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Terry Gilliam on the death of Hollywood

167 points by Alex3917 12y ago

saturdayplace 12y ago
Hollywood has already validated its product, and found product-market fit. It's now just stamping out products it's pretty sure people will buy. Anyone claiming Hollywood doesn't make things people want to buy would, given the choice, swap bank accounts with any of a very large number of Hollywood executives. The coffers of which are by definition filled with customers' dollars. You may not like most of what's on offer, but then, like is so often mentioned around here, you are not the target customer.
- CompanyLaser 12y ago
  Obviously. To anyone who's ever had an authentic encounter with film/art, money and the doctrine of utilitarianism no longer mean anything to you. It's dust.
- rverghes 12y ago
  Is that true though? Take a look at this: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/ http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/ The number of tickets sold seems to be on a steady decline since the early 2000s. It's only because the average ticket price is increasing that the total gross is increasing, and even that has been relatively stagnant for the past five years.
vanderZwan 12y ago
Thank you for posting this - wonderful interview, and I also wasn't aware of Terry Gilliam's new film yet so that's an added bonus for me!
- Alex3917 12y ago
  Yeah the new movie was great, and as I usually do after seeing an unexpectedly nuanced movie, I went to look up what Andrew O'Heir had to say about it. And that's how I found this, which was also unexpectedly great, because how many people have ever asked themselves, "I wonder what Terry Gilliam thinks about X." Probably no one, which is probably also why the interview is so good. (That, and the fact that Andrew O'Heir is one of the film critics who seems to actually understand the movies he watches.)
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Highly recommended: The Zero Theorem if you haven't seen it yet.
  - ape4 12y ago
    I saw it. Thought it was terrible. Not just because the "computer hacker" and "hacking" in the film was beyond silly. I didn't care about any of the characters or story.
    - monocasa 12y ago
      I don't know, I thought the computer work was actually a pretty good visual metaphor for proof assistant software like Coq. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_assistant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_assistant
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
vincvinc 12y ago
I submitted a very interesting Grantland article a few days ago that goes into exactly that (it failed getting HN attention, unfortunately). Just one look at those lists of upcoming releases and you can see what is happening to Hollwood right now. http://grantland.com/features/2014-hollywood-blockbusters-franchises-box-office/ http://grantland.com/features/2014-hollywood-blockbusters-fr...
- _broody 12y ago
  Wow. I just read that article yesterday while browsing for some critiques of The Hobbit Part 3: Alfrid's Quest[sic], and I was nodding furiously all the way through. Brilliant, brilliant framing of the state of Hollywood. I was ensnared by franchise hype for the last couple of years, and seeing this film was the turning point for me to stop and reflect that not one of the dozen+ franchise movies I saw at the theater in this time managed to remotely live up to my expectations. I believe all is not lost, though. Other industries have shown the public eventually fatigues from such exhaustive, quality-less milking. Personally I've had my fill of being duped with franchise marketing, and next time I start thinking of wasting my money on one more of these ridiculous plot-less, CGI-bloated rehashes, I'll look for a decent original movie to wash the temptation off.
  - tunap 12y ago
    What? No more time shifting reboot regurgitants for you? What if Kahn morphs into Kanye for hip-hop goodness? You're going to miss yet another weak Spider Man/Superman/Iron Man written to appeal to a 10yo(seemingly written by said 10yo), or the greatest Terminator peppered with digital homages to Arnold and paper thin plot lines. Perhaps 'Transformers VII: It Can't Get Any Worse' will entice you back. Think of the popcorn, man!
    - aswanson 12y ago
      Hilarious. As a comic fan as a kid, I always wanted to see my X-men, Avengers, Stark, et. al. on the big screen. I had no idea how nightmarish it would turn out. A lot of it has to do with growing up, but as I sit with my kids through these movies I can't help but think: Every one of these movies is nothing but a goddamned Mighty Morphin Power Rangers episode.
aswanson 12y ago
One of the informative/funny things that came out of the Sony hack was that the studios themselves, at least at the lower rungs, are sick of the formulaic, Adam Sandler style movies as well. They just keep throwing money at it because they have no creativity. They cited 'The Hunger Games' as the type of stuff they should continue with; I think they just need more wider-read people in charge of the studios.
Nanzikambe 12y ago
"It’s just — this is crazy. You go to a rock concert and before the first song is finished, the tweets are coming through. It makes me crazy because people are not relating to the real world anymore. That’s very worrisome. Hunter Thompson predicted America would soon be a nation of panicky sheep, and I think it’s adding to the problem." In a nutshell, I couldn't agree more with the notion
- aswanson 12y ago
  He's right. People can't live in the moment anymore. They're only able to report it happening.
  - jschwartzi 12y ago
    This is why I don't take pictures with my phone or use Facebook or Twitter. I don't want to become just another reporter of experiences like everyone else. They're mine, and if someone wants to know about them they should have to ask like they did back before these tools existed.
    - na85 12y ago
      >I don't take pictures with my phone or use Facebook or Twitter. I don't want to become just another reporter of experiences like everyone else. I often feel the same way, but then I wonder if that makes me avant-garde and enlightened, or just a curmudgeon stuck in the past.
      - justathrow2k 12y ago
        Possibly the latter. In any event, there's certainly nothing inherently avant or enlightened about not sharing photos on social media.
      - jschwartzi 12y ago
        I think there are two historical views of technology that people take. View 1 holds that any new technology is better because it saves time performing some task that used to take a long time previously. View 2 holds that any new technology is suspect unless it can be shown that there was truly no value in the time spent before the technology came about. I think there's value in both views, but I'm also more of a View 2 rather than View 1 person, and that's why I prefer not to do those things. I also don't own a microwave, toaster, or coffee maker. Instead I use a French Press and an oven. Realize that when you choose to do something differently from the way it was done in the past, there is necessarily a trade off to be made, either in your enjoyment of time, or the quality of your output, or both.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Pyret 12y ago
In the olden days there used to be 3 channels on TV max. That's how I see Hollywood. It has maybe 2 and a half concept it keeps selling whereas TV, let alone Internet, wouldn't be able to get away with it these days.
e3pi 12y ago
Nice to see billionaires can be creative artists and still have fun: ".. ..I love Matt [Damon] in the film. I think he’s fantastic as that character. I’ve never seen him do that before, and that’s great. I actually said, “Matt, I’ve got a small part. A few days work.” he said “Don’t bother, I’m in.”

