Hollywood bashing: Narrative versus reality

Conservatives all over the blogosphere and beyond are gloating over the miserable box-office returns for Brian DePalma's Iraq-war-themed picture Redacted, which grossed all of about 25 grand on its opening weekend.

Not that you had to be a conservative to see that coming; as I wrote in my review of that largely misbegotten film, "Brian De Palma's Redacted was so thoroughly debated during its tour of the fall film-festival circuit that its theatrical release seems a bit of an anticlimax. (Given the way Iraq-themed pictures have been playing at the box office, distributor Magnolia likely has at least one more anticlimax in store.)"

But the notion among certain conservatives that Redacted's failure represents some sort of milestone in the imminent death of the entity they sometimes refer to as "Hollyweird" is more than slightly ludicrous. It's not unlike the not-quite-worked-through thinking alicublog made such sport of in a post a few weeks back, noting a conservative blogger's glee over the fact that the evil Hollywood product Lions for Lambs got thoroughly trounced at the box office...by a bunch of other Hollywood products.

In the case of Redacted, we've got Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit linking to blogger/documentarian JD Johannes, who discusses how his own film, Outside the Wire, made and distributed by he and he only, has outgrossed DePalma's picture. (It hasn't turned a profit yet, which is generally when one is supposed to begin bragging, but let's not be churlish, shall we?) "When one guy with a camera is beating Hollywood in rate of return and almost beating Hollywood in gross receipts--Hollywood has a problem," blog-intones Johannes. Boogity boogity.

Well, as Paul Stewart said in Citizen Kane, "maybe yes, maybe no." In the interests of accuracy, I should first like to point out that Redacted is not a Hollywood product. Its producing entity is HDNet, the Mark Cuban-founded-and-financed outfit that explicitly defines itself as a Hollywood alternative. Its theatrical distributor is Magnolia Pictures, another Cuban entity, which doesn't even have an office in California, for heaven's sake.

These facts will not move the likes of Reynolds or Johannes because, well, any cinematic manifestation of an idea they don't like has to be labelled as a product of Hollywood. (Unless it has subtitles. No, don't bring up The Kite Runner.) But, for the sake of argument, let's continue to play according to their definitions.

So, one film created and marketed by...oh, let's call them media professionals...at a cost of $5 million...is a dismal failure, while another film made for $35,000 by one guy has grossed $23,464. Hence, "Hollywood has a problem." Except...Hollywood, such as it is accepted as an entity by the rest of the world, is in fact projected to gross over $10 billion at the box office this year, breaking previous records. (Yeah, that's $2 billion less than the video game industry, but we'll get to that in a minute.)

So what, exactly, is Hollywood's problem?

I guess one problem is that it can't succesfully market a subpar Brian DePalma film to the mass moviegoing public. But that's been the case since the early '70s. And in spite of that problem...Hollywood still lives, thrives even, you might say! What the hell's going on here?

Let's move on a bit, and maybe we'll see. A bit later on Instapundit, Reynolds posts a link to a piece by Politico's Jeffrey Ressner about how the tide of politically-themed Hollywood films is not to be stanched by the failure of said films. (Reynolds must not have read the entire piece, which cites an upcoming Rambo movie. No right-wingers aside from Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball would ever even think of objecting to a Rambo movie.) "If I were a shareholder, I would complain," snorts Reynolds. "...It's as if they don't care about shareholder returns at all in Hollywood."

Um, dorkwad—do you mind if I call you dorkwad?—if you were a shareholder, YOU WOULD BE GETTING A DIVIDEND. BECAUSE—let me repeat—HOLLYWOOD IS GOING TO HAVE A RECORD BREAKING $10-BILLION YEAR. Well, I can't say I'm entirely certain of that dividend, because most of the major studios—Warner, New Line, Disney, Columbia, Paramount, etc.,etc., are merely cogs of much larger conglomerates and their earnings/profits might have to offset the losses of other divisions, and so on...but theoretically, you know, it SHOULD happen...

