7 Ways Hollywood Can Recover from Its Worst Year Ever
Suddenly the summer’s sour box office is the furthest thing from a Hollywood mogul’s mind.
What’s on the front burner now? Which A-list star will be accused of sexual assault next?
In the last 24 hours we’ve learned both director Brett Ratner (“X-Men: The Last Stand”) and screen legend Dustin Hoffman have been accused of predatory behavior. That’s on top of similar headlines clinging to director James Toback, actor Ben Affleck and Kevin Spacey.
The scandal that began with producer Harvey Weinstein’s fall from grace shows no signs of stopping. In fact, it might be speeding up.
It all comes at a terrible time for Hollywood. Consider:
- The industry has spent the past year savaging both Donald Trump and his supporters, alienating millions of movie goers in the process.
- Those aforementioned box office figures were disastrous for the industry.
- The era of the Movie Star is but a memory. Starry features like “Suburbicon” are crashing while horror entries with few, if any, recognizable names are the industry’s rare hits.
- The upcoming Oscar movie season might not ride to the industry’s rescue, even as “The Last Jedi” and “Thor: Ragnorak” promise a respite from the box office blues.
Is there any doubt 2017 has been the worst year ever for movies?
So what should Hollywood do to restore its tattered brand? It won’t be easy. The following seven suggestions would be a good start all the same. A few are aimed at wooing Red State America. Others will bring both sides together.
One More Celebrity PSA
What’s the single most annoying thing to come out of Hollywood in recent memory? No, it’s not the Lady Ghostbusters or that R-rated “Baywatch” flop. Not even close. It’s the parade of smug celebrity PSAs tackling everything from candidate Donald Trump to gun control.
It looked like the industry gave up on the tactic following Hillary Clinton’s humiliating defeat last year. Nope. We recently got yet another fact-challenged PSA last month. This time, the stars aligned to smite the NRA.
Enough is enough. No minds are being changed by these awkward, didactic clips. And we’re not impressed you ditched the makeup trailer long enough to record your lines.
Which means it’s time for one last celebrity PSA … with a twist. Here’s a sample script and suggested stars.
Julianne Moore: We’re here to say… we’re sorry.
Jack Black: We’re sorry.
Don Cheadle: Sorry.
Matt Damon: We finally realize how lame our relentless PSAs are, and how predictable.
TV Actor Whose Name You Can’t Remember: Condescending, too.
Mark Ruffalo: We just want to entertain you and tap into our creative souls in the process.
Scarlett Johansson: We’ve overstepped our job descriptions. Bigly.
Melissa McCarthy: And, in the process, ignored the festering boils growing within our industry.
Lena Dunham: Sexism. The casting couch. Hollywood so white.
Clark Gregg: That’s over now.
Jamie Foxx: Over.
Bradley Whitford: Over.
That blast of self-awareness might do wonders for the industry’s image. At the very least it’s a start.
Make the Oscars About … The Oscars Again
There’s a good reason roughly half the country immediately ignores the modern awards show. They’ve become first and foremost a place to lecture the country, not honor the industry’s stellar achievements.
Why would any Red State type bother to watch? Even liberals might yawn over the nonstop sermons.
That can change, starting with the biggest awards show of the year, the 2018 Academy Awards ceremony. The upcoming event is off to a bad start. Nakedly partisan Jimmy Kimmel is set to host for the second year in a row. That doesn’t have to sink the evening even if he went the full Stephen Colbert during his first Oscar gig.
Let’s have Kimmel stick to funny jokes, not political slams aimed at only one side of the aisle. In any given year there’s plenty of fodder for a quality comic.
More importantly, make the night about the magic of movies as it should be. Bring back acting legends like Jack Nicholson and Sidney Poitier. Crank up some great movie compilations to fire our nostalgia neurons. Celebrate the year in film without becoming a HuffPo op-ed.
The goodwill it would generate among conservatives would be considerable. And would any liberal revolt after being entertained for three-plus hours without a progressive lecture?
Unlikely.
Give, and Give Some More
Actors are rich. Very rich. Cartoonishly so. Think the Monopoly guy without the threat of that “Go to Jail” card looming. Just read the sad details of Johnny Depp’s money “woes” and you’ll understand.
