Original Idea Fund Launches Today!

Big excitement in the world of Talented Earthquake Productions today - I am starting a mutual fund on the Hollywood Stock Exchange, and the IPO is today! The Original Idea Fund will invest in movies that are based on an original idea. No sequels, prequels, remakes, or sequels to remakes. Nothing based on a book, play, comic book, musical, news story, or theme park ride. No biopics. No documentaries. Just original ideas.

So no Pirates of the Caribbean, no Ocean's Eleven, no Twilight or Harry Potter. But I will be investing in movies made by people like Kathryn Bigelow, Woody Allen, and Quentin Tarantino. I might be investing in the next Avatar or The Hangover. I will also be investing in StarBonds of actors and actresses who star in these movies, although initially I am planning to limit those to one or two StarBonds per movie.

The Fund will IPO at H$20, as all mutual funds do on HSX, and will delist, or cash out, when it reaches H$100. Looking forward, there is a question that I haven't answered yet. Many mutual funds cash out, and then have another IPO. So there have been six iterations of the New York, New York fund, for example. But, given the nature of this fund, I don't think I could do a sequel!

Project Genome suspension

Project Genome has announced that it is suspending its HSX stock research. That's a bummer. I have really enjoyed Project Genome HSX research since it was started on HSBR.net oh so long ago. They are still keeping the bond charts going, thank goodness. I loved the HSBR bond charts. I'm not quite as much of a fan of the Project Genome charts, but they're still good. I loved being able to adjust the delist price of upcoming stock delists, to play with hypotheticals. What happens if this movie totally bombs? That was one of the best features of the HSBR charts. It was great.

The Project Genome stock research hasn't been perfect, not by a long shot. When I search for a stock, the latest update is usually several months old. Still, even old research is better than nothing.

But what I loved about their research was the commentary, which was very straightforward. They were brutally frank about a movie's prospects. An indie comedy with no stars? OK, that would be a short. An IPO of a movie that's already wrapped production? Hello and goodbye - short short short. On the other hand, I remember the description of a blockbuster, I think one of the Spiderman movies, as having a release pattern "wider than the widest river at it widest point" (or something like that).

In July of 2007, they wrote this about Delgo:

the stock will hang around HSX like a bad smell as long as there’s the slightest chance of it being released. Let’s all hope for a quick STDVD release.

That was exactly what happened - it hung around like a bad smell. They knew a long time ago that it was a dog, and they were right. It delisted at H$0.51.

I applied for a position at HSBR a long time ago. I obviously didn't get it, but I think it worked out for all concerned. The person who did get the gig, Ultimate Frisbee, married one of the other people on the site. And I would have had to resign after getting into USC. But I still miss HSBR, and I'll miss Project Genome. One thing I miss the most about HSBR is the weekly predictions. I am trying to fill in the gap just a little bit with my own predictions, but I can't begin to hope to fill the shoes of the entire HSBR crew.

So thanks, Blue Duck, for all your hard work over the years, thanks in advance for keeping the bond charts going, and here's hoping that Project Genome is somehow, maybe, just maybe, resurrected once again.

HSX Nominoptions

HSX floated Nominoptions last week. Nominoptions are options for betting on who will be nominated for an Oscar. There are options in eight categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Adapted Screenplay, and the Acting categories. There are 12 Nominoptions in each category, for a total of 96. The hottest one so far is for Heath Ledger to be nominated for Best Supporting Actor for playing The Joker in Dark Knight. I'm sure he'll be nominated; apart from the sympathy vote, he simply played one of the best villians in the history of cinema.

Trading will be halted at 9 pm EST on January 21, in anticipation of the nominations being announced on January 22. That's two days after the Inaugural! That's going to be an exciting week.

I love Nominoptions because, first of all, it's a fun word to say, and second, because they represent Hollywood gossip in its purest, most raw, unadulterated form. Gossipy gossip at its gossipiest. Rumor, innuendo, hearsay, dreams and delusions of grandeur. Ridiculous ad campaigns for nobodies with a chance, or even famous stars with even less of a chance. Inflated egos, fingers crossed, thousands of people obsessively reading the tea leaves of obscure critics' awards, hoping for a sign of great things to come.

Then there are the denials, the dismissals, the absurd protestations of "Oh, I just don't care," "I'm excited just to be in a great movie with so many wonderful people," "It's all about the work," "I would be thrilled, of course, but there are so many wonderful writers/directors/actors/actresses/movies out there right now, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda . . . "

Some of which protestations might actually be true. Some of them actually mean it when they say they were excited to be in a great movie with lots of wonderful people. Others might be cynical enough not to care about winning an award. Others mights actually be secure enough not to worry about whether or not they are going to win an award. And still others know that they really aren't that great, they just look really good on screen, but they're thrilled to be making a lot of money playing around at being other people, and they have come to terms with that a long time ago, so they really do know that they don't stand a chance in hell at winning an award against people with real talent, and they're fine with that because they're married with great kids and they drive a nice car and live in a nice house and don't have any debt because they're actually decent, responsible people.

This last is a rare breed, but they do exist.

And then there are the people who actually deserve it. And some of them will be nominated. And some of them will deserve the award that they will win. And some people will think that all of the hype and nonsense and wailing and gnashing of teeth and bruised and battered egos and superficiality and obsession with fashion and who wore what will be worth it, because at the end of the day there are a few movies - just a very few - that come out every year that make you go "wow."

And one of those people who think it's all worth it will be me.

