Hollywood isn't as hopeless as the music business

posted by Jeff | Wednesday, February 27, 2008, 11:30 PM | comments: 0

I was listening to a podcast recently where they were talking about the movie biz and how it's making all of the same mistakes that the music business did, and that it would suffer as well. Mostly the comparisons are drawn around issues of DRM and online distribution. And yes, I'll agree to a point that Hollywood is being stupid, but there's a very crucial difference: Not everything that Hollywood is turning out sucks.

Year after year, there are a lot of good movies that I would say maintain some level of artistic value, and some of those even end up making big bucks. The music business just puts out endless crap and promotes the most generic shit it can.

I'm not saying Hollywood always gets it right, but I tend to seek out a great many films, I buy tickets, I buy DVD's, and I laugh/cry pretty frequently. Granted, Hollywood seems to almost function like a venture capital firm, where it bankrolls ten films and if one hits, they've made their money back. There is some room for "failures" because the hits are so disproportionately successful financially. That's a pretty sweet arrangement, because it means I get to see movies like Kissing Jessica Stein or, God forbid, Clerks 2 (the latter of which, Kevin Smith will point out, more than broke even in theaters and cleaned up on DVD).

I guess going forward, the question is how we'll acquire movies. DVD sales are softening, but I suspect downloads will hit a snag since we're all getting used to music coming DRM-free. And heck, I just "rented" my first HD movie on my Apple TV. The distribution model is totally in flux. I just hope that by way of downloads they figure out how to do special features. As a wannabe, I live for that stuff.

I still wonder if there will be any kind of decentralization of power. Technically anyone can make a movie these days, and I'm not even sure if the production quality is that crucial. Pieces of April was shot on DV, and that one did OK. I'm just not sure anyone with online aspirations has done anything really sweet yet.

Exciting times for film. Just be sure, Hollywood, not to fuck it up.


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