30 Really Bad Things In FilmBiz 2014

It is now time for my complete list of The Suck In Today’s Film Biz. Earlier this week, I’ve dropped some bits on Keyframe and Filmmaker Mag. IndieWire picked it up. There’s so much that is wrong, it is easy to share the wealth. But here is all of those combined lists  plus many more. Can’t you hear everyone screaming “OMG, there is so much too fix! It is time we made this really work for ambitious and diverse film once and for all!”?  We wish, right?

I have been chronicling the negative in our film industry for sometime now — six years in these type of posts, but my original rant goes back to 1995 for Filmmaker Magazine.  Much of what I have stated in years’ passed remains still in need of getting done. Dig in to my past lists and when you combine them you will have well over 100 things that we could be doing better.  You’d think with so much wrong, more people would stand up and say “this has got to change!”. Where is the film industry’s national leadership? For the first time I believe we are capable of conceptualizing what an entire systems reboot could be — and one that looks out for ALL the stakeholders.  Isn’t it time for a international summit on this?

I have been also chronicling the good too, but today that’s for another day. Come back tomorrow for my comprehensive list of 30 Good Things In The Film Biz 2014.

By detailing what we have failed to do, done wrong, or continue to ignore, we build a road map of how we can improve things for the future. Here’s my contribution to that map for 2014.  Let’s build this better together.

1. The “Winners Take All” Blockbuster Model Has Stomped “The Long Tail” Flat (in Hollywood). And as much as I hoped people would try to resist & not just dream of a world where diversity, quality, and ambition cause the worthy to surface, it doesn’t see to be so. The louder you yell, the more you win.  Culture becomes what has the most marketing money behind, and the underground gets buried in the grave, never able to get enough of a footing to rise in opposition.  The outsiders grow so discouraged, the next gen that might have been inspired to build upon their work, nevers sees or hears it.  Corporate culture becomes the monolith. Much has been written about this, in books, newspapers and elsewhere — and still few do little to offer an alternative. Sigh… http://nyti.ms/1fIipGr
2. It Was The Worst Summer Theatrical Attendance In Over 17 Years — And That Still Probably Won’t Change Anything. Box office dropped by 15%. Although there are many reasons for the poor performance, there is no ignoring that very little feels fresh or original any more.  As the NY Times reported: Studios released 12 sequels this summer and only three performed better than the prior installment. The revenue leaders came from familiar brands or genres. Even if the box office champ was the most original movie of the summer, will that change anything?
3. “Movies are not a growth business” — at least so proclaimed Dreamworks Animation Chief Jefferey Katzenberg this April at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference. Perhaps that is why he’s been shopping his company to Softbank and Hasbro…  As much as we appreciate it when the chieftains speak the truth, one can’t but suspect such blunt realities stem the tide of capital into the sector too.
4. We Fail To Promote Cinema’s Most Unique And Powerful Attributes. Film creates a shared emotional response amongst strangers in the dark. Great movies compel us to discuss them afterwards. Movies create bridges of empathy across divides of difference. In this era when we have less available time than ever before, as well access to more ways to spend it than ever before, people want a greater return on the investment of their engagement (ROIE). Tom’s Shoes gets this. Cause-based investment understands we want to do good as we do well. Yet here in the film biz we only evaluate work generally on its entertainment value or profit potential. It is time to unlock cinema’s true utility.
5. Indie Film’s Foreign Sales Pre-Sales Model Is On The Verge Of Collapse — For Most Titles.  Schuyler Moore says Netflix is to blame “a worldwide VOD reach will rip the heart out of these sales, because it will destroy the value of DVD and pay TV rights to the local distributors.  The net result will be that independent films will be financed by pre-sales to Netflix, not the local distributors.” Will we focus on finding a solution?
6. The Traditional Broadcast Television Model Is Beginning To Die. The audience is disappearing, albeit slowly — but it won’t be coming back. A big ratings drop happened this summer. Bernstein Research’s Todd Juenger pointed out that TV viewing dropped 13 minutes a day over the last year, and viewers are making up for it by spending 12 minutes more a day on Netflix. Nielsen confirmed it: “SVOD Eroding Traditional TV Watching Audience“. Others debated it. Obviously people want commercial free viewing on demand, and they are paying for it. Advertisers won’t pay the same rate to reach less people.  How will traditional broadcast survive? Juenger recommends they stop selling their shows to Netflix. Hmmm….
