For the love of movies: The Past, Present, and Future of Cinema and what makes us fans (1 Viewer)

[Winston T. Boogie]

He also said he is going to make one more film before he hits 60, or his next film isn't happening.

Well, if he sticks to his word, it aint happening (he's 59).

Yes, it is self-imposed so up to him if he wants to stick to that. To me I think the thing with Tarantino is all his pictures emerge from some grand inspiration he has had. So, for him to create the next one, something will need to inspire him to do so.

While Maher is not much for talking about kids, there is a moment or two in the drunkfest where Tarantino does seem to be expressing he is enjoying fatherhood. As a filmmaker, I always saw Tarantino as a selfish and self-obsessed guy. I don't mean that as a knock but rather as something that defined how he made his films and so contributed to his art.

Fatherhood is pretty much the opposite of that. It is about understanding your value as someone that cares for and gives to others with your entire being. It is the opposite of selfish and self-obsessed. A selfish and self-obsessed person would be perfect for making revenge pictures because revenge is a selfish and self-obsessed thing. It is about quenching your overwhelming desire.

Maybe, as a dad, as a person whose legacy is now another person, he might not be the same guy that wanted to delve so deeply into revenge stories. There is more to life and more to write about it.

 

[TravisR]

I think he may have done his best directing work with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. So, to me when a guy seems to have done his best work, I get excited to see how he will follow it up. Of course, the flipside to that is the guy may sit there wondering "How do I follow that up?"

Yeah, I think the idea of following up what he must feel is a great movie (I'm comfortable saying it's his best) and the expectations of his "grand finale" must make actually coming up with one more a really tough prospect so a longer than his normal 3 or 4 years between movies is likely.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Yeah, I think the idea of following up what he must feel is a great movie (I'm comfortable saying it's his best) and the expectations of his "grand finale" must make actually coming up with one more a really tough prospect so a longer than his normal 3 or 4 years between movies is likely.

Yeah, I think Tarantino is a Paul Masson guy and will sell no wine before its time. I hope he makes another film as I enjoy his work. I doubt it happens in the next year or two though.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

And in case anyone did not catch my Paul Masson joke, here is drunk Orson as a tribute to drunk Quentin in the Bill Maher interview...



I always wondered how the guy and the woman at the table never start laughing. I would have fallen out of my chair laughing at Orson doing that.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

So, here is a look at the future of cinema/content at one of the major producers of film and TV. I am bringing this up not as a political topic, as that is not the aspect of it that bothers me. It really disturbs me in terms of creativity. This is the rule, in writing, that you must make whatever you write conform to a certain set of rules. Meaning, do not be creative and write what is in your imagination...make your imagination conform to these rules or, your project does not get made. Or someone else will rewrite your project so it does conform to these rules.

If you tell someone, write whatever you want as long as it follows these rules, well...you have stifled their creativity. A sure sign you will get a "compromised product" rather than a work of art. If that really matters at this point to people.

While I am for inclusivity, I am not for telling creative people what they must do and giving them rules to follow.

And look, I know this has been going on in cinema for the last 25 years so, it is not new. They have been telling creative people, change this character, make this character this sex, or that orientation, or whatever. However, I don't think it makes for good filmmaking and it certainly destroys what a writer would be setting out to do.

So, here's the memo if you did not get it...

To establish inclusion standards across all Disney General Entertainment content.

By 2022, 50% of regular and recurring characters across Disney General Entertainment scripted content will come from underrepresented groups.

Reimagine Tomorrow - Disney shares commitments towards diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Learn more about Disney’s goals and investments around diversity, equity, and inclusion.

reimaginetomorrow.disney.com

So, that's that. Write the characters the way we tell you to write them or you don't write for us. Why do you need a writer for this? Just have a computer program spit out the scripts. I mean if you just throw a number on it, 50% of the characters have to be a specific thing, then just do it via a computer program. Scrap creative and ramp up the assembly line.

 

[TravisR]

So, here is a look at the future of cinema/content at one of the major producers of film and TV. I am bringing this up not as a political topic, as that is not the aspect of it that bothers me. It really disturbs me in terms of creativity. This is the rule, in writing, that you must make whatever you write conform to a certain set of rules. Meaning, do not be creative and write what is in your imagination...make your imagination conform to these rules or, your project does not get made. Or someone else will rewrite your project so it does conform to these rules.

If you tell someone, write whatever you want as long as it follows these rules, well...you have stifled their creativity. A sure sign you will get a "compromised product" rather than a work of art. If that really matters at this point to people.

