Things the Film Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know About
Cinematic Listology By Ashe Cantrell on September 8 |
You may already be a film industry cynic. Maybe you think Hollywood is a barren wasteland, devoid of creativity and originality. Maybe you’re sick of seeing talented people get ignored and vapid hacks get splashed all over the trades. Maybe you’re tired of 3D everything and having to re-buy your movies every five to ten years.
I’m not here to dissuade you of any of that. Hell no, I’m here to make it worse. Get ready, because this is some of the rottenest shit of which the film industry is capable. These are the things so terrible that Hollywood has to cover them up, lest God see their sin and smite them accordingly (and keep various government entities and lawyers off their backs, of course). If you still had any kind thoughts toward Hollywood, I suggest you prepare yourself for crushing disappointment.
But first, I’d like to give a very huge shout out and thank you to writers C. Coville and Maxwell Yezpitelok for their help on this article. You guys are great!
And now back to the shit storm, already in progress:
6. Tricky Hollywood Accounting
Here’s a basic example of Hollywood Accounting: A studio makes a movie. The studio distributes the movie itself, and although the distributor is technically a separate company, they both belong to the same parent company. Also, the distribution arm sets whatever fees it wants. If they want to charge themselves eleventy quintillion dollars for distribution, they totally can. Then, even if the film earns billions of dollars in box office receipts, they’re still technically in debt (to themselves) and thus haven’t turned a profit.
Sound ridiculous? It happens all the freaking time. David Prowse, the guy who was in the Darth Vader costume in the original trilogy of Star Wars (before being ousted by that douche Hayden Christensen in the special edition) has never been paid for Return of the Jedi because it hasn’t turned a profit after nearly 30 years. That’s after dozens of home video and theatrical re-releases. (All the merchandising money goes to Lucas directly, of course.)
Similarly, someone leaked Warner Bros.’ accounting sheet for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix onto the internet, showing that the film that had grossed about $1 billion worldwide had lost $167 million on paper.
Winston Groom, the writer of Forrest Gump was told that the film based on his work wasn’t profitable. Of course, he got the last laugh when they came to him asking if they could turn the sequel, Gump and Co. into a film as well, and he reportedly told them, ”I cannot, in good conscience, allow money to be wasted on a failure.” In other words, “Go fuck yourself.”
And then there’s Art Buchwald, whose spec script got stolen by Paramount (remember that, it’s going to come up later), and got turned intoComing to America. When he took them to court and sued for a percentage of the profit, Paramount was totally cool with it, because according to their books, it hadn’t made any kind of profit, so they didn’t owe him one red fucking cent. The judge later ruled that it was “unconscionable” for Paramount not to pay Buchwald something in a settlement. Otherwise, he’d have to ask Paramount to open their books for the courts to review. Paramount quickly backed down and settled with Buchwald instead.
5. Extorting Theaters
Movie theaters have had to look for more and more ways to increase revenue, like jacking up the prices of things at the concessions stand and adding a dozen ads to the beginning of each film. Why, when new releases are constantly breaking records and making obscene amounts of money? Because film studios don’t like the theaters getting their beak wet.
Movie theaters operate on a kind of sliding scale. The first weekend of a movie’s release, the profit is split heavily in the studio’s favor, typically around an 80/20 split. The second weekend, it may change to a 70/30 scale, and so on. It’s even rumored that some major blockbuster films like Avatar are released with 90/10 or even 95/5 splits. Now keep in mind that exceptionally few films do very well after the first week of their release. Today, sometimes it's 100/0.
So why do the theaters take these awful deals? Because if they don’t, the studio is under no obligation to lease their films to that theater, so they can just totally bounce if they want to. If that happens, the theater has no films to show at all, and then what have they got to draw people in? Overpriced hot dogs?
4. Fake Reviews
Have you ever seen a trailer for a shitty movie on TV and it has one of those blurbs that’s like “…stunning…,” and maybe a soothing voice reads it aloud? You may joke with your friends that the rest of that quote is “a stunning pile of horse shit.” Turns out, that actually happens. It’s not a joke at all. Marketing departments just plain don’t give a fuck. For example, one critic’s review of Live Free or Die Hard got shortened from “hysterically overproduced and surprisingly entertaining” to “hysterically… entertaining.” Sometimes they’ll even take the blurb from parts of the review where the critic was referring to a different movie entirely or the genre as a whole, like when a blurb used for Definitely, Maybe turned out to be from the critic’s description of the romantic comedy genre as a whole and not his actual thoughts on the film.
