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You have to beat the man to be the man

charliecurran.com

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Re: You have to beat the man to be the man

#11

Post by lisper »

paulsutter wrote: post #5

Charlie Curran's mistake is thinking the entertainment of the future will be just like the entertainment of the past. pg's essay was a challenge to find what the future will look like. He wasn't excluding any possibility. He wasn't predicting the demise of every single aspect of Hollywood, or even, of any specific aspect of Hollywood pg was just pointing out that entertainment will continue to evolve, that change is…

Yes, but Silicon Valley's mistake (not necessarily PG's mistake) is thinking that what will kill Hollywood is technology. It isn't. What will kill Hollywood is the marriage of technology and the new content creation and distribution models that the technology enables. Curran's point is just that cute cat videos will only get you so far. It's what comes after that that no one seems to have figured out yet. The current approach is desperate attempts to access or reproduce Hollywood's content, and that surely won't work.

Re: You have to beat the man to be the man

#13

Post by charliecurran »

MarcScott wrote: post #7
lisper wrote: post #6

When I clicked on this link the anchor text was "Why Silicon Valley will never beat Hollywood" (or something like that). When I came back, it had changed to "You have to beat the man to be the man," which is the title of the piece. But IMHO the original title (presumably the one written by the submitter) was much better and more descriptive. I don't think I would have clicked on this link with the current title. Ther…

Also, the title on the front page is different from the title in the comments. I don't think I've seen this before, but maybe I'm just not very observant. edit: They're the same now. Confused.

Hey, just came back to hacker news and noticed the change as well. Very confused as I didn't edit the title after I had posted it.

Re: You have to beat the man to be the man

#15

Post by gergles »

The real reason a VC company isn't going to kill hollywood is because there's not enough money in it. The author throws around $65 billion industry as if that's some sort of impressive number. FB alone is worth $100B. We could liquidate FB and buy the entire industry and shut it down if we really wanted to. Compare that to LNKD, EBAY, GOOG, hell even CRM. We have hit after hit after hit that are worth more than the entire film industry after a few years' worth of nurturing.

No, the reason that a VC-funded company won't kill Hollywood is because there's not enough money there - not because Hollywood has some sort of monopoly on how to entertain people.

Re: You have to beat the man to be the man

#16

Post by vehementi »

gergles wrote: post #15

The real reason a VC company isn't going to kill hollywood is because there's not enough money in it. The author throws around $65 billion industry as if that's some sort of impressive number. FB alone is worth $100B. We could liquidate FB and buy the entire industry and shut it down if we really wanted to. Compare that to LNKD, EBAY, GOOG, hell even CRM. We have hit after hit after hit that are worth more than the e…

Sounds like there's an untapped $65 billion market that other VCs won't touch. What opportunity!

Re: You have to beat the man to be the man

#17

Post by nileshtrivedi »

KaiserPro wrote: post #10

There are several reasons why Y combinator is unlikely to kill hollywood. The Author touches on part of the problem. To make a good movie you need: 1) an excellent script (if it reads like shit, its going to look worse, if the pitch is "its like X but...." its a fail) 2) a significant amount of captial ($1million) 3) quality actors 4) ridiculously good organisation skills (you'll be organising 40+ people hundreds and…

You're assuming that the content has to have the same format as movies. Short videos (like the ones produced by CollegeHumor) can have a good script and quality visuals without involving a big budget. The market isn't "films". It is "entertainment".

Re: You have to beat the man to be the man

#18

Post by nileshtrivedi »

lisper wrote: post #11
paulsutter wrote: post #5

Charlie Curran's mistake is thinking the entertainment of the future will be just like the entertainment of the past. pg's essay was a challenge to find what the future will look like. He wasn't excluding any possibility. He wasn't predicting the demise of every single aspect of Hollywood, or even, of any specific aspect of Hollywood pg was just pointing out that entertainment will continue to evolve, that change is…

Yes, but Silicon Valley's mistake (not necessarily PG's mistake) is thinking that what will kill Hollywood is technology. It isn't. What will kill Hollywood is the marriage of technology and the new content creation and distribution models that the technology enables. Curran's point is just that cute cat videos will only get you so far. It's what comes after that that no one seems to have figured out yet. The current…

> cute cat videos will only get you so far.

Aren't we already spending more time watching videos on YouTube / CollegeHumor and funny pics on Reddit than we do watching films? One might think that we have solved the content / attention problem. What remains to be solved is monetization.

Re: You have to beat the man to be the man

#19

Post by sliverstorm »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #9

"the basic formula of pairing known stars with compelling stories has not and will not change" Didn't it change with the advent of the modern TV Shows? How big were Schwimmer, Laurie or Cranston as stars before their show made a hit? Laurie was locally known but not that much. With modern show, you have select good actors for their role, not stars from an universal pool, and that's what changed. And I fail to name te…

What applies to TV shows doesn't necessarily apply to movies. The thing TV has going for it? A pilot is twenty minutes long, instead of a hundred and sixty.

To me, as far as actor career trajectory, TV seems to be like a minor league that some actors use to help launch their overall career.

Re: You have to beat the man to be the man

#20

Post by JackFr »

gergles wrote: post #15

The real reason a VC company isn't going to kill hollywood is because there's not enough money in it. The author throws around $65 billion industry as if that's some sort of impressive number. FB alone is worth $100B. We could liquidate FB and buy the entire industry and shut it down if we really wanted to. Compare that to LNKD, EBAY, GOOG, hell even CRM. We have hit after hit after hit that are worth more than the e…

Ummmm, not quite. Fox, Disney, Universal all have market caps larger than FB at P/E's 20 times lower. I think the $65 billion he's talking about is revenue.
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