Michael Bay and pop corn love

[alexwhitmer]

So Vanity Fair's results for Hollywood's top 40 are in.

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/features/2010/03/top-hollywood-earners-201003

I must have read all the wrong books, but it does beg the question: are pop corn flicks really the only road to riches and/or glory? Do we even care?

In one writer's web forum I occasionally hang, there is an overwhelming consensus that writing what Hollywood wants is the only sure way to 'make it'. And, even more baffling, a healthy handful of those same writers could care less what happens to their script once the check clears.

That just feels so perverse to me. My typewriter needs a shower.

There is a constant guessing game as to what the current and next trends are/will be, and scripts falling into that genre begin to hemorrhage from all corners. Spin-offs, take-offs, copy-cats and the few oddly originals.

Not sure if the do-it-yourself Indie filmmakers have this same - what do I call it - peer pressure? to make what mass audiences want to see, and are more than willing to pay for many times over, or do you go for a different kind of story - character driven stories with real-life scenarios, with those lingering 'picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words' shots, and nothing that goes boom. Too risky?

Do you really care what 'trends' Hollywood is currently following - assuming anyone agrees on what they are - and does the lure of multiple paycheck orgasms really drive your decisions on what kinds of films to make?

p.s.
I'm trying to remember who said something along the lines - 'I fear that filmmaking will cease to be a job, and turn into an art'. Anyone?

 

[Eric.T]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWsGvWwUctk

i think stewie knows the answer .

but seriously at the moment it seems hollywood wants to play it save:spin off's,comic adaptations or book adaptations are the way to go.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films

just the first two films in the top ten list have been written specificly for the screen.
all the others are adaptations.

my advice: do what you like and try to find your audience. dont focus to much on what other people are doing to be successful.
find your own formular .

 

[Rick Presas]

p.s.
I'm trying to remember who said something along the lines - 'I fear that filmmaking will cease to be a job, and turn into an art'. Anyone?

It sounds like something Peter Jackson or Martin Scorsese would say.

Hollywood wants to make money. So of course they're going for what the know will sell. It sucks. But its just the way of things. This is why Bay keeps getting work. He knows exactly how to leave the average moviegoer (with whom we have VERY little in common, an easily forgotten fact) with jaw agape.

HOW TO MAKE A SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER

Ingredients:
-Popular pre-existing storyline or character - ideally the kind that will inspire a sense of nostalgia in parents and a sense of wonder in kids.

-A main character with several cheesy, yet memorable one-liners.

-Large robot, Dinosaur, monster, or impressive super-power. these MUST be computer-generated.

-An explosion every 7 beats, minimum.

-A handsome, white male lead (substitute minority ONLY with Will Smith). He should ideally be of the wise-cracking variety.

-A expendable sidekick, to create the illusion of drama upon killing.

-Attractive female supporting role given just few enough lines that she doesnt distract from the monsters and explosions. She must always work to make our main character likeable. not herself.

 

[Julio Quintana]

I totally understand your frustration with the lack of originality in Hollywood blockbusters, but I often feel the same way about the independent film scene. This seems to be the general formula for low budget filmmaking:

1. A cast made almost entirely of well-educated Anglos under the age of 30 who all wear converse sneakers.
2. An "artistic" protagonist (writer, actor, painter, musician) whose biggest obstacle is boredom and his conservative parents.
3. A series of witty conversations that alternate between white-walled apartments, city parks, and health food stores.
4. A free-spirited quirky female love interest who is different from any girl we've ever met, but could always be played by Natalie Portman.

I think that writing original material is just hard no matter who is doing it, so I don't think it's fair to isolate the criticism to big-budget movies. If only we could all write like Charlie Kaufman...

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I must have read all the wrong books, but it does beg the question: are pop corn flicks really the only road to riches and/or glory?

Well, if riches and/or glory (i.e. fame) are your primary goals, making extremely commercial fare would probably make sense. If telling compelling stories that may be less commercial is your goal, that's just a riskier path to take but possible, though the current distribution climate is a bit bleak for those movies. But there are always cycles.

