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What's it like to star in a flop?
- jerf 5y agoSounds a bit like the work I've done for a startup I eventually knew was dead, followed by the position I was hired into for a contract that never went through... but at least I didn't have an audience for those! (That dotcom burst thing suuuuuuucked.)
- flooow 5y agoI went to see Manor at opening night. I thought it was OK, I was entertained. Was weird to find out (just now!) that it had got an absolute mauling in the press. It makes me wonder if I have terrible taste, and to what extent the 'quality' of a work of art is constructed after the fact by a social in-group (the critics). Relatedly, I've started watching movies at random, without reading reviews before or after, to try to develop a sense of what I actually enjoy. Whether I have any real critical faculties at all. Perhaps it is all just received opinion. I re-watched League of Extraordinary Gentlemen last night though, and can confirm that it is in fact bad.
- isk517 5y agoI think one of the big differences critics and general viewing audiences is the amount of media consumed and how it effects their views. Over time the bar of excellence goes ever higher and the tolerance for the good, mediocre, and bad becomes less.
- BizarroLand 5y agoIt's kind of like a lot of one-hit wonder bands. They may have a lot of really good songs but it all gets overshadowed by their mega hit song so people rarely get to hear it. Most Millenials know the song, "Flagpole Sitta" by Harvey Danger, for instance, but how many people know "Problems and Bigger Ones" off of the same album, or "Jack the Lion"? "Closing Time" by Semisonic is in the same vein, but on the same album is, "Secret Smile", "Singing in my Sleep" and "Gone to the Movies". Great songs that can totally stand on their own but most people hear the hit, enjoy it, and move on, never realizing how much musical depth they're missing.
- vimda 5y agoOne of my favourite things is how hard the band Smashmouth tries to correct people that they aren't just "the Shrek song guys". They actually have a decent catalogue, but no one hears it outside of "SomeBODY once told me..."
- ludamad 5y agoProbably not so funny if you're Smashmouth and otherwise stoked to make new music :)
- mixmastamyk 5y agoFunny, never heard of the second band or song you mentioned. Looked it up on AllMusic and recognized it immediately. Rest of the album good? They have three. Think I have the Semisonic CD around here somewhere... might dust it off. ;-)
- brandnewlow 5y agoEvery song on Feeling Strangely Fine is terrific. The other albums have great songs but uninteresting ones too.
- mixmastamyk 5y agoSorry, I kinda screwed up my comment, meant second paragraph.
- BizarroLand 5y agoYeah, Harvey Danger is hyperliterate garage rock. The follow up albums are a little less raw than Where have all the Merrymakers Gone, but still fun to listen to as a background of your life kind of music.
- laumars 5y agoFunny enough I got into Harvey Danger’s back catalogue because Flagpole Sitta happened to be the one song of theirs that wasn’t on Spotify. Now I’m wondering if that was intentional to encourage people to listen to their other songs.
- ghaff 5y agoFurthermore, for a similar reason, critics probably are more attracted to novelty than the average viewer for whom it may actually be a negative if they're just looking for an enjoyable and not too challenging night out.
- NikolaeVarius 5y agoLeague of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a bad movie that is curiously extremely entertaining IMO.
- gilleain 5y agoThis makes sense if you consider 'quality' and 'enjoyability' on two separate axes: - High quality and enjoyable? A classic. - Low quality but enjoyable? A personal favourite. - High quality but boring? Critics choice that no one watches. - Low quality but boring? Obvious trash.
- HideousKojima 5y agoWhat if someone recognizes that Steven Seagal movies are utter garbage but enjoys them anyway as a guilty pleasure? Asking for a friend
- gilleain 5y agoThat's category2 - personal favorite. So long as he is wearing a giant leather trenchcoat, shooting people while sitting in a chair, saying "this is a little mutherfucking thing called justice", and letting someone younger fight for him.
- danielheath 5y ago“American History X”: I think that was amazing, and I hope I never see it again.
- flooow 5y agoSomehow I always remember it as being good escapist fun, but it isn't really. But I'll probably watch it again in a couple of years' time.
- Jenk 5y agoFor an example of the polar opposite, I thought Drive[0] was exceptionally high quality, yet not even remotely entertaining. It made for some nice screencap wallpapers, though. [0]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780504/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780504/
- lapetitejort 5y ago> I thought it was OK This may be enough to justify harsh reviews. If people are going to spend several hundred dollars to see a live show, it better be an amazing show, something they'll remember for life. If people want to see something that's just okay they can watch a movie and not regret their loss of time and (nowadays very little, if on a streaming service) money.
