The Oscar edition
Oscar season used to be a bigger deal for me because I used to be a lot more into films. I actually wrote a screenplay that was a semi-finalist in the Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting Competition that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences puts on. (Semi-finalist means it was in the top 300 of around 7,000 scripts submitted.) I lived in L.A. for a year. Thought I wanted to be a film writer.
What happened? Well, my forties happened. It’s okay to make no money in your twenties or thirties. Not such a good idea now.
What else happened? At some point, Hollywood seemed to change from an industry of artists and creativity, to a Disney/Sony/Time Warner corporate machine that churns out crap for the highest possible return on investment. They do this by stifling creativity and only investing into projects that have some kind of previous name recognition by the stumbling, dumb masses. Thus, with few exceptions, they will no longer make big budget movies that weren’t once a book, comic book, video game, children’s toy, or TV show.
Consider some of the great movies from the 1990s—a golden age for Hollywood:
There’s Something About Mary, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, The Matrix, Casino, Schindler’s List, Silence of the Lambs, Good Fellas, Fargo, Saving Private Ryan, Forrest Gump, Shawshank Redemption, American Beauty, Dances with Wolves, Titanic, Terminator 2, Braveheart, The Usual Suspects, Barton Fink, Boyz’N the Hood, Jurassic Park, Fight Club, Being John Malkovich, Magnolia, The Big Lebowski, Shakespear in Love, The Player, Good Will Hunting, Wag the Dog, Philadelphia, Shine, Thelma and Louise, Apollo 13, Edward Scissorhands, Groundhog Day, In the Name of the Father, Three Kings, As Good as It Gets, The Green Mile, The Sixth Sense, A Few Good Men, Jerry Maguire, Clerks
God, I could just keep going! Maybe not all your favorites, but original and, many of them, ground breaking and rewatchable. Some came from novels (like Silence of the Lambs) but not books that everybody had heard of.
Now consider the top grossing movies of the 2000s (and where they came from):
1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (novel series)
2. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (theme park ride)
3. The Dark Knight (comic book)
4. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (novel series)
5. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (theme park ride)
6. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (novel series)
7. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (novel series)
8. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (novel series)
9. Shrek 2 (sequel)
10. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (novel series)
11. Spider-Man 3 (comic)
12. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (novel series)
13. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (sequel)
14. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (novel series)
15. Finding Nemo (an original!)
16. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (sequel)
17. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Mattel toy)
18. Spider-Man (comic)
19. Shrek the Third (sequel)
20. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (novel series)
Not a lot of originality there. What does Hollywood take away from this? Original doesn’t sell. America will only spend money if it’s something they’ve already heard of. Thus, what else do we get?
BOOKS: Narnia, Bourne Identity (all), Pride & Prejudice, Cold Mountain, No Country for Old Men. Comic Books: Iron Man, Speed Racer. Broadway: Chicago, Dreamgirls, Sweeny Todd, Frost/Nixon. Celebrity Bio: Ray, Walk the Line. Children’s Toy: G.I Joe
I can report that a few gems slipped through in the last decade, but not many were commercially successful:
Traffic, Gladiator, The Departed, Sideways, Almost Famous, Adaptation, A Beautiful Mind, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Crash, Momento, Lost in Translation, Good Night and Good Luck, Kill Bill, The Wrestler, Cast Away, A History of Violence, Requiem for a Dream, Passion of the Christ (I know this one has baggage, but it was a hell of a film), Juno, High Fidelity, Training Day
My ranking of the 10 films up for 2010 Best Picture (not my prediction, but my rankings): A dead heat between Up in the Air and Inglourious Basterds. I’d probably go with Up in the Air by a whisker, but it would depend on my mood at that moment. Then, in this order: Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Up, The Blind Side, District 9.
Didn’t see: Precious, A Serious Man, An Education
Waltz as smiling, milk-drinking, four-language-speaking bad ass in "Inglourious Basterds"
Pulling for: Jeff Bridges, Christoph Waltz, and Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Jason Reitman. Waltz should get best actor. Even though he was the villain and not the biggest star, he carried the movie. Best movie villain since Hannibal Lecter. Just seeing him on the red carpet might make me pee a little bit out of fright.
Most excited for: Alec Baldwin as host. Who knew this aging action star would become, arguably, our generation’s funniest actor?
As much as I don’t think that it was a great year for movies, I am enthused that there is not a comic book, video game, toy, or novel series among the bunch. Maybe there’s reason to hope after all.
Posted on March 5, 2010, in Uncategorized and tagged Alec Baldwin, Best Picture, Hollywood, Movies, Oscar. Bookmark the permalink. 5 Comments.
Gee Bagger, I really have to agree with you on films of the 1990′s. I would agree with all your favorites and give special dittos to Schindler’s List, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Sixth Sense, which we watched again yesterday. I have long thought that Jeff Bridges was one of the finest actors in Hollywood. We watched The Fisher King this week and enjoyed it tremendously. Though I haven’t seen Crazy Heart yet, I’m rooting for Bridges too.
I am impressed that you wrote a sceenplay that made it to the top 300. That’s quite an achievement, but with you superb writing skills, I’m not surprised. I hope you keep at it because the gift you have is rare, especially today.
It was fun. However, that and $2.00 will get you a bus ride downtown. It was the true story of a German pastor who, along with his brothers and brothers-in-law, tried to assassinate Hitler. It was about the moral question: Thou shall not murder, but if you had the chance to knock off someone who would kill millions, would you defy God’s law?
The only meeting I got out of the award was with the producers of “American Pie.” Yeah, they’re gonna make this movie. “Can you get any nudity into it?”
IB is a great move. The scene in the basement bar is SO good. Better than the opening in my opinion.
Awesome movie. I still prefer the first scene because we didn’t know who Waltz quite was yet. But the bar scene was good, too. Love how Tarantino is not afraid to allow a scene to breathe and be a bit long. Very Hitchcock-like.
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