A Call to Filmmakers

Hollywood is paralyzed in it's fear.  Studio executives insist on making bets so safe it's absurd.  Somewhere right now, a panel of marketing experts, film industry veterans and social media savants stream live in a vain attempt to address the same unanswerable questions:

Is that Great Hollywood Bounty a thing of the past?  How will movies make money in the digital era of micro-audiences, piracy, and streaming video?  How will we make a living in a saturated, one-dollar-a-rental-Redbox-market, with so little space for theatrical distribution? 

We producers, writers, and directors, are preoccupied with article after article addressing these questions, no more certain or satisfied than if we hadn't even read the articles in the first place.  Meanwhile the battle for the soul of our culture hangs in the balance, and I hate to say it but culture is losing.

Today's teenagers are supposed to identify with remakes, reboots, sequels, and incessant comic book movies they've known since they were young enough to start appreciating movies.  Copies of copies defining a generation, coming from those that came before them --  willingly supplied by us.

Where's the sense of outrage?  And more importantly, why comic book movies?  Was this the unobtainable "We'll-get-there,-pop" dream Shakespeare had in mind all along?  Really?  A Jonah Hex movie?  A Deadpool movie?  (Not to mention the fact that the guy that played Deadpool is also playing Green Lantern?)  -- We're not even talking about the staples anymore, this is the crap left over.  Why?

Of course any industry lives or dies by economics and higher ROI.  Money.  These safe bets with built in audiences are a better guarantee for investors -- so say the executive sages that run this town.  

But friends, money, and money alone isn't good enough.  Money is no excuse.  Money vs. creativity is a false argument, and money alone is a short-sighted illusion.  It's the same oversimplification that doomed Bear-Sterns and Washington Mutual (and perhaps our whole economy if the government hadn't intervened).  One need look no further than the sub-prime mortgage crisis to see this truth in practice.  As long as great sums of money were flowing, the experts that run the great banks of wall street never asked why, and virtually all the tycoons forgot what they were there to do to begin with.  Trading worthless mortgages at top dollar, they forgot their purpose, and it nearly destroyed the U.S. banking system.

Asking why, always why, in the midst of good times or bad, is the difference between failed societies, failed civilizations, failed economies, and fundamentally sound ones.  Are we fulfilling the true purpose of our industry?  Are we providing entertainment and culture to our society?

You can argue that comic book movies, remakes, reboots and sequels can be entertaining.  It's possible, but it's doing a pretty half-assed job, wouldn't you agree?  It's a copy, a traced sketch, a re-used tissue.  Yeah, it'll get the job done, but we aren't just in the business of entertainment.  Our business is also about culture, and anyone that says otherwise is deaf, blind, and dumb.  People once admired poetry en masse and it defined a culture; people once read fiction en masse.  Film is the new standard bearer. 

I'm not even talking about adult dramas, or avant garde cinema, or foreign films nobody can understand.  I'm talking about films with heart!  An honest stab at original content!  Films that jump off the 3 act structure every now and then.  Exceptions!  Risks! -- Whether they be dramas, comedies or horrors.  Films that respect their audiences instead of patronizing them.

Why do we re-make the same movie when the original story is sufficient?  Why are sequels made that don't further a story?

And to you independents: dispell your egos.  Cast it from yourselves!  While, money and only money could be the reason a film as sick, useless, and morally barren as "The Human Centipede" could ever be made, ego is the ingredient that inspires such films.  The sense that your work deserves to be seen, no matter what, is not enough.  While you concern yourselves with bottom line, marketing, and potential audiences (in pre-production like you're supposed to be doing, right?), think of this as well:

Films are reflections of the people that make them and the era in which they are made.  What kind of a movie do you want to make?  What do you want to say during your short time above ground?

Hollowed out culture marks a civilization in decay.  The responsibility falls on you to provide some of that culture -- and don't get me wrong, I believe even goofball comedies are part of the solution.  But don't pass the buck.  Don't blame audiences for accepting copies of copies; don't give into the easy dollar.  We've got a job to do.

Charles Rhoads