So what does that mean? They can give … ‘til it hurts. And maybe it’s about time they start doing just that. Now, many stars already give to charity. Some selflessly rallied after the horrific rains flooded Houston earlier this year, for example. Others do so quietly, steering some of their fortunes for noble causes without issuing a single press release.
Great. Now up the ante.
RELATED: Celebrities Make It Official – Pick Trump or Us
Challenge your fellow stars to give and give some more. Make it fun and social, and use a dollop of peer pressure to make it happen faster.
The stars can even encourage audience to do the same based on their own budgetary restrictions.
Is this a transparent attempt to curry favor? Yes. So what? Think of how many people would benefit from it.
Take a Page from the Indie World
Indie filmmakers tell personal stories that often lack mainstream appeal. Studios, by comparison, are seek the biggest audience possible.
Why?
Money is the obvious answer. The second answer is even more basic – to cover their costs. The modern studio film is outrageously expensive. One reason last year’s “Ghostbusters” reboot was considered a flop was due to its massive budget.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Ask any indie filmmaker and he or she will share a dozen ways to cut down on production costs. It’s what they do on every movie, every time. There is no Plan B. They just don’t have the resources the big players have. And they act accordingly. Sometimes their cost-cutting measures make for a better product. Ingenuity has that effect.
RELATED: Indie Doc Goes Where Hollywood Fears to Tread
Why does this matter?
Smaller budgets will allow studios to avoid mega flops … and let them take more creative risks. That means less remakes, reboots and sequels. If audiences see more original stories on their local movie marquee they might start heading back inside again.
Keep Naming Names
It’s been depressing to read about the sexual assaults happening across the Hollywood landscape.
Only some of the stars knew something was afoot. Others had much more information but stayed mum. Quentin Tarantino and Jessica Chastain jump to mind. Does anyone think they’re alone?
It’s time to open the flood gates. Start talking, stars. Share the stories you’ve heard behind closed doors. But, and this is critical, do so in a reasonable fashion. Confirm your findings. Don’t just blurt out an accusation on social media.
This message is especially true for the industry’s most powerful players. You will not lose your place in the Hollywood hierarchy by doing the right thing. We need your voices now. Speak up. Speak responsibility. Bottom line? Make sure the future Harvey Weinstein’s think twice before pawing another aspiring actress. Or worse.
Watch More TV (And Take Notes)
We’re experiencing a new Golden Age of TV. It’s happening while the quality of movies is on a slow, but consistent, downward spiral. And pop culture consumers are taking note. What inspires more water cooler chat, “Stranger Things” or the latest Tom Cruise movie? Can any movie compare to HBO’s “Game of Thrones” for audience enthusiasm?
It’s not even close. Not let’s examine why.
More original stories. Meatier roles for actors of all ages. Extended storylines that grow richer with every installment. Writing that leaps off the screen. Have we seen a movie this year with dialogue as tart as what we heard on FX’s “Fargo?”
For years TV chased movies for better storytelling. The roles have been reversed. Now, it’s time for film to play catch up.
Find New Villains
One of Hollywood’s moldiest tropes deserves a breather – the rich capitalist as the go-to baddie. He might peddle oil, own a luxury apartment building or simply suffer from greed on the brain. Either way, Hollywood screenwriters can’t help falling back on him over and again. It’s time to give this trope a breather.
#8 If one is going to make a movie about a controversial war, play it straight with fare like “Blackhawk Down” and let the audience make up its own mind.
ALWAYS REMEMBER, PEOPLE: Hollywood needs you more than you need them. From that, all else follows.
The white male capitalist (or hillbilly) as the go-to baddie is all they’re allowed. Every other villain is un-PC.
