MKTPeterson.blog: It's the end of the Hollywood world as we know it and I feel fine- Part IIa Movie Management

Once upon a time, Hollywood was a series of vertical monopolies with steady streams of cash allowing actors/writers/directors to be put under weekly/monthly/yearly contracts. Most of the major movie studios were founded to provide movies for theater chain magnates like Universal’s Carl Laemmie[i] Metro’s Marcus Loew[ii] and Paramount Adolph Zucor [iii] that were cheaper than the patten owned Edison films that were Tik Tok/YouTube of the late 19^th and early 20^th century. (Seriously check out the oldest cat video here- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k52pLvVmmkU ) . Louis B. Mayer, cofounder of legendary golden age Hollywood powerhouse MGM famously said “Movies are the only thing you can sell and own at the same time.” For just 25¢ (Average weekly wage was about $14-$18 a week during the 30’s [iv]) you could spend an evening at a movie and escape from your harsh hard -working life if you were lucky enough to have a job. In the 1930’s 65% of all Americans went to the movies once a week. Now it’s down to 10% and most of those who do go on a weekly basis probably have movie critic somewhere in their job description. Back in its heyday according Turner productions’ 1992 documentary “MGM: When the Lion Roared”, which originally aired I believe either on TNT or TCM (and I had to go to my mom’s house to watch her copy of it on DVD because it’s unavailable for streaming anywhere) sometimes studios like MGM could take a chance on a picture bombing. With nearly 52 pictures a year in the 1930’s & 40’s if something like “The Kissing Bandit” staring Frank Sinatra and Kathryn Grayson flopped the 6.8 million “Easter Parade” staring Judy Garland and Fred Astaire made would cover it and MGM had other guaranteed income from its Loew’s theaters for the other average ho hum movies people went to because they were bored on a Saturday night. Warner Brothers, 20^th Century Fox, Universal and Paramount studios had similar structures/economics. Then in 1948 The US Supreme court said most movie studios were in violation of the [v] 1890 Sherman anti-trust act and had to dump their theaters at the same time television was evolving from some exotic luxury device to something everyone would deem a necessity for modern American living. And Television of course was free thanks to its commercials for Tide soap, Kellogg’s corn flakes and Chesterfield cigarettes that paid for the Cleavers, the Kramdons, the Andersons, the Nelsons, and especially the Ricardos to come into America’s home night after night.

So, movie studios innovated with stuff you couldn’t see on TV. They went with 3D (still a hit or miss novelty) and smell-o-vision. They went with big time color widescreen epics like “Ben Hur” , “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea”, ”The Robe” , “Brigadoon”, “An American in Paris” to name a few from the 1950’s. They also amped up their sex appeal by promoting the outright sexiness of a Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor (not their beauty but their sex appeal). Eventually movies began to incorporate things you couldn’t see on TV like actual sex and violence or say on TV (just ask George Carlin). Movie studios also slowly began to get into the TV business by producing shows as well and in the case of Fox, Paramount and Warners eventually they got their own TV networks. Heck some like Universal got into the amusement park business as well. The problem quickly became (and it still an ongoing problem to this day) every movie becomes a crap shoot the movie studios have bet the house on and most movie studios don’t want to loose the house. Part of the reason why MGM is more like a kitten mewing instead of a lion roaring is because they let their directors go wild with their productions and subsequent production budgets in the 1950’s & 60’s. Directors like David Lien and his film crew traveled overseas to Holland twice just to get a perfect shot of a field of jonquils for Omar Sharif to wander through in “Dr. Zhivago” for less than a minute on screen. Was it worth the money-maybe?

Heck Hollywood only greenlights a movie script (or asks someone to develop a screenplay) if there is a hope of making money like a best-selling novel (Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter) or comic book nowadays. They always think audiences will love a remake. For 1959’s MGM “Ben Hur” it was. For 2016 Paramount “Ben Hur” remake it wasn’t. (Original film came out in 1925). Movies have to be these spectacular specatulars now to motivate someone coming out. Even with something supposedly that will guarantee a success there needs to be more than a concept to draw an audience in. With gas at $3.57 per gallon, a loaf of plain white bread around $2, milk $4.32, rent around $1,700 month movies tickets nowadays have to be worth the price of the $11-15 price being paid.

For example, I chose to see the “Oppenheimer” half of Barbenheimer on IMAX and my ticket plus a slightly fuller box of popcorn than what I would have consumed if I microwaved a bag of Orville Redenbacher at home and a bathroom dixie cup sized cherry coke (with a pouch of Welsh’s fruit snacks thrown in for free)was about $21- an 84% increase from the price of a movie ticket Robert Oppenheimer would have paid in the 1930’s. Christopher Nolan is perhaps one of the last famous directors (Spielberg, Scorsese, Tarantino, Lucas) whose name alone would cause the film to become a blockbuster. It was an experience watching that Trinity bomb explode across the entire 52’ X 72’ IMAX screen and feeling the effects of the explosion. I even was reminded of a quote from late great 80’s & 90’s Sun Times movie critic Roger Ebert who explained the joy of watching a movie with the crowd and laughing when everyone else laughs or cries whenever anyone else cries. Still, the last time I went to a movie before “Oppenheimer” was November 22 and I was trying to support my favorite show/director in a Fathom Events movie special screening of the season premiere of “The Chosen” season 3. In other words, I had to have a very specific reason to go.

Many of the 2023 flops are by Disney which, when movie theaters closed during the pandemic, made people realize it’s better to wait for something like “The Haunted Mansion” to come on to Disney + where a family of four or more can sit around a big TV screen and still be amazed at the movie for just $9.99 a month with commercials and pop two bags of aforementioned Orville Redenbacher from a $5.99 microwave popcorn box with M&Ms box for about a $1.50 from Walmart instead of the $4.50 the movie theater was trying to charge me. Furthermore, Disney has to pour hundreds or millions of dollars for these spectacular spectaculars because I’m not sure the old Michael Eisner strategy from the 80’s and 90’s Disney I watched when I grew up would work. The Eisner era of Disney had what he termed 1^st and 2^nd base hits that would keep the studio on solid financial ground. Something like “Three Men and a Baby” that featured big time TV stars like Tom Sellek and Ted Danson at the height of their “Magnum P.I.” and “Cheers” fame and B list movie star Steve Guttenberg from the popular “Police Academy” series fumbling to be fathers to a cute little baby that got left on their bon vivant bachelor penthouse doorstep. It was a relatively cheap film to make, got a lot of laughs and made for something for people to want to go see in theaters when they were once again bored on a Saturday night. It was a hit, but not like Star Wars box office hit numbers. And, as much as current Disney CEO Bob Iger would like to try that strategy, I guarantee nobody is going out to see an average movie like “Three Men and a Baby” because the last thing anyone is nowadays is bored on a Saturday night thanks to all of the streaming options.