The Hippopotamus at the Table

In the past two decades our choices for entertainment have exponentially increased along with our population. That has caused, however, a reduced market share for the traditional venues of television and movies. The days when network TV was the only choice for an evening of entertainment have long past. Now, there is cable. Not only is there cable, though, there is TIVO, On-Demand, and Internet Streaming entertainment. There are games. There are hand-held games, on-line games, on-demand games, Nintendo, X-box, Wii games and Kinnect Games. There are games on your smart phone. 

Then there is social networking. The fifteen hours the average Facebook user spends on Facebook are fifteen hours away from television and film viewing. It’s isn’t going away. It’s getting bigger. When Facebook announced they would stream Warner Brother’s “The Dark Knight” and it looked pretty much like nothing happened, it made me wonder what the future of film and television really can be? I rarely am so enraptured by filmed entertainment that I willingly shut off my Facebook checking.

There are about 40,000 people getting film degrees in the world, and yet the market for film and television is suffering from attrition. So, as a screenwriting teacher, it is a daunting task to find some modicum of hope that I can share with my students. Sure Hollywood has successfully promoted the idea of the “overnight success” but in truth, it is a slog to get there no matter how you slice it. Moreover, getting “there” is perhaps a questionable goal. Blasphemy! I am supposed to be cheering you on to “make it big” in Hollywood, right? Wrong.

Hollywood has now entered the phase of its life in the Universal Marketplace where it is becoming “niche” entertainment. (shhhh! The Hippopotamus is eating!) It is not all of entertainment anymore, and it never will be again. There are just too many options for the consumer to ignore. Therefore, if you want to get into that niche, you’re really going to have to figure out how to write what they produce – The Hollywood Movie. It is what they do best, and they are not looking to break out of that mold, at least for now.  Rather it seems clear they intend to hang on for dear life against the winds of change.

If you bristle against that status quo, then I suggest you stop looking towards Hollywood as your answer to the age-old questions of the artist – How do I get seen? How do I make a living? How do I get discovered? Stop assuming that the only way to get your film made is the traditional way. You don’t have to do it their way anymore. That said, it is time to notice the Hippopotamus sitting at the table with us.

“The Hippopotamus” is always an assumption that everyone makes at certain times of our lives that we strive to avoid noticing. We would like to pretend that the Hippopotamus is a figment of our imagination. We are ripe for blissful ignorance, and hope that it is having no influence on the dinner at hand. Of course, a hippo at the table is a messy thing to pretend about. Have you ever smelled a pachyderm’s house? So, that’s the kind of stinky assumption we’re dealing with, and it needs to be acknowledged and put in its proper place.

The Hippopotamus we have at the entertainment industry dinner table is an assumption about what the future of entertainment looks like. It’s a multi-tiered assumption that, in my opinion, is dangerously avoided or ignored. Let me introduce you to the unspoken thoughts that fuel fear in my industry:

• We assume that movies are going to exist as marginalized entertainment, much as theater has over the last one hundred years. There I said it.
• We assume that games and social networking will dominate the entertainment industry eventually, and that barring a few break out, technologically inventive film events, like “Avatar”, most people will eventually view all movies on their iPads, or internet televisions. There, I said it.
• We assume that an “interactive movie” is more like a game than a point of view story created by a master storyteller. In fact, the story is so hackneyed by now, it hardly matters as long as you have a celebrity that has box-office attached. Yeppers.
• We assume that people will stop wanting to leave their homes to gather for entertainment’s sake except at astronomically high prices for “important” Academy-sanctioned films. We assume that film, like theater, is going to exist still but be less important to our collective conscience and more elitist in the future. So there.
• Like libraries and books, like big box stores, like heirloom seeds, the world of big movie theaters and even multi-plexes take up too much room, require too much electricity, and will become unnecessary. There, I said it.
• Even DVDs and BlueRay disks take up too much room in our lives to exist for very long in a world of apps the audience can download for free.
• Even Television will be a hand-held app on Facebook, Amazon or Google before the end of the decade and living rooms will look more like office cubicles. There, I said it.

This Hippopotamus belies our hope that somehow people will continue to want to go to the movies, and watch television when they have so many other options in life to live adventures. Because the truth is this: we’re married to our hope, and we’re having a wild and lustful affair with the Hippopotamus.