1/26/2006


HOLLYWOOD FOLLOWS MSM INTO THE TANK, AND FOR THE SAME REASON

A guy named David Davenport left a comment on one of my posts that quoted from a fellow who calls himself Tap Scott . The post has to do with the decline of the print media, that hits the nail on the head. BTW, make the Tapster a stop. He's good.

Which Major Daily Newspaper Will Lose the Most Readers in 2006? Judging by the results of the non-scientific survey that has been running in the right-hand column of this blog for several weeks, it looks like The New York Times will be the big circulation loser for 2006 with 46 percent of the respondents checking the Gotham paper's box.

Second is The Los Angeles Times at 22 percent , while running third is The Philadelphia Inquirer at 11 percent. Biggest surprise is the low number of survey takers giving the nod to The San Francisco Chronicle, which lost an amazing 16 percent of its subscribers last year.

My personal pick is the Knight-Ridder Newspapers-owned Inquirer, which, along with the Philadelphia Daily News, has suffered staggering circulation, advertising and editorial staff losses for several years. The weakness of these two dailies is a major reason why Knight-Ridder is viewed by many industry observers as a prime takeover target.

For those who might wonder why this question is even a topic of discussion (and believe me, it is among the most intensely whispered-about topics at professional journalism gatherings these days), check out Hugh Hewitt's update of his Weekly Standard piece, "The Media's Ancien Regime."
How is this MSM meltdown just like Hollywood? The MSM is being irretrievably pulled down by their disconnected Left Wing editorial policies like a modern day Titanic headed toward the bottom, the slow slide to a final cemetary impossible to stop. The publishers won't fire anybody because they are just as left as their leftist reporters and they cannot fire their friends. Be aware that media ability to earn huge money, tied to the circulation of opinion means huge power; the power to persuade millions, the power to affect election results, or the ability to start and stop wars is an irresistable lure to the egomaniac in all of us. The money (publishers) will go down with their ships with their flags bravely flying and no stock holder rebellion can save the companies now. This state of things is no different than "Hollywood" (the American movie business), an industry that has seen its audience shrink ten percent and falling, and no matter what all the wise guys tell you, the drop is due to the lousy movies; movies most of us don't want to see. Nobody in the exclusively Left executive branch has any intention of changing movie themes, even if they could; in fact they cannot change. Not only have they all been "taught" in all the elite universities that stories must contain "social significance," they "know" that all stories must contain an "us vs them" theme, that bad guys have to be governments, that government(s) are corrupt and their allies (big business, never big labor) engaged in looting economies and countries. The money train, filled to the brim with rich Communists, Marxists, and Democrats, will not disgorge the slime that is producing shit like Syriana, Good Night and Good Luck, the terrorist loving movies like The War Within and The Day After Tomorrow, and tons of other Muslim ass kissing cinematic vomit. Expecting them to change is similar to expecting the mostly homosexual Catholic priesthood to clean the pedophiles out of the church. The church mucky mucks cannot attack themselves. There isn't much difference between the church, which has seen tens of millions of Catholics leaving their religioin in disgust, and the MSM/Movie complex which is suffering a similar decline. The homosexual-commie-America haters in the movie business will not clean themselves out because like the Catholic church, they cannot fire themselves. The business will cease to exist and I believe that it is the lust to make money, big big money, that will be seen as the ultimate cause of the disintegration of the movie business by Marxist analyists. Again, Marxists won't blame themselves.

Lots of us have detailed the secret left funding of various left movies but none of us has honed in on the Studios, the major players in the distribution of all Left Wing crap. Corporations exist to make money. Period. They don't care how it's done so long as it gets done. The distribution of movies (the transfer of prints to theatres and the resulting count of admissions) is where the money is begging to be stolen; tickets to a different movie than you actually see are sold, the people who take tickets at the door can pretend to tear your ticket and give you back another one thus creating a "back door" sale (three $8 tickets for $15 adds up); the actual "duping" (printing a print from a film in distribution) of film for transfer to CDs; all and more are what creative distribution is all about.

The really big money that can be safely skimmed off the top in movie distribution is the stuff legends are made of. Many of the old time moguls started by stealing movie prints and showing them in tents around the country. A "bootstrap" style of capitalism that still goes on.

As an example, here's just one of the things that happened to me. The distribs made fifty extra copies of my movie and just threw them out there in various markets. I got hip only because a slimy friend of mine in the porno biz told me to watch for it. Trust me, if you have 1,500 prints out there you cannot keep track them all. I did by having a company comb the daily papers so I could count the theatres in which the movie was playing. When I called the distributor on it the guy shrugged and said, "So sue me." To his surprise I sued him. And I won. So as we are all strolling out of the court the thief comes up to me and asks me for a distribution shot at my next movie. These guys are criminals and criminals do what criminals do, they fuck you. The same business style holds true for ads. How the fuck can you count every ad in every media? You are billed for stuff that never runs. Nuff said on that subject. At least we can be sort of happy that the distribs are now ripping off the hard core Left.