7. Further Media Consolidation Feels Inevitable.  “in 1983, 50 companies owned 90 percent of the media consumed by Americans. By 2012, just six companies — including Fox (then part of News Corporation) and Time Warner — controlled that 90 percent, according to testimony before the House Judiciary Committee examining Comcast’s acquisition of NBCUniversal.” (NY Times 07.25.14) To me, it would seem obvious that when it comes to media companies, a different standard of anti-trust must be applied, as we deal with the traffic of ideas, opinion, and truth.  The fact that first a merger between Comcast and Time Warner could even considered, let alone late Fox & Time Warner, indicates how far wrong we have gone. What are our values? Does business trump democracy as a matter of course now? Can a line even be drawn? The Cable Industry is one of virtual monopolies and the movement towards further mergers gives them incredible leverage over the creative community. To bring the studios down from 6 to 5, and the networks from 5 to 4 seems absurd. At least the NYTimes opposes the consolidation. But the general lack of resistance does feel like we’ve entered the world of (he hit me and) “It felt like a kiss” where we’ve come to want the ritualized abuse that such mega-mergers bring us.
8. Hollywood Is More Committed To Producing “More Of The Same” Than Ever — Despite Terrible Box Office Performance Of Such Crap This Year. In his great article on “Hollywood’s Horrid Summer” Mark Harris points out that the suits have doubled-down on a formula of sequels, reboots, and retreads for years to come.  Warner Bros. has dated over nine new DC comic adaptions.  Avatar 4 is already dated. Disney has announced eleven installments of their Marvel Cinematic Universe. Doesn’t that make you soooo excited? Essentially, as Kenneth Turan pointed out, Hollywood is a “hedgehog”, good now at only one thing (making tentpoles), and no longer a “fox”, fluid and adept at many things. We have reached a point where we should accept the death of the Hollywood film for adults. Hollywood is a one horse town.
9. Hollywood’s Business Is International.  Eight of the top ten movies of the summer earned more than 60% of their revenue abroad. Whereas we might want to applaud that The Studios have found another way to continue to prosper, what may be good for the business is terrible for the art. When we look for depending on everybody to make films profitable, it requires we make films that appeal to everyone.  As long as this foreign focus represents the core of the Hollywood business, Hollywood won’t be returning to making movies for adults any time soon. Just a lot of films with limited dialogue and swell stuff to look at. The Studio business thus can no longer even be titles, it has to be franchises (as Brad Grey said here), which also further emphasizes the aforementioned point that the public gets virtually nothing but endless variations on a theme from the story worlds of caped crusaders and horrific avengers are dedicated to. On top of that, this international focus makes the entire studio side of the business susceptible to injury via national film quotas (Russia?) and world economic downturn. What happens if Jonathan Wolf, the American Film Market’s managing director, is right and there has been “a global shift away from U. S. product over the last 25 years” and it continues on?
10. Hollywood Has All Its Eggs In One Basket. If you combine the two points right above, you see a glaring flaw in the entertainment industry’s crown jewel. The entire industry’s practice of the lemming dance could be leading us all off a cliff.  What if this profound bet on  the franchise platform play — as replicated in the superhero, Star Wars, and monster franchises — is something the audience later chooses to reject?  The studios do not have a diverse portfolio at all these days and a shift of taste could bring them crashing down. They are no longer just film franchises either as they are drivers across multiple platforms including television, toys, theme parks, and live events. I don’t know about them, but I would be feeling pretty pretty vulnerable if I wore their fancy boots.
11. Hollywood’s Business Isn’t The Film Business.  Or rather: Hollywood’s Business Isn’t About People Seeing Movies.  The movies are there to sell the products. Hollywood’s business is a product and platform launch.  Just look at the money Frozen made, beyond the box-office.  If you want to make movies that stand on their own, you might want to move to another town. On the other hand, those that are aiming for creating cinema, what can you learn from the other guys? Sometimes it pays not to put all your eggs in one basket (I know, I know…).
