The gravitational pull of mediocrity in hollywood

Why is it that majority of the hollywood has this affinity for mediocrity ? isn't someone an inherent risk taker by choosing to be an artist for living ? or maybe it's just media who wants clicks and money that is giving a venue for these kinds of opinions/news. But majority of directors and actors who are not stars and don't have enough clout to pull audience into the theaters on their name brand are rooting for theatrical experience to die or be limited to the 10th movie in a franchise or remake of a disney cartoon. They love netflix because the 10 people who see their movies are happy and they will never bother about making art that will reach millions. This is the loser mindset of "if I can't get it then no one else should". The problem with this approach is it is putting even more burden on the ones who do have clout to get people to theater because, some of the fringe audience are habituated to staying at home and in enough time that number will increase substantially there by rendering those artists powerless as well.

In interviews some tv artists saying that real art is in TV but that is just their way of saying " I can't make art that could pull people to theaters...so i will make it for TV and be happy but not without belittling or invalidating the things I can't get".

Funny how you know what these “tv artists” are really saying.

For some years now many people have been saying that there’s so much excellent stuff on tv now as compared to previous decades. Even major movie stars are doing tv now which never happened before.

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How have you determined that the "majority" of this group is rooting for the theatrical experience to die?

Unfortunately, this happens in all these threads: they all heavily feature armchair psychoanalysis of what famous people must really think or want. Why they feel remotely qualified to judge this (or even care to try, rightly or wrongly) remains a mystery, despite numerous ignored follow-up questions and counterarguments.

I know four filmmakers who have had varying degrees of success (the most successful showed his film at the LA Film Festival and it's now for rent on several streaming services). None of the way that they talk about theaters, their own aspirations, streaming services, mainstream releases, or anything else matches what you are saying.

It's a strange projection to say that any filmmaker who hasn't made huge theatrical releases must be horribly bitter and want the whole theater industry to collapse.

Are there a few filmmakers who look at some of the garbage that makes it to the theater and laments that their own work is more deserving? I'm sure there are! But that's true in any field: there are tons of unknown musicians who are better than what's playing right now on Top 40 radio; there are great writers out there running circles around the books on the bestseller list. That's just the nature of the intersection of art and commerce.

Viet Nguyen made two YouTube videos back in 2010 and 2013. Two years later, in 2015, he was able to expand those shorts into a feature length horror comedy (the incredibly enjoyable Crush the Skull). From there he's gone on to direct and edit on major TV shows like iZombie, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Lucifer. To suggest that he's probably unhappy because he's not making Hollywood blockbusters seems inherently wrong.

You can't project your own metric of success onto every filmmaker and then assume that anyone not meeting it must be unhappy and consider themselves a failure. If you've ever met a filmmaker, you'll know that just the act of making a film is cause for celebration.

Without having read the OP, and only maybe half of the title of this thread, I believe the model to analyze to find whatever answer is being asked is to first ask why one thread is opened asking for answers to a question that likely won't be discussed when the question is proven ridiculous while other, equally ridiculous questions are still open having been asked, countered, then abandoned for another similar effort somewhere else in the forum as if any of the previous threads never existed.


Is that a run-on?


brb. I got Shoutbox GIFs to organize alphabetize.

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Who let you out of the Shoutbox? Get back to where you belong.

Always odd when an OP doesn’t once return to his thread.

If I only knew what you are saying, I would definitely say you are correct.

Odd at first, but if you operate under the assumption that they just want people to listen to their theories and the discussion part is incidental, it starts to make more sense.

lol yeah. I was just being a smart ass. These hardline posts pop up a lot but when others reply that disprove whatever the assumption of the week is, nothing comes back in the form of recognition that maybe the assumption and point of the thread might actually had been silly to begin with. Instead of acknowledging that, the guy makes a new thread with another as silly hardline theory as fact that will, likely, be ignored once called out. Cycle starts over. Again.

I'm not really sure what you mean by "mediocrity", do you mean boring art films, cheesy hollywood themes that only have the good-guy/bad-guy super hero dynamic?


Movies to me are a source of pleasure and excitement, plus as far as art is concerned i'm a writer, so with movies anything that tickles me and keeps me watching is "good"


I actually think netflix has a lot of good stuff, and netflix as a film financier/streaming service has actually experimented with a lot of types of things hollywood wouldn't touch, even though most movies are garbage anyways.


Hollywood itself is kinda stupid and a lot of people go there because they want to be famous, such a dream is a magnet for mediocrity in my opinion. But then again...i don't want to be famous, so i'm kinda fine with mediocrity...

This is such a strange tangent considering the releases/filmmakers that draw big sales on name brand (and absurd marketing budgets of course) are most often the torchbearers of mediocrity in modern film culture.

And the vast majority of filmmakers I know of who aren't stars or don't have noteworthy draw power at the box office care very little about either of those things — and yet many of them are still against the loss of theaters and streaming becoming the primary release avenue/screening experience.

I think that it's because the OP has two contradictory notions of mediocrity. On the one hand, he seems to regard people who aren't financially successful as being failures/mediocre. But he also clearly has derision for the "generic" entertainment that automatically makes it to the theater (sequels in franchises, Disney films).

It's just kind of a fact that entertainment that is more palatable (and thus more often bland and less artistic) will get a bigger audience. It's not unheard of for innovative, original, or edgy films to be successful at the box office. But when I look at movies that top the box office, most of them just seem "fine."

