SMALL MOVIES AND NEW LEADERS

In the series we will discuss the future of the film industry, which will involve fewer action movies and franchises, more work on smaller screens, more original stories, and better writing. Also we will discuss how women have always been the driving force in Hollywood and can be again, if we protect and empower them.

 Franchise fatigue

America is a big, fast-moving economy, and it creates and destroys its unsinkable Titanics with dizzying speed. Steel, the railroads, GM, the big banks, the airlines all ruled the world until they didn’t; even the oil companies will go down when fossil fuels leave the stage.

Broadcast television had big big TV shows that seemed invincible, but they all ran out of gas in a few years, except for the occasional Lucy, Gunsmoke or SVU. Then they tried big-night lineups, so that a fading show could be supported by a new teammate show without losing fan loyalty: the Archie Bunker Saturdays, the Brady Bunch Fridays, the Cosby/Friends Thursdays, until broadcast itself became a dinosaur.

VHS was massive in the 1980s until Netflix came to the party and destroyed it all.

Cable had a temporary edge over broadcast because they could push sex and violence in shows like the Wire, Deadwood, the Sopranos and Game of Thrones, until the streamers took away their advantage. MTV was massive in the 1980s until they turned into a rap/reality outlet and were overtaken by Youtube and other websites.

In the movies, genres came and went, big musicals, big westerns; they dabbled in the classics in the 1930s, in prestige pieces in the 1980s, in Young Adult a decade ago.

Technology is a graveyard. ATT versus Sprint, AOL, Time Warner, MySpace, Compuserve, Napster! Eight tracks, Betamax, dot matrix printers! Remember when Facebook was cool and edgy? Remember when the IBM 286 ruled the world? Remember the incessant ads from Wang, the gang that thought they would dethrone IBM in the 1980s until they went bankrupt?

Likewise the actors who owned the world for a short time: 100,000 people came to the funeral of Rudy Valentino. Shirley Temple was queen of the world, Clark Gable was the King of Hollywood, Fred and Ginger, Bing Crosby, Martin and Lewis, Brando, Doris Day, James Bond, Julie Andrews, Newman and Redford, Burt Reynolds, Eastwood, Stallone with his two franchises, Arnold, Cruise, Murphy, Kevin Costner, Mel Gibson, Julia Roberts. They all ruled, they all fell. The only one who really performed at the box office for a long period was, ironically, one of the worst actors in the bunch, John Wayne.

And so it will prove with action blockbusters and franchises. They’ve been here for 40 years and they’ve worn out their welcome.

Studios are so addicted to blockbuster franchises based on safe, known properties, that they invariably go to the well once too often. Planet of the Apes had one installment too many and then rebooted, ditto Superman. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Rocky all spawned franchises and then subfranchises; X Men and Spiderman are spinning off. Star Wars repeated itself too many times and finally went astray with Solo. Marvel has made five films too many. James Bond veered into self-parody twenty years ago. Too many Batmen and too many Jokers, too many Aliens and Terminators. Jurassic Park resorts to bigger, more fake-looking dinosaurs, just as Jaws did with their sharks. Star Trek lost all of the mind-blowing ideas of the original series and became just another dull franchise that stayed too long. The next Indiana Jones will hit the theaters just as Harrison Ford is turning eighty. Disney makes every big blockbuster twice. Bourne is the same car chase over and over.

Some franchises and blockbusters failed to launch: The Mummy, John Carter, Maze Runner, Narnia, Golden Compass, Dragon Tattoo, Percy Jackson, Lone Ranger, Green Lantern. Just in 2015-2016 there were no less than 22 big movies that lost at least 60 million at the box office. About once a month a studio got crushed with a “can’t-miss” like Fantastic Four, Man from UNCLE, the BFG, Ghostbusters, Ninja Turtles, the Huntsman. The carnage continued into 2017 with Blade Runner, Justice League, King Arthur, the Mummy, Power Rangers, Valerian.

Foreign markets are getting bored with the franchises also.

The complicating factor is that a handful of recent franchise installments made staggering amounts of money. It will be that much more difficult for the studios to face the fact that they made that money because they were releasing the FINALES of the Avenger story and the Skywalker story.

