David Brooks, Fiscal Restraint, Culture Wars, and Hollywood

David Brooks has a good column today about a fundamental American value: fiscal restraint. He points out that over the course of our history, our materialism has been balanced by a countervailing thrift. He points to the old WASPs, immigrant families who sacrificed for their kids, etc. Then he throws out some numbers about how in debt we are as a country, and how we are going to have to experience a major cultural shift if we are to get our fiscal house in order. He ascribes equal blame to both sides of the ideological spectrum, conveniently forgetting that it was Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and supply-side economics that have gotten in to this mess, while Bill Clinton managed to balance the budget. Other than willful blindness, I think he's basically right.

I am an eternal optimist, so it's not hard for me to find some encouraging signs; the decline and fall of the insane demand for luxury that has besotted us and driven developers to erect ever-more fabulous monuments to consumption. But I find the most encouraging sign in what may be the most unlikely, and yet the most likely, of places: Hollywood.

I say "most unlikely" because Hollywood is about the farthest from anyone's mind when looking for examples of monetary sanity; this is a community rather well known for spending lavishly.

But I saw "most likely" because Hollywood is also where many great trends get started. One trend in the box office this year has been the decline and fall of a fair number of movie stars and their potential for opening movies and making millions. So far this year, Duplicity, starring Julia Roberts, State of Play, starring Russell Crowe, and, just this past weekend, Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis, have all done much worse than expected. These people are not earning their $15-20 million paychecks.

Which raises the question: were they really worth $20 million? Presumably, yes; movie studio executives aren't that stupid, and, in fact, they tend to be fairly intellectually disciplined when calculating their bottom lines. Which is one reason Sandra Bullock starred in The Proposal, rather than Julia Roberts: Julia wouldn't cut her $20 million fee, Sandra Bullock was perfectly willing to do it for less, and wound up with the biggest hit of her career.

Movie stars are no more or less greedy than regular people; if I had the chance to make $20 million for 3-6 months of work, you damn well better believe I would take it. They are also no more or less greedy today than they were in previous generations; the nature of human greed has not changed in the last few years. Technology has, and with it certain aspects of the Hollywood business model. It's physically possible to distribute movies today in a way that wasn't possible even 30 years ago. A major studio release generally hits 3,000 screens on opening weekend; Star Wars, by contrast, opened on May 25th ,1977, on a grand total of 43 screens.

Movie stars have been making millions of dollars a movie because they could. Audiences, however, are also ever-more discriminating. The fact that Bruce Willis is in Surrogates is not a guarantee that it will be a good movie. Moviegoers are shade more conscious of what kind of value they are getting for their entertainment dollar. Studio executives are also, I hope, more conscious of the value of their budgets. There is some reason to be optimistic in the recent firing of Dick Cook from Disney. Bob Iger has made it clear that he isn't all that happy with Disney's slate of movies these days. Surrogates is a Disney movie. Bob Iger was worried that Disney is not making good movies, so he fired the head of the studio, Cook. Looks like Iger made the right call.

Money does strange things to peoples' brains: it takes a certain a certain amount of intelligence to make money, but too much money can give people the impression that they are smarter than they are, which leads them to making stupid decisions. We're in the post-stupid decisions phase in this country now. Too much money led way too many people to think that they were smarter than they are, which led them to make stupid decisions. This recession is a wake-up call. The generation that survived the Great Depression was a frugal one.

Money also has a strange way of convincing people that they are worth more than they really are. Certain movie stars seem to think that. They think of themselves as being worth vast sums of money, when their worth is really determined by that insanely fickle entity known as the audience.

What the market giveth, the market taketh away. We are seeing a certain rebalancing of the equation of inequality, at least in Hollywood. Personally, however, I think the best solution to rebalancing inequality is the old-fashioned one: tax the rich.

Stars falling from the sky

One meme in Hollywood this summer is that the movie business seems to be going through a shift of sorts. Movies featuring movie stars are failing, while the most successful movies are those without stars. The LA Times examines this trend, and, unfortunately, engages in some utterly trivial, completely inside-Hollywood analysis.

The studios, which for years have banked on richly paid stars to open their movies, are now witnessing a new reality: even the most reliable actors can be trumped by what Hollywood executives like to call "high concepts" (a bachelor party gone awry), movies based on brand-name products (Hasbro's Transformers toys), and reinvented franchises (not your father's "Star Trek")

I have name for this current batch of "high concept" movies.