Another fun trick Hollywood likes to use is trying to woo critics with free screenings, food, set visits, and other goodies. The people who take the bait are called quote whores. If your film needs a good review, they’re there to give it. One of the most infamous is a critic named Earl Dittman, who is the film critic for a publication called Wireless Magazine. You’ve probably never heard of Wireless, and that’s because they apparently have zero subscribers and no web presence, and yet that doesn’t stop film studio marketing departments from using his blurbs like they’re gold. In fact, Dittman was the center of a lot of controversy when an e-mail he sent to Fox contained not one, but ten different blurbs for the movie Robots and instructions for the studio to pick and use whichever one they liked best. But at least Earl Dittman’s a real guy.
David Manning, however, is a different story. Sony Pictures created the fictitious Manning and claimed that he worked for The Ridgefield Press, a real newspaper. Unfortunately, they didn’t foresee someone actually asking the paper if they’d ever heard of the guy, because, you know, they hadn’t. All of his blurbs were concocted by Sony Pictures’ marketing department. Fox pulled similar shit, using footage of employees pretending to be ordinary movie-goers for promotional material.
In the spirit of Hollywood review tactics, I’m going to build a review of my most recent articles from an e-mail that the Film School Rejects editors sent me.
“Ashe, we’re getting really sick of telling you this, but if you… don’t… keep… posting these ridiculous[ly wonderful]… articles, we’re going to have to let you go.” -Cole Abaius, Film School Rejects
–~~~~~~~~~~~~–
3. Copyright Bullshit
Now, I’m not going to sit here and say that copyright sucks and it should be abolished, because I think it’s a useful tool for creators who want to protect their work from douchebags who might rip it off. What sucks is the way that big film companies use copyright as a bludgeon to keep people away from their intellectual property.
See, originally, copyright was limited to a maximum of 28 years. If you created something, you had 28 years to get all you could out of it, because after that it became public domain. Since those days, copyright terms have been extended numerous times, and each time one company has been leading the charge: Disney.
Each time the copyright on Steamboat Willie is about to run out, Disney loses their shit and lobbies the government to pass another copyright extension law. Although a popular explanation for this is that they’d lose the rights to Mickey Mouse if Steamboat Willie were to become public domain, that’s not the case. Mickey Mouse is actually a trademarked property, and trademarks are perpetual as long as the company continues to use it. (If you haven’t noticed, Disney uses the fuck out of Mickey Mouse.) The simple fact is that Disney still makes lots of money selling DVDs and merchandise relating to Steamboat Willie.
In fact, Duke University compiled a list of all of the films that could have entered the public domain this year if Disney hadn’t argued for the law to be changed in 1976. Movies like On The Waterfront and Seven Samurai, and even the first two books of The Lord of the Rings would be in the public domain now, free for anyone to use and enjoy and remix and learn from. As it stands now, Steamboat Willie remains under copyright until 2023, and even fairly boring things like the very first issue of Sports Illustrated are protected until 2050. You can imagine what that means for movies that came out this year.
Here’s something funny, though: Some legal experts believe that Steamboat Willie may have never been registered for copyright at all. Nowadays, the very act of creating something gives you copyright, whether you register it or not, but back then, you had to specifically register the copyright for the works you wanted protected, and you had to label it in a very certain way afterward. A Disney researcher,Gregory Brown, believes that Walt Disney may have improperly formatted the copyright notice on Steamboat Willie, thus making the copyright void. In fact, a law student at Arizona State University researched Brown’s claims and agreed with him. Not only that, but a George Washington University copyright expert agreed with both of them and published a paper saying so. It was at this point that Disney took notice of the issue and actually threatened to sue him for “slander of title.” Holy shit, Disney.
2. Strangling Consumer Choice
If you’re like many millions of other Netflix customers, you were probably pissed off when they jacked up their prices last month, effectively doubling the cost of some people’s subscriptions. And before that, you were probably annoyed when they started putting out their DVDs 28 days after they went on sale. And maybe you’re mad now that they’re losing their contract with Starz because they had an argument about money.
