on TV going to get bigger than GoT or will it fade on the vine? Is there a family friendly fantasy out there now that Merlin is gone?  

Finally, do you think TV sci fi is in an upward trend or just the superhero stuff?

I think sci-fi TV is in an upward trend both in regards to superheroes and with more traditional science fiction material. It's caught in that rising tide that's affecting all of television.

The TV market is hyper-competitive with every outlet not only competing for market share with each other, but with big screen movies, and the internet. That means you have to bring your "A-Game" or you might as well not play at all.

Also, the ability to make a show that looks like a big budget A-List movie has never been cheaper, which means TV is freer to do more both visually and narratively.

As for family friendly fantasy, something will come up. If there's a profitable niche someone will fill it.

How long will this last?

I don't know.

In the 1950s and 1960s the TV Western looked unassailable, now they're rarer then hen's teeth, but I think it will be a while barring some sort of dramatic crash and burn.

Next question...

Nate Winchester asked... 

Hmm... how best to put this... 

Ok, what, in your opinion, is the best way to handle product placement in a movie? 

I mean I don't entirely object to product placement. In fact I've always found it a bit hypocritical how on some sites you'll see people complaining about how characters are drinking BEER (a bottle with the super generic label) in one review of a movie, then complain about "Bud Lite" products in another movie (then some will end up complaining about knock-off products some movies/tv/etc will make too). One gets the feeling people are never happy. So in instances like Man of Steel the complaints make no sense to me. I don't mind it quite as much because I know that if Superman was having a fight in my hometown (which is about the size of Smallville) and was filmed, one would see hundreds of businesses being trashed. It strikes me as less product placement and more realism. But some folks complain about that in movies. 

(and although it sometimes can bug me in TV shows, I'm willing to let it slide more because I know the show has to pay bills)

Product placement works best if it's done subtly.

However, among the Mad Men of Marketing, subtlety is seen as a vice, and they feel they have to beat the audience's head with their stitched on sales pitches.

Filmmakers and advertisers must find that happy medium where the film looks realistic, labels can be seen, but where things don't look like a badly made commercial.

By the way… I had heard a possible urban legend that the Alex Cox movie Repo Man became famous, incorrectly, as statement against product placement for its use of generic products. The twist is that the generic products were from a product placement deal with a grocery store to use their in-house  brand as free props in exchange for giving it a lot of screen time. 

ILDC said... 

Right now, Disney's film slate doesn't have much going for it besides Marvel, Pixar, live-action cartoon remakes, etc. Is having an increasingly narrow film focus something that's going to someday bite them in the ass? While I'm not saying they have to go back to making R-rated movies, there's something thoughtlessly cynical about saying you only produce tentpoles and "brand deposits".

It will bite them in the ass.

Maybe not today.

Maybe not tomorrow.

But someday.

That's because when a studio starts narrowing its focus to only certain kinds of movies, then they are putting themselves on a path that's only going to get narrower.

Because if they only make Marvel and Pixar movies, then, if some films don't all succeed 100% they're going to limit themselves to certain kinds of Marvel and Pixar movies.

Then they'll limit themselves even further to sequels and reboots of previously successful movies.

And then nothing.

Anonymous said... 

In your opinion, is the lack of original projects, as opposed to sequels, remakes et al , a function of the copyright laws? Just think, if the original 28 year copyright law was in effect, Star Wars, Mad Max and a host of other properties would be public domain and would not be profitable for media companies to continue to turn out unoriginal material. The whole idea of copyright was to boost and stimulate creativity. Now it's strangling it.

I don't think it's the fault of copyright law.

If the old 28 year law was still in effect the studios would be much more militant in renewing their copyrights like they were before the laws were expanded. 

The main cause of unoriginality is fear.

New material is an unknown quantity, and that's terrifying to someone whose job and expense account are dependent on how the company's next quarter is going to go.

Better to stick with things that are known, and those things are franchises and filmmakers with a track record.

ILDC said... 

Do you agree with Ennio Morricone saying film music has gotten less memorable? 

http://www.avclub.com/article/ennio-morricone-not-impressed-modern-movie-soundtr-220401

5/6/15 6:00 p.m. 

I love Ennio Morricone's music, and I do agree that he has a point. A lot of the movie music is forgettable.

But memorable movie music is a double edged sword.

A memorable movie soundtrack needs to be part of an extremely memorable movie, or it could overwhelm the movie and become the only thing people can remember.

Maestro Morricone has consistently done great and groundbreaking work for decades, but more than a few of the over 500 films he's provided music for have been truly worthy of his work.

If a lot of modern movie music comes across as bland, it's because in many cases it kind of has to be bland.

maurice asked... 

What's your view of the future of the integration of the most popular YouTube and other Internet stars (formerly known as "user-generated content") into the mainstream entertainment business? Disney just bought an aggregation of YouTube-stars (a new-media "studio"?) for $500m. This seems to be a chip on the table, maybe nothing more. Tastes for that kind of content change rapidly and barriers to entry are low, and so it doesn't seem to jibe with Disney/Iger's current hyper-monetization of big intellectual property brands and tentpoles. Jeff Zucker's jibe of a few years back, that it doesn't make sense to trade analog dollars for digital pennies, is relevant as well. So, perhaps, is the BuzzFeed model of clickbait garbage masquerading as journalism (although the best YouTube performers are definitely good entertainers). Will big data analytics and targeted advertising even out the differences and help the two worlds converge in a structural way? Or, despite some obvious opporunities for synergy, are the two worlds simply too different to merge?

I think it will all hinge on one thing: the star quality of the specific project or person.

I don't see YouTube or another form of social media completely taking over entertainment. It's too anarchic, too splintered, and outside of periodic fads like Gangnam Style, incapable of getting a project to stand above all the static and reach the sort of wide audience that the major professional media outlets can.

However, if the big media companies are smart, they'll look beyond the flash-in-the-pan YouTube "stars" to look for real talent, they way they used to hunt for talent on theatrical and nightclub stages and radio.

But that takes effort, and I don't see the big studios doing that unless they're really desperate.

Gary Burnaska said… 

What is your take on hollywood pairing up 20 year old femaies with leading men in their 40s. We've seen this many times with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. Is this some sort of Hollywood mid-life crisis.  

I do have to admit they also work well together.

I did recently write about this phenomenon, so click here, and thanks for giving me an excuse to post a picture of Jennifer Lawrence with whom I am somewhat smitten.

I hope I answered your questions in this edition that managed to be both rushed and late at the same time.

Feel free to ask me anything in the comments.

ASK ME ANYTHING!!

Family business is going to keep me a tad busy for the next couple of weeks. Which means the odds of me putting up a new post are pretty slim.

However, all is not lost.

GIMME YOUR QUESTIONS!!

That's right, ask me anything related to pop culture and the business behind it, and I will pretend to have an answer.

When my family business is done, I'll post my answers, so get asking, the more the merrier.