Medved: Hollywood slump caused by values disconnect

hgc

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hgc
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Click for column in Tuesday's USA Today to read how Michael Medved thinks that Hollywood is slumping because of liberal values.

This op-ed column is astoundingly stupid, even by Medvedian standards. I will pick out a few choice points...
Something clearly changed between 2004 and 2005 to cause an abrupt drop-off at the box office, and the most obvious alteration involved Hollywood's role in the bitterly fought presidential election. The entertainment establishment embraced John Kerry with near unanimity — and bashed George W. Bush with unprecedented ferocity.
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That's it! If you supported Kerry, then people won't go see your movies. Perhaps he forgot that Bush's margin of victory over Kerry was pretty damn slim.
Meanwhile, conventional wisdom ignores all ideological considerations in explaining the sudden box office collapse, concentrating instead on purely material excuses (high ticket prices, availability of DVDs) that have, frankly, applied for years. This knee-jerk tendency to offer direct, physical solutions to deep-seated problems constitutes an unmistakable element in the liberal outlook that remains Hollywood's reigning faith.
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Oh yeah. DVD's are old news, but Hollywood's liberalism is brand-spanking new. I think Medved has some 'splainin to do re his many years of decrying Hollywood values if he's now claiming that it's the new problem on the block.
To combat threats to the family from out-of-wedlock births, for instance, the left offers birth control and abortion — though illegitimacy soared as "reproductive choice" became widely available. On crime, liberals stress gun control — despite statistics showing states with widespread gun ownership producing less criminal violence. To fight poverty, progressives want more funding for welfare and public housing — ignoring the destructive impact of a culture of dependency and the failure of government projects in every big city. On the core question of terrorism, liberals blame economic deprivation, suggesting foreign aid to dry up anti-Americanism — downplaying the depravity at the heart of Muslim militancy that draws its murderous leadership from the Middle East's most privileged classes.
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The usual suspects: unmarried mothers, birth control, abortion, gun control, welfare, public housing and an attempt to understand the anger of the impoverished and dispossessed. That's why people stay away from movies.
This same habitual blindness to spiritual, substantive dimensions of every significant challenge continues to handicap Hollywood. Paramount Pictures recently announced that the first major thriller dramatizing 9/11, with Nicholas Cage as a rescuer attempting to escape the wreckage, will be directed by notorious conspiracist Oliver Stone. Aside from his recent drug busts and box office bombs (the gay-themed Alexander and his documentary paean to Fidel Castro, Commandante), Stone has compiled a vast collection of anti-American statements, including his 1987 declaration: "I think America has to bleed. I think the corpses have to pile up. ... Let the mothers weep and mourn."
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No need to see the movie. Just know that Oliver Stone is making a 9/11 movie, and people will stay away from all movies in droves.

I could go on and on, but I don't want to abuse fair use of copyrighted materials. I encourage others to read and comment.
 
I do agree with his take on Executives coming up with the wrong solutions to solve the slump.

The problem as far as I can see is that Hollywood is offering nothing new to draw people to the box office. They are overly dependent on fans of certain genre's and stars to carry a movie, and then disappoint them, thus giving the fans no reason to trust them next time.

I could wax nostalgic for pages and pages about the days when I fell in love with the movies, but I won't here. However, let me give you an example of the difference between today's movies and some of the greats from just a few years ago.

A co-worker, who is a big fan of recent romantic comedies (The Notebook, Wedding Date and such) saw the season finale of CSI, directed by Tarantino, and wanted to see more of his work. I have all his movies except Four Rooms and Sin City , and lent her what I consider his best works. While she didn't love both movies she did admit they were interesting, and she would like to see more. To be fair I watched some of her favorites, mostly remakes, and I found them formulaeic, predictable (not just because they were remakes), and the endings overly schmatzy.

If Hollywood ever asked me what they should do, I would tell them to put movies back into the hands of artists. Take them away from the accountants. Don't let commitees write the scripts, or focus groups influence the plots. Sure have test screenings, to trim them and give them better focus, but don't pander to the audience. Pandering can lead to dull endings with no impact, and dullness. Movies lately have been like watching a Yanni concert, it may be nice to listen to at first, but eventually it will become monotonous.
 
