Terry Gilliam on the death of Hollywood | Hacker News Reader

Terry Gilliam on the death of Hollywood

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I submitted a very interesting Grantland article a few days ago that goes into exactly that (it failed getting HN attention, unfortunately). Just one look at those lists of upcoming releases and you can see what is happening to Hollwood right now.

http://grantland.com/features/2014-hollywood-blockbusters-fr...

Wow. I just read that article yesterday while browsing for some critiques of The Hobbit Part 3: Alfrid's Quest[sic], and I was nodding furiously all the way through. Brilliant, brilliant framing of the state of Hollywood.

I was ensnared by franchise hype for the last couple of years, and seeing this film was the turning point for me to stop and reflect that not one of the dozen+ franchise movies I saw at the theater in this time managed to remotely live up to my expectations.

I believe all is not lost, though. Other industries have shown the public eventually fatigues from such exhaustive, quality-less milking. Personally I've had my fill of being duped with franchise marketing, and next time I start thinking of wasting my money on one more of these ridiculous plot-less, CGI-bloated rehashes, I'll look for a decent original movie to wash the temptation off.

What? No more time shifting reboot regurgitants for you? What if Kahn morphs into Kanye for hip-hop goodness? You're going to miss yet another weak Spider Man/Superman/Iron Man written to appeal to a 10yo(seemingly written by said 10yo), or the greatest Terminator peppered with digital homages to Arnold and paper thin plot lines. Perhaps 'Transformers VII: It Can't Get Any Worse' will entice you back. Think of the popcorn, man!

Hilarious. As a comic fan as a kid, I always wanted to see my X-men, Avengers, Stark, et. al. on the big screen. I had no idea how nightmarish it would turn out. A lot of it has to do with growing up, but as I sit with my kids through these movies I can't help but think: Every one of these movies is nothing but a goddamned Mighty Morphin Power Rangers episode.

The problem is that there's a certain segment of the population that will always pay to see CG explosions and the next hollywood starlet's TNA.

Excellent article, thanks.

The list of software tools below is interesting. Has there been research into statistical analysis of "artistic attributes" of movies, as input to decision making algorithms that can augment Visicalc-inspired tools?

"If you asked a bunch of executives without a creative bone in their bodies to craft a movie lineup for which the primary goal is to prevent failure, this is exactly what the defensive result would look like. It’s a bulwark that has been constructed using only those tools with which they feel comfortable — spreadsheets, P&L statements, demographic studies, risk-avoidance principles, and a calendar."

I interviewed for a financial analyst role with a film studio (not one of the majors) some five years ago. They had a predictive model for their movies which was built in Excel with VB macros and which had exhausted the dimensional limits of pre-2007 Excel. I'm not sure where you draw the line as far as what constitutes "artistic attributes" but it definitely included fields for such things as the star power of the actors and directors. It surely included extensive statistical analysis, but all ran inside a "Visicalc-inspired tool."

Part of their pitch was that they were looking for someone with an investment banking background (i.e. me) because they operated their production studio the same way you operate a private equity fund. I ended up declining the next interview because "like a private equity fund" didn't seem to have the same cachet as working at an actual fund, which I then went on to never do.

Thanks for the anecdote.

Free-to-play mobile game makers (some from casino gaming) analyze the behavior of paying players and have been financially successful at using Facebook demographics to isolate and target those likely to pay for F2P games.

Since Facebook also has access to Axciom offline purchases, it may be possible to correlate movie attendance with online and mobile activity profiles. If so, it will eventually be possible to segment incremental audiences who seek artistic films. Cineplex in Canada created VIP theaters with seat-side waiters, alcohol/food and selected films -- their attendance data will also be useful.

http://stratechery.com/2014/dependent-digital-whales/

Edit: fixed link, thanks mikeyouse

> http://stratachery.com/2014/dependent-digital-whales/

Your link has an 'a' instead of an 'e' in Stratechery..

http://stratechery.com/2014/dependent-digital-whales/

I, for one, am eagerly anticipating the fallout from this. People will get tired of the franchises eventually and there will be a reckoning. 2020 will not look like what the studios have planned.

There's your fallout: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jan/02/north-american-b...

Nope, the number the execs care about, and the reason all major blockbusters have zero dialogue and plot:

Chinese revenues up 34%

Hollywood has already validated its product, and found product-market fit. It's now just stamping out products it's pretty sure people will buy. Anyone claiming Hollywood doesn't make things people want to buy would, given the choice, swap bank accounts with any of a very large number of Hollywood executives. The coffers of which are by definition filled with customers' dollars. You may not like most of what's on offer, but then, like is so often mentioned around here, you are not the target customer.

