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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Netflix: The Antistudio (and Antidepressant) of Choice


Jesus Christ. I hate these late starts as much as you do, but the news that the Antistudio got over again with a film its own execs admit is terrible just has me eight different ways of disconsolate. You know those commercials with the despondent slob sprawling in bed in broad daylight and the gentle voiceover prodding, “Sleep a lot? You may be depressed.” Exactly–that was me this morning, sunken by the tragic brutality of Lionsgate.
But Steven Zeitchik has the corrective today in Variety, which features a thoroughly interesting profile of what I believe could be the real Anti-studio in years to come:

(S)lowly but surely, the Netflix approach is catching on. The site has helped increase the popularity of niche categories like documentaries and foreign films, especially in smaller cities. The company takes credit for 70% of DVD revenue from hit Capturing The Friedmans and says that 16% of its rentals come from suppliers smaller than Lionsgate. …

Execs at the company, who tend to toss about lofty phrases like “democratizing film,” believe they can quantify what has previously been determined by instinct. Netflix staffers feverishly work to refine “perfect-inventory” and “perfect-buy” models — that is, stocking the exact number of copies of a given movie, whether it’s one or 1,000, so that the company never runs at a surplus but is never shorthanded either. By doing that, Netflix believes it can offer a much broader selection of movies than, say, Blockbuster, which is forced to make the safer bet and carry a lot more tentpoles.

In other words, the Netflix system is customized to the tastes of individual customers — the anti-tentpole model.

Zeitchik notes an even more intriguing statistice placing Netflix’s library-to-new release rental ratio at 70-to-30 percent, which, at least from a long-term perspective, is about as freakish (not to mention deadly) as it gets for distributors. And as video-on-demand forces conventional theatrical windows shut over the next 5-10 years (and do not think the studios are not watching how IFC First Take and 2929 Entertainment evolve in the interim), and as Netflix bumps its market share from 8 percent to 15 percent to 25 percent and higher with a younger population living online, the tentpole metaphor becomes less apt. We would almost be facing a high-ceilinged ballroom full of support columns, and whichever studio could crowd the biggest stars and the least incentive to change the channel into its room could probably survive in the black for a while.
Of course, the star system would eventually collapse on itself, but who is to say that is not happening already when Madea’s Family Reunion can rake in $30 million on opening weekend and Paul Walker is carrying two of the weekend’s top ten grossing films? Or when one of the biggest threats supposedly facing old-school Hollywood is a DVD service that rents stuff like The Johnny Cash Anthology at a two-to-one ratio over Walk the Line?
OK, fine–I might be overcompensating a little hyperbolically for the Lionsgate Blues. But at least I am out of bed, and I have to admit: The big distribution question mark excites me. Now if only I could shake off all this Oscar fatigue, I might be able to summon enough will to leave the house.

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One Response to “Netflix: The Antistudio (and Antidepressant) of Choice”

  1. Chuck says:

    I didn’t catch this story until now (way behind on my blog reading), but it’s an interesting argument. I’ll take the Tyler Perry films–and let other people watch them–if I can get my documentaries in Eau Claire, Wisconsin (or wherever).
    I have to admit that I was worried about the effect of Netflix on independent video stores (and I still am), but it has certainly made it easier for audeinces to see films they otherwise would miss.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon