Blog entry assignment #5 (technically)

The main aspect of the studio system that particularly interests me is the "assembly line" attitude that was applied to the movies of old Hollywood. The making of movies were viewed through a completely different paradigm back then. It's pretty strange in our current time to think that studio heads looked at a movie not as the drawn out and creative process that it is today, with actors calling the shots and directors having they're nitpicky ways. It seems to me that when it was time to crank out movies, studio heads looked at their actors/directors/writers/etc. not as people, but as pieces of the puzzle that was the finished movie. This interests me because I think of how I would look at a movie today if Hollywood operated under that same system.

To illustrate my point, think of how different the film Casablanca would have been if Jack Warner didn't have such a heavy hand in the process. What if it was more like today, and Michael Curtiz and one or two screenwriters were calling all the shots creatively? No telling whether it would have been better or worse, but it would have been a very different movie. It most likely would not have been the mish-mash of genre's that has helped elevate it to the level of "all-time greats" status. It probably would've been a very good movie regardless, and would've still made money behind the star power of Humphery bogart, but it would have also stuck to one straightforward genre, with all of the other potential genre's serving as a mere backdrop (for example, a love story during World War II). Even though I don't like how controlling the studio heads of yore were (or how they treated their talent like machines instead of people), I like how they took matters into their own hands and squeezed greatness out of their people instead of just kinda letting it happen on their own time.


Since I've already used a specific example from old Hollywood to make a point, I'll take an example from today's world for this final paragraph. Think of how different the movie Avatar would have been if Hollywood still worked the way it did 70 years ago. First and foremost, it wouldn't have taken over a decade for that movie to be made. We would have seen it in 1999. No new and improved 3D technology to make it sweet, and we would've watched it through those crappy cardboard glasses. And $300 million on the budget with no stars? Scratch that. See ya Sam Worthington. We're throwing Mel Gibson, Will Smith, Cameron Diaz, Ian McKellan, and Martin Lawrence (for diverse comic relief) in this. It wouldn't be "James Cameron's Avatar" anymore either. Instead, we've got Brett Ratner (of Rush Hour and Mariah Carey music videos fame), and he's the messenger boy for Rupert Murdoch, whose really running the show for this picture. Now we have a very different movie. The poster would look more like this:











Without the super special effects, this movie would basically be Braveheart 2: On A Different Planet.