Arts: Movies: Presbyterian layman, entrepreneur couples tech-innovtn to public morals, impacts Hollywood

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Originally published May5,2k6
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In a h+ly-slanted news article which nevertheless is chock full of factoids new to me, Justin Clark of Nerve.com (pornwarn!), writing in AlterNet's MediaCulture series recounts in his way the story of Philip Anschutz, a Presbyterian layman who had an idea about the sad state of movies and how to manoeuvre investments to find a toehold where distributors at the retail end and closest to consumers (we're talkiing movie theatres here) were going belly-up across the USA. They no longer attracted customers eager for their wares.

Anschutz developed a business plan to make his investment in dying movie houses produce a return that would permit innovation to win back audiences. Part of his plan was sheer ad-consciousness: he innovated the 20-minute pre-movie commercial ad-package which has now become standard in theatres that want to stay alive. He also innovated with the use of h+tech fibre-optic cables to deliver digitally the movie to the Big Screen.

All this turned on ins+t into the product that Hollywood was and is still relentlessly delivering to addle the brain and morals of American society. Despite reporter-opinionist Clark's anti-Abschutz bias, we can distill some important factoids about Hollywood's failure to love its audience:

In 2005, PG-rated films outperformed R-rated films in the theater for the first time in two decades. Conservatives have touted weak theater attendance as proof that the heartland isn't interested in Hollywood's licentiousness and liberal politics. Dove Foundation, non-profit advocates of "wholesome family entertainment", published a study showing that G-rated movies are eleven times more profitable than R-rated flicks. ... Although Hollywood didn't heed Dove Foundation's advice in 2005 -- the key Oscar nominations were all low-grossing films that are very political -- studios have begun looking into releasing PG versions of their R-rated fare, an innovation made possible by the advent of digital cinema. The double release would allow theaters to play the cleaner version during more lucrative screening times earlier in the day, and the director's cut later on. ...[T]here is no shortage of screenwriters willing to lend Hollywood's product a cleaner sensibility. In December, Atlantic Monthly reported on Christian screenwriting school Act One, whose faculty includes producers and writers from mainstream shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and That '70s Show. In 2004, conservatives launched Liberty Film Festival; last October the festival included a panel discussion titled, "Was Communism a Threat to Hollywood?"

That last tag-on comment by Clark is revealing of his prejudices, and its worth dwelling on a moment. The key idea is expressed in Clark's earlier comment: "What's good for the theater lobby isn't necessarily good for those of us who don't want our entertainment censored." Censored? What about the much larger group of people who have been subjected to last-stage Hollywoodism that prevents going to the movies with the kids, or has discouraged so many of us that we've broken our habit of customing the movie theatres entirely? Clark is simply and simplistically tendentious in regard to who is ceonsoring whom. Clark resents that a Christian force has gained sufficeint cultural power at present (it may not last long) to offer movies to famlies who want to bring the kids along (and not necessarily to "kids movies," rather to non-offensive films that offer drama and/or entertainment values that many adults find worthwhile, whether the kids are with them or not).

Hollywoodism is still entrenched; but it's got some competition; Clark wants to paint this cultural competition as monopolistic, censorious, sectarian (that's why he keeps referring to denominations of people in the industry of whom he doesn't approve); but the new pluralism in the industry has actually none of the characteristics he ascribes to it. Clark can't fathom cultural pluralism. Too bad. I welcome the development as quite a healthy one for American culture. But it's still a small minority presence in the overall structure of the demoralizing-industrial complex that is the movies these days, an industry which is still stacked against Christian cultural competition. It doesn't mean either that films focussed on difficult subject matter won't emerge from the newly-rising competition; but a space will be opened for adventurous new approaches and kinds of stories.

Snarky Clark adds, "Perhaps the more pressing question: is Hollywood ready to compensate exhibitors by eschewing edgy politics for movies with a built-in audience?" So, it is "edgy politics" he wants more than anything else. Yet, already Holltywoodism has contributed to making everything political, ideological, propagandistic, and "correct" - especially in the hypersexualization of children, the amoralist treatment of relationships, the inablity to portray tragedy without swerving into nihilism.

Were Clark capable of a bit more cultural honesty, he would acknowledge candidly that there are many built-in audiences for various American movies. It's really hard to deny that Brokeback Mountain had a built-in audience; and altho, I'm happy it was made and distributed, it certainly was a letdown as an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. That kind of eventuality simply devalues the Oscars. But apprently an even worse movie won - it's winning feature being that it dumped on the public the by-far-largest count of curse words in movie history. As one movie wag told me, that was the flick's only redeeming feature. A childish overindulgence in Gross-Out, to which only a small fraction of the movie-going public is addicted, altho Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe may come close.

Thanks, Mr Anschutz for the possiblity of alternatives to Mr Clark's cinema fetishes. - Politicarp

Further resource:
Roger Ebert's Movie Glossary