It’s almost like Netflix got tired of making money or something. Why do they keep doing all this stupid stuff? Well, simply put, it’s not really their fault. You see, film studios aren’t the biggest fans of things like Netflix, Redbox, or Hulu. You know, those things that allow you to pick and choose what you want to watch when you want to watch it for a reasonable, affordable price. The reason is that it eats into their sales of DVDs and pay-per-view rentals, for which they get a much higher cut of the profit. As DVD sales drop, movie studios panic.
So, instead of adapting their business model to a format that consumers obviously prefer, they’d rather try to turn back the clock and take away the distribution methods people love and enjoy. That means demanding more money from Netflix to lease their movies, ever-increasing delays between a DVD’s release and its availability out of Redbox machines, and putting Hulu, a service created by the content creators themselves, up on the auction block when it ended up being too successful. The Time Warner CEO has even taken to blasting Netflix in the press for the last year, describing them as a “fading star.” You’d fade, too, if someone wrapped their hands around your throat.
1. Stealing Scripts
Remember Art Buchwald from earlier? The guy who almost got screwed by Paramount before a judge stepped in and told them to cut that shit out? Well, there’s a little more to that story. A few years before the big court case, Buchwald was already a successful humor writer and satirist, even winning himself a Pulitzer for his work. Then he set his sights on Hollywood, and he pitched Paramount an idea for a movie about an African prince who moves to America to find a bride. He suggested Eddie Murphy as a lead actor. (That’s right, kids. People used towant Eddie Murphy in their movies.)
Paramount took the pitch, but then had trouble getting it off the ground. Eventually, the rights returned to Buchwald and he pitched it to Warner Bros. Shortly after they began work on it, though, Warner Bros. killed the project. Turns out, there was a similar film going into production at Paramount. It was a movie about an African prince who moves to America to find a bride. Oh, and it starred Eddie Murphy, who was also given writing credit. That movie, of course, was Coming to America. Buchwald was furious and immediately took Paramount to court, which instigated the events discussed back in the Hollywood Accounting entry. So Buchwald didn’t just get screwed, he almost got double-screwed. But he’s not the only one.
Turns out, some of those crazy people who constantly crop up and say Hollywood producers ripped off their scripts aren’t so crazy. In fact, it turns out that it’s a dirty little secret of Hollywood’s that stealing scripts is almost commonplace. Jeff Grosso wrote a script about his life as a professional Texas Hold ‘Em player and had it turned down by Miramax, only for them to turn around and begin production on an identical project that became the Matt Damon film Rounders. Another writer, Reed Martin, pitched his idea and, like Buchwald, even recommended the perfect actor for his script– Bill Murray. Months later, an exceptionally similar movie, Broken Flowers (starring Bill Murray, of course), went into production without Martin. Although Martin’s claim survived many attempts at dismissal, it saw a trial in which a jury sided with the studio. Due to the high cost of the appeals process (an approximated $800,000), he has not filed an appeal.
The problem is that while scripts can be copyrighted, ideas cannot. So, if Hollywood gets pitched an idea and likes it, but doesn’t want to deal with the whole “paying for the script” thing, they can just hire someone to write another script based on “their” idea. Since they have much bigger, meaner lawyers than your average spec script writer, the writer kinda gets boned. So even the mythical “original idea” in Hollywood? Yeah, it may not be so original after all.
Others:
Writers Don't Come Up With the Ideas
The Complaint:
"There are no original ideas! Look at the top-grossing 25 films of the 2000s -- 23 were remakes or adaptations! How lazy can these writers get?"
"I made almost enough money writing Transformers 2 to drink away the shame of having written Transformers 2."
The Problem:
Even if you know nothing about how movies get made, you know that there are very specialized tasks -- the sound guy is an expert in microphones and audio but probably couldn't be trusted to do stunts. And, you assume that when it comes to thinking up the ideas for what happens in the movie, somewhere it's all just some writer hunched over a keyboard -- a professional who is an expert in story, plot and character.
Not so.
