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Wired on Hollywood's Elite Message Boards
superflippy writes " Wired journalist Ben Mezrich gets the scoop on the online forums that film producers and other Hollywood heavyweights use to "track" the buzz on spec scripts, actors, writers, etc. "The tracking boards are the herd mentality gone digital," says one tracker. This helps explain how dreck like Kangaroo Jack makes it to theaters."
Imagine what a goatse redirect would do!
As everyone knows, a certain well-known site has a similar problem. Yet with the magic of Zoo, trolls can be banished with just a few mouse clicks! And as we all know, now slashdot is perfectly free of such ill-behaved creatures.
So the obvious answer is for Hollywood to use slash! Blacklist the Trolls, and we'll get better movies.
sulli
RTFJ.
I read this guys book "Bringing Down The House" I enjoyed every page of it. I read this article he has written about hollywood fuckwits, and it all seems farely believable.
Having to work around writers and executive producers and other people in the industry is a drain. You will never find a group of folks more full of shit. I completely agree with the article in that all the movers and shakers in the industry run on fear, constantly looking around to see what everyone else is doing.
"that movie's gonna make some huge bank."
"What buzz?"
"The Internet buzz."
"What the fuck is the Internet?!"
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
You pretentious little fuck.
reading a board is one thing, basing your decesions on it another.
Then again, there is this anecdote from Terry Pratchett. He met a Hollywood executive who wanted to make a movie out of his book "Mort" (that is about Death taking on an apprentice). Here's what happened in the word of Pratchett himself:
"A production company was put together and there was US and Scandinavian and European involvement, and I wrote a couple of script drafts which went down well and everything was looking fine and then the US people said "Hey, we've been doing market research in Power Cable, Nebraska, and other centres of culture, and the Death/skeleton bit doesn't work for us, it's a bit of a downer, we have a prarm with it, so lose the skeleton". The rest of the consortium said, did you read the script? The Americans said: sure, we LOVE it, it's GREAT, it's HIGH CONCEPT. Just lose the Death angle, guys.
Whereupon, I'm happy to say, they were told to keep on with the medication and come back in a hundred years."
Sounds like you could pick up some very interesting projects by being a contrarian; ie, getting the stuff that's getting poo-pooed on the boards and actually READING it; then picking it up for less than the project would've gotten if it were universally lauded.
Remember, these people formerly made all of their business decisions at parties and in hot tubs. Mostly this is a crowd that confuses their ability to make money with being truly significant. They all operate under the same set of deluded assumptions about themselves, they're drawn to this type of community for the insulation from reality it provides.
This doesn't make them bad people, some of them are exceedingly decent human beings in terms of their personal habits, but the "creative" community in Hollywood is really dominated anti-creative forces and incredibly self-absorbed people. It's truly amazing we ever get any good movies at all.
The best way to do is to be.
Just because a company has bought a hyped-up idea, it doesn't nessecarily mean that they will shoot a film of it. I remember a guy who worked as a trainee in Hollywood talking in a newspaper about what he did there. He was one of those hapless people who had to read the freshly-written scripts and then give an evaluation of how good they were. This guy said that only a small number of scripts actually make it to production, the others are trash. He also said, though, that these rules don't count for big stars - if a script is good enough for Arnoid, it's good enough for his fans, too... This was about three years ago, so things may have changed over the time.
(Or maybe I just underestimate the stupidity of people)
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
This helps explain how dreck like Kangaroo Jack makes it to theaters.
That said Kangaroo Jack made money. It grossed $65 million in the USA alone, which matches its budget. Add in foreign releases and DVD/VHS sales/rental and you have a profitable movie. So what was wrong with it again? Oh yes - it was crap - but you know hollywood is a business.
That comment about Kangaroo Jack wasn't fair.
Don't blame the internet or even hollywood. Blame the people who went to see it. That movie was a success (as much as it might scare some of us), because for one reason or another lots of people bought tickets.
There have always been people making crap movies (and tv shows) and people who have what most of us would consider poor taste going out to watch them.
Hollywood isn't bringing down movie quality by only making crap like "The Core". Viewers are bringing down movie quality by watching crap like "The Core". Entertainment is an industry, they produce what sells.
The problem is NOT that Kangaroo Jack "makes it to theaters". The problem is that someone has the power to shove it onto everyone's screens while other quirky stuff never gets filmed and the vast majority of things that do get filmed never see a screen. The article's author gives us, "The truth is, I don't belong here. I am not a Hollywood player." The real truth is that there should be no such thing as a Holywood player. Theater owners should be independents who are able to pick and choose films suited to their own audience. In reality, some dorks in LA make a playlist.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Guess not in LA.
