'In a Losing Race With the Zeitgeist'
http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/goldstein/cl-et-goldstein22nov22,2,2846042,print.column
I like an honest rant with a pundit visibly at his wits' end
A few of the tasty takeaways here:
'Put simply, an explosion of new technology — the Internet, DVDs, video games, downloading, cellphones and iPods — now offers more compelling diversion than 90% of the movies in theaters....'
'It's become cool to dismiss movies as awful. Wherever I go, teenagers say, with chillingly casual adolescent contempt, that movies suck and cost too much — the same stance they took about CDs when the music business went into free fall.'
'What's really driving the studio folks crazy is that a huge chunk of their core constituency – young moviegoers – has evaporated. Poof! They've scattered to the winds. Young males aren't just AWOL from movie theaters, they're also not seeing the studio's TV ads — either because they've stopped watching TV altogether, or because they've got the TV, iPod and IM all going at the same time '
'What should studios do to come to grips with this new era? In a world bursting at the seams with new technology, it's hard to justify the antiquated idea of studio development, which keeps churning out movies such as "Be Cool," an Elmore Leonard novel from 1999 that was hilariously out of date by the time it reached theaters, having a storyline that revolved around Chili Palmer's exploits in the music business, perhaps the least cool place on the planet.'
(((It's amazing to have lived to an epoch when the music
biz is stodgy and backward. The MUSIC BIZ? Unhip?
But it's true.)))