A major aggravating factor is that they would rather use a well-known cultural phenomenon that is often stupid, than gamble on something new. They are running out of TV shows to rip off. The horror franchises of the 1980s shuffled offstage, the world of fantasy franchises is a long string of false starts, and Young Adult era ended almost before it started: Hunger Games limped to the finish line and Divergent didn’t even get that far.

They made billions on movies that are either toys and games, or the next thing to it: Clue, Pirates of the Caribbean, Sucker Punch, GI Joe, the Matrix, Transformers, Super Mario, Pokemon, Mortal Kombat, Lara Croft, Battleship, Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Final Fantasy, Hitman, Prince of Persia, Angry Birds, Warcraft, Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty, Pikachu, Minecraft. They actually made Lego Batman, a cartoon about a toy about a comic book. But they are running out of this junk too.

You know who else is getting sick of franchises? Actors. Franchises involve a lot of trips to the gym and very little acting. Actresses like franchise money but wonder why even the Oscar-winning actresses have to do franchises to maintain their visibility. Sean Connery had to be dragged back to James Bond twice. Harrison Ford begged for his characters to be killed. Emma Watson almost gave up Hermione. Jennifer Lawrence has been injured multiple times in action sequences. Gwyneth Paltrow says she’s only doing another blockbuster as a cameo. Contrariwise Leo di Caprio has lasted three decades without diving into the franchise pool. Viggo Mortensen took his son along to watch him turn down Wolverine because he didn’t want the multi-year commitment.

Small movies

Hollywood’s survival may depend on its ability to remember how to make small movies.

In the old days, betting the studio’s future on a few blockbusters sank MGM; Cleopatra almost sank Fox, and Heaven’s Gate killed UA.

When the global entertainment industry stands to lose 30 billion in a single year, investors will demand change. Any investor will agree that it’s safer to diversify into ten $20 million productions, than to plunk it all down on one $200 million behemoth. When the seas are choppy and full of pirates, put your treasure in ten ships, not one. It’s better for creators. And audiences are begging for that kind of story telling anyway.

Perfect example: Paramount released 61 films during 1971 to 1973. They made a ton on the Godfather, but even if the Godfather had been a flop, Paramount would have survived, because those other 60 films included Plaza Suite, Willy Wonka, Harold And Maude, Play It Again Sam, Lady Sings The Blues, Save The Tiger, Charlotte’s Web, Paper Moon, A Touch Of Class, Bang The Drum Slowly, and Serpico. They were guaranteed to survive because they made a lot of small, good movies. They allowed art to happen, while also diversifying like smart businessmen.

But Hollywood has forgotten how.

Disney, with two fifths of the market, focuses on more blockbusters, dumps the boutique operations at Fox 2000 and Touchstone. Sony had an excellent movie in Dragon Tattoo, but they insisted in over-spending on it and then demanding a blockbuster-like BO return which they didn’t get: they failed because they couldn’t think small.

The old model still focuses excessively on actors and directors who want big checks but can’t deliver anymore. Netflix had to pay $300 million for the Irishman, a sixth of their massive acquisition budget for one film, and essentially needed five dollars from every subscriber to watch the movie, to break even. Old directors like Scorsese and Spielberg still make 100 million dollar movies and they all star de Niro and Hanks. Hateful Eight was 54 million to shoot a story that takes place all in one building. Dumbo, 170 million. Justice League had a break-even point of $750 million. The second Blade Runner fell short of break-even by $80 million.

This just in: Scorsese’s new project is yet another $200 million movie with de Niro and Di Caprio. Killers of the Flower Moon. Paramount will try to release it in theaters and Apple will try to get its money back by streaming it. Because these guys never learn.

Guys like Chris Nolan and Denis Villeneuve, who make expensive, boring, pretty pictures, howl that they need the big-blockbuster opening in the theaters.

Some studios have boutique operations, or like Paramount they put out low-budget offerings under the main company logo, but even before the virus they only put out a couple of dozen low-budget offerings, a lot of them with weak scripts because they make no effort to find the good writers. But the studios and theater chains have given up on romcoms, adult dramas, independent films, writer-centric pieces. Today, films like Clockwork Orange and Lenny wouldn’t be nominated for Oscars: they probably wouldn’t be made at all.

