The Changing Tide in Hollywood

Hollywood once made great film on purpose...

Ok, let's talk film. This is an easy subject for me. I am not sure if you know or not, but I actually do a lot of research in writing this blog everyday. It takes maybe about two hours at the most. Mostly an hour for me. Usually it's a subject I have to mull over for a bit. But this subject is easy for me because I talk about it ALL THE TIME. It's is the underlying subject in every blog I write, the quality of film. Hollywood has been getting away for a long time with delivering sub-par film. Yet, history repeats itself and it has again.

You see in the early 70's films used to run in the theater for up to a year. The only form of advertising was word of mouth. So in the 70's Hollywood knew they had to make quality film to perpetuate word of mouth. They went to USC and other film schools to recruit filmmakers to help make great film. Well this is total irony for the filmmakers they got were Coppola, Spielberg, Lucas, De Palma, Scorsese and Kubrick. The ones who made film not only great, but exceptional.

When Jaws was released in 1977, the world of film changed. It was the first film with a huge opening weekend. The studio heads since that day in 1977 have tried and succeeded until 2008 to fool audiences by heavy advertising. And all through the 80's and 90's, we ran to the theater to see Total Recall, Big Trouble in Little China, Matrix Reloaded and even Episode one, just to be let down.

It got really bad for a while

Well this summer has changed everything. Thank God for that. Studios know that they now have to produce quality film or any hope of breaking even at the Box Office is over. The films that reigned this year all were films of good review. A while ago, execs blamed texting for a film's opening failure. They did! Execs blamed texting. People texting each other after the film on opening day telling their friends the film sucked. Today its the Internet. Specifically Rottentomatoes.com.

The tomatometer at RT.com has wreaked havoc on studios marketing campaigns. We as an audience have once again regained control over the quality of film. We have all the studios scared. LA Times covers the studio by studio summer progress here. I know I feel like I am repeating LA times today, but I really wanted to chant from the rooftops today that Hollywood is fearful because they are realizing that the audience out here is smart.

And that is what Hollywood hates about us. They hate that we are smart. They want us to be dumb and listen to them. They want us to watch what they want us to watch. Well No more! When Disaster Movie bombs this weekend, the audience will have spoken completely. That's all Hollywood wants to do. They want to hire cheap, make cheap, dazzle, slap on a happy ending and count their money. I think that trend is ending. Hollywood needs to start making great film again. If they don't then we just won't go. Until tomorrow, let's talk film!