America’s Core Business Strategy Has Become Its Dominant Movie Aesthetic.
We’ve programmed ourselves into fetishizing bad storytelling
Please be sure to check out this conversation I had with Cole Haddon that dropped yesterday. He has a very great Substack you should be sure to subscribe to,. Although he interviewed me, I learned a great deal from Cole; his passion, thoughtfulness, and commitment to the craft really come through. And he got some good thoughts and expressions out of me, if do say so myself. Anyways, consider it extra credit reading for later!
It really should have been predictable. Forget about tea leaves or coffee grinds to read, the writing was on the wall. Our individual failures hopefully will now be our communal lesson. What once was a strength has become a weakness. A nation of dreamers has become a horde of schemers, as we’ve trained our sages, our poets, our weavers and webbers all to do the work of our corporate overlords.
Hollywood’s promise was the marriage of business and art. It was the town where anyone could be “both, and…”. The fact it, cinema – perhaps more than any other form of expression – allows one to make bank while moving hearts and minds is no small thing. The conflict between the two often generated something that was more than either. It pulled folks in. Whether it is the glitz and glamour or the power and the glory that leads those with their hands on the money chest to choose to invest, we have no need to argue. I think we can all agree that is a good thing that they danced that dance. Shake a leg, puppy dog. But we lost them and the music stopped.
Yet once, and not so long ago, the industry was overrun by the lovable scoundrels, pirates, dreamers and schemers whose reach regularly exceeded their grasp. And what a magic thing that was.
They believed that even if perhaps they were not going to change the world with this one, they would still make a pretty penny. Keep placing those bets. They did and they dared to reach out of the gutter. Now, too many folks know what they are doing, but far from having drunk the kool-aid, they are just doing the steps to manage the risk. Boring. Very. But safe. Why reach for the stars when most folks will be content with “good enough”?
All this damn know-how has snuffed out the flame of daring-do. Let’s light it anew, okay?
Capitalist enterprise encourages predictability, and many a time it has led to a poor choice in bedfellows.
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