Gullible's Travels

I subscribe to a number of business and tech blogs. Not because I've got millions of dollars tied up in Dow Jones Technology Futures -I don't- but because the entertainment business is a microcosm of the entire business world at large. A quick study of one can be a crystal ball for the other. It didn't take a genius to see that, well, Genius -and everybody else for that matter- would be forced to downsize after the housing and lending institutions followed the stock market into the toilet last year. Thus my daily email is filled with updates and news stories from a dozen or so industry reports, padded out by at least another dozen "insider" blogs.


My favorite headlines yesterday included: Rigged Podcasts Can Leak Your Passwords; Pondering The Next Ten Years; How To Manage The People Who Manage You; and Apple iPod Touch Sets Child's Pant's On Fire.

Which one do you think I read first?


If you guessed any of the headlines likely to actually impact my life (the first three) you would be wrong. I went straight for the burning baby.

If it bleeds, it leads!

I'm a little embarrassed by my virtual rubber-necking, but I've always conceded that I'm as susceptible as anyone else to tried-and-true marketing methods. Blood and guts are a surefire marketing ploy if ever there was one. Unfortunately, the blood in this week's column belongs to the studios, themselves, rather than the films.

This past weekend's receipts were comprised primarily by the debuts of two wildly different remakes, and the continued (severely dropped) returns on a film that (following a lengthy montage) practically opens on a pool of blood. However, following three months of ever-escalating revenues and attendance, this past weekend the bottom fell out and sales came crashing down. I'm not saying the industry is trouble, but a movie starring the biggest teen sensations on the planet (The Jonas Brothers 3D Concert Experience) raked in less than $1 million in only its third week of release!

OK, maybe I am saying the industry is in trouble...

Well, it is and isn't.

If you look at the predicted success stories you may see failure, but if you look at the top films of the past 365 days you'll see that Paul Blart Mall Cop ranks #5. It has (so far) grossed over $138 million domestically. There is a lesson here. It's not a new lesson, and it's one that studio execs often learn the hard way -as though this formula isn't almost unwaveringly accurate. Perhaps if they had been reading the Wall Street Journal instead of Entertainment Weekly it would have been as obvious as the noses on their faces.

The economy was definitely heading for the crapper and movie tickets fight on the front lines alongside restaurants and fitness clubs when the purse strings tighten at Ma & Pa Kettle's house. When times are tough, people want to laugh. They want to go to the movies to escape from the the unemployment, the inflation and the bills piling up around them. And it's a good value, too. It's good use of nine or so dollars whether it comes from an unemployment check or adds onto the balance of an escalating visa bill. What's another sawbuck when you're already up to your ears in debt?

The truth of the matter is that laughter is just a byproduct of having been entertained, so if a film can dazzle instead of tickle a funny bone, it'll be a worthy placebo. A well-acted, tightly paced thriller ala Taken will fit that bill quite nicely, as will an uplifting musical (Mamma Mia) or the feel good award-winner of the season (Slumdog Millionaire). What people don't want to see in times of turmoil are films that are depressing, confusing, or just plain crappy. While a $25 million marketing and advertising budget can help a film that is one (Watchmen) or perhaps all three (Miss March) of these things, the second week drop off will convey the public's true feelings. If the budget is low, the film can still make out alright, but not too may films produced for less than $40 million are given that kind of advertising budget, so the tail wags the dog.

So why doesn't Hollywood just produce a bunch of uplifting musical thrillers?

Because it is possible to have too much of a good thing. The public will tire of too much of the same thing even if they loved it two weeks ago.

Why else? Because it's really hard to make a good movie. Heck, it's really hard to make a bad movie! Rest assured that well written feel-good scripts do get optioned rather quickly, but sometimes languish in pre-production or turnaround as producers try to line-up big stars or a hot shot director. This can trap a project for years. It can sometimes kill it. Good intentions are like good-film kryptonite, and most authors would rather receive less money in order to see their project fast-tracked, which often means getting a second-tier cast, leading to lesser performances, necessary and unnecessary rewrites, and finally a completely different film from the spec script or original novel. Even if the film manages to dodge all the aforementioned obstacles it could fall victim to change of guard at the studio of origin resulting in a "marketing burial."

This is when a new executive purposely shelves or minimizes any and all projects that started life before they came on board. Sounds awful, right?

It's common.

But I digress... a downtrend in ticket sales is just part of the cycle. If sales don't go down they can't go back up. This summer's blockbusters will look all the more impressive by comparison.
Of course that doesn't mean heads won't roll in the meantime, but with Tax Day right around the corner we'll all be looking forward to our stimulus packages, so let's try to keep our chins up.

Even the boy in the burning pajamas should be collecting a pretty decent paycheck by then...