- ddek 5y agoTickets start at £10. It’s not a high value production.
- TomVDB 5y agoI once went to opening night of Il Trovatore at the NYC Met opera. I thought it was great. At the end of the performance, singers for the usual ovations but when the director appeared on stage, the audience started booing. They apparently didn’t like the modern decor. Neither did the NY Times. I obviously don’t have a good eye for these things.
- kjellsbells 5y agoThe people who boo at operas are detestable. Like they have a mental image that the work is preserved in amber and the staging must never change. It's crazy and short-sighted. Example, they booed Patrice Chereau at Bayreuth in 76 and that is now considered a classic that rebooted Wagner out of the endlessly stale swords and horns look. Plus there is the absolute dickishness of booing a team that spent six months or more slogging their guts out so they could sing, in tune, for three hours straight, for their entertainment. In short: it wasnt you.
- nickff 5y agoWell, the other side of this is that many audience members will give every performance a standing ovation, even when it isn't merited. Some people give 'unearned' standing ovations because they want to believe that the bad show was actually good, while others succumb to social pressure. I think the audience should be expected to react with their genuine feelings about the performance; if the team wants a positive reaction every single time, they're going to have to earn it.
- autarch 5y agoI go to a lot of classical concerts here in the Twin Cities, MN, and the audience basically gives a standing ovation every time. I don't mind it. I'd much rather be part of an enthused, appreciative audience who celebrate the incredibly hard work it takes to get to the point of these performance (literal decades of practice).
- nickff 5y ago
- tomcam 5y agoBut that car, the Nautilus… https://www.google.com/search?q=nautilus+car+The+League+of+Extraordinary+gentlemen&sxsrf=AOaemvIyN1E3rMtbh55UeL04ezYvNz4tTw:1639795925427&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjVjI7tq-z0AhU7DzQIHZlUAb0Q_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1121&bih=1352&dpr=2 https://www.google.com/search?q=nautilus+car+The+League+of+E...
- w0mbat 5y agoThere was a London West End musical life of Leonardo Da Vinci which the critics hated, partly because it featured a fictional female love interest when Leonardo is generally believed to have been gay. It was financed by the island nation of Nauru using proceeds from its guano fertilizer business, prompting every critic to say they had found a way to turn crap into crap. My Dad told me about another West End disaster called "Fire Angel". Every West End theatre has little signage areas out front where they put press quotes about the show. Even with a terrible show they can always quote critics saying something positive, even if it's only about one song or one actor. However, no review said anything good about the show, so the signs all had snippets like "Fire Angel is a musical" - The Times.
- koolba 5y ago> Even with a terrible show they can always quote critics saying something positive… Many years ago when movie times and reviews were posted in newspapers, I recall seeing a print ad for a movie that had the quote “X is like a beach vacation…”. The movie was beyond terrible and I was curious of the source so I dug up the actual review. The full line was: “X is like a beach vacation, except you’re not invited.”
- m3kw9 5y agoReview “..opposite of awesome”, Movie “awesome”
- iainmerrick 5y agoReminds me of this cleverly-placed two-star review in a movie poster: https://web.archive.org/web/20150909082602/https://twitter.com/benfraserlee/status/641368752798306304 https://web.archive.org/web/20150909082602/https://twitter.c...
- koolba 5y agoI’d hire the graphic artist that put that together instantly.
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- wly_cdgr 5y agoAs if there's any critic who would work for The Guardian or Times whose opinion matters. It'd be like deeply caring what Kotaku or Polygon have to say about games...comical
- dhosek 5y agoI found it fascinating that the London theatre business is such that a play must continue running for a minimum period (described in the article) even if it's a failure. That's really bizarre. In my younger childless life, I used to go to the theatre fairly often and even had a Goodman subscription. I don't think I ever saw anything that would have qualified as a flop or even an artistic failure, but the Chicago theatre scene is pretty vibrant. While we lived in Los Angeles, we went to the theatre less often, but again a pretty vibrant theatre scene although not as risk-taking as Chicago (many smaller venues seemed to be actor-financed productions meant to catch casting directors' eyes, but none of these actor-producers had Ed Wood–like blindness to bad production, at least none that I saw). My sense is that New York is a lot more risk-averse, especially in the main stages. Perhaps things get more daring in smaller venues in the outer boroughs?
