A Lifeline for Serious Film Fans

The implications of the Academy Awards the other night were much more interesting than the actually awards themselves. The hosts, James Franco and Anne Hathaway, proved to be, as expected, awkward and not up to the task. Furthermore, as has been the case for far too long now, the show was far too long, spending countless hours focusing on awards no one in the general public quite understands, and even worse, hours of Hollywood doing what it does best: patting itself on the back. Instead, the results of the major categories, as well as some interesting points about the films themselves should have led the audience, and America in general patting its collective self on the back. Most all of the films nominated and all of those awarded were smaller, adult focused films with independent backing, and focusing on topics that generally don’t make any money. The last point is what makes this year so very interesting, however. These films did make money, unexpectedly large sums of it in fact, and the implications of their box office success may change the course of the American film business and consequently film product for at least the near future.

Looking at the numbers, and the statements from studio heads, the future of film generally points in one direction: those that focus on children, usually CGI, and those that focus on young teenage boys or girls, namely mindless comic book films and their sequels for the former and, interestingly enough, horror films produced in the 10 to 20 million range for the latter.  In fact, Disney head Rich Ross took over the studio just a few years ago with the goal of only making family films with the potential for sequels and franchising.  Over the last few years, the top 10 grossing films for each have almost entirely been G rated or PG-13. Among those, really the only true adult films, outside of comic book based or twilight (whatever the heck that is) were inception and Avatar; with The Hangover representing the only true R rated film. Much has been made of this. With the inception of Netflix and other methods for streaming videos, the movies that Studio heads trust most are those that are driven intensely by a clear demographic that could also be considered “spectacles” or tentpole “event” pictures.

The independent film industry, on the other hand, which had gained so much prominence in the 1990s with the rise of companies like Miramax, were the sole parties responsible for making movies of taste. Yet, these companies died from multiple wounds. The first was self-inflicted, a victim of taking on too much capital during the hedge fund boom, and as a result they were tempted to spend wildly making expensive movies. They had left the comfort zone of adult driven serious films capped at a budget of $40 million or so, and as a result made poor decisions. The other death knell was the destruction of the DVD business at the hands of Netflix or I-tunes and other Internet companies. The DVD business was a key source of a revenue, and without it, once the hedge fund money dried up with the crash of 2008, companies that cared about taste rather than the bottom line in films nearly ceased to exist. Even those that did survive and were able to produce recent films like The Hurt Locker, faced a bitter pill to swallow: critics loved their works, and Oscar awarded them, yet they barely made back in profit what they had spent on their budget.

This years Oscar’s film, however, were different. Films like True Grit and the Town earned over $90 Million dollars, and films like Black Swan, the Social Network and the eventual Oscar winner The King’s Speech all earned over that sum themselves. Those are numbers that executives expect from their larger comedies, starring bankable stars, not serious films starring actors who have never appeared on a commercial in their lives. What happened? Well The New York Times recently proposed that perhaps the fact that America is aging as a whole is contributing to a larger number of adult theatergoers. The expansive number of baby boomers has in turn created an audience without kids to cater to and, now that they are retired, not much to do otherwise. Another argument is simply that the product was better this year, and that studios, though at a scale dwarfed by what they do with their larger summer films, managed to get behind them and market them more effectively than they had in the past. Personally, I have my theories but don’t have a set concrete opinion just yet. I think what happens, not quite this summer, but during next winters season and the summer after that, when the effects of the success of these sort of films can truly be felt, will let us know if perhaps the quality films, with real cultural resonance have been offered a last minute lifeline.