Bringing the Audience: Why Hollywood is Addicted to Adaptation

Heavy sigh. Another book or two bites the dust at the movies, and still Hollywood insists on adapting books, GREAT BOOKS into movies. You know what I think. I think that they are simply terrified to make original movies anymore because it rarely pays off. Why is that? Because original movies don’t have audience. Well, original movies by new artists don’t have audience. Original movies by the old guard, Spielberg, Nichols, Brooks, Scorsese and Copola still have audience, but even that is not a sure thing. Tarantino sort of kind of has audience. Rodriguez kind of sort of has audience. Uhmmm. Spike Lee anywhere to be found?

Who are the original new artists getting funding for their films anymore? If you go to the influential group “New Directors/New Films” http://newdirectors.org/ for their top 40 film presentations, you’ll see lots of familiar names at the beginning of the list starting about 1980, but as the list becomes more recent the last filmmaker who has continued making films that have audience is Christopher Nolan, 1998. Uhmmmm. So the ones that follow, besides the brilliant filmmaker Darren Aronofsky, who made “Pi,” I have never heard of since. Since 1998.  The films post 1998 are sparse. Why is that? No audience.

What happened in 1998 to take the audience away from the movie theater? Hmmmm. Well, I for one have a perfectly good excuse: I had two babies. Surely though there must have been something else going on besides all the moviegoers my age staying home from the movie theater to watch videos at home on their big television screens. Home video burst onto the scene in the 1980s in a big way with VHS surging ahead of Beta in this country. When I worked on The STAR TREK Fact Files I had an entire room with wall-to-wall shelving to accommodate every single STAR TREK episode and movie on video for quick replay. I was actually dreading the advent of shows after the third season of ST: VOYAGER because I didn’t know where I’d put the dang video tapes. Video tapes meant for me that I could work at home with my baby in her swing, but that was work. What it meant for the audience was that a person could be reasonably entertained without going out.

A friend gently pointed out to me that losing movie theaters is not like losing the banks on Wall Street. They are not too big to fail. They can be shown the door from the entertainment industry, but I will tell you that until the dust settles from their demolition, Hollywood is not funding new, untried, high-risk ventures often, if at all, because the business model does not yet exist.  The audience is shrinking from first run releases. The first run release success is how second run success is predicted. Straight-to-video films have generally not done well at finding their audience. Therefore, what we will see is films that come from someone or some creation that already has audience.

That means we’re going to see adaptations of popular, well-loved books, even when they NEVER really work.  We’ll see films based on other franchises like SNL, or any given science fiction show, ahem, and don’t be surprised if they try to figure out how to make movies about Real Life Housewives, American Idol or So You Think You Can Dance. It is not to insult the audience’s intelligence. Really it isn’t. It is trying to guarantee an audience will fill the theater. I mean they make successful first run weekend movie releases on movies based on theme park rides, and board games for shitsake just because we want to see how they try to pull it off. We are into gimmicks like 3D and IMAX. The age of the sequel is so deeply ingrained that there are now Academy Awards going for THIRD sequel releases. Thank goodness, for comic books because with their audience and from their very conception as essentially storyboards, they make pretty good movies. All of this is simply to guarantee an audience (YOU) will come into the theater, and buy licensed products like apps and games. It comes down to this fact: Audience = Money. Money equals a return on investment.

Sticking My Neck Out

I've been teasing you to think about screenwriting differently than most teachers. Instead of focusing solely on your story, your structure, your product, I've been asking you to think about the fortune of film itself in the digital age. A few weeks ago, I pointed out that while we may love film, we screenwriters are as guilty as anyone else is of killing the movies because we, too, partake in the wonderful world of digital entertainment. It would be like a photographer going on and on about the importance of 35 millimeter film and using a smart phone to take pictures of her kids. And, yet, that happens all the time, I bet. So, let's admit that we're joining the attrition crowd to read blogs, to join in Facebook discussions, to watch YouTube.com videos, and to play games in a million different ways. Let's wonder about the loss of books, and films that tell stories classic to our understanding of humanity itself, and let's not think of gimmicks to save them but of re-purposing those big stories for the audience.

