Hollywood Babble On & On #942: Movie Budgets Are Too Damn High!

A tip of my jaunty sombrero to reader Blast Hardcheese for aiming my jaded eyes at this article from the LA Times.  If you're too lazy to click the link I'll sum it up for you: J.J. Abrams, the man behind the Star Trek revival and other major projects on the big and small screen, say that movies, especially big studio movies, cost too damn much.

He's right, while he's made some big budget movies, primarily for Paramount, the films that he tends to have complete and direct control over are relatively inexpensive. Films like Cloverfield and Super 8 were large scale science fiction projects, but were done for budgets that wouldn't cover the cost of James Cameron's ego polish.

It's a philosophy I'd like to see spread through Hollywood because the industry is intent on pricing itself out of business.

The major studios are spending more money on fewer films than ever before. Yet despite a handful of hits, the summer movie season, usually pure gravy for the industry, is most likely going to be either flat, or slightly down from last year.

Folks are blaming the flat to dwindling state of the box office on the expansion of entertainment options to be found on TV and the internet, and that the studios need to make these mega-sized blockbusters to get the teenagers to spend money in theaters, and hopefully pay extra for the 3D.

 

I call bullshit on that.

Thanks to technological advances the movies should be cheaper than ever to make and distribute.

But they're not. 

Why?

There are no natural market reasons for their prices to go up, this inflation is purely artificial and comes from an unspoken collusion between studios, stars, and filmmakers, and each have their own reasons.

STUDIOS:

1. The more money being spent on a movie, the more control they can exert over the project. Mo'money, mo'power!

2. Tossing money at a problem is easier than using imagination.

3. If they throw lots of up-front money at the big stars they're less likely to make a stink about the outright looting of the "back end" profits.

4. When the movie costs a fortune and a half, it's way easier to claim the film lost money at the box office than if it was a smaller budget movie.

STARS:

1. It's assuages their anger at not getting as much of their share of the profits as their contract stipulates.

2. It makes them feel important, and gives them more power and status on set, and in the Hollywood community.

FILMMAKERS:

1. The bigger the movie the better the chance that it'll get a big release, even when it's a piece of steamed over shit.

2. Outside of stars the biggest thing a movie buys a filmmaker is time. The more time you have to fiddle and tweak, the happier a lot of filmmakers are. 

3. Money is easier to use than imagination. When in doubt make everything look busy, complicated, and loud.

Do I see this changing anytime soon?

I really can't say.  Reform's necessary, but too many people are too heavily invested in the inefficient and expensive status quo to accept change at the speed that's probably necessary.

Hollywood Babble On & On #941: Late Night Losses

It's incredible how things can change.

In the 1970s The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was directly responsible for 20-25% of all the revenue earned by the then struggling NBC Network.

With its entire profit margin in the hands of one man, host and producer Johnny Carson, NBC couldn't do enough for him. He was treated like royalty, and any attempt to "bring him under heel" tended to backfire in the face of the network executives.

As I said at the beginning, things have changed, drastically.

This past week The Tonight Show with Jay Leno lost 20 staffers, and Leno himself took a multimillion dollar pay cut to avoid any more job losses. Now the official word is that the cuts are a way to adjust the show's budget back to its original late night standard, after bumping it up for Leno's disastrous prime-time run in 2009. However there just happens to be an even larger wave of layoffs hitting the NBC-Universal media congealment conglomerate ordered by their owners Comcast.

However, I'll stick with talking about the late night talk shows.

Apparently, The Tonight Show is only just breaking even. That's shocking, not only because of its past as a money machine, but because of its status as the number one late night talk show in America.

However, having the number one late night talk show in America right now is like having the nicest house made of shit in all of Shitsville.

Overall viewership is down, their demographics are aging, and the cultural influence of talk shows is practically non-existent.

I can remember a time when a relatively unknown performer could appear on the Tonight Show and have his or her career made overnight. If you're a comedian having Johnny Carson call you to the couch at the end of your set was like getting blessed by the Pope of Comedy, and your life and career would never be the same.

Nowadays, appearing on what the networks consider their flagship late night talk shows really doesn't do anything for anyone. If you're a big star you're not going to be affected unless you show up sans pants and your antics get you mentioned negatively in other media outlets, and if you're an up and coming performer, you're not really going to get any real benefits from it.

