Mass-market movies rarely appeal to me. I’m drawn to stories that reveal a personal or distinctive voice. Production companies are interested in appealing to the broadest audiences and in-turn making the most money possible as soon as possible. They want the opposite: movies that appeal to the masses. Personal, distinctive or hard-to-category stories just don’t fly there.
People usually forget about or ignore independent, documentary and short films, even though the best stories are often compelling and memorable. They receive so little publicity that they lay or languish below America’s pop cultural radar. Well below it.
I was grateful a few years ago it dawned on me just what kind of eclectic selection I could have in movies if I simply visited my local library a couple time a week! While the feature-length movies are supposed to be organized by genre, after borrowers’ hands touch them they don’t stay so strictly organized. That makes it adventurous.
I’ve found several films that way, which I might not or flatly would not have noticed if I’d relied on a social media queue or searched for those, which my friends recommend.
I recently discovered Foreign Letters, which documents the childhood bond between two almost teenaged American immigrants. Their bond helped to insulate them from the cruelties that children can levy on one another. And it stuck with or sustained them into their adult lives. Most children know what it’s like to move to a strange place, be the new kid and have to carve out a new social life. The girls’ story is sweet, smart, perceptive and dramatic. Rare!
You just don’t find these stories at your local mall’s multiplex anymore!
While social media movie queues have their places, there is a pleasure, an old-school (or maybe just mid-20th century) pleasure in the randomness and adventure of watching what a grab bag give you. A grab bag approach to choosing movies is a fun and novel way to accidently find some of the best and most unappreciated films you might not have otherwise found. You could probably do this via Facebook or Flixster, but those media lack the hands-on and face-to-face satisfaction that I appreciate.
YouTube is a haven for a democratic media market, where independence and risky ideas could be shown, and where producers of color can shine. Still, why are so few doing so? For sure, YouTube is a place where independent voices can be recognized.
Some production companies that make content for YouTube have A-List Hollywood connections and budgets; some others want to, and list almost enough above-the-line crew to resemble that; still others have ambitions that are independent and riskier.
Until a generation ago, aspiring media makers went to film schools for formal training. Some people called them the film school generation.
I discovered the draw of professional-grade YouTube videos when I spontaneously clicked on “FunEmployed” from Wong Fu Productions, in Pasadena, CA.
Now, a shining few make their livings and their dreams come true on YouTube, and make it seem easy! YouTube, all of seven-years-old is the best known place to “broadcast yourself.” That’s their tagline. The latest New York Times feature, “On YouTube, Amateur is the New Pro,” about YouTube’s growth, indicates that a few are making big money, while others who find inspiration in them, are trying to make sense of it and make enough to live on their own creativity and ingenuity.
But as with the politics and biases of traditional media productions, it’s harder if you’re note white. Prof. Aymar Christian, at Northwestern University, has a blog provides a list of programs by creators of color, particularly Latinos and blacks. Each is a long list. But there are complications. First, he deems few of them to be worth watching, and second, few of the teams that produce the series have recent or new content. Truly, several of the series or short films are at least 18-months-old.
Some of the successes are “Awkward Black Girl,” and “Fly Guys,” but these programs provide a narrow range of images similar to that, which viewers find in the traditional media.
YouTube is one of the proven, least costly and most accessible distribution channels. Some people also use Vimeo and DailyMotion. YouTube also incubates talent and inspires the next generation. A question remains. A pivotal one: why aren’t there more creators of color, those who take risks? A change in technology and distribution methods does not mean increased ethnic diversity in the videos.
Asians are represented. With Wong Fu Productions, Ryan Higa and KevJumba, at least one slice of that tremendously diverse group is covered. Wong Fu has nearly 200-million views, and more than 1-million subscribers. And Mr. Higa more than 1-billion views and more than 5-million subscribers.
What about other, browner minorities’ stories? A harsh economic reality, in regard to programming for small or niche audiences, according to Prof. Christian, is that “there’s not much money in web media generally, and even less for content geared toward minority audiences.” With ever more productions, viewers’ standards raise the bar to a similarly demanding level. If you’re a minority producer, good won’t cut it. Your work has to be great, as often as possible.
