Good article on why Hollywood is f'ed

In a losing race with the zeitgeist - Los Angeles Times

"There are still optimists who say the sky isn't falling, who insist that a few hits will turn things around, or gas prices will come down, or that the business being off 7% this year has more to do with the absence of a left-field sensation such as 'The Passion of the Christ' than a long-term decline in moviegoing.

To them, I say — go ye to Costco or Best Buy and watch the giant HDTVs zooming out the door, the TVs that used to cost $7500 that now go for $1995 and allow middle-class people to have a marvelous moviegoing experience right at home without $10.50 tickets, $4 popcorn, 20 minutes of annoying commercials and some guy in the next row yakking away on his cellphone."


I've been thinking about the current Hollywood losing streak in the context of the creative explosion of 70's cinema, ably chronicled in the excellent Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.

You could do a find/replace on a history of 70's cinema and not end up far off base...'the out of touch remnants of the Studio system' become 'the out of touch Corporate paymasters', etc. The DVD panic is redolent of previous 'television' and 'VCR' panics, but exacerbated by the corporate insistence on immediate, massive profits.

The studios with their ever-narrowing lag time between theatrical and DVD releases are digging their own graves. It reminds me of that parable where the scorpion stings the dog carrying it across the river to death. A corporation like Sony can no more defy its nature than the scorpion.

Personally, I don't really care. I watch one or two 'event' movies a year, the rest of the time you'll find me in our local art house, ingesting some subtitled opus from a minor national cinema still motivated by the creative act instead of the mercantile impulse to move units for Best Buy.

There will be another sea change akin to the creative explosion of the 70's, but who knows what form it will take. Digital distribution is looming for theaters (the last hang-up is who's paying for it, the studios or the theaters), it's just a matter of time before Netflix cuts out the middle man and starts streaming digital films directly to their customers (mailing dvds back and forth doesn't really make sense in a media climate where anyone with the slightest bit of computer know-how can download the same films for nothing).

There will be room for creativity in mainstream cinema again...the only real question is will the corporate studios catch the wave, or be drowned by it.