MOVIE WARS

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JONATHAN ROSENBAUM

This is a brilliant book, much better than I expected. Rosenbaum is widely recognized as a great critic, particularly among hardcore film buffs but, although the breadth of this work greatly exceeds film criticism, Rosenbaum maintains the same level of insight that he brings to movie reviews. In fact, I learned more and got more enjoyment from Movie Wars than from his reviews, which I think are a bit overrated (i.e. I don't think Rosenbaum gets rim-jobs from God.)

The question this book seeks to answer is simple: why do today's movies suck? It is a common observation that mainstream films are more poorly made and disdainful of the audience than ever. Not only that, quality has eroded even at the art house and among foreign films. Where are the Bergmans, Kurosawas and Godards of today?

The common answer to this question, given in self-important tones by the mainstream press as well as academia, is that the decline in film is the fault of the audience. The audience wants crap and the studios give them crap. Rosenbaum acknowledges that there is some truth to this claim, but finding it inadequate and simplistic, endeavors to offer an anti-thesis to the common view.

Rosenbaum answerers the question, "why do today's movies suck?" in several parts. The first part of his answer is that today's movies do not suck. He criticizes knee-jerk conservatives who claim that cinema is being dragged down as part of a general, cultural decline by pointing out that it takes a while to sort greatness out. Most of the geniuses of the first half of the century who are now pointed to as patently superior to contemporary artists were widely recognized as geniuses only somewhat recently. Most of the films of most of the great voices in world cinema of decades past did not make money and received mixed reviews. There are greats out there today, not making money and receiving mixed reviews, and Rosenbaum thinks he knows who some of them are. For example, Godard still does great stuff, but it's uncommercial stuff, so he is ignored, even by professional critics. The new greats won't be canonized for at least a few decades, at which time a new generation of Chicken Little conservatives will ask something like, "where is our Kiarostami? Where is our X? (who may be someone even Rosenbaum hasn't yet heard of.)

Rosenbaum does allow, however, that these great films and even most good films are harder than ever to see, or even know about. While the following of art films in past decades may have been small, the films were allowed to find audiences. David Lynch's Eraserhead is a prime example. An independent theater in New York ran the film for weeks before it finally caught on and became a cult hit. Thanks to certain political changes, this is less likely to happen today because there are so few independent theaters and those that do exist are subject to bullying from the studios.

During the eighties, the federal government allowed studios to regain their vertical monopolies over the production, distribution and exhibition of films by allowing studios to own most theaters. As a consequence, business arrangements favorable to the studios prevail, meaning the studio gets a percentage of the box office rather than renting out prints. This means less incentive for a theater to take a chance on a film like Eraserhead slowly building an unexpected audience. It also means that the studios have so much leverage, owing to the fact that they can always show films at the theaters they own, that they can dictate the choices of independent theaters. Miramax can (and does) say, "you want the new Tarantino? You'll show our new romantic comedy." More importantly, the concentration of theater ownership means that there are fewer independent theaters to begin with which means less competition and fewer choices for consumers.

Other business practices are still more sinister. Miramax and the Weinsteins, a favorite target of Rosenbaum's, are known to buy rights to foreign and independent films and demand that they be drastically re-cut or, worse still, simply shelve them to reduce competition for the films they do choose to release. In fact, according to Rosenbaum, if Miramax buys the rights to a film at Cannes, the odds are that you'll never see it. Because Miramax (a subsidiary of Disney) and other corporate, "independent" brands so dominate the distribution of art house films, if Harvey Weinstein and his piers don't like an art or foreign film, or decide that it is too artsy, that film will become very difficult to see in the U.S.

