Piling More Bad On The Pile Of All We Ignore And Then Ignore Some More

Part Four in HFF's All The Good & Bad In 2024 The Cinema Ecosystem

Today, I have 25 more items for the list of all that is currently wrong with the Cinema Ecosystem, and there’s many more to come. This is not a complaint list though. It is a To Do List. We can fix things, lift things, and really make some things sing. Don’t despair. Pick your space and let’s make it better together. Let’s do it.

You want to live in truth and engagement, right? You don’t want to be thinking all’s good and you can put your head down and just keep doing the same as the next person — when you know deep down it isn’t. And you don’t want to just throw up your hands and blame other for a situation that you yourself can improve either. You are a problem solver. You get things done. And you know the first steps are seeing and accepting things as they are. Then you are going to work to make the better. It does no good to make something wonderful if there isn’t a system to help bring that work out wide and connect with those whom the work will really resonate with.

Or perhaps you just want to use this link to get 20% off an annual subscription at 2024 prices. Time is running out! And reading helps. It may even lead you into action. Let’s protect the things we truly love. That IS the goal of HopeForFilm. Please come be a part of it.

We have five more posts to go to celebrate what I have on my list this year. It might help to go back and meditate on all The Good we shared after you finish this installment. I am not sure what you should chant, but I like to think reading this list might lead us to do something different in the year to come. Have you figured out yet how you intend to improve your creative and professional practice? The answer my friend, may be found in or inspired by this list. I don’t think you can afford not to follow through to the end (and if you literally can’t afford to, just send me a note and I will hook you up).

I may have missed a few things too. It’s not to late to make suggestions, even for the parts I have already published.

It is really all about the love. We are fastened for life. There are no bolt cutters in HFFworld.

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Problems With The FKATheFilmBiz, 2024, #51-75 (C-F)

51. Criticism / replaced by algorithm and aggregation sites. People rely on Rotten Tomatoes now, but they don’t even recognize what the ratings there mean. To be “certified fresh” is to have the 80% (or whatever the bar now is) of the critics think you are decent. Isn’t decent the equivalent grade of C? And did grades ever work well anyways? Don’t we really need context? To love a film, doesn’t it help to understand how it fits in a dialogue with other films? With culture today?

52. Cultural Conversation / Movies Are No Longer Part Of It: When you look at the issues with criticism and discovery — not to mention Big Media in general — this isn’t much of a surprise, but what I do find surprising is that our industry doesn’t want to take responsibility and try to tackle it. I used to describe the movies I make as the sort that compel you to discuss them after, but that was when we people still spoke about movies in general. I used to praise films that helped us understand the things that were otherwise difficult to discuss, but that was when we had an ecosystem that generated and supported a cinema a bit broader than pure comfort food. I used to feel compelled to make cinema because it was the art form that had the most direct line to many people’s hearts and minds; cinema still has the capacity to be such an “empathy machine” but it needs the apparatus and efforts to carry it far and wide long after the lights have gone back on. Perhaps if artists and creative entrepreneurs had a lobby or trade group and it wasn’t just the mega-corps that could afford to do it, we’d have entities trying to place film discussion on the Big Media Platforms? Perhaps eventually this will become the beat of Substack author?

53. Cultural Course Correction Mechanisms: CCCMs are what get us back on track when the Corporate Mega Platforms keep serving up the same dish flavored by past success. Where are they now that “Indie” film can no longer function that way due to how dependent they are on the financing and distribution mechanisms? How will corporate programmers free themselves from the idealogical, style, and narrative ruts they place themselves in, without the wild ideas that once seduced the free-thinking rebels and their wealthy supporters to swing for the fences? Can we even dream of such curveballs coming from public media?

54. Curation / the degradation there of— “curation is a retention device; our goal is primarily audience acquisition”. I don’t know who said this to me when I enter the world of the streamers, but I heard it often. This shift of emphasis is a degrading of taste. Curation may have been a discovery mechanism in the exhibition era, but it’s utility is not as welcome these days by the GSPs and other gatekeepers.

55. Curation / development — sure someone can go to school for curation knowhow, and for the passionate few, is a bit the byproduct of their love affair with cinema and all culture, but helping those in all areas of our ecosystem develop their curatorial skills is even more needed due to the overall degradation of it in our primary business delivery sector of streaming platforms. Oh, what to do? What to do? Do we need a new incentive?