12. The Majority of US Citizens Prefer To Watch Movies At Home.  A Harris poll at the end of 2013 showed the scales had tipped.  Two thirds of Americans went less to the theaters in 2013 than previously.  Obnoxious patrons and high priced concessions seemingly scared them away. Even all the fantastic innovations can’t lure them in.  Last year, the number of frequent moviegoers ages 18 to 24 dropped 17%, compared to a year earlier — and that is with plenty of action and superhero flicks to lure them in. Movies, as a glorious projected and shared experience, grow less and less consequential or needed. It’s not just that audiences are going to “wait for video”, or that they prefer convenience over commonality or community, it is that: People… Don’t… Feel.. The …Need …To …Go ..To …Movies …Anymore! I guess it is a good time to be in the SVOD & OTT business though!
13. It Is Commonly Acknowledged That A Career Of Making Ambitious, Original, Countercultural Films Is Now Impossible (And A Thing Of The Past). I was thrilled to read in the NY Times’ interview with John Waters on the occasion of his FSLC career retrospective that he was reading my book. But as soon as  the buzz of him mentioning it left, what he said hit hard: he would not be able to do what he did if he had to do it today.  His work inspired me to dare to try to make movies because he demonstrated that one could say or do anything. Aren’t you afraid that we will reach a point where artists won’t be able to develop a body of work, growing along the way?  Aren’t you concerned that there won’t be voices of dissent?  Don’t you suspect that The New may get really boring, making our young boring in the process? Well, I guess we can be thankful that there is so much to gain from the past. And at least for me, it makes me want to help the new rising artists even more than ever before, because, damn, they sure need our help.
14. There Is Tremendous Disparity Of Income Between Those That Make Films And Those That Distribute Them. I am amazed at how little filmmakers are making on the indie side these days, but I usually just suck it up and say that is the way it is. But then I see what the executives at Studios earn, and I am reminded at how broken this system really is. It makes me want there to be a rule that when you show an executive your budget, they have to reveal their salary too.
15. It Is Extremely Difficult For Filmmakers To Benefit From Each Others Success While Easy To Replicate And Suffer From Each Others’ Failures. I benefited from my “competitors'” success coming up. Indie Film, the NYC ’90’s version, was a scene that ultimately created a network effect for most of the participants. And those days are long gone. We achieve a bit of group learning from case studies and discussion on the internet, but good luck in making that scale. The potential is there in a connected world but currently it is really hard to expand one’s audience through another’s. One of the things that drew me to run a mission-driven SVOD service is its potential to do just that and deliver a network effect for filmmakers. Yet when I look out for examples of filmmakers working together to increase their audience, revenue, and impact I few examples. And without that, the examples of filmmakers repeating the mistakes of their predecessors abound.
16. There Is No True Indie Film Promotional, Celebratory, or Award Event. Somehow I have neglected to put this on my list all these years, but for years filmmakers and critics have pulled me into discussions on this. Don’t get me wrong: I like the Spirits and I like the Gothams — but neither is primarily about truly independent film.  They are both about the Award Season. They are both about raising funds for their excellent organizations. But even for each event’s or org’s efforts to provide an award for the outsiders (i.e. Best Film Not Coming To A Theater New You), there is nothing that brings together all the filmmakers working to express themselves on limited means. Sure you have festivals, but where’s the annual survey.  Every year when we look at the films for Hammer To Nail’s Golden Hammer & Silver Nail Awards I am deeply impressed by the work that is being done. Without ways to highlight this, without ways to provide a further layer of promotion and curation, good movies don’t get seen. It would be awesome if one of the film support organizations dedicated themselves to true indie.  It might take outsiders though to celebrate the outsiders.
17. Net Neutrality Is Not Recognized As An Absolute Necessity. With the cable biz far from being a free zone, the last hope of a level playing field is the internet. Somehow the commitment to preserve it as such has been lost. Okay, sure, Obama has stood up and spoke of this necessity, but what took him so damn long? As Fred Wilson pointed out, this is a David & Goliath issue: “a fight between the 1bn active domains and the roughly six or seven wired and wireless carriers who own the internet access market in the US.” There is no doubt about the “cable industry fuckery“. The fight does go on and it is a good sign that the FCC got a record number of comments (over 3 million) regarding their interest in creating a “fast lane” for those who are willing to pay.  Yet, it grows forever more complicated.  First we really just focused on the “last mile”. Now we are looking at the CDN’s that provided the web’s backbone.  Hopefully soon we will also place our attention on the walled gardens of commerce that provide the direct interaction with audience and consumers, and on that note…
18. The Internet Grows Less Free. “Mobile Apps Are Killing The Free Web, Handing A Censored Duopoly To Google And Apple“.