To continue: The studios see the European-Muslim grosses as at least fifty percent of their market and they would rather ignore fifty percent of the American market of around 150 million potential viewers than to lose the potential half a billion or so people in Europe and the Middle East. BUT pandering to foreign dogs has what is known as a "currency risk." In today's world the values of all currencies fluctuate day to day. This means if you want to do a deal based on admissions (tickets sold) for payment your grosses will vary every day because the currencies vary day to day. In addition, you don't know what the Uzbekistan Shit Bag is worth, but it ain't much, so whatever the suits say Uzbekistan grosses are they are lying. It is for this reason that many territories are just "sold" so that the cumbersome accounting can be bypassed. Foreign grosses of movies may never see a studio bank account, and the same can be said for movie videos and computer games.

As this sagging saga of the roaring boring west lurches to its obvious ending, continue to look for movies that none of us have the faintest desire to see, movies that are just loved to death by lefty clowns like Ebert and Roper. So long as the CIA, the American government, or American icons (the fruit cowboys in Brokeback Mountain or war mongering presidents of the United States) can be made either the villain or the object of destruction, the Left will consider themselves successful.

However, but, and hooray, a feel good moment is at hand for all us Left haters. Here are the recent daily grosses for Good Night and Good Luck: $453, $160, $208, and $220. But not to despair, you can bet that the left multi millionaires will make more fertilizer pellets just like them. That is because in the clouded world of Left Wing party goers the ultimate "social significance" is losing money doing things one believes in. The more you lose the more you want to lose. Gives you even more suite cred. And enables you to score great babes at parties.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Howard in so far as Hollywood goes, I can see your point of commie birds flocking together, but how does explain a player like Sony? The top guys in Japan are looking for return on capital so why fund this type of tired left-wing polemical dreck? at best all the third world gross even if they actually got the legit take is worth what? they can't possibly score more there than what their losing here. how long can this go one before they blow up?

As for Knight-Ridder, living in Miami I can tell the Miami Herald is also a lousy paper. the only reason to subscribe is for the Real Estate and Weekend sections. I can get the same dreck news from the same sources for free on the net.
either they haven't got a clue or their paralyzed in fear. sort of like the dear in the head lights. again how long can they go on before they too blow up or get a reality check?

Howard said...

If you will check closely you will find that Sony finances nothing. They, like all studios, agree to distribute product others create and only agree to finance the cost of distribution, which they can always lie and cheat about. They will also rent out studio space and wildly over the top rental agreements, and so on.

In other words, a guy like Skoll shells out the real bucks and his movie is released through Sony. Actual studio funding is reserved for "event" pictures, those summer computerized psuedo spectaculars that cost a few hundred million, and even that production cost being shared these days. And do not ever forget that foreign dogs put up the bucks for lots of movies, and actually produce them before allowing a studio to move in and distribute.

Why Hollywood? It's where the best craftsmen in the world ply their trade. We have guys you have never heard of that can do behind the scenes things like nobody else in the world.

Anonymous said...

Last movie I paid to see in a theatre was Harry Potter #1 in Amman, Jordan. That was better then three years ago...

Marc said...

How about a movie about Al Gore doing a slideshow? Sounds like a winner, right? Well, it's a hit at Sundance:

The film came about after Laurie David, wife of Larry David, saw Gore's slide show in New York after the 2004 premiere of the mega-budget global-warming feature film "The Day After Tomorrow" (starring Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal). Laurie David gathered a team, including Lawrence Bender (producer of Quentin Tarantino films, including "Pulp Fiction") and Jeffrey Skoll, the billionaire eBay founder and movie mogul. They met with Gore. "We said you have to let us make this into a movie," David says in an interview over breakfast.

Anonymous said...

Excellent point Howard. makes sense. all their doing is taking cuts without putting cash up front. In essence the ultimate super-agent. And charging over the top fees for craft services. Sort of like the Mob in their Vegas heyday. Still the part I don't get is why not encourage more mainstream films? it would give them an even larger pot to skim from.
Another question why doesn't the DOJ take a look in to this? it looks like they recreated a de facto studio system from the 30's and 40's, but unlike then, without risking any real capital of their own.Particularly a Republican DOJ. And why would Republicans help out Hollywood with legislation like the Digital Milenium Act? What am I not seeing here?
Where do you see the MSM and Hollywood in five years?

Howard said...

There is so much ciminality that the DOJ cannot go after everyone. Noonan, one of my faves, ran a piece several weeks ago in which she said she felt like "the wheels are coming off the entire system." No one can possibly control all the bureauocracies, all the crooked cops, courrupt politicos, and thugs, not to mention the suite crime taking place in business and Wall Street.

Hollywood accounting has been corrupt since day one when some guy put out extra nickelodeons that the boss didn't know about, or since the first actress had to put out to get a part (Greece 800BC), or the first actor had to bend over for a producer (Greece 999 BC).

But all things come to an end, it is scary that both big media and big autos seem to be ending at the same time.

Anonymous said...

Howard you have confirmed what I have always thought; that the best talent in Hollywood by far are the accountants. there ought to be an Oscar category for Best Accountant.
I just pray that GM is using Hollywood accountants. Pure special effects for the IRS and the unions. Since I'm in at $48 a share this is what is known as whistling past the grave yard.