A couple of weeks back, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas caught the film world’s attention by pointing to a trend within the industry.
From Spielberg:
“You’re at the point right now, where a studio would rather invest $250 million in one film for a shot at the brass ring than make a whole bunch of really interesting, deeply personal – and even maybe historical projects that may get lost in the shuffle. . . .
“There’s going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen mega-budget movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that’s going to change the paradigm.”
It’s easy for me to say I agree with him, and even easier to want to place the blame on the film studios, the book publishers, and the music companies, which all are caught in the ambulance-chasing blockbuster race. But… The audience is responsible, too.
Have you watched the Dustin Hoffman interview, about his film Tootsie, which went viral a few weeks back?
Though he doesn’t use the word “blockbuster,” he provides another example of what happens when we chase the blockbuster Marilyn Monroe, instead of supporting the just-as-interesting Norma Jean.
I asked [Columbia] if they would spend the money to do makeup tests, so that I could look like a woman. If I couldn’t look like a woman, then they would agree not to make the movie.
And they said, “What do you mean?”
I just somehow intuitively felt that unless I could walk down the streets of New York and not have – dressed as a woman – and not have people turn and ask “ who’s that guy in drag?” – or turn for any reason – you know, who’s that freak? – unless I could do that, I didn’t want to make the film. I didn’t want the audience to suspend their believability.
When we got to that point and looked at it on screen, I was shocked that I wasn’t more attractive. And I said, “Now you have me looking like a woman – now make me a beautiful woman” – because I thought I should be beautiful. If I was going to be a woman, I wanted to be as beautiful as possible. And they said to me, “That’s as good as it gets. That’s as beautiful as we can get ya, Charlie.” And it was at that moment that I had an epiphany.
And I went home and started crying, talking to my wife, and I said, “I have to make this picture.”
And she said, “Why?”
And I said, “Because I think I’m an interesting woman” when I look at myself on screen and I know that if I met myself at a party I would never talk to that character because she doesn’t fulfill physically the demands that we’re brought up to think women have to have in order for us to ask them out.
She says, “What are you saying?”
And I said, “There’s too many interesting women I have not had the experience to know in this life because I have been brain washed” and . . . that was never a comedy for me.
Toward the end of the interview Hoffman slows, pausing to check his emotions. I kept thinking, he’s going to cry. Instead, he verbalized how much blockbusters are a part of so many of us. We want what looks good, what looks like a bestseller, a Top Ten, or a blockbuster film.
You know that old saying, Don’t judge a book by its cover? There’s a similar saying in book publishing: The cover is the most important page of a book.
The cover plays a role in our decision process. It’s the blonde hair and low-cut dresses on Marilyn, the colorful 3D image on a kids’ DVD, the attention-grabbing foiling and embossing on a book.
Something that doesn’t look good – that doesn’t look like a blockbuster should – is a harder sell. Might be just as interesting – if not more interesting – but it’s that cover, that trailer, that clip that convince us to buy instead of pass. How many film trailers have pulled you in, only to leave you walking out of the theater disappointed?
I spent the evenings of my senior year in college working the third floor of Strawberries Music on Boston’s Boylston Street. It was a rare day when more than a handful of customers made the climb to sort through the jazz, classical and Broadway musicals sections hanging at the top.
One of my first observations? The covers are BORING.
Though the sections collected more dust than customers, my manager insisted that I go through every section, aisle, category, and album, and ensure that everything on the floor was in the correct section, aisle, category and alphabetical place. He didn’t want to see Chick Corea’s category card sitting in Tower of Power’s section – and if he found a first floor Alanis Morissette album hanging with Mozart, heads were going to roll.
I looked at every cover of every album on that floor for hours on end. Because the covers competed for boring, the next category was content. What’s inside? I know Beethoven became a bestseller, but his album covers are just as boring as Vivaldi’s. Which to choose?
It was an experience I’ll never forget, because it forced me to think beyond the cover. It fed Curiosity and inspired Exploration.
As readers, listeners, watchers, it isn’t our responsibility to keep the different industry companies alive. But . . . If we want diversity, it is our responsibility to support it.
The first floor can be exciting, but after a while, it’s boring, too. If the various companies, studios, publishers, continue to spend big on the first floor – thinking that’s the best thing to attract customers – and then the first floor implodes . . . the second and third will fall with it.
We can’t tell them what to do, but we can do a better job climbing those three flights of stairs, providing that young kid on the third floor a busy day – and those interesting artists a read, a view, and/or an ear. And, perhaps encourage the execs to go beyond the first floor, too.