By David Haslinger
Hollywood has been the center of film for many years now. It is where many film innovations were fostered and grew and it truly brought new film techniques into the lime light. The first talking film, the first color film, the first use of Computer graphics, many film tricks were created here. Directors in Hollywood were at one time the epitome of film. They had the greatest creativity and relevance and film makers strived to be a Hollywood director to create great film. This has changed in the past 20 years.
Hollywood has lost its glamour. It has become less of a center for great film and is more of a money grabbing organization like any other corporation. Films coming out of Hollywood try to use easy tactics to sell film tickets and make more money. They use star power, sequels, sexuality and pandering to get your money. These new tactics have caused the smart Hollywood films that were once so prominent to all but disappear. The smart film makers have broken away from the big 5 film companies.
One tactic that is being used by Hollywood to sell tickets is the sequel. Hollywood producers take advantage of popular film plots and stretch them to their breaking point to squeeze every penny out of it. One example of this came from the film American Pie.
American Pie was a very popular movie among teens showing teen high school antics. Hollywood decided that this was a good plot line to continue the plot line as long as possible. They continued the antics of the main characters into there first years of college in American Pie II. It wasn’t done there. They made this movie into a trilogy by showing life after college of the main character with American Wedding. One would think that this was all the further that they could take it. They would be wrong.
Playing on one of most talked about lines in the first film “One time at band camp,” they made American Band Camp. Using only one original character and stretching every little part of the original movie that they could to create this movie. This movie didn’t even make it to theatres and was released straight to video. You’d think that this would be where they gave up, but it wasn’t. They then made The Naked Mile; another straight to video release that created new characters with the same name to keep the story line somewhat relevant.
Star power is also used by the new Hollywood to sell a movie. You see this in movies like Wild Hogs. This film is about 5 men going through a mid life crisis that decide to take there fake biker gang on a road trip. As exciting as this sounds they decided to use big Hollywood names to sell the story and tickets. With John Travolta and Tim Allen leading the way this super star cast shows that once a Hollywood star becomes A list, they must not read scripts anymore. The Mel Brooks film Silent Movie played on this truth 30 years ago. The plot line was that a director trying to make a great movie to save his career wanted to make a silent movie. He can’t sell his movie on the plot alone, so he convinces major Hollywood stars to be in it.
This is also a big problem with Christmas Movies. Most Christmas Movies fallow the same plot lines, whether it be Competing with the Johnsons, A Scrooge who turns into a Christmas junky, or some family gathering with some family antics. Hollywood always makes these movies with large Hollywood actors to make it popular. One Christmas movie uses both tactics to sell there movie. The Santa Claus staring Tim Allen uses star power to sell a plot line that wouldn’t otherwise sell and has 2 sequels to milk every bit of cash out of its audience as it can.
I’m not trying to say that every Christmas movie or even every movie with big actors is a bad film. Elf was a great Christmas movie that had Will Ferrell and he definitely helped sell the film, but it was a good movie, and Departed has very big Hollywood names in it, but it is an excellent film by Scorsese. The problem isn’t using big Hollywood stars or doing a theme movie, it’s using these to make a buck to sell a plot line that was written in a brain storming session.
The worst tactic of Hollywood is sexuality. It seems sometimes that a movie will use sexuality to sell just about any movie. You can find car movies with sex or even children’s movies with sex, It’s everywhere in Hollywood. A Hollywood director or producer will add a sex scene or sex up a character just to sell more tickets. A movie that uses sex to sell is Showgirls. It is a movie about a girl who goes to Las Vegas to make it as a Vegas showgirl. Though there is a certain degree in this type of plot where nudity is necessary, but the extraneous sex and unnecessary nudity ruin the movie. The intent of the director was to make an NC-17 movie, to push that limit, and in doing so it further sleazed Hollywood.
Hollywood needs to clean up its act. People will go to movies whether or not they have sex or big stars, like Napoleon Dynamite, a teen movie without sexuality big stars or a popular theme. It came out of no where and was a huge hit. It launched the career of Jon Heder and made new slang terms for our generation. Hollywood can learn from this and make more movies with meaning and that are entertaining to sell tickets.
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