- ghaff 5y agoIn major cities, there are a lot of smaller theatre companies you can go to. The quality is a bit hit or miss but tickets prices tend to be in in tens rather than hundreds of dollars. (NYC will be more expensive of course.) I have a subscription to a theatre that has a couple of companies in Cambridge MA and it's always an enjoyable night out and is pretty economical.
- PeterisP 5y agoIt's probably not that it must continue but rather that it must pay the rent and salaries anyway, so if the venue is going to be 1/3 full then it's at least some revenue to compensate instead of nothing and they continue.
- tunesmith 5y agoLook Look sounds really interesting. I wonder if it's possible to get copies of the script to do a table read, I've been wanting to get occasional table reads together with my friends, even if just over Zoom.
- jccalhoun 5y agoI've always wondered if actors know while they are filming it that the movie is going to be terrible or if they can't tell until it is finished.
- newsbinator 5y agoI assume that 1) they know and 2) they can never, ever admit during or after that they knew... possibly not even to most people in their personal life. There are a lot of things that a production can't recover from, no matter which other elements are excellent: * Bad director * Bad cast * Bad writing Get those 3 things right, and you can recover from bad special effects, bad costumes, bad make-up... even lousy cinematography or low budgets. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mOIxyRTY5I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mOIxyRTY5I
- rectang 5y agoA lot of the most compelling art happens when people fully commit. But if you fully commit to something which is a little off, a brilliant performance can become something that feels "bad" but you still can't look away. If an actor gives a committed performance while filming, they could have the sense that it is either amazingly good or amazingly bad. And either premonition could be right or could be wrong. (Not to get into what makes something "bad" anyway which is a whole 'nother subject...)
- toomanyrichies 5y agoI suspect the latter. Much of the storytelling aspect of filmmaking is done in the editing room, piecing together takes into a narrative and deciding what makes into the finished product. A terrible movie can be made into a decent one (or better) with a skillful re-cut.
- fumar 5y agoDo you have any examples?
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- danbmil99 5y agoMy Dad starred in an epic flop which ironically got raves from John Simon, a much-feared theater critic for New York Magazine. Unfortunately, his positive review was not enough to rescue the play, which promptly closed after (I think) 2 or maybe 3 performances. https://slleiter.blogspot.com/2021/06/589-whitsuntide-from-my-unpublished.html https://slleiter.blogspot.com/2021/06/589-whitsuntide-from-m... Actors need to grow an iron hide. My pop went on to have a decent career with small parts in big movies, bigger roles in some low-budget films, and a few commercials to pay the bills. The writer of the flop, Tom La Bar, was my dad's mate in the Marine Corps. They lived interesting lives. Art is about risk. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
- dannyobrien 5y agoI've been "lucky" enough to be in theatrical flops, and start-up flops. The mood is very similar -- the sort of constant background nervousness, and the tricks you play to keep your motivation up. I liked this piece for describing something that you never feel at the time, which is the transitory and arbitrary nature of the failure. The show that I was in which was called "the worst show on the (Edinburgh) Fringe" was directed, written and and starred folks that would go on to be well-known as very talented, popular performers; and in different combinations the folks in the start-up would be the engines behind much more successful companies. Of course, it could have all been my fault as the common element, but I'd rather not think about that :)
- divbzero 5y ago> ”The first thing you do is tell all your friends who have booked tickets to cancel.“ Beyond a certain level of awful wouldn’t it become ironically amusing to watch especially with your friend in the show?
- gwbas1c 5y agoKinda makes me wonder how the live action Cowboy Bebop actors took it. There was so much buildup for the show.
- bsenftner 5y agoWorking in feature film visual effects for several years, when an obvious flop goes through the studio it casts a dark depressing cloud over the entire 2000 person operation, despite the film being only one of 4-6 productions in the studio at that time. Regardless, the work requires painful attention to detail and long hours - which seem to double in length when the film content is stupid, poorly executed, and we (the VFX team) have an irrational hope from the filmmakers that the VFX will somehow polish their turd. It really hurts the entire studio, dragging on all productions. Yet, worst than working on a flop is working on what everyone recognizes will be a Best Picture Oscar candidate, and the filmmakers are hell bent on driving your studio out of business with their extreme demands. It was extremely painful to be at Rhythm & Hues during the making of "Life Of Pi" - we knew it was gonna win Best Picture and we knew it was bankrupting our company and ending our jobs.