You can subscribe to this newsletter by clicking here.
When I was attending NYU for the brief time I was there, some time in the late 80s, I worked as a waitress in a cocktail bar (that much is true). It was a jazz club owned by a family from Trinidad. They were hilarious and really kind to me. The spot picked up the most renowned jazz players. I only knew that because my dad was a jazz drummer and he told me who all of them are.
The staff (except for me and one other guy) were all non-white or mixed-race, I guess you could say. The clientele was probably 99% wealthy white elite New Yorkers. The funny thing was, the whole enterprise was held together by a thread. They were always running over budget and never had enough money to buy the food they promised on the menu.
At some point, they just started serving one dish to everyone, no matter what they ordered. I don’t know if people knew what was happening. Maybe they just figured, the music is great, why complain? ” Except that one night someone did complain. He was a Gavin Newsom-looking guy with slicked back hair and a suit, and he stood up and said loudly, to the packed room, “I can’t believe we’re all pretending like what is happening isn’t really happening!”
He was furious. The owner ordered the doors to be locked until every customer paid. I ended up quitting some time later, as I recall, because I was dropping out of school and moving home, and I think it closed shortly thereafter. I always think about that when I look at how the trades cover Hollywood. “I can’t believe we’re all pretending like what is happening isn’t really happening.”
What is happening? Movies are bombing at the box office at an alarming rate, with very few exceptions. No one on Film Twitter will talk about it. The trades won’t write about it. The reason is that most of them are owned by Jay Pensk,e and pissing off the studios means no filthy lucre. That goes double for the independent sites that make money off the Oscar game. I wish I still did. It’s good money. But what matters more than money? The truth. The truth matters more. The truth is the same thing I’ve been saying forever, that Hollywood lost its audience and destroyed its brand when they went “woke.”
A word on the work “woke.” I use it not as its original intended usage, which means something very different. It also means the newfound religion of the mostly white elite ruling class, who still run everything but use designated marginalized groups as protective shields. It means the new rules put in place, like the Hays Code. Everyone knows what it means, yet all are forbidden to use it because it’s cultural appropriation. I use it because it is commonly used to describe the upending of Hollywood and other industries.
I am so tired of having to explain it. It is frustrating beyond belief to have so many people gaslight me on it. If you read Film Twitter on the box office for One Battle After Another, which is on track to lose around $100 million for the studio, you’ll hear the same thing on repeat:
No one wants to see these movies fail. No one wants to shame artists for making films at all. They are major investments of their time, their blood, sweat, and tears. It is not their fault that Hollywood has destroyed its brand. But I know we can solve this problem. I just know it.
But if no one talks about it, how can Hollywood course correct? Lucky for us, a man named Marc Andreessen exists. If you don’t know who he is, Google him. He was on a podcast called a16z talking about Hollywood. He says the “woke” fever has broken and that everyone in Hollywood knows it, even if they don’t yet feel brave enough to say so out loud.
The whole podcast is here, but I have clipped important bits. On the podcast, Andreesen has hope that we are moving through a phase that is almost over but that the movies we’ll be seeing now come out of that phase and it will take some time for them to work through the system, which is why it’s all the more remarkable that Ari Aster was intelligent enough to make Eddington which is a look at everything we just lived through from a non-dogmatic point of view. It is, I think, the polar opposite of One Battle. Here is Andreessen on both movies:
And here he is about film critics and the “reign of terror” that made them unable to really speak the truth or be honest about anything. He also says One Battle will probably sweep the Oscars.
So, why am I quoting Marc Andreessen? Because he’s one of the few people who is uncancellable, smart enough to see what is happening, and brave enough to talk about it.
It is, of course, all the other problems hitting Hollywood —like COVID, like streaming, like changing times, like competition with TikTok and YouTube. Hollywood moves slowly. Culture is moving fast, too fast to keep up with. Movies feel almost out of date by now — just the whole idea of driving to the movie theater, parking, going to your seat, watching a film on the screen, then driving all the way home, where you have a flat-screen TV and a big bang of content to watch on it.
Not to mention, AI is here. It works hard. It works for free. It’s incredibly easy, and it never complains, sues, or demands a higher salary. It can work all hours and faster than humans. There is only one way for humans to compete with AI, and that is what I’ve been saying for years now. Let writers out of their cage. Buy edgy, provocative, daring NON-WOKE screenplays.
