The Pitfalls of Hypothesizing about Film Success

Say we take a film like Transformers 2. The film, like most other films, has a lot going on, in its content and the circumstances under which it was released: grand spectacle, a link to something that is established in a target audience's cultural memory, an extensive marketing campaign, the fact that its a sequel, Shia LeBeouf, its director, its screenwriter, its late-June release not opposite of other big action blockbusters, etc. Which of these elements is most responsible for the film's success? Let's throw in another element of the film: Skids and Mudflap, two robots who (quoting the NYTimes piece) "talk in jive and are portrayed as illiterate; one has a gold tooth." The depictions have been called racist by many. Are these depictions reasons why the film is more successful, or is the film successful in spite of those depictions?

The questions are essentially unanswerable, but its not because film is Art and one cannot theorize about why some people like art and others don't, or why some art is profitabe and other art is not. It is so hard to predict why films, as opposed to other art forms, are successful or not b/c there are so few comparable films made and the circumstances of release (marketing, timing) play such a significant role in their success/failure. In order to determine what aspects of a product are responsible for its success, we need to make comparisons, but there are so few comparisons to be able to make that its harder to predict what will succeed. If you wanted to find out what elements of motion picture content made a certain text successful (e.g. certain choices in pacing, plotting, certain bigoted depictions, certain actors, lighting, etc), then you would look away from film and towards online video. There are simply more comparable texts, and the circumstances under which each video is watched are so varied that the uniqueness of each viewing can be considered to be random error and cancels out. What you're left with is a more pure comparison and better insight as to how motion pictures work on audiences than one you would try to do looking at a successful box office film like Transformers 2 and making generalizations about what aspects of the film resonated with the public. And yet film and cultural theorists have been doing just this, and continue to do just this: identifying certain characteristics of a film that possesses many charateristics, noting that the film was successfull, and then making claims about a culture's preferences.

Its interesting to consider recent advances in two untraditional predictions markets, both linked to the work of Nate Silver: presidential politics and baseball. Frankly, I don't know much about Silver's prediction models, but I'd guess he just takes discrete characteristics of each event (a race for office, a baseball game), takes a data set comprised of past events, and sees which characteristics, when all other characteristics are controlled for, exert the most influence on the outcome. You take those influences, assess the observable characteristics of the upcoming game/election, and make predictions of the outcome. With presidential elections, you have very few comparable events to use, while in baseball, you have many. In the former, I would think that you would have to start incorporating patterns in opinion polls (which fluctuate systematically based on various characteristics of world events and their coverage).

The trouble with film is that there aren't the equivalent of polls. Yes, there's test screenings, but those samples are so small and they're just used for minor recuts, not learning about why certain people like certain characteristics of films under certain circumstances. There's too little comparable data to work with. Perhaps the prevalence of remakes, reboots, adaptations is an attempt by producers to use the "data" of those other properties being successful with their suite of characteristics, and making a bet based on that. Its not very systematic, but in a way, I trust it more than I trust anyone who guesses that a film resonated or failed to resonate with the public b/c it was/wasn't successful at the box office and possessed a certain characteristic. That's just guesswork on their parts.

Unoriginality at the multiplex: Franchises are the New "Genres"

Here are some broad trends. I've categorized the top 10 grossing films of several years.

1980: 6 of 10 original, 2 sequels, 2 based on books
1985: 6 original, 2 sequels, 2 based on books
1990: 7 originals, 1 sequel, 2 based on comic books
1995: 5 originals, 4 sequels, 1 based on comic book/cartoon
2000: 7 originals, 1 sequel, 2 based on comic book/cartoon

No interesting trends there. People liked to talk about how Hollywood was infected with "sequelitis," but the numbers don't indicate any significant movement in that direction during those 2 decades. Then something happens in the last decade:

2001: 3 originals, 3 sequels, 2 based on books, 2 remakes
2002: 3 originals, 5 sequels, 1 based on comic book, 1 based on popular musical
2003: 3 originals, 6 sequels, 1 remake
2004: 3 originals, 5 sequels, 2 based on books
2005: 2 originals, 2 sequels, 1 based on book, 4 remakes/reboots
2006: 3 originals, 3 sequels, 1 based on book, 3 remake/reboot
2007: 0 originals!, 6 sequels, 3 based on comic book/cartoon, 1 remake
2008: 3 original, 4 sequels, 2 based on comic book/cartoon, 1 based on book

In many cases, the sequels were sequels of movies that were based on existing properties.

Of course, this is a reflection of what people want to see and what they are presented with. Whether its one or the other is, for the point I'm making, beside the point. I'm claiming that this is not a temporary trend. This is cinema (creators and consumers) obeying a fundamental law of economy. There are other media in which producers can distribute motion pictures to consumers (namely cable TV and the internet). They can also share stories via books, as always. Now, if you were a bank and you were going to fund a major motion picture, which cost 10s of millions of create, distribute, and promote, you would want to be as sure as you could be that the movie would be a hit. An established star is one way to bolster your odds, as is a director or writer with a proven track record of hits. But what about the story or the premise. Ideally, you'd want to be able to test it out for a smaller sum of money. And that's what we're able to do now. When you make a film out of an existing property, be it a cartoon, a novel, or an older film, you attract an audience who believes the film will be similar to the existing property and you have evidence that the story or the premise will resonate w/ people.

Its a little odd that it didn't happen sooner. Why weren't all movies tried as novels first? Maybe b/c some stories would only work on the big screen as spectacle. But now, with the internet and lots more TV channels, you would have to be a bit daft to bankroll an unproven story as a film. Why not make it into a miniseries on TNT or a novel first, see how it does, and retain the motion picture rights?

I would suppose that many cinephiles lament the lack of originality in mainstream cinema (if they care anymore about anythign "mainstream" that is). But are these remakes, reboots and sequels really any less original? Do we judge originality by a title? Couldn't a non-sequel thriller be less original (that is, more similar to its predecessors) than a sequel? I think that this is possible and has been the case in some instances. Really, franchises are the new genres: boundaries within which various artists work.

What to do with CGI films? Are they a genre? There are two companies that dominate - Pixar and Dreamworks. They employ many of the same creative people, use a lot of the same dramatic tropes. More importantly, I feel like audiences treat them more like a series of films and less like a genre. In terms of number and "quality," they are more like movies in a series than films in a genre: there are few and they are of uniform quality.

This is just the top slice of cinema, too. There are plenty of "original" stories lower down the charts, though again, I would question the idea of original. There has evolved a horribly formulaic strain of indie film that, I would argue, are, as a group, no more original by any definition of that term than the bulk of franchise films.

We needn't lament the fact that more hit films aren't fantastically original, the way they were, say, the in 70's. There are still great, original stories being told using moving pictures, but they aren't being told on the big screen. This is what should happen, economically speaking. Cinema no longer holds the same place it did 30 or 40 years ago when it was, essentially, the only place to go for amazing, engaging stories. Once the internet ramps up as a distribution platform for video, cinema will be even less like the cinema of yore. Get over it.

What gets written about in Media Studies?

I just went to a talk about the portrayal of women in shows and movies about the spiritual/supernatural in the late 1990's. Of course, the key text that the scholar was examining was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. the speaker described people's reactions when she told them she was writing about Buffy. Generally, people reacted negatively because so many media scholars (particularly those working in the feminist or cultural studies traditions) write about this one show. This was followed by a justification by the scholar as to why she was writing about this one very-written-about show. It was part of a larger trend that she was examining, it ran for a relatively long time (6 years), and it was fairly popular.

The idea of one show or movie being "better" than another is one that most media scholars, I would expect, would reject. And yet it seems impossible to get away from, because we must write about certain texts and not others. What do we base our selections on?

What we love: My problem with this is it will lead to a few shows/movies being written about a lot while most other shows/movies don't get written about at all. This seems to be happening in film studies. There are a million papers about The Searchers, which isn't a bad thing per se, but shouldn't the number of films that scholars examine and write about be larger? Shouldn't we aspire to examine a diverse set of texts, however one might define diversity? Also, there are plenty of hyper-articulate, passionate, super-smart people who write about texts they love on the internet. They're called fans. Part of the discipline of media scholarship, part of what sets us apart, is our willingness to consider texts that we don't like. Examples: Buffy, The Searchers.

What is popular: I like this strategy, but only if it pertains to films/shows that are popular over a long period of time in multiple cultures, and ideally, independent of the degree to which they were promoted (extra promotion gives some shows/movies an unfair advantage over other shows/movies that would've been just as popular had they had the marketing muscle behind them). If it is desirable to have the deepest knowledge about the greatest number of media experiences, starting with the most popular experiences seems like a good idea. Example: The CSIs and Law & Orders.

What isn't popular: Scholars often take it upon themselves to act as a corrective influence on readers' tastes, trying to counteract the effects of extensive mainstream marketing by "rescuing" lesser known works that are usually aimed at marginalized audiences. This isn't so much about enlarging our collective understanding about how media and culture work as it is about acting is opposition to the private corporate influence on culture. Examples: Stan Brakhage, Queer as Folk, soap operas (yes, I know soaps are "popular" in that they endure much longer than any other text, but it depends on how you look at it. Individual episodes are disposable in the way that news reports are disposable. They don't have a long shelf life).

What did/could/should have an impact on culture: Even if a show wasn't particularly popular, it may have exerted a significant influence on culture or cultural form thereafter. A show like My So-Called Life wasn't very popular when it aired. I doubt that its very popular now (DVD sales and all). And yet its hard to argue with the fact that every teen drama that came after it resembles it in many ways, and that no show that came before it was quite like it. Ditto to Arrested Development, which has spawned a ton of voice-over single camera comedies that might usher out the era of sitcoms (fingers crossed). Its exceptionally difficult to anticipate what shows/movies will have the greatest influence in the future, but if we look back, we can see some unpopular-yet-influential texts. Unfortunately, a lot of scholars try to promote texts they happen to like as highly influential (or possibly influential in the future), but this is just textual boosterism, plain and simple.

