Is Hollywood in the midst of a "Golden Age"? (1 Viewer)

[Steve Christou]

Well you and others were lamenting that Hollywood isn't making more films like "Lost in Translation" right? Hollywood doesn't make films with you guys in mind, thats what it boils down to, what can I say, bummer.

 

[JediFonger]

well, i wouldn't make THAT much of generalized/sweeping comment. LOTR is certainly awesome =). that was 2001-2003.

fight club can be watched OVER and OVER and OVER, again and again and again. it's seminal piece of work.

i'm about 24 and i love the silent films 1900-1927! =). so age really doesn't have anything to do with what you love.

 

[Oliver K]

Glad to see some dissenters on that Gollywood Golden Age here.
Like Eric P said; not every movie has to be in the 'Lost in translation'-genre. I love 70s stuff like "Freebie and the Bean' or even 80s classics such as the first 'Back to the future'. Not much lost in translation there, wouldn't you all agree? And what does age have to do with anything, anyway? The thing that keeps annoying me is that if you're into the more 'quiet' areas of cinema, you're supposed to be old, cranky and mentally deteriorating. Meaning: when you're young(er), you're supposed to like everything loud and superficial. I'm 40, by the way, so half way there, Steve C.
I think that a whole group of filmgoers and, for some years now, dvd-buyers is always overlooked and seriously underestimated. Not every kid is into PlayStation number whatever or into the latest piece of crap that ... (insert flavor of the week actor/actress here) is in.

The artistic ethic used to be different in Hollywood, even though the industry part nearly always beat the art/quality factor. It's lawyers, high-concept storylines, obscenely inflated budgets, the marketing department and short-term money recuperation policies that killed the classic H'wood quality. If you let good and original directors make the films they really need to make (as opposed to the films they need to make for the money and that overrated midget of kitsch that is Oscar), you can spend a fifth of the money and have your long-term investment as well. Quality lasts longer. Always.

 

[Steve Christou]

Wow you're younger than me Oliver! It's just when you started going on about todays films not being up to the standard of Hawks and Von Sternberg, CG and "soundtracks filled with irritating noises", I thought I was hearing my father, who loved old westerns and had little time for todays "junk cinema".

The fact there was a lot more junk made in the Golden Age of Cinema is easily swept under the carpet. We have to respect the golden oldies, good or bad they're classics.

Like I mentioned before Hollywood is going thru the doldrums, it will recover but whether they'll be making better films or more of the same who knows.

 

[Adam_S]

Come and work an eighteen hour day with me, six days a week (figure in a half hour to hour commute each way so maybe four hours of sleep if you're lucky), sometimes seven days a week, do that for at least eight consecutive weeks and tell me most of the filmmakers today are lazy.

As for writing, take your ideas, you got twenty, figure at least 80 years of development time while you're writing, rewriting, adjusting, polishing, waiting, rewriting, rewriting, rewriting. Then you finally get an interesting director on board for ONE of your projects and he wants you to rewrite it again. AND he has seven other projects he's developing, so you have a 12.5% chance at best, and a lot less since you're an unknown writer. It's on the verge of taking off when an exec with a grudge against your exec/director/prod company/agent/agency decides to post a vicious pot shot at it on studio system, and suddenly the support for it evaporates and the project never gets off the ground. Wait another five years or so and another idea gets picked up. Then the studio that's funding the director has their readers take a look at it, and they don't like your opening, so you rewrite a perfect opening into something hamfisted, but it pleases that embittered feminist/queerist failed writer working in the studio reading department, who also makes some other suggestions, one or two which are good, but the rest reveal they didn't even bother to try to understand the screenplay. But the studio listens to them because they're a 'fresh voice' and therefore can see the forest better than you, the writer, or your production company, because y'll are so close to the project you only see the trees, so your opinion doesn't matter as much because the studio readers are closer to how a 'real audience' might react.

Yeah, you're right, all the hollywood writers are lazy, and ESPECIALLY the writer/directors.

 

[Eric Peterson]

Sorry Adam!

I wasn't directly attacking anybody.

Maybe it's not the writer's fault, but someone sure as hell is to blame for the gross lack of originality in films today. Blame it on the director's, the studio heads, the sponsors, etc....

I don't really give a damn who's to blame, but when I compare scripts of modern movies to scripts of just about any older film (be it classic or not), and I see absolute glaring differences. Maybe it is the myriad number of rewrites by a series of writers with input from directors, producers, etc... who have no business writing.

I still hold out hope of actually turning one of my ideas into a script, but I know how difficult it is to get an original idea made, and that is one of the many reasons that I haven't spent much time on this. I share your frustration with this, and I'm sorry if my comments hurt you, but I still feel the same way about the quality of modern films.

I just recently watched Bogart in the film "In a Lonely Place", and there was a very appropriate quote. This is from memory.

Bogart is attacking another screenwriter for making lousy pictures and says
"You're nothing more than a popcorn salesman"
to which the other writer replies
"So are you, but at least I admit it"

That quote by itself is a better piece of dialogue that just about anything in a modern film. I love biting dialogue like that and it's extremely elusive today.

I could never write a script that was intended to sell popcorn.

 

[Andy Sheets]

I agree with this. The main point isn't blaming anyone specifically, it's just that the overall quality of writing has dropped steeply over the years, particularly over the past 15-20 years or so. Too many movies today, especially the bigger budget ones, don't seem to understand telling a story. They're just concepts with gags and set pieces hung onto them.

 

[TravisR]

Yes, but there's still plenty of good movies today that do understand that. Of course, big budget junk like Stealth or Fast And The Furious is just one action sequence to the next but those movies probably won't be remembered in 10 years but the good stuff that they make today will be remembered for decades.

 

[Oliver K]

Quote
Wow you're younger than me Oliver! It's just when you started going on about todays films not being up to the standard of Hawks and Von Sternberg, CG and "soundtracks filled with irritating noises", I thought I was hearing my father, who loved old westerns and had little time for todays "junk cinema".

I'm with your dad on this one, Steve C.

 

[dana martin]

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=13643
Why???

 

[JediFonger]

well, the filmmaking process hasn't changed THAT much since inception. there were also a lot of rewrites/redirection/re-actings and a lot of those things existed in the first half of film history as adam described. this is regardless of being lazy or not. (BTW Adam, one can be very hardworking but for a crappy story, like Van Helsing, they all worked hard i'm sure).

eric, one of the reasons why older films (specifically 30s-50s era) read better on the page was because hollywood hired REAL-LIFE authors. imagine hollywood full of tom wolfes/stephen kings, etc. that's why classic film scripts were more literate. but that changed after brando came along and post modernism made films more "realistic" instead of theatrical and dramatic. realistic meaning dialogue that sounds like what you and i would say without all the highfalutin baggage. on the other hand, it's the literate qualities that makes classics what they are. i hope we all return to that form of filmmaking one of these days.