I just asked AI to draw me a picture of Hollywood as an empire in collapse, with AI taking over. It drew me four images:
If you don’t think Hollywood is going to be all over this shit, you have another think coming. What AI does for me is it saves me time. It gives me images that are not copyrighted, so I won’t get sued, and it mostly gives me what I need to make my job move faster. It will do that for everyone, and there is no going back.
The best thing writers can do is what AI can’t. I just read George Orwell’s Animal Farm, one of the absolute greatest books ever written. Clean prose, brilliant allegory to Stalin’s Soviet Union. AI can’t do that. It can’t even get close to that. They are still robots that need people. But if Hollywood insists on pumping out movies that really are THE MESSAGE, AI can do that. You bet they can. It’s one or the other. Deal with the screeching mob that will come for you and save your industry, or not.
It isn’t just social justice fundamentalism that has strangled the life out of Hollywood. It is also the bland, safe writing across all the movies, for fear of offending, even in the blockbusters and superhero movies.
The problem is the Left doesn’t want to give it up. It is a method of societal control and, frankly, it serves them well. Critics see movies for free, so they don’t care about the economic realities. The whole thing is moving to streaming, where the box office won’t matter anyway, so why not AI? If it does “woke” as good as or better than Hollywood, why not?
Sinners was a success story
If the Oscar voters wanted to award the film that best represents their industry, they would pick one of the biggest successes of the year, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners. While it is about the history of blues in the Jim Crow South, it is also one of the highest bars reached not just for a Black filmmaker, but for a rated-R film that is not a sequel or an IP. Weapons and F1 are also shining examples of Hollywood success stories that deserve recognition.
This scene is one of the best ever put to film this year. Coogler should win for this scene alone.
If they cared about rewarding success, that is the movie that should win all of the Oscars, at least right now, before we see Wicked For Good and Avatar Fire and Ash. And I haven’t seen many other films like Hamnet, for instance.
But for now, Sinners is easily the best of the bunch that have been released to audiences. Shouldn’t that matter? Shouldn’t its effect on audiences matter? Shouldn’t this extraordinary success of Ryan Coogler matter? Why shouldn’t he be the first Black director in 98 years to win? Tell me, oh Woketopians, why not?
But if they choose One Battle After Another, it will be the most expensive film since Titanic to win Best Picture. I’m not sure how the industry survives that kind of catastrophe. They are rewarding failure. It might be a well-intended failure. It might not have been PTA’s fault, what with the costly California regulations, the union fees, etc. But that money is not on screen. It isn’t a big effects movie. So where did the money go? And why would the industry feel that is what deserves to win Best Picture of the Year when Sinners is sitting right there?
What is another success this year? Zach Creggor’s Weapons. You want to save the industry? Reward movies that brought people to theaters, not movies that make Film Twitter spiral into euphoric circles. Weapons and Sinners are two movies that made their mark, and both should be nominated for Best Picture.
Amy Madigan is one of the strongest performances of the year, without a doubt. Everyone knows who she is, and everyone will be dressing up as Gladys for Halloween. Sinners and One Battle, too, will make some costumes.
Don’t give up on America, Hollywood. Don’t abandon movies that everyone can share under the same roof. We need that as a country more than we need just about anything else. Movies used to have to cast as wide a net as possible, and that meant they had to be good. If you go back in time and look at the movies of the past, you’ll see that these were films anyone could watch on either side of the political aisle. Why did that have to change? Why did Hollywood pick a side? And no, making movies for the Proles doesn’t mean only faith-based or patriotic movies. It just means good movies. Like, look at 1982:
E.T.
Blade Runner
Poltergeist
The Thing
Tootsie
First Blood
An Officer and a Gentleman
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
48 Hrs
My Favorite Year
Diner
The Verdict
The World According to Garp
The Executioner’s Song
Frances The Year of Living Dangerously
Sophie’s Choice
Gandhi
The only people who would have a problem with these movies are the Woketopians who would find thoughtcrimes in all of them and demand they be changed to adhere to the new code. But Hollywood, you know how to do it. You do.
