"I used to be in the movie business where you made something really because you cared about it,"
I had the impression,the movie business was a shit show for at least half a century now.
Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back
31–40 of 492 posts
Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back
#32”I used to be in the movie business where you made something really because you cared about it," he said, noting that popular reception mattered more than anything else. What arrogance.
How is that arrogant?
I think the OP means that this is a person-- late in a storied career-- saying in effect: "We used to care about art, now they only care about money."
Memory is kind. Barry Diller's Paramount made Orca, Bad News Bears Go to Japan, etc. Art and commerce were always mixed. The arrogance is in being able to convince yourself it was different in the old days without risk of being contradicted.
Still, you have to admire Barry Diller.
Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back
#33The actual quote (with my emphasis added): > "The movie business *as before* is finished and will never come back." And I think that's correct. Superhero blockbusters taking over all box office receipts was one thing, but now those blockbusters are becoming deeply tied to streaming services like Disney+ that's bringing content into people's homes and away from movie theatres. I won't mourn movie theatres (though I ho…
TV shows have also gotten more prestigious, and so the people who would have been telling their stories as movies may be making TV shows instead. The article compares traditional movies to movies from streaming services, and I just think that’s avoiding the elephant in the room. The change started happening slowly in the late 1990s, but at this point I’d say that the change has happened and we’re in a golden age of t…
Roots in the 1970s (and The Thorn Birds afterwards) was notable for being a widely-viewed blockbuster miniseries, so the concept was there; without streaming, it was just hard to get an audience to watch every episode at the right time.
Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back
#34Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back
#35What I find exhausting is having any systemic criticism of the movie/music industry met with arguments along the lines of: "It was just different, you're merely nostalgic/you have golden age syndrome", and have a hard time answering back with anything except: "It really was better, sometime things do get substantially worse". While technologically everything has improved, creativity feel like going from the golden ag…
I find the cure to this frustration is to accept that everything I love is obsolete and that it's OK. As you say there are historical periods we now look back upon and say objectively they took a step backwards in terms of skill and artistry in many areas. But we don't know if this is that period, because maybe the creativity is shifting into something we can't yet observe clearly.
Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back
#36What I find exhausting is having any systemic criticism of the movie/music industry met with arguments along the lines of: "It was just different, you're merely nostalgic/you have golden age syndrome", and have a hard time answering back with anything except: "It really was better, sometime things do get substantially worse". While technologically everything has improved, creativity feel like going from the golden ag…
It's more like, the spotlight has shifted away from the medium and creative people have left. Old movies, like old books, are by definition more important. Looking at the highest grossing movies of the past 2 decades almost all are based on older stories/franchises, from star wars to marvel , to LOTR, to harry potter (newest one).
Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
TV shows have also gotten more prestigious, and so the people who would have been telling their stories as movies may be making TV shows instead. The article compares traditional movies to movies from streaming services, and I just think that’s avoiding the elephant in the room. The change started happening slowly in the late 1990s, but at this point I’d say that the change has happened and we’re in a golden age of t…
Roots in the 1970s (and The Thorn Birds afterwards) was notable for being a widely-viewed blockbuster miniseries, so the concept was there; without streaming, it was just hard to get an audience to watch every episode at the right time.
Also Winds of War and others. Yeah, the miniseries had its day but, especially pre-widespread VCR, depending on an audience to watch every episode at a scheduled time was a high bar. It obviously could work but it depended on having a sufficiently big "event" for people to schedule a week or nights on successive weeks around it--in a way few would do today.
Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back
#38What I find exhausting is having any systemic criticism of the movie/music industry met with arguments along the lines of: "It was just different, you're merely nostalgic/you have golden age syndrome", and have a hard time answering back with anything except: "It really was better, sometime things do get substantially worse". While technologically everything has improved, creativity feel like going from the golden ag…
They're wrong, and the reason they believe it is because they're stuck on older mediums. In music, the radio and the record store defined the market. You had a small window so you invested big and mainstream stuff tended to be pretty good. Now music access is decentralized and you can chase a long tail of niche personal tastes. Music is incredibly healthy right now. There's so much great content going in myriad different directions, but you'd think otherwise if you're only listening to the radio which has tripled down on non-differentiating hyper mainstream blandness.
Movies are largely the same with streaming. The movie theater model is rough. Even before streaming the vast majority of movie tickets go unsold, and to many people there's a sort of social group requirement to justify going there. So you get mass appeal as a requirement. But the actual space of film has more richness than ever before. People who say the only films are marvel films just don't know about the other films being released.
Re: Barry Diller: The movie business as before is finished and will never come back
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on your home setup, a big screen and some big speakers go a long way
I agree. No sticky floor, no person behind me that decided to take off their giant winter coat when the movie started (instead of previews), no people ruining my immersion because they have to pull out their pocket PC to address their attention deficit, no large groups of people clapping at every character reveal during a film or audibly cheering on the protagonists, no untrusted heavily farted-in seating, no reduced…
Not having to listen to people eat like pigs during the movie while I'm trying to enjoy being immersed in the audio of the movie (while some guy nearby very loudly assaults a giant bucket of popcorn over the next two hours). Because if they didn't consume two thousand calories during the movie, they might starve, seeing as the US has no other available food options.
The only way a movie theater experience can be consistently great is if you banish all food. Too many people lack even basic manners & consideration for others, they can't be trusted to not be inconsiderate idiots.