In almost all cases, the initial ideas for movie plots don't come from screenwriters at all, but from producers (basically, the people in charge of the money side of the project). So most of the movies playing in your nearest theater didn't come from some writer thinking up a story he wanted to tell -- they came from some producer saying, "There hasn't been a ThunderCats movie yet, has there?"
"Avatar was full of cat people -- we can't miss!"
At that point, the producer and whoever else is involved (other producers, maybe a famous actor if they're lucky) will then hammer out a rough idea for the movie that will appeal to at least two of the four market demographics (young males, young females, older males, older females). So if it's an action movie aimed completely at young males, you throw a romance in there for the ladies. It's only then that they will give a screenwriter a call. In other words, in most Hollywood films, the writer is basically there to fill in the dialogue holes and think of clever catchphrases for Ryan Reynolds to say every time he socks a guy in the jaw.
For Example ...
The Halloween franchise wasn't cooked up by a plucky man named John Carpenter who had a dream about a man in a creepy mask. Instead,two producers approached him after they decided it would be cool to have a movie about a psycho stalking babysitters.
It's a tale as old as time.
So what about those screenplays that your friend working at the video store is constantly writing, in hopes they will some day get made and star a naked Natalie Portman? In reality, even the great ones are treated as spec scripts (basically, a literary audition). The script is proof to the people in charge that the writer is, for the most part, not illiterate. So if you submit a powerfully emotional piece that deftly explores the facets of love and loss, you might impress someone enough to get a job co-writing Transformers 4.
On the rare occasion that an original script does get picked up for production, it's likely to get swept up by one of the big franchises. I, Robot was initially an original script called Hardwired that no one would touch until a famous Asimov title was attached to it. Die Hard 2, 3 and 4,Ocean's Twelve and Starship Troopers were all original ideas that were snapped up and rebranded as franchises. So if you're working on a passion project, maybe it's time to let the dream die and just start focusing on a gritty reboot of She-Ra.
Creativity counts for a hell of a lot less than brand awareness.
Everything Is Simplified for the International Market
The Complaint:
"Even the original movie ideas are just mindless explosions and CGI! Why does every other movie have to look like a video game and make me feel like a moron?"
The Problem:
If you're reading this, then those movies weren't made with you in mind. They were made for the international box office (Transformers 2 made $400 million overseas, for instance). Now, before you even have a chance to think it, we are not saying foreign audiences are stupid. The movies made in their home countries, for them, are no doubt just as deep and thoughtful as any Best Picture winner.
No doubt.
What we're saying is that to make a movie that appeals equally to American, Japanese, Korean, German and Mexican teenagers, you need to simplify that shit down to things they all understand equally. Anything dealing with, say, the subtle trials and hardships of everyday life in the American Midwest is going to be totally lost on someone from the other side of the planet.
But there is one thing that everyone in the world can understand and sympathize with, no matter what their culture or ethnicity: The need to run away if you are being chased by giant robots.
Forget math -- robot threat is the universal language.
Likewise, foreign audiences also aren't as picky about good writing (a lot of it will be lost in the translation to subtitles anyway) or clever comedy (which is highly culturally specific). So if you're a studio executive who is choosing between financing a poignant coming of age film about an orphan ranch hand in East Texas or a film about a giant radioactive thunderstorm that gives people superpowers, chances are you're not going to go with the poignancy.
For Example ...
Everybody chuckled at how over-the-top stupid 2012 was. And it did a "meh" $166 million in American box office.
Overseas? It made $604 million.
"Yah! Ve liken das tidal waves unt der evil vice fuhrer."
By the way, it was that lust for foreign currency, not a sudden loss in patriotism, that was behind the G.I. Joe movie replacing its "all-American hero" with a multinational group of soldiers with a strangely American task force name.
Movie Projects Get Killed for Bad Reasons
The Complaint:
"Man, whatever happened to that Halo movie Peter Jackson was going to make? Or (insert any of a hundred impossibly cool movies rumored on Ain't It Cool five years ago that were never mentioned again)?
Caption Dept. Note: Sorry, we can't think of anything that would make this picture more ridiculous.
The Problem:
"Development Hell" is what happens when a movie gets indefinitely stuck at some point during the moviemaking process and gets lost. Now, sometimes it's nobody's fault -- Halo would be expensive and at this point would look like a cheap Avatar knockoff. But the kicker is that sometimes the studios banish projects to oblivion intentionally.