Selecting Purely at Random: No one I know of does this, but it strikes me as a good way to go about studying media. If you did it enough, you'd get a pretty good (that is to say, unbiased) sample of all media. Thus, the conclusions you drew about the texts you happened to look at would be generalizable to a much larger portion of all media than any other selection technique. I was going through old TV Guides for some research and kept seeing shows that I knew no scholar or fan was ever going to write about, and this seemed like a shame to me. Again, if we want to form larger theories about how media works, we should broaden our horizons to include texts that don't fit into any of the above categories: the truly mundane texts.

Some texts can fit into more than one of these categories. My next project: taking a survey of texts written about in scholarly journals and those written about on blogs, to see what categories and texts we've got covered and which ones need covering.

The Politics of the Dark Knight

The Dark Knight is, in many ways, the ideal movie to blog about. Its complex, so complex that I'm sure I missed a few things. After seeing it a second time, I still wasn't sure whether The Joker, when he was informing Batman of the Harvey Dent/Rachael Dawes hostage situation, told Batman who was at which address. My friend and I had conflicting memories about this, and I heard a reporter from Slate say that Batman had intended to save Harvey when I'm 90% sure he said he was going to save Rachael (though who can tell w/ that ridiculously gruff voice!). You can pause and review a DVD, but not theater flick, so we're left with the collective memory of the blogosphere to get everything straight.

But more than facts, its the meaning of The Dark Knight that needs unpacking and debating, specifically the political meaning. I'm reminded of why outlandish fiction (particularly sci-fi and comic books movies which, in some ways, have taken over sci-fi's domain in the past 5 years) can work so much better as a way of talking through issues of the day than more literal historical fiction like that rash of Iraq war movies from the last year. Even a movie I adore, The Lives of Others, is ill-suited to really dig into the philosophical and moral issues around surveillance in an impartial way. We know who to side with - those fighting the Stasi. Similarly, we know to side against the US administration and with the hapless, brave soldiers in most movies about 'nam or Iraq.

It would be very easy to read The Dark Knight as an allegory for post 9/11 America, though we don't have to read it that way. In fact, I think its a great way to think about a hypothetical world with hypothetical heroes and villains that our world might come to resemble in the future, in which case we should think about how we would act in those situations.

Being a Role Model: Batman wanted to be a symbol of good actions, so that if he died, there would be others who would take his place to step up and do the right thing. Trouble is a lot of those people bastardize that good symbol and put their own spin on it. To them, its OK for Batman to carry a gun, and b/c they're not mega-millionaires with military R&D people working for them, they don't have much choice but to carry guns and wear hockey pads. Then there's the matter of inspiring madmen like the Joker/terrorists, but its tough to say that Batman's hubris and his clones created The Joker, just as it would be tough to say that any given culture or Cowboy president created terrorists, though its to their advantage to make you think that.

Surveillance: In real world "prisoner's dilemma" situations, the best course of action is to try as hard as you can to find a third option. Its Batman's use of illicit surveillance that resolves the prisoner's dilemma on the two ferries. Thanks to the cell phones as cameras, he's able to track down the Joker before he throws the switch and kills the people on the two ferries who, in a strictly Utilitarian sense, made the wrong decision not to kill each other. There are two significant things about that cell-phone scene in the Bat lab: Lucius Fox objects to the surveillance on moral grounds, and even though he capitulates, the fact that he objected makes it more thought provoking than if the scene were just passed off as cool gadgetry (Bond, anyone?). And before we jump to making the obligatory Orwellian metaphor, its worth noting that the civilians do not know they're being spied upon. When people know they're being spied on by their leaders, it can have a chilling effect on their behavior. But if they don't know, well then, is there any harm? This leads us to the next moral dilemma.

Lying to the Public: Bruce has trouble with this one at first, wanting to come out and tell the world he's been living a lie, coming clean and telling them that he's Batman. He wants crime to be fought by a public figure - Harvey Dent (Obama to Bruce's Bush? Just a thought). Alfred insists that there needs to be someone who does the dirty work, who makes decisions that he knows are unpopular and probably illegal. The solution? Do those deeds but invent a persona that is distanced from you that can take the public's disapproval. At first, its just Bruce's reputation that needs to be kept clean. In the end, of course, its Harvey's. But all of this assumes that the public simply can't handle the fact that a good person - Harvey Dent - did some really bad things. Knowing this would make them lose all faith in themselves. Is this true? What if we found evidence that MLK shot a bunch of people in an insane revenge seeking fit? Interesting question, but I really find it shocking that any movie would say that the answer is that the public can't handle the truth. What are we, children?

Killing people: I would argue that b/c Batman cannot kill anyone, even his arch nemesis, he has to commit other sins against the freedom of the people he protects. Sometimes, martyrs for non-violence don't get assassinated. Sometimes they live long enough to have to make some unpopular decisions, to see themselves become villains.