Dear HSX: The redesign sucks

The Hollywood Stock Exchange has undergone a redesign. For reasons passing understanding, the powers that be at HSX have changed the format so that it is worse in just about every possible way. It's beyond horrible. So far I can't find anything that has changed for the better. The text is too small, the portfolio is too small and hard to read, the calendar is also too small and also hard to read, and when I tried to trade something, IE crashed. It used to be easy to tell which securities I was holding long and short, because the ones I was holding short were in red italics. Now they are all the same, with the word (long) or (short) next to each. Not as visually easy.

The formatting for the calendar used to be really well done; each day was clearly marked, the StarBonds, MovieStocks, and derivatives were all separate, and it was easy to find the next or previous weeks. Now everything is just in one big long list. On Monday, October 20, there are 28 securities listed on the calendar. Some of those I don't care about, some of them I do. But I have to squint at the damn list to figure out what exactly is going on.

And it's slower than ever, if that's possible. My portfolio usually takes a long time to load, but I do own about 1,700 securities, so there is a lot of actual text to load. I don't have the fastest computer, but I do have DSL. It's not even loading right now.

Of course the ads are now more intrusive. Someone's trying harder to make money on this, but my strong suspicion is that this will backfire, and badly. I haven't read a single completely positive post on the forums. One person had a "pro and con" list - that was the only thing I've seen that had anything good to say about this godawful mess. I normally ignore the forums, but I'm sure paying attention to them this week.

What's bizarre is that it was working fairly well, and now they've put a great deal of effort into redesigning it, and they threw out the things that were perfectly fine!

I've been playing HSX for 10 years. My portfolio is getting very close to H$2 billion. I am in the top 99.97% of all players. My lifetime return is over 98,000%. I'm really good at this, I like it, and I have put a huge amount of time into it. I've learned a lot playing HSX. Now I'm learning lessons I really don't want to learn. I already know what bad design and corporate screwups look like; I don't need any reminders on that score.

I wasn't playing much last winter and spring, but I have been playing fairly consistently of late, and I've been looking forward to upping my game a bit, playing the derivatives carefully, paying slightly more attention to openings and the StarBonds, that kind of thing. Now I'm really not sure I'm going to do more than check on the IPOs every couple of days and the StarBonds on Tuesdays. It's going to be more difficult to find the stocks that are tanking in my portfolio, which is a huge pain.

I've been toying with the idea of auctioning off my portfolio for a while, because it does take a certain amount of time just to maintain my ranking, and I could probably get something for it. I don't know how easy that it anymore; I think eBay outlawed selling virtual reality stuff like this. But the irony is that now that I am more inclined to do sell my portfolio, the market to do is, I'm sure, largely gone, because, until they fix this dog, ain't nobody going to be jumping in to play more HSX.

Which, of course, makes the game that much less interesting. Fewer players would just be less fun.

I am sincerely hoping that someone at HSX has the sense to realize what a horrible mistake they have made and fixes things pronto.

Bad conservative movie coming soon!

A movie that I hadn't heard of until today is allegedly coming soon to a movie theater near you. It's called "An American Carol," and it sounds horrendous. IMDb lists the release date as October 3 of this year. It's not completely surprising that I haven't heard of it, but I do try to keep up on these things. It's going to have an IPO on HSX next week. The IPO price is H$6.00, which I think is optimistic. That price means that the folks at HSX think it might make as much as $6 million in the first four weeks of release. The lowest possible price for an IPO is H$3, which is usually reserved for documentaries and foreign movies that are going to make a few thousand at most.

So maybe the H$6 price means that they're being nice.

Unfortunately, the Liberty Film Festival, my source for all things conservative-film related, is on hiatus (I know the founders). The closest I can come to a conservative review is this review from Reason, which is technically a libertarian rag.

I've thot a bit about why conservatives don't make good movies. It's not that they don't want to. And it's not as if there aren't conservatives who aren't talented.

I think the problem is that making great movies requires a strong sense of empathy, and conservatism, as an ideology, is not strong on emphasizing empathy. As individuals, conservatives are perfectly capable of being good, sympathetic listeners. Conservatives can be just as compassionate in person as liberals.

Ideologically, however, conservatism tends to stress principles like competition, the rights of the individual to compete in free markets, etc. Every man for himself, that kind of thing.

I make a distinction between ideological conservatives, like William Kristol, who preach the virtues of the free market, and actual businesspeople, who are IN the free market. Many businesspeople have to be empathetic; salespeople in particular have to listen to and understand their customers. Business folks also have to make an effort to understand the world as it is so they can deal with it, rather than try to impose their will on it. Ideologues of all stripes, left and right, tend to want to shape reality and make it conform to their desires, rather than working with what's possible. Ideologues who make movies are making movies that they want to make, not that audiences want to watch.

In this respect, the free market is actually a blessing for liberals in Hollywood, because it forces them to compromise between making movies according to their political ideals and making movies that will attract audiences. While it may constrain a liberal's idealism to make movies in Hollywood, doing so also forces them to make good movies.

Box office numbers - right and wrong

Last Friday, I wrote a post about box office projections. I compared my projections to that of the LA Times. Turns out that the Times was right about Wall-E. They projected $66M, I projected $70M, and it came in at $62, so we were both too high, but within the neighborhood.

But on Wanted, we were both way off. The Time predicted $39M, I was a little more optimistic at $42, but it hit $51, much better than expected. So I was closer, but still off.

Unlike Bill Kristol, I am capable of admitting it when I am wrong. Of course, I also bet on these movies on the Hollywood Stock Exchange, so I know how wrong I was. I lost money on both stocks over the weekend. Fortunately, I was way ahead for both.