Hollywood's Big Six & The Future
I just finished reading Time magazines article on “The End of Excess,” and one part that particularly struck me was that during the 70’s, a time of renewed entrepreneurship and creative thinkers, Microsoft and Apple were formed. So I began to think, how can a business today do things in a fresh and more efficient way than it’s already being done?
For starters, I think it’s time for a period of selling off. I’m talking about the big six. When people talk about Hollywood Studios, they’re more often referring to Warner Bros., Fox, Disney, Sony, Paramount and Universal. What’s happened is studios are now owned by huge conglomerates. Universal/NBC is owned by GE, Fox by News Corp, Sony… duh, Disney… double duh, Paramount owned by Viacom, and Warner Bros. by Time Warner.
Your asking, so what, why does it matter they’re owned by a bigger company, more exposure right? Well lets look at it this way. When GE sees profits shrink up in their Aviation/Industrial/Railway division (pick one), they need to divert funds from other segments of their company to help things out. As a result, Universal is forced to layoff. This doesn’t only occur at Universal as you can imagine. Not only do people lose their jobs, but fewer projects are getting the green light as they make cut backs. Variety has reported that 2011 will see a cutback of films being released. Granted, the credit crisis is one factor in the equation, but doesn’t help nonethless.
In my opinion, I think it would be better if the studios went back to being independently owned. Despite the economic recession, box office sales are doing just as good as any other recent year, so why not take advantage of the market? Allowing a company to be judged solely on the performance of its executives/talent/products is the only way to do business, instead of just lumping it together with the other unrelated (losing) branches.
I’ve been trying to figure out what the draw is to people using Twitter. I like to think of it as a blog for the “txt mssge” generation. The people who typically operate blogs (like myself), and people who are big into text messaging (the tweens), are not that far off in age, but Twitter provides another venue for people to share their views without having to write several paragraphs. After all, people are reading far less these days, and short and lean is always favored over long winded (Sorry Faulkner). Throughout the day I’ve got funny ideas or things happen to me that aren’t very blog worthy, but it’ll make the cut for twitter!
I was on YouTube today and came across a 2 min trailer for Role Models where I realized it had a scene that wasn’t in the entire movie, and I thought, why don’t more films do this? Deliberately write 1 or 2 scenes that have just one great joke but really have no place to put in the film, but use it for the trailer. Most movies have deleted scenes that were cut anyways, so include some of these.
As I’ve commented before, trying to get a script through a major studio is real difficult. Unless you package it/produce it yourself, its even tougher. One way to help this process is to write a book first, which I’ve increasingly thought of doing. I’ve got one script that I’m still figuring out, but since I’m doing all the heavy lifting of mapping out the relationships and story line, I might as well adapt it to book form after I write the script. After all, in screenplay format it’ll be around 100 pages, which if you’ve read any scripts you’ll know its a very bare bones format. Less is more. Naturally I like to use as many words to get my point across, so writing the book could be nice since I can use more description, and if I so chose, go inside the characters heads.
Tonight I caught a $1.50 theater showing of Jim Carrey’s Yes, Man. Never mind the fact that it comes out on DVD in about a month, there’s still something unique about seeing it in a theater.
I used to think Hollywood was about creativity, the best of the best, where money and talent goes to make something awesome. Then I discovered the truth, especially in more recent times. Independent films is where creativity goes, because the studio system has almost given up on creating fresh ideas. This post is spurred by the recent news that a Total Recall remake is on track. Yes, the 1990 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Because apparently its TOO OLD? Utterly ridiculous. You want to remake a movie, pick some old Cary Grant movie. With this mind set we’ll be seeing a Back to the Future remake soon.