OpinionJournal - Who Wrecked the Movies?

The worthies at The Wall Street Journal seem to think that a lack of proper ushering is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the steady, relentless decline in box-office receipts. I disagree.

The Journal cites the usual suspect of movie and TV commentators today: the sales of home-viewable copies, formerly only on videotape and now on DVD. They even admit that DVD sales bring in more revenue than does the box office! (Yes, and then I would add the cheap, tawdry merchandising campaigns of some movies. What, for example, was Keebler Foods (a subsidiary of Kellogg) thinking of when they agreed to produce "fudge stripe" cookies in the cover of volcanic lava as a tie-in to Twentieth Century/Fox's Revenge of the Sith? Hello! Somebody almost got himself killed in that scene--and you want some kid to think of that as he eats his lunchtime dessert? But I digress.)

But the Journal then disposes of that argument by saying that DVD's aren't so hot anymore--because by now, people have built libraries of classic films and now have nearly full shelves. And at this point they touch on the real issue and utterly fail to recognize how important it is. Because how can you expect the exhibitors to carry all of the load for the "movie experience," by hiring and training ushers and doing all the other fancy things that exhibitors no longer do, if those same exhibitors can't count on people coming to the movies in the first place? No, the running commentators and popcorn crunchers (with apologies to Mike Straka of Grrr fame on Fox News Channel) didn't run people away from the box office. Rather, the producers did by producing one bad film after another.

First, the producers long ago learned how to justify producing films that no audience would appreciate. They simply suggested that to produce a film for commercial reasons only constituted prostitution of their art. And then they made movies that portrayed women as little better than prostitutes, if not actual prostitutes--in addition to movies with offensive political content. (I refuse to dignify any titles of this sort by naming them here.) They get away with it largely for the reasons that the Journal cites--that the studios get paid up front, and the investors end up losing their shirts when people not only won't attend, but won't buy the DVD either--at least, not in large-enough numbers.

But worse than that is that Hollywood has no talent left anymore. Hollywood is now re-making movies (talk about lack of originality!), and the remakes almost never meet the standards of their originals. And small wonder! Where are John Wayne, James Stewart, Charlton Heston, Humphrey Bogart, Katherine Hepburn, and Audrey Hepburn? Except for Heston, they're all dead. And their replacements are so forgettable that you probably wouldn't recognize their names even if I bothered to name them.

So if Hollywood wants people to come back, then they need to go back to Broadway and recruit acting talent there, just as they did when they started out. And they need to start making movies that whole families can appreciate--and I don't mean--never mind. After that, when exhibitors see some potential, they can think about hiring ushers to make sure that the yakkers and yuckers and popcorn crunchers will cease and desist, or leave. But until that happens, nothing will save the movies.

Except that I just had a horrible thought: a time will probably come when movies are all made by a Department of Information that will make them as salaciously as Hollywood ever did, if not worse. But by then you'll have to let the box-office agent scan your cattle-brand-like stamp on your forehead or right hand to get in....