New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | July 13, 2005

Is Hollywood's loss our gain? Nick Gillespie considers why this summer's slump is a longer, happier story than advertised.

Comments

|7.13.05 @ 6:20PM|#

I'm surprised the usual boogeyman that's always trotted out by large media companies wasn't mentioned, piracy and and file sharing. Or perhaps those arguments are so laughably tired and lame that they weren't considered worth responding against.

|7.13.05 @ 6:26PM|#

I find that I can't stand the TV news any more. They only tell me what they think is important, and it irks me. On the net I can find exactly what I want to know without the talking heads.

I suspect that there is a great deal of market fragmentation going on in the entertainment industry. Everything Nick mentions in the article points in that direction IMO, while at the same time showing that people are increasing the entertainment they consume. We simply have more choice in what we view than we used to.

Sassafrass|7.13.05 @ 6:27PM|#

Is it physically possible to write an article about feature film production without sounding like a gossip columnist? Is it possible to make a simple, if tired, point without similies and metaphors whose objective is not to further the argument but to display how "in" the writer is?

Here's one paragraph:

"Tinseltown's bad B.O....as the phallic antenna display at the heart of the all-too-aptly named Herbie: Fully Loaded...the bubbly in La La Land .... movers and shakers ....more flop sweat than Jerry Lewis at a viewing of The Day the Clown Cried...."

|7.13.05 @ 6:38PM|#

The movies are weak, tickets are expensive, the food is expensive, everything is PG-13 and the damn kid behind me won't turn off his fucking cell phone.

Other than that I have no idea why box office would be down.

As for DVD sales, maybe people are realizing (as my wife likes to point out to me every time I buy one) that you never watch the damn things.

(Of course I explain to her that the point isn't to watch them. The point is to display them in the living room so all our guests can see how cool my taste is. Plus, someday our child must learn the wisdom of Ash.)

|7.13.05 @ 7:07PM|#

Well, I go to fewer movies than I used to. This is for four reasons:

1) Movies are stupid expensive. If my wife and I go with a friend to a movie, we're shelling out damn near $30. Movies at my house are a buck or two, depending on how fast we're churning through our Netflix subscription.

2) Movies feature about a thousand commercials leading up to them now. If I never see another 'edition of the Twenty'... The alternative is to go just before the movie starts, and inevitably end up in not-great seats. All the seats in my living room are great seats. They're all at the center of a 7.1 surround sound system.

3) Other people are irritating. Movies might be a communal experience for some people; for me, they're the 'dude stop kicking the back of my seat, ok?' experience; they're the 'wtf, this guy must be seven-foot-three, I can't see a damn thing' experience. In my living room, if someone is being irritating I pause the movie and tell them to knock it off.

4) Movies are too damn long. About hour two, I have to pee really bad. About the end of the movie, I don't care what's happening on screen anymore because I need to pee too bad, and I want a damn smoke. If your epic is 3 hours long, I'm probably just going to walk out at the 90 minute mark and miss whatever critical drama is happening; while outside, I'm going to think about how much nicer it is to watch movies at home, where I can pause for an intermission.

But I also don't buy DVDs as much anymore. This is for one reason:

1) If your movie sucks, I'm going to get it from Netflix. Why would I shell out $20+ for a movie I'm going to watch exactly once? If I think that's too much to see it in a theater, I sure as hell think it's too much to see it at home.

Counterpoint: With a good enough commentary track, or special features, I'll buy the DVD. Hello, Firefly.

What can Hollywood do? If they dropped movie prices to $5/$2.50 matinee, it would go a long way towards luring me back to theaters on weekends. If they stopped churning out 180 minute 'masterpieces' that have 60 minutes of pure padding, that would also go a long way.

|7.13.05 @ 7:21PM|#

Yet another boxing movie, a Batman movie that wastes 30+ minutes showing how he became a Ninja (god, I am soooo tired of martial arts crap), another made-from-an-old-TV-show movie; sequels of this, remakes of that -- yikes, aren't there any synapse-firings of original thought out there in the movie industry?!
At home I can watch "House", "Numb3rs", "Monk" and "The 4400" to name a few at least mildly interesting programs on TV, essentially for free. Go ahead, ask me why I haven't gone to many movies this year.

|7.13.05 @ 7:38PM|#

I'm either on the internet, at work (on the internet) at the gym, drinking or sleeping. Going out to a movie is too much of one thing. At home I can participate in political discussion on reason, while getting my news, listening to my newish Prodigy and watching Daily Show at the same time. Watching a movie isn't enough anymore.

|7.13.05 @ 8:26PM|#

From Murderball's OFFICIAL website:
"Featuring fierce rivalry, stopwatch suspense, and larger-than-life personalities, MURDERBALL, winner of the Documentary Audience Award and a Special Jury Prize for Editing at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, is a film about tough, highly competitive rugby players. Quadriplegic rugby players."

...Quadruplegic? Paralyzed from the neck down?
Perhaps people are avoiding this movie because they don't think rugby can be very exciting when the players must manuever by blowing through a straw.
Now, PARApalegics playing rugby; that would be cool.

The Wine Commonsewer|7.13.05 @ 8:40PM|#

Isildur, well said, man.

It would also help if there weren't so many crappy movies.

I took the kids to see Madagascar a couple of weeks ago and it cost dang near forty bucks. My shock at spending $21.50 for an adult and two kids under ten to see an afternoon movie (matinee?) was immediately eclipsed by the FIFTEEN BUCKS (U.S.) it cost for a popcorn and two sodas.

Back in the early-to-mid 1970's, when popcorn was 60 cents a box and you could buy a Coke for 45 cents, Playboy ran a little black and white cartoon on some obscure page that sticks in my mind. Two guys walking away from the snack bar at a movie theater, each with a cup of soda and a box of popcorn. It was a commentary on the rapidly escalating inflation of that era. The caption read: Remember when popcorn was only a dollar a box? Yeah. I do.

The popcorn contained the entire 113 pounds of salt that Lot's wife morphed into when she glanced back over her shoulder upon the forbidden city of Sodom as they hot footed it out of town. That stuff was coronary inducing, kidney failing, inedibly salty. All the better to sell more drinks, I suppose.

Oh sure, the movie was entertaining, the theater was large, modern, and best of all, no sticky stuff on the floors. The timing was good, we had it to ourselves, and we were able to lean back in comfy easy chairs and let the film wash over us.

But the quality of the film wasn't as good as a DVD on Mrs TWC's hang-on-the-wall TV. The projectionist or computer or whatever, was a little off on the reel changes (if they even do it that way anymore) and the film was already worn in spots. For the money, it should have been pristine.

Stuff costs money, I'll grant you that, but this is why we sometimes buy DVD's and subscribe to Netflix, have Friday movie night at home with the kids, pop our own popcorn (with actual butter), and pocket the difference.

As Nick says, that's technology offering more and better choices. I like that. Plus at home there are no chattering fools sitting behind us who wandered into the movies thinking it was a bar.

|7.13.05 @ 8:57PM|#

For anyone interested enough, here's a chart of average ticket prices from 1948 (36 cents) thru 2004 ($6.21).

Anyone want to adjust some of that for inflation?

|7.13.05 @ 9:15PM|#

Now how do they get an average of $6.21? Are they including all the childrens tickets, matinee showings and second-run houses? They must be because an adult ticket for a regular screening in Logan Utah costs $6.50, and Utah is not charging above the national average for an adult movie ticket. In Tupelo, MS your adult ticket will run you $7.75. It would be more meaningful to have the average first-run adult ticket prices, I bet they've grown even faster.

|7.13.05 @ 10:09PM|#

I don't go to the movies because it's too expensive, and I don't feel like going during the day for the matinee. If ticket prices were lowered, I would probably go to see more movies, I've always thought theatres should stagger their prices, charge a lot for the opening and then lower the prices as the movie gets older, I mean I've gone to movies where it's empty after a week and I think more people would go if it were cheaper.