So what does the movie really say about any of these? I think it leaves a lot of questions open to debate. If the movie has a moral voice, it is not that of Bruce Wayne but that of Alfred. Bruce eventually comes around to Alfred's "things have to get worse before they get better" philosophy, which is oddly similar to Ra's Al Ghul's, the villain from Batman Begins. Something about the way in which Alfred and his message is presented makes it seem authoritative in a way that Bruce isn't. Bruce, like the audience, is trying to work through difficult real-world moral dilemmas, whereas Alfred seems to have it all figured out from his years of experience.

Still, I'm not convinced that if we are to call Alfred's version of reality a bit...right wing that we must dislike or dismiss the movie if we do not share those values. It reminds me of one of the most praised films of all time - The Searchers. From what I understand, critics love that movie b/c the morality it apparently presents in the end (lunatic racist hyper-macho psychopath hero decides to reform for no reason at the last minute) shows how ridiculous traditional Hollywood Western morality (and, by association, the morality of 1950's America) really is. You could read the end of The Dark Knight the same way. Its holding up a mirror to our political culture. We're scared of people we think just want to watch the world burn (maybe you think its terrorists, maybe you think its Cheney/Bush/corporations). We want a knight in shining armor, but sooner or later, that knight has to do some things that aren't going to look so good to others. In order to maintain power in this democratic culture that values popularity above all else, the knight has to hide his or her dirty work and maintain a nice face for children and the ignorant masses. At least that's my reading. What's yours?

Superhero Movies - More Diverse Than You Think

At the risk of using a classic snowclone, Superhero (or comic book) movies are the new Westerns. What I mean is that the genre is both popular and diverse enough to be regarded as a venue for working through our collective philosophical and psychological issues.

Other genres (horror, melodrama, comedy) also hold up a mirror to our collective psyches, but not in the way that the Big movies do. The lesser genres show us what we want - morally, aesthetically, emotionally - but only part of what some of us want. The dominant genre of the time, be it Westerns, gangster movies, or superhero flicks, reflects most of what most of us want. I would consider comparing gangster movies and TV shows to Westerns, if you were to say that Westerns were more of a way of defining masculinity. But I think Westerns, in their time, were bigger than gangster films/shows like The Sopranos, Godfather, Goodfellas, and Scarface are today.

No one would doubt that superhero tales are quite popular, more popular in the last 5 years than ever before and more popular than any other type of film with the possible exception of talking-animal-CGI films. If you were keen on making an older comparison, you could liken them to myths or fairy tails, other dominant genres of their times. But what about my claim that the genre is diverse?

Enter The Dark Knight, in some sense a synthesis of the superhero movie and the gangster flick. And yes, I know Batman isn't technically a superhero because he doesn't have superpowers. But genres and classification aren't defined that way. They're defined by the language we use to refer to the texts, by marketers, vendors, critics, and fans. And I'm willing to assume that most of them would classify this as a superhero blockbuster film. While watching it, I couldn't help but compare it to another superhero blockbuster - Iron Man. These films came out in the same year, they're of the same genre, I'm willing to wager they make roughly the same money (they're as popular as one another), and, significantly, they have almost the same amount of critical acclaim (79 for Iron Man on metacritic, to Dark Knight's 82).

If we were going to plop down $15 to see the Dark Knight on the Imax, maybe we'd like to have a good idea of what we're in for. Ads are of no service here, as they remain startlingly homogeneous. They have to. Ads have to appeal to the largest group possible, even if they have to misrepresent their product, which they frequently do. Ads for Iron Man, Hancock, and Dark Knight look pretty similar to one another - lots of action, some ironic wit, good-looking wounded-yet-rough men, sexy women. To take Dark Knight as an example, its interesting to note that almost all of the clips in the many previews come from the first 2/3 of the movie (which, in my opinion, are the least interesting part of the movie, certainly not as morally complex as the last third). So ads are not a good indicator of content.

What about critics? Shouldn't critics be the corrective to misleading advertising? Well, it depends on how much you bother to read. If you're just looking for general thumbs-up-thumbs-down assessment, as most people are, then the critics are of no use. Yes, all of the critics like both movies, but I have a tough time believing that the public will like both movies equally. One is pretty frothy and fun, the other is pitch black and quite complex. If you dig a little deeper and read the reviews, you can see that most critics recognize these differences. Its important to say that I do not think critics should've praised Iron Man, damned Dark Knight, or vice-versa. But to fail to acknowledge the stark differences between these movies, as thumbs-up-thumbs-down reviewing does, seems to indicate that there's something wrong with that kind of popular film criticism.

Let's go over some of the differences:

Humor: the humor in Iron Man relies primarily on understatement - the hero reacts to a huge explosion with raised eyebrows. There are plenty of catchphrases and instances of Tony Stark reacting in more laid-back fashion than the situation dictates. In the Dark Knight, the humor is more dry and British, quicker and, depending on your taste for these things, either clever or too clever. There's more gallows humor as one would expect with the Joker (here's hoping that Heath Ledger's death doesn't totally overwhelm critical appraisal of this film).

Romance subplot: While both protagonists are playboys, Tony Stark gets the girl in the end while Bruce Wayne is left to brood over a dead lover. Not exactly a minor difference in terms of tone.