167 points by Alex3917 12y ago

Hollywood has already validated its product, and found product-market fit. It's now just stamping out products it's pretty sure people will buy. Anyone claiming Hollywood doesn't make things people want to buy would, given the choice, swap bank accounts with any of a very large number of Hollywood executives. The coffers of which are by definition filled with customers' dollars. You may not like most of what's on offer, but then, like is so often mentioned around here, you are not the target customer.

CompanyLaser 12y ago
Obviously. To anyone who's ever had an authentic encounter with film/art, money and the doctrine of utilitarianism no longer mean anything to you. It's dust.
rverghes 12y ago
Is that true though? Take a look at this: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/ http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/ The number of tickets sold seems to be on a steady decline since the early 2000s. It's only because the average ticket price is increasing that the total gross is increasing, and even that has been relatively stagnant for the past five years.

vanderZwan 12y ago

Thank you for posting this - wonderful interview, and I also wasn't aware of Terry Gilliam's new film yet so that's an added bonus for me!

Alex3917 12y ago
Yeah the new movie was great, and as I usually do after seeing an unexpectedly nuanced movie, I went to look up what Andrew O'Heir had to say about it. And that's how I found this, which was also unexpectedly great, because how many people have ever asked themselves, "I wonder what Terry Gilliam thinks about X." Probably no one, which is probably also why the interview is so good. (That, and the fact that Andrew O'Heir is one of the film critics who seems to actually understand the movies he watches.)
jacquesm 12y ago
Highly recommended: The Zero Theorem if you haven't seen it yet.
- ape4 12y ago
  I saw it. Thought it was terrible. Not just because the "computer hacker" and "hacking" in the film was beyond silly. I didn't care about any of the characters or story.
  - monocasa 12y ago
    I don't know, I thought the computer work was actually a pretty good visual metaphor for proof assistant software like Coq. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_assistant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_assistant

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

vincvinc 12y ago

I submitted a very interesting Grantland article a few days ago that goes into exactly that (it failed getting HN attention, unfortunately). Just one look at those lists of upcoming releases and you can see what is happening to Hollwood right now. http://grantland.com/features/2014-hollywood-blockbusters-franchises-box-office/ http://grantland.com/features/2014-hollywood-blockbusters-fr...