But Prof. Christian says, “most of the inequalities we see in traditional media are replicated online, particularly with regard to race. From film students to advertising executives, most people in the industry are white” and men. ”Still,” he says, “there’s a great diversity in production. …Black audiences have Issa Rae” the woman behind ‘Awkward Black Girl’ “and Al Thompson. Latinos have the creators of ‘East WillyB.’ And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.” In the end, in terms of durability and critical acclaim, entertainment history has proven that distinctiveness wins out. If you think about it, ethnic diversity is one side of that complex artistic prism.
Another question pops up, though, when you remember that most of the videos on YouTube seem to come from amateur producers who just have too much time on their hands. The title of that New York Times feature story clearly emphasizes amateurs.
Furthermore, according to that same story, “with or without Hollywood, it’s getting tougher to break through to YouTube stardom and become the next Phil DeFranco. …Perhaps inevitably, the weird originality gets harder to maintain as new aspirants try to replicate what is already popular.”
One YouTube producer and star, Matt Sloan, made a related point on the “Director’s Cut” program from Wisconsin Public Television in 2010. He is a co-creator of and actor in the “Chad Vader” series from Blame Society Productions. “I think a lot of people think that you have to make something that appeals to the masses. That’s not true; you have to make something that appeals to yourself. It’s gonna be unexpected, personal and interesting to watch,” Sloan said.
That idea is not news unless, of course, you’re young enough that…it is. As is often the case, youth rules.
I regret that, after having contacted the people at Wong Fu Productions, Blame Society Productions and Sweet Irony Productions (begun by Jaleel White), none responded in time to press publish.
Despite a hidden history of female warriors, which in the U.S. dates to the Civil War if not prior, the image of women soldiers, with rifles in their hands and charging on the enemy, is novel for a lot of people. Academic and other writings indicate that 100s of women fought beside men during the Civil War, while disguised as men. For generations women have argued for front-line combat roles, and the career opportunities they bode. Those posts are vital high-profile promotions and careers.
How do we see women in combat? It’s usually in the movies or TV: I could remind you of and discuss combat films that remind us of and respect soldiers’ deeds. “Bourne On the Fourth of July,” “Saints and Soldiers” and “Jar Head,” which depict the aftermaths of the Vietnam, Second World and First Gulf wars, respectively, remind us of how combat affects soldiers.
But where are the women warriors on-screen? We’ve seen Jessica Biel in “Home of the Brave.” She portrays an amputee who survived an engagement in the Middle East. In “G.I. Jane” Demi Moore portrays an Alpha female who undergoes Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training. The story shows a test case for integrating women into that program. On TV one of their title characters in the Lifetime channel hit show Army Wives is Col. Joan Burton, a base commander.
While their on-screen stories are not abundant, there are probably a bevy of reasons: a major one might be the proportion of citizens who serve in the armed forces, or how many of those are women.
In true life, while women are 51 percent of the U.S. population, they are 20 percent of military. Less than one percent of American citizens are soldiers. While a lot of people may scratch their heads and raise their eye brows at the thought of women under fire, some women find and make homes and careers there.
There’s a telling line from “G.I. Jane” where the Senator who nominates her later says that polling shows male soldiers won’t know how to deal with a female comrade. “Corpsmen would linger over a fallen female,” when according to triage, they needed to move on to a soldier they could treat. I regret that YouTube may not have that clip.
Greater chronic, persistent, perplexing crises have made headlines about how the “old boy” military traditions and culture of the early 20th century after service women. There are news and documentary stories of the hardships: documentarian, Kirby Dick (director of “This Movie is Not Yet Rated,” about America’s movie rating system) is coming out with a film about a cultural epidemic of sexual assaults in the armed forces, “Invisible War,” on June 22.
Last Wednesday, two female U.S. Army reservists filed a lawsuit in order to finally permit women to serve in combat positions. Their bottom-line is that the ban limits “their current and future earnings, their potential for promotion and advancement, and their future retirement benefits.”
