My friend Landon sent me a link to a story in Indiewire about what Harmony Korine thinks about the state of movies.
Readers of this site already know what I think because they know the truths I’ve been telling going on five years now about the disaster that loomed ahead like an iceberg no one can see in the glassy water. I’ve also said the ship is made of iron and it will sink. But let’s check in with what Korine said about why people don’t engage with movies anymore, from Indiewire:
Maybe Korine is secretly a popular — or populist — filmmaker in disguise. He certainly has thoughts about the existential crisis hitting Hollywood: why it simply is that so few movies seem to break through and dominate the zeitgeist the way they once did.
“I think it’s just because they suck,” Korine said. “Yeah, most of them just are not good. And movies were the dominant art form for so long, and for better and for worse, I don’t think they’re the dominant art form anymore.”
Why?
“I think life happened,” Korine said. “Radio was the dominant form, then television and movies. I think you have a period of time where things are the dominant, perfect art, and then something comes along. And it’s not just technology, but it’s people, syntax, the way that they view things, the way that they feel about the world, their internal rhythms and the cadences and the vernacular, the imagery of sight and sound, and it changes. It evolves or devolves. I don’t think movies are going away. I just don’t think that they’re the dominant form anymore.”
He more or less hits the nail on the head here:
“What comes after conventional movies is, for me, something that is closer to an experience or a trance or something that’s beyond a simple articulation,” Korine said. “But it’s also me just having fun, enjoying the medium, playing with things. There’s people who get really upset. You get people that get really angry, and they’re always trying to tell you, ‘You shouldn’t be making this. You should be making what you made 10 years ago,’ and then they hated what I made 10 years ago. So people are always trying to tell you what to make, what they think that you should make, and so this is what I want to make.”
He’s not wrong. There are no surprises left in anything Hollywood puts out. The public knows this. Superhero movies are almost always about the same thing: the brand. Woke movies are almost always about the same thing: the ideology. We already know just looking at the poster what the movie will be.
Another part of the problem is people like me, Oscar bloggers, who have destroyed our own habitat in how we hunt for movies that “they” will vote for. Imagine that the fate of the Best Picture lineup rests in the hands of the bloggers and critics who attend film festivals, don’t pay for movies, and are coddled and micromanaged by studio publicists.
It wasn’t as visible during the IP/Superhero free-for-all when the Oscars existed in their own confined space, like the First Class section of the airplane. But when COVID hit, the whole thing upended and all of the debris floated to the surface. We could not tell what was what anymore. All we knew was that we woke up to a country and an industry transformed by a revolutionary movement that would mean the BAFTAs eliminated their nomination process and brought in juries (a now-abandoned policy), and the Academy implemented a diversity mandate. No one made a big deal out of these things (except me) but the message they sent was that there was a right and a wrong way to tell stories.
A few of us knew what that would mean. It would like placing a pillow over art and suffocating it to death. The reason Top Gun: Maverick is so good is that it was made prior to 2020. Those rules were not put in place. Everything after that was tainted with those invisible hands re-arranging things to be in compliance. What a disaster it has been for Hollywood and the Oscars, a disaster almost no one has the courage to address and in fact will argue with you endlessly about why you’re wrong.
Recently, Molly Ringwald was quoted as saying that The Breakfast Club should not be remade today because it was “very white” and does not represent our world today.
‘This is very, you know, it’s very white, this movie. You don’t see a lot of different ethnicities. We don’t talk about gender. None of that. And I feel like that really doesn’t represent our world today,’ Ringwald said.
She received much outrage over these comments, but she was right. It was a movie of its time that accurately reflected time and place so much so that everyone not only remembers it today, but young people can watch the movie and think, okay, so that was what high school was like in many parts of America in the 1980s. Did it reflect each and every person in America at the time? No. Was it very white? Yes. Did it look like a world we all know and recognize? Absolutely.
Why, because the Breakfast Club was not about skin color. It was about the roles we all played in high school that ranked us in terms of our status. That is why it was beautifully done. Today, you might see a woke liberal stuck in detention with a MAGA Trump supporter (would make a great movie, Hollywood is too chicken shit to go there). There could be a trans person in there with someone who is fighting for women in sports. That was the movie’s point – people who did not know each other, would never know each other, were now stuck together, and it was brilliant.
And no, it would not get made today. Hollywood would never make a movie with a charismatic white guy – Judd Nelson would be considered “toxic masculinity.” Poor Molly Ringwald would be considered a “white feminist” or maybe just a “white girl.” But you know, these stereotypes could be put in a movie as long as the movie recognizes that they exist.
Judd Nelson was a bully, and everyone fell in love with him. That’s why it was fun to live in the 1980s and not fun to live today. People who tell stories now are agonizing, uptight, puritanical scolds. They have strangled the life out of fun — all fun, but especially hot dude fun. Hot dudes, where did they even go? I’m glad Ryan Coogler brought them back in Sinners, but too few and too far between.
Maybe the reason we’re all going crazy is that we’ve been abandoned by Hollywood almost completely. Remember All in the Family? We could all joke about things that were rough subjects?
There is no funny left that hasn’t been bleached and sanitized beyond recognition. In other words, All in the Family and The Breakfast Club both existed in THE REALITY that everyone else existed in. Does Hollywood? NO. It doesn’t.
It’s true that everyone sat down and watched television back then, but what is even more true is that they were speaking for the full spectrum of the American experience and making people laugh. Now, the Left has gone so stark raving bonkers, they would never have a show like this in the mainstream – not on HBO, Netflix, or network television.
It has become a monoculture at a time when culture is exploding outward.
So yes, everything sucks because there is no diversity — of thought. That’s why the free market still matters. It’s the only way of telling the people at the top what we all want to see. And if those at the top detest the American people, as it appears that they do, then maybe fire them and bring in people who remember that we all need a richer cultural experience. We need to LAUGH at ourselves most of all.
But it is also true, as Korine warns, that maybe that’s it. Maybe the medium is now outdated and there is no bringing it back. I hope not.
Predictions
When we Oscar pundits decide our predictions, we look at several factors – the studio, the publicist, the movie, and the status of the person involved. If we know there is a chance for the voters to flex their diversity, we go in that direction (woman director, female lead of color, etc). Everyone does it instinctively, even though there was a time when no one did that. They tried to predict based on merit alone. That is no longer how we predict the Oscars. We predict them so that we imagine Hollywood is telling a story about who they are at a given time.
Does merit still matter? Yes, it does, but it is not measured the same way anymore. We hedge and grade on a scale to ensure parity or fairness whenever possible. It feels like the right thing to do—no one wants things to go back to how they were before—but it also feels wrong because the awards are supposed to reflect the very best (not that they ever have).
Other than the Emilia Perez implosion, last year’s story honored Sean Baker’s filmmaking legacy. Either you got that or you did not. Many people were chasing the ambition of The Brutalist, but there was no narrative for that movie to win. They never found one. By contrast, Baker is a success story in a time of AI and “woke” storytelling and the dying star that Hollywood has become. But more than that, Anora was a good story well told.
The year before, it was a similar narrative, but it was Christopher Nolan’s turn to collect gold statues after a successful career. It was the other bookend of the Sean Baker story. Still, both represent filmmakers whose time was due (as opposed to filmmakers like the Daniels and Everything Everywhere All At Once, where it was not about an overdue winner).
The narratives that land this year will follow either of those two paths. An overdue filmmaker finally collects statues, or a movie that captivates voters for a season. Girl next door vs. one-night stand.
The overdue narrative would suit Wicked. Is there anyone else on tap? From the Awards Expert App, these are my current predictions as far as I can get, even though they are premature and should not be taken seriously at all.
I could easily create a narrative about Shia LaBeouf and his comeback, or I could create a narrative about Cynthia Erivo collecting an Oscar for the two Wicked movies. Julia Roberts has already won an Oscar, but she has the strongest narrative heading in, as will Amanda Seyfried with the variety of roles she’ll be playing this year.
And then there is Jim Cameron, who won for Titanic but lost for Avatar and is returning with another Avatar movie. It might not even get nominated, but if it is next level, who knows? The international voters are not as anti-genre movies as the OG voters, so who knows? Paul Thomas Anderson has never won Best Picture and Best Director, so he would be someone whose ship might finally come in (unless it bombs).
The narrative for a movie like F1 could be that if it becomes a monster hit and offers something a little more, it could win for Top Gun Maverick too. Probably not, but you never know.
Then there is the Life of Chuck, which could CODA itself to a surprising win.
An “It’s a Wonderful Life” movie that will play to one half of the country where it should be playing to all of the country. I already going in that for them “good” only means one side. A shame. Still, watch that movie. It might be your frontrunner someday.
Next week, I’ll be doing a deep dive into the casting category. Have a nice weekend.