Morality: Iron Man dabbles with moral complexity, casting a reformed arms dealer as hero (who ultimately ends up using weapons he designed to kill bad guys, much like the military does). The Dark Knight, on the other hand, had scene after scene in which characters were made to ask themselves (and the audience) tough moral questions: is it ever moral to kill large numbers of people? Is it okay to lie to the public in order to maintain order? Is it okay to survey the public without their knowing? Does using force against the enemy breed more insidious, amoral enemies? Can we delegate the killing that our situation demands to superheroes (read: soldiers) because we can't do what needs to be done? The film was practically an ethics class.

There's one scene that really brings home the dissimilarity. At the end of Iron Man, Tony Stark holds a press conference and announces that he is Iron Man. The scene is subversive, in that it goes against what we know about superheroes: they like to keep their true identity a secret. In The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent calls a press conference and announces that he is Batman (when we know that he's not). Iron Man is content with a few double crosses here and there but doesn't want to confuse the audience with too many. The Dark Knight assumes the audience can maintain an understanding of character motivation even when there are many, many more double crosses.

If there's anything to learn from this, it is that looking at who wrote and directed the movie might be a better indicator than any as to what the film will be like, lending credence to the beleaguered auteur theory. I think that auteur theory is imperfect in that it fails to recognize the fact that creators could create something especially similar to other creators' works and dissimilar to their own previous work. This happens plenty, and the good critic can recognize it.

So, what are the recurring authorial themes? Right away, there's identity. In the first two scenes, the Nolans play with our expectations of who's who, just as they did with the twins in The Prestige, the hero/villain of Memento, and superhero-as-symbol-transcending -individual concept in Batman Begins. They take the idea of superhero's symbolic power being more important than their individual identity to a new level by making a mockery of the personal-history-as-destiny concept. The Joker tells a couple of different versions of how he got to be as fucked up as he is, and none of them is the truth. Each version suits his situation. This film deals far more with moral, political, social, and philosophical issues than psychological or personal ones. Another point of difference from some comic book heroes (Hulk) but not terribly different than others (Spiderman).

And for those of you who think web criticism doesn't matter, check out this article from Slate. Be advised that the article never claims that critics cause a movie to be popular. Only that they are able to anticipate the popularity of a movie better than non-experts and better than chance. Surely, some critics exert some effect on the popularity of a movie (probably the ones who have been especially good at predicting how much the public will like it). Anyway, if critics learn to write from the point of view of the experienced expert and not from the point of view of the cultural elitist, then they will be valued widely. As long as they assume that their job is to say what is good and what is bad, what is art and what is trash, instead of being able to distill the differences of films and be able to present those differences in a way that consumers can make decisions based on them, they'll be writing for just another niche.

3 Ways to Define Good Cinema: Box Office, AFI, and IMDB

As the subjective coronation that is the Academy Award for Best Picture approaches, its interesting to compare a few gauges of public and critical enjoyment: AFI's top 100 (critics), Box Office revenue adjusted for inflation (public), and IMDB's top 250 (a certain segment of the public). If nothing else, a comparison might give us some clue as to what kind of sample of the public IMDB users are. Also, it might give us some indication of differences between public and critical perception of films.

What the lists have in common
Amazingly, Star Wars is on all three lists (#2 B.O., 15 AFI, and 11 IMDB). My personal opinion on this film is that the acting and dialog are awful and the special effects haven't aged well. Still, the themes resonate across time and cultures, the story is well constructed, and its a good mix of humor, romance, action, and philosophy. The Godfather just misses being in the top 20 on all lists (21 B.O., 2 AFI, 1 IMDB). Just as I'm surprised that so many critics like Star Wars, I'm shocked that The Godfather, with its European art cinema tendencies, is as popular as it is. I wonder if this film is a lot more popular with men than with women. Might that also be true of Star Wars? If that's so, then the male bias in movies isn't just coming from the critics or IMDB users. Its coming from paying customers. And yet, there are plenty of women who consume media. Historically, were they (and are they still) not making the decision as to what films to go see? Might this change in the future? Are TV and books more women's media than film and video games?

What they don't have in common
Gone with the Wind is #1 in Box Office, #6 with the critics, but its nowhere to be found on the IMDB site. IMDB definately has a bias towards newer films while AFI skews much older. The average age of a film in the IMDB top 20 is 30 years, while the average age of AFI's top 20 is 50(!). The average age of the top 20 box office hits is 38.

Casablanca is 3 on the AFI, 9 on IMDB, and nowhere to be seen on box office. Could it be that the general public didn't or wouldn't really like this movie as much as the critics or the semi-elite users of IMDB? Possibly, or maybe Casablanca was never promoted properly in the theater or re-released widely. Perhaps its stature grew over time. Perhaps all of these things account for the discrepancy.

E.T. is the 4th highest grossing film of all time, and rates a reasonable 24 on the AFI list, but is nowhere to be found on IMDB's 250. The critic/public hybrid represented by IMDB seems to be more testosterone heavy than either the general public or the critics. IMDB's top 20 is packed with men and violence. E.T. is a bit schmaltzy and certainly isn't very high in testosterone. This male (presumably young male) skew is a big reason why IMDB should not be confused with public or critical praise, but more likely represents, on average, the desires of young male Americans.

