How to be American - part 2: the stars

When you decide you want to work in film, you need to take a look at the figures at the weekend box office numbers. This may seem boring at first, but it's very interesting to compare the performance of different movies depending on their genre, their budget, etc. ...

What is even more interesting is to go on specialized websites and read the comments below the articles, where people try to explain the good or bad performance of a film by the fact that an actor is a true star or not, is underestimated or overestimated, has no talent or a lot of talent, has always drawn crowds or has never done it. They do so by throwing insults at each other, which quite frankly, makes for an even better read.

Since we’re all trying to become Americans here, I’ll talk about movie stars, this week. Because if there's one thing that Americans have over the rest of the world, it is the magical aura of Hollywood actors, examplified by TV shows in which they are invited abroad with an ever-delirious crowd welcoming them.

In soccer or basketball, you’re ahead of the pack because you are just more talented than the others. Take Messi, Ronaldo, Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, for example. You score lots of goals you score or lots of baskets. It's that simple, it’s that objective. But it's hardly the same thing for our friends the actors.

Will Smith-although not particularly bad, is not better than most. Neither is Angelina Jolie. If I start talking about Jennifer Aniston, Cameron Diaz, Jessica Alba, Robert Pattinson, Ashton Kutcher, and many others whose talent is very well hidden, I'll still be here in 3 days. In short, unlike with Kobe or Lebron, when you put a stars in a bad movie, it's still a bad movie (Will Smith in Seven Pounds or Hancock). You put them in a good film, it's still just a good film. Basically, a star is expensive, but does not make that big of a difference in terms of quality.

How does one become a star in Hollywood if talent does not explain everything? And what is the point of having one in a movie?

An actor/actress does not necessarily become famous by attracting public attention with his talent, far from it actually (not everyone is Meryl Streep). He or she does with her looks (Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Angelina Jolie), his personality (who does not want to be friends with Will Smith or George Clooney), a person with whom he or she goes out with (Jennifer Aniston), the nightclubs he/she attends, sometimes even just the clothes he/she wears. This make him/her a star because there is much so much media coverage about him/her in magazines, even though that person's work itself has not necessarily been groundbreaking.

As for the use of stars, the explanation is simple. A famous actor is “everybody’s friend. " When he is in a movie that’s coming out soon, it attracts your curiosity, regardless of the film in question, just as if a member of our family or a colleague told you he will appear in the newspaper the next day. When you see a trailer or a poster in the street, that familiar face makes you unconsciously think that you will have a better time watching this movie rather than another.

The studios need that. A marketing device. They need celebrities who draw attention to themselves and not the (often poor) quality of their films. It would be simpler not having to spend millions of dollars to pay actors who are sometimes overrated. Just make good stories that the public wants to see without any regard to who is on the screen.

But at the same time, it is so much easier to make "Valentine's Day" and go play golf while spectators don’t realize until afterwards that they’ve been taken advantage of.

Because after all, a good script –unlike actors - makes all the difference, but it’s kind of hard to find...

Do you know what one looks like? If you do, no need to take the first flight to LA.
They don't buy them here.

How to be American - part 1: the trailer

Throughout the following weeks I'll teach you to how be "Americans." Because after all, it is what we all want to become. Americans. Right?

Whatever the country, English-speaking or not, European, Asian or South American, American films have hade a huge success, often greater than the one enjoyed by domestic films in their respective countries.

Most international movie stars owe their global celebrity to their participation in a Hollywood product or a nomination / win at the Oscars.
The explanation cannot simply be the fact that all American films are better than others. Why then?

There are many answers, and trailers are one of them. Yes, trailers. There's just something about them that makes the difference.
Of course, there's the cavernous voiceover that makes even the greatest banalities exciting. (IN A WORLD WHERE EVERYONE IS LYING ... HOW DOES HE KNOW WHO’S TELLING THE TRUTH?).

There is also the recent top 50 hit which is used so that if you don’t like what you see, the film is at least associated with something you love to hear-or that TVs and radio stations have been hammering in your brain incessantly for weeks.
There is the fast-paced editing that makes you believe that there has to be something exciting since everything is moving so quickly.

Above all, the U.S. majors always make sure that at the end of said trailer you really know what the film is about. Entire film concepts are modified and some movies don’t even get produced because executives felt it couldn’t be summarized in a simple 150 seconds clip that can successfully attract audiences. Because that’s the name of the game: attracting people. Butts in the seat. By all means.

So you do what I already talked about above, but you also show all the best scenes of the film. So much for mystery or surprise. If there aren’t enough good scenes, you can also show a major plot twist (hello, Terminator IV and Sam Worthington who is in fact not human). What if the client feels robbed after seeing a mediocre movie whose trailer showed the only elements of interest? It does not matter.