Personally, I thought it was a great article that really shows just how rapidly the internet has changed the way we think/act/say/do in a converstational or consensual manner.
In fact I think it's fairly obvious that we can expect to see even more of this mode of consensual decision making as communication devices continue to permeate our culture.
For example: I have a G4 tiBook, it has rendezvous which in turn is supported by an app called Hydra that allows multiple users to edit a single document real-time. And that is a fairly obvious and straight forward model. I believe that within 2-3 years the notion of 1 user/computer will be old hat and many tasks will be done as part of a consensus.
Imagine a team of genetic research scientists in the year 2007. They run Linux workstations and perform calculations to create a designer genome for the creation of a bacteria to use as an eco-friendly solvent. While they work, their CPU/HD and memory are all shared via the net and they are able to operate asynchronously on the same problem via this distributed architecture. Of course any distributed architecture amongst real-time users would require chat. So this small team could also allow in research fellows and peers to help guide and assist them in their work. And now we see an environment just like the one written up. But here, a chat user could influence the course of R&D, by trolling accordingly, they could cause the scientists to follow their friends research while shunning other research by those they do not favor personally.
And as such, would likely follow a similar killing floor for college research papers to be applied and praised or ignored out right WITHOUT even being read.
As you can see today hyper-communication causes people to act without doing any research and as technology progresses it won't get better. In fact far worse in the respect of it's cultural permeation and impact but hopefully better if tools made available to quantify and qualify data may be equally as ubiquitous in the coming age.
Dude, Where's My Car?
The simple fact is, Dude, Where's My Car may have been stupid, but it was fun. And enough people agreed with me that it made enough money to justify a sequel. It's easy to mock movies, but if they sell, they have succeeded in their goal, no matter how stupid and worthless you may think it is.
Having to work around writers and executive producers and other people in the industry is a drain. You will never find a group of folks more full of shit. I completely agree with the article in that all the movers and shakers in the industry run on fear, constantly looking around to see what everyone else is doing.
." and we get two or three movies that are exactly the same.
;)
We're discussing this at Fark. Here's what I had to say there:
Ben's experience matches up EXACTLY with what I've known to be standard industry practice for as long as I can remember.
We used to joke that there was one guy, who'd get drunk at a restaurant and spout out movie ideas (it changes as things go in and out of style -- in the 80s it was Spago, in the 90s I think it was the Viper Room. I have no idea what it is now, as I attempt to claw my way back up to the "b" list.) The joke went that there were execs from all the major studios, and they'd only hear flashes of the conversation, like ". . . asteroid . . . earth . . . big summer movie . .
The worst thing about this article is that Hollywood will see it, and they'll add Ben to the "we hate him because he doesn't play by our rules" list, and Bringing Down The House will never get made.
Which REALLY sucks, because I was hoping to score a part in it.
A friend of mine (who is now an indie director) worked on "Batman and Robin."
The horror stories he told me about the insane wasting of money on actor crap would make you explode.
The budget for actor garbage -- workout rooms, personal chefs, personal assistants, personal drivers, groomers, and all that useless shiat -- was THREE MILLION DOLLARS.
We made Neverland for less than 50 grand, and even THAT was a ton of money to me. (I'm not an investor, just an actor, in that picture.)
Jane White Is Sick And Twisted, which is coming out on DVD in just a couple of weeks, was similar in budget . . . and I'd wager that both of these movies are more entertaining, and more watchable than Batman and Robin.
Yeah, Hollywood is fucked. Royally. The big media conglomerates (you can't even call them 'studios' any longer) have co-opted "independent" as a marketing device . . . but there are some real indie studios out there, with people who love the material, love the process of bringing it to life, and create great work. It's just hard to find right now, is all.
As for Ben's movie? I'd DIE to play Kevin, but a part that big will go to someone who is currently "established," who can "open" a movie. (By "open," I mean that they can get people into the theatre based on their name alone.)
Kevin's character is asian in Real Life, IIRC, but they'll change that for the movie, and you'll see someone like Matt Damon (if Hollywood is smart, which they're not so we'll probably see someone who's a lousy actor, but on a "hot" series right now. I leave it to you to fill in the blanks on that one) in that role. Which he probably won't take, because it's too similar to "Rounders," which leaves it wide open for me!
. . . to lose out to some guy who's hot right now.
But Dealer #5 is all mine, baby!
It's either "mainstream", "indy" or "foreign" with you guys.
How 'bout rooting for some "good" films?
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
"This helps explain how dreck like Kangaroo Jack makes it to theaters."
Hollywood will keep making dreck as long as it makes money.