While I am for inclusivity, I am not for telling creative people what they must do and giving them rules to follow.

And look, I know this has been going on in cinema for the last 25 years so, it is not new. They have been telling creative people, change this character, make this character this sex, or that orientation, or whatever. However, I don't think it makes for good filmmaking and it certainly destroys what a writer would be setting out to do.

So, here's the memo if you did not get it...

To establish inclusion standards across all Disney General Entertainment content.

By 2022, 50% of regular and recurring characters across Disney General Entertainment scripted content will come from underrepresented groups.

Reimagine Tomorrow - Disney shares commitments towards diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Learn more about Disney’s goals and investments around diversity, equity, and inclusion.

reimaginetomorrow.disney.com

So, that's that. Write the characters the way we tell you to write them or you don't write for us. Why do you need a writer for this? Just have a computer program spit out the scripts. I mean if you just throw a number on it, 50% of the characters have to be a specific thing, then just do it via a computer program. Scrap creative and do ramp up the assembly line.

Frankly, I see almost zero reason to think that this would have an effect on the finished piece of entertainment. There are more minority characters in entertainment today BUT there's rarely anything that actually differentiates them from another race, sexual orientation, gender, etc. so outside of who is getting cast in a role, I don't think it will mean anything to a movie or TV show. If Disney has a movie with a black Captain America, I don't think they will insist on a scene where he gives a speech about the evils of racism. That movie would be the same as it would be if Chris Evans was still playing the character because franchises are designed to be accessible to basically everyone.

This seems like a corporation taking a self-congratulatory bow more than anything else. If Disney actually wants to make a real difference, they'll hire more writers or directors from underrepresented groups and give them the financial and marketing backing to tell their tales. Personally, I welcome that because it would lead to a greater variety of stories than what we're getting now.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

If Disney actually wants to make a real difference, they'll hire more writers or directors from underrepresented groups and give them the financial and marketing backing to tell their tales. Personally, I welcome that because it would lead to a greater variety of stories than what we're getting now.

This is what they should do. Unfortunately, this does not appear to be their approach. And I understand their reasoning for not doing it that way. Basically, the truth is they want the properties to make money. So, they want to just gender swap or race swap a popular character because that has a better profit potential.

If they actually hired writers that were a specific race or sexual orientation or whatever to write specifically for whatever group they are from...well...the properties likely would not have across the board appeal...which is what makes them money.

So, rock and a hard place. If you, for example, have a transexual writer, write a story and characters that are transexual and less than 1% of the population is transexual...well...now you have a property that will only appeal to a small segment of the population which eats into the box office.

Sure, everybody can celebrate and pat themselves on the back for being inclusive, but you are writing at that point for much smaller groups.

Much better just to have a black guy or a woman play Captain America than to actually take a risk on having a person representative of one of those groups actually write a property that would represent them.

I mean, I see what they are trying to do but basically as you essentially said, they are not going about it in a way that makes any sense. They just say "Make 50% of the characters represent groups that do not make up 50% of the population" just in a random way.

And here is the issue with that, everybody, including the people in these groups, can see right through what they are doing.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Frankly, I see almost zero reason to think that this would have an effect on the finished piece of entertainment.

It is a rule, given to all Disney writers that they must obey or someone else will make it happen. So, it has an open effect.

You and I both like weird cinema experiences. OK, well, if we run the company and say "Write whatever you want but at least 50% of the characters have to be weird." we have now changed how the writers approach the creative process.

Would we like those films more? Sure, but most of the population does not like those films. So, we would have pictures we enjoy that would maybe do OK once and a while when they strike a chord with a broader group of people. That will only happen once and a while though. So, we could not sit there expecting our films to make hundreds of millions of dollars.

I am all for small films. Films that tell all different kinds of stories about all different kinds of people. Disney is honestly not in that business. A24, yes, in that business. However, A24 does it the honest way. They make the picture because they are committed to whatever it is about and however different it is.

Disney is taking the assembly line approach. They hand you the parts and instructions and you just put it together.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Basically, my advice to a company like Disney or anybody that wants to make a film, focus on your story first and then bringing in the right people to help bring that story to screen.

So, if Disney really wants to make movies that are about representing different underrepresented groups then by all means try to find the best writers and filmmakers to bring those stories to screen.

My guess is that is not really want they want to do. They likely want to make the same type of films that made them money, following a formula that made them money, and just gender or race swap some characters to make the film look more diverse.

I'm not sure how you gender or race swap animated creatures be they a mouse, duck, dog or ogre. It will be interesting to see them try to do something like a transgender animated duck, that also represents an underrepresented race without slipping into the character and animation some pretty telling stereotypes.