It's not a very healthy time for art house cinema -- the costs of distribution and exhibition are up, both types of companies are mainly owned by large corporations who want to see bigger profits and have higher overheads, and frankly, audiences have been a bit ambivalent about going to art house fare.

That last part I'm not sure the reasons for -- I even find myself going out less often to these more challenging movies. Seems easier to go see a crappy Hollywood action movie and come out of the theater going "wow, that sucked" than to make myself buy a ticket to something less commercial and perhaps more gritty and hard-hitting (i.e. depressing.) On the other hand, many of these Hollywood blockbusters are pretty depressing to watch...

Part of it I blame on the rise of the American indie movement in the 1990's into the mainstream, which crowded foreign movies out of the theatrical market and forced us to watch one more badly-shot faux-realism coming-of-age piece of Americana after another.

But the bottom line is that until the costs of distribution and exhibition -- including advertisement -- are reduced, plus the desire to only want huge early weekend box office receipts is reduced, it will be hard on art house fare.

Even Hollywood movies suffer from the fact that they have to earn their money back in the first two weeks or are considered flops. Back in the 1980's, some movies could play for months, gradually building up an audience.

I remember a survey of the "Aliens" movies that had an interesting statistic, that each Alien movie made about the same money, but each one required a larger and larger release pattern and had a shorter and shorter time to make its money. I think the first "Alien" had only 500 prints or so in theaters and took several months to make its money, then the next had double the number of prints and half the time, the next had three-times the number of prints and a third of the time, etc.

Now we have movies that strike 6000 prints, open on the same day worldwide, and have two weeks to earn the bulk of their profits. That sort of formula means that movies have to have the broadest level of appeal internationally, which is the problem. And for every "Avatar" that manages to create a good movie with wide appeal, we get a dozen "G.I. Joe" movies.

 

[Jay A. Kelley]

I have to say,

I grew up on bubble gum flicks (Star Wars, Jaws, ET, Close Encounters, Indy)..

I love them.. I don't do well with hard hitting (depressing) movies at all. I'm fairly shallow in that regard. I think I can easliy get depressed for free, just looking at bills, going to the low rent district and seeing people who need so much.. I love movies for the escape. I love films that highlite the more positive side of life.. Realistic or not.

That said, as a FILM MAKER, I still respect those movies that are well made (yes, I can tell the difference).

We saw "The Hurt Locker" over the weekend. When it was over my wife turned to me and said "Well?".. I responded: "That was a fantastic movie.... I hated it."

I do not need to like film for it to be wonderful.

Jay

 

[Sarah C.]

I agree with you guys. Without discussing who I know, or where I've been... I'll just say the filmmaking climate is of insecurity, and "on the ground" with fellow co-workers people are liking anything but drama and complication.

Without needing to be a philosopher, it looks to me that it all has to do with money. People are just plain edgy on a personal level. This translates to less daring, or expensive and creative... anything. Not just filmmaking. Non-industry work, art and personal lives too. which..may translate into the current movie-going demographic/tastes of the day. my $0.02..

~s

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

The problem with independent cinema is that it mostly sucks. This is my problem with Korean cinema. I have some friends who love every Korean film because it's so "un-hollywood". But I always point out to them that it's just a different formula: Guy has someone close to him killed or kidnapped. Guy goes on killing rampage of revenge. Guy kills bad guy with last dieing breath. Cut to wide shot of everyone dead.

For every creative independent film I have to sit through 100 depressing, meaningless, emotionally manipulative, equally shallow tear jerkers. I find most independent cinema as emotionally honest as a horror film. It's an exploitation film wrapped up as art. It's tragedy porn.

That isn't to say that a film can't be intelligent and entertaining. But just because it isn't entertaining doesn't mean it's intelligent and insightful.

