Cold Weather, Hot Coffee, Warm Kino: Rantings and Ravings: Is Hollywood Dying?

For a few years now, every time a new comic book franchise is rebooted or a knock off Harry Potter is green lit, I’ve heard people collectively sigh and state that the end of Hollywood is upon us. Ask some people and they’ll tell you the great behemoth is already a still and lifeless corpse and that the workers of Hollywood are tricking everyone into believing is all well - much like a cross between a H.P.Lovecraft story, the Wizard of Oz, and those Castro rumours from a couple of years back.

Is this Hollywood?

It doesn’t take a genius to see that the box office is clogged with what some critics deem unimaginative trash. Currently in the top ten, there are two children’s books, one remake and one re-release. Meh, only 40% of the top ten, I’m sure we can find worse. In fact, consider last July. Over in the States, 70% of the top ten grossing films were remakes, sequels, comic books or musicals based on existing shows. A similar thing occurred in August 2007, where 60% of the top ten fell into this category [1]. So what do we know so far? Well, if I pick the week well enough, I can show you a box office list with a majority of these critically ‘undesired’ films.

So what? Sure these films aren’t original stories, but why does that equate with the death of American cinema? I guess that unlike most of us, Hollywood can suffer two deaths, the demise of quality products and the loss of its financial income. Yes, cinema is one of those odd economics products that classes as art, so unlike most other products they don’t rate themselves only by how much demand there is. For example, despite their huge returns, I don’t think any of us are going to claim that Titanic or the Phantom Menace are perfect films. No, film is an art and therefore should be rated on more than receipts, but noting that Hollywood makes a lot of sequels (and lots of people watch them), does that equate to a creative decline? Well, it doesn’t. Every year, stunning new American films are released by newcomers and old favourites alike. Sure, critics like to put a lot of foreign cinema on their end of year lists, but if you pressed any of them, they’d be forced to admit that the US still makes good films and in an abundant quantity. The difficulty is in getting these films into cinemas and doing them justice in terms of promotion. Seeming these days, the only way to get people to flock to an imaginative film is to slap a Pixar logo on the product credits.

In April 2006, Focus Features released Brick, a neo-noir film set in a Californian High School. This wasn’t a camp parody however; in fact its serious and sombre mood was refreshing in a year dominated by seemingly generic family friendly cinema. Directed by Rian Johnson and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who I maintain will be the great American actor of his time – although that’s another story), its nods toward Hammett, Chandler, Bogart and Mitchum helped it net over $3 million and a Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at Sundance [2]. Not bad for a first time director.

Rian began work on his follow up, the Brothers Bloom in March 2007. The budget was a huge increase from Bricks $450,000, estimated at $20 million [3]. The Brothers Bloom has currently grossed less than Brick. Having not seen the film, I cannot comment on its quality, but I can tell you that its journey into cinema was far from helpful. Delay after delay hit the film, not due to usual guilty parties of postproduction or spiralling costs. No, this time it was the fault of the distributor. Summit Entertainment had decided that too many similar films were scheduled for January [4], so it was pushed back until summer. Of course, the entire buzz from its premiere at TIFF the previous December had evaporated and currently the film is waiting for its DVD release in order to maintain some dignity.

This is a prime example of what people worry about when observing Hollywood’s current strategy of remake, rehash and reboot. The Brothers Bloom’s chance to shine was squandered due to a decision based on economic returns. Fine, cinema is a business and Summit need to look after their capital as best the can, but to let a film with such promise, a film that many internet critics rate as one of their favourite of the year, simply slip into cinema quietly and die is a waste.

Economically speaking, noises about the demise of Hollywood really came into force in 2006, with the New York Times going as far to state that it would suffer a fate similar to Detroit [5]. The apparent issues included box office receipts and DVD sales falling significantly, the writers strike, the rise in quality of home entertainment products and stale, bland films filling cinema screens[6]. However, whatever the cause of the downturn, it was obvious that Hollywood needed a good kicking and I believe that the Dark Knight certainly was the jumpstart it needed. Whatever your opinion on the film, for better or worse, it was proof that ‘high grossing’ and ‘critical favourite’ were not mutually exclusive terms, which is sadly what we have become accustomed to.

In the end, this is the chief problem and success of the Hollywood system. Ingmar Bergman famously rejected Hollywood, claiming it to be too obsessed with box office returns [7], unlike the Soviet Cinema of the 30s or the Polish cinema of the 80s. This hinders the success of creative film, but that isn’t to say it kills it. The beautiful thing about great stories is that people will find a way to make them, even at their own expense. Hollywood just doesn’t make it easy. Depending on your opinion, the downside to this is that so many people have so much tied into this leviathan that they won’t let it sink without a fight. Much like the French nobility of the 1700’s, it is a very self-obsessed and self-serving system. Who knows if there is a revolution coming?