Rosenbaum also acknowledges that American mainstream films are being dumbed down, or at least staying consistently dumb, but blames the producers more than the consumers. According to Rosenbaum, the testing methods studios use to recut films are "pseudoscience" that doesn't represent real consumer tastes. Although he doesn't provide enough evidence to fully justify this claim, Rosenbaum's reasoning is at least somewhat convincing. He cites a James L. Brooks feature as a prime example. It started out as a musical, but after test audiences expressed dislike of the music, all of it was removed. The film subsequently flopped and since that time, it's been proven that musicals can still make money. Although, unlike Rosenbaum, I am inclined to think that the researchers employed by studios have a pretty good idea of what they are doing (maybe because I don't want to think that earning two degrees in the social sciences was a complete waste of time), two points stand. One, when artistic integrity is compromised to the extent that you are willing to take the music out of a musical, the end product will probably not have much of an impact on audiences. Two, it's hard to imagine how research based on test screenings could avoid a conservative bias. On some level, audiences realize and have internalized conventions. So, for example, if musicals are out of favor, they'll probably say they hate musicals. That doesn't mean that Chicago can't come out and, based on word of mouth and other acclaim, make well over $100 million. Nonetheless, I know how well focus groups work for politicians and other marketers and Rosenbaum did not convince me that the film industry is much of an exception, so this was the least convincing part of the argument. A better point is that the conservative bias of the testing is not a problem for studios, who prefer to churn out a predictable product with predictable profits rather than produce risky films that might have a huge impact. In other words, nobody gets fired for greenlighting Charlie's Angels 2.

Rosenbaum's main concern, however, is not whether XXX is worse than Cannonball Run II is worse than The Green Berets and so on. It's that our alternatives to XXX are narrowing. Why does the truly independent film scene lack the vitality of the independent music scene, or the literary fiction market? It's not the expense of producing films because, again, the good stuff is out there. Part of the problem is the unfair advantage given to big studio films over others. Here Rosenbaum uses an analysis following Noam Chomsky's analysis of the news media. Essentially, the studios demand that the press adhere to a deceitful, profiteering agenda and the press complies without a qualm. Rosenbaum lays out the sleazy details about ,quid pro quo interviews, press junkets, press screenings, free banquets and free hotel rooms that make up modern film "journalism," and which is perhaps tolerated because the same companies making the big features buy ads from the periodicals covering them and both companies are owned by the same conglomerates. A similar state of affairs may exist in the worlds of book publishing and music production (the reputability of music industry ranks somewhere between that of illegal arms dealing and child prostitution), but the good books and music are still able to find their audience, unlike most good films, because record labels don't own record stores and book publishers don't own amazon.com.

Rosenbaum's greatest ire is reserved for the willing players among the media: those willing to write and publish flattering puff pieces about films they haven't yet seen; big name film reviewers who are both professionally and personally uninterested in foreign language films; journalists who spend most of their Cannes coverage discussing what the Weinsteins do and don't like; the AFI.

Oh, does Rosenbaum hate the American Film Institute, which he sees as one more pawn of the industry hype machine, due largely to the AFI's disingenuous list of the top 100 American films of all time. AFI is honored by perhaps the most Ruthless passage in the book, of which the following is only a sample.

[The federal government] now gives [AFI] about $100,000. By contrast, Britain supports its own Film Institute to the tune of over $60 million a year. Yet, on reflection, I doubt whether the AFI can justify getting even two cents on it's present agenda. When they recently shut down their theater at the Kennedy Center in Washington, the AFI's director, Jean Firstenberg, said to the press that video made repertory programming unnecessary. If she meant what she said, I'd rather see the funds used to reduce the AFI to rubble.

In the end, these effects - corrupt journalism, corporate oligopoly and monopoly, abuse of studio power - combine to insure that many good and great films are never released in the U.S., talked about in the press or even seen by critics, who have internalized the idea that films without commercial viability aren't worth seeing, let alone telling readers about. Let's see, word check: over 1,500 and I've only begun to cover what Rosenbaum crams into 220 pages. I'll end with the kind of blurb the book rails against. "Movie Wars is passionate, Ruthless, intelligent, creative, enjoyable and a must read for the serious film fan!"