Gross: The Hits, the Flops...the Summer That Ate Hollywood

Oscar madness is one thing, but has Hollywood itself gone crazy? Peter Bart, editor in chief of Variety, has been asking himself the same question. His new book, THE GROSS, turns the spotlight on the summer of 1998, zooming in on the bombs and blockbusters, but also focusing on what turns the heat up in the Hollywood summer season. In this barnesandnoble.com exclusive essay, the ultimate Hollywood insider compares the big-money blockbusters of the '90s with the "golden age" of the '70s, with surprising results.

Movies: Getting Better or Worse?

by Peter Bart

I am often asked how I would rate the movies of the '90s against those of the '70s, a period that increasingly is being called the second "golden age" of American cinema. Should Hollywood have an inferiority complex about its current crop of movies?

In my opinion, the '90s movies are neither better nor worse, just markedly different. That's because they were intended to be.

In the late '60s and early '70s the principle propellant in getting a movie made stemmed from the passion of the filmmaker. At that moment in time the studios were intensely auteur-centric, which meant that if a Coppola or an Ashby or a Tony Richardson had a strong conviction about a film and his budgetary demands were not outlandish, odds were that he'd find a studio chief who'd listen to him. The director was king, and the financial risks were minimal. Even a rather broad-canvas movie like "The Godfather" cost well under $10 million, and movies opened on only a few screens, supported by a modest fusillade of advertising. No one made $100 million tie-ins with McDonalds orTaco Bell.

How else could "Taxi Driver" or "Easy Rider" or "Coming Home" or "Harold and Maude" get made? How else could "The Godfather" happen, with its (at that time) offbeat cast and untried director? The notion of making a movie like "Midnight Cowboy" today would seem farfetched indeed.

By contrast, '90s movies are more often the by-product of a marketing scheme than a director's vision. It's all about plans, not passions. In order to elicit the approval of the many echelons of studio executives, a major movie must meet several criteria that simply didn't exist a generation earlier. It must be appealing to potential co-financiers since most studios no longer will go it alone. It must have an obvious attraction to the overseas audience. It must be interesting to a marketing partner, whether it be a fast food chain or toy maker. Ideally, it should have the potential of becoming a hot video as well as theme park ride. There should be a hit song in the mix. Also a line of merchandise. In short, it must meet all the criteria of a consumer mass-marketing product line.

Thus an instantly forgettable Disney film like "George of the Jungle" was destined to become a '90s natural. McDonalds loved it so much that Disney opted to lavish more money on its budget than originally planned. "Men in Black" also qualified as surefire '90s fare, even though it was essentially devoid of plot or characters.

There are exceptions to these generalizations, to be sure. After all, blockbusters got made a generation ago, though it's worth noting that, as far as George Lucas was concerned, "Star Wars" represented a personal film, not a marketing scheme.

Similarly, a '90s filmmaker now and then may succeed in sneaking through a more personal, character-driven movie—witness Peter Weir's "Truman Show." Significantly, the few exceptions of this type made over the last couple of years were directed not by idealistic young filmmakers but by veterans of the '70s like Peter Weir and Warren Beatty.

It should be pointed out that some of the '90s blockbusters represent superb examples of filmmaking craft—reality morphed into Hollywood spectacle. But they were conceived in a different film universe than that of the early '70s—shot differently and marketed and distributed differently.

Are films better or worse today than a generation ago? The answer is that they're so different, both in intent and aspiration, that the question itself is a non-starter. I am just grateful to have served as a studio executive in the '70s. It was a lot more fun responding to passion than to grandiose marketing schemes.