Even the smaller players like Lionsgate, A24, Bleecker Street and Roadside are nervously seeking a bankable big-name artist, a now-endangered species, or a deep-pocketed financier before going ahead.

Ironically a great place for small movies and female-driven projects to get off the ground was The Weinstein Company – not anymore.

Executives still don’t grasp that you don’t need to spend to earn. Bridgerton not only surpassed the number of viewers Irishman got, they did it with a much smaller budget. Bridgerton reached the screen for about $55 million, while the Irishman drank up about $300 million. How often do you think Netflix will spend that much on somebody like Scorsese or Spielberg, insisting they can’t tell stories for less than 100 million?

Modernizing means finding new marketing solutions. The firm that figures out how to make a film go global without spending $70 million to market it will own the battlefield: free media will be pivotal. Today’s action films all seem to be aimed at 10-year-old boys, so Hollywood will need to learn marketing all over again anyway. Will Netflix ever figure out how to market all its properties, and not just big titles like Stranger Things?

Directors

Hollywood needs fewer egomaniac directors stomping on everyone’s toes.

Innaritu and Orson Welles tormenting the cast and crew with needlessly long and complicated shots, showing off, despite the fact that no one but a cameraman would even notice. Eastwood, Kubrick and George Roy Hill treating actors like dirt. Wyler and Fincher making actors do fifty takes of a scene because they can’t clearly articulate what they want. Truffaut insisting that creating a film is the work of the “auteur” in charge, not a collaborative team; Taylor Hackford blocking efforts to recognize casting directors because the only choices that matter are the director’s. Spielberg and Spike Lee trying to be Important Directors. Directors creating unsafe conditions, firing live weaponry at actors, cutting off bathroom breaks, confiscating phones, harassing women, yelling, threatening, throwing things. Joss Whedon’s abusive behavior prompted a Warner investigation, and in fact complaints about his on-set abuse go back to his vampire-slaying days, to include insulting female writers to make them cry.

Year after year, more stories about abusive directors are coming out. Olivia Wilde quotes a famous director who advised her to have three arguments on set every day, to show her power and be the predator. George Clooney quotes a director who bragged about breaking down actors with 40 straight takes. Matt Reeves 50 takes in a row for actors in heavy costume. David O. Russell talks to actors right in the middle of a take. Aaron Sorkin freaking out when actors change his writing, despite the fact that his writing is overrated. Directors instructing actresses that they can’t make it unless they enhance their breasts with surgery.

And let’s not forget producers. The rapists and other idiots from days of yore. Tom Cruise, on the Mission Impossible set, a white male multi-millionaire publicly threatening and screaming at blue collar workers who don't work for him.

Let’s distinguish between being a jerk, and merely being a bad director. David Fincher does realize that he over-prepares and wears people out. For Panic Room he prepared a massive game plan that mandated where every actor and every camera would be every second, which leaves no room for the other artists to contribute. But even recently, in Mank, he was still indulging in overkill. Personally, when I was directing, I always prepared those game plans in case the actors came up empty for ideas, but we never needed most of it – we would use the overall structure of my plan and then the actors came up with most of the details.

However, Fincher will just say, “Take 45, do it again.” William Wyler would say “Take 45, because your acting is lousy” and never explain what he wanted.

Hollywood needs fewer directors laboring desperately to be cool. Scorsese is all mean streets and needle drops and voice-overs and de Niro. Kevin Smith dropping trou like a middle schooler, as though he’s being paid by the F-bomb. David Lynch, Tim Burton and the Coen brothers think that weird and twisted are cool; when Lynch has a good story, he manages, but without one he produces gibberish like Mulholland Drive. Wes Anderson is just the weird-and-cool school with prettier colors, like Soderbergh always painting in yellow.

Tarantino, having built a rather undeserved reputation by trying desperately to be the Cool Director, is now trying to be the Purist Director. He proclaimed that he loves actual film and that digital filming is the death of cinema. Which is not only Luddite thinking, but also a huge threat to independent producers who don’t have the millions Tarantino does to shoot on film. Tarantino wasted a mountain of time and money shooting Hateful Eight in extreme wide-screen 70mm, despite the fact that most of the film takes place in a tiny stagecoach lodge; this is a key reason why this cinematic pig cost over $50 million.