 

[rod bradley]

I chime in with David and Sarah's take on the general zeitgeist. Alas, while the raw technical costs of filmmaking appear to make it more accessible -- the talent and opportunities to grow as a craftsman/artist (outside of self-provided) are not expanding in the feature film arena. While the aspirants are expanding exponentially, at least in this country.

And as always, genuine talent is rare, and often overlooked or marginalized. Even as grand a talent as Orson Welles could not quite compromise himself in a properly accommodating way to the Hollywood structure/ethos -- although he did try. I think of someone like Jarmusch whose financing almost always came from personal sources or sources outside this country.

So I think the struggle is always the same. And the gateways to mass/popular distribution will always be controlled by the "executives" who are almost excuslively motivated by money/power.

I think this is why the most vital and interesting filmmaking of the "art house" (a condemnation in itself, alas) cinema is coming from places like Turkey, Albania, Iran, China, where filmmakers have social/political pressures that spur them beyond purely commercial concerns. There is also Europe, where there is a more robust embrace of cinema as an art, most obviously in France.

I also think our culture of celebrity, of all or nothing, of winners and losers, has a tendency to push us in certain directions -- and often select somewhat faux heroes of success that prove short term in the scheme of things. The same can be said to some degree in terms of all the popular arts, and now even of the fine arts. Although the difference there being that film by its nature is almost always collaborative and costly, unlike writing -- which ironically is the key to film, but good writing is not what generally pays the bills except when it comes to television, cable television mostly -- where something like The Wire or Breaking Bad proves we can make serious and entertaining cinema here as well.

 

[Wesley Scoggins]

Whenever these discussions come up, I remember something I read a while ago, that I think is relevant to these kinds of discussions; it's that Shakespeare was considered popular tripe by many critics of his day.

The people flocked to Shakespeare's works, the rich, the poor, he had wide-ringing mass appeal, yet many of the very educated didn't LIKE him, they thought his stories were simplistic and shallow and many argued made only to appeal to the base impulses of his stupid audience.

NOW, fast forward 450 years or so, and he is considered one of the greatest writers in HISTORY, not just of the 1600's, but IN HISTORY. We consider him a central figure in Western Canon, and still READILY readapt his stories constantly. His work has lasted for CENTURIES, in near constant performance all over the world, and all because "the people" LOVED his work.

Now, I don't know if Michael Bay is necessarily the Shakespeare here, but I think it should teach us an important lesson that things that "the audience" loves, and "the critics" hate, are usually the things that survive, and generally the things that get "reappraised" over time, and that people look a bit more deeply into.

So i'm generally a bit reluctant to just discount ALL Popular or "popcorn" movies as artistically worthless, when there is obviously something there that mass audiences find appealing more than just the marketing and hype.

Beyond that, I don't think that mass and popular distribution will always (or currently is) be controlled by "executives" (whoever those are..), we've already seen the internet open up an entire world of connections here. Anyone can start a website, and pretty much say or distribute whatever they want. Pretty much anything can be posted and distributed for free or pay on the internet and get to an audience of millions if people pass it around.

But I get what you're saying, there are always gatekeepers, I just don't think that's necessarily a negative things. I love Charlie Kaufman movies, but if the marketplace was crowded with that sort of thing, we'd hunger for something different. If the only movies that were made, and the only movies that were popular, were slow independent "foreign-style" films, we'd probably applaud the rare blockbuster popcorn film that snuck through the system as artistically daring.

I think there is room for everything, there is room for the Epics and things that only focus on action and adventure or comedy, and there are room for slow, quiet, small indie films, and everything inbetween and outside of that.

 

[Joe G.]

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." -H.L. Mencken

I'm ambivalent about this dilemma, as some studio fare turns out pretty exceptional, and a lot of non-studio, yet overly hyped indy movies are seriously flawed.

So, you've got to take them on a case by case basis. I guess that's the fun of it.

"...only sure way to 'make it'. "

There is no "sure way" to make it. If you're born into a film dynasty, maybe. Barring that, it's real rough.