The Empire Strikes Back is 12 on all-time BO, 8 on IMDB, and its left off of the AFI list. I've always felt that Empire is vastly superior to Star Wars in every way: acting, cinematography, character development, pacing. The Joseph Campbell mythic themes that made the first one great are still there, too. The only reason I can think that AFI found Star Wars so superior to Empire is the former's cultural and economic significance, which is weird b/c they have no problem putting films that didn't exactly change cinema or the public consciousness (The Searchers, for example).

Critical godhead Citizen Kane (the Stairway to Heaven of movies, as it were) sits atop the AFI list. Only 3 films stayed in the same spot from the 1998 top 100 AFI list to the 2007 list, and this was one of them. IMDB rates it a respectable 24, and of course, its not on the box office list. I wonder if this were re-released and promoted heavily, would the public show up? Would they like it? Would they get what the big deal was about this movie? I kinda doubt it. Again, maybe critics are rating this movie highly for being innovative, in terms of style (depth of field), story, and themes. Sure, its still a good story, and the look of the film, the acting, and the dialog still hold up reasonably well, but I think the critics are mostly rating it so highly for its influence on subsequent movies (and the IMDB folks are probably acting like critics on this one). Ditto to Wizard of Oz (10 on AFI, 110 on IMDB, nothing on BO).

The Searchers, considered by many to be the apotheosis of a critics movie, is number 12 on the AFI list, 241 on IMDB, and nowhere on box office. What's most interesting is that on the 1998 edition of AFI's top 100 list, this film was 96(!!!). What the hell happened in those 10 years? Other big jumpers include Vertigo (52 spots) and City Lights (65 spots to 11).

Many films (Psycho, Schindler's List, Vertigo, Dr. Strangelove, Lawrence of Arabia to name a few) are higher on AFI's list than IMDB by 20-50 spots, but that's not really that much of a discrepancy. They both think the film is great. But none of these films grosses all that much $. Unsurprisingly, epics do better on the box office list, probably b/c they play well on big screens and are heavily promoted to recoup high costs of production (both of which critics and IMDB users don't seem to care about). Sequels and films based on existing properties do better on the box office list, too, for obvious reasons.

So, what lesson can we draw from this brief comparison? I think we should pay more attention to IMDB and AFI for a few reasons: big screens won't really account for that much huge revenue in the future. Only 3 out of the top 20 films of all time were released during the home video (VHS/DVD) era. Back when theatrical release was the only revenue stream for film, they made them so that they would play well on the big screen. AFI and IMDB lists are made by people watching films that were made during that era and the era of home video, so I don't think they'd have this big screen historical bias that the box office list has. Presumably, home video, with its smaller screens, isn't going away. It would help to have a list of top 100 grossing films in all formats (theatrical, VHS, DVD, online, TV, etc). The same is true for repeated viewings: critics and IMDB users have time to pour over films again and again, so that might be a better indication of what people would really like, instead of what they've been told to like by marketers.

On a similar note, I think that in the future, promotion won't influence film revenue the way it has in the past. The long tail economy of the internet will allow good films to rise to the top over time. For these reasons, the top box office list might look more and more antiquated as the years go by. I think that the critics list are just as prone to cultural elitism bias as ever, but there also needs to be a way to track audience desire that can factor out the effects of marketing. Maybe that's what truly "good" criticism can do.

Box Office adjusted for inflation:

1	Gone with the Wind
2	Star Wars
3	The Sound of Music
4	E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
5	The Ten Commandments
6	Titanic
7	Jaws
8	Doctor Zhivago
9	The Exorcist
10	Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
11	101 Dalmatians
12	The Empire Strikes Back
13	Ben-Hur
14	Return of the Jedi
15	The Sting
16	Raiders of the Lost Ark
17	Jurassic Park
18	The Graduate
19	Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
20	Fantasia

AFI:

1	Citizen Kane	1941
2	Casablanca	1942
3	The Godfather	1972
4	Gone with the Wind	1939
5	Lawrence of Arabia	1962
6	The Wizard of Oz	1939
7	The Graduate	1967
8	On the Waterfront	1954
9	Schindler's List	1993
10	Singin' in the Rain	1952
11	It's a Wonderful Life	1946
12	Sunset Boulevard	1950
13	The Bridge on the River Kwai	1957
14	Some Like It Hot	1959
15	Star Wars	1977
16	All About Eve	1950
17	The African Queen	1951
18	Psycho	1960
19	Chinatown	1974
20	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest	1975

