Hollywood is Losing Its Power

A lot of us haven't noticed it yet. It's been happening quite slowly, but it is becoming more and more obvious that Hollywood is losing its grip as the center of the motion picture universe. Sure all the major and minor movie studios are still there and they still dominate the business but it is just not the same.

Was it the cheaper costs of Canada that got it started? Or the various incentive programs offered by the other states? That is just one reason. This day of reckoning has been a long time coming.

That entity called Hollywood had it pretty good for a very long time. World War I crippled its European competitors, and its great PR machine worked its wonders to make sure that talented people and all that thought they were would funnel themselves into Hollywood's gates. But what has been the cost? With everyone storming the gates to get their chance connections (who you knew) became much more important than what you knew and quality movies became more accidents than expected occurrences. Once someone did something "good enough" to meet standards, those standards took second place to whatever the current trend was.

Once the agents got their grip in the late 40's and early 50's, the end was on its way because deals then became more important than movies. The studio system took all through the 50's into the 60's to collapse. There was television, the outlawing of block booking, and finally the prohibition of the studios owning movie theatres to remove the power, leaving the studios for the most part with distribution. With their weakened state the studios became vulnerable to takeover. Studios became mere appendages to international conglomerates whose love wasn't movies but profits. To satisfy this lust for profits, movies were no longer made for everyone but for mostly males who were 15 to 25 years of age.

While the studios were being raided, there was a brief time when the executives were distracted during the 1970's where some creative experimentation could slip through. But when the conglomerates discovered how lucrative blockbusters could be, a lot of smaller movies became much harder to make.

With all talent flowing toward Hollywood, these self-appointed gatekeepers just could not keep up. More and more elaborate barriers went up in place to stem the flow. Agents found every way they could to avoid reading new scripts. Unions made the barriers to entry so formidable that it was a wonder that any new talent made it into the ranks at all.

Then came the lure of shooting in Canada. Because of government intervention, shooting became cheaper there and run-away productions became the topic of conversation. States within the United States soon followed with various incentive schemes and the flow out of established Hollywood borders had begun. But it still took a lot of money to shoot with film, so it was still mostly the established players making the films.

Then digital video happened. Gradually at first but then more quickly, independent productions began springing up shooting feature films for a fraction of the cost of those on film. But these still had to be put onto motion picture film to be shown in theatres. That barrier soon began falling away with help from the established players themselves. Thinking they could save on distribution themselves, they began lobbying theatre owners to switch over to digital projection. Why? Because they could send their films via satellite and get those expensive film prints out of their budgets. Of course this eliminated a barrier to the independents for getting their films screened.

So where are we now? Hollywood is in one of its worst periods ever. Beyond its television industries being reduced to reality TV shows and game shows, its movie industry has been so contaminated by focus group studies and executive "safe bets" that most of the films are sequels, remakes, retreads of old TV shows, and superhero films which are reaching out to more and more obscure characters as it goes on. More productions are taking place in states where government subsidies have been enacted than in the place where you expect it to be the film making capitol of the world - Hollywood.

Independent filmmakers around the country are rapidly getting up to speed on how to make entertaining and profitable movies. Once Hollywood-based distribution (and along with it the practice of "Hollywood Accounting") is displaced by distributors based elsewhere and the sharp business practices of the establishment is replaced by more sensible and fair ways, the shift of power will be well on its way to being complete.