Obviously. To anyone who's ever had an authentic encounter with film/art, money and the doctrine of utilitarianism no longer mean anything to you. It's dust.

Is that true though? Take a look at this: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/

The number of tickets sold seems to be on a steady decline since the early 2000s. It's only because the average ticket price is increasing that the total gross is increasing, and even that has been relatively stagnant for the past five years.

    "It’s just — this is crazy. You go to a rock concert and  before the first
    song is finished, the tweets are coming through. It makes me crazy because
    people are not relating to the real world anymore. That’s very worrisome.
    Hunter Thompson predicted America would soon be a nation of panicky sheep,
    and I think it’s adding to the problem."

In a nutshell, I couldn't agree more with the notion

He's right. People can't live in the moment anymore. They're only able to report it happening.

This is why I don't take pictures with my phone or use Facebook or Twitter. I don't want to become just another reporter of experiences like everyone else. They're mine, and if someone wants to know about them they should have to ask like they did back before these tools existed.

>I don't take pictures with my phone or use Facebook or Twitter. I don't want to become just another reporter of experiences like everyone else.

I often feel the same way, but then I wonder if that makes me avant-garde and enlightened, or just a curmudgeon stuck in the past.

Possibly the latter. In any event, there's certainly nothing inherently avant or enlightened about not sharing photos on social media.

I think there are two historical views of technology that people take. View 1 holds that any new technology is better because it saves time performing some task that used to take a long time previously. View 2 holds that any new technology is suspect unless it can be shown that there was truly no value in the time spent before the technology came about.

I think there's value in both views, but I'm also more of a View 2 rather than View 1 person, and that's why I prefer not to do those things. I also don't own a microwave, toaster, or coffee maker. Instead I use a French Press and an oven.

Realize that when you choose to do something differently from the way it was done in the past, there is necessarily a trade off to be made, either in your enjoyment of time, or the quality of your output, or both.

It makes you cautious. That's not a crime, is it?

that's the most insanely stupid thing I've seen posted on hn in a long while. You've totally missed the whole point of experience - part of it in this day and age is to be able to relive it and share it with a wider audience than those physically around you through the marvel of technology.

By all means don't take photos, but please don't kid yourself that this is some retro throwback to days gone by. Why not skip showering in the morning too, that just distracts you from the things people did before household plumbing.

You're missing his point. The act of recording has taken place of the act of experience. How can you live and fully take in what you are mainly concerned with informing others about?

Do you write letters? It is a fairly old practice, and while I agree that one can fall into a habit of thinking "how will this look on paper", I think that the world would be much the poorer if people had not written so many letters.

Weird side effect of the ubiquity of communication channels. We had things to tell before that, there was silence and then signal; now it's a big echo chamber / interference pattern.

One of the informative/funny things that came out of the Sony hack was that the studios themselves, at least at the lower rungs, are sick of the formulaic, Adam Sandler style movies as well. They just keep throwing money at it because they have no creativity. They cited 'The Hunger Games' as the type of stuff they should continue with; I think they just need more wider-read people in charge of the studios.

Thank you for posting this - wonderful interview, and I also wasn't aware of Terry Gilliam's new film yet so that's an added bonus for me!

Highly recommended: The Zero Theorem if you haven't seen it yet.

I saw it. Thought it was terrible. Not just because the "computer hacker" and "hacking" in the film was beyond silly. I didn't care about any of the characters or story.

I don't know, I thought the computer work was actually a pretty good visual metaphor for proof assistant software like Coq.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_assistant

Yeah the new movie was great, and as I usually do after seeing an unexpectedly nuanced movie, I went to look up what Andrew O'Heir had to say about it. And that's how I found this, which was also unexpectedly great, because how many people have ever asked themselves, "I wonder what Terry Gilliam thinks about X." Probably no one, which is probably also why the interview is so good. (That, and the fact that Andrew O'Heir is one of the film critics who seems to actually understand the movies he watches.)

Nice to see billionaires can be creative artists and still have fun:

".. ..I love Matt [Damon] in the film. I think he’s fantastic as that character. I’ve never seen him do that before, and that’s great. I actually said, “Matt, I’ve got a small part. A few days work.” he said “Don’t bother, I’m in.”

In the olden days there used to be 3 channels on TV max. That's how I see Hollywood. It has maybe 2 and a half concept it keeps selling whereas TV, let alone Internet, wouldn't be able to get away with it these days.

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