Hollywood Plays to the Pimply

chas smith R.I.P. · From: Encino, CA, USA

This is adapted from a speech to the graduating class of USC's film school by Frank Pierson, who wrote "Cat Ballou," "Cool Hand Luke" and "Dog Day Afternoon," among other films and is president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It's not about music, per se, but I think it applies:

Hollywood was once a small company town, where everybody knew everybody, and if you dropped your pants at a party or punched a reporter or danced with a prostitute in the parking lot, it wasn't on "Entertainment Tonight" tonight.

It was even hard to get arrested. Every studio had a publicity department that paid the Los Angeles cops to stay away from show-business people. The police didn't arrest movie people. They drove them home.

We all went down to the film factories every day (at Warner Bros. even actors, directors and writers punched a time clock until the mid-1940s). We ate in the studio commissary, where the writers' table was preferred seating because the jokes were better there. If the New York writers were in town, slumming — sneering at the movies and cashing big, fat paychecks — you found yourself sitting next to Dorothy Parker or F. Scott Fitzgerald.

You could wander off to a sound stage and watch John Huston or Willy Wyler shooting a scene with Bogart or Hepburn or Peck. No security. We all knew each other.

It was up close, and personal.

Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia, was a legendary bully who admired Mussolini and had his office designed to resemble Mussolini's — with a long approach into blinding lights and himself behind a desk, raised a foot above the floor, ranks of Oscars his studio had won behind him. He said he made only pictures that he wanted to see, and once the public stopped wanting to see what he liked, he'd quit. Not for him delegating decisions to demographers, pollsters and marketing experts. Nobody knew what a demographer was in those days.

It was up close, and personal.

Then, in the 1960s, when the glove salesmen and carnival touts who built the studios began to grow old and retire, their grip on the business loosened. For a while, independent producers flourished. New companies, new writers and directors burst the bonds of studio-imposed style.

The '60s and the '70s produced movies now looked upon as a golden age: "The Godfather," "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Dr. Strangelove," "Taxi Driver," "Chinatown," "Clockwork Orange," "Annie Hall," "Midnight Cowboy," "MASH," "Bonnie and Clyde" and a couple I like, "Dog Day Afternoon" and "Cool Hand Luke." Even "Easy Rider," which symbolized the anarchistic spirit of that drug-ridden time, was a Columbia release.

Then, on Wall Street, it began to be noticed that a single blockbuster movie could make in a weekend what a substantial business made in a year.

Warner Bros. was bought by Seven Arts, Seven Arts was bought by Kinney Shoes, and the whole mess now is owned by AOL Time Warner (as are HBO, Warner Books, Turner networks and CNN). Viacom owns Paramount, CBS, Showtime cable and Blockbuster. Of the 100-odd prime-time shows that will premiere on the four networks this fall and winter, more than 30 — including CBS newsmagazines — will be made by companies owned by Viacom. An additional 25 or so will be made by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which owns the Fox network.

We had been having too much fun to notice: The barbarians were inside the gate. The polo games, the writers' table, Jack Warner's lunchtime tennis matches with Errol Flynn, the cops as our friends, all were a thing of the past.

We began to see Harvard Business School MBAs sit in on story conferences. Lawyers multiplied.

As the huge debt created by mergers was added to the rising costs of making little but blockbusters, the risks of making a film forced the businessmen to be risk-averse, to play to the least critical audience: teenage boys with disposable income.

The problem is how to keep this "average" moviegoer, male, 16 to 25, high school education at best, doesn't read books, gets his news from the 11 o'clock news if he bothers at all, never heard of Mussolini and thinks Korea is another part of downtown L.A. This pimply, oversexed slob with the attention span of a chicken, how do we keep him awake and interested while staying awake and interested ourselves?

It's not just Hollywood. What has happened here has happened to us all because the focus of international business has shifted from production to distribution. Whoever controls distribution shapes what is produced — to what will fit under the seat or in the overhead compartment. Today, agribusinesses have researchers trying to produce cube-shaped tomatoes that will be easier to pack in boxes (and that probably will taste like the boxes). Watch the odd, the old, the personal, the traditional, the idiosyncratic, the family-made or the regional disappear from supermarket shelves that are rented by the foot to international companies that then stock them with their own water and sugar products.

