Kool Aid Time
With due respect to Anne Thompson, the idea of connecting trouble in the American auto business and alleged “trouble” in the film business is horrfying. It speaks directly to my greatest fear… that the intellectual debate about what the future of the film business is will be reduced to non-specific ramblings and irrational connections between things that are utterly unconnected.
In the most simplistic analysis, the auto business is completely different than the film business. The auto business has not been dominated by America the way that the film business dominates the world business in a long, long time. G.M. or any manufacturer release their product line once a year and sell that line for a year. While making a film does take time, no one film involves the kind of massive investment that an auto line does. And no studio, since the end of the studio system in the late 60s, has ever suffered or benefitted from trend buying the way the auto business is. Studios are not building SUVs only and seeing the trend suddenly turn away from that style.
Stealth may have crashed, but another studio tentpole, Fantastic Four, did terrific. Yes, Disney lost by chasing the Asian girl horror trend with Dark Water. But that was one movie with a small loss… and the lesson was learned. And a few months later, girls drove The Exorcism of Emily Rose to huge profits. The ship of movie state is much more flecible than that of the auto business.
And the argument that the connection is that the film business is slow to adapt is completely counter-intuitive.
The DVD business is five years old!!!
How many times must one say it? The DVD business, which expanded revenues by 30% to 40%, is only five years old!
Anne restates the same utterly false, completely unproven notion that texting is speeding up word-of-mouth to lightening speed. Besides people mouthing this absurdity a lot over the last year, what proof is offered? Forget details… just show me a Friday/Saturday drop that suggests it. Second weekend drops are not new. So if things are going faster, it should be seen on Saturdays, right? And before you use Rent as an example, you’ll need to find a teenager who saw the movie on Wednesday.
We have seen this kind of hysteria before. It comes and goes. And it DOESN’T mean that there is nothing wrong. Many things are wrong. But this experiential journalism – for which the web must take some responsibility – is for shit. None of us who write about this business are the target for the business. Yet we write endlessly about how we feel… and now that extends to the major papers and teh trades. This is getting very dangerous.
No one who knows anything about the record business will tell you that the troubles that occured in the 90s were a result of technology so much as a result of record company greed. Pricing was just to high.
And for some reason, all these people who are screaming about the end of the movie world as we know it and the NEED to chase technology (let’s not even get into the lack of screaming that the studios should have converted theaters to digital projection years ago and could be saving a billion dollars a year now) don’t seem to understand that the entire push for home delivery is about expanding the costs of films at home… not serving the consumer more effectively.
If you serve the customer more effectively, the price families spend to receive films at home will go down, not up! And if you prioritize the home experience over the theaterical window followed by the home window, it will go down even further.
The only two arguments for shrinking the window further are: 1. Serving the blockbuster and 2. the notion that people will pay a significant premium for seeing movies on opening weekend at home.
If either of these notions disturb you… and I would bet that both notions would disturb Anne Thompson and Patrick Goldstein as the primary drivers, since neither have written about them… then you have to be taking a stand on the side of strengthening the theatrical business and window before getting to a wide open ancillary business. If not, you are sure to be like the girl who sleeps with the guy on their first date to “get him” and wonders why he then leaves her because he thinks she is a whore.
The film business is a long relationship. The one night stand mentality is not progress.
The record industry priced themselves out of the market. 18 bucks for a cd? Unreal. Who wants to pay that? It costs less than a buck to produce them. They should have been selling and still should be selling for 9.99$. It was tragic that the Spiderman soundtrack was selling for 18$ and the dvd could be had for 9$.
I must make note of something you mentioned. While I agree that in no way has text messaging really affected word of mouth to any normal degree, it should be noted that Wednesday night in Cleveland… opening night of Rent, my relatives saw it (and loved it, natch), and they said the entire theatre was filled with middle-school girls and their mothers. Not making any statements, but one could argue that there were quite a few teenagers seeing Rent Wednesday night.
I do wonder, just tossing it out, whether or not the alleged text-messaging word of mouth might explain the decline of the usual healthy Friday to Saturday increase. While back a few years ago, only the most front-loaded blockbuster made less on Saturday than Friday, I seem to be seeing that more and more in the last couple years, either with minor drops on Saturday or near even Saturday numbers, even with normal, seemingly non-front loaded movies.
Of course, it’s just as likely as that’s simply a case of the ‘gotta see it first’ mentality that used to be merely a thing for film geeks and hardcore fans, but is now a national pasttime of sorts.
Random thought, make of it what you will.
Scott Mendelson
I think Thompson’s text messaging comment wasn’t meant to be taken too literally, but simply an example of how buzz & (ahem) movie dialogue has sped up these last few years as a result of cyber technology. It’s there, sure, but I don’t think it’s hysterically there.
What I find interesting is how the studios seemed to have made peace with the geek sites. AICN has been all but declawed. The industry has very cleverly found a way to turn any cool news into questionable news with their go for the jugular marketing blitzs. A test screening or rogue script review doesn’t seem to affect business like we once thought it might (and what was the last leaked script anyone’s read online? Kill Bill?)
Even Poland blowing my Voldermort surprise a few days ago doesn’t mean a thing. The critics I trust liked it, word of mouth is strong, and it’s making killer money… Count me in.
I guess word of mouth, in any form, is still king.
Of course my reference to text messaging was also just a general remark to the sorts of ‘youth word of mouth spreaders’. Out of curiosity, what exactly was the ‘Voldermort surprise’? Had you not read the book? Even if so, for a reader, that was not the surprise for me, but what happened… um… what else occured.
Scott Mendelson
That picture on the blog. That’s Voldermort right?
“A test screening or rogue script review doesn’t seem to affect business like we once thought it might (and what was the last leaked script anyone’s read online? Kill Bill?)”
I recall the Batman Begins and Stay scripts being out there long before the movies premiered. Didn’t read BB, but Stay’s script affected MY business, hyuk-hyuk-hyuk.
“That picture on the blog. That’s Voldermort right?”
The Jeff Wells one, you mean? Yeah, that’s Ralph Fiennes as the younger Tom Riddle, reincarnated.