 

[Brandon Kraemer]

It seems to me the best foreign and art-house films come along every so often and through forces of their own making, buck the trends that say you have to have wide distribution (appeal) in order to be successful beyond their initial release. A few that come to mind, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", "Lost in Translation", "Hoop Dreams", "Fargo", "Magnolia", "The Ice Storm" and perhaps the recent "Crazy Heart", which was all but left for dead in the distribution circuit until critics sat up and took notice.

I might be off base a bit, but the above films were not big budget, they had a different kind of story to tell, often by film makers with no major commercially successful reputation to leverage, and yet because they were very well made films, they gained a wider audience than they were probably meant to based on their initial release. Why? I think the answer is because they were unique executions on original subject matter and were made with a quality that not all art films can aspire to.

As a rule, art-house films are not all original enough or of enough quality for me to say they categorically get unfairly marginalized compared to the realm of popcorn movies. Yes, it would be fair to say that the weight Hollywood puts on shoot-em-up action films is culturally bankrupt, when compared to important films like say... "The Killing Fields", but entertainment is what sells. The better the execution, the more original the subject matter, the more success a film will have.

 

[Steve Das]

A few that come to mind, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", "Lost in Translation", "Hoop Dreams", "Fargo", "Magnolia", "The Ice Storm" and perhaps the recent "Crazy Heart...

I might be off base a bit, but the above films were not big budget, they had a different kind of story to tell, often by film makers with no major commercially successful reputation to leverage

Yes..mmm..you're off base. All of those films were lowish-medium
budgets. Wouldn't consider those art house as they are all
done by people very..very well established/connected to the industry.

Sophia Coppola's script for Lost in Translation would have been
in Bill Murray's agent's trashcan most likely if she wasn't
Coppola's daughter. Attended screening with her and Murray
where they both admitted such..she really had to work on him to get him
to do the film. Not surprising at all since it's such a subtle..simple script.

Crazy Heart was done by Scott Cooper a working actor who's family
happens to be good friend's with Robert Duvall. This is from LA Times story:

After Cooper optioned the book and wrote a script, he sent it to Duvall, a longtime family friend. (Cooper, who frequently refers to the actor as Mr. Duvall, was married at Duvall's 300-acre estate in Virginia...)

Duvall liked the script and signed on as a producer, which immediately opened a lot of doors, since, as Cooper acknowledges, "it's one thing for an actor to read a script by some new filmmaker, very much another thing to read a script that says 'produced by Robert Duvall.'"

When Duvall asked Cooper what he needed, Cooper said he needed Jeff Bridges and T Bone Burnett...

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the...-acting-weapon-its-director-scott-cooper.html

Plus Cooper got Duvall's personal cinematographer from Sling Blade
and The Apostle, Barry Markowitz ASC, to shoot the film. Yes... DP
jobs are just as tough to get as writing ones nowadays.

 

[Matt W.]

The thing a lot of people ignore is that Bay is some kind of visual genius.

I've heard him lecture and he seems quite intelligent (though maybe not terribly intellectual or artsy about how he approaches movies) and it's really clear he has more technical knowledge than 99.9% of the people on this forum. He knows every detail of the cameras, lenses, and stocks he uses and he's very hands-on with post stuff, too.

Beyond that, he has an incredible gift for composing shots. I can't describe it and I think it's an innate talent, not necessarily something you learn but something you can only develop. Even the Transformers films are just spectacularly photographed, totally beautiful and kinetic. The fact that Bay's interests align with a teenage male demographic is both awesome (he gets to make the most spectacular films as he's given huge budgets) and a shame (his storytelling craft has atrophied as his films grow more spectacular--but I'll add the disclaimer that I loved Transformers 2 anyway), but he's a bonafide auteur and visual genius.

And there are highly-paid screenwriters (and ridiculously well-paid script doctors) but at that point it's primarily craft. I'm sure Kurtzman and Orci would place on that list if tv salaries were counted in, too. And script doctors may have the highest hourly rates in Hollywood. The "art film" types make a whole lot less money, particularly if they insist on making "art films," but there's a certain amount of selfishness involved in writing a script for yourself rather than a large audience.

