Selling Out
By Tom Macy
December 10, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
That the glut of "good movies" (notice the air quotes) are released now needs no explanation. The blitzkrieg of biopics and George Clooney is all-familiar territory. But that doesn't make it any less frustrating. The pressure to get to everything feels like sinking in quicksand. The more you see, more the more you realize you need to see. And no matter how hard you try, eventually you just have to accept that you won't be able to get to all the films featuring the best supporting actress nominees, throw up your hands in exasperation and ask, "Would you mind spreading things out a little more!? Seriously, trying to find a decent movie to go to in April is like scraping the bowl for the last morsel of cookie dough, and in December it's like, I can't eat all this!" Or something like that.
To make matters worse, the former half of the year, Oscar season's polar opposite – in essence and in season - the summer movie season only amplifies the disparity. All of sudden we go from a constant state of leave-your-brain-at-the-door movies to Syriana. You may as well call them the bad and good movie seasons. It always takes me a few films to get the rust off the ol' pedantic analysis gears. Last October, I was definitely not in shape for Synecdoche, NY.
It isn't fair. Why should the time of year dictate what types of movies are being shown? Going back to the food metaphor - because food and metaphors are two of my favorite things in life – its as if Hollywood is asking us live on a diet of Ring Dings and Mountain Dew all summer long and then in the winter switch to red kale and wheat grass (I couldn't think of any healthy foods). What does Average Movie Goer #31 do in July if he wants to sit in a dark air-conditioned room for two hours and not see pointless explosions, anthropomorphized CGI creatures or Adam Sandler? It's not an absurd request. What happens after Christmas dinner when Audience Member #23 doesn't want to go spend her money to be depressed, bored and confused just so she doesn't have to remain silent during the 700 Oscar movie conversations the media will force her to be subjected to over the next three months?
This system is just a product of greed manifesting itself to our detriment. I'm not about to go into a tirade about the negative effect Capitalism has on cinema - though just typing that did make me feel really smart. It's no big revelation that money is the driving force behind everything in our society. However, the driving force behind the money is the consumer, who has the right to choose what they spend it on. It is on this front that the public is being cheated.
You might respond by saying the movie-going public dictated this uneven schedule. By gravitating to escapist fare in the carefree days of summer and morose in the brooding winter months, Hollywood began releasing films adhering to the buyers' demands. Well, to that I say phooey! True, Transformers is to a day at the beach as Schindler's List is to a shoeless walk in a blizzard, but the reason for such segregation has nothing to do with what the public wants.
Once upon a time, there was a much more even keel look to the release schedule. But that all began to change in the late '70s when two films, Jaws and Star Wars, met, fell in love and gave birth to a beautiful new species, the Blockbuster. It was a child with so much promise that, tragically, in the end it was exploited for evil. The Blockbuster is basically the Anakin Skywalker of movie history.
The tentpole film – a film that appealed universally to the public - quickly became a cornerstone of mainstream movie making. Studios were salivating for their own Star Wars and if they didn't have one, they tried to convince everyone that they did. This brought forth a major shift in marketing. A broader approach was taken. A wider net was cast. With the heightened awareness, anticipation for upcoming films started to become the subject of national conversation. Couple this with rising theater counts that had movies literally opening everywhere – hence the term "In theaters everywhere!" – films began to haul in more of cash up front, often in their first weekend alone. This was most true with sequels, which came with the phrase that's music to a Hollywood exec's ears - the built in audience. All that was left to do was fan the fire.
This trend took shape throughout the '80s, with Return of the Jedi, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Rambo: First Blood II taking in over $20 million in their opening weekends in consecutive years – the only films in those three years to do so. But the real turning point took place within a month of 1989. During this 30-day period the record for highest opening weekend was broken three times. It began on Memorial Day when Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade opened to $29,355,021, only to be narrowly bested by Ghostbusters II's $29,472,894 3 weeks later. GB II was also one of the first examples of frontloading as it only made $112 million domestically, less than half of the original (whatever, I was six and it blew my mind). But the following weekend of June 23rd was the one that changed everything when Batman, the one with Beetlejuice, opened to a whopping $40,489,746.
Once studios saw the potential to make this kind of money this fast the floodgates were truly opened. Why worry about making a film good - so people would tell their friends to see it – when you can get everyone to go before they hear how crappy it is? Marketing was the game now. And for Hollywood, it was fun to play. Opening weekends soared, from Jurassic Park ‘s $47 million in '93 to Spider-Man's then ridiculous $114 mil in 2002.