19. The Promise Of The Internet Has Not Been Delivered. Forget jetpacks, imagine if we just took the promise of access to everything (web1.0) and married it to the promise of engagement with everyone (web2.0). It would be an even more exciting way to watch movies (yes, I prefer to watch in the theater) as we can embed “calls to action” (CTAs) within the experience itself. Conversations would be free of temporality. Instead of offering simple consumption, depth could be provided, surrounding the content with context, community, and connection. Movies power to bring people together would be unleashed. Film strength of keeping communities engaged would be revealed. The world would be a better place.
20. Respected Companies Continue To Tacitly Support Illegal Activity Via Advertising On Pirate Sites And Elsewhere.  The MPAA is doing something about it, raising the alarm. Recognizing “When adverts from well known brands appear on illegal websites, they lend them a look of legitimacy and inadvertently fool consumers into thinking the site is authentic ” the UK has started placing warnings on such sites. Maybe the US will also start to take it seriously….
21. Netflix & iTunes Dropped Many Indie Titles That Don’t Have Closed Captions. Granted, the government-required closed captioning has made many titles available to a community that previously had been deprived, but many filmmakers witnessed their work being removed from the platforms, even when their work wasn’t legally required yet to have closed captioning.  All the really wise filmmakers started budgeting for closed captioning going forward. Yet for the discerning film fan that likes indie and foreign titles, this all added up to less access to diverse work.
22. The Availability Gap Widens. DVD rental was not a permissions-based business.  If you owned a video store, you could rent anything.  Streaming is however; we need to license media rights to offer online streams and downloads, and that is both expensive and complicated.  Who wins? Not the fans, that’s for sure. Probably not even the rights holders truly benefit as not only are they not earning money, but new titles are supplanting older ones in the canon and our other places of discovery. Sure, Hollywood maybe offering more than before, but that is always just “this year’s model” and not the undiscovered or forgotten gems of yesteryear. We live in an era where unless you buy it, you may not be able to ever see it. We’ve lost a great deal when we lost our video stores. And no matter how much is written about it, it won’t bring them back.
23. Pop Culture Now Builds Many Audiences Of Elite Specialists, Losing The Common Generalists In The Process.  As Frank Bruni captured will in his NY Times column, we now have a vast myriad of choices of what to watch & engage with, transforming us all from generalist with common knowledge to specialist stuck in our area of expertise.In the mid-1970s, America’s top-rated television series, “All in the Family” drew more than 50 million people per episode. That was in a country of about 215 million. “NCI” the No. 1 2012-13 television series typically drew fewer than 22 million people, even counting those who watched a recording of it within a week of its broadcast. There are nearly 318 million Americans now.  We don’t use pop culture to bring us together anymore but to separate us still further.
24. Although All The Big Internet Platforms Are Producing “Content”, One Or More Of Them Are Bound To Fail In A Big Way. Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Microsoft, Yahoo — in the search for another “House Of Cards”, will one mistake cause the whole building to fall? Wait, did I say Microsoft? They are in; no, wait, they are out again. Why does it seem so precarious when tech players become media companies? It’s worth plumbing that further, but when any big entity does a major misstep, everyone proceeds cautiously. I wrote this point when 2014 was only 25% through, and I will be surprised if we reach the end of the year without a major rethink. Yes, Microsoft withdrew almost as soon as they entered the game.  Will they be the only one? I am willing to bet that they won’t.
25. A Better Interface And Discovery Tool Arrived And Failed. We are overwhelmed by content options and lack an easy way to find what we may like best. But that problem got solved and no one cared.  Fan TV had a remarkable new device. It integrated all content into a single experience and made it easier to both search and go in deeper. It was a beautiful design and captured the true future future of TV. Well, it failed. It cost a lot to get there and then found there was no there there. Or at least no one came to the party. (Be sure to watch the video in the link above to see what beauty we lost, dang it.)
