THB #93: The Batman (no spoilers)
| March 6, 2022
Paul Schrader on Facebook: “AN OBSERVATION ABOUT FILM ECONOMICS. The clever post-nickelodeon decision to monetize motion pictures (squeezing large numbers of patrons in un-air-conditioned large rooms with (for a time) intermittent vaudeville acts worked like a charm for decades. Then came TV. Yet movies survived. Became larger scope, racier subject matter, exploitation pix, women’s pix, prestige pix, horror pix, genre pix, realistic pix. bigger in scope, racier in subject matter, newsreels. serious dramas, art films, European films—and air conditioned cinemas. But now comes Phase Three: BOOM! The growing desire of audiences to see film entertainment in theater like home entertainment at great discount, a transition 14 months in the training, but, more importantly, a shift away from the standalone 2 hr ‘important’ drama inspired by literature to the ongoing episodic dramas inspired by crime series (true or otherwise), telenovelas, expanded documentary and biographic sagas, stripping storytelling of its ability to compose concise stories which land like a punch in the face.”
-30-
May 1, 2022
"Netflix, the great disrupter whose algorithms and direct-to-consumer platform have forced powerful media incumbents to rethink their economic models, now seems to need a big strategy change itself. It got me thinking about the simple idea that my film and TV production company Blumhouse is built on: If you give artists a lot of creative freedom and a little money upfront but a big stake in the movie’s or TV show’s commercial success, more often than not the result will be both commercial (the filmmakers are incentivized to make films that will resonate with audiences) and artistically interesting (creative freedom!). This approach has yielded movies as varied as Get Out (made for $4.5 million, with worldwide box office receipts of more than $250 million), Whiplash (made for $3.3 million, winner of three Academy Awards), The Invisible Man (made for $7 million, earned more than $140 million) and Paranormal Activity (made for $15,000, grossed more than $190 million).From the beginning, the most important strategy I used to persuade artists to work with me was to make radically transparent deals: We usually paid the artists (“participants” in Hollywood lingo) the absolute minimum allowable by union contracts upfront, with the promise of healthy bonuses based on actual box office results—instead of the opaque 'percentage points' that artists are usually offered. Anyone can see box office results immediately, so creators don’t quarrel with the payouts. In fact, when it comes time for an artist to collect a bonus based on box office receipts, I email a video clip of myself dropping the check off at FedEx to the recipient."
Jason Blum Sees Room For "Scrappier" Netflix
| April 30, 2022
"As a critic Gavin was entertaining, wry, questioning, sensitive, perceptive"
Critic-Filmmaker Gavin Millar Was 84; Films Include Cream In My Coffee, Dreamchild
April 29, 2022
| January 24, 2022
DP/30 Audio: Bombshell, Jay Roach
| December 13, 2019
DP/30 Audio: The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Jonathan Majors
| December 4, 2019
DP/30 Audio: The Mustang, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre
| December 4, 2019
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