Okay, you get the point. So why does Reynolds go on like this? Well, he's pretty much doing what he constantly accuses the mainstream media of doing in Iraq: ignoring the facts the better to promulgate his favored narrative. The narrative is two pronged. First, there's ever popular, good old-fashioned Hollywood bashing, which all of us enjoy on some level. (Specifically right-wing Hollywood bashing was a slightly tricky ball to keep in the air during the Reagan presidency, but Newt Gingrich put it in play big time with his Woody Allen=Democratic Party values gambit back in '92, and it's been going strong ever since; Hollywood's aesthetically-and-otherwise hobbled attempts to produce films relevant to the current situation have only imbued its practitioners with more brio.*) Second is Reynolds' even more beloved hobbyhorse, his Army of Davids schtick, a scenario wherein ordinary folks with the help of new technology overturn the media overlords and do...stuff. Aside from his entire book on the idea, Reynolds contributed a piece on the moviemaking aspect of it to Popular Mechanics a couple years back. (Would it be gratuitously unkind to liken his "My wife made a movie! I made a video!" exultations to Max Fisher's "I wrote a hit play!" protests? It would? All right, then.) Not exactly in the generously utopian spirit of Francis Ford Coppola's age-old prediction that the next Mozart was gonna be an eight-year-old girl with a digital camcorder, but on a similar track.

But still. Let's get real. Yes. Hollywood has taken notable hits from the videogame industry. Yes, it is scrambling to concoct new strategies to get butts in seats for this generation, and the next, and the next after that. Yes, it has a history of being kind of unbelievably stupid about new technologies, such as the VCR. And then it has a history of making a shitload of money off of those new technologies ANYWAY. And yes, Hollywood is gonna gross ten billion dollars this year. Neither Redacted nor domestic-tech triumphalism is gonna take a penny of that good, good money away. So don't start whistling "Dies Irae" yet, fellas.

*Those practitioners often cite the Hollywood of World War II as the example today's moviemakers ought to emulate, conveniently neglecting the irony of who was President at that time, and how his New Deal policies in a sense created the platform from which Hollywood product could be deployed in the propaganda war.

Comments

[Ray]

I saw "Redacted" this last Saturday night--a 9:00 showing time--and I was the only one in the theater (an art house theater in Minneapolis, which is usually pretty packed on weekends). So I guess my $9 is not an insignificant part of that majestic week's haul.

I would probably agree with almost any serious criticism people might make about this film. But I have to applaud De Palma for trying something other than another post-Hitchcockian thriller. The movie felt personal to me--like the director was, as they say, "mad as hell." And that alone, coming from a filmmaker who's been a pretty damn significant presence for three decades, made it worth seeing.

And, if he now goes back to making those post-Hitchcockian thrillers, I'll be happy too!

[cadavra]

Well said, sir. Every time I get hit with that "Hollywood is out of step with Mainstream America" mantra, I not only bring up the 10 billion in theatrical, but also toss in the three times that on DVD, not to mention all the other revenue streams (TV, music, theatre, video games, etc.), never mind porn and piracy. All of that dough can't possibly come from L.A., N.Y., S.F. and Boston!

I watched Re-dacted at home over Thanksgiving and I wanted to like it but I just couldn't. The performances were, uh, how do I put this politely, uh, on the level of a production put on by The Thousand Oaks Civic Center Theater Company. They were amateurish, and in the worst possible way. De Palma has been making movies for over 40 years and his command of actors is still very, very iffy. Yeah, his heart is in the right place, but maybe he should worry a little more about casting his movies. The two soldiers in Re-dacted, the Chris Farley-ish guy and the lunatic who rapes the girl, are just plain cartoonish. It was hard to take the movie seriously. The one-two fish-limp slap of Black Dahlia and Re-dacted makes me wonder what's going to happen to De Palma. He's on a roll, going the wrong way.

[actionman]

Redacted was released on like 10 screens. What do people think? How can a movie make any money if it's released in a handful of markets. And had it been released wide, of course, sure, it would have bombed. But to get all high and mighty over a movie like Redacted bombing at the domestic box office is a little silly. Redacted wasn't made to make money, it was made by De Palma as an angry, personal, political statement and on that level it's a success.

[Christian Toto]

Many of your points are valid - conservatives are often too eager to slap Hollywood around. But it doesn't detract from the fact that movie makers are creating films solely from one side of the ideological spectrum on this topic, and for the most part they're failing both artistically and commercially.
Aren't any artists angry about a movement which denies basic rights to women, not to mention that whole head removal trend amongst the Islamo-fascists? Where are those films? Why aren't those stories being told, instead of our often clumsy attempts to fight said movement?

[Cheap Canada Goose]

A fool may ask more questions in an hour than a wise man can answer in seven years.