There's a fascinating article in this week's New Yorker
by Louis Menand about the history of the US film industry. It describes
what's happened to the industry since its #1 year, way back in 1946:
|
1946
|
2004
|
Studio films released
|
700
|
200
|
Number of screens nationwide
|
19,000
|
36,000
|
| Average weekly tickets sold, all screens |
100 million
|
24 million
|
Average weekly tickets sold, as % of population
|
72%
|
8%
|
Average tickets sold per film
|
7 million
|
6 million
|
Average tickets sold per week per screen
|
5,000
|
700
|
So now you know, if you didn't already, that the 'box office records' routinely reported to be broken are all dollar records, and that actual attendance and popularity of films, by any measure, are in a long-term and steep decline.
 There
is no great conspiracy to dumb down the industry, or to turn out less
and less product each year, or to make more sequels and re-releases
than original scripts, or to hype films so that most people who go at
all rush out to see them before the unpaid
critics, and actual movie-goers tell them how bad they really are. It's
a perfect example of the 'free' market in action, and the excesses it
leads to. Today between 25% and 40% of the total attendance at a new
release is rung up in its first weekend.
And on average 60% of the revenue comes from overseas, because, well,
because there are more people and hence more undiscerning moviegoers
overseas. And 35% of movie-theatre revenue comes from overpriced
concession food.
The economics of the industry are now such that, in order to make
money, you must have a blockbuster that will bring in hundreds of
millions in its first weekend. To do that you need to 'open' on at
least 15,000 screens worldwide, you have to pay at least $50 million in
advance marketing worldwide, and you absolutely have to feature one or
more of the "handful of stars who can open a movie worldwide", and pay
each of them $25 to $150 million to do so. The margin of error is
small, so you cannot risk a failure, and hence every blockbuster must
follow a proven formula, like a comic book.
This hyperbolic model would be fine, for those foolish enough to
continue to sustain it, if it weren't for the fact that, as Menand puts
it:
Blockbuster dependence is a
disease. It sucks the talent and the resources out of every other part
of the industry. A contemporary blockbuster could almost be defined as
a movie in which production value (sets, costumes, special effects
etc.) is in inverse proportion to content. The talent, knowledge and
ingenuity required to make just one of the battle scenes in 'Troy', or
one mindless James Bond chase sequence, would drain the resources of
many universities. But why doesn't anyone put more than two seconds'
thought into the story?
The answer to Menand's question, of course, is that they don't have to.
Why spend money on a well-crafted story, as director Norman Jewison
said when receiving a recent life-time achievement award pleaded the
industry to do, when it merely distracts from the 'production values'
and needlessly reduces the bottom line? Why write a script at all when
you can create a movie which makes hundreds of millions of dollars even
though the star speaks only 17 lines in two hours of action (Schwarzenneger in Terminator)?
To those that think all this is just envy, Menand tells the cautionary
tale of one non-blockbuster that merely attempted to present a good
story with a competent ensemble of non-big-name actors, Sideways.
This film, #189 of IMDb's top-rated (by audiences) movies of all time,
has been a critical smash as well, but it was made for a mere 16
million dollars, excluding marketing costs, and despite all the help
from critics, Oscar nominations and viral marketing, has brought in a
mere 22 million dollars in ten weeks. That's a fifth of the marketing
budget alone for each of the Matrix sequels, which brought in half a billion dollars each. [The picture above is a scene from Sideways].
The 'free' market has basically determined that if you want to make a
quality entertainment product you have to do it as a labour of love,
and if you want it to be seen you have to be willing to lose a lot of
money on it (which means you need to find someone with both taste and
money to underwrite it) or else let it wallow in obscurity, unknown to
the millions who would appreciate it if only 'the market' would allow
it any visibility. In other words, the unrestricted 'free' market in
entertainment produces less, of lower-quality (according to both
critics and customers). In the process, just like everything else in
George Bush's America, innovation is discouraged and a tiny handful of
people and corporations get obscenely rich while the rest struggle
their whole lives.
And this isn't true just in the film industry -- it's true of every
aspect of the 'entertainment industry' in America: Television (remember
when we got 39 quality episodes a year of a well-written series like
M*A*S*H?), music, publishing, 'professional' sports. In each we get
less and less product, hyper-marketing, flagrant 'product placement',
spin-offs and sequels, a dearth of innovation, and a handful of
privileged billionaires working alongside millions of starving peers.
Blockbuster dependence, thanks to the unhealthy working of the 'free'
market, is making all of these wonderful trades and crafts into
manufacturers of overpriced mediocrity.
The answer is the same as the solution to any other aspect of the
economic, political, social or educational system that has become
utterly dysfunctional -- as producers we need to establish our own
parallel industries, and as consumers we need to withhold our money
from from the blockbuster industry, walk away from it, stop funding it,
and instead direct our business to new enterprises that enable, support
and sustain entrepreneurship, innovation and craftsmanship. In the
entertainment 'industry' that means supporting independent
filmmakers, studios, theatres, media, musicians, publishers, and
'amateur' sports leagues. It means helping artists break free of the
stranglehold of the blockbuster machine by encouraging them with our
consumer dollars, and helping them organize a new, quality-oriented
network of production and distribution companies.
And it means one more thing, something commonplace (though constantly
threatened) in Europe and Canada, but anathema in the US -- encouraging
government investment in entrepreneurship. We realized in Canada that,
being so close to the US and overwhelmed by the hype of its blockbuster
entertainment industry, we simply could not compete for the youth
market and for space in the bottom-line-oriented movie theatres and the
bottom-line-oriented commercial TV stations' schedules. So we have
heavy government investment in our 'cultural industries', despite the
outrage of America's NAFTA supporters. The government invests heavily
in film and television production, and in supporting the publishing of
Canadian musicians and authors. It has quotas on 'Canadian content' in
the media. And it has whole networks paid for substantially or
completely by the taxpayer, with a charter to provide an avenue for
Canadian and quality foreign content. It's not a perfect solution, but
the difference between the content quality on Canadian and American
television, at least on a per-dollar investment basis, is startling,
and a testament to the fact that, as with anything else, a balance
between markets and government investment and regulation works better
than either an untrammeled 'free' market or a government monopoly.
Some of the best US television, like the CSI series, originated with
partnerships with Canadian companies that depend on government support,
and repay it with extraordinary creativity. It would be nice to believe
that indy producers and catalysts like Sundance Institute could compete
with the blockbuster industry without substantial government
assistance, but the evidence suggests otherwise. The business model is
stacked against them. And the US has moved so far right from the days
of the New Deal in its conception of the role and value of government
that I wouldn't hold my breath for anyone in power to advocate a
government role in funding innovation for anything except military
applications. We'll have to look elsewhere for working models.
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
