[WS:] I very much appreciate your insights into the organization of film making. Very informative, indeed.
BTW, a similar but more general point was made by "our man" in the evil camp of economist profession, John Kenneth Galbraith, arguing specifically that large corporations have a greater capacity for producing public goods than small producers under a market regime - precisely because large organizations are better shielded from the raving effect and the anarchy of the market.
Wojtek
On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 1:19 PM, magcomm <magcomm at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> > Walsh knows this. But as he points out money has long been a problem in
> Hollywood.
>
> Not nearly so much under the studio system. The movies Walsh praises come
> from a time when Hollywood was flush. Movies did have to make a reasonable
> return, but one misfire did not kill a career or shutter a studio (that came
> in the 1960's). At one point, the returns made by the Freed Unit alone
> supported MGM's entire output: a studio could produce some radical films
> under such circumstances. Nowadays, most films are independent productions
> of some sort that must fully support themselves.
>
> > He's locating the problem more at the level of consciousness - there's
> just much less in the way of a critical impulse around than there used to
> be.
>
> My problem is that he comes to this conclusion by looking at the current
> crop of Hollywood movies and concluding that there is not much of a critical
> impulse in most of them. I agree so far.
>
> What I disagree with is the broadening of this conclusion to embrace the
> entire population. Fewer films are made today, and the ones that do get
> made are done under more rigid systems of oversight than existed during the
> Classical Hollywood period. John Ford's philosophy of "one for them, one
> for me" cannot be practiced any more (Van Sant being possibly the only
> exception). There very well might be thousands of filmmakers around who
> have the consciousness Walsh wants to see in an artist, but if they cannot
> get funding for their films, Walsh will never know about them. From a very
> small, skewed sample, Walsh wants to draw a very large conclusion.
>
> > Like I said, I'm usually allergic to these implied Golden Age narratives,
> but I think he's got a point.
>
> He does, but he fails to give enough weight to the tremendously changed
> circumstances and methods of film production. It can take years for a
> filmmaker to find financing for her work. Years ago, Douglas Sirk finished
> one film Friday and started a new one the following Monday. In fact, a
> director could complete a new film before his previous one was even
> released.
>
> > It's fiction too, isn't it?
>
> I don't know. It's been a long time since I have read contemporary
> fiction.
>
>
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