IMDB

1.	9.1	The Godfather (1972)	263,716
2.	9.1	The Shawshank Redemption (1994)	311,972
3.	9.0	The Godfather: Part II (1974)	151,051
4.	8.9	Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Il (1966)	85,867
5.	8.8	Pulp Fiction (1994)	267,773
6.	8.8	Schindler's List (1993)	179,754
7.	8.8	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)	134,305
8.	8.8	Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)	189,692
9.	8.8	Casablanca (1942)	117,857
10.	8.8	Shichinin no samurai (1954)	65,877
11.	8.8	Star Wars (1977)	229,423
12.	8.8	The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)	239,837
13.	8.7	12 Angry Men (1957)	63,122
14.	8.7	Rear Window (1954)	77,927
15.	8.7	Goodfellas (1990)	145,925
16.	8.7	Cidade de Deus (2002)	90,867
17.	8.7	Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)	162,612
18.	8.7	The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)	273,337
19.	8.7	C'era una volta il West (1968)	43,490
20.	8.7	The Usual Suspects (1995)	184,812

Most Favorite Media Vs. Most Popular Media

One of the many things I love about YouTube is the function that allows the viewer to see what the most watched videos are AND what the top favorite videos are. That's an important distinction that box office figures and Nielsen ratings don't make.

Even the "favorite" function on YouTube leaves something to be desired, since marking a video as your favorite isn't that exact an indication of one's adoration of the video. I've marked some videos that I found mildly interesting as favorites, and others that I've gone back and watched over and over again. There's no ranking feature within favorites (yet).

If you could see how people rank their favorite videos, movies, books, TV shows, that would really tell you something that initial revenue or viewer #s wouldn't, namely: how much a person would be likely to pay to own the media text in question, or shell out for a sequel or another text made by the author of the text; how deeply influenced the individual is, in terms of their values, by the text.

From some evidence I've gathered (an audience study I ran as an MA at UTexas; conversations with undergrads I taught at Emerson), Fight Club is among young people's favorite movies. And yet this film didn't do so well at the box office. A more extreme example of this is Donnie Darko, which tanked upon its initial release, yet seems to have quite a following. The DVD sales numbers indicate that these films have more of a following than initial #s would indicate (the same is true of ratings challenged TV shows that do well on DVD), but even that is an imperfect gauge of how much people really love something. The thing is, we've got the technology to tell what media texts really resonate with people right now - you can see the Top Favorites in various social networks on Facebook.

So, let's say your a TV exec. One show does really well in the ratings, but its not on any of the top favorite lists in any social network on Facebook. Another show has mediocre ratings, but is featured in many of the Top Favorite lists. You've got the opportunity to create a spinoff of both shows. In a world where TV execs are beholden to Nielsen ratings, you definitely go with the first one. Its entirely possible, maybe even probable, that the spinoff of this highly rated show won't do well b/c the fan base of that show was probably watching it not b/c of any inherent quality, but b/c it happened to be popular. They'd be just as likely to migrate to any other new show (probably whichever show was on during a time slot that appealed to them, or whichever show was most heavily promoted) as they would be to watch the spinoff. The fans of the highly favorited show would be much more likely to watch its spinoff, and maybe more likely to preach the gospel of how good the shows are, acting like an unpaid viral marketing team.

Bottom line: the technology to gauge fan passion exists. Even beyond Top Favorite lists, you can see how many people wrote lengthy positive reviews of something, etc. Its time to start paying attention to this, not just b/c you want to know what movies, TV shows, etc people will like in the future, but b/c you care about what media influences people's lives. The idea for this blog hit me when I thought: "which movie resonated more with people, and arguably shaped the philosophy and actions of its viewers: Fight Club or Norbit?" If you go by box office revenue, Norbit was 3 times more influential than Fight Club.

Why Screenwriters Get No Respect, and How They Can Get It

Listening to this interview with Akiva Goldsman on The Business rekindled my interest in the status of screenwriters. We all know that screenwriters are treated like shit in Hollywood. They're typically not well known and not well paid. I've always thought of the screenwriters as the primary authors of films. Yes, I know that directors and cinematographers shape the look of the film, that producers' tastes are the only reason the screenplay gets made into a film, and that movie stars bring certain cultural cache that affects the interpretations of the audience and helps films get made. I've come to value all the input of every creative person who works in the industry. I firmly believe that every one of them has some impact on how a film is received, and that if even one of those elements is out of place, a film that could've been great would turn out to be awful. But still, the appeal of Hollywood films is less about lighting, acting, and even subject matter. Its about a well-told story. Its still my contention that everything else can only either augment or detract from the core emotions and ideas that are in the screenplay. As they say: the story's the thing.

Then why aren't writers more well known and paid more $? It has something to do with how many there are of them and how quickly they can be shifted from picture to picture. Goldsman points out that everyone piece of the cinematic division of labor pretty much stays put during production. It would be unthinkable to go through 10 wardrobe people during a film, but completely normal to go through 10 writers.

A less extreme version of the infinite monkey theorum applies here, and while I'm not quite calling screenwriters 'monkeys,' I am saying that they're partially responsible for their low status in Hollywood. Part of the reason that everyone has a screenplay (and not everybody is a budding cinematographer) is b/c the tools of the trade - paper and pen - are pretty damn cheap. As digital production and distribution costs fall, maybe they'll be the kind of glut of talent in other realms of filmmaking, but still, it seems like writing will always have this edge.

How are screenwriters responsible for their lowly status? I think that they have a certain view of writing and are unwilling to depart from it.

