Letters to the Editor
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What if their niche is big?
While I know your heart is in the right place, I wonder: if there is a niche called 'big and stupid'; and if we know it exists because a lot of money is being made in it; why would Hollywood try to fill some 'small but complex' niche, when more nimble players, many of them willing to work for free and earn no money, are doing that?
What if, in short, their 'niche' is big?
I mean, it ain't pretty, but somebody will do it, and really Hollywood's in the place to do it.
Instead of transforming Hollywood itself, I think that people who want small, good, complex (frankly, a lot of recent 'serious' movies sound like self-important snorefests to me) will end up looking to some new location--or network--to become the Hollywood of that.
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From my viewpoint
Hollywood is sort of generally known, a place to get McProduct, but not nutritious. Breadth of sales, not depth of devotion or interest.
Hollywood can never seize the Long Tail of sales with this method, and it's really not constructed to.
It won't go away, but it will have its limits. I can't see people being as devoted to Will Smith's "I am Legend" as they are to an anime like Neon Genesis Evangelion, or for that matter Harry Potter.
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Interesting now that distribution is changing...
I read an article a while ago (maybe here on Salon? Can't remember) about Netflix picking up indie films at places like Sundance.
So someone films a cool, interesting, quirky movie (like "Little Miss Sunshine"), produces it on the cheap, and sells it directly to Netflix. Cool idea... not all films demand the space and noise of the big screen. Then if it does well enough there (with Netflix's backing), it might get a big-screen run. Even if it doesn't ever make it to the big screen, it finds its audience, completely circumventing the traditional Hollywood scene.
The end of the deal is that people like stories. We'll get them one way or another. As another poster pointed out, if Big, Simple, and Loud is the niche that Hollywood wants to fill--great. Someone else will fill the Literate and Complex niche.
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Hollywood Babel on and on and on
I really liked the last paragraph of your piece, Mr. Leonard. Right on the money, I think you are, although we're in a weird place, culturally, where niches are everything, now -- like being on an endless coastline of fjords, where before everybody had been on some broad steppe, sharing a similar reference point.
Technically, we can get anything we're looking for, but at the same time, it's a lot easier to be lost in the endless flood of information. A number of years ago, it was possible still to have a cultural conversation with somebody and you'd be speaking the same language, more or less.
But now, there's so information asymmetry all over the place, even in entertainment, based on how much effort you make to swim against (or with) the tide. There's the passive consumer who still embraces the old media -- the "What's on TV?" newspaper reader who will see a summer blockbuster because that's what's been advertised; there's the indie rock hipster who only likes ultra-obscure French art films done by Nepalese auteurs using Super 8 film; there's the DIY Slovenian irony-worshipping splattercore enthusiast who posts on YouTube and relies on production programs to assemble their heavily-edited pieces, and so on (as many worlds and niches as there are culturally-attentive human beings).
While it's great that everybody's got a place at the table, I can't imagine how those folks can actually have a meaningful cultural conversation with each other -- at some point, a niche becomes a cubbyhole, and then a sinkhole. And if these niches aren't necessarily communicating, then I'm wondering if it's just so much noise, or if everything's contextual. Does the Good(tm) stand a chance in such an environment? On one level, it would seem to increase the odds of the Good showing up, but on another level, it makes it harder for the Good to be seen by very many people, diminishing its impact. It's both liberating and horrifying.
I think it's impossible for something so old-media and bottom line-driven like Hollywood to navigate all of those fjords -- they just build their big, dumb freighters and slide on through, hoping they don't run aground.
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Give Me Escapism
I'm pretty well educated and, I'd like to think, smart. I prefer my movies to be escapism. There's enough reality in my reality, thank you very much.
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No World for Young Men
At the SAG awards last night, Josh Brolin made fun of the main Hollywood studios, as 4 of the top 5 movies were made by the 'indie' arms of the studios, or actual indies. He said actors were loving the demise of the Hollywood blockbuster.
I did like Titanic, and it is still the biggest selling movie worldwide. But I doubt there are many more where that came from.
Lowest common denominator films still make money. And that is what it is all about. When they stop making money, then the world will begin to watch Indie films. If they aren't already.
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Question
I've heard the film critics in both the US and Europe complain about the dumbing down of Hollywoods output. However isn't that part of critcs strategy for earning a living......convince us that they are wiser, more cultured and tasteful than the rest of us. Otherwise why would we read their columns?
I've never heard any empirical evidence or survey showing that this is the case. It's so qualitative and subjective.
Perhaps there are a fairly constant number of decent films with real and interesting plots being made. They may not get the biggest budgets or much publicity. Whilst more dumb films are being made and promoted because the masses flock tom see them, thus bringing in stacks of cash for the studios.
Incidentally some of that cash might actually be in directly reaching the indie film makers, enabling them to survive in nooks and crannies of a big industry. Whereas they might simply be starved out of business in a smaller more esoteric arty industry.
Just thought I'd be devils advocate :-)