This just seems a completely grotesque and destined to fail approach.

However, it is the future of film at Disney.

 

[Kevin Antonio (Kev)]

Basically, my advice to a company like Disney or anybody that wants to make a film, focus on your story first and then bringing in the right people to help bring that story to screen.

So, if Disney really wants to make movies that are about representing different underrepresented groups then by all means try to find the best writers and filmmakers to bring those stories to screen.

My guess is that is not really want they want to do. They likely want to make the same type of films that made them money, following a formula that made them money, and just gender or race swap some characters to make the film look more diverse.

I'm not sure how you gender or race swap animated creatures be they a mouse, duck, dog or ogre. It will be interesting to see them try to do something like a transgender animated duck, that also represents an underrepresented race without slipping into the character and animation some pretty telling stereotypes.

This just seems a completely grotesque and destined to fail approach.

However, it is the future of film at Disney.

When they lose money it will be interesting to watch them backtrack unless it's simply for the sake of programming.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

When they lose money it will be interesting to watch them backtrack unless it's simply for the sake of programming.

I think it will be difficult to backtrack for them. According to the paperwork they are releasing, 50% of the people they hire going forward must be from underrepresented groups. So, it does seem they are committing to this idea that everything they do and make will now be aimed at meeting this self-imposed quota of characters on screen and people behind the scenes. You can't just fire everybody and I suspect that at least a portion of the people they hire to work on these projects are not going to want to just change the color of a character's skin or just swap the gender of a character...they are going to want to create full characters and stories, and why wouldn't they?

So now that they go down this path there is no turning back really. Hey, I am fine with it, if anybody out there can afford to lose money, it's Disney, and so if they want to try to make films that appeal to small sections of our society, I say "Go for it!"

However, when you do this you do shrink the audience you will appeal to drastically and this will result in losing money. Disney has always been into mass market entertainment, not niche market entertainment, so for them it is a major shift.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

To reduce it to a fortune cookie message:

Nobody ever walked out of a film and said "Oh, I loved that picture because of the inclusion policies of the company that made it!"

And nobody says "Any good diversity movies playing at the cinema tonight?"

You'd best have a good story and characters to hook people or your picture won't be huge. Disney is in the "billion dollar movie" business in that when they turn out a picture they can at least realistically hope their picture is going to be huge. I am all for making smaller pictures so maybe they will.

 

[Capt D McMars]

Thanks PB for running this thread!! Growing up in the LA area as a kid there where cinemas everywhere. although this was before cable systems, so most tv as via antennas, foil not included!! It was always a special outing ( it took about an hour both ways) with the family to go to the big movie palaces like Grauman's Chinese Theater or the Egyptian or the Cinerama Dome, but those were rare, until I was able to drive.

Most movies before this were either Saturday aftroon dropoffs @ the local movie house the Covina Theater, now a Community Center, or the Covina Drive-In, which closed in the mid 80 and replaced with rows of apartments!! They would run occationally movie festivals "from dusk to dawn" in Sci-Fi, Horror, Westerns, Pirate genre, Kung-Fu tons of Shaw Bros and Bruce Lee of course. A bunch of us teenagers would pill into a massive staionwagon or van, borrowed from someones mom&dad, and proceed to fill it with food, beer and weed, LOL!!!
Once I discovered the arthouse theaters, my mind was blown. Able to see Kurizawa, the Toho Ishiro Honda Kiaju on the big screen and all the Italian westerns I was hooked!!
I loved the abience of the theaters back them, it was really a part of going to the movies.
they were truly Movie PALACES!!
It might not have registered with me at the time, but looking back to them and then compairing them to the black boxes of todays theaters, I can simpathise with those that just build thier own mini-theaters in lew of convience and comfort. With so many advances, also talked about in other threads, it seems many of us are making house viewing in 4K 89" HD goodness the way of the futrure.

Still delivering the communial experience, without all the hassel of paying crazymoney at the gate, gas, time, traffic, food. Many times just having 6-8 people over with a BYOB , now that covid is getting under control, is a much more attractive alturnative to the tradtional theater experience.

I remember the reaction of the studios back in ths 50s that saw TVs as the enemy and reacted to it with the miriad of Panavison, Super-scope, ect, now find themselves up against affordable tech. Easily accessable and implamented by many today as the nice alturnative to going to the big black box mega plex theaters...so it seems there are few slight advantages, going too the movies, these are increasingly being outweiged by the quality and convienience of these amazing in house theaters.

