Mariachi Square & the Arbiters of Content

When I was a little girl, I spent many summers in southern Texas on the border with Mexico. Often we would travel across the border for lunch and an afternoon in the Mercado in small towns like Reynosa, and Progresso, and cities like Matamoras, Mexico.  One of my favorite experiences was walking through the town squares where the Mariachi bands gathered in their big sombreros, and sharp suits of black with gold piping, white with blue piping, or fuchsia with silver piping. The colors were magnificent, but the music was even better. Dozens of guitars of all shapes and sizes, trumpets blaring and the perfect harmony of brothers and sisters singing and that cry, “Aye, yie-yie-yie~!” filled my ears and my heart with joy.

What I didn’t understand then was that these Mariachis trained all their lives, and they made their living by being the best of the best. Mariachi Square was a grand audition stage, not there just for my entertainment, but to hawk the Mariachi wares, to win the prize of playing at a wedding or Fiesta Quinceañera. Throwing a band together, shooting from the hip (because aim was impossible) or assuming their grand idea was good enough would have been unthinkable. These men and women were professionales in every sense of the word, and the bigger the band the higher the price and the grander the occasion. The duets and trios were better suited for wandering the restaurants or intimate affairs. Each band, quartet, trio and duet knew all the songs that it could know, and could play those songs on the spot in any circumstance.

This brings me to the movies and television and the new explosion of “filmmakers” on Youtube.com, Vimeo.com and any number of smaller aggregate and the question of skill and talent. Right now, during the birth of this new entertainment, anything seems to go, but I’m here to tell you that this will not last very much longer. Imagine if Mariachi Square had been filled with a bunch of amateurs. Would anyone in their right mind spend even a dollar to hear their songs? Is it any wonder that YouTube has no business model, yet? I am not saying that the potential is not there, of course.

It used to be that the arbiters of content in the entertainment industry resided behind the wrought iron gates of grand studios, in the air-conditioned high rises of New York City and the Sunset Strip, and precious Spanish Colonial bungalows from Malibu to the Hollywood Hills. These people had an eye for talent and potential. They had worked their way up through the industry from mailrooms to cubicles and right into the corner office. They spent their lives looking for the perfect combination of fresh and edgy work that could be “developed,” for the road to final cut is a collaborative affair.

Now the arbiters of content still reside in those faraway places, but they also now live in small apartments in Tokyo, mud huts in Africa and trains in Europe. They live in trailer parks in Florida, and mansions in the Rocky Mountains. They live at the end of a satellite signal, and when they like what they see, they share it. A well-loved piece of filmed entertainment goes viral in a day, and for the first time ever we can have an exact number for just how many people “hit” the program. There is no more bull shitting a project to success. Its success is in numbers, and no one knows whether that work was a struggle, developed into something we love, or whether it was shoot-from-the-hip aimless, and just happened to tickle us.

Right now, the more seemingly spontaneous a short video on YouTube is, the more popular. How many flash mobs and baby moments captured by accident can we absorb? I think probably many more, but eventually, the surprise grows thin. When that happens, I ask you dear screenwriters to be ready with projects that make sense for the format. When we turn that corner, then business models will emerge.  

My extrapolating mind says that these business models will look very different from the big-money projects done in Hollywood, but there will be big money to make nevertheless. The difference is that the future of multi-level storytelling will depend on a balance between giveaway and micropayment. Suddenly, we will be Mariachi Bands in the “Town Share” vying for bigger prizes, and still accepting the pesos for individual songs.  These auditions will begin the moment we share our first concept on-line, because like a website, we will only have a moment to capture the audience’s imagination. We will have to be perfectly tuned, and choose the right offering for the audience we hope to win over. Some of us will be better suited to wander through the square alone or with a few fellow collaborators, collecting micropayments and surviving. Some of us will join bigger collaborations and become more event-focused. Both styles are valid, and there are a myriad of in-betweens.

That leaves to Hollywood the slickest packages, aimed at the very broadest audiences. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for that, but now there are opportunities to work at many different levels. We must understand that the arbiters of content no longer live only in the ivory towers of Hollywood, but are walking amongst us, and this should not be a relaxing acknowledgment. There is some room for slackers at this stage of the game. However, in the end, they will be relegated to this small slice of time when anything goes. Those of us who are serious about the craft will determine, by virtue of elimination from the on-going game, that our mission is to be the best of the best in our expression.