I have a near fetishistic love of routine, especially when it involves breakfast. Since I started work, I've enjoyed arriving at the office early, getting myself a nice coffee, maybe a pastry too if I'm feeling indulgent. I sit at my desk in a near empty building, take in the atmosphere of the Thames and read through some articles that take my fancy. For a while, one of my regulars was a column published on the LA Times website. It was titled 'the Big Picture' and written by a rather well informed chap named Patrick Goldstein. He, unfortunately, has since stepped down from the paper/website/thing, but not before producing a final column that inspired me enough to comment, but unfortunately not in a positive regard.
It's a peculiar final post, allowing for only a minimum amount of personal reflection on the lessons learnt during his time at the LA Times. Instead, Goldstein takes the opportunity to aim his vast intellect at "Hollywood" at large. Unfortunately, I have to report that I don't think the article is quite the middle finger to the establishment that Goldstein intended. It is merely one of several misguided, poorly thought out and outdated articles lamenting the death of cinema or the decline of great movie making published in the time that I've been ignoring this blog.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-big-picture-20120822,0,3537850.story
I have so many issues with the article that I could provide a lengthy argument with every point made and end up with a blog post double the size of Goldstein's opinion piece. Aside from making several brief, wide ranging and, in some cases, contradictory points, I think the biggest crime Goldstein commits is allowing his heart to influence his memories. He maligns today's Hollywood system, claiming that it has an "aversion to originality", as if this was a recent change. Thankfully Wikipedia is here to allow us to examine such things in more detail. A handy search for "wiki list of the most expensive films of all time" will direct you to a table showing (without adjusting for inflation) a timeline of the highest budgeted films. One thing that you'll note is that, with the exception of Waterworld and Titanic, all of the films are based on novels or existing franchises (including the Bible).
The fact is, when throwing astronomical sums of money at directors/film productions, I don't think it is out of the question for the financiers to look for some security, regardless as to whether this will result in a bad quality film. That's why Goldstein's counterpoint regarding Pixar & Seth MacFarlene is so misguided. Pixar have proved themselves to be a reliable studio in terms of revenue. Seth MacFarlene has also vast evidence of a built-in audience. His fans even got Fox to recommission Family Guy for Christ's sake! It's not like handing over $60m to the production team behind a TV show that lasted four episodes.
There are several things that bother me about such articles. First and foremost, in not strictly explaining what he wants from a film industry, we get a rather muddled view of what Goldstein likes/dislikes in the current environment (so against sequels but for Pixar films - what about Pixar sequels?). Moving past Spike Lee's idiotic statements, I think they are both guilty of romanticising the past. We were extremely lucky in the nineties to have a group of young film makers all allowed to make mid-budgeted and exciting films at the same time. The same thing happened in Hollywood in the 70s and France in the 60s. Just because we haven't the same 'band of brothers' narrative now, doesn't meant that there aren't original voices any more, they're just not grouped together.
I was discussing Formula One records with a friend at work recently. We noted that, despite his reputation as a great racer, Senna won a substantial portion of his total wins from pole position. On the other hand, Prost, a man painted as doing the bare minimum to win his races won far less from the front row. Now, does this tells us that Senna wasn't the great racer that people remember? Certainly not, but it does make us question how much we can rely on our memories as evidence for grand conceptual arguments.