Not surprisingly, the bulk of these massive opening frames were in the months of summer. Kids were on vacation and the films targeted such a broad audience they could potentially be suited for everyone. As time passed, these event films fueled by saturating marketing campaigns became the routine. And somewhere along the way, the public began to get so enticed by the magnitude of a release they stopped caring if seeing the movie was actually going to be an enjoyable experience. It's as if seeing the films was no longer a choice and eventually this summer-is-the-time-where-we-see-crappy-movies mindset took hold.
This past year is a perfect example. We all got it into our heads that we had to see Transformers 2, even though we all knew it would suck. But Paramount and DreamWorks got their money, so what do they care? And we're all going to see Transformers 3. I know I will. Would Jaws and Star Wars have succeeded if they were Transformers quality? We've gotten to the point where we're constantly justifying seeing these films with, "it's not bad, it's fun!" No folks, they're bad. And we deserve better.
But all the good movies weren't just forced out of summer by Michael Bay. There was another force at work. As Batman and the studio execs were making it big by making things bigger, on the other end of things, a couple of brothers were making a name for themselves by going small. It was just as manipulative, though. The shift was so simultaneous it almost seems too perfect. In fact it was 1989, the very year Batman broke the mold, that Sex, Lies and Videotape, made by some random Soderbergh dude, grossed $24,741,667 against a budget of $1.2 million and changed independent film forever.
Bob and Harvey Weinstein preyed on that small pocket of resistance, the few holdouts that still had a palette for good films. The Weinsteins astutely recognized this audience as a lucrative untapped resource. All they had to do was find a spigot. They did, and his name was Oscar.
If a movie is nominated for or wins Academy Awards, people will see it as a brand of excellence, as good or maybe even better than a recommendation from a trusted friend. This is what drove the Weinsteins - under their entrepreneurial endeavor Miramax - an approach that ultimately turned the Awards season into a farce. Once again, they made it less about the quality of the film and more about the marketing strategy. The Weinsteins didn't just put a movie out there and wait to see if it stuck. They made you feel like if you didn't see it you'd be missing the second coming of Jim Caviezel (I make that joke all the time and I have no idea if anyone thinks it's funny. I'm sure it won't be the last).
The Weinsteins saw a way to cheat the system, or rather a better way to operate within it to achieve success, not unlike Billy Bean and his Moneyball approach to baseball scouting (I can make sports references here, right?) . However, Billy Beane didn't cheat the public's ability to enjoy baseball. With tactical positioning of release dates and carefully orchestrated campaigns so overt the term Oscar-bait had to be invented, the nominations and awards began to flood in, often maddeningly. The most glaring example of this was Shakespeare in Love's win over Saving Private Ryan in 1998. The Weinsteins saw that to win the Academy's favor, it was more important how a movie's caliber was perceived rather than its actual quality.
To be fair they did a lot of good, too. We can thank Miramax for jump-starting the careers of Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, Danny Boyle and Todd Haynes. The trouble began when others saw how successful they were and started to emulate The Weinsteins' techniques. Soon, releasing a film in December was an announcement that you had hopes for Oscar gold. In years past, opening a film in the latter part of the year may have been seen as an advantage - a prime example is Gandhi opening in December of 1982 and beating out E.T, which had opened in June, for Best Picture (I know there's a massive debate to be had here but that's entirely another conversation altogether. However, I'm going to the mat for E.T. Just saying). Today, it's a given. Opening a movie with possible awards potential at the end of the year isn't to gain an edge, it's just to stay competitive.
Whether it's because we're such slaves to these damn awards to the point where winning an Oscar is the only way we'll buy a ticket or marketers just perceive it that way, a year's worth of good movies are now crammed into a tiny, two-month hole. And we're left clamoring, and ultimately failing, to keep up. The only people who have time to see everything are critics and The Academy – and I have doubts if even they get to them all. But we're still the ones paying for tickets.
In my vision of a perfect world, The Messengers – fourth on my list now but about to be bumped down with Invictus, The Lovely Bones and The Princess and the Frog opening this weekend – opens in April. I promise you, marketing people, there are other people like me who will always come out to see a good movie. Just give us a chance and stop acting like you know what we want. What we want is simple. To see good movies all the time, not just in the winter. Is that really so much to ask? My guess is yes. Those who have the power will always take advantage of those who have none. Where's Keanu Reeves when you need him?