But that's totally fine. Would David Lynch's output be half as impressive if he had to produce mainstream films? We'd get a lot more movies like Dune and far fewer like Lost Highway. "Cult" directors and "art house" directors find small audiences that eat up work the mainstream simply isn't interested in. And this provides enough money for them to keep working without massive studio pressure as their films get great receptions from critics, even if mainstream audiences would find them boring or weird.

If you think you're such a great artist that you deserve 125 million dollars a year, you're in the wrong business. Narcissism and entitlement are separate problems, but that kind of thinking reeks of both. If you're brilliantly talented and have mainstream interests, maybe you'll be the next Spielberg. If you're brilliantly talented and make art films, maybe you'll be the next Wong Kar-Wai.

 

[alexwhitmer]

Seems easier to go see a crappy Hollywood action movie and come out of the theater going "wow, that sucked" than to make myself buy a ticket to something less commercial and perhaps more gritty and hard-hitting (i.e. depressing.)

That's pretty funny.

Maybe it was Goldwyn who said 'Movies are for entertaining. If I want to send a message, I'll use Western Union'.

Really some great comments and insight here. Admittedly, when I decided screenwriting was my epiphany, I was pretty certain all you had to do was write a great script and people would throw money at you. Lots of money. Then I learned about a million folks had the same idea, year after year. It took a healthy paradigm shift to get over that and settle in to write, more because it's something I 'hafta' do, and not to get ridiculously rich. - not that screenwriters ever do get ridiculously rich, unless they are also the director/producer. Hell, I'd settle for moderate comfort.

Not knocking pop-corn entertainment for the masses by any means. It's as valid as any - and as mentioned, been around since at least Shakespeare. Cameron has moved from one of the greats to positively immortal with Avatar (I have not seen it yet). From what I can tell, it's not a groundbreaking original story at its core. Then again, neither was Titanic - a pretty formulaic story with a known outcome - but the mastery is in the ability to tell it in such a way that audiences won't hesitate to pay real money to see it again and again - to the point they can recite every line of dialogue. In fact, I think sticking to a simple story structure is what makes these so successful.

But - and I'm likely wrong here - I have yet to see a best actor / actress Oscar or GG go to a performance in such a flick. Nominations (Kate Winslet), but no wins. Am I dead wrong here? Best film, editing, FX, sound, etc,. yes, but best performance?

It's those kind of roles I decided I want to write. Oscar-wining roles. Not that I ever will, but it was a conscious decision when looking for my place in the craft of screenwriting. The kinds of roles you see in 'As Good as it Gets', 'Scent of a Woman' and 'Blind Side'.

It's near impossible for me to imagine a 16-year-old boy sitting through any of those and being thoroughly entertained.

To date I have not seen Transformers. The trailer was enough to convince me it's not something I really want to see. Maybe someday, but I'm so tired of Annihilation-themed entertainment. It just isn't helping matters.

Nope, for me it's those quiet little lakeside stories rich in character-driven performances, small paychecks, and rice cakes.

Course, now in my sixth year of living on ramen and tuna, I may rethink this.

In the meantime, me thinks history will place Cameron with the greats - Sophocles, Shakespeare, Cameron.

EDIT: I see Jessica Lange won a GG in '79 for Best Acting Debut in a Motion Picture - Female, for her performance in King Kong. I did not know they had such a category.

 

[alexwhitmer]

It's tragedy porn. That isn't to say that a film can't be intelligent and entertaining. But just because it isn't entertaining doesn't mean it's intelligent and insightful.

Tragedy porn. Good one.

Agree 1000% on this.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

For actor nominations I assume you only mean recently. It often used to be the big blockbuster spectacle films that got best actor:
Ben Hur, The King and I etc.

The modern exception would be Gladiator.

 

[Joe G.]

