HBO/TNT/SHOWTIME/etc. function as the Warner Bros. studio did back in the 1930's. There is an immediacy to shows on these channel that is no longer part of Hollywood filmmaking. In some ways, televisions shows are now produced at the speed that movies once were, which may account for their great immediacy.
> A possible bright side is that maybe when a form is on
life support and unremarkable, a space opens up for it
to become like new again and to command the attention and
authority it once had.
Film is dying since the projection of light through a reel of celluloid is going the way of the dodo. The digital image has different material properties than the filmic image, and is even created in different ways. Watching Michael Mann's PUBLIC ENEMIES shows how beautiful and powerful the digital image can be, but it ain't film as we have understood the medium up until this point (and the best attempts to make the digital image resemble film actually diminish the potential of the digital image in and of itself).
> Directors like Ford and Hitchcock learned by doing. They
didn't set out to be directors because when they were
younger there was no such thing as a film director.
And when you read the interviews they gave late in their careers, almost to a man they disavow any artistic intentions. They were just trying to tell stories and entertain audiences. The next generation went to school to learn what their predecessors had learned on the job, self-aware artists who needed to have a personal vision since school had taught them that having a personal vision was what directors had. But without the studio system, there was no other way to learn.
Brian