HomeHomeSeptember 2005
Hooray for Hollywood?
Recently, at a Twin Cities cineplex, I perked up at the end of a long series of commercials and movie trailers. While plugging their upcoming film, actors Paul Reiser and Peter Falk made a short, humorous plea to all moviegoers: come back to AMC theaters in the fall to see their new movie, please!
Should they be worried about the declining movie/theater revenues and bored movie fans? You bet. Two months ago, while waiting for a show to begin at a different Twin Cities theater chain, I had an unusual experience--as the movie began, I turned around and discovered that I had the entire theater to myself. It had NEVER happened in all my years of movie-going, and this was on a lazy Saturday afternoon. They played the movie for an audience of one---me!
There’s been much talk and hand-wringing in Hollywood about this phenomenon. Earlier this summer, the AMC chain tried to get fans back in theaters by offering a money-back guarantee for those who wanted to see "Cinderella Man." Movie fans didn’t come back in droves.
America is not the only place where movie fans are staying away from theaters. For example, declining audiences was one of the featured topics at the Sydney Film Festival in June. Not only that, but the Village and Hoyt cinema chains lowered prices from $A14.50 to $A8.50 from Thursdays to Sundays at the theaters in the Melbourne area.
At Issue: Our Cultural Legacy
There are many possible reasons for this phenomenon–the costly price of movie tickets and refreshments and the endless stream of commercials and movie trailers are two such factors. Others include audience members talking to each other, if not to someone else on their cell phones, the increase in the number of home-movie theaters, the ease and relative low cost of getting DVD’s mailed to one’s home. Changing technology means it’s easier, more comfortable, and cheaper for a family to stay home and watch a flick.
There may be more fundamental issues beneath the surface, however. For this movie fan, there are fewer and fewer intelligent movies that leave me inspired, or make me laugh, or cry or make me think about the human condition. I wonder about the messages Hollywood is sending out around the globe, messages about this increasingly "disposable" form of American culture--our films. I wish Hollywood would help create dreams again, instead of merely sending out just another soon-to-be forgotten "product."
In his wonderfully witty autobiography, What’s It All About? (1992, Ballantine Books, New York) actor Michael Caine discussed what Hollywood films meant to him as a poverty-stricken youth growing up in post-war England:
"We had won the war, but the shops were empty and even to get your legal ration of things you had to queue for hours. The one blinding light in the middle of all this gloom was the cinema, where I could escape for a couple of hours to somewhere better---usually America. I became an absolute fanatic about the cinema and besotted with what seemed to me the glamour of America. Most dreams are a letdown, but the cinema has been more fantastic for me than anything I could have imagined in those dark, depressing days, and America itself greater than anything that I could have possibly imagined it to be. I don’t know what I would have done at that time without the cinema and the public library, the two places where I could escape the grim reality of everyday life."
The engaging love stories, horror films, westerns, and biopics of yesteryear seem to be long gone. What’s left are stories that sometimes make me laugh and often make me cringe. There are producers that could offer a free movie screening and I wouldn’t go within miles of the theater. The idea of a female character with a penis for a nose, as in the current "Deuce Bigelow" film, may be funny to the 13-year-old demographic, but I would be willing to bet there aren’t a lot of older females laughing at that one.
What movies have you seen recently that will we be talking about 20 years from now? If you’re having trouble naming some current classics, you can see the gravity of the problem. If we have no inspiration at the cinema, what will be our future cultural legacy in this particular genre? Where is the fun in going to the movies? Where is the greater vision of America or the better world that we wish for?
The Hard Work of Making Films
Most of us do not get to see how movies are actually made; we only see the finished product on screen. With the advent of DVD, sometimes we have an opportunity to learn more about behind-the-scenes details from actors or directors.
But we never personally know the long and often tedious hours involved in the rehearsals, set design, scouting of scene locations, props, wardrobe, make-up, script writing, editing and rewrites, as well as actual filming of our favorite movies. It is rare for a movie fan to meet with the stars or directors or to observe a movie as it is filmed.
There were two occasions when I had a chance to meet actors and get a glimpse into their working lives. One incident took place in my youth by happy accident. The other opportunity occurred this summer.
The Greek Tycoon and Me
One beautiful, hot summer day in 1977, while visiting Athens, Greece, I stumbled upon a movie being filmed in the flea market area of the city.
Jacqueline Bisset and Anthony Quinn were playing "Liz Cassidy" and "Theo Tomasis" in "The Greek Tycoon," a thinly veiled story about Jackie and Ari Onassis.
