News
H'wood Miscalculates With Politico Films
Commentary/by Robert Marich (for related New York Times, Variety and Hollywood Reporter articles, see bottom of this file)
Oct. 26, 2007 -- As Hollywood mogul Samuel Goldwyn once said, “If you want to send a message, call Western Union.”
These days, a slew of pricey movies set against the backdrop of the Middle East/Afghanistan cauldron and that project distaste for the U.S. are falling flat at the box office. More such films are in the pipeline, and so worried film distributors are crafting marketing campaigns to position some of them as thrillers or general-purpose dramas. But the trouble is the audiences sense that the films are full of political connotations and don't buy the
Attention Movieogers: This is an engrossing character drama, not a political film! Your cooperation in this regard will be appreciated.
marketing sleight-of-hand (“pay no attention that man behind the curtain!”).
The box office disappointments include Syriana with George Clooney, bombing aftermath actioner The Kingdom, U.S. spy agency indictment Rendition and In the Valley of Elah, whose advertising uses an American flag as a backdrop for a movie that knocks the U.S. military. Coming soon to a theater near you are Lions for Lambs -- starring Tom Cruise with a $35 million production cost-- and searing war crimes drama Redacted. These are mostly well-crafted filmmaking. But Hollywood seems to be forgetting the audience, which shows little appetite for morality plays set in the murky Middle East. Surely, with so many of these Middle East downers in the movie pipeline, audience fatigue should have been an obvious flashing red light.
History consistently shows the audience doesn’t want edgy, topical movies with story lines that hit too close to contemporary newspaper headlines. It took a decade after the U.S. withdrew from its Vietnam War before U.S. audiences accepted films on that conflict. In 1979, when the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident occurred 12 days into the release of The China Syndrome, box office for that thriller immediately plunged in what was widely interpreted at the time as an improbable storyline suddenly becoming all too uncomfortably real (see “H’wood Unleashes Geo-political Films” Aug. 14 also in the News/Features directory).
Films with edgy political visions can have an audience, but what Hollywood is learning at considerable financial expense is that it’s not a mass audience. Not reaching a mass audience means scaling down costs to match box office/revenue expectations. A $15 million film with political overtones could work economically (if it has stars, they have to work for less than their regular pay), but not an $80 million major studio release, like The Kingdom.
The $70 million production of Gulf War actioner Jarhead, which would have been a dandy as a straight-forward action film, was a harbinger of things to come when performing poorly in its 2005 release. As the 1990-91 first Gulf War ends in Jarhead, a soldier exclaims with joy, "We never have to come back to this s*** hole ever again!” that plays off the follow-up 2003 Iraq War. The screenwriter may pat himself on the back for delivering biting satire, but the message comes off as rather naïve. World War II was a re-run of WWI that, in turn, was a re-enactment of the Franco-Prussian War. It’s no profound commentary that history is littered with repetitive wars.
The notable exception to today’s economic carnage for politico films is Fahrenheit 9/11, which is the 2004 Iraq war documentary critique that cost just $6 million to make and grossed an astronomical $119 million in U.S. box-office. Because Fahrenheit 9/11 was in the first wave of today’s trend, its success likely blinded Hollywood to the true long odds for economic success for this genre. Sure, there will be some other box office successes, but experience indicates to expect more than its share of flops for this genre.
One might ask why is this disconnect between Hollywood and the audience happening now? After all, Hollywood has always been an insular place with its own take on off-screen morality and politics. What’s changed is that talent – actors, writers and directors – are increasingly powerful and their lives breathlessly celebrated in the media. This leads them to think audiences will embrace their geo-political view emanating from Sunset Blvd., which has not been the case so far.
In past decades, studio “suits” enforced a sort of adult supervision over the Hollywood sandbox. And the suits had a better pulse of the mood of Middle America, even if they didn’t necessarily mesh with their personal outlooks. In Hollywood’s golden era, studios churned out white-bread films presenting an idolized Middle America. And just who was responsible for these films? It was studio moguls who emigrated from Europe.
Whether highbrow Hollywood talent like them or not, uncomplicated films with easily-identifiable good guys and bad guys not only connect with U.S. mass audiences, but moviegoers around the world. These films give us characters that we want to root for and make the audience feel good. Critics can argue those films also project a political viewpoint, but it is comparatively bland and in synch with mainstream audience. Today’s cavalcade of politico films relish heaping an ambiguous morality on the audience.
Hollywood talent asserts that the politico films simply represent artists creating signature masterpieces. The problem with that thinking is that it’s not just some misunderstood Van Gogh toiling alone on an inexpensive-to-produce painting. Today’s mainstream Hollywood movies cost tens of millions of dollars each to make and many more millions to market. That’s the reason that it’s called show business. # # #
Note these related stories.
A New York Times analysis article Oct 29 notes “the upshot is clear: Jihad; torture; suicide bombings; terrible things done by and to American soldiers; official secrets and government lies; the failures and responsibilities of journalists, politicians, law enforcement officials and ordinary citizens in the face of terror — such matters will be hard to avoid in movie theaters between now and Christmas…. What is missing in nearly every case is a sense of catharsis or illumination.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/movies/28scot.html?ref=movies
Robert Redford sounded off on the political message in Lions for Lambs in a London press appearance, says Variety.
For whole story, click link below:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117974840.html?categoryId=2526&cs=1
According to this Variety story, “Filmgoers in France and Germany have revealed their own waning appetites for political fare by turning away from a brace of home-grown pics dealing with contentious episodes in their countries’ history.” While films dealing with topical political and controversial subject matter sink at home, foreign sales for the same films are sometimes brisk.
For whole story, click link below:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117974819.html?categoryId=2520&cs=1
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How to Market a War Film? Leave Out the Battlefields
Hollywood Reporter -- Oct 19, 2007 For New Line, one of the biggest challenges in marketing Rendition, which stars Reese Witherspoon as a young American mother whose Egyptian-born husband mysteriously disappears, has been differentiating the film from other recent movies set against the backdrop of the Middle East. Trailers, TV spots and posters have tried to position the Gavin Hood-directed film opening today as an engaging thriller that features an all-star cast that also includes Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep and Alan Arkin. The marketing challenge faced by Rendition also will be confronted by other movies about the Iraq War, the war on terror and the politics of the war in Washington. (note only this extract is posted).