As the movie business has changed, liberal critics have raised the alarm over corporate censorship. But the danger of censorship in the United States of America is less from business or the religious right or the self-righteous left than from self-censorship by artists themselves, who simply give up. If we can't see a way to get our story told, what is the point of trying? I wonder how many fine, inspiring ideas are strangled in the womb of the imagination because there's no way past the gates of commerce.

To the studios today, the art of film and TV is a byproduct of their main business, a side effect, and like most side effects, more likely to be a noxious nuisance than a benefit.

But movies are more than a commodity. Movies are to our civilization what dreams and ideals are to individual lives: They express the mystery and help define the nature of who we are and what we are becoming.

We need writers with ideas and passion, who write with force and conviction; directors who have minds enriched by their lives and not a library of stunts and special effects. They must be centered in their feelings and ideas in the culture and society, not in comparing grosses and applauding computer-generated ballets of violence.

We need it like we need clean drinking water and roads, green parks and libraries; it is as important as the breath of democratic life. Somehow we need to keep alive in our hearts the vision of community, shared interests and understanding of our neighbors' needs, the sense of connection this fractionated society is losing.

We need to recapture the spirit of Main Street. Up close. And personal.

[This message was edited by chas smith on 26 May 2003 at 09:05 PM.]

Pat Burns · From: Branchville, N.J. USA

...Chas, once upon a time we were risk-takers, and we didn't litigate the outcome of every endeavor...life was like this where I grew up...

quote:
According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's probably shouldn't have survived.

Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint. We had no childproof lids or locks on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. No cell phones.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, no video games at all, no 199 channels on cable, video tape movies surround-sound, personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms. We had friends! We went outside and found them. We played dodge ball, and sometimes, the ball would really hurt. We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame but us.

We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it. We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out any eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rang the bell or just walked in and talked to them.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Some students weren't as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. Tests were not adjusted for any reason.

Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected. The idea of parents bailing us out if we got in trouble in school or broke a law was unheard of. They actually sided with the school or the law.

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers, and inventors, ever. We had freedom, failure, success, and responsibility --- and we learned how to deal with it.

....our art, be it films or music, is a reflection of what we have become...I worry for my young daughters...they think Disney is cool...I can only try to tell them why it isnt'....

[This message was edited by Pat Burns on 26 May 2003 at 09:36 PM.]

chas smith R.I.P. · From: Encino, CA, USA

Pat, I was there.
I read an article last year or so that explained extreme sports, like skiing, you fall, you die, as being a reaction to everything being safe and regulated. It's a bit of a stretch, but it sounds plausable. A lot of things now seem to be more extreme.

Ron Randall · From: Dallas, Texas, USA

chas

Great topic. Yes, the entertainment folks go for the glands. Adrenal glands and others. The pimply will pay money to get those glands going.

Yep...born in 1946.

Ron

Roger Rettig · From: Naples, FL

Chas,

I'm not particularly well-informed about the history of the movie-business, but those words seem to me to be uncannily close to the truth - that reasoning would go a long way towards explaining the awful sterility of the vast majority of today's films.

I can remember first seeing Al Pacino, and thinking, 'He's not Marlon, but he's pretty good!' Now, a Pacino, or a DeNiro, film are just about all that'll tempt me to go to the movies at all!

I know I may be missing some good stuff, but I scan the movie-lists in vain and just stay home. For some reason that I've forgotten, the last picture I was persuaded to pay to see was the lamentably poor 'Pearl Harbor'. What drivel! A bunch of faceless 'celebrities' in a contrived cinematic video-game....

If you guessed I'm around sixty, you were right - I'm waiting for another 'On The Waterfront'.....

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Roger Rettig

[This message was edited by Roger Rettig on 27 May 2003 at 04:58 PM.]

Tom Campbell · From: Houston, Texas, USA

Born in '43...did all those great things in Pat Burns reply...and I am still alive to talk about it! Didn't have a TV until the late 50's...wish I didn't have one now...Hummm, maybe I should just...!

Ken Lang · From: Simi Valley, Ca

Born in '42. Don't watch TV. Last movie we were drug to was Tom Hanks on that island.

Now....the computer and the internet. I'm here ain't I?

It's hard to be too smug when you trade one dang fool thing for another.

ebb · From: nj

the internet or it's next incarnation will be the new order. i can't wait for the toppling of mottola's statue on cnn. and pixar is cool

[This message was edited by ebb on 27 May 2003 at 07:02 PM.]

chas smith R.I.P. · From: Encino, CA, USA

I think the last really good movie I saw was "Spirited Away", a Japanese animated film that deserved the Academy Award it got this year. Sometimes we go just because we know the audience is going to be good. We saw the midnight show of "Independence Day " at the Chinese Theatre on Independenc Day with an audience that really wanted to see that movie. The audience was worth the price of admission.

I was born in '48 and I haven't had a tv since '72, although I'll watch the Lakers, and weren't they an inspired group this year, at the market.

quote:
Tom Hanks on that island.

I liked Wilson.

Paul Graupp · From: Macon Ga USA

Pat: I was born in '32 and when I heard Rush on the EIB net reading that piece, I thought to myself; he's talking about my family. The only thing it doesn't mention is spraying the flies with a Flit-Gun and having so many on the floor you had to sweep them up with a broom. We ran around barefooted and that stuff between your toes; if you misstepped playing baseball in the meadow; was easily washed off in the creek.

I recall walking to the meadow with a milk bucket and stool to milk the cow because I was too lazy to bring the cow up to the barn. Besides, who cared ? There was no Osha or such to overlook our lives.

We slid down an icy hill one winter and my older brother beat me to the bottom but he went under a barbed wire fence and it took his aviator goggle cap right off his head. I don't recall any one calling DFACS because we didn't have a phone then and the neighbors were too far off to see us.

Some times when we would got to high school in the nearest town, we had cow stuff on our shoes or we were wearing knickers [

] and the city kids would make fun of us but the police never seemed to notice it. I still don't care now that I'm on Easy Street and most of them are still working to make ends meet.

Good quote and I thank you for reminding me how lucky I am, once more !!

Regards, Paul

[This message was edited by Paul Graupp on 27 May 2003 at 11:37 PM.]

Jody Carver · From: KNIGHT OF FENDER TWEED

Sheeeze
And I was asked to do a screen test for a
Gangland Movie,called The Godmother.

Pat Burns · From: Branchville, N.J. USA

..did she make them an offer they couldn't refuse?...

chas smith R.I.P. · From: Encino, CA, USA

My first musical job in LA was playing B3 on the soundtrack for the film, "The Goddaughter". If you saw that one, you probably wouldn't admit it. Costuming must have been easy, I don't remember any of the actors and actresses having any clothes on.....

Pat Burns · From: Branchville, N.J. USA

...like you said in the beginning, it used to be up close and personal...

Jason Odd · From: Stawell, Victoria, Australia

If you want to see a good film without a blockbuster approach, go find an Australian or British new release.
Go to the foreign section and start looking, I mean sure you have to deal with subtitles, but there's plots and no Julia Roberts.

I mainly watch indie films, I admit going to the latest Matrix installment, and I'll go see the new X-Men film as well, but there's a lot I wan't go see.
Anyone catch the last Coen Bros. film, what a classic.

I found that post of Hollywood in the 'good old days' interesting.
We'll skip over the racial seperation in the films, the McCarthy blacklists, studio links to racketeers, the covered up indescretions of certain movie stars (in some cases like the infamous Fatty Arbuckle, sexual assualt leading to murder was just too much to cover up), hillbilly and racial stereotypes, and yep.. there was a strong anti-Semantic core through parts of the industry while porn goes back to the 1930s.

Jason Odd · From: Stawell, Victoria, Australia

Actually, I had a point.
At the moment we're at a reversal of what was around 50 years ago.

Right up to the post-war (no#2) period, the US market for music and fims concentrated on 20-somethings and 30-somethings with a rather overbearing (to my 30 something tastes) sentimental and simplified approach to morals, tastes and lifestyle in general, which started to change during the war.