Women want to serve. But the military culture acts like it is of two minds and mouths. We haven’t yet seen on-screen or other stories where gender is an incidental element instead of a novel one. This, especially when those women, who have committed to a career, want to advance.
The perception of brown and black men has improved little since President Barack Obama came into office. Three years ago in America, with a brown-skinned, and kinky-haired man as its president, it seemed inevitable to presume, or at least assume that that would herald seismic improvements in how the US, or the world at-large appreciates and understands men of African descent. The latest media spectacles provide examples of that, making some bow and shake their heads in response.
Co-star, César award winner, Omar Sy, dances in "Intouchables" from 2011
One image and message, which are often one and the same, is the young black man. Recently, two images, and their innate problems, have captivated imaginations, and ideas of “justice,” in the U.S. The most troubling and divisive is the killing of Trayvon Martin, and the incomprehensibly late arrest of his assailant. Somehow Mr. Martin was perceived as the stereotypical menacing, young black man. That’s best described, in the 1993 film “Menace II Society:” young, black, and don’t give a fuck. Another is a French film, “Intouchables,” from 2011, which is so popular that one-third of France, 20-milllion people, has seen it. One Minnesota scholar of French compared it to “Driving Miss Daisy.” The lead character, Driss, is a young, ne’er do well black man, from Senegal, who has a complex personal history, and a basic criminal one. Driss is a handsome, irrepressible, immature man stuck in the life that often exists in the metropolitan ghettos of France, as it does in America’s. He becomes a health aide to a rich, quadriplegic French man, serving as a conditional confidante; and as a muse to venture beyond his singular and insular comfort zone.
“Intouchables” is amusing, but if you’re prone to thoughtfully watch movies, you’ll probably notice a bevy of story tropes.
Both images, of Trayvon Martin in life and Driss in fiction, as an intouchable, harken to stereotypes, even story tropes: Trayvon was killed by a man who totes some heavy mental and cultural baggage in regard to young, black men. To him, that character was more of a bogeyman, and less a man, less of flesh and blood. He found and killed Mr. Martin In such a mentality. For Mr. Zimmerman, somehow a young, clean-cut brown-skinned man, carrying Skittles resembled the ghetto monster, O-Dog, in “Menace II Society.”
Larenz Tate, as O-Dog, in "Menace II Society" from 1993.
The darker, the blacker, the more self-assured a man is, he is also that much less likely he is to be gullible, and swallow or see himself reflected in those silly, and destructive messages. So, he poses a greater the threat; he will not be controlled.
The more I live, grow and learn, it seems like the folks, who are the most likely to turn over their leaves from prejudice to progress are those who need a mere nudge.
Harvey Weinstein, the legendary man behind The Weinstein Company, and Miramax before that, is talking about his film “Bully” being itself bullied by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). That’s America’s largely anonymous movie rating organization.
The crisis: bullying in itself is even more barbaric and cruel in our social media epoch than it used to be. It devastates youngsters in their formative years. For a myriad of complicated reasons schools seem disinclined to punish the bullies.
This film aggressively exposes the crisis, and the filmmakers aren’t timid with the profanity that the children use. The politico-artistic problem: the MPAA disputes how appropriate the profanity in the film is, and in-turn gave “Bully” an R rating. Historically subtlety is not their friend. The vital subtlety is about why the use of the “F-word” in different contexts, and stories, for different reasons can have different meanings.
In the interest of fairness, I am opining without yet having seen the film. But concerns about the rating associations’ usefulness have persisted at a low hum for years.
This specific dispute has made headlines from Los Angeles, which is often conflated with Hollywood, to the world.
Here’s one argument more potent and memorable than Mr. Phillips’ words: this 2006 documentary “This Film is Not Yet Rated.”
Before the MPAA came, movies were censored by the Motion Picture Production Code, aka the Hays Code, which reigned from 1930 through 1967. And, then, in 1968, two years after its birth, the Association established and offered basic sense ratings. But that basic sense got lost when it came to films being judged beyond the MPAA’s provincial standards.