Make movies that focus on entertaining audiences rather than ‘educating’ them
TV does some things well but the form still can’t do what movies can do. The best movies are still artistically lightyears beyond even excellent TV. No TV show has done what Schindler’s List has done. Or On the Waterfront. Or Ran. Or Network. Or Citizen Kane. Or Casablanca. Or Ikiru. Etc. Etc. TV is… comfortable. It is easy to watch for long periods of time and it doesn’t demand much of you. We get to know and like characters over hours and you can tell longer form stories, which are advantages. Still, you can watch through even the best shows and by the end feel a curious emptiness. Like one has simply passed the time. Even excellent shows are basically soap operas with better production values, and they still feature lots of silly TV tropes that come with the long format territory. I can walk in a room and see a TV show on mute and tell in two shots that it’s a television show and not a movie. The production values, even on big shows, simply can’t compare with movies. But I admit, TV is… comfortable. It’s an easy way to pass the time. But after it is over I always feel like that’s all I’ve done. Just pass the time. It just fades away and leaves a hole where my life was as I sat for hours and binged-watched. I got nothing more out of it. When I watch Sunset Boulevard or The Apartment or Shane or Dog Day Afternoon or Unforgiven or The Godfather, however, I feel something much more than that. I feel like I took something with me. TV has its place for sure. But we really need movies, too. And we need movies to be as good as they can be.
Hollywood will never stop. NEVER. The only solution is to stop going to the movies and that’s what I’ve done.
That’s a great PSA video. I just added more faces and names to the long and growing list of people whose work I will never care about. It won’t matter if they suddenly all shut their pieholes. I now know that every one of them is an Anti-American domestic enemy of the Constitution who doesn’t grasp the meaning of the words “shall not be infringed.”
Personally, I cannot disconnect the actor from his/her political stance. There is no mystery anymore. They literally wear their elite preachy snobbery on their chests. or hold up virtue signs.
Like what is happening to the NFL, this has very negative consequences
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If I were a studio exec I’d greenlight a series of movies about a WW2 band of brothers, tank crew, or fighter pilots or something. Nazi’s make easy enemies, use unknown actors, patriotism sells well in red states, just keep the budgets low and spread across the series.
Yeah, we’d probably have the SJW screaming for lack of females and POC but it could still be a money-maker and help rebuild the reputation.
Too bad Hacksaw Ridge was so… Hollywood. It really is an incredible–in the literal sense–tale of heroism.
Nazis are so last century.
When Hollywood had the chance to be edgy making Tom Clancy’s Sum Of All Fears, leftist/Zinnite Ben Affleck was sure to change the villains from the actual Islamic terrorists in the actual news, to “Oh no! They’re Neo-Nazis.”
Having read the book, just seeing the trailer with that sad snippet turned me off.
Yes. Change the villains from capitalists. But also change the villain from Nazis. We literally beat them to death in 1945. We have real enemies we can fight today.
I’d use proper 40s Nazi’s as even the Germans can root for their death. The point is to root for the heroes and enjoy their victory and pretty much any other villain will be controversial among the stupid half the country. So make them defend the Nazi’s if they want to crap on the show.
They’d still revise history and force feed a minority transgendered atheist character
Your site is unusable to many android users. Ads block over half the screen, and eliminate most of the text. I really wanted to read this article, which is why I fired up my old laptop just to get past the Malware masquerading as Adware. I won’t bother a second time. Can you fix it so the rest of us can read it?
use ghostery
Make a good movie now and then wouldn’t hurt.
Your site has become unusable. On my mobile Android running Chrome; ads cover about 75 percent of the page rendering your content inaccessible.
I use Mozilla Firefox with Ghostery, it has no ads or trackers and works just fine.
I am having the same trouble. Except Its not the adds covering parts of the page that are the real problem though. It is that many adds insist on drawing the page focus to themselves when they run, so the cursor ends up jumping all over the page randomly, making it impossible to read or do anything else.
I get a little tired of the lectures from Hollywood for the rubes in the middle of the country. Clean out your own disgusting closets first. And Hollywood is as cut throat and captalist as any oil tycoon.
Kimmel has already said that he will avoid doing any material about the sex scandals that are consuming Hollywood right now.
Which leaves him no choice but to do 4 hours of Trump bashing.
haven’t set foot in a theater in over 30 years
don’t have netflix
insulting me, my beliefs, the Republic and the world in general is not entertaining
get rid of all the tax breaks for the industry
and keep politics out of it
I honestly don’t think Hollywood can or will save itself because they blame the audience instead of themselves for their issues. I would even take it one step further and say they hate most of their American audience. By politicizing everything they’ve sunk themselves.
You really need to talk to whoever manages your ads. I really like to read your articles, but on my iPhone, where I do most of my browsing, one ad covers the bottom 10% which is fine but another add covers the left 60% of the article making it impossible to read the article. Makes it pointless to come to this website.