For a few thousand years we have depended on books to help us interpret the meaning of life. Now, we are looking at the end of paper publishing. Really and truly. In a decade libraries will be on-line more than they'll be places for pimply-faced kids to make too much noise in while they're supposed to be researching their report for history. What took 10 hours for us to research 10 years ago, takes kids today 10 minutes, and pretty soon it will be 10 seconds, and there is nothing, short of blowing up satellites, that we can do to change that. The same things are happening in films. My daughter, aged 14 made a 10- minute documentary that would have been a monumental task for me to do in junior high school. When filmmakers can so easily make films, and it is sure to get even more accessible, and easier to do more amazing things than simply editing a home video (for instance, on-line greenscreens, special effects and stock-footage dramas) how is the industry going to stay in business? Who are the future arbiters of content if any script can be made by a teenager on their PC or iPad or Smartphone? When will the industry's efforts to stay technologically one or more steps ahead of the home filmmaker finally be fruitless?

This experience, I say to you, screenwriters, in all seriousness, isn't that far away from today, and so I want you to begin removing from the equation that there is only one way to be a successful screenwriter and that is the Hollywood way. The future is in the hands of the storytellers who can honestly reach the audience and touch their hearts in such a way that the audience shares your story with their friends. Success for filmmakers and screenwriters will look much the same as it does for book authors in a few years. As we have print on-demand, and uploaded eBooks from a myriad of sources, as we get our music from YouTube and iTunes and Amazon Cloud, so will we get films virally. I'm not talking about 5 minute YouTube Videos, I'm talking about full-fledged feature films and episodic programs. The more Hollywood worries about the stuff I was trained to worry about - intellectual property rights - the more they will take themselves out of the equation. When you write and make a movie, expect it to be pulled apart by a Digital Jockey somewhere in the world and re-purposed into another story you never dreamed of and how in the world do you make a living that way?

One way for certain is to be recognizable and unique. For instance, Tim Burton is going to be fine, as is Christopher Nolan, because when we see their work, even cut up, we'll know they made it. So that, even pirated, their film work will be in demand and that demand will create protection. There's going to be tons of up front work for actors and writers, but royalties...I don't know if they'll survive. Royalties are the backbone of the industry as it exists now. They make it possible for the artists who create film to be compensated for the repeated use of their work, and for the use of their work in other products (i.e.; games, toys, t-shirts). If everyone is just freely "borrowing" filmed content, then royalties can't be calculated and paid. Are there enough lawyers in the world to chase after everyone who downloads a video and uses some bit of it for something else? Did the dissolution of Napster return the music industry to the way it used to be? Without royalties, how will the studios, networks, agents and guilds survive? I don't know how they can survive. Although, yes, there are travel agents still, there certainly are not as many. There are not as many realtors. Bookstores who resisted eBooks in favor of the tried and true way, are now declaring bankruptcy.  There are not as many music execs who can sit in a glass building and arbitrate a deal that will make money for years to come. So, people will still make a living, but who and how is the question at hand.  I think also distribution channels and theater releases are in big trouble. The filmmaking world has got to come up with something better than 3D to keep people paying exorbitant prices to leave their flatscreens and iPads (where they can now even purchase 3D). I rarely use a DVD, much less a Blu-Ray, even though I have the capability because I don't want to go out and get it during my already overbooked time. Theaters?

Gimmicks are not going to save the movie theater or possibly television. What is going to save the movie theater? That's our problem as screenwriters as much as it is a problem for distributors. Let me use another metaphor: I suppose we could stick our heads in the sand, like Ford and their engineers did with Lincoln Continental and Buick and hope that the big swishy car is going to be popular again because of some gimmick, or we could invent the electric SUV and mini-van. Do you get what I'm saying? Our limitation is not the audience. It is ourselves. A new interior design is not the gimmick that is going to save a big, swishy sofa of a car. A re-purposing might save it. It is not the story itself. The world still needs big cars for some purposes, but for what, but for why? The world still needs big stories but for what and why?