"Pay our hefty ransom, or you'll never see your precious Halo movie again."
For Example ...
Hollywood studios generally buy 10 times as many scripts as they make into movies, which means they currently own exclusive rights to a shitload of films that will never see production. And in most cases, they won't let anyone else have them. E.T., The Matrix, Pulp Fiction and Star Wars are all films that you never would have seen because the studios that owned them were content to sit on each forever. They were saved only because someone convinced another studio to re-buy them, usually at a higher price.
Sometimes the reasons for stalling a project are even more duplicitous. According to screenwriter Howard Meibach, in the 90s Disney bought a script for a hockey-related movie that was getting attention in Hollywood simply because it had a different hockey movie in production and "[didn't] want another studio to get it." Thanks to Disney's unapologetic cock-blocking, we will never know what the actual film was about.
We have our guesses.
And finally, sometimes studios will sit on entirely completed movies. We've told you about the time a studio made an abysmal low-budget adaptation of The Fantastic Four it never intended to release, simply because it wanted to keep the rights. It turns out this sort of thing is more common than you'd expect: When legendary producer Harvey Weinstein was in charge of Miramax, he used to buy exclusive rights to foreign films and then push back their releases indefinitely as part of a scheme to get bonuses from Disney. He bought the rights to distribute Jet Li's movie Hero and then didn't, releasing it a full two years later only when Quentin Tarantino finally intervened.
After what we can only imagine was one hell of a sword fight.
OK, so you probably don't care about a crappy superhero B-movie or some foreign flick about old people falling in love or, like, rain (look, we don't see a lot of foreign movies). But how about Mike Judge's movie Idiocracy?
Despite how much America loves Judge for Beavis and Butthead and Office Space, 20th Century Fox did everything it could to bury his movie. It tried to weasel out of a theatrical release for over a year and finally did the bare minimum to fulfill its contract by opening Idiocracy in seven cities, with no trailers or press kits.
The inevitable conclusion here is a movie about the secret lives of Happy Meal toys.
REJECTED.
"You made a time machine ... out of a box of Kellogg's Rice Krispies?"
Copyright Cinematic Listology
Merchandising Supremacy
The Complaint:
"Wait, Pixar is making freaking Cars 2? Of all the original films they could be working on or, hell, of all the sequels they could be making, they're making a goddamned Cars 2? Why?"
The Problem:
Five billion dollars. That's how much money Disney has made off of Cars merchandise (and that article is two years old -- hell, it could be 7 billion by now).
The inevitable conclusion here is a movie about the secret lives of Happy Meal toys.
That's why Up, despite being wildly critically acclaimed from the get-go, actually caused Pixar's stock to go down before its release; investors thought the lack of merchandise would make it bomb and wondered what the point of the movie was without the toys.
You can't overstate how huge merchandising looms in the process of getting a blockbuster made. Film merchandising is a $132 billion industry worldwide, and it's also a pretty sweet deal for filmmakers -- they don't have to actually manufacture or sell anything; they just charge a licensing fee and use that money to help fund their movie. So if the toys don't sell, the merchandiser has to take the loss, not the studio. Awesome, right?
Well, no. The more expensive films get (and they're getting pretty expensive), the more the industry becomes dependent on merchandising. So parents concerned about Hollywood's influence on their children will be happy to know that today it's nigh impossible to get a kids movie greenlit if your characters don't look like something you can put inside a Happy Meal.
REJECTED.
For Example ...
Take a look at what will probably be next year's biggest blockbuster:
Seriously. Someone is making a $200 million movie based on some pieces of plastic and a bunch of holes, some of which will be played by Liam Neeson and Rihanna. There's also a remake of Clue and a movie adaptation of motherfucking Monopoly directed by Ridley Scott.
And don't get us started on the product placement. Today, branding experts read drafts, meet with the writers and even write new dialogue. That's why you have scenes in which John Connor drives a Chrysler in the post-apocalyptic future of Terminator Salvation, even though there are about 67 solid reasons why that doesn't make any sense. You can look forward to seeing a hell of a lot more of that in the future.
"You made a time machine ... out of a box of Kellogg's Rice Krispies?"
