We are getting old!

A

Aspiring Mogul

I just watched Apocalypse Now on DVD, and, even though I like it, I still can't say it's one of the greatest movies of all time.

That said, I've asked several 20-somethings if they know of Coppola's work, and, while they know of the Godfather, they have never heard of Apocalypse Now. This just jibes with what George Clooney said at the Oscars, at how the ceremony (and, by extension, Hollywood) was becoming irrelevant to the younger generation.

I've also done a bit of informal polling, and the younger generation do say they don't go to movies that much anymore - they watch them at home. This has serious implications for the industry, especially with the ongoing revolution wrought by the internet.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
 
Yeah, this is exactly why 3D is getting pushed upon producers and directors.
It has zero to do with audience appreciation.

Studio scale filmmaking is a business.
Businesses operate on profitability.
To willfully allow the theater distribution income to wither is fiduciary negligence.
Most people don't have 3D TVs at home, so they are forced to goto the theaters to see films - unless they just want to wait for DVD and VOD, which many of them are, myself included.
Studios know they can't compete with 2D home theater systems + 4month delays, so they have to change their own product to something home viewers can't get.

This is not an either/or scenario.
It's about maintaining even small percentages of revenues through multiple income streams.
There will be people who can wait.
And there will be people who will pay for the opportunity to see something first.
And there will be people who will pay a premium for 3D.

Hollywood will be relevant for a very long time.
Consider what the advent of the internet and Amazon.com has done for book sales.
Book products and purchasing have gone through the roof.
Will there be any way other than through the Hollywood studio business model to fund multi-hundred million dollar films? No. It can't be done on a DVD+VOD funding format. Not anytime soon.
So, will there be a decline in interest in blockbuster films? Hardly.
The demand is there, no matter how it's funded.

Generation Y-ers are not a monolithic demographic uninterested in Hollywood products.


But we're still getting old. :)
(And kids are still getting stupider! :yes: )
 
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My 20 year old daughter and her friends will not watch a film if it's in black and white. She did "suffer" through "Casablanca" with my wife and I one night; she couldn't understand why the film is supposed to be a classic. Oh, and "it's really stupid" that the beginning and ending of "The Wizard Of Oz" is in black and white. She does enjoy classic Disney films like "Bambi", "101 Dalmations", etc., and watches them with her ten year old sister, but I suppose it's more of a nostalgia thing as we used to watch them together when she was a toddler.
 
When I grew up and started to watch movies on tv a lot, in the 70`s there were only 3 channels available and movies were shown regularly, especially on a Sunday afternoon. These were all movies made many years earlier. New movies were not shown on tv for several years after their cinema release. These days new movies are shown a lot sooner on tv and you have dvd`s and computers, etc so people have a lot more access to new stuff. I`m not surprised, therefore, that many younger people haven't heard of Apocalypse now. I dont suppose I would have heard of many of the classic movies from the 40`s and 50`s when I was younger if I had easy access to new stuff.

In regards to Hollywood, I`m sure that it will last for many years to come but people these days have so much media pushed down their throats, most of it not from Hollywood, that they may see Hollywood as not being that important anymore.

I stopped watching the various ceremonies years ago and find them overblown and so self congratulatory.
 
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Alcove Audio said:
My 20 year old daughter and her friends will not watch a film if it's in black and white. She did "suffer" through "Casablanca" with my wife and I one night; she couldn't understand why the film is supposed to be a classic. Oh, and "it's really stupid" that the beginning and ending of "The Wizard Of Oz" is in black and white. She does enjoy classic Disney films like "Bambi", "101 Dalmations", etc., and watches them with her ten year old sister, but I suppose it's more of a nostalgia thing as we used to watch them together when she was a toddler.
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My daughter, 13, is like that, she says she hates black and white films and groans if I put one on. That said, she did sit with me a couple of years ago and watched `Whatever happened to baby Jane` and `12 angry men` and thought they were very good.
 
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Alcove Audio said:
My 20 year old daughter and her friends will not watch a film if it's in black and white. She did "suffer" through "Casablanca" with my wife and I one night; she couldn't understand why the film is supposed to be a classic. Oh, and "it's really stupid" that the beginning and ending of "The Wizard Of Oz" is in black and white. She does enjoy classic Disney films like "Bambi", "101 Dalmations", etc., and watches them with her ten year old sister, but I suppose it's more of a nostalgia thing as we used to watch them together when she was a toddler.
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Same here. My 18 year old son has finally come around a bit, but it was a struggle for years to get him to watch anything in B&W.
 
Teenagers are the bread and butter of the movie theater. It's hard to get me out of the house. It's hard to get a teenager to stay in the house. When going to the movies completely stops being a social event for teens on a Saturday night, the movie theater is finally doomed.
 
Gonzo_Entertainment said:
Teenagers are the bread and butter of the movie theater. It's hard to get me out of the house. It's hard to get a teenager to stay in the house. When going to the movies completely stops being a social event for teens on a Saturday night, the movie theater is finally doomed.
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You`ve hit it on the nail
 
Hollywood will always be around, because telling stories is as old as humanity - possibly older, if our evolutionary predecessors did that around the campfire.