I call them "good movies."

And this, quite simply, is the secret of how to make money in Hollywood: make a good movie for a reasonable cost. That's it. Of course, making a good movie is not simple, just like writing a good book or painting a good picture is not simple. But there is no secret beyond that to making money in Hollywood. Whether or not "Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen" is a good movie is debatable, but it clearly delivers substantial entertainment value.

People who believe that casting movie stars is the secret to making money on a movie confuse correlation and causation.

Correlation is when a moviegoer says to herself "I have seen Julia Roberts in good movies before, so if Julia Roberts is in a movie, then there is a good chance that it will be good, and that I will enjoy it." If you eat an apple and enjoy it, then there is a good chance that you will enjoy the next apple. But that is not guaranteed - you may have liked that particular apple more than the next apple you eat.

Causation is when a moviegoer says to himself "I have seen Tom Cruise in good movies before, so if Tom Cruise is in a movie, that automatically means that it is good, and I can be sure that I will enjoy it." If you drop an apple, it will fall to the ground. If you drop another apple, it will also fall to the ground, because it is affected by gravity, which is the cause that makes the apple fall. As long as you are standing on the planet Earth, that will not change.

But there is no such thing as causation in the relationship between movie stars and whether or not the movies that they are in will make money, because there is no causal relationship between movie stars and whether or not the movies they are in will be good movies. Movie stars have a combination of qualities: good looks, talent, and the ability to choose good roles for themselves, and good movies for themselves to be in. Julia Roberts and Harrison Ford are both great examples of this. Both of them have demonstrated very good taste when it comes to picking roles for themselves over the years. So moviegoers have strong associations between Julia Roberts and Harrison Ford and good movies. But neither of them has a perfect track record. About the only actor I can think of who has a near-perfect record of choosing good roles is Meryl Streep.

Casting Julia Roberts does not mean that the movie will be good, or that audiences will automatically assume that it is a good movie. Casting Julia Roberts means that audiences will notice the movie, and pay some attention to it, and start out with a favorable impression of it (at least many people). That's it.

People do not go to see movies strictly to see the actors and actresses who are in them. They go to see the movie itself. The movie itself is a package, and the stars are parts of that package. Important parts, to be sure, but only parts.

People go to see movies for one reason: they want to see a good movie. They may want to see a comedy, a tragedy, an action-adventure movie, a thriller, or a horror movie. They may want to laugh, cry, or be terrified. But at the end of the day, they want to see a good movie. Putting a movie star in it increases the chances that audiences will perceive it as a good movie. But putting a movie star in a movie does not guarantee that it will be a good movie. And good movies do not necessarily have to have movie stars in them. Consider the following list:

The Graduate

Jaws

Star Wars

Raiders of the Lost Ark

E.T.

Back To The Future

The Usual Suspects

Four Weddings and a Funeral

Shakespeare In Love

Titanic

Pulp Fiction

What do those movies have in common? Each of those is a great movie. And not one of them featured an actor or actress who was an A-list star at the time of the movie's release. The closest any of those has to a star is John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, but he was considered a has-been at the time, and this was his comeback role. Some of those are utterly cliched. Jaws? Jaws is about a giant creature that terrorizes people, with the creature created with mechanical effects. The same description can be applied to King Kong, Godzilla, and a thousand other cheesy B movies. There is one thing that distinguishes Jaws from those thousand other movies: it's a damn good movie.

High concept? Consider Titanic. It's based on one of the worst ideas for a movie ever made. "I know, let's spend $200 million on a movie about one of the worst man-made disasters ever, cast two unknowns, and make it a tragic love story, with one of the main characters dying a horrible death almost immediately after they fall in love." Great! Let's go! Sounds like a winner!

By the standards of Hollywood that the LA Times recites, Titanic should not have been a successful movie. Kate Winslet was a total unknown. She wasn't even particularly svelte. Leonardo DiCaprio had been in a bunch of art house movies. But it's the most successful movie of all time.

The article quotes a number of Hollywood executives. They all try to provide solid analysis, but they somehow manage to make trendy marketing concepts sound like bad post-modernism.

