Re: Jackson KING KONG remake (was Why Not Released???)

Jay G. wrote: 
On Tue, 19 Jul 2005 16:23:22 GMT, The Man Behind The Curtain wrote:

Very true, but I think you can tell to some extent the difference between they tried hard but didn't quite make it (a flawed but good effort, Lord of the Rings for example) vs. a purely cynical attempt to take our money turning out trash. (Just page through the paper and pick almost any movie out right now.) 


Why do you find it more believable that a studio would cynically produce
something they knew would be crap and everyone else did for the money
rather than the studio and production crew aiming to make a film that, like
Shakespeare, would be "merely entertaining"?


Because they only care about money.

The old studios were run and owned by people who really loved movies. Today's studios are run by bean-counters and conglomerates who look to pull profit out of anything under their corporate umbrella--oil, banking and finance, movies, music, theme parks, hotel chains, video games, internet, TV, whatever. They are appointed based on their ability to pump the stock price and little more. And it's the same with any other corporate enterprise. If you don't know that, you haven't been very far or deeply into corporate America.

For many things this mindset works fine. But for art it's a little different. Sometimes art takes longer to simmer. Sometimes great art doesn't make a profit, or doesn't make one right away, or doesn't make as big a one as crap. Shakespeare may have been very popular in his own day, but others were even bigger crowd-pleasers but today their are largely forgotten. Were the management philosophies (if you can call them that) of today applied to The Bard, he would be cut out of the picture because, while his plays do fine, someone else's do better, and do it faster. Then someone else gets his chance based on his ability to do even better even faster. Then someone else topples that person by doing even better even faster. It's a feedback loop. You'll notice most syndicated TV shows and local news programs don't even do honest-to-God reviews of films anymore. They just tell us how much money they made on their first weekend. THAT'S what's important. So that's what they aim for. That's how the executives, the producers, the directors, the writers, et al, keep their jobs. That's how the stars justify $20 million for this picture after they just got $15 million for their last picture. No one walks into Universal and says "I should get more money because last time out, I created ART."

Nobody gives a flying *** about art. Except for one night, Oscar night, where they trade their tattered jeans for expensive gowns and tuxes and wax eloquently on the importance of what they're doing for art. Then the next day it's back to slasher films and horror and paging through old TV Guides to find the next 70s program or made-for-TV movie to rip off.

I agree that not every film is aiming for an Oscar, but one look at the
trailers for "Dukes of Hazzard" and "Bad News Bears" shows that they were
making films they hope will be enjoyable, if not terribly memorable or
moving.

-Jay

No, they're making movies with name-recognition built-in so that they can turn the quickest buck possible, and if you believe any different you are naive. There are plenty better scrips sitting on shelves of every studio--you could literally fill a soundstage with them--but if you can't convince an executive today in--it used to be five minutes, but people in the industry tell me it's now down to two--that you're going to deliver them a blockbuster, they don't want to hear your pitch. And what's the easiest way to do that? Give them a title they've heard of before (Bad News Bears, King Kong, Poseidon Adventure, Bewitched, et many a cetra). That's it. There's no creative process. The whole thing is about as "creative" as looking at the fact that everyone's wearing frayed blue jeans right now and saying, "We should go into the frayed blue jeans business." But then marketing can hang it on a peg. Otherwise figuring out how to package it is *work.* Why do work for a risky proposition when they can not do work for something that's closer to a sure-fire thing? You don't think executives found the script to "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" to be enjoying, *and* terribly moving??? They damn sure did. It got passed around and passed around till it was dog-eared. Do you know how many rejections Nia Vardalos got before an indie production company made her film??? Do you know that "Shakespeare In Love" sat on the shelf for almost ten years, because "everyone knew it wasn't commercial," utnil Gwyneth Paltrow said she wanted it to be her next film--period? Do you think the "creative Forces" behind Bewitched had to go through all that to get to production?




John

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Von Herzen, moge es wieder zu Herzen gehen.  --Beethoven

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