 

[TravisR]

To reduce it to a fortune cookie message:

Nobody ever walked out of a film and said "Oh, I loved that picture because of the inclusion policies of the company that made it!"

Agreed but that's why I think it's more of a self-congratulatory move than something that will have an effect on the actual movie. Whatever the makeup of the cast, if the movie is good, people will enjoy it and if the movie is bad, people won't enjoy it.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Agreed but that's why I think it's more of a self-congratulatory move than something that will have an effect on the actual movie. Whatever the makeup of the cast, if the movie is good, people will enjoy it and if the movie is bad, people won't enjoy it.

I think there may be more to it than that in ways that might not be immediately obvious to most people.

For instance: background and extras casting. Let’s say you’ve got a scene set in a crowded restaurant. The director isn’t the one casting those people sitting at all the tables. It usually gets outsourced by the casting director to an agency that specializes in those types of scenarios. In the past, the default for most casting situations was “white male” or “white heterosexual couple” and if the script didn’t specify otherwise, that’s what the casting agencies would reflexively look for. Does it negatively impact the content of the scene of the patrons in the restaurant have a more diverse appearance? I would argue it does not. But I think there is a benefit in letting the patrons in a movie restaurant look more like they would in a real life restaurant.

Or, for a more visible example, is the upcoming live action Little Mermaid film starring Halle Bailey negative impacted by the choice to not limit the casting search to white leads? She’s playing Ariel, the mermaid - mermaids are imaginary creatures.

Or how about the new Spider-Man movies that Disney made with Sony? Historically, Peter Parker’s classmates have been portrayed as being all white. But the movie takes place in present day Queens, and to show Queens today as being an all white borough would probably stand out more than not doing so. I don’t think the films were harmed in any way by having Zendaya play MJ - I think she was one of best things about those films. The film doesn’t spend any time commenting on her ethnicity because it makes no difference to the plot one way or the other to the story. But I would imagine that for people in the audience that are used to not seeing people like themselves on the screen, that it might have felt nice to feel as if they could be part of that world too.

I think from a business perspective it also makes sense - Disney is a worldwide business and the world is not exclusively straight white men and making a more diverse product will attract a more diverse audience, which is actually responsible corporate governance.

So while I don’t think Disney should necessarily pat itself on the back for doing this, I don’t think they’ve done anything outrageous or wrong in making these kinds of policies. I see a lot of straw men arguments for why this means the sky is falling and will lead to the end of all things, but I don’t think the reality of the situation supports those conclusions.

 

[TravisR]

So while I don’t think Disney should necessarily pat itself on the back for doing this, I don’t think they’ve done anything outrageous or wrong in making these kinds of policies.

To be clear, neither do I because it is helping groups that have been routinely or entirely ignored to get some jobs, exposure and hopefully more acceptance.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

To be clear, neither do I because it is helping groups that have been routinely or entirely ignored to get some jobs, exposure and hopefully more acceptance.

That was 100% clear to me already from your posts

 

[jayembee]

I would love to see Tarantino do a science fiction movie.

Overall, I hope he doesn't retire at ten movies but keeps going. He's said ten over and over, but iirc he hasn't mentioned much about TV. Might that be a loophole he could walk through in order to make an epic miniseries after he retires from movies?

Well, he'd been considering doing a Star Trek movie...

As for the next paragraph...his concept about "10 movies" is a little freewheeling. In order to get his current filmography down to nine, the two Kill Bills count as one movie, he doesn't count his contribution to Four Rooms, and he doesn't count any film he wrote but didn't direct. And specifically concerning TV, he doesn't count the feature-length 5th season finale of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (or his single, regular-length episode of ER, for that matter).

 

[jayembee]

Yeah I watched it last week. Well most of it. Sort of a drunken mess from the very start. Who thinks this is a good idea?

No one.

 

[jayembee]

Well, to some extent the B movie has graduated to being the A movie today. The superhero films are big budget B movies. Except they have become an A movie because in general they are one of the types of films that a companies financial year rides on.

The whole classification of "A movies" and "B movies" doesn't really exist anymore. Most people think of "B movies" as the ones with lower budgets and without Big Stars. And that was true, but it was true because back in the day, a night at the movies gave you two films. The "B" movie was the warm-up act, and the "A" movie was the headliner.

(Two movies on a single bill has been a feature of regular movie-going since the 60s. The last time I can remember seeing a double-bill as a regular movie-going experience was when I saw Waterhole #3 as an opening act for The Odd Couple.)

As such, the superhero films of today have big budgets and Big Stars. They no longer are "B" movies by any stretch of the imagination.