Why do so many Americans still heed our movie ratings system?
Why should or would a nation-wide standard reign when every region, and state in-general has and abides by its own sensibilities?
Joan Smalls on the cover of “Vogue Italia” has raised hopes, brows, and questions about when black, will ever truly be “in-fashion,” (or brown, or cinnamon for that matter) aside from the slimming power it wields as a color.
Ms. Smalls is the first model of color to be on a fashion magazine’s cover in four years.
“Vogue Italia” commanded attention in 2008 when it published its all black edition, with a black woman gracing its cover.
But it also did that when it called a pair of earrings, worn in a runway show, “slave earrings.”
This raises chronic, persistent and off-putting questions about what color beauty is. That reminds me of a brief Canadian-produced documentary, “The Colour of Beauty” that was released in 2010.
It addressed questions of bias and bigotry in fashion and beauty, and the American and international psyches that feed from that. A “white girl dipped in chocolate” is how the successful black models are described. They do not have typically African-American features. Of course, most first worlders are so used to seeing and in-turn deeming that light skin, the lightest skin is the height of beauty. That prevails in our culture, and then in the minds of many young women.
While I’ve been filing several local, evergreen stories for Twin Cities’ KFAI, there’s been a terrible lag in uploading my works to the web. But I’ve a fun, timely update.
One story, for which I wasn’t paid, but which was fun, parrots the Joker if he were to ask about “important movies”: “Why So Serious?”
As The Joker taunted Gotham City, he could’ve asked about a “better class of” movies!
There’s a film about a pivotal labor activist, and with a peculiar title, that tells a sad story within its title, “10,000 Black Men Named George.” Thousands of “nameless” African American men worked as porters on the railroads. The man was Asa Philip Randolph, although his first name is rarely spelled out.
This is Martin Luther King’s weekend. His birthday is on Jan. 15th, while we await Monday to celebrate his profound legacy. Next to the most publicized personalities of January and Black History Month – Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Thurgood Marshall, Langston Hughes and William E. B. Du Bois – Mr. Randolph might be the least known.
It’s remarkable that the most palatable icon, Martin L. King, has not yet had a biopic made about him. In 1992 Spike Lee gave us “Malcolm X.” Ten years later, Julie Dash gave us “The Rosa Parks Story” with Angela Bassett for cable. And then, also in 2002, Robert Townsend, brought Showtime TV and us A. Philip Randolph (portrayed by André Braugher) and the porters’ story of toiling to improve Sleeping Car Porters’ work lives. “10,000 Black Men” potently sheds light on a little known portion of American labor relations, at the crossroad of African-American history.
The film’s first scene shows how their work might go, illustrating a common sort of clash with a client: when a porter sees a woman steal and stow Pullman towels into her luggage, he diplomatically reminds her not to do that. He tells her that the porters are charged for items, that end up missing. “Stunned,” she insists on telling his boss, the conductor, of this daring, uppity offense. When the conductor arrives, the porter stands there and take the situation.
While Rev. King deserves our reverence, he’s one of a small cadre of comet-bright icons – out of the 100s and 1,000s who deserve as much recognition. It’s an irony that so many activists in that list, above, had no films made in their names, save for Justice Marshall with CBS’ “Separate But Equal” in 1991. One worthy question is “why so few the movies have been made about even that set of almost 10?”
“10,000 Black Men” is a delight to watch, sneaking history lessons into a great story. The under-recognized André Braugher’s portrayal of Randolph is key. Late in the film there are pivotal scenes that highlight loyalty and betrayal. One climactic scene has a kindly elder porter, zealous about the movement, found out as a Judas, a double-agent. And then we see the hardship that Mrs. Randolph, an entrepreneur, endures when protests against on her husband force her to shutter her salon.
According to an excerpt of “Marching Together,” from google books, “the porter [union] election results forced the Pullman Company to recognize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters as the porters’ and maids’ legitimate representative. More than two years passed before contract negotiations were completed,” 12 years to the day after they began their struggle.
