This article in the LA Times is depressing:
He makes $20 million a movie, won the best actor Oscar for “Gladiator” and enjoys his pick of Hollywood’s choicest roles. But there’s one thing that Russell Crowe can’t do right now: sell movie tickets.The actor’s conspiracy thriller “State of Play” lands in theaters Friday and all indications suggest it will perform as poorly as (and possibly worse than) Crowe’s previous film: last October’s box-office bust “Body of Lies,” which opened to $12.9 million and topped out at $39.4 million. Audience-tracking surveys show that “State of Play,” which costars Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams, will be trounced this weekend by Zac Efron.
I’m not depressed about Efron winning via TKO over Crowe. I’m depressed about this:
While some of “State of Play’s” likely lackluster performance will be blamed on Crowe, the 45-year-old Australian — who is overweight and disheveled in the film’s lead role as an investigative newspaper reporter — is hardly the sole issue. Equally problematic is “State of Play’s” genre: the highbrow adult drama, which is quickly becoming a big-studio relic.Fans of sophisticated storytelling complain that hardly anyone makes smart dramas anymore, but the problem rests with the audience itself: It isn’t supporting them.
Where are my fellow “highbrow adult drama people?” C’mon! It’s says right there that we’re smart! How smart can we be if we allow adult dramas to shrivel and die?
“You are going to find every studio saying, ‘I can’t do it, I can’t do it,’ ” Donna Langley, Universal’s production chief, says of the near-term prospects for dramas. “It will be awhile until there are a lot of really smart dramas.”In the last few months, the General Electric-owned studio has put the brakes on some of its most acclaimed dramatic projects, including writer-director Gary Ross’ “The Free State of Jones,” Spike Lee’s “L.A. Riots,” an adaptation of the Claire Messud novel “The Emperor’s Children” and the AIDS drama “The Dallas Buyer’s Club.”
As recently as 10 years ago, smart dramas were a staple for the major studios. Now they’re on the verge of being relegated to independent fare. Which means lower budgets. Which means less adult dramas. Which means I’m depressed.
Okay, people, who’s going to talk me off the ledge? It’s just a phase, right? In five years, when every nominated movie for Best Picture is an adult drama, we’ll all laugh as we remember all our wailing and gnashing of teeth — although I may still be paying my dental bills.
Let’s do everyone a favor. Let’s go see State of Play this weekend. Here’s the trailer:
Heh heh. I think the problem for this genre may be the studios’ fault more than they’d like to admit. They don’t know how to cut these trailers to make them unique anymore. Take “Body of Lies” for instance. The trailer made that movie look like every other movie ever made. They didn’t take any chances. And the titles they’re giving these films are horrible. Body of Lies? State of Play? Is there even an ounce of originality in either of those? They might as well be “Don’t Come To Me” and “I’m Boring”. Before you start blaming the films, you might want to take more of a chance with your marketing approach.
Couldn’t all the 2009 nominated films be considered adult dramas? Slumdog was sort of a fantasy, I guess – but it was indeed “smart” in its conception, taking the time to prove how that kid knew the answers. Frost/Nixon, The Reader, Ben Button and Milk could all be described as ” smart adult dramas” too. But I wonder – are we talking about box office success, which some of these films enjoyed, though not blockbusters in the summertime sense, or are we talking about critical praise from peers and press? If Paul Bart or other films of that ilk end up nominated next year, yeah I’d be worried. I’d eat my shoe, in fact. But I gotta believe good work still gets made. I do see what you mean though. State of Play gets trounced and it gives the money people less inclination to make anything other than Twilight. Meanwhile ” Do The Right Thing” , for example, if written today, would die a quick, un-ceremonial death in the slush pile. Like Andy Dufrense dramatic screenwriters are just going to have to swim thorough a river of shit and hope they come out on the other side clean.
Jeez Scott, your blog has talked me down from so many of my glum, self-imposed funk trees, I feel I must somehow return the favor…
…but alas, I’m not sure I can. Perhaps this:
I submit that the Hollywood model that we see today will eventually, like Major League Baseball, devour itself whole. As you and I both know, the way Hollywood “works” is no way to run a business.
The real culprit here is ticket prices, I fear. I’ll hold my parents up as a prime example. They were avid filmgoers for as long as I can recall. They rushed to see those “adult dramas” you’re lamenting. I remember my father raving about stuff like “The Parallax View,” “Silkwood,” “Three Days of the Condor,” “Network,” etc. Hell, he took me to see “Tender Mercies” and “The Killing Fields” when I was fifteen or so just because he HAD to share them with someone!
Now?
Not a chance. He’ll ALWAYS opt for DVD rentals. If that. He complains the multiplexes are obnoxious, noisy, overpriced and the payoff for such an irrating night out is very little.
He’s right on all counts.
He and my mother will frequent our local arthouses on occasion for a possible new Woody Allen film or the like. But overall? He and the cinema are done. Now he reads a lot of James Patterson books instead… yeeesh.
Still, I don’t blame him a bit for giving up on the movies. From the look of the box office for movies targeted to his demographic, it would appear he’s not alone.
Still… I find hope and it’s usually right on this blog. You and the readers here all post and debate such compelling story and drama issues that I can only believe that REAL, HONEST storytelling on film is far from dead.
Will we find such works only in places like Hulu and YouTube in the future? Possibly. Is this a bad thing? Probably not.
Look at newspapers. Talk about a medium that’s rapidly changing! I think that same evolution may be happening to MOVIES/FILM as we know it.
Stay tuned but stay hopeful!
Oh, and if I can find a sitter, I’m off to State of Play! You’ve inspired me!
Um, maybe because these movies aren’t actually any good? And maybe the filmmakers making them have abandoned their own voices in the name of middlebrow awards-baiting dramatic shlock? I mean, right off the bat:
Gary Ross. Big, Dave, Pleasantville.
Spike Lee. She’s Gotta Have It (the rom-com that was the Obamas first date).
Ron Howard. Splash. Cocoon.
And let’s not get all misty-eyed, either. When people make comparisons to the past, they take the whole of the present and compare it selectively to their few favorite memories. The Bourne movies are easily as good as Parallax and Three Days. Silkwood doesn’t hold up. Tender Mercies and Network — well, those are two movies written by master dramatists. But so are Adaptation and Sideways.
And at the end of the day, “17 Again” seems like a relatable fantasy comedy. “State of Play” just seems like a retread of all those “smart” movies that aren’t nearly as intelligent as they like to think.
The trailers for “State of Play” fall flat for me for a couple reasons:
1. as Carson said, terrible, bland title;
2. the plot seems very similar to a slew of recent “politicians as murderers” films, Murder at 1600 and Absolute Power come to mind.
3. It’s not based on a true story. Why get worked up about a reporter uncovering government corruption story when I can see “All the President’s Men” and it’s based on the real thing?
I actually was surprised by the description of “State of Play” as a highbrow adult drama. Is that what it is? Watching the trailer doesn’t make that very clear. To me it looks like tired way too overdone action thriller. I was actually thinking as I watched the trailer that the clips they showed could have been taken from a dozen different movies I already saw before. Maybe this movie is good, but the trailer certainly wasn’t showing me that.