Aging Bulls

Charles Oliver from the October 1998 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

In the so-called Golden Age of the studios in the '30s and '40s, a studio contracted writers, directors, and actors, and assigned them to projects under the tight control of the studio head. Today, someone else is likely to put together a package of talent and bring it to the studio to try to get it funded. Depending on the size of the film and track record of the producer, the studio may have very little creative control over a film.

For a time, the system did seem geared to the big action blockbuster. But in the late 1980s, Miramax came along and showed that smaller films targeted at niche markets could earn a tidy profit. Studios responded by buying or starting their own art-house divisions. Now, there's room at the multiplex for The Full Monty as well as Titanic, for Boogie Nights on the screen next door to Men in Black.

Finally, by focusing on theatrical films, Biskind misses entirely the rise of cable and home video. If one counts made-for-TV movies and films that go straight to video, Hollywood makes more full-length features now than ever before. Granted, few of these films are classics. Sturgeon's Law, which holds that 90 percent of everything is crap, is especially true in Hollywood.

But along with Sturgeon's Law are rules of conduct recognized by Adam Smith. If the big studios have survived, it is because the people running them have been smart enough, over time, to adapt to a rapidly changing market, and to recognize that they can no longer gear their films to a few large audiences. Instead, they must now make a broad array of films for increasingly different and ever-changing tastes. Dennis Hopper did bury George Cukor, just as he promised he would at that long-ago party. Hopper was buried in his turn. Hollywood parties on.

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