Still, it's exciting to replay what worked and what didn't. Normal math doesn't apply in Hollywood: In 1997, for instance, Hollywood math showed that Harrison Ford (in Air Force One) is greater than Harrison Ford plus Brad Pitt (in The Devil's Own), and that Julia Roberts (in My Best Friend's Wedding) is greater than Julia Roberts plus Mel Gibson (in Conspiracy Theory). This is what's exciting about following "the gross" and Bart captures this roller-coaster feeling. Last summer's guaranteed biggest hit--Godzilla--was a relative disappointment, while a film no one even saw coming--There's Something About Mary --became the most profitable.
There probably is no formula for success, but this doesn't stop the studios from searching for one. Bart does a good job of explaining the different approaches studios take, but he never gets around to actually evaluating their effectiveness. Paramount, for instance, believes in splitting the costs of movies with others. Its investment in Titanic was split with Twentieth Century Fox. Paramount's investment was limited to $65 million and its profits limited to domestic take. When the cost of the film ballooned to over $200 million, the deal looked brilliant. Ultimately, when the film broke all box office records, owning only half meant hundreds of millions in lost profit. For some reason, though, Bart simply parrots the company line that Paramount was lucky to avoid the pain and risk that financing the whole thing would have entailed.
Fox's strategy was to make a number of modestly budgeted films aimed at different demographics, hoping one or two would break out. In other words, the studio diversified its portfolio. Meanwhile, Disney decided to cut back on releases and spend more per film--the opposite of the Fox strategy. Bart reports these two facts but doesn't seem to notice that these strategies are at odds, much less say which one is better. Perhaps this is because no one really knows which will work better until the films come out.
When Bart gets into the quality of the movies themselves, he becomes unnecessarily nostalgic. He goes on a bit about how people really used to care about movies, but that now it's all packaging and profits. To be sure, there have been changes in how Hollywood plans and markets films, but the studios have always been about making money and people have always complained about how bad films are (compared to how they used to be). Without even getting into low- and medium-budget art films, the slate Hollywood offered in the summer of 1998 was diverse: Saving Private Ryan, There's Something About Mary, Bulworth, Small Soldiers, The Negotiator, The Avengers, Armageddon, The Truman Show, The Mask of Zorro, Deep Impact, The Horse Whisperer, Mulan, Out of Sight. You don't have to like all these films (I certainly don't) to recognize most were made by people sincerely striving to deliver solid entertainment, perhaps even art, not cynics just in it for a paycheck.
Despite its weaknesses, The Gross remains an interesting foray into Hollywood. When Bart set out to write his book he took as his model The Season, William Goldman's work about the 1967-68 Broadway season, where each chapter takes on a different production. Broadway has changed considerably since then, but that book is still delightful, filled with insights that make it worth reading even if it no longer describes how things get done on the Great White Way. It's doubtful The Gross will be remembered so fondly 30 years hence. However, while there's a better book waiting to be written about Bart's subject, until it comes out, The Gross will do just fine.
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