So, I live in Puerto Rico, which means that I get my weekly entertainment magazines approximately one or two weeks later. I just got my March 4th Entertainment Weekly issue, in which there is an interesting article co-written by Anthony Breznican, Josh Rottenberg, and Benjamin Svetkey called "How to Fix The Movies". And it basically talks about the downward spiral the box office is in right now, how it’s been 20 years since the last time the box office was in such a precarious situation. They proceed to offer some good and best of all, FREE advice on "How to Fix The Movies". I personally loved this article because it is so true! The theme in this article was basically that big budget movies (i.e. "How Do You Know?" was budgeted in the $256 million and it bombed in the box office) don't do well in the box office, while small budget movies end up being the most successful (i.e. "Black Swan", "True Grit", "The King's Speech").
They recommend, among other things, to instead of remaking old but good movies, to remake the old bad ones. Its clear that studios are going to always remake old movies, they just remake the wrong movies. The article advises to “remake a movie that had a good idea at its core, but was poorly executed in the initial intent or has aged badly.” Examples of movies that followed this path and succeeded go from “True Grit”, “3:10 to Yuma”, “Ocean’s Eleven”, “The Fly”, “The Thomas Crown Affair” among others. Films that didn’t follow that path and failed go from “The Women”, “The Longest Yard”, “Planet of the Apes”, “Sabrina” and “The Pink Panther”.
Another good advice by the article was to stop killing their audiences with their popcorn. You’d think that popcorn is a pretty safe food, its not. According to a 2009 study “a single medium-size bag of popcorn from the Regal theater chain contained 1,610 calories and 60 grams of saturated fat.
“Treat 3-D like the good silverware: only bring it out for truly special occasions”. I couldn’t have said it any better. The fact that almost every movie that has come out in the past year has been made in 3-D is a joke. 3-D should be treated with utmost respect; I think that just because it made the highest grossing movie of all time doesn’t mean that everyone should use this technology. The only people that love using this technology are the studios because they can charge a premium of $3-$4, but misused 3-D in movies like “Clash of the Titans” has created a backlash against big-house “Avatar”. The time for no-nonsense in the movies has come.
Another advice that I thought was very well thought of was the fact that TV writers have a really hard time transitioning to the filmmaking business. The article questions if we’ve seen a romantic comedy that is as funny as “Modern Family”, the answer is a resounding “No”. “And yet, a snobby caste system still exists in Hollywood that makes it tough for TV writers to cross over into features (unless your name begins with “Aaron” and ends with “Sorkin”). What’s odd is that TV guys nowadays are running studios, and yet the writers are having the same problems that back in the day TV actors used to have. Let’s love, not hate!
As a production assistant myself, I have been through the experience where myself and fellow PA’s haven’t really believed in the project that we’re working on. “Chairman and CEO of Legendary Pictures, Thomas Tull, says that commercial considerations have overtaken the creative ones far too much of the time. Which may be a reason why we’ve seen so many movies based on everything from old TV shows to board games to fairy tales. If you have to think hard about why the movie is special, then you should also think hard about why you’re doing it.
I personally like the commercials before the feature, but even I can’t deny that the amount of commercials before a feature is downright ridiculous. Obviously theaters need every nickel they can get their hands on - and cinema advertising accounted for $584 million in 2009. But that’s precisely what turns off moviegoers from actually going to the movies. So, instead of pushing these ridiculous amounts of commercials down our throats, why not a cartoon? They say. Pixar has done a lot of great-animated shorts. In fact they’re going to premiere their next short “Hawaiian Vacation” before the June 24 premiere of “Cars 2”.
Now, for something that I believe a lot of people can agree on. No more than 2 writers per film. The best films in history have had no more than two or three writers. 1994’s “The Flintstones” had more than 35 writers working on the script. Says a producer: “If you look through history, most great movies were a singular vision.”
Well, there it is, my point of view regarding this extremely informative and entertaining article. I believe that the movie going experience is the last step in the movie-making process, as well as being a teamwork experience. It starts with great single or double vision writing, followed by great pre-production, production (in which you have reliable people working on it, that truly believe in the product that they’re making), post-production (great editing!) and last but never least, enjoying the movie. Hopefully a time will come where moviegoers will actually be taken care of. What are your thoughts?
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