Part of this is because of the fragmentation of the audience. There are a hell of a lot more entertainment options out there than just three TV channels, but that's not the whole story.

Another part of the story is that both the fundamental natures of the format and the hosts of the 11:30 flagship network shows* just don't measure up the way they used to.

Now socially Johnny Carson was, by his own admission, shy and stand-offish, however, on air, he was very relaxed, quick, and a master of getting the funny out of his guests. His casual, conversational style humanized his celebrity guests. When things went wrong, he didn't freak out, he rolled with it, made a joke out of it, and made everyone involved look good. He really looked like he enjoyed being there on stage with his quests, and that he loved show business in general.

Leno and Letterman both look like they are only there to fill time until the other either quits or drops dead. Leno strikes me like he wants to get the whole thing over with so he can get back to his car collection. He doesn't seem remotely interested in his guests, just that they're over and done with before the next commercial break.

David Letterman doesn't strike me any better. All I get from Letterman is a desire to show that he's smarter than his guests, which isn't that hard; which I'll get to in a minute, pandering to the critics and the elite New York media social circle, and outliving Leno.

Neither host seems like they want to get to know their guests the way Carson did. If they can't be interested in their guests, than there's no way their audience is going to get interested, and they tune out.

The format's also a problem. There's not time really for the audience to get to know anyone, no time really to be funny, just get them on, get them off, to make room for an appearance by the latest brain-dead reality TV troglodyte, or inarticulate kiddie pop star in the vain hope that their fans aren't already in bed before the monologue's done.

There's no room for casual conversation or even a funny story, just make your plug and get the hell out.

But it's not all the fault of the hosts and the network. The current crop of celebrities is hurtin' for certain when it comes to being an entertaining guest. Far too many are inarticulate, uninteresting, and completely incapable of being funny or charming. Those that are, have to fight to get a slot on a talk show because Leno's afraid of them replacing him, and Letterman's afraid of them looking smarter than him, unless they're an old friend.

What's happening to the late night talk show is what's happening to the old-school variety show in the 1970s. Too many shows, not enough talent, and not enough material to go around.

Eventually those old variety shows disappeared from American TV, and I fear the late night talk show might go the same way.

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*And yes, I know I left out Jimmy Kimmel and the other after midnight talk shows, but they're not really in the same time-slot, or given the same cultural importance by the media.

Hollywood Babble On & On #940: Random Drippings From My Brain Pan

Time for three tiny tales and the lessons that they may teach us...

ITV WANTS DICK....

...Clark Productions that is.  The British commercial broadcaster ITV has expressed interest in buying the television production company  founded by producer and American Bandstand host Dick Clark. 

It's joining the Yankee CBS Network who have also expressed interest in buying the company.

Now you're probably wondering why two pretty big TV networks are so keen to buy a production company that's comparatively small when compared to the major studios.

CBS has its reasons, and while ITV has similar reasons, it also has a reason that's uniquely its own.

Most commercial broadcasters buy their shows from production companies and studios through what's called a license fee. That fee pays for the episode to be made, including salaries, and gives the network the right to premiere the show on their channel and rerun it at least once following a pre-agreed payment schedule depending on their contract with the producer. The key is that during this airing period the network keeps all of the revenue made from selling advertising on the show.

After the initial airing, the production company/studio that owns the show can then license the show to local stations, cable networks, and home video outlets, and pocket all of the profits from these sales.

The networks looked at the money being made by producers and studios and said "me too." They started their own production divisions or bought their own studios, and started giving those divisions prime spots on the network's schedule.

The results have been mixed at best.

That's because it denied what made network broadcasting successful: variety.

I'm not talking about old-fashioned variety shows, but a variety of shows, in different genres, and different styles. The competition between studios, and independent production companies meant that there was a steady supply of new ideas crashing against the rocks of narrow TV network mindsets, and eventually a few drips of something good will get through.

When the networks tried to monopolize their schedules with stuff from their own studios suddenly the competition moved away from the networks to cable channels.

The broadcast nets are opening their door slightly to outsiders, but are also hoping to freshen their blood by buying smaller companies that have track records and libraries.