26. The Entertainment Industry Furthers Rape Culture By Our Tacit Support Of Possible Perpetrators Over Declared Victims.  This is a complex subject with no easy answers, but it is an incredibly important one that we can not ignore. There are far more victims of sexual abuse than there are liars about it — and we in the film industry are permitting this trend to continue. We need to create a culture where victims know they can speak without further suffering, not one where perpetrators feel they will be given the benefit of the doubt and can continue to create for an entertainment industry that only respectss the powerful. The law must protect the innocent, but our culture must enable victims to rise above the shame. To proclaim that because we don’t know what really happened, we can not decide for ourselves whom we believe, protects and encourages the powerful and silences the victims. There is no place where this not only is truer but more problematic than in the entertainment industry, where directors, musicians, managers,actors and others have leveraged their power to not just prey on their victims but to walk away from prosecution and signal to the public that for any victims to speak out will not only shame the victims but ostracize them from the industry.To quote Amy Berg in regards to a scene in her important film An Open Secret “The question is, if you are an adult at one of these parties where so much is going on out in the open, what is your responsibility?“. We are all at that party now. We need to accept our mutual responsibility. I agree with Aaron Brady: we fortunately are not the judge and jury, and thus can decide just for ourselves. We are not the law. We do not need to do business with folks who have amassed a constant string of compalints. There is a place for culture and community to rise above the silencing of victims and we need to find it. I find the backlash against Cosby very heartening and hopefully  a sign that things are changing.
27. There Is Tremendous Gender Disparity In Terms Of On-Screen Representation. The USC Annenburg study on this found that: “Across 4,506 speaking characters evaluated, 29.2% were female and 70.8% were male.” OUCH! This is not how life in the real world balances out, and to portray it falsely has negative repercussions. The NY Times got hip to this finally, giving us an analysis and pointing out that in family films that were 2.42 male characters for every female.
28. There Remains Tremendous Gender Disparity Behind The Camera.  The USC Annenburg study on this found that: “Female directors, writers, and producers comprised just 15.9% of the workforce (on popular films) in 2013, outnumbered by a ratio of 5.3 to 1.”  Perhaps there is a connection to my prior point and this one, but we can all work to do better on both.
29. Racial disparity, before and behind the camera, remains huge, with Hollywood offering up heroes and directors generally of a predominately white variety despite a world that is hardly such. It is particularly discouraging when top directors and actors just give in and say, alas, that is just how it is if we want to get our movies financed. It’s not. That’s bullshit. It is just how it is until someone with enough power says “no, I am not going to perpetuate such nonsense and demand to represent reality.” Ridley could have.
30. Hollywood Turns A Blind Eye On Other Countries’ Censorship. Are we accepting censorship as a given in other countries, refusing to acknowledge all we can do to stem it? The Film Business generates a tremendous amount of money worldwide and thus Hollywood has tremendous leverage to influence policy. Does it have to happen on our own national soil for the creative community to take action, like the celebrity support that emerged in the boycott around the Bel Air hotel due to it’s owner’s discriminatory practices? China severely limits its artists’ free expression, yet  time and time again we ignore their acts of censorship — presumably because we get so much money from them for our movies, our theaters, and surely soon our studios. James Cameron boasts that he is not interested in Chinese filmmakers’ reality when it comes to censorship. When will we accept that free expression is the cause of the WORLD’s creative community, and limiting it anywhere effects us everywhere? (I cited this also last year — #30 –, but it sure seems to be getting worse with little getting done in America’s creative community). Of course the answer is when when the country in question immediately links it to access to their market — so when Russia says they will shut Hollywood out of their $1.3B and growing marketplace if they don’t portray them in a better light, we can expect Hollywood to corrupt their own ways again and cave, but not without a few shouts of “censorship!”.  Money trumps freedom and ethics in this land yet again — and we turn our back on this unfortunate fact. Maybe now that a second cultural revolution looks like it could be afoot, we will take a serious stand — that is unless it looks like it will cost us money!

If you are not sufficiently bummed out yet and care to catch up on the troubles from years prior…

Film Biz Bad Things 2013: http://bit.ly/18A5DN9

And: Bad Things 2012 and More Ways The Film Biz Is Failing 2010.  You can even start with the 2009 list.  Or maybe go here where they are all posted; not counting for inadvertent redundancies we now have as of December 2014 164 Things to do something about. But remember, lists like this only makes fools despair.  There is tremendous opportunity in them there hills, and as we will see tomorrow, things do keep getting better too.