matrixschmatrix wrote:Again, the big Hollywood movie he made is a famous bomb- and I would argue it was absolutely a compromised picture, on Lynch's part.
Although wasn't Lynch's Dune, if that's what you were talking about, produced through Dino De Laurentiis's production company (one of the best, if wildly variable, producers out there, who also backed Bergman's The Serpent's Egg as well as Blue Velvet) and then just distributed by Universal? The international distribution clout of a company such as Universal (and the guarantee of the film being released through those channels) might be something not to be sniffed at, but had they actually been financing the production of the film from the start?
Nothing wrote:Alright, to take a slightly softer line, one might concede that there is still a place in Hollywood for artistic directors with an incredibly commercial sensibility - the Speilbergs, the Lucases of the present (eg. Bird, Jackson, Nolan, etc - although, actually, none of these guys are even as talented as Spielberg or Lucas, but let's save that for another day...).
I would add *shudder* Michael Bay to this - I appreciate his films much more now that he is obviously backed by both a toy company and the US armed forces - two sides of the same coin.
I would broadly agree with Nothing on his points, though I like the point brought up a while ago on the way that Hollywood, and film in general, is
always collapsing, forcing people to work within a narrow range or encouraging artists to sell out. 'Artistic integrity' might be getting squeezed in a different, and perhaps harder, way now but I would be sympathetic to the idea that perhaps there might be a change somewhere along the line to allow a wider range of films to be produced again (But then the only positive review I've heard of the The Green Lantern so far has been a casual remark on one of the Bloomberg news shows that, whatever the quality of the film, it is going to be a sure fire winner, fulfilling a superhero film gap in the schedule and keeping Warner's stock price high! Note: That film looks terrible in the trailers, but I haven't seen it yet)
It might depend on international co-productions (i.e. with TV companies such as FilmFour, though that was tried and failed), or outside production companies working in collaboration (i.e. Christine Vachon's Killer Films etc), to produce the riskier ventures to then 'present' to the big studios, especially around the time that they are looking for 'prestige' productions around the awards season.
However that does create a very short term view to film production, with the burden becoming greater on the filmmakers themselves to not squander a hard fought for opportunity on a film that might be 'uncommercial' or a flop with interesting non-mainstream ideas that may gain a future cult following or turn out to be far more important and memorable than any Oscar Best Picture winner. The sense that with every film you have to be bettering your last can mean that a filmmaker cannot learn their trade through making mistakes, or the idea that there can be pleasure in watching the (maybe flawed, maybe their best due to being their purest) films by a filmmaker and see them developing towards a mastery of the medium, appears to simply not be there in most cases.