Of course it's not the product that causing people not to go to movies. Why just look at some of the new movies showing at one of the local theaters:

Bad News Bears
Charlie & Chocolate Factory
Bewitched
Herbie
Batman
Longest Yard

Can't imagine why people aren't flocking in droves to see them :rolleyes:
 
DavidJames said:
Of course it's not the product that causing people not to go to movies. Why just look at some of the new movies showing at one of the local theaters:

Bad News Bears
Charlie & Chocolate Factory
Bewitched
Herbie
Batman
Longest Yard

Can't imagine why people aren't flocking in droves to see them :rolleyes:
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Your point is a little cryptic. Is it because these movies suck (which surely they do), because it's all been done before, or because Medved is right about something?
 
hgc said:
Your point is a little cryptic. Is it because these movies suck (which surely they do), because it's all been done before, or because Medved is right about something?
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The list of movies are all re-makes. I've heard Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is good and I'd like to see it, but it costs more than $30 for my family to get in to see a matinee. If I wait 6 months, the DVD will come out for half that price. For me, that's the majority of the reason I don't go to the movies. That, and most of the movies suck.
 
Too much dependence on CGI and not enough on creativity. There's only so many excuses for blowing up a car, and only so many ways a car can blow up. How many more scenes of a guy outrunning an explosion will we be subjected to before Hollywood finally puts it to bed and comes up with a Plot?

It used to be it was just porn that had the bad scripts. Now the only difference is one has lots of explosions and the other has, uh, lots of explosions. No coincidence Hollywood thinks the way to goose up a movie's draw is to put some softcore porn in it.

The only connection to loose morals is that the script writers are all probably coked out of their minds.
 
hgc said:
Your point is a little cryptic. Is it because these movies suck (which surely they do), because it's all been done before, or because Medved is right about something?
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sorry :)

I can't say the movies suck as I haven't seen them and I won't, which is my point, at least from my perspective.

Movie remakes aren't necessarily bad movies, but can anyone say, with a straight face, that the remakes of those I mentioned would actually draw significant numbers? Sure, you will get the fans of Will Ferrell, Nicole Kidman, and Hillary Duff, but beyond them?

As far as Medved, I agree 100% with your comments.
 
The video game business has quadrupled in size the last three years. It is now as large as the theatrical box office of the movie business and is also equal in size to CD sales.

Idiots like Medved don't realize that consumers have finite disposable income for entertainment and that this money has to come from somewhere. Likewise, consumers have a finite amount of time to be entertained, and if they are spending it playing Xbox they'll watch fewer movies.

Also, due to saturation, the DVD bubble is bursting.

These situations are all natural as formats mature, and consumer tastes change.

But hacks will spin.
 
Add HD TV to the mix. Mrs. BPSCG and I got a 42" DLP TV for ourselves as our one and only Christmas gift (it had been a tough year, and we decided we deserved it). And we got Comcast's digital TV package, which included Showtime (yay! - Penn and Teller's Bullsh!t) and HBO, including their "on-demand" features. I hooked the whole thing up to our 5.1 surround-sound stereo.

What's that give us?
  • A screen with an apparent size comparable to what we get at the theater (it's a lot smaller than the theater, but we're also a lot closer).
  • Great sound.
  • The ability to start and stop the movie whenever we want. No more coming back from the bathroom and asking "What'd I miss?"
  • The ability to see movies we'd simply missed (I recorded chick-flick Under the Tuscan Sun for Mrs. BPSCG last week), or which we'd decided we might be interested in seeing, but wouldn't want to pay eight bucks a pop for. Last week we saw Kill Bill, Vol. 1 and Anchorman, and for both movies, we came away with the same reaction: "Aren't you glad we didn't pay to see this at the theater?"
Seeing movies at home is more like being at the theater than being at the theater. Why should we shell out 96 collective dollars to go see the likes of Bad News Bears, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, Bewitched, Herbie, Batman, and The Longest Yard, when we'll be able to see them at home in a few months?