The question is how to sell movies to the younger audience so as to make money. As I write this, I'm thinking of the VCR revolution, which allowed people to watch movies on their TV's. This did not, however, destroy the theatres because the theatres were often a social event, with teenagers and 20-somethings using that as an outing with their peers.

I am perfectly at ease with producing movies for TV and showing via online streaming as I would be for theatres.
 
While we do (and ever shall!) disagree on Apocalypse Now, I do agree that we're all getting old. Don't get me wrong, I like watching movies at home and only end up at the theater when I'm sure it won't be crowded, but I've never liked crowds and spend more time creating than consuming these days. I've been a bit of a cranky old man since I was a teenager (when the other teenagers definitely needed to get off my lawn).

But it does seem it's coming from a different place, with the youth of today. They're watching movies on phones. They're listening to music on crappy speakers. Their priorities, with art and entertainment, are different than back in the day, whenever that day was. And when THEY grow up, they'll say the same thing.

Doesn't mean there isn't room for good stuff, and it doesn't mean that there won't be a place for films theatrically (in an ideal world, Hunger Games will underwrite all the weird horror films Lionsgate has supported over the years). I've never watched or been interested in the Oscars myself, but it's always been a "patting each other on the back" sort of thing. Not that it's a BAD thing or they shouldn't do that, but I'm just not interested in it.

Not liking black and white just makes me sad though.
 
We just watched HUGO and that films' (and book's) message was along these lines of bridging and connecting the ever widening gap between the past with the future, the old generation with the now generation, and B&W silent films with IMAX Color 3D. It certainly wasn't targeted at the high school or college demographic, but hopefully the message wasn't lost on the kids between 8-12 or so.

Scorsese has a 12-year-old daughter so he was doing everything he could to make something she might appreciate and watch while telling a story that is very close to his own heart and sensibilities.
 
You know, this may be a good reason for remakes after all. If the new generation don't want Dorothy on B&W, then perhaps we should make it in color and even (ugh) 3-D, so they can watch it in a way they would like it.
 
Gonzo_Entertainment said:
Just make new films. Don't desecrate old ones.
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Amen, brother!

And it isn't just a matter of whether a film is old or not, it's whether the film requires the viewer to pay attention and think about it. Apocalypse Now demands a lot from its audience. If you're just tuning in to watch a war movie, you're going to be sorely disappointed (except maybe for the Air Cavalry sequence).

Americans have grown accustomed to being spoon-fed everything, I'm sad to say, so movies have dumbed down to retain the audience's attention. :mope:
 
2001 Productions said:
Americans have grown accustomed to being spoon-fed everything, I'm sad to say, so movies have dumbed down to retain the audience's attention. :mope:
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I don't think this is necessarily true. There's always been bad films and other forms of entertainment, it's just that over time they tend to be forgotten, while the good ones are remembered for decades. At the same time, many great films are ignored or dismissed when they are first released, and it's only over time that they actually come to be recognized as great. This creates a situation where it seems like the films of the past were all much better and the current ones are all pretty bad, but it's really no different than any other form of nostalgia. There never was a golden age of cinema where the mass audience appreciated or demanded nothing but great cinema - it's always been the purview of critics, academics, and a small number of enthusiasts from the general population.

Most kids don't like Shakespeare, and don't like being forced to read it in school. Great classic cinema is no different. Over time some of them will learn to appreciate and embrace it, but most won't - just like most of the population doesn't continue to read Shakespeare after high school.
 
ItDonnedOnMe said:
Most kids don't like Shakespeare, and don't like being forced to read it in school. Great classic cinema is no different. Over time some of them will learn to appreciate and embrace it, but most won't - just like most of the population doesn't continue to read Shakespeare after high school.
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I've been wondering about this - if people don't read the Bard's works after high school, what's the point of forcing them to read it?
 
Hell, most of the films I watch are from the 90's and 70's, and much earlier on- French New Wave material has been growing on me lately. So I get my fix of a lot of classics every week. I can't remember the last time I voluntarily watched a "recent film".

So, at least it's not my fault. :lol:
 
ItDonnedOnMe said:
There's always been bad films and other forms of entertainment, it's just that over time they tend to be forgotten, while the good ones are remembered for decades.
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I didn't say they are necessarily "bad" films; I said the stories have been "dumbed down" -- and I stand by that.

Yes, the studios produced The Godfather movies (Apocalypse was independently produced). That was in the 1970s! They also produced Chinatown, The French Connection, Midnight Cowboy, etc. etc. -- back in the 70s. Those movies would not get studio backing today because audiences for them would be too small to justify their production cost.

Independents today are producing some marginally sophisticated stuff -- but not very much of it because they're competing for the same audiences. I'm racking my brain, trying to come up with a recent example, but can't think of anything off the top of my head that is on the level of the examples listed above.

Addendum: The Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy remake impressed me for its sophistication -- so they occasionally manage to sneak one through. But I believe that was mostly foreign money, so it may not be a good example...
 
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