In recent days, the Los Angeles Times has devoted much ink to the question of why movie attendance has plunged. Pundits have knocked Hollywood's product while ignoring the obvious answer.
Let's first make one point clear: Don't blame the films themselves.
Yes, I realize that the previous sentence constitutes heresy. Everyone loves to play film critic, and everyone loves to recite those magic words: "Movies are much worse than they were ten years ago." People have been making that complaint for as long as I can remember, and my memory stretches back further than I prefer to admit.
Many now consider the 1970-75 era Hollywood's silver age -- a time when the studios gave creative freedom to a bright new generation of directors and screenwriters. Believe me: Throughout those years, film-goers and critics incessantly caterwauled that Hollywood had become a dreck factory. Each year was decried as the worst year ever for movies.
A little research reveals that every year since the beginning of the sound era has been the "worst year ever." If you listen to these complaints long enough, you'll come away with the impression that the last good film was made in 1916.
Is 2005 a bad year for movies? Can't really say. The only time I've set foot in a theater this year was to catch the new Star Wars film -- which I enjoyed. Which means that -- in my experience, at least -- the industry has finally managed to bowl a perfect game.
As opposed to (say) 1975. Lots of stinkers that year.
Of course, that was the year I saw over 400 films in theaters.
So don't tell me that audiences boycott Hollywood because the audience hates all of these horrible new releases.
If so, then why do the video stores rely on new releases for most of their rentals? Why don't more people rent classic films? Why are audiences in foreign lands still attending our films, even though they affect to despise all things American?
Other pundits tell us to blame rude audiences who insist on turning each movie into an episode of MST3K. Yes, today's moviegoers are indeed pretty ghastly. But (trust me on this) audiences were worse in 1975. Not only was the mob unruly, you couldn't enter a theater in Los Angeles without swimming through a marijuana fog.
Still others try to convince us that people boycott moviegoing because projection is so poor.
I know something about the art of film presentation. The first-run houses in the 1970s would often put on a superb show, which is why savvy moviegoers traveled miles to see film done right. But in the neighborhood theaters -- in those poorly-designed multiplexes where most people saw most movies -- shoddiness reigned. I recall tiny screens, weatherbeaten prints, monophonic sound, haphazard cropping and uneven lighting. The mark of bad projection is an image with a "hot" center and shadowy sides. This phenomenon happened a lot back then; you rarely see it these days.
Few care to admit it, but today the average film experience is -- on a purely technical level -- much better than the average presentation of twenty or thirty years ago.
Is downloading murdering Hollywood? Downloading has hurt, no question about it. But the process requires many hours and some technical know-how (even if you have broadband), and illegal film prints are often unwatchable.
So why aren't you going to the movies tonight?
Because the landlord (or the bank holding your mortgage) has pocketed your disposable income.
The final two Clinton years were 1999 and 2000. 1999 was an astonishing year for film: The Red Violin, Magnolia, The Sixth Sense, Fight Club, and many more. By comparison, 2000 reeked.
In both the good year and the bad, I went to the movies nearly every weekend. I could afford to do so.
At that time, in Los Angeles, you could still rent a one-bedroom apartment for under $500. You could buy a matinee ticket for under five bucks. And for less than twenty bucks, you could pay for dinner for two at the small family-owned Mexican joint down the street. All in all, a nice, affordable night out.
Today, many have to pay over a thousand bucks a month for a studio apartment, while the average person's transportation costs have topped $9,000.
Have the wages for working people gone up appreciably? You already know the answer.
In the Bush era, the only thing tighter than my belt is, it would seem, Bush himself.
Meanwhile, film ticket prices have more than doubled. And that cute little Mexican place? The bill has crept up to 30 bucks or more.
For me, and for an increasing number of us, a "night out" means eating burritos in the park and taking the pooch for a long walk -- window-shopping at places where we used to do real shopping. This, after a week in which we've worked rather more than forty hours.
A hard truth: A middle class is created by robbing the rich -- at gunpoint, if necessary. Poor workers manage to squirm into the middle realms only when the tax laws force the rich to fork over excess funds that they do not invest in productive enterprises.