"Maybe it was Goldwyn who said 'Movies are for entertaining. If I want to send a message, I'll use Western Union'."

Samuel Goldwyn said all sorts of asinine gibberish. A lot of it quite laughable.

 

[Joel Kaye]

That just feels so perverse to me. My typewriter needs a shower.

If you want to get paid you need to create something people will pay to watch. If you don't care about that, write anything and enter into the better screenwriting contests.

At any budget I think the trick is to write about a very compelling concept and then do that in a surprising, innovative way. Be artistic and original inside a commercial idea.

I'm pretty sure only a couple spec scripts per year get made by the studios these days. They have in house concepts they make in house. The odds of you coming up with something a Hollywood studio greenlights is close to zero. Don't forget there are a bunch of well produced writers you're competing with. People with Oscars are trying to get their new script made.

I think it helps for writers to remember the only reason anyone watches a movie is to get certain feelings. Movies are drugs. And they are purchased like drugs. Genres are important because those are the drug types. If you're not a master of a particular genre then how can you deliver the drug that the consumer thinks they are buying?

Is there an audience for ARTistic drugs? Absolutely. Most scripts I've read that pretend to be art are simply boring as hell and it's no wonder they don't go anywhere.

There's this weird blend of writing what you're passionate about so you do it well and doing it in a way that'll please some segment of people out there.

I wouldn't worry about Hollywood trends personally. You can watch the trades to see what's 2-3 years out and greenlit so you can either avoid those movie ideas OR create a lower budget version of the same thing. There are indie producers who make that stuff.

Writing a spec for Hollywood to make is worse than a lottery ticket. Write something great and win contests and maybe you'll get a chance to work on THEIR stuff.

If you want your own stuff to be made think low budget indie (feature or short) until you're invited to pitch Hollywood based on previous successes.

I'd probably advise trying to make an EXTREMELY well done short to break through the clutter (10 minutes or less).

Or being a novelist.

 

[Seung Han]

Often times, if you write something that is actually dramatic or funny or scary then it will get through the clutter and get you noticed. It might not turn into an actual production, but it will get you an agent or a producer which might lead to paid gigs. But to write something that connects with people emotionally on a long format is incredibly difficult.

I just read the Children of Men script and it is an astonishing piece of literature. I know it's based on a novel, but the script is just so well written that it transcends the limits of the screenplay format. I thought the film was great, but after having read the script, I realize Cuaron missed many chances of really developing the main characters for the audience to connect with on a deeper level. Although, he did improve the pacing and of course the action. My point being that risky but well written scripts do get made in the studio system.

The AD of my first feature handed me his script last week to see if I could pass it on to some producers I know. I read the script and told him that it was too flat dramatically and that he needed to flesh out the characters motivations then make their obstacles more difficult to overcome. He also needed some details on the characters that were not off the shelf, things that personalized them and gave them depth and texture but also the feeling that they were unique. I think these things are very difficult to do in writing, and if you can do it, then people will notice. But writers have to be honest with themselves about their work. I told my AD I wold pass his script along, but after hearing my comments, he decided to work on it more.

If you wrote something good, then the most important thing is finding someone who really believes in your work who is either well connected of has access to money. If I go to a festival or a marketplace pitching a project, I will meet a hundred people but really only one of them, if that, has the power to help me. Which makes sense since it's like a pyramid scheme, the ones who make the decisions are few and inaccessible. So it's important to evaluate realistically who can help you. Most people you meet who want to help are trying to figure out a way to leverage you so they themselves can climb up that pyramid. Which is fine but this type of motivation never lasts long, and from the beginning, they never had any power to help you anyway. I can't stress enough how it important it is to find a good agent or reputable producer who believes in your work.

If you've gotten your work in the hands of agents and producers and nothing materialized then you need to maybe face the idea that your writing is not opening doors. If you've been doing this for years and have never gotten your work into the hands of an agent or producer then again either your writing is not exceptional so it is not being passed along or you are ignoring the importance of the business side of this industry. In other words, you need to hustle.