That particular day, I was with my mother and a then-teenage friend of ours who happened to be a huge fan of Ms. Bisset. For the next five hours, we watched, fascinated, as one scene, which amounted to a couple of minutes in the finished movie, was filmed over and over and over again. To have an opportunity to see the hard work involved in making a movie was an education that gave us a new appreciation for our favorite movies and actors.
As luck would have it, my friend Don wound up in the film for a couple seconds in the crowd scene where Ms. Bisset gets out of a car and walks over to Mr. Quinn when their newlywed characters are publicly introduced as "Mr. And Mrs. Tomasis." Don had his little flirtation with fame, though his name is nowhere to be found in the movie’s credits!
When the filming finished for the day and the crowd had broken up, young Don found Ms. Bisset shopping in a nearby souvenir store. Along with a couple of other fans, we waited until she was finished. She then graciously gave us autographs, and politely chatted with Don. She genuinely cared about what he thought about her movies. To this day, I can still remember her enthusiasm and kindness when talking with Don. Unfortunately, I was mute the entire time, overcome by shyness. Alas, there is no photographic record of this event, either; I ran out of film just before we ran into the movie shoot that day!
Although this particular movie did not turn out to be a "classic," it was fascinating to have the chance to meet Ms. Bisset in person and to see that she genuinely cared about her fans.
The King of the Corner
In June this year, actor-director Peter Riegert came to the Twin Cities to promote his film, King of the Corner. Following several showings over a weekend, Mr. Riegert talked with audiences about this particular project–how it was written, his involvement in it, what it takes to get a movie made and distributed these days, and so on. It was fun and educational and entertaining to hear Mr. Riegert answer our questions, plus it was a good movie with great dialogue, and it didn’t contain a dozen car crashes, gratuitous, soft-core sex, or computer-generated graphics.
"King of the Corner" is an interesting story that even has three female characters over the age of 40, something which also seems rare these days. This time, I got up the nerve to ask a question of Mr. Riegert and to get my photograph taken with him, but, wouldn’t you know it, the picture turned out blurry! I simply have no luck with movie stars. Sadly, since I don’t travel in the same social circles as either Ms. Bisset or Mr. Riegert, well, the chances of getting photographs taken with either one are slim to none.
What was most fun about this particular opportunity was that Mr. Riegert cared enough about his project to meet and talk directly with audiences all over the country, in the process, providing a learning experience which is rare for movie fans, and very valuable. The celebrity-driven tabloid TV shows and magazines focus on personalities or the diets of the female stars or box-office grosses, but not on what it takes to make a film.
Tell Us A Story and Make it Worth Our While
From a "new economy" perspective, the life of an actor cannot be easy. A small percentage of actors are lucky enough to work steadily throughout their careers, let alone experience long and varied careers in the theater or movie business. To add to the slim odds for success, large corporations now own the major Hollywood studios, where profit seems to be more important than creativity.
Technology is changing this field, too. Will popular actors and their mega-salaries fall by the wayside as computer animation improves over the next few years? Time will tell.
What will it take to get fans back into the theaters NOW? Give us stories we can believe in, be inspired by, and learn something from, not the cinematic equivalent of junk food. At the very least, give us more Jacqueline Bissets and Peter Riegerts or Michael Caines, actors who have survived in that brutal business, who have lived to tell tales, and who care about their fans.
Is the American Dream Still Alive?
Consider the words of writer Nicholas Gage as he describes what movies meant to him as a Greek refugee child trying to find his way in post-war Worcester, Massachusetts (A Place for Us 1989, Houghton Mifflin, Boston):
"I studied the movies for insights into American culture and real life, and they inspired dreams I never could have dreamed in my Greek village, where my wildest fantasy had been that the winter snow would turn to flour or sugar and we could all have enough to eat. In America, the movies taught, there is so much luxury and opportunity that anyone---a shoeshine boy, a farm girl, or an orphan---can become anything: president, tycoon, radio singing star. In the gloom of the Greendale Theater I realized that if I just played my cards right, I could be anything from a mafioso to a matinee idol---a revolutionary idea to a refugee from an impoverished and class-dominated country."
Hollywood, are you ever again going to sell us our dreams of a better life, of who we can be in the greater scheme of things, inspire us and make us laugh or cry, or will you simply continue to sell us short as a people, and a culture? Are the dreams of who we are and what we can be as individuals and as a nation still alive?
Teresa
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