Your Box Office meat and potatoes...Apparently

Ok, let's talk film. Well you got your Will Smith movie out there. The country wanted another Will Smith film this summer and they got it. Now, I am wondering why the Studios even bother making the Will Smith films any good. The audience still came in droves to drop ten bucks, in many cases, 11.50 to see Hancock, a film that was released to horrid reviews. I don't understand why a film that was released to tragic reviews banked the weekend with 66 mil. Seems like Will Smith can be in anything, whether good or not and still have the Box Office draw.

But I have a feeling that most audience members want to see their Will Smith as the underdog hero. That's what he usually plays, the down on his luck guy with internal greatness who wins in the end. Don't we all wish we were like that? Well, Smith also has family appeal. You have to look at that for the reasons for his success. Well he has had about, what is it, 8 number ones in a row and this is his Seventh consecutive film that has grossed over 100 mil. He is a box office draw. I wish I could do journalistic research into this. But I don't think I have the resources for that. The blogosphere and journalists are always telling us bloggers to NOT act like journalists.

I always say journalists need to stop acting like sensationalists. Of course this is perfect world syndrome. I have that affliction often. Well someone out there needs to research why Will Smith is a huge box office draw. I don't understand. Yes he is very good, but why rush out to see him blindly, ignoring all reviews? But that's just me, I need to completely research a film before I see it. That way I know I will enjoy it. All signs pointed to the contrary with Hancock. Well enough about that.

Sigourney Weaver says she is ready to gear up for another Alien film. This would make 5. She tells Bloody Disgusting dot com that she is ready if a director like Ridley Scott is directing. Now this goes into something that I want to talk about today. YOU as a filmmaker, now we are talking about horror and suspense film here, well any film that have that ingredient. Christopher Nolan (the director of Batman Begins and Dark Knight) in the LA Times here, says that Nolan had to tone down the scene in The Dark Knight were Harvey Dent gets burned because he didn't want the audience to look away from the screen. This got me to thinking about this factor.

Cause, I am going to tie these two stories here, no worries, if you look at the Original Alien Directed by Ridley Scott you will find yourself looking away a lot at the film, well at least I did. I ask you the talented filmmaker, Smart Hollywood Player, and Filmfan, how often would you want your audience to look away at your film if you are doing such a genre? Have you ever looked away at the screen seconds or minutes at a time? And if so, how does that help or hurt your film. Minding that you just want a "look away" factor, you obviously don't want a "walk out" cause of gore or such.

How can you not love this poster?!

I bring this up cause we recently had this, what I call, Torture Porn on the screen with Hostel and Saw. How some audience members and film makers are mistaking horror with torture scenes. Not that's a look away factor! I saw Hostel by mistake once and found myself not wanting to watch it. It's just too much. If you saw Wanted you would notice that film had a look away factor to it also. It was too violent and over the top in its gore. I think and here is the point of all this, how do you decide what is going to keep the audience looking away for a period of time and not watching your film. Would that bother you?

Well I think people look away for different reasons, I mean I look away at the screen for male nudity. I don't really need to see famous male actors naked. Totally doesn't do it for me. But dealing with this specific genre of Horror or suspense like Alien, which to wrap up that first thought it would be wonderful to see Ridley Scott tackle that again, I want to explore the good and bad aspects of having your audience look away at the screen during your movie.

Lets take our first example from Silence of the Lambs, directed by Jonathan Demme. Now the last twenty minutes of the film is riddled with suspense, so much in fact you might want to look away at the screen, even though the screen is pitch black most of the time and you only hear Clarice's panting as she looks for Buffalo Bill in the basement. But this is a good look away. For in a fine film like this you will most likely watch it again. So in this looking away is a good thing, cause its a fine film and you will most likely see it again and see what you have missed.

So this would be a good thing. Now a bad example would be the torture porn that is out there with the Saw and Hostel thing. Looking away at a film in that franchise would mean that you really don't want to see it and you probably will never want to see it ever. So as a film maker, stay away from the torture porn or images that are too harsh because your audience may look away from your film and not want to look at it ever again. They key is to use suspense and gore in a substantiated way as to have the viewer look away for a few seconds but not to look away for a while and most importantly, not to make the viewer lack luster for a second viewing.

Let's talk more about this article in the LA Times about Chris Nolan, now here is a filmmaker with integrity. This director knows what he wants and is creative. Let's take a quote here from the article, "For the Joker, Nolan went back to the first appearance of the character in comics back in 1940, when the leering clown showed up without any sort of back-story and simply started killing people. That's how the Joker enters Nolan's Gotham, not unlike, Nolan pointed out, the toothy intruder of "Jaws""




Yes! He believes that little or no back story is scarier than explaining it to death! I agree. Then what's to say about all Rob Zombie's back story to explain Michael Meyers! Rob just made his film unscary by doing that. Of course we also have the new version of Friday the 13th that apparently explains the whole backstory of Jason. Now, when will film makers learn that Horror is scarier with no explanation. We fear what we don't know. If you explain all this backstory it takes away from the horror.

Well I can talk about this till I am blue in the throat and I doubt it will make any difference. You should read that article, its a nice piece that goes into Ledger's performance and how the film is dedicated to him and his memory. Until Tomorrow, Let's talk film!