The Wine Commonsewer|7.13.05 @ 10:21PM|#

The 1948 movie ticket at .36 would cost 2.48 in inflation adjusted 2005 dollars.

The Wine Commonsewer|7.13.05 @ 10:23PM|#

Oops, double trouble.

1. A typo, it would be 2.98 in 2005 dollars.

2. it would be 2.90 in 2004 dollars.

Sorry.

|7.13.05 @ 11:14PM|#

Back in the early-to-mid 1970's, when popcorn was 60 cents a box and you could buy a Coke for 45 cents, Playboy ran a little black and white cartoon on some obscure page that sticks in my mind.

Good post, but you should try to avoid using the words "Playboy," "page" and "sticks" in the same sentence.

Franklin Harris|7.13.05 @ 11:25PM|#

Look, I already own about 1,000 DVD. That's not a typo. And there comes a time when a man takes stock and realizes he's tired of tripping over stacks of Italian thrillers and Christopher Lee vampire movies and says to himself, "Dude, you've gotta cut back."

Also, I've never purchased many new-movie releases; about 90% of my collection is catalog titles, and about 2/3rds of that is from indie DVD companies, not from major studios.

|7.13.05 @ 11:46PM|#

Well, to be fair to the Newsmax guy, there are movies I decide not to see because of the politics of the actors (Sean penn comes to mind) or the ridiculous moral equivalence and revsionism of movies like Kingdom and Sum of All Fears.

So, I think he's got an argument - at least based on my little data point.

|7.14.05 @ 12:16AM|#

I LOVE seeing movies in the theater (widescreen and sound), but it's been the audience that has been pissing me off lately. There always seems to be someone one row behind me and just a little to my left that just has to keep talking to their friend (and this includes a couple of old gray haired ladies a couple of months ago), or some guy explaining to his kid what's going on. Now I love the idea of a guy taking his son to the movies, but for fuck's sake if you have to explain to him every five minutes what's going on, then he isn't old enough to be watching the film in the first place. Rant over.

So, that being said, my first bitch about movies these days is that the writing flat out SUCKS. Second, the other people in the theatre suck.

|7.14.05 @ 8:21AM|#

After pretty much being a charter subber, I think I'm gonna pull the plug on our Netflix account. There's nothing out there I care to invest 2 hrs in, let alone $20 a month. So-so sounding titles arrive and sit around unwatched for weeks. The last take-a-flyer movie I was pleasantly surprised by Nappy Dynamite.

The DIY option just crushes movies right know. I find myself futzing with my $100 digital effects processor for my guitar for an actual relaxing, semi-creative experience. I talked to guy the other day who enjoys editing hours and hours of camcorder footage down to 1 hr. DVD hi-lite packages of his kids' sports teams. His audience, the other parents, worship him for it.

He doesn't need Hollywood for anything.

|7.14.05 @ 9:20AM|#

Some more price comparisons, thanks to an inflation calculator (online here):

A ticket that cost $2.69 in 1980 would cost $6.65 in 2004 when adjusted for inflation. The actual average cost of a ticket in 2004? $6.21.

A ticket that cost $4.22 in 1990 would cost $6.11 in 2004 when adjusted for inflation. And a ticket that cost $5.39 in 2000 would cost $5.83 in 2004 when adjusted for inflation.

|7.15.05 @ 1:20PM|#

It's mainly just the economics of it all. It has to be a *really* good movie to go through all the hassles of seeing it on the big screen. Even dvd's get expensive, but if you rent them first, especially with the more recent one monthly price, see all the movies you want deal, you can watch them and then decide if a movie is really worth buying and gathering dust on the shelf at home. But I still am willing to pay a dollar for a cheapo old movie just for the heck of it. How else are you going to be able to see the 1925 silent film version of "The Wizard of Oz" (which is hardly worth more than a dollar, I've warned you), old Charlie Chaplin shorts from 1914, the Burns and Allen TV show from the 1950s, or even just some classic but ancient cinema like the early Hitchcock movies or the early Sherlock Holmes films? Even if you're not as easily amused as I am, these things have a fascinating historical value.