ITV shares those reasons with CBS, but it also has one of its own: America.

Purchasing Dick Clark Productions gives ITV a foothold in an English language TV market that's way bigger than the one in their native England. ITV exports a lot of shows to America via PBS and cable networks, and it can expand their place in this market.

Let the bidding war begin!

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE INTERNS

The interns who are suing Fox Searchlight over being unpaid interns on the movie Black Swan are expanding their suit to include all interns working for the 20th Century Fox movie/media empire.

Do unpaid internships suck?  

Are they over-used by greedy studios? 

Of course, but I wrote about this story before, the aggrieved interns seem to have missed the point of internships, and I don't think they're suit is really going to change anything other than make them unemployable in the movie business.

DAREDEVIL GOES HOME

Fox is letting the rights to the Marvel superhero Daredevil lapse, and, come October, he'll be back home with Marvel Productions and Disney. 

This development fizzles out rumors that Fox wanted to hold onto Daredevil so much they were willing to trade their rights to elements of the Fantastic Four to keep it, and could potentially put the kibosh to director Joe Carnahan's proposed 1970s period action flick for which he made this sizzle reel...

Personally, I don't think Fox was too keen to keep Daredevil. Their movie version with Ben Affleck as the blind crime-fighter did okay, but it wasn't a major blockbuster domestically, and they probably weren't too keen on rebooting it as a 70s movie.

However, there is a silver lining to this.

Right now Marvel/Disney/ABC are developing a series with Joss Whedon that would share the same fictional universe as their successful movie franchises, while not necessarily being a direct part of them.

Daredevil's a perfect fit for television. He's a "street level" hero, dividing his time between fighting traditional comic book costumed villains, ninjas, and normally dressed New York city mobsters, not massive alien invasions, world destroying disasters, or giant bug-eyed monsters.

That makes him affordable for small screen weekly adventures, that don't have to result in massive changes in Earth's geography that then must then be included in the movies for the sake of continuity.

The franchise also has a large supporting cast of friends, foes, and fellow travelers, extended story and character arcs, and frequent elements of personal tragedy. All things Joss Whedon has a good track record with.

Now I'm not predicting a Daredevil TV series here. I'm just saying that I think it would be a pretty good fit.

Hollywood Babble On & On #939: Warner Plops Premiere

Movie and media conglomerate Warner Bros. is closing down its direct-to-DVD division Warner Premiere, which they founded in 2006.  

Now the folks at Warner Bros. is blaming the collapse of the DVD market for the division's collapse, but let's look a little deeper.

Yes, the DVD market is weak. Cable, internet, and other mediums have stolen its thunder, and people are iffy over whether or not to commit to Blu-Ray, but that's not the whole story. If it was the whole story, then Warner Premiere would still be running, just selling its output to the aforementioned other mediums, I think what sank WP was its very business model.

You see, since the advent of home video as a viable market in the early 1980s people have been making movies directly for that market, and often making money out of it.  

Usually these were low budget "exploitation" movies in the genres of horror, action, science-fiction, and lowbrow comedy. For the most part the big studios avoided this market, thinking it was beneath them.

However, they soon realized the money-making potential wasn't beneath them, and jumped in with both feet.

And this is where they screwed up, not only their direct-to-video divisions, but the DVD market as well.

"What was the screw up?" you are asking, furrowing your brow in a feeble attempt to understand.

The screw up was the choice of movies they made and released.

You see the big studios couldn't let a division of theirs pump out low budget exploitation movies by new talent heavily ladled with of over the top novelty. No, that wouldn't be right for a major studio like Warner Bros. to do.  Instead, they churned out a bunch of cheap knock-off sequels and prequels to movies that did well in the theaters, but not well enough to justify a theatrically released sequel.

I'm talking about films like this--

Movies guaranteed to repel fans of the original, and fail to win over new fans. 

Now I'm not saying that every one of these knock-offs was a stinker financially. But it's like running a pyramid scheme, eventually you will hit a wall, and folks will stop buying what you're selling.

Add that to the general ennui the audience has been feeling towards a lot of the big studios' output in recent years and you have a recipe for the collapse of the home video market.