"The world has changed, throwing conventional wisdom out the window," said former studio marketing executive Peter Sealey. "The star-power opening is fading in importance and the marketing and releasing of movies is going into new territory where the masses are molding the opinion of a movie. People no longer say, 'It's a Tom Cruise movie, let's go see it!' With social networking, you know everything about a movie before it comes out."

Let me quote part of that again: "the marketing and releasing of movies is going into new territory where the masses are molding the opinion of a movie."

In other words, the opinion of the customer matters. Moviegoers are now finding out whether or not a movie is good very quickly, before the marketing has a chance to work its seductive magic.

The opinion of the customer matters. Hey guys, welcome to capitalism. News flash: figuring out what the customer wants and delivering it is your job as a studio executive.

I don't think that every studio executive in Hollywood is this obsessed with marketing, but I have noticed a tendency in the LA Times, particularly in the business section, to engage in this kind of analysis. The problem with trying to analyze trends in the movie business strictly in terms of marketing is that you end up with some serious nonsense:

"Movie stars in the right films provide a certain amount of value from a marketing point of view," he said. "But there is no star power that you can throw at a movie that gives you the kind of brand awareness you get from pre-sold titles."

But "Star Trek" was not a pre-sold title. The last few Star Trek movies were forgettable. "The Hangover" is about the farthest thing from a "pre-sold" title. "Terminator: Salvation" is a pre-sold title, part of a franchise, with star power, and yet it's not doing all that well. "The Proposal" is a movie with a somewhat silly premise, without a great deal of originality. But it's a good movie, it works, and it's making money. The woman in the lead in this romantic comedy is in her 40's, and there's a joke in the movie about the fact that she doesn't have a very big bust. She's not funny or charming; she's very unpleasant through most of the movie. But she's the lead in a successful romantic comedy.

Adult dramas are allegedly not doing terribly well. But the examples cited here, "State of Play," "Duplicity," and "The Soloist" all sounded very cliched to me, which is why I didn't see any of them. Corporate and political conspiracies? Yawn. An inspirational movie about a black homeless guy? Please. Not finding myself excited about that one. I don't care who is in them - if I think they're cliched and boring, I'm not going to go see them.

The basic problem with trend analysis is that trends are, by definition, ephemeral. Movies are the ultimate trend-resistant industry because they are one industry defined by a constant demand for the new. That's why it's a "creative" industry - customers want something that has just been created. Very soon after a trend starts, if indeed it is a trend, customers will be bored by it.

I'm sure all of the executives quoted in this article are highly educated. But there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

"There's something to be said for chemistry between actors, and you don't need to be a star to have chemistry," said Oren Aviv, Disney's production president, suggesting that is exactly what the casts of "Proposal," "Star Trek" and "Hangover" all have in common -- "combined with an idea that people connect with."

"There's something to be said for chemistry between actors." Well, yeah. Sort of like there is something to be said for baseball players who can hit the ball. "[A]n idea that people connect with." Somehow it's impossible for these people to say "You know, what people want is to see good movies." Like there is this urge to sound deep and profound, an urge that apparently interferes with the operation of common sense.

Maybe the problem is that the LA Times needs to figure out something to say about movies on a constant basis, and there just isn't that much to say. Good movies are more likely to make money than bad ones. The definition of what is a good movie changes, and is different for different people, but good movies make money. That's the formula, folks. Trying to find lots of different ways to say it just ends up sounding like you are on the wrong side of the sublime/ridiculous divide.

Someone once said that movies are a great art form, but a terrible business. What they meant was that business is about finding the rules that will determine how to make money, and then following those rules. But art is about finding the rules of what makes good art at a particular time, and then breaking them.

Businesspeople want stability and certainty. Artists want the freedom to be creative, to be daring and different.

But it's not even that simple. Good artists do follow some rules; good businesspeople do too. But great artists follow certain rules, and then break others. Great businesspeople do the same thing. The first trick is knowing what rules to follow, and what rules to break. The second trick is getting the great artists together with the great businesspeople. The last trick is figuring out what the audience wants before the audience knows that it wants it.

A reason to see Harold & Kumar

I didn't see Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, but it's been on my radar screen, particularly since I loved the title of the sequel, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Now I have a reason to see both: the guy who plays Kumar, Kal Penn, now works at the White House. He will be the associate director in the White House Office of Public Liaison. Great Hollywood-Washington connection! Apparently politics runs in the family - his grandparents marched with Gandhi.

h/t: Daily Kos.