Film (like literature or fashion or any other art) is a huge landscape. And within that landscape I think that people have different goals. Someone like Frank Hennenlotter (someone who has a good grasp of craft) clearly isn't aiming to push out a big-budget rom-com or even direct some slick horror franchise sequel.

there is difference between drawing audience to theaters based on the name of the director or actor and drawing audience based on an IP like superhero or cartoon character.

I am talking about the former not the latter. A monkey can direct an MCU movie and audience will show up..it has nothing to do with the directors of those movies.

Vast majority of other filmmakers are okay with streaming sharing space with theaters and not just theaters. But the problem with this approach is, many of the quirky indie directors with vision and distinct style can't make movies that appeal to wide audience so they end up at streaming and are not talented to hit it out of the park each time they make a movie. So they are rooting for theaters to die through their actions maybe not consciously. The examples are Charlie Kaufman, Coen brothers etc.

But the Coen brothers have had a lot of critical and commercial success in the theater: True Grit came out just two years before Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which was also well received.

There are plenty of directors who move back and forth between streaming services and theatrical releases. A great example is Mike Flanagan, who bounces back and forth with very engaging films. I would even say that his streaming releases (Hush, Gerald's Game) are as good if not better than his theatrical films.

There's also a degree to which you have to realize that directors do not always have control over the release/distribution of their films. Flanagan's film Before I Wake is a great example of this. He made the movie and a distribution company purchased the rights, so the film was headed for the theater. But then the distribution company hit financial trouble and was purchased by Netflix, which is why the movie ended up being a Netflix movie not a theatrical release. Many films that are "Netflix Originals" or "Amazon Originals" were not originally commissioned by Amazon or Netflix--those companies just purchased the distribution rights. Many filmmakers show their movies at festivals in the hope that they will be picked up by a distributor.

The recent romantic comedy Palm Springs ended up as a mix:
Palm Springs had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2020.[ Shortly after, Neon and Hulu acquired distribution rights to the film. Neon and Hulu reportedly paid $17,500,000.69 for the film, breaking the previous record for the highest sale from a film from Sundance by $0.69. Later reports put the deal closer to $22 million after guarantees were factored in.

The film was released in the United States digitally on Hulu and in select drive-in theaters on July 10, 2020.

Just a decade ago....60 million opening weekend was a big deal...now its small potatoes compared to 150 million opening weekend...before jaws..movie stars were the king...without movie stars...movies wouldn't make a dime...but after jaws everything changed....whether you like it or not...movie business is highly volatile and original films will be the first fatalities of a streaming war especially since there are no movies stars or star directors..apart from a handful of them.

I would argue that there are, in fact, still a ton of incredibly influential movie stars. If you're arguing that, after Jaws, blockbusters no longer relied on movie stars as a box office draw, I would simply disagree. Everyone went to see John Wick because Keanu Reeves was in it. Someone could film Dwayne Johnson or Kevin Hart reading a TV manual, and it would get butts into the theater. Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks led two different romantic comedies to box office success in the 90s.

And why would the lack of movie stars (if that were a thing) create a problem for original films? If anything, if money isn't going to paying huge star salaries, it opens up those funds for directors and production.

I feel like every year I see plenty of original films: funny, edgy, weird, niche, etc. If anything, streaming services allow those films to get in front of viewers. Going to the movie theater is an experience that is distinct from watching a movie in your home. Theaters and streaming services can totally co-exist, just like TV and theaters have always co-existed.

I'm not totally sure what you think this shift is post-Jaws. Yes, there are big tentpole blockbusters, but plenty of smaller movies make it into the theater every year. The number of original films (or non-blockbuster films) isn't getting smaller.

You might find this article interesting. It explains how non-theater releases can generate revenue streams, so that the "home theater" actually becomes a funding source for theatrical releases.

Real star power doesnt mean luck...yes, keanu Reeves was the reason people saw john wick but that was more luck than anything...why didn't those people show up to replicas ? or the movie he did with winona ryder ? or scanner darkly ? same with Dwayne johnson or kevin hart..ask them to make a serious movie like collateral beauty or concussion and their movies will bomb. This directly dictates what kind of movies they can make. Studio is not gonna give money even with them as stars to make a movie like moonlight or 12 years a slave.

Moreover there is an honor is making people spend some time dressing up and going to theater and watching a movie. Its called commitment. Instead of that..when you put something on TV....you are essentially cheaping a piece of art and denying it the respected it deserves. People can talk over it, eat over it, pause it and sleep for a while..all this during a 2.5 hr movie. Any filmmaker that settles for that should be slightly ashamed, especially established filmmakers. How many tv shows you remember from 70s...but there are tons of movies that are memorable. Netflix is a bottomless pit..any movie that is thrown in it..will never see the light of the day.

Romantic comedies is another garbage genre. They are all the same movies. Its a waste of time from artistic perspective because anything you can do. woody allen probably done it decades ago and 10 times better. So its just to fill pockets of corporations and not for artistic reasons.

Ah, so this is why you completely and conspicuously ignored my simple request for evidence: because there is none. It's just based on some totally unfalsifiable vibe you get. I'd say "good to know" but it was already pretty obvious this was the case, so I'll just say "good that you admitted it."

Neither of these are examples of anything other than your ability to project your own value system onto other people.