Not only that, other mediums, like cable TV, downloads, etc... more or less shut out the bulk of these officially sanctioned knock-offs.  

Why?

Imagine you run a cable channel, you're starved for content and a studio comes to you with a package of movies to sell, and the meeting goes something like this:

STUDIO STOOGE: I got a bunch of sequels and prequels to big hit movies for your channel.

CHANNEL GUY: Great, do they have the original stars?

STUDIO STOOGE: No.

CHANNEL GUY: The writer?

STUDIO STOOGE:  No.

CHANNEL GUY: The director?

STUDIO STOOGE: No.

CHANNEL GUY: Is there anyone from the original movie involved?

STUDIO STOOGE: No. But the replacements all have the same haircuts as the people in the original movie.

CHANNEL GUY: I think we'll stick with reruns of Small Wonder and Lifetime 'Woman in Peril' movies.

These same outlets might spend money for the broadcast rights to a novel low budget genre movie, but they're not going to spend it for a cheap counterfeit that's guaranteed to leave audiences disappointed.

From what I was able to gather, the most popular stuff put out by Warner Premiere was the DC Universe series. They were animated movie adaptations of popular comic books with an eye towards giving the fans what they wanted.

The DCU animated movies will be the only thing continuing after the shuttering of Warner Premiere, and obviously so.

What sticks in my craw the most was that Warner Bros. pissed away an opportunity to use a direct-to-video label to develop new talent and new ideas. Instead, they tried to rehash old ideas cheaply, and that's why they failed.

Hollywood Babble On & On #938: NBC- National Bialystock Corporation

The London Olympics are over, NBC enjoyed a ratings bonanza from its coverage, and may even get a modest profit out of the deal, but it's also revealed something about NBC's business plan.

NBC's business plan is to offend, insult, and annoy as many viewers as possible.

Yes, millions of people watched the network's coverage, but I've yet to hear of anyone who was happy about it. I know that my own twitter timeline was dominated by complaints from viewers who complained about the tape delays, the games they played with the editing to make it look more like a reality show than a sporting even, the interrupting of events to air yet another interview with swimmer Michael Phelps, the brainless and constant chatter of the commentators during the opening and closing ceremonies, dropping coverage of a memorial to the victims of the London terrorist attacks, and holding back on airing sections of the closing ceremonies to air a preview episode of this show:

It's almost as if NBC is being run by Max Bialystock, one of the main characters in Mel Brooks' The Producers. If you're not familiar with the film, the stage musical, or the film of the stage musical, The Producers is about Max Bialystock, a washed up Broadway producer who teams with his accountant Leo Bloom to scam investors by putting on a deliberate flop.

Their plan is to find the worst, most offensive, play they can find, oversubscribe it to investors, let it flop and pocket the money.

The problem with NBC's resident Bialystocks is that no one seems to be really gaining anything out of it.

NBC is struggling to reconnect with audiences after David Jeff Zucker's extended reign of error. That reign was supposed to have ended with cable giant Comcast's purchase of the NBC-Universal empire, but there seems to be no end in sight.

NBC scored good ratings with the Olympics, and they're going to trumpet that as a triumph and proof that they're a pack of geniuses, but it comes with 3 caveats.

1. The Olympics are a major sporting event that can generally get pretty good ratings any year when the USA isn't boycotting it like they did at the old Moscow games in 1980.

2. NBC had a monopoly on the live coverage, which made them the only place to go to see the Olympics.

3. I have yet to hear from anyone who was remotely pleased with how NBC handled the Olympics. In fact, most report being annoyed and angered that an event meant to promote international fraternity and peace was being used to push this--

--A sitcom that looks like something you would see in a sketch or a movie about bad network TV shows.

Not only that, millions of people who saw the preview, now actively resent the show, and will probably avoid it like the plague during the Fall TV season.

So you have to wonder, who the hell could possibly be gaining from this nonsense?

It's certainly not NBC, and it's definitely not the viewer.

Hollywood Babble On & On #937: Sequels 2: Son Of Sequels!

Today we've got two stories of sequels, one very obvious, and one that less than obvious.