Art, Sausage, Politics: Christian Bale and the Stimulus

Senators have reached an agreement about the proposed stimulus package. Christian Bale got in trouble this week for a profanity-laced rant he unleashed on the set of the latest Terminator movie (Bale has apologized). I'm not going to link directly to an audio of his rant, because this is a family-friendly blog. Maybe he's frustrated at following in other actors' footsteps; he is the third John Connor and the fourth modern Batman.

Those two news items don't seem like they have much to do with each other. But work with me for a minute. There's an old saying in politics that those who like sausage and legislation should watch neither being made. The same could be said, to an extent, for art. Art can be beautiful, funny, inspiring, tragic. But the process of making it (particularly movies) is rarely beautiful or inspiring (although it can definitely be funny or tragic).

Christian Bale's rant is unusual only because it was made public. There are many stories about movie stars acting badly on set. But they are, for the most part, just that: stories. Until now, there wasn't much hard physical evidence of a movie star being a jerk on set. Christian Bale just happened to be mouthing off within range of a live microphone in the age of the Internet. A political columnist (I can't remember who) gave this advice to pundits and politicians after one too many people were caught saying things they shouldn't have: if you are in front of a microphone, assume it is live and recording. The same is true of movie sets, particularly since they use some microphones that record over a much greater distance the ones in a TV set or on a podium. The whole point of making a movie, after all, is that it will ultimately be released to the public.

And we are now watching legislation being made in a much more intimate way than we did previously. There's a reason for the phrase "behind closed doors" and the cliche "smoke-filled back rooms." The process of coming up with enough compromises to make a piece of legislation passable was one that went on out of sight of the public. Not so much anymore. We know that Ben Nelson, Susan Collins, and Arlen Specter were key Republicans engaged in the final negotiations. The smoke-filled room was Harry Reid's office. I read about this on several different Websites within a few minutes of when it happened.

So those of us who are paying attention to these things are a little more aware of what happens behind the curtains. Christian Bale's reputation will probably never quite recover. No one is going to be quite satisfied with the stimulus, because we all know exactly who got what, and most people who see a program that they favor being cut are going to be upset about that part of the package.

But what the Internet takes away it also restores. Christian Bale apologized on a radio station in LA; Entertainment Weekly put it on its Website. It's also part of pop culture in ways no one would have imagined. Stephen Colbert parodied Bale's rant with Steve Martin as the target of his venom; I saw a mashup of Bill O'Reilly and Bale's rant. Bale apologized, and he was in one of the best movies of last year. If he can show the world that he can laugh at himself, maybe he'll come out even better. I have an idea: he should parody himself, but instead of ranting at a crew member, he should drop some f-bombs at the Academy, for not nominating Dark Knight for Best Picture or Christopher Nolan for Best Director. That could be funny. If Heath Ledger doesn't win Best Supporting Actor, he will have millions of people's permission to let loose.

As for the stimulus, disillusionment and discouragement seemed to set in in some quarters almost as fast as hope bloomed after November 4th. I do not countenance any cynicism at this point, and will not even begin to contemplate it for myself. The package came together quickly, and it looks like Obama will sign it less than a month after taking office. Part of the reason for the alacrity is the speed of communication these days. We all know how bad the economy is, and we all hear the same horrible news instantly.

Those who like legislation and sausage should watch neither being made. And if you don't have a strong stomach for constant setbacks and rejection, stay away from Hollywood. But the most difficult movies to make can be funny and inspiring. And two of the greatest speeches in American history were given in the middle of, and at the end of, our worst war: Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and his Second Inaugural. We are in a horrible economic crisis. Our Senators and Representatives just came up with a plan that may or may not solve this crisis.

Christian Bale finished making Terminator: Salvation, presumably without further incident; that tirade is actually from last July. The process of coming up with the stimulus was not pretty. But it's done. Time to clean up the details, watch Obama make great speeches pitching it to the American people, watch him sign it, have a few beers, maybe an apple martini, and then cross our fingers and pray that this actually works. Which I look forward to hearing about on multiple blogs, nytimes.com, and washingtonpost.com.

No more VHS for you!