You don’t believe me? Let me tell you a story, despite my really inaccurate memory. A few months ago, a marketing executive from one of the majors came to talk in one of my classes. A girl –pretty hot, come to think of her again- asked this question: "Don’t you think it is a bad thing that many trailers nowadays show much more than they should and don’t leave any room for surprises? I went to see XYZ recently and I realized that the trailer was more a summary of the film than anything else."

The - pretty funny - answer of our marketing friend? "Excuse me, but this is everything I've heard: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I went to see XYZ, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You paid to go see the movie, my mission is accomplished and the job ends there. What happens afterwards is not my problem."

He’s right after all. You can’t get a refund. What will you do? Never watch a movie again in your life? I’d love to see that.

Mom, how do you make bad films?

If you ever take a class about the film industry or film distribution, there is something you will hear very often: despite the fact that it’s all about the money, no one sets out to make a bad movie. This is true. Nobody wakes up one morning and decides to spend the next 3/6/12 months of his life working on something he will be ashamed of when the world will lays eyes on it. However, there still are a lot of people who go to bed at night knowing that they are more likely to get a Razzie than an Oscar.

So what happens, inside a studio, between the first words written with optimism on a blank page (more exactly a new Final Draft file) and that first screening that makes you understand you just threw away a few million of $?

Starocracy

As Ari Gold – Vincent Chase’s agent- once said in an episode of Entourage, "without Vince, this project is just a bunch of chopped up trees with words on them! Translation: at the Oscars, when they say a good script is essential for a film, there are very much full of crap. If a script -no matter how well-written- does not attract the interest of a famous actor or director, no one is willing to finance it. At first, this seems quite logical. If Jennifer Aniston, Anne Hathaway, Ashton Kutcher and the likes are interested in a project, it has to be a good one, right? Wrong. The main quality of an actor is to act. The main quality of a director is to know what to do with a camera. Recognizing a good story when you have one before your eyes is a more than an optional quality for many of them. Now you know how you get films like Love Happens, Bride Wars or What Happens in Vegas.

Idiocracy

I hope it’s nothing new for you when I say that a film doesn’t need to be intelligent for it to be succesful. After all, the world is not exclusively populated by PhDs in nuclear physics. And The Hangover is a prime example of a good movie that doesn’t cater to university professors. Unfortunately, there is a problem that producers, who are not stupid, have to face. What is the acceptable limit of stupidity that you cannot exceed? Because if you do exceed that limit, you’ll find yourself with Miss March, When in Rome, or Year One.

Merchandising (merchandising-ocracy didn't sound really good, so I stuck with a real word)

It's simple, instead of actually making a film, you just put together 2 hours of colorful moving images. Then you can sell toys, comics, t-shirts, key chains, caps, a new attraction in the park and all kinds of other stuff...
Example: Transformers, GI Joe, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Daredevil, Spiderman 3, Land Of The Lost
Coming soon: Monopoly movie, Barbie movie, Transformers 3

Sadly, the only solution to prevent these films from happening would be that ridicule could actually kill somebody. But according to my information, Michael Bay is not dead; he is actually a very rich man. The producers of Land of the Lost (a film that lost dozens of millions of dollars) are also alive and hope they will have more luck next time.

Are bad films going away any time soon?
No. Apparently, they’re not.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Internet Pirate

Last week I talked about voting with your wallet to stop the studios from continually releasing mediocre films for the simple reason that there will always be people to see them.

I also added that this was not an encouragement to all the pirates that plague the Internet and try to pretend they do nothing wrong. When listening to them defending themselves during interviews, you would almost be tempted to pass The Declaration of the rights of Man and the Internet Pirate in Washington.

Yet none of their arguments (seeming reasonable at first) hold up:

1. Culture is a public service and should ideally be free.
Let’s be reasonable for a second, music and movies are not comparable to health and education in terms of necessity. And despite those being absolute necessities, everyone has to pay (directly or through taxes) to access these services. And no one would ever dream of asking a doctor, a teacher or a policeman to work for free because of the greater good his activity brings to the community. On the same subject, I wanted to tell you that every single one of us contributes in his own way to the public interest. So why don’t we all offer to work for free? It would be a little hard to sustain ourselves, but the general interest would benefit from it. Right?

2. The most recent films are mediocre at best.
This is an opinion that I agree entirely with. But like I said before, we'll all die someday. Why waste your time with movies (2 hours of your life) that do not interest you and you don’t deem worthy of spending a few dollars on (online or in theaters)?