OBVIOUS SEQUEL NEWS

Joss Whedon the man behind the cult hits Buffy The Vampire Slayer & Firefly TV series and the mega hit movie Avengers has signed on with Disney to write and direct Avengers 2: More Avenging (working title) as well as develop a TV series set in the Marvel universe for its sister ABC TV network.

This is probably a good move on the part of both Marvel and Whedon.

For Marvel:

1. Audiences and critics cited the film's script and directing as worthy of the repeat viewings that take a film from doing well to doing great.

2. It allows Marvel to make Whedon into their "Christopher Nolan," giving the Avengers movies a greater sense of continuity as the singular vision of a filmmaker with a genuine interest in, and ability with the source material.

For Whedon:

1. While Whedon has a dedicated fan following, but his projects, even the successful ones, tend only to be cult hits. A greater number of his projects, especially in TV, fizzled out, mostly due to network or studio neglect. Being associated as the central "genius" behind a mega-blockbuster franchise greatly improves his clout and prominence in Hollywood.

It's easy for a network or a studio to dismiss a critical darling who makes cult material, but they can't say no to a blockbuster factory.

LESS OBVIOUS SEQUEL NEWS

There's some talk going around that Fox, writer/director Mike Judge and actor Terry Crews are considering some sort of spin-off of Judge's 2006 movie Idiocracy.

In case you haven't heard of it, Idiocracy is about a man with an average IQ who goes into cryogenic suspension for 500 years to discover that dumb people have out-bred the smart people and society was a dumb dystopia.

In the film Terry Crews played Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, a pro-wrestler and porn star elected to be President of the United States, because that's what happens when everyone's an idiot.

Personally, I don't see the project going much farther than a few internet sketches and here's why:

1. Fox is probably gun-shy about the whole thing.  The original film was made in 2004, then Fox sat on it for almost two years, only to dump it in theaters without publicity for a total theatrical take of less than $450,000. It's current status is strictly as a cult phenomena with fans who think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it's unlikely this cult will take this project to mainstream success.

They had no faith in the original, so I don't see them having much faith in a spin-off.

2. It struck me as a one-joke premise, which is good for one film, but is not really the basis for a strong franchise. After a while it all comes across as repetitive, if not in specifics, then in general attitude and style.

That's what I think, let me know what you think in the comments...

Hollywood Babble On & On #936: Total Recall, Recalled.

The remake of the 1990 Total Recall fizzled at the box office completely powerless before the seemingly unstoppable force of The Dark Knight Rises.

What can we learn from this fizzling?

1. There really needs to be someone outside of Hollywood who wants to see the remake.

If you read anything about the original Total Recall movie the franchise fizzled out almost immediately after it came out on VHS.

An attempt at a sequel, based on another Phillip K. Dick short story, died in development because no one wanted to do it, and the audience wasn't exactly demanding. The rights to the story lapsed, ended up at another studio, and became the Tom Cruise movie Minority Report a decade or so later.

A 1999 Canadian/German/American Cable TV series called Total Recall 2070, tried to cash in on the name, but failed to last more than one season due to extreme lack of interest.

When the studio announced plans for the remake, the overwhelming reaction was one of being extremely underwhelmed. Even the most ardent sci-fi action movie nerds were giving it a big fat "feh." 

And let's not forget the original. I caught it on TV a while back and the charms it held when I first saw it were long gone. 

I got the sense from watching it that all director Paul Verhoeven wanted was to just overdo everything to the extreme, and to hell with coherence. Evidence can be found in the the film's then record breaking $60 million budget and the fact that the first thing people think of when the movie's mentioned is the 3-boobed hooker*.

2. Just because someone is big in Hollywood doesn't mean they're going to sell tickets.

Colin Farrell is actually a good actor, but his appeal to the audience was tainted early on by Hollywood's attempt to pigeonhole him as the pretty Irish bad-boy which only made him look like a huge asshole.

This has put him in a strange twilight zone. Hollywood loves him, because he looks good on a magazine cover, but the audience really doesn't see his presence as a plus.

I don't know what he can do to break this because it seems pretty insurmountable.

3. Special effects can overwhelm a movie.

When you're just bombarding the audience with wave after wave of impossible imagery courtesy of money and computer technology, the thrill is going to fade really quickly.