BOX OFFICE SUMMARY FOR "KANGAROO JACK"
Box Office Total: $65,708,774
Box Office Opening: $16,580,209
No. of Weeks at #1: 1
No. of Weeks in Top 10: 5
BOX OFFICE HISTORY
Week Rank Wkd. Gross Theaters Per Theater Cumulative
1 1 $16,580,209 2,818 $7,770 $21,895,483
2 2 $11,548,247 2,848 $4,055 $35,112,415
3 4 $9,048,362 2,848 $3,177 $45,886,113
4 7 $6,105,250 2,848 $2,144 $53,035,263
5 8 $3,953,199 2,535 $1,986 $58,954,899
6 13 $1,988,368 1,742 $1,141 $61,901,888
7 17 $1,363,485 1,545 $883 $63,609,564
8 19 $772,413 1,110 $696 $64,691,137
9 23 $352,060 615 $572 $65,478,341
10 44 $108,774 216 $504 $65,708,774
Box office cumulative figures also include daily grosses from Monday through Thursday (not shown).
In a world that is Free and Open, who needs Windows and Gates?
How much were people paid? Did you meet guild rates and all that? What, more generally, did things cost?
Well, SAG makes several contracts available for producers who wish to use SAG actors, but don't have a lot of money. They are all listed at the SAG Indie website (warning: it's flash hell) http://sagindie.com/flashFS.html
For those two movies I mentioned, I worked for the SAG minimums, and took some profit-participation incentives. I did it because they were both great scripts, and I wanted to work with the people involved.
I'm very conflicted about actor's salaries. On the one hand, if an actor is going to be "opening" a movie, he or she should share in the massive profits that movie will be bringing the studio. On the other hand, because of this phenomenon, we're looking at one actor getting a multi-million dollar salary, while all the other actors work for scale.
In Sydney Lumet's book "Making Movies," he talks about those stupid actor bonuses, and how money that's spent on those things doesn't end up "on the screen," and the audience gets cheated because of it.
I'm not sure what the crew and department heads got paid. I'm sure you could get an idea for that stuff by tracking down some indie film makers . . . they usually like to help out aspiring film makers.
>. Entertainment is an industry, they produce what sells.
I wouldn't say that, even though, objectively its correct, but let's face it - we are obsessed with Hollywood. We complain when a bad movie gets released. Doesn't that seem a little odd? Its just taking up space at the local 20-screen cinema, its not like we're forced to watch them at gunpoint.
A movie critic is a respected international job. Why? The TV and the internet are constantly telling us who Julia Roberts is dating or what Heidi Clum wore last week in Paris.
I've divested in Hollywood long ago. I catch the occasional movie and am stunned at how many commercials I have to watch, how much I have to pay, and the how "movie people" simply act like little children when they don't get that perfect movie they were hoping for.
The best thing I did in a long time was buy a Tivo. I now have almost no connection to pop-America, have no idea who "hot" actors are, don't see commercials for crap like "Celebrity Justice," etc. Yeah, I sound like one of those, "I dont have a TV" people, but you know what, they make excellent points. You simply can't see the forest from the trees if you grew up watching TV like I did.
It would be nice if Hollywood would just make art, but it collectively decided long ago that the celebrity star system serves it well and people don't seem to complain much. Heaven forbid we see actors, musicians, and TV-people as our peers and not saints we hope someday will sign our chest with a sharpie at Barnes and Noble.
I love how concerns over real events that affect us, politics, the war, etc made the oscars look like the cheap industry backscratching it truly is. Who wore what? Who cares. Take your little statue and go home.
The nice thing about the internet is that media people have suddenly become real. Reporters have blogs and *gasp* they're trying to make their way through life too, even though they can occasionally get a quote or two from someone holding a powerful office in government. The most common thing I heard when Wil Wheaton's blog hit critical mass was, "Oh, he's just like an ordinary person. We were so mean to him." Or "I'm a dude who wrote some software, enjoy" compared to "Mega-corp announces its newest proactive and innovative product for PC consumers, this revolutionary...."
I think Hollywood's celebrity system is more or less destined to collapse due to the egalitarian aspects of cheap/free information. I'm not going to bother to provide supporting links: (im sure you've read these stories) TV time has been interrupted by internet time, the RIAA is losing sales and indie labels are experiencing a small boom, linux is in the enterprise and kicking ass, fans petition or even pay for quality TV episodes, access to lots of different news brings balance to national tunnel vision, etc.
I really hope my kids grow up in a society in which the self-important PR and other celebrity BS are seen plainly as lies. I hope they don't go crazy over the latest fads because J-Lo was seen wearing something similiar at Spago. Or even how to explain to them why adults can pay 9 dollars to see something like "Kangaroo Jack." I hope my generation looks crazy to them, because we probably are.