12 responses to “Girls on the Loose, Girls Will Be Boys, and a few more films”

1. 

   js

   07/31/2024

   None of these movies were made in my lifetime, and I'm 35. Whose grandfather are you?

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   1. 

      Claude Reigns

      07/31/2024

      Modern films are almost uniformly horseshit

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   2. 

      Doug Holland

      07/31/2024

      Truth, and I chuckle at folks who do movies only at the multiplex. You will never, js, know what you've missed.

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   3. 

      johnthebasket

      07/31/2024

      Someone who understands the economics of the movie industry through the 20th century ought to write a summary piece about how the funding of movies has evolved from the scattered small studio system/systems of the 19 aughts through the silent era, then through the studio system(s) of the thirties through the fifties and into the sixties, and the mess that has funded/defunded movies since the 70s. As Deep Throat said, "Follow the money and you'll understand the crime."

      I live in ignorance about the economics of moviemaking, but it seems like there is some expertise on this site — and I think it would explain why it's best to avoid the multiplex.

      John
      John

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   4. 

      Doug Holland

      07/31/2024

      Hospitals suck, and I hope you're plotting an escape and playing defense until you're discharged. Hope the food is edible, and hooray for that nurse with the marvelous rear.

      He's John-John to me, in the photos from when he was a tot. Without researching it, I'd have no idea what he did with his life, so he's still John-John to me.

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   5. 

      Doug Holland

      07/31/2024

      I don't know much about the economics, and try not to know. Most movies, and all mainstream movies, are a commercial product, only about money. Just another business, behind the scenes, no different from the business of slaughtering hogs or manufacturing tampons. They make movies the executives think will sell tickets. What sells has changed some, but it's the same money-powered recipe.

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   6. 

      granville

      08/01/2024

      I saw this interview with Peter Bogdanovich. At the time I think I knew more about his incredibly sleazy personal life than his movies, probably still do. But it was a "career retrospective" thing and at a certain point all the questions about films he directed from about mid-career or so began with "I need the money, so I…"

      Later I read "Being Hal Ashby." Admittedly knew less of Ashby than I did of Bogdanovich. Again we get to what should have been the middle of his career, and every chapter seemed to begin with "Needing money after…"

      Finally there's Francis Ford Coppola, the first director I can think of whose entire work history or close to it was probably in your local Blockbuster. Half of them are not very good, and almost every review mentioned his need of money.

      I'll put Cimino in here too. Whatever you think of these 4 guys, they were among the most successful directors in history at one point, and within a few years of their greatest successes were out with bowl in hand, sometimes being allowed to make terrible movies but usually not even allowed to use their gifts to make the terrible movies a little better. The industry seems to revel in this, tearing down idols they built up into "geniuses." It's money but it's sociopathy as well.

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   7. 

      Doug Holland

      08/01/2024

      The fight for funding must suck for those guys, but at least the money they're looking for is for a movie, not for the rent. I'd be surprised if any of them knew hunger or worry or lack of health care, after their first success.

      I try to stay away from people's personal lives … even people in my family, but especially people whose artistic work I like. 9½ times out of ten, whatever's reported about their personal lives will make me like 'em less.

      All I know about Bogdanovich's life is Dorothy Stratton, which I'm sure was a sleazy story even while she was alive.

      My favorite genius torn down is Woody Allen, but he did most of the tearing down himself. Not his personal peccadillos, of which I'm unconcerned and unconvinced — innocent until proven guilty and all that — but he decided to make movies that look like shit, with hand-held camerawork for 'realism' so 'real' they should've sold Dramamine alongside the popcorn at the concession stand. I'll stick with his early work.

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2. 

   johnthebasket

   08/01/2024

   Opinion: Economics are the most interesting things about art.

   My slippery understanding of moviemaking is that the Producer (or Executive Producer) is the money person. Obviously, sometimes the director is also the producer. So tell me what I got wrong here. You guys were talking about four directors and I'm talking about funding. If the producer(s) have nothing to do with money, what the hell do they do?

   If the producer just smokes cigars and farts, Cubby Broccoli got a lot of 'splainin' to do.

   John

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   1. 

      Doug Holland

      08/01/2024

      The producer is about money, either spending it or managing how it's spent, which means the producer is the boss, even over someone like Francis. Unless Francis is in Zoetrope mode, producing a film hisself. It's also a title sometimes given to brothers-in-law and cronies and mobsters, and handed out to actors who don't do much of anything producer-wise but like the prestige. Ot at least, that's my understanding, as a guy who drove through Hollywood once, looking for a cheeseburger.

      Broccoli makes me fart, too.

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   2. 

      granville

      08/02/2024

      Many ways this can go and how it went is different than how it is now. But here's an example. Let's say Coppola wants to make a movie about bowling. He probably is working with a producer already as part of a "filmmaking team," or is one himself, but this person doesn't have much money (or any: they're just a person with access to money, but they still have to ask). So they try to line-up the financing. Often this can go on for years and the vast majority of these projects never actually get funded.

      While this film about bowling is raising money (or not!), a producer approaches Coppola and says, I want you to direct a light-hearted comedy about talking babies. You get no control over the story, the editing, or the casting, we just want you to point a camera and shut up. We could get anyone to do this, but if that anyone is named "Coppola" we might be able to get DeNiro or Travolta to voice the dark-haired, swarthy baby. Coppola will do it because producers in meetings about his bowling movie are clearing their throats and worrying that he's "out of touch" and has heard stories about him telling producers to fuck off. Eating shit by making a talking baby movie for hire will prove that he's worthy of their trust and money again.

      Coppola has, several times in his career, said fuck it and financed his films himself. He has another one coming out soon, Megalopolis, that he was trying to fund for 30 years and did so by selling or mortgaging a lot of what he's built in his 80 years of life. Critics are pretty scathing (but often in a way that you can't really understand what is so bad about what they're describing), which I think is part of the socipathy: not playing along in the above game indicates that you're crazy and have delusions of grandeur and need an MBA to help you make some nice movies about talking babies.

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   3. 

      Doug Holland

      08/02/2024

      What a frustration you describe. Cimino had to do a lot of that, I think. Probably happens to everyone in Hollywood who still has a soul — sell that soul baby, or you're going nowhere.

      I had a nightmare more than once, that had me hired as a professional writer, but only if I wrote celebrity gossip. Guess that's my version of a bowling movie.

      Although I did like The Big Lebowski.

      If I admire anyone in cinema (I try not to) it's the few who seem not to have compromised. Not many of them, and probably it only means they had a head start with money or nepotism, so they never faced a sell-out situation.

      Lynch maybe. Not sure who else. Coppola had to compromise his ass off early in his career, of course.

      Maybe the only people who don't have to compromise every day of their lives are the homeless. Can't fire 'em, can't evict 'em…

      And the retired!

      Reply

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