You remember VHS tapes. I'm sure you do. I certainly do. I still own some VHS tapes. I have a couple of movies on VHS that I don't think I could get in a DVD format. I even still have a tape player, just in case I want to play these tapes.

There was a time, oh not so long ago, when VHS tapes were a great new technology. You could watch movies at home! On your own time! You just had to go out to Blockbuster or your local movie rental place and get them there. Then the prices came down, and you could afford to buy them!

No longer. The LA Times reports today that, as of last October, VHS tapes are officially dead. No more. Kaput. None are being sold in the United States. Some guy named Ryan Kugler, one of those bottom-feeders who buy "distressed" inventory, and then ships it to places like 99 Cent stores, moved his last truckload of tapes a couple of months ago.

Hey, if you have any left, they might now be collector's items. I donated my last batch to my church rummage sale. Apparently Amoeba in Hollywood stills buys and sells them. They're hardy. The ones that still exist will last. And there are billions of them. So maybe they won't be collector's items.

The Village People get their star

The Village People are now officially cool for all time: they have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Many years ago, a friend of mine booked the Village People for a party at the University of Virginia, while he was a student there. This was long before they became hip.

So Ian, this one's for you.

The Oscars

The Oscars were a few days ago, but I still feel the urge to comment. I liked Jon Stewart, I thot he was good, if a little subdued. Somehow that felt appropriate. I haven't seen Enchanted, but someone who has said that the musical numbers just couldn't come close to the movie. I'm glad Diably Cody won. There seemed to be something of a generational divide in the Best Picture race. There were four nominees aimed at older voters; Atonement, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men, and There Will Be Blood. All very serious, somber movies. And mostly about men. And then there was Juno, written by a woman, about a teenage girl. I think the generation coming up will be more open to movies by and about women.

Patrick Goldstein in the LA Times has a great piece about how to improve the Oscars. I really hope someone takes his advice. He's got some very good ideas.

There was also a plethora of awards for people who are not American. The LA Times:

"There Will Be Blood's" best actor Daniel Day-Lewis lives in Ireland, while "La Vie en Rose" surprise best actress winner Marion Cotillard makes her home in Paris. Spain's Javier Bardem was named best supporting actor for "No Country for Old Men," and Scotland's Tilda Swinton won best supporting actress for "Michael Clayton." Many of the evening's lower-profile awards -- for art direction, makeup, costume design and animated short among them -- went to non-American filmmakers and designers.

But this is now a new phenomenon. Tilda Swinton, who is from England, pointed out:

"Hollywood is built on Europeans! Go back and look"

She's right, of course. Some of the best directors were from Europe: Charlie Chaplin, Hitchcock, Billy Wilder. Lots of movie stars have come from other countries. Three of the four stars of Gone With The Wind were from other countries. Vivien Leigh was born in India.

But even most "American" movies have a strong interntational flavor. "Titanic" is a classic American blockbuster. But the HMS Titanic was a British ship, and it sank in the North Atlantic. The movie starred an English woman (Kate Winslet), was directed by a Canadian (James Cameron), and was mostly shot in Mexico.

Or another classic Best Picture blockbuster, Gladiator. A throwback to the old swords-and-sandals epics. But other than its cinematic origins, it's not very "American." It takes place in ancient Rome and was shot mostly in Europe and North Africa. It's directed by an Englishman, Ridley Scott, and stars an Australian, Russell Crowe, a Dane, Connie Nielsen, another Englishman, Oliver Reed, an Irishman, Richard Harris, and the only movie star from Benin, Djimon Hounsou.

Harrison Ford is famous for starring in two great series: Star Wars and the Indiana Jones movies. Neither really takes place in America. And not much of either series was shot in the US; both series were shot all over the world.

Even the great fantasy series of the recent past were barely "American." The Lord of the Rings movies are based on books written by an Englishman who was born in South Africa, and they were shot in New Zealand, directed by a Kiwi. Harry Potter is almost entirely English. The Pirates of the Caribbean movies take place mostly in, well, the Caribbean, and star a couple of Brits, Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom, and an Australian, Geoffrey Rush.

So the fact that all of the Best Actors and Actresses were "foreign" should not be a surprise, but a sign of how strong Hollywood's connections to the rest of the world are. And a testament to how well America, at its best, engages the rest of the world.