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Newsweek: Documentary Sector Collapse
July 5, 2008 -- Commentary from author Robert Marich. It’s always amazing to see that even film industry insiders seem to forget the “rules” of this industry, as set by moviegoer behavior. Political films have a long history of not selling, with some exceptions, most notably anti-Iraq war critique Fahrenheit 9/11, which was a blockbuster.
The industry is suffering mightily because it came to believe Fahrenheit a new rule, rather than an exception.
Newsweek published a pretty good article about how the entire documentary film category nose-dived, and Fahrenheit wannabes are the main culprits (the article’s weakness is quotes from Fahrenheit filmmaker Michael Moore, who analyzes the world from the faulty assumption that all movie-goers really do love political films that comport with his outlook).
Notes the Newsweek article by David Ansen: “Unless documentaries were made by Michael Moore, or featured Al Gore talking about inconvenient truths, the theatrical market for these films collapsed. Huge expectations ran into a wall of audience indifference: Crazy Love was supposed to go through the roof yet it made a measly $301,000.”
The Newsweek article continues: “Taxi to the Dark Side won the best-documentary Oscar—and its grosses, paltry to begin with, went down! Alex Gibney, the director of this tough movie about the torture of terror suspects by Americans, is suing THINKFilm, its distributor, for what he says was an inadequate release. With all due respect to Gibney, he’s kidding himself if he thinks tons of marketing money could have made a difference. Even Errol Morris’s high-profile film on Abu Ghraib, Standard Operating Procedure, flopped—$209,000.”
Now that’s the reality…and why does Gibney merit “due respect” from Newsweek? It seems he’s being a cry baby. Another industry rule ignored by filmmakers these days is that awards don’t necessarily translate into box office, which is another inconvenient truth that lawsuit about Dark Side is ignoring.
Many of the current crop of documentaries represent fine film craftsmanship. My guess is audiences feel burned by manipulation of the hit and edgy documentaries of a few years ago, which broke with traditional filmmaking by emphasizing show-biz glitz and refused to seriously acknowledge contrary viewpoints. After their box office success, these films were criticized in the press for their excesses, which I think had a creeping effect on audiences.
Old school documentarians would serve up one point of view that is necessary for storytelling, but along the way represented disagreeing views to some extent. The new show-biz school of documentary makers ignored this rule too.
For full text, click link below:
www.marketingmovies.net/news/opinion-oscar-docu-selections-out-of-step/
www.marketingmovies.net/news/war-docu-basks-in-controversy-over-ad/