When I was young we were thrilled by stunts and FX because they required some pretty involved mechanics, skill, and artistic flair to pull off. Now, all you need is the right software being manipulated by some pale guy in a windowless office.

I hate to sound like a fawning Nolan fanboy, but you can see that he only uses the minimum of CGI to pull something off, preferring the verisimilitude of physical stunts and effects.

That's what I think, tell me what you think in the comments...

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*Boobs are like martinis. 1 is not enough, but three is too many.

Hollywood Babble On & On #935: Bad Idea / Good Idea / Bad Idea

BAD IDEA:

Actor and producer Vince Vaughn is in talks to produce a TV series continuation of the cheesy family sitcom The Brady Bunch.

If you've lived in a cave for the last century the original Brady Bunch show was a sitcom about a widower with 3 sons and a widow with 3 daughters, who get married, create TV's first blended family, and wacky hijinks ensue.

Vaughn's production would follow the youngest Brady son, now a middle aged divorced dad, who marries a divorced mother, and wacky hijinks ensue.

Now I've heard that Vaughn's a nice guy, and all that, but I think this is a mistake. There have been half a dozen attempts to extend or revive the franchise ever since the bloom went off the show's rose, from adding Cousin Oliver, to a variety show, to spin-offs, to reunion specials, and they all failed. Then there were the 2 hyper-ironic 90s parody-remake movies that while modestly successful were very quickly forgotten as a 1-joke property that went on too damn long.

While the whole blended family concept was new and novel with the original series, it's been done, it's old hat, and unless you're willing to go into Dan Harmon-esque insanity, pretty much all the material is going to be well retreaded.

What do you think about this idea Victorian Era Gentleman?

Yep, me too.

GOOD IDEA:

Producer Hutch Parker has inked a deal for a TV series adaptation of the Dave Robicheaux novels best-selling mystery author James Lee Burke.

If you're unfamiliar with Dave Robicheaux he's the star detective of a series of 19 novels by Burke set in Louisiana. He's a Vietnam vet, a recovering alcoholic, and former New Orleans police detective who becomes the main detective for the New Iberia Sheriff's department.

He's been adapted for the big screen twice. First with Heaven's Prisoners in 1996 starring Alec Baldwin, and In The Electric Mist in 2009 with Tommy Lee Jones. The first film was a box office failure, and the second movie wasn't even released theatrically in the USA.

That leads me to why I think adapting the books into a TV series is probably the best thing for the author and the books.

Adapting the individual books into feature films means that each novel has to go through years of development, and if they're luck enough to be made, they're only going to be lost in the shuffle as the major studios chase a decreasing number of mega-blockbusters and forget how to make and market the smaller scale, non-spectacle movies.

Television is the perfect medium for a adapting a series of mystery novels. They can begin with book one and have a much freer hand adapting them without having to cram them into a less than 2 hour package. They can do each novel as a one and done TV movie, a multi-part miniseries, or as a series of 1 hour "chapters." Whatever suits the material best is there for them to use.

Also cable TV is much freer subject-matter wise than feature films which fear losing money because of the dreaded "R" rating.

British television has had a lot of success adapting the books and beyond of popular detective novelists in this way. Shows like Inspector Morse, Midsomer Murders, and Agatha Christie's Poirot, not only do well domestically but sell internationally, enjoying multiple airings in markets all over the world.

So I wish them good luck with this project, and would like to see more like it.

BAD IDEA:

The ABC network has inked a deal with mega-movie producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura to produce a series called Founding Fathers.

The series is about a veteran who returns home to Texas and gets mixed up with the sinister militia movement.

Now that idea would have been cutting edge and daring and relevant if this was 1994.

The militia movement was an offshoot of the survivalism of the 1980s. When fear of nuclear war died down with the fall of the Soviet Union it was replaced with fear of an overreaching and oppressive federal government.

These fears were stoked when raids by federal authorities in Waco Texas, and Ruby Ridge Idaho ended in violence and deaths. For most of the early 1990s the militias were a popular bogeyman in the media, waiting in the woods, getting increasingly radicalized and racially polarized, heavily armed and just itching to overthrow the government on a moment's notice. A lot of the fear mongering was exaggerated, especially since the biggest danger wasn't from any armed group, but from a maniacal lone wolf.