ETA: Plus, when I watch a movie at home, I can do it in my underwear, burp, fart, scratch wherever I want, and drink beer. Try that at your local MetroMultiPlexCinema.
 
BPSCG said:

ETA: Plus, when I watch a movie at home, I can do it in my underwear, burp, fart, scratch wherever I want, and drink beer. Try that at your local MetroMultiPlexCinema.
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Odd, that sounds like most of the other people who go to the theater...
 
What is really amazing is how the values revolution has caused this slump in just one year! Last year, I believe, was a banner year for the industry, but thanks the re-election of Bush and the emergence of "family Values" as a campaign issue, all of those people who went and saw last year's block busters are now merely waiting for more Mel Gibson movies in order to return to the theaters.
 
While I think Medved overstates the case I think he is partly right. Movies are entertainment. Entertainment is making people feel good. People don't feel good when they perceive that the people entertaining them also look down on them.

Hollywood in general has gotten way too political to be looked at as pure entertainment. People go to the movies to get away from things like politics, not to be reminded of it every time they see an actor/activists face on the screen.

I think Medved wants more righty movies/actors to counter the left moves/actors but while that might even the score a bit and interest the people at both extremes, there is a huge middle chunk that don't want want politics in movies to be balanced but rather want it removed.
 
BPSCG said:
ETA: Plus, when I watch a movie at home, I can do it in my underwear, burp, fart, scratch wherever I want, and drink beer.
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But can you make out in the back row with your Best Girl? Come to think of it, I guess you can if you don't have kids playing the gooseberry role your parents used to.
 
CapelDodger said:
But can you make out in the back row with your Best Girl?
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No, but that's because we don't have a back row.

But we can make the beast with two backs... um, never mind.
 
My wife and I spent about 100 hours on Gothic II @ $39.00. The kids as often rent games as movies. Around here, you can easily drop $70 to take 3 kids to the movies plus the hassle of getting there. The kids were brought up with screen sizes of <50 feet so watching on TV is perfectally acceptable. Net, why bother?

Also, P-P networks must be making a dent. Also some producers are experimenting with DVD/Theater/VHS release simultainously.

I think that the point is that the movie business is changing and all of those "creative" minds out there are simply missing it. Not unlike the idiots in the music business.
 
Medved is a bit of a one-issue fanatic; he probably think the lower sales of LPs nowadays are due to liberal influence of the record companies as opposed to the emergence of DVDs. But he has one important point: Hollywood DOES seem to make movies with more and more violence, CGI, and sex (instead of plot, character, etc.) than ever, because these things which were impossible or not allowed in the past are now possible.

In theory, allowing much more sex, violence, and explosions in movies was supposed to make movies more "realistic" and therefore better. But in reality, it didn't: not so much because "bad" (morally) movies are made, but because it makes for BORING movies that you can't take the kids to. For example, there is a new movie out, "Nine Songs". The Village Voice had already praised it as "breaking barriers", "an honest look at sex", "realistic" portrayal of "physical relations", blah blah blah. Translation: it's thinly-disguised pornography. I cannot honestly say I never watch porn, but nobody wants to watch two hours of porn at one sitting, certainly not in public, and certainly not while paying $25 or so (with popcorn, etc.) for it.

This movie is an "indy"-type movie, but the point still holds that the "solution" to the fact that people simply don't want to watch boring movies even if they do have lots of sex-'n'-violence seems to be to make the same boring movies, only with even more sex and violence. Then wonder why they don't come. At the same time, the "G" and "PG" movies, like Shrek or Finding Nemo or Spiderman, make tons of money. And so do movies like "Sideways" that--while having its share of nudity and sex--is really a movie about the characters.

I am not advocating this in any way, but if tomorrow no sex or violence were allowed in movies any more, don't you think that--by and large--it would make movies better? When was the last time you watched a movie and said, at the end, "Well, it's a really good movie--but it could have used more naked breasts, shootings, and curse words?".
 
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