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First Blog
Written by Administrator
"A Celebration of Truly Worthless Stuff" Some reflections on the decline and demise of Hollywood, or "So Long, It's been good to know you." Is the movie industry dead? The economic forecasts would lead one to think so. Hollywood is dying. But the movie business won't go away unless we want it to. I for one don't. Much of what's been happening is attributable to technology changes. But that's just part of it. Technology began perpetually changing the day Edison opened his studio in New Jersey. It never stopped. In a few years the first color appeared. Soon came sound (though movies were never silent;) by the 1920s there were four different sound-on-film systems. Tech change has always been an integral part of movie making. Then came SFX.        What was not a part was the change forced on it by the Paramount decree ending major studio domination, and the surrendering of the asylum to the inmates -- to actors and accountants who hadn't a clue what business they were in. The waters muddied. Those in control made a fundamental marketing mistake in an exercise in arrogance and stupidity that leads directly to the situation we face today. They began to market a product that wasn't what their market wanted -- reality. It started small at first. It wasn't enough anymore just to fire a blank pistol and have someone fall over. You fired it; a squib would explode spraying blood; then they fell over. In Saving Private Ryan, we saw legs blown off, with ragged flesh and blood vessels left obscenely behind -- obscenity in the name of realism. Apply the same principle to 10,000 other details and you have today's movies. Though today's films are technically perfect in almost every respect, over the last 50 years, the product, in so far as the market is concerned, has become increasingly shabby and less responsive to the market's needs. Box office revenues are swiftly falling. Blockbuster just raised the specter of that decline impacting revenues from DVD sales and rentals, plunging them (and soon) also into steep decline. We are at the end of the present day movie industry, like it or not. And good riddance to bad rubbish.        It can be fixed. It's not hard, but it will take resolve. Somehow we must bring ourselves again to believe in Santa Clause. We did once; and because we did, we had an industry. All we need to do to have it again is to unring a bell. We must wipe out every major marketing decision of the last 60 years and go back to what Hollywood once did better than anyone one earth. It's probably too late, but maybe not.        Once upon a time, the industry based everything it did on appealing to lonely people sitting in the dark. We didn't sell them movies. We sold them dreams. That's why the studios were called "dream factories." For a couple of hours a man with a dead end job could rule a kingdom, rescue a beautiful maiden, be a captain of industry. A woman with little joy in her heart could become a queen, be worshiped by a handsome leading men, fill an empty life with romance. Imagination was the only limitation. Then we made things real. If we could just get back to selling dreams, theaters would again be packed/ There's a good deal more to this story, but you wouldn't want it all at once.