In the previous entry, I posed the question "has Hollywood officially lost its collective mind?"
This go around, I'm hoping I haven't gotten an answer to that question.
Frank Darabont, the man with the plan where Stephen King is concerned, is the latest in a long line of those trying to get Fahrenheit 451 made for a modern audience, and he's
facing a problem. Here's his quote as found on both Mania and Shock Til You Drop.
I actually had a studio head read that script and say: "Wow, that's the best and smartest script that I've read since running this studio but I can't possibly greenlight it." I asked why and he says "How am I going to get 13-year-olds to show up at the theater?" And I said "Well, lets make a good movie and I bet that will take care of itself." But that argument cut absolutely no ice. The movie was basically too smart for this person, too metaphorical, etc., etc. It's a bit of a battle you've got to fight.
Is this a common problem in Hollywood? I sure as hell hope not, even though I worry its more prevalent than it seems, especially when I consider all the popcorn movie fluff that really gets executives all hot and bothered.
Now I'm not stupid enough to believe that Hollywood should just drop all the fluff and focus on "art movies" or serious dramas. Hell the latest movie I bought on DVD was "Jimmy Neutron - Boy Genius." I wouldn't call that a hard hitting expose on the lives of children.
But I also don't want every executive thinking "how can I get 13 year olds in to see this movie?"
All those that are joining in the conversation at Mania, myself included, are laughing at the apparent idiocy of a guy more concerned with getting 13 year olds into a movie they'd have no appreciation of.
Is this really the golden rule of Hollywood? You can't go forward without the approval of a PG-13 MPAA rating?
Screw that.
And does every movie have to be friendly to as many people as possible to get little Johnny away from his Wii to have more CGI monsters and robots thrown at him just to get him to buy more toys?
Absolutely not.
We're heavily into the PG-13 generation: it's too naughty to be PG, it's not naughty enough to be R, and we can get as many heads to be numbed down as possible in theaters across the country.
I sure as hell can't imagine American Pie being watered down to a PG-13 rating. We're getting horror\thriller movies that have the look of R movies yet are safe enough to take little Billy too.
And the notion of it being "too smart" really pisses me off, as I've encountered quite a number of people that don't want to be talked down to, that need more of a competent story than the ones we're getting more and more of these days.
We are smarter than this. We are better than this. We're all for pure entertaining fluff, but you can only have fast food movies so often. There are feasts out there to be had as well, and we want to dine upon them just as much.
We also want to be engaged. We're not all suffering from ADD, and in fact we can fight off those symptoms quite easily when needed.
Let's face it - executives both underestimate and overestimate us at the same time. Abram's Trek reboot was highly successful while also having the shoddiest story ever to come out of a word processor. Transformers is all spectacle and is nothing more than an over priced commercial for a line of toys. Up remains the best example of storytelling I've seen this year so far.
I simply don't want to be presented with the notion of "too smart" when I make it out west. I also don't want to be defined by the limitations of not having 13 year olds in the theaters. What's the point of telling stories, any stories at all, if you can't make it as it should be and not have it defined by it's imagined limitations?