_broody 12y ago
Wow. I just read that article yesterday while browsing for some critiques of The Hobbit Part 3: Alfrid's Quest[sic], and I was nodding furiously all the way through. Brilliant, brilliant framing of the state of Hollywood. I was ensnared by franchise hype for the last couple of years, and seeing this film was the turning point for me to stop and reflect that not one of the dozen+ franchise movies I saw at the theater in this time managed to remotely live up to my expectations. I believe all is not lost, though. Other industries have shown the public eventually fatigues from such exhaustive, quality-less milking. Personally I've had my fill of being duped with franchise marketing, and next time I start thinking of wasting my money on one more of these ridiculous plot-less, CGI-bloated rehashes, I'll look for a decent original movie to wash the temptation off.
- tunap 12y ago
  What? No more time shifting reboot regurgitants for you? What if Kahn morphs into Kanye for hip-hop goodness? You're going to miss yet another weak Spider Man/Superman/Iron Man written to appeal to a 10yo(seemingly written by said 10yo), or the greatest Terminator peppered with digital homages to Arnold and paper thin plot lines. Perhaps 'Transformers VII: It Can't Get Any Worse' will entice you back. Think of the popcorn, man!
  - aswanson 12y ago
    Hilarious. As a comic fan as a kid, I always wanted to see my X-men, Avengers, Stark, et. al. on the big screen. I had no idea how nightmarish it would turn out. A lot of it has to do with growing up, but as I sit with my kids through these movies I can't help but think: Every one of these movies is nothing but a goddamned Mighty Morphin Power Rangers episode.

aswanson 12y ago

One of the informative/funny things that came out of the Sony hack was that the studios themselves, at least at the lower rungs, are sick of the formulaic, Adam Sandler style movies as well. They just keep throwing money at it because they have no creativity. They cited 'The Hunger Games' as the type of stuff they should continue with; I think they just need more wider-read people in charge of the studios.

Nanzikambe 12y ago

"It’s just — this is crazy. You go to a rock concert and before the first song is finished, the tweets are coming through. It makes me crazy because people are not relating to the real world anymore. That’s very worrisome. Hunter Thompson predicted America would soon be a nation of panicky sheep, and I think it’s adding to the problem." In a nutshell, I couldn't agree more with the notion

aswanson 12y ago
He's right. People can't live in the moment anymore. They're only able to report it happening.
- jschwartzi 12y ago
  This is why I don't take pictures with my phone or use Facebook or Twitter. I don't want to become just another reporter of experiences like everyone else. They're mine, and if someone wants to know about them they should have to ask like they did back before these tools existed.
  - na85 12y ago
    >I don't take pictures with my phone or use Facebook or Twitter. I don't want to become just another reporter of experiences like everyone else. I often feel the same way, but then I wonder if that makes me avant-garde and enlightened, or just a curmudgeon stuck in the past.
    - justathrow2k 12y ago
      Possibly the latter. In any event, there's certainly nothing inherently avant or enlightened about not sharing photos on social media.
    - jschwartzi 12y ago
      I think there are two historical views of technology that people take. View 1 holds that any new technology is better because it saves time performing some task that used to take a long time previously. View 2 holds that any new technology is suspect unless it can be shown that there was truly no value in the time spent before the technology came about. I think there's value in both views, but I'm also more of a View 2 rather than View 1 person, and that's why I prefer not to do those things. I also don't own a microwave, toaster, or coffee maker. Instead I use a French Press and an oven. Realize that when you choose to do something differently from the way it was done in the past, there is necessarily a trade off to be made, either in your enjoyment of time, or the quality of your output, or both.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

Pyret 12y ago

In the olden days there used to be 3 channels on TV max. That's how I see Hollywood. It has maybe 2 and a half concept it keeps selling whereas TV, let alone Internet, wouldn't be able to get away with it these days.

e3pi 12y ago

Nice to see billionaires can be creative artists and still have fun: ".. ..I love Matt [Damon] in the film. I think he’s fantastic as that character. I’ve never seen him do that before, and that’s great. I actually said, “Matt, I’ve got a small part. A few days work.” he said “Don’t bother, I’m in.”