Investors and artists see films differently. Robert Marich explores the eternal tension between art and commerce and how filmmakers can balance both.
A German investment advisor speaking at a Berlin film investment conference in 2000 said one of his important criteria for evaluating commercial potential of any film is its ability to be screened in film festivals. “Of course, this reflects a strong relationship to box office expectations,” said the advisor, who like other German finance experts, was new to the then-burgeoning film sector after analyzing the myriad of unrelated industrial sectors in which Germany excels.
Within two years, the nascent German film sector collapsed on the stock market as a result of overblown valuations. I was in the audience (and a speaker on another panel) at that 2000 conference in Berlin and not surprised at the disconnect. Film festivals celebrate art and it’s a mistake to confuse art with commerce.
The mixed critic reviews for Fox’s July release of Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs reinforced this point again today. Critics were cool to what is the third Ice Age animated film, but were wildly enthusiastic about Disney/Pixar’s more complex animated feature Up. To date, the third Ice Age has grossed $800 million in worldwide box office while Up – which cost nearly twice as much to make and was released weeks earlier – has about half as much in global box office.
What’s going on?
Film critics swooned over Up’s serious elements dealing with old age and abandonment, and were enthusiastic that this pushed the envelope for family animated films. In contrast, Ice Age was strictly a formulaic exercise: a simple quest, cute characters and an uncomplicated happy ending—also known as “the Hollywood ending.”
Filmmakers who try to serve art and commerce in the same film usually succeed at neither, so it’s wise to choose one path or the other. For filmmakers early in their careers, it’s usually better to build on commercial successes – because it makes rounding up financing easier. It’s tough to convince a Screen Angel financier with a pitch, “While my first film did not recoup for its investors, it did get official in-competition screenings at the Transylvania and Lima film festivals, winning the Critics Choice award in Lima.” That leaves investors to wonder if the Lima festival was in Ohio or Peru.
The futility of trying to straddle the line is evident in the Ice Age reviews, where critics seemed to go out of their way to bash the film’s audience appeal. “Unlike such wise, witty Pixar Animation tales as Up and WALL-E,” goes an Associated Press review, “this one’s strictly a slapstick tale for the young ones, who will ooh and aah over all the adorable beasties, new and old.”
“The movie is pleasant enough for kids and will surely play to large numbers of them during the summer: If 80% of success is showing up, the main component of box-office success is filling a need,” writes Wall Street Journal reviewer Joe Morgenstern. “…there’s also a sense of ineptness in a script that constantly reaches, with only modest success, for amusing things that the mammoths and their friends can do.” Morgenstern, by the way, won a Pulitzer Prize for film commentary!
Of course, filmmakers lusting after commercial success have more allies than in past years. The Internet has spawned an array of film websites, many of which cater to mainstream tastes. The so-called “fanboys” that love simplistic but entertaining films have their own set of critics and can be marketed to inexpensively via websites.
On the other hand, traipsing through the world of sophisticated art has an appeal to. After all, Hollywood talent is fond of calling themselves “artists.” But let’s be honest about this. They really are “craftsmen”—skilled in a nominally creative endeavor but essentially making repetitive products. Hollywood talent are more like a makers of glitzy TV commercials, goldsmiths or concert violinists, and should not be confused with Mozart.
Perhaps the ultimate example of elitism came in a July column in Entertainment Weekly penned by Diablo Cody, who is the screen writer of Juno, which took a lighthearted look at the serious subject of teenage pregnancy. She praised end-of-year Oscar contention movies about “unhappy marriages or political situations.” Let’s remember that Frost/Nixon was a moderately-budgeted political film that was nominated for Best Picture Oscar…that grossed a meager $18.6 million in domestic box office. Frost/Nixon will end up losing money for Universal Pictures.
“And finally, the less said about summer movies, the better,” Cody adds. “I appreciate a big, rowdy, bros-before-hos comedy as much as anyone, but I’m basically allergic to action franchises and ‘family’ fare.”
If so, that’s also being allergic to making money. Certainly, some art and arty films have turned out to be hits— called “art-busters” within the industry that grafts on the idea of a blockbuster. But these are far fewer hits than films crafted to be hits in the first place.
The experience of European cinema reinforces this notion. For years, the auteur philosophy dominated European film, which was mainly financed by government grants that were little concerned with economic return. The auteur theory holds a film should bear the stamp of a single creative figure – the director. The trouble is that such highly-personal films that wowed elitist European critics usually did not catch on with Europe’s mainstream audiences.
In the post WWII era, British cinema elites were obsessed with social dramas, which were called “kitchen sink dramas” by cheeky mainstream newspapers. Much of the dialog took place with families at home in scenes framed by the mother washing dishes in the background—hence the kitchen sink name. Audiences – already depressed by post war economic woes – were more interested in goof-ball British comedies, which the film elite despised as vulgar despite their popularity.
Let me add this personal note. In 2001, as the aforementioned stock market boom in German film companies ebbed, a new box office record was set for a single film in Germany at $50 million, rivaling US import Titanic—which is the global box office champ. That local German film was a pies-in-the-face parody of Hollywood Westerns called The Boot of Manitu. It was simple, insanely silly and unpretentious. And its creative team did not want for work thereafter.
Business journalist/analyst Robert Marich, who authored Marketing to Moviegoers: A Handbook, has a quarter century experience in covering film and media. The book’s website is a repository of free information at www. marketingmovies.net. CNBC, CNN, Fox Business Network and the Today show have interviewed Marich for film-related stories. In 2009, he served as lead editor updating the ninth edition of Music Business Handbook and Career Guide. As a journalist, his articles have been published in Broadcasting & Cable, Emmy magazine, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, Screen International, Variety, and other publications.
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