How Hollywood can do Penance

American cinema has become victim of its own power. It has not yet learned to exercise power over itself especially in self discipline. Hollywood has stopped taking risks and is now at a point where it is slowly dying. The market has been oversaturated with films reliant on adaptations from television shows, comic books and other films from decades before. The problem is having too much investment in the bottom line which is money.

I am here to give Hollywood some suggestions to do penance and save itself from downfall. First the budgets are too large for films. There is really no justification for a film to cost $100 million when you don’t see it on screen. Instead of making films that average $80-100 million in budget they should cap the cost at $20 million a film. In this strategy they can make more artistic risks giving the director more control of his vision. Just in case the film flops it won’t tank a studio like the film Heaven’s Gate did.

Films should be longer as well. Why make a film that is 90-120 minutes when you only scratch the surface of a subject that needs more depth? A good range for a film would be three to six hours. This includes back-story, character development and watching those characters adapt to their environment, and more inward probing of the character’s soul and their place in the world. If you watch the films Heat, La Dolce Vita, and The Thin Red Line they all accomplish this and they all have remarkable cinematography. The cinematography advances the narrative because it is a character in itself.

Another thing about Hollywood with the exception to independent film is its aversion to more sexual energy on screen. When you watch a movie by Wong Kar-Wai such as In the Mood for Love there is more sexual intimacy going on between the glances of his two leads than what a 30 second shot of foreplay on screen can do in other films. The reason is because it is not rushed and not perverse. In the Mood for Love captures this intimacy between the characters with the slow motion shots, down tempo music and longing both characters have for one another. It is believable.

There should be no more World War II films or political films dealing with the Iraq War. When over 60% of people oppose the Iraq War, an anti-war film isn’t that controversial, brave or relevant. Everyone dislikes something about it and it doesn’t hit hard like it did three years ago. World War II films have been overplayed as well. Hollywood pretends to honor veterans with a slew of World War II films but instead they are actually making an action film with Germany in the background. They should instead have more war films about World War I or the American Revolutionary War. We either need more real wars or fewer films about war. Pick one.

Lastly salaries should be capped. No actor should be making $20 million a movie. A film itself should have a budget of $20 million. There should also be more location shooting and less shooting inside a studio which produces a stale, cold and artificial look. Computer Generated Imagery must be reduced to the point of it not being used or only used to create an impossible shot. Special effects used to special when they weren’t used every five minutes. Whole films have been shot in front of green screen and backgrounds have been generated off of a laptop. It is distracting and takes away from the realism of a film. I don’t go see films to escape; I go to probe deeper in the world.