My theory is that screenwriters are:

A) too married to their work. So when a producer asks them to change something in the script b/c it doesn't test well or b/c the producer has done many films like this and "knows the audience," the screenwriter refuses, and is summarily replaced. They don't think about the finished screenplay as something that can be radically altered after it has been completed, by them or by anyone else. The economics or production and distribution necessitates that work be seen this way. Producers can't know exactly how a film is going to play from looking at a treatment. Screenplays are like theories, and the process of bringing one to the screen involves various little experiments, each of which either confirm or deny the effectiveness of the film. If its denied, you don't just give up. You retain some elements and introduce new ones. You revise. Sure, the producer is a false proxy for the audience, but still, he's more detached and experienced than most screenwriters.

B) too into the idea that storytelling is an art and not a craft, and that the spirit that moves one to write and the place where the ideas come from cannot be pinned down. Either you got it or you don't. It comes from the soul, and the worst thing you could possibly do is to compare writing to a science (like I just did).

The theory I offer here is a self-serving one (but that doesn't make it wrong). I want to teach visual storytelling, therefore I'd love it if writers looked at screenwriting as more of a teachable craft and less of a "you got it or you don't" kind of art.

Maybe that's true, and maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree. But there seems to be some evidence to the contrary. If you look at the most successful screenwriters, a good number of them have read screenplay manuals (which are imperfect for reasons I'll explain), have gone to film school, or generally see writing as (at least partially) a teachable craft. If good writing really "came from the soul" and not the textbook, then wouldn't all successful writers not have read any screenplay manuals or taken one screenwriting class? I'll readily concede that plenty of great writers aren't taught but born, but the amalgam of taught/born writers suggests that there's something about writing you can teach. And I think part of the reason more great writers haven't been taught is b/c they're not teaching in the right way. Manuals provide a hard-and-fast formula, when really its an ever-mutating process that is (like pretty much every phenomena in the world) better known through a combination of ongoing experiments and classic books . So, if Hollywood continues to run this way (at least partially), how long can screenwriters keep preaching the gospel of the gut and scratching their heads at why they can't get any respect?

Also note that writing screenplays in the revisable, experimental mode isn't antithetical to creativity. Someone has to come up with the ideas to try, and the best screenwriters will still be the ones with the deepest wells of creativity, the "biggest guts."

If they did change the way they thought about screenwriting, then maybe the hierarchy would change a bit. Maybe a flexible writer would stay put on a film longer, or collaborate with a producer or studio longer. Its in the best interests of producers to collaborate with known entities. The business isn't out to screw writers. They just want them to be a bit more flexible.

Thanks a Lot

The first ep of Fox's new reality series On The Lot started off virtually indistinguishable from pilots of other competition reality shows - "confessional" interviews, meltdowns, triumphs, and tragedies. Things got a bit more interesting in the second episode. The format is true to the American/Pop Idol template, but its clear that there will be more controversial debates than the ones over song choice and pitchiness.

The first controversy: is this guy's film exploiting the mentally challenged? Hopefully the judges' comments (and the obvious discrepency between their perception and the will of the audience) will ignite the honest conversation we need to have about laughing at freaks (explored in depth in this earlier post). Its too simplistic to say that the Hollywood judges are too politically correct for the masses, but I can't help but wonder what the discrepancy between the judges' and the audience's opinions (not to mention that the judges harp on the fact that there aren't enough female directors in Hollywood, and the voting audience doesn't seem to care) says about who is really offended by anything on television.

Isn't there something vaguely paternalistic about the news media determining what is offensive and what isn't offensive? How many careers would've bit the dust over the past year if it had been put to a vote? The new visibility of the lives of the famous makes every little slip up a career-ender, but there are two things that might counter that: the ever-shrinking duration of the news cycle, and the democratizing effect on what is deemed offensive. There's an entire generation growing up thinking that they can get away with broadcasting racist rants online. We can keep them off TV, but when you can reach billions of people online, who needs TV? Is it any wonder that one of the most enduring TV comedies of the internet era is one of its most uniformly offensive? To quote Mr. Politically Correct himself (Kramer): "People, they want to watch freaks!"

Between the fact that the key demographic is an audience weened on YouTube video shorts that tend to be more sensational and offensive than anything on TV, and the fact that a vicious "vote for the worst" campaign could do serious damage in light of the low ratings, we might see films that give new meaning to the term "lowest common denominator." Would Spielberg have to give the Fred Durst of filmmaking a development deal at Dreamworks? Considering the fact that the real Fred Durst already has such a deal, it doesn't seem too far-fetched.

Somethings - television and music - seem ideally suited to the pseudo-democratic system that American Idol employs. Other endeavors - fashion and interior design - are not, and so we defer to a panel of experts. Where does film fit into this? On The Lot is taking place at a time where film, once a populist medium, is becoming a more and more elite medium, with internet taking the bottom rung on the ladder and TV moving up a notch. Filmmakers, like fashion designers, are the tastemakers. Its an expensive, top-down medium.

Speaking of beloved mentally challenged characters, this guy always seemed a little slow to me. And he's a professor!