Look in the mirror, Hollywood

I keep reading in the news media that the motion picture industry is in trouble. Aside from the blockbuster Harry Potter and King Kong efforts, moviegoers are staying away from the theaters in droves. Hollywood’s beating upon its breast, tearing at its hair and screaming “why?!?”

My response to them: Look in the mirror, folks. People aren’t going to the theater because you’re not producing movies that people want to see. Your lockstep adherence to an ideology alien to most of the country handicaps your efforts. You’re the bluest of the blue, we’re the reddest of the red; you make the movies, but we consumers have the right to decide whether we want to see them.

People go to the movies for entertainment. They want to see something funny, entrancing, exciting or thought provoking. They do not go to the movies to see Hollywood’s version of the “world as it should be through our enlightened liberal glasses.” If they want to see that, they can turn on CNN or read the New York Times.

Hollywood has become sensitive to social concerns which are foreign to the average American. I suspect this is because overseas ticket sales are becoming increasingly important to a movie’s bottom line. But in pandering to the international crowd, moviemakers have lost their connection with domestic audiences. Let’s see…”Kingdom of Heaven” where Hollywood rewrote Muslim conquest? Bombed. “The Sum of All Fears” where Hollywood rewrote a gripping Tom Clancy novel about Mideast terrorism into a confused movie about eastern European terrorism? Bombed. How about “War of the Worlds” in which the screenwriter opined that the aliens were a metaphor for the United States and the poor people of Earth mirrored the Iraqi populace? Bombed.

********Warning...gratuitous "Serenity" promo*********

A lone bright spot in the dreck emerging from Hollywood in 2005, Joss Whedon’s “Serenity,” tanked because Hollywood gave it no backing – confining its promotion largely to free screenings for bloggers. Prediction: Watch the DVD sales go through the roof, as they did for its parent series, “Firefly.”

And now back to the posting...

People are tired of the false picture presented by Hollywood of the United States as the source of evil in the world. They’re tired of all white men being presented as bumbling, incompetent, corrupt or evil; they’re tired of movies with a liberal social agenda; they’re tired of movies which portray religious people as superstitious zealots; they’re tired of movies in which criminal behavior is excused or deified; they’re tired of Michael Moore; they’re tired of movies in which flash, nudity and eye candy substitute for substance.

I think Hollywood, and other large urban areas, are truly unaware there is a different school of thought from that which is mouthed by their friends and sycophants. They’d better become aware before the entire motion picture industry follows its crappy products down the toilet.