During World War 2 the Us changed quite dramtically, besides the fact that large amounts of the poulace were travelling for the first time, across the country (military training, war industry jobs), they were also travelling across the world. (Not only seeing different cultures, but travelling with fellow Americans who had different backgrounds, tastes and opinions.. an interaction that was unheard of in US history, except perhaps for the incrediable boom of New York as a major port of industry and immigration.

During the war, the trends were reflected in music, there were patriotic songs by country and pop artists, but with quickie marrages, divorce and more unwed mothers and a general change in society (hey you drop an atom bomb and you ain't no prom queen no more), music began to reflect this, while films generally go quite as far.
R&B brought raunch and sex further and further into the open, now this wasn't generally unusual, R&B was rapidly finding a more urbane audience while old blues was far more rual and didn't appeal to the city people as much.
The rise of the honky-tonks, smaller bands (amplification meant bands could be smaller, so you could get more sound for less $$) and more risky material helped alter and yet, still reflect the changes of society of the time.

This was all still stuff for adults though.

Teenagers were supposed to be non-existant little adults, no burgeoning sexuality, no wild tastes that would shatter convention.
When rock and roll began to finally hit, it was amazing, suddenly these old execs (and remember that most of the old major labels were simply started as offshoots of the film companies), just scratched their heads.
This Elvis kid, he certainly wasn't the Dorsey Brothers, what was this sh!t that the kids were buying,.. and wait a minute, what are kids doing buying records anyway?

Yep, post-war America's economy was boosted by all the war babies, the baby-boomers and their slightly older siblings.
Kids who wanted to buy Elvis, Little Richard, Bill Haley, the Clovers, Buddy Holly, and the R&B and Doo-Wop sales via white suburban kids increased.

Films like 'Rebel Without A Cause' and 'The Wild One' were kind of a step into youngr market, but didn't feature and R&B or rock, but after 1956 when Bill Haley, Elvis, Gene Vincent and Wanda Jackson were on the charts, the rock films began to come out.
The rock and roll film in itself wasn't the longest lasting trend, they kept cranking them out into the 1960s, but most of them were B-features with the same recycled plot over and over.
The Beatles brought some new life into the rock film market, and the doco-style rock film approach had a run from about 1966 into the 1970s, they still exist, but are quite rare.

But, the trends had changed.. films aimed at teens were on the growth. Throught the 1960s they tried various cash-ins, various rock, rug and biker flicks came and went, some weird hits like the Spaghetti Westerns from Italy became massive hits (for the time) while younger actors, writers and directors came up through the exploitational indie companies and with the changing times came new trends and styles.

After 'Jaws,' 'E.T.' 'Star Wars' and 'Close Encounters' their was an indication that indeed the blockbuster was the way to go, and sadly that concept has remained the core of Hollywood since then.
Of course there's crap like 'Titanic,' 'Maid In Manhattan' and 'Pearl Harbour'.. but there's also 'Saving Private Ryan,' The Thin Red Line' and 'The Majestic' films that actually survive on their pomposity because they're actually well made and written films.

I admit I'm part of a generation that has had a lot of product and trends pointed at my age group, I myself am a product of the age of cross promotion and mass marketing.
I'm probably one of the few on the Forum that actually has some chart CDs from the last few years in their collection, it doesn't mean I have a sense of irony about these things.

Having said that, the whole concept of a youth orientated market is pretty much here to stay. After all the oldies had things their way since the dawn of time, so I figure the youth having just under 50 years under their control (in a marketing approach) is a drop in the ocean.

The big corporation approach has been around for some time, they used to be monarchies and religions, now they're businesses.

All you have to do is go see an independent film, buy an indie CD, eat at anywhere where it ain't part of a chain, no-brand Cola, give some money to Greenpeace, write your local TV station and ask for something other than game shows or 'supposed' reality TV.

In the good old days they made just as much junk as before, geez Bill Monroe used to do ads for dodgy products during his radio show with the Monroe Brothers.

------------------
Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

chas smith R.I.P. · From: Encino, CA, USA

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