Oh good God I don’t know where to start this column.
Last night, after witnessing a barrage of promotional appearances by Jerry Seinfeld to promote his new movie on “Netflix” “Unfrosted”, the wife and I decided to sit down and watch his latest effort.
And I can say this will all confidence, this is the worst piece of garbage ever committed to film. It isn’t interesting, it isn’t well done, it isn’t funny, the acting is downright awful, and the entire production is crap from start to finish.
It is so bad that my lovely wife, who will give the benefit of doubt to just about any endeavor, got up and walked out after a half hour saying that she felt “embarrassed” by the film and just couldn’t sit feeling so personally ashamed that the cast of recognizable comedians had made such an awful movie.
Do you get that? My wife, who had nothing at all to do with the production of this thing was forced to get up and walk away, too embarrassed by how bad the movie was going to continue to be involved in even watching any longer.
Now that is bad. I mean really bad. She will actually sit through an entire episode of “The Batchelor” and couldn’t get through more than a half-hour of this thing.
There is a prominent writer of note, Ms. Sasha Stone, who covers Hollywood with an online publication called “Awards Daily”, and writes about the Oscars, movies, and the industry, who has commented frequently of late on “what is wrong with Hollywood”. I find her to be absolutely brilliant, interesting, thoughtful, and thought provoking. Personally I wish she had greater amplification, a show of her own, a podcast. I read her frequent tweets and find myself talking back to them out loud.
She has some ideas of her own on what plagues Hollywood. She appears to be convinced that Hollywood has gone far too “Woke”, and instead of telling good stories decided to lecture America, and that this is where Hollywood went wrong.
But I think it goes far deeper than that. It is very clear that Hollywood was off the rails since the advent of the “blockbuster” movie concept, and became far too reliant on sequels, and comic book movies. There seems to be no end to just how many movies they can make about a group of PED abusers stealing cars within some fabricated time frame, and Liam Neeson has made a full career out of playing the same character over, and over, and over. By now you’d think he’d just hire a body guard or two to follow his daughter around full-time, she gets kidnapped in every movie.
The entire film industry has yet to actually react to “streaming”, and appears to have been gobsmacked, stumbling and bumbling around clueless as to how to deal with all these new changes.
Frankly I think the entire industry needs to take a “start over from the beginning” approach. Go back to the days of a Max Sennett and a crew of writers, actors, cameramen, all working on putting out a production a week. The same was going on over where Charlie Chaplin has his studio, and many more. They just churned out productions for an eager and willing public who found refuge inside a darkened, air conditioned theater, an escape from the heat of Summer, as well as their daily lives.And all that for only a nickel, hence the term Nickelodeon.
I would base at least part of my new “studio” on the model of those who made “The Blair Witch Project”, a group of cinephiles who wrote a story, got a camera, and filmed actor friends acting out the script. Who then cut and edited the piece into a movie. It wasn’t expensive, it didn’t take forever, and to my knowledge there were no dreaded “studio notes” to deal with. Creatives allowed to be creative and bring their own vision to the screen.
The problem with Hollywood today is one of control. They are gatekeepers in an era when the gatekeeper has been rendered obsolete. Yet they attempt to maintain their tight grip on being a gatekeeper. And dictating fare. Investing money only in those ventures they feel properly meet their criteria.
With this crowd running Hollywood today you’d never get a “Midnight Cowboy” ever. You’ll never get an “Easy Rider”, or a “Graduate”. Today these movies just couldn’t be made. Too “out there”, too “Avant Garde”, too risky.
Compounding this problem is that it appears from afar the “Woke” have taken control over green lighting films and their sensibilities are far, far from the mainstream.
I’ve recently watched two productions, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know they weren’t “Hollywood” productions, but they had their sensibilities, one was “Saltburn” where a man drank up the last of another man’s semen laden bathwater. And in another seven episode production called “Baby Reindeer” I saw a man not only get raped by another man and fondled and abused, but I saw that man return to do hard drugs and get abused again, and again. All while dating a trans person and being stalked.
Excuse me, but do those events sound as if they’d appeal to the mainstream, to middle America, to those in fly-over country? Do you think that there exists a movie audience in Kansas City and St. Louis who are conversing about the state of the motion picture industry who say “you know, what I’d like to see, is a homosexual murderer who targets a filthy rich family for execution, while both drinking the main target’s semen laced bathwater, and also nakedly humping his dirt covered grave after killing him”.
These are plots that appeal to an LA hipster. These are plots that appeal to some New York liberal in Manhattan who can name every one of their transitioned friends, and in those Manhattan circles there are many more than just one.
You are not going to be ultimately successful selling such fare to the American public at large.
It just so happens one of my own favorite past-times is reading about Hollywood. Especially “Old Hollywood”. I get into books about the oldest of Old Hollywood, the Fatty Arbuckle scandal, stories about the silent picture days, reading about when Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin ruled, stories of how Douglas Fairbanks lived as daring and crazy a life off-screen as the characters he played onscreen. I’ve read about the evolution of Hollywood. From a rag-tag group of entrepreneurs making quick movies to entice the nickelodeon crowd, to the formation of the studios under moguls like Louis B. Mayer. And how the studio system ruled into the fifties and early sixties.
About how the studio system began to break down in the mid-sixties and renegades came along with all new ideas for a new generation, and how some of the greatest movies ever made conquered the studio system an ushered in a new era.
I believe we are in a transitional period very much like the mid-to-late sixties now.
Somewhere out there a small band of movie buffs are trying to get the next “Easy Rider” made, but one of them isn’t the son of a Hollywood icon, and no doors will open to them. They aren’t “well connected”. So their movie sits in a script they gave blood, sweat, and tears to, on a shelf never to be made, never to be seen.