Hollywood doesn’t need lazy directors. David O. Harris uses the same actors over and over, and he shows up to the set with half-finished scripts and little idea how to realize it all onscreen. He’s not prepared.

Hollywood doesn’t need directors who can’t tell actors what they really want. Scorsese is weak in this department, as is Fincher; Wyler was the same way. As Stanislavski would have said: it doesn’t matter what is going on in the director’s mind or the actor’s mind, or the kind of mood or vibe they think they’re going for: what matters is what the actor says and does, specifically and in a concrete way, in front of the camera. That’s all the audience can see and hear.

You know who can do great work? The guys who learned, like most adults, that cool is what happens when you stop trying so hard to be cool. People who treat cast and crew with respect. People who can introduce the cast, crew and audience to great characters telling a great story, and then get out of the spotlight and out of the way. For that reason, they can tell any kind of story. Ang Lee can tell any story; so can Alfonse Cuaron, and Ron Howard when he chooses to push the boat out. Billy Wilder when he was around. And Ridley Scott isn’t bad, although he could pick better material. It ain't about you: let the characters talk to the audience.

And where are the ladies? We need to find agents, producers and money for female directors. Being a director means dealing with actors, and women are going to bring a whole new toolkit to that aspect of filmmaking. Female surgeons keep more patients alive because they follow the rules and listen to others: what if we had female directors showing us what female leadership looks like?

Actors

At various times in Hollywood, big-name actors have had a lot of power. This isn’t one of them.

In the 1940s actresses determined whether a studio would make a profit or not; in the 1950s the actors won more clout because it foreign markets wanted to see the stars and it was easier to break contracts. Today, the actors don’t have that much clout. 

Big name artists demand big paychecks, back-end deals, first-look deals, but few actors can demand all that now.

Male stars like Tom Cruise and Will Smith, who in the past could be counted on to open action hits, have flopped.

Back-end deals may disappear if audiences don’t want to go to the cinema anymore; actors can threaten to boycott studios or form their own company if they don’t get the deals, but that won’t make audiences show up.

Big-name artists want production deals, but studios are cooling to the idea because actors don’t stay loyal to the studio. Universal held Ron Howard’s hand for The Missing, Inside Deep Throat and Cinderella Man, and he repaid them by taking the golden goose, Da Vinci Code, to Sony. Will Smith’s deal apparently is no more and so is Jerry Bruckheimer’s.

Likewise the agencies have been sucking a lot of money out of the industry, sometimes with conflicts of interest, involved both as agents and in the production process. The aftershocks of the Warner decision, which threatens back-end money, will force both actors and agents to rethink.

Actors may never get their power back, but we need to figure out their artistic power. Unleash actors so they can do what no one thought they could: Emma Stone in Easy A, Emma Watson in Deathly Hallows, Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings and Winter’s Bone, the entire cast of Silence of the Lambs and Judgment at Nuremburg, Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith, the kid in The Kid.

One thing we can be thankful for, is that the Method is fading into the past.

The true godfather of acting was of course Stanislavski, who taught actors to fill up their toolkits with all kinds of different problem-solving tools. And then sit down and chart the path of your character through life, his fears from the past, his hopes for the future, his relationships. Use your tools and use your head.

Let’s be careful with our terms: Stanislavski was the System, while Lee Strasburg was the Method.

Strasberg insisted that acting was about emotional memory – recalling emotional moments from the past and using them to fuel you as you proceeded through your scenes. This made for a lot of weird neurotic performances. When he wasn’t drilling actors on emotional memory, he was doing improv, a wildly over-rated acting tool, but emotional memory was his big thing.

Many people, including Stanislavski himself, said that trying to act using only the emotional-memory tool was insane. Stanislavski told his actors, and tried to tell Strasberg indirectly, that all that emotional nonsense isn’t worth anything until it is translated into something physical that the audience can see. But Strasberg insisted that he knew better than Stanislavski.

Strasberg ran the Actors Studio like a dictator. He tried to direct one production using Method only, and it was a disaster, whereupon he simply blamed the actors for doing it wrong. Right after James Dean died, Strasberg ridiculed Dean for straying from the path.