It all came to a head when Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal office building in Oklahoma City killing 168 and wounding 800. While his act was not an operation by any known militia group, he was a known militia sympathizer, and claimed that his motive for the attack was to inspire a revolt to overthrow the federal government.

Well, in reality, it turned out that very few people in the militia movement wanted to be associated with a man who blew up a day care center, and the whole movement started to fizzle out. 

True, there are still several dozen "militias" out there, but the days when they were considered a clear and relevant danger to the country are long over.

So why do a show about militias?

I think the motive is more political than commercial. Right now the USA is extremely polarized and Hollywood loves to associate people they don't agree with politically with violent fringe movements.

Personally, I don't think much will come from this project, it will either fizzle out in development, or last about three episodes and get cancelled. Because while they may love sending a message, if it doesn't pay the bills, they might as well just post a blog at the Huffington Post, it's much cheaper.

What do you think Victorian Era Gentleman?

Too true, too true.

Hollywood Babble On & On #934: Too Soon?

There are two reasons a comedian makes the news these days. 

Either they've signed a deal for a sitcom, or they've offended somebody and people are demanding that they make some sort of public apology, possibly involving a form of self flagellation or face being boycotted or censored into oblivion.

You had Gilbert Gottfried getting fired from his Aflac duck gig for tweeting jokes about the Japanese tsunami disaster, Adam Carolla being deemed worse than Hitler for saying that he sees more men in comedy than women, and most recently Dane Cook had to apologize for making jokes about the recent shootings in Aurora.

And it's not just an American thing. A Canadian comedian was fined thousands of dollars and literally banned by a government agency from performing in the province of British Columbia for the crime of hurting the feelings of a heckler who was being rowdy at an open mic night.

Why are people putting so much weight on the often off the cuff rantings of comedians, who are not role models in any sense of the word?

Two reasons: 

1. It's easy. 

2. Too many people NEED to be offended these days.

Need more explanation? Okay...

1. It's easy because comedians are prone to run off at the mouth. This is especially true when they're developing new material, and are prone to do and say anything in front of any kind of audience to see if it will work.

Sprinkle a dozen camera phones recording every second of a live performance, or people taking screen grabs of their social media postings, and suddenly something that would have just got a few boos from the audience goes viral, and it's all over the world.

Which brings us to...

2. There are people who just need to be offended because they profit from it in some way. First there's a 24/7/365 media industry that needs stories and there's nothing they like better than someone doing something outrageous and offensive because it requires little to no investigation or analysis.

Second are the professionally outraged. Lawyers, activists, sensitivity trainers, and others all need causes to get attention for themselves and their causes, and to keep their paychecks coming. So they can, and will, jump on anything they think they can use, and like I said earlier, comedians are easy targets.

Now this is where I get to say that the Middle Ages had done something right.

You see back in olden days, between plague outbreaks, peasant revolts, and sieges the royal court would be entertained by the Court Jester or the Fool. 

Now there was a rule that the Jester could not be punished for anything he said, no matter how offensive or outrageous.

Why?

Because laughter, even inappropriate laughter is essential to our mental survival, and occasionally a nugget of deeper truth would plop out of the all the foolishness.

See, even before the invention of the dinner fork, they knew that censoring comedy was wrong.

Now you're probably sitting at your computer thinking "This isn't the Middle Ages, this is the Internet Age where outrage is cheap and plentiful. What do I do if a comedian says something that offends me?"

The answer is NOTHING!

Don't laugh.

Don't boo.

Don't go running around screaming about your hurt feelings.

Just sit there in silence.

You see boos and screams of outrage are a form of attention, and some comics would prefer attention over laughs. However silence stings the comic, it can induce potentially fatal cases of flop sweat, and it forces them to move onto something else that might work better.

Trailer Trashing: 2001?

Here's a fan made trailer for Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey done as if it were a modern day Michael Bay style summer blockbuster. Both blasphemous and amusing...

The only other big movie news is that Peter Jackson is going to make a 3rd Hobbit movie, and you can read what I think about that idea here, which I wrote when it was just an idea. Plot-wise: It's going to be a buddy/road-trip movie about Gollum searching for his lost ring with Jar-Jar Binks.