3. The studios and the movie stars earn too much money.
This is completely demagogic. Let's put things in perspective. $20 millions per movie is a lot. 10 millions euro to run after a ball is too much. But either you have no interest whatsoever in sports or cinema and do not contribute to fill up the wallets of all those actors, directors, football and basketball players, or you're interested in it (to some degree), therefore it is illogical in this case not to reward someone who provides something that has value for you.

4. I'm just sharing what I love with my friends.
It is perfectly legal to lend a movie to friends and family. But let’s not fool ourselves now. I am not a Facebook addict, yet I still have over 500 "friends" (a drop of water compared to others). I know we all love to feel popular but no one has over 500 close friends and needs to publish a link to an illegal torrent on his Facebook page.

The only reason one can use as an excuse for illegal downloading (one that engages the responsibility studios) is that the copyrights holders don’t make any legal way to see the film available in your country.

That will be the subject of my post next week. So sit tight

What, already missing me? Don't worry. I'll be back.

The Porn industry: the future of cinema

No, I'm not completely insane. The facts are there to prove what I’m saying.

Flashback to the 80s; a new technology now allows consumers to record content on a cassette. Two formats are competing, VHS and Betamax. JVC is OK with adult film producers using the VHS format to sell their movies when Sony and its Betamax refuse. Result: Although Betamax format was comparable in quality, VHS became the universal format for videocassettes. The Hollywood studios, initially reticent to this new technology (Universal and Disney took Sony's Betamax to court for copyright infringement) eventually follow the trend after witnessing the success of adult films in home video format the following years.

With the advent of the Internet in the mid 90's, the producers of adult films again showed to their more conventional counterparts how great a tool the web could be to promote films and reach audiences wherever they are in the world and at lower cost. The introduction of broadband has only confirmed the trend since the pornography industry has exploded with the emergence of countless sites allowing downloads and/or legal streaming on the web when, at the other end, conventional cinema is still in its infancy as far VOD goes.

However, the fate of the more recent war between new DVD formats (Blu-Ray and HDDVD) has not been decided by the adult industry as producers didn’t care much, having already understood that the future was mainly in the digital. Conversely, American and even French studios persist in their efforts to convert us to Blu-Ray, while DVD sales have collapsed over the past two years.

In short, all I was trying to say is that if you're an aspiring filmmaker/producer, you have much more in common than you think with your “adult” colleagues. Few people are willing to go into theaters to see your work and you cannot afford to spend millions on marketing or even in production. However you can find viewers around the world who are still interested in the message you want to convey through your films (“love each other” for porn and whatever you think you have to tell).

Well, now you know where to look next time you want to see where the cinema industry is heading.
And you also have a ready-made excuse if your boss catches you on questionable websites in the middle of the afternoon.

Don’t thank me. You’re welcome.

What's your favorite movie?

I hate this question. Actually I hate those who ask this question. Because they don’t want to know what movies you like in general. They want to know what is the movie you like the most in the entire universe (including Pandora). They don’t accept no for an answer. They absolutely need an answer and only one.
"I know there may be several, but if someone woke you up in the middle of the night and put a gun to your head, which movie would you choose? "(A very likely situation, knowing that most burglars are moviegoers. It’s common knowledge.)

Normally, I try to avoid having to answer such questions, but when you take film classes there will always be someone to ask, usually with two or three people around who are willing to conduct an endless debate about the quality of your choice.
Or maybe you're talking to this girl with unbelievable cleavage and mini-shorts -which is not difficult to find in LA, and it'd be silly to break the rhythm of your conversation before it takes you... I digress. In short, sooner or later you will have to answer. So I think. And I think Pulp Fiction .
No, it can’t be that. The movie is brilliant ("some serious gourmet shit"), but there are at least 30 minutes that could have been cut. And Tarantino borrows from a lot people. I see the long debate coming from a mile away and I have no time for that. Before Sunset then. No, I'll look like one of those pretentious people who like films that nobody watches where two characters talk to each other for 90 minutes. I keep thinking.

I start to curse myself for having this discussion with this classmate or having told that girl with unbelievable cleavage I studied cinema, until the light started flashing. Truman Show . It's perfect. Everyone has seen it, I see nothing to edit out, I do not get to look pretentious. It's intelligent without being too complex. And as a bonus, it turns out that I actually like it. Voilà. Now my classmates will have nothing to say about my choice and I can finally go home, or the girl with unbelievable cleavage will say she loved the film as well and now we have something in common. The conversation continues on another subject, and then another, eventually leading to... I digress again.

Now a question for you; what's your favorite movie? I mean if someone woke you up in the middle of the night with a gun to you head ...