The studios of today are run by bean counters and greed heads, not movie enthusiasts. They are run by men who will take no chances. Sure they will spend a hundred million or more to make a film, but only do so knowing that between US rights and overseas income the film is guaranteed to bring back four hundred million minimum in returns. They want the guaranteed income of a “Mission Impossible”, or some comic book movie that will do a billion worldwide. They agree to attach a Tom Cruise and pay him handsomely, but how do you build the next Tom Cruise when no one will invest in some unknown?
Through the years there were always men who would game the system. There was a producer in the 1980’s whose name escapes me, he used to come up with a movie script and plot, pre-sell the movie to Europe and Asian interests, use the cash they put up to make the movie, and scrape off profits from showing the movie in other markets. His films did well which created a steady flow of overseas funds to fund his ventures. Some driven director or script writer today needs to do that.
Perhaps we need such enterprising souls today. A group of people who band together with a story, a script, and access to cameras and actors who can come together for a few months, create content, and then disband until such time another story, another script comes along.
Perhaps there needs to be groups of artists in the guise of Christopher Guest and his band and troupe of actors, writers, and producers. They make a movie “Best in Show” parodying the show dog industry, then “A Mighty Wind”, “Spinal Tap”, where the same group of actors gets together and makes movies together over, and over. Adam Sandler does the same, he has a troupe he relies on, gets them together regularly to make his next venture. But we need more than just a few, we need many such groups. It doesn’t all have to be thirty million dollar pictures. There has to be a way to get a camera and a half-dozen friends and commit an idea to film.
Streaming proves that people enjoy binging. The same way that early movie goers went on a Saturday morning and sat through an entire day of movies and shorts, we need small bands to create content for consumption and to feed the streaming beast quickly, and with a frequency. Go back to the early days of Keystone Cops, and Buster Keaton. Along the lines of making WC Fields ventures.
I think that is the next phase of movies.
Except they must think mainstream. Get off the “Woke” bandwagon and attempt to make movies more sensibly focused for the mainstream and not the big city critic.
The big city critics all seem to be “Woke”, green and purple hair colored tattoo’d types, with nose rings and a lesbian sensibility. I say that because their views never dovetail with Rotten Tomatoes and all disparity leads in the same direction. The more degraded the theme the more the critics love the film. The more “queer”, the more “pornographic” the more the critics rave. The more mainstream the less the critics are enthusiastic.
It’s as if the entire industry is relying on Andy Warhol and the Factory types to tell America what movies to see.
I have at least sixteen “movies” written in my head. I can’t for the life of me write in “movie script form” and so none get produced and written. But I could in stenography style rip off entire movies, shots, locations, and dialog in minutes. There is no end to my imagination, only a reluctance to follow the rules of writing a script with all the necessary directions, one minute per page filming speed, and one hundred-twenty-page script expectation. Content out there in Hollywood shouldn’t be the problem. Writers and ideas are a dime a dozen.
They need to get back to telling good stories, for a mass audience. Lose the shock factor. Tell a good story well, make it relatable, cash the checks.
And stop relying on comic book movies. If all you want to visit theaters are thirteen year old boys then keep making Marvel Comic movies. If you want actual American adults to attend your showing, then show us a movie meant for adult consumption.
Put me on retainer I could solve Hollywood’s problem in six months. I’m no genius I’d just parrot and emulate Spielberg. Look at his catalog. He told interesting stories and filmed them well. He didn’t use the biggest Hollywood names, he made stars, he didn’t have to hire them to tentpole his films. “ET” was a great story. “Indiana Jones” was a throwback to 40’s serial cliff-hangers. All his movies, with the exception of the cocaine fueled “1941” were human interest stories well filmed. And none were controversial, all were general audience films. He didn’t stuff lesbian sensibilities down people’s throats.
No need to re-invent the wheel. Start up an RKO pictures on the cheap with a troupe of actors, get some human interest story scripts, film cheap and quick, and watch the box office grow. And for adults to return to the theater.
I know the wife and I are starved to go out to movies and see a good film. A movie night out used to be a great “date night”, out to a cheap dinner, and a movie, it was a great night out.
We just sat home and watched the worst shit imaginable, we witnessed Jerry Seinfeld take a blow torch to his stellar reputation at the advanced age of 70. I’d pay cash money to leave the house and flee such crap on Netflix. I’ll pay twenty bucks for popcorn and a soda if it meant seeing better fare than “Unfrosted”.
The only redeeming thing about that film was the little kid girl. She outshone dozens of today’s biggest comedians. A ten year old. They should apologize to her for making her big screen debut a piece of absolute garbage. Which is funny, because they introduced her diving into a dumpster in the film. That should have been informative to her. That should have been a clue. Seinfeld’s entire movie was garbage.
Sequels can work, but its rare... "Avante Garde" is good, but it can go way too far.... and the super hero thing is fine for the kids, but its played itself out for adults.
I completely agree that Hollywood is way over the top liberal WOKE. Theyre intentionally preaching a diversity/inclusion message to the point of ridiculous over-saturation. Enough trannies, pixies, and sexual deviants.. its so old its sickening and repulsive.
The problem is exacerbated by so many small independent studios and streaming service films. Adam Sandler hasnt put out a decent film since he went indie, and 2/3 of the trash one sees on Netflix and Hulu is unfit for airing.
Its an interesting predicament, and Im uncertain as to exactly what the fix is. One thing is for sure... politics and social agendas cant be part of it.
Sasha Stone has a big presence on Substack, not just twitter/X