In Ike's final year, the top tax rate was 88%. Guess what? America did great. We had the highest standard of living the world had ever seen, we produced the world's finest industrial goods, we were the world's biggest creditor nation (instead of the world's biggest debtor nation), we built freeways a-plenty, we lavishly funded the military, we cackled at Asian-made merchandise, we boycotted the products of totalitarian nations, and we had a national debt that now seems laughably miniscule.
The average worker with a "Fred Flintstone"-type job could afford a two- or three-bedroom house.
Now he feels lucky if he can avoid eviction from his one- or two-bedroom apartment.
I have seen the past and it worked.
I have seen the future, too -- a future of master and slave, of sneering opulence and hopeless poverty. I see a growing number of people with full-time jobs at Wal-Mart who have to sleep in their cars. Cars that don't run.
If Charley and Charlene Anybody don't have a few extra bucks in their pockets, if they must hand three-quarters of their income to the landlord, then they aren't going to go to the movies. And they won't be able to buy any of the other items produced by our few remaining industries.
Hollywood, the answer is simple: Your industry will continue to worsen until the government decides to transfer wealth away from the landlords and into the wallets of working people. Your customer base has disappeared because many of them are -- quite literally -- homeless and hungry.
5 comments:
It's an appealing argument, but (I suspect) a wishful one. Consumers are still spending billions on video games, pornography and "home entertainment centers" and cell phones. And the industry is currently salivating over home High Definition .
It's that the magic has gone from cinema -- the Hollywood tropes are exhausted, there's no longer a quasi-religious element to movie attendance, and everything will be out on DVD sooner rather than later. TBesides, he popcorn is cheaper at home, and if the image still can't begin to compete with what's available in a good theater, people simply don't care, or even notice. Consider the multitudes listening happily to MP3s, which is worse in quality (in some respect) than the old 78s.
In my part of the world, the repertory houses still sell out for films which aren't commercially available. But, as for commericial cinema -- there just isn't a compelling reason to go anymore. Miss one, and you'll see iteration of the same stuff a few weeks later. No conceivable urgency.
Movies today are conceived and marketed as commodities, and people are just treating them accordingly.
Price increases and less disposable are certainly factors. For me, I am becoming unwilling to pay more for a movie and more for popcorn only to sit with troglydites who ruin the experience for everyone. When you have people coming in really late, talking constantly out loud, popping gum throughout the movie, laughing at inappropriate times, or engage in other miscellaneous activities unrelated to actually watching a movie, it's easier to rent later and watch the movie with a lot less irritating.
Kim in PA
Sorry, I meant to say "price increases and less disposable income..."
Kim in PA
From fifty years away Eisenhower seems
pretty decent. (Kinky Friedman has the right take on his Veep.)
According to Howard Dean's "Winning Back America" under Eisenhower corporations
paid 39% of taxes; in 2003 they paid 17%.
Under Eisenhower the rate in the top tax
bracket was 91%; in 2006 it will be 35%.
Eisenhower was straight-shooting enough to
warn us about a military-industrial
complex that has plagued us ever since.
"Every gun that is made, every warship
launched, every rocket fired, signifies in
the final sense a theft from those who
hunger and are not fed, those who are cold
and are not clothed. This world in arms
is not spending money alone. It is
spending the sweat of its labourers, the
genius of its scientists, the hopes of its
children."
"Here in America we are descended in blood
and in spirit from revolutionists and
rebels - men and women who dare to dissent
from accepted doctrine. As their heirs,
may we never confuse honest dissent with
disloyal subversion."
"The problem in defense is how far you can
go without destroying from within what you
are trying to defend from without."
If Eisenhower was alive to say these
things today the neocons would be howling
for him to move to France.
You start out great describing the problem, identifying who the culprits are and then all the sudden you nail down just why or one of the many reasons why Democrats are not in office.
Look no one ever created a wealthy society by steal that which was honestly acquired from anybody - rich, middle class, or poor.
A kleptocracy, which is what we got and exactly what you proposed to replace what we got with, makes the aggregate less well off and ends in the abject poverty of all most everyone save the handful of new feudal lords.
Besides which most of the movies are really crappy, bad writing, bad acting, with the same special effects scenes repeated ad infinitum.
Take a little advice from a libertarian Dibold is just one problem democrats have, a dependency on the fascistic tendencies of the Republican elite is not enough.
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