They’re Not Making (or Watching) ‘Em Like They Used To by KTK

Jonathan Yardley has a review in today’s Washington Post of The Big Picture: The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood – a new book by Edward Jay Epstein. It apparently details the market-driven nature of the modern move business, fixated on “blockbusters” that generate lots of secondary revenue in the form of DVDs, soundtrack albums, T-shirts, toys, “action figures”, and the like. Hardly a new story. A few facts jumped out at me, though.

For one thing, Epstein claims that at the height of the old “studio system,” in 1947, 4.7 billion movie tickets were sold, in a total population of about 140 – 145 million. In contrast, last year fewer that 1.6 billion were sold to a population over twice as large.

That’s astounding. That comes to about 33 tickets per person that year. If you assume that, say, 20% of the population was too young, too old, too sick, or just uninterested, and thus never went to the movies, that means the average moviegoer attened more than 40 flicks in a year. Now, I consider myself a real movie buff, and I would guess about 40 movies per year is likely what I average. In 1947, the average person went that often. Today’s average attendance is about 6 flicks per person per annum – a falloff in frequency of 6 or 7 times.

In part, this may be due to the fact that, back then, movies were easier to see. They were shorter, for one thing, and many theaters played them continuously, with patrons walking in at any point, sitting through the end, then watching the beginning of the film as it started up again until it got back around to a part they recognized (famously giving rise to the phrase “This is where I came in”). (This also suggests that plot was not a major issue in a lot of those old films.) More importantly, they cost a lot less. Average movie ticket prices for the late ’40s were about 35 cents – which translates in inflation-adjusted terms to less than $3 today – yet actual ticket prices today range from $8 to over $10 in high-cost cities (like the one I live in, where $10.50 is the standard price and there are no matinee discounts). In other words, tickets have increased 3 to 4 times in price in real terms. Going to the movies used to be casual entertainment – now it’s become a big deal. I now often skip movies that I might otherwise be willing to see, because a movie is now half the cost of an opera ticket and I figure it better be comparable as an artistic endeavor. The rest I can rent for a buck a year from now, if I even remember them then. (Here’s a wonderful essay I stumbled across, on the lost experience of moviegoing in the post-war years.) Another problem, obviously, is the rise of alternative entertainment: video games, cable TV, and so forth. (Put these two together and they tell a plausible story: rate of attendance has fallen 6 times as prices have risen 3 times and alternative venues have exploded. If you figure today’s entertainment-seeker is spending the same amount of constant-dollar money on visual entertainment as in 1947, but spending half of it on non-movie outlets, the numbers work out reasonably well.)

Another point Epstein makes, that I think is an informative twist on the obvious hyper-market-driven nature of modern movies, is that distributors never make a profit on box-office receipts today. I hadn’t thought that was true, and I don’t know how reliable his claim is, but he puts the “blockbuster” phenomenon in a new light. Epstein claims that the box office was only 18% of total movie income, on average, in 2003, and that the specific purpose of movie-making today is to produce marketing spinoffs and license fees for DVDs, TV broadcasts, and the like. (Yardley’s quote does not mention foreign distribution, which is a huge profit stream – the majority of profit for most US movies – so I am not sure how to take these figures. At any rate, the point is clear: movies need a huge “back end” to be profitable, and they are specifically set up to generate it.) The result is the development of a new, specific way of making movies – what Epstein calls “the Midas formula”:

the ingredients of which include “a child or adolescent protagonist,” a “fairy-tale plot in which a weak or ineffectual youth is transformed into a powerful and purposeful hero,” “bizarre-looking and eccentric supporting characters that are appropriate for toy and game licensing,” a happy ending “with the hero prevailing over powerful villains and supernatural forces” and “conventional or digital animation to artificially create action sequences, supernatural forces . . . and elaborate settings.” In two words: “Harry Potter.” In four: “Lord of the Rings.”

. . . In effect, as Epstein persistently argues, theatrical release now exists not to make money but to open the way for “intellectual property” income to be earned over the long term from other sources. As the “Midas formula” makes plain, these movies are strictly product; they may win the occasional award, since Hollywood reveres success, but they have little if anything to do with cinematic art.

Yet there are good movies being made. Epstein explains that serious adult-oriented films are essentially loss-leaders for the studios, aimed less at increasing their prestige than at simply placating the talent that would otherwise balk at churning out endless childish crap:

Such art as does still emerge from Hollywood can be found in the comparatively modest productions from the “specialty film units — Miramax Pictures, Sony Classics, Fox Searchlight, Paramount Classics and Warner Independent Pictures,” which are a return “not so much to the studio system as to the art-house system, which had at one time coexisted alongside the Hollywood studios.” These movies are modest only by Hollywood standards: Their average cost was “an astounding $61.6 million in 2003, nearly two thirds that of studio movies,” and “since many of the more adult films produced by the independent subsidiaries did not appeal to the youth-oriented toy, game, and other ancillary markets, they often resulted in huge losses for the studios.”

The Big Six swallow these losses not because they’re suicidal but because “studio executives seek, along with strictly commercial projects, projects that are likely to attract the sort of actors, directors, awards and media response that will help them maintain both their standing in the community and their own morale.” As Epstein says, “as persuasive as the [Midas] formula is from a moneymaking standpoint, it doesn’t satisfy the community members’ appetite for prestige, recognition, and creative expression.

This suggests another explanation for why, for instance, Robert Deniro is doing voice-overs for animated fish movies. (Which is comforting. Now I don’t have to send him a check for $80.)

Epstein notes the massive consolidation in the entertainment industries: the major film studios are owned by the “Big Six” broadcast networks, such that, between them,

[they] own all six broadcast networks in America,” as well as “64 cable networks whose reach accounts for most of the remainder of the prime-time television audience,” a combination that enables them to “control over 96 percent of the programs that carry commercial advertising during prime time.” They “control the television networks depended on by advertisers to reach children under 12 . . . and those designed for younger teens.” They “dominate the worldwide distribution of movies, a studio business [the late] Steve Ross once described, with considerable justification, as a ‘money machine,’ ” and they “control a large part of the entertainment media, including magazines . . . TV and radio interview shows . . . and cable channels that publicize movies.” All of which is to say that they control “one of the largest consumer-based industries in America . . . .

Which means the dreck we see, and the inflated prices we pay, are the result of an effective oligopoly, not just over the movie business but over every outlet and venue of publicly-distributed information and entertainment.

Most of this story is old news, but Epstein’s version of it is depressingly cynical and no doubt true. Coming on the morning after one of the blandest Academy Awards shows in years (after what was, actually, a pretty good year for movies), it bodes ill for an artform I have always thought had a depth and richness to rival any other. The crapification of the movies can only get worse.