Directors like Hitchcock and Laurence Olivier began to roll their eyes when they saw Method actors coming, because the actors were generally erratic, uneven, and poorly prepared. Actors quickly lost patience with the Method boys too; when one actor too many asked John Gielgud what his “motivation” was for making that cross to stage right, Gielgud rolled his eyes, pointed, and said in that Pomfret Castle voice of his, “my motivation…is to get over there”. At Strasberg’s funeral, even his friends admitted that he screwed up an entire generation of actors, and many acting schools soon turned their backs on Strasberg, including Sanford Meisner and Stella Adler.

So, first, Method actors who achieve great things, manage it in spite of their Method training, not because of it. Daniel Day Lewis is a perfect example. Second, the work of Method actors can be dull and uneven, because their other tools are under-developed. But we’re not allowed to criticize the “giants” -- Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, Robert de Niro, who weren’t even pure Method guys – for fear of ridicule.

De Niro established a mildly interesting character in Mean Streets, a nutty out-of-control thug, which he recycled in Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Cape Fear; since then, dozens of boring, unmemorable performances. De Niro got a supporting actor Oscar for Godfather II, which was frankly silly: he spoke Italian and he shot a guy, big deal. There were three different guys in Young Frankenstein who deserved that Oscar more.

Pacino established a screen persona that he kept going back to, a sympathetic, rather desperate figure, with a signature mumble punctuated by a sudden crazy bark; his work in the last 30 years has been uneven and mostly forgettable.

Brando played de Niro-like thugs in Streetcar and Waterfront. He put 19 more erratic performances on film, made a nice comeback in the Godfather, and then another dozen forgettable movies. Like Monroe, he seemed to think that the Method meant never bothering to learn your lines. Apocalypse Now was one of several movies he should have been fired from: he had a long record of screwing with other actors on set.

And now the Method people are finally retiring.

Handling success

Most of us will struggle to achieve success. And the few of us who get there struggle with success itself. The rich do not become better people when they hit the big time: they reveal themselves as they really are, and it’s generally not very flattering. Their kids have been known to grow up as lazy, arrogant parasites. How many lotto winners saw the repo man drag their yacht away because they wasted their fortune?

What happens if you hit the jackpot?

Will you wallow in addiction like countless musicians, actors like Rita Hayworth, Veronica Lake, Judy Garland?

Will you ignore the rules of professionalism, keep everybody waiting like Axl Rose, show up without learning your lines like Marilyn, irritate the other actors like Brando?

Will you abuse everyone around you when you become a director or producer? Make insane demands like Joan Crawford? Become a predator like Weinstein? A pedophile like half the bands touring in the 1970s?

Will you succumb to the delusion that everything you do is brilliant, like Lennon after he met Yoko, laying in bed with a running tape recorder and releasing it as an album? The delusion that you can never put out bad product, follow a brilliant product with a terrible one like Fleetwood Mac and the Bee Gees did? The delusion that you will stay at the top forever even if you do the same stuff over and over?

When everyone is screaming at you for longer days, more product, will you insist on self-care? Vivian Leigh did Shakespeare onstage with bipolar disorder, Karen Carpenter starved herself to death. The Beatles were at each other’s throats partly because they pushed themselves to record about 70 songs in little over a year. Can you take your foot off the gas when everyone else wants to bus to go faster? Can you step on the brake if the only thing keeping you going is dangerous medication?

Will you surround yourself with crooks who lead you to disaster?

Many bands and actors found that their managers made their money disappear.

A con man manipulated Brian Wilson.

The Beatles ran afoul of the Maharishi, Brian Epstein who mismanaged their money and merchandising, Dick James who screwed them on song ownership, and Allen Klein who ripped them off.

Elvis was surrounded by the drug pushers who eventually killed him and by the manager who sold off the entire Elvis music catalog for $5 million. Michael Jackson was not only killed by drug pushers, he let mad scientists destroy his face first.

Peter Grant was a thug bouncer whose main skill was intimidating people and beating up teenagers selling T-shirts at Led Zeppelin concerts.

Will you remember to be humble, to be a professional, to protect yourself, to be careful choosing the people you surround yourself with?

PS Anyone who is interested in top-notch low-budget screenplays, I have 24 in all genres, although one is in production. Check out loglines and scripts at https://threewibbes.wordpress.com/ .