In the 1920s and 1930s the porters were paid such meager respect that the patrons and Pullman Company didn’t care what the porters’ mothers had named them. It was easier to call “them” George, after George Pullman, the company’s founder. According to Rising from the Rails, a website that honors the porters, “They were hired…because they epitomized Pullman’s vision of safe, reliable, and invisible servants.”
Taking a way-back look at a movie reminds us of films that could be memorable and give us something, if we take the time for them. While some movies are “always” on cable TV, these aren’t.
The “New York Times’” writing on film trends is idiosyncratic. While the lead film critics often spend more and bigger words than are necessary to make their points, as in intellectual self-congratulation, it’s rarely easy to slight their insights, even though reporting is rarely involved. On December 26th, their Brooks Barnes wrote about “Hollywood Moving Away from Middle-brow” movies, and having opted to improve its bottom-line and culture in the process. He thinks it’ll focus on new, original voices.
The problem is that he relies on 2010′s box office numbers and infers that the implied strategic trend will be stable. That’s a lot of faith to invest in a brief dip in box office profits for a small portion of titles. It’s premature.
Imagery based on "American Graffiti" (Creative Commons)
Now those cinephiles, who routinely avoid the middle-of-the-road movies, have yearned and awaited a return to this “trend.” If he’s correct, that’ll be splendid. Some people are frustrated by those movies that merely serve viewers who want to “relax, laugh, and empty their minds” as a French philosopher, Bernard-Henri Lévy, recently described to the “Wall Street Journal” the European and in-turn the masses’ interests in different though related questions.
After the recent flopping of high-concept films and the triumphs of higher quality ones, he wrote, “As a result, studios are finally and fully conceding that moviegoers, armed with Facebook and other networking tools and concerned about escalating ticket prices, are holding them to higher standards. The product has to be good,” Barnes said. And as morose as it is, this urgent sensibility too will pass. It’s a recurring attitude and posture that defies the masses’ desires.
This is merely one of several opinions of which he is certain, but with weak and meager evidence. This is disappointing. Commenting on this presumed about face in film tastes, according to Mr. Barnes’ reporting, ‘“We think the future is about filmmakers with original voices,”’ said Amy Pascal, Sony’s co-chairwoman. ‘“Original is good, and good is commercial.”’ That doesn’t even make sense. That circular reasoning flops like people used to say “Ishtar” did 20 years-ago.
According to Mr. Barnes, 2010′s box office is projected to fall less than 1% to $10.5 billion. While that sum is enormous, reflecting nothing of the lives of anyone we know, proportionally, it doesn’t even amount tip money. According to imdb, at least 70 percent of those top 30 titles from 2007 through 2010 were studio-made star vehicles with the “quality” ones, which emphasized story over pyrotechnics, amounting to maybe five or six out of that 30. While a “quality” film experience, as with beauty or even intelligence, is in the eye of the beholder, here’s a go at critiquing the meat or soul of Barnes’ argument.
In 2007, according to imdb, those “quality” films were “Ratatouille,” “Juno,” “American Gangster.” In 2008, those were “The Dark Knight,” “Quantum of Solace,” “Wall-E,” “Gran Torino,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” At best those amount to 20% of that year’s 30 best titles. From 2009, “Public Enemies,” “Inglorious Basterds,” and possibly “Avatar,” “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” That bodes no 2011 indie film boon, or at least neither a compulsion nor an impulsion toward it. From 2010, you might concede that a few more from the top 30 emphasized “quality” than in prior years, with “Black Swan,” “The Fighter,” “The Town,” “True Grit” and “The King’s Speech.” That’s the film-goer’s call. Does this slightly taller list of substantial films show a trend, a reliable, strategic increase?!
Maybe that fact skipped Mr. Barnes’ mind as he considered the crevasse between insipid middle American appetites and the discriminating ones which typify indie film-lovers? According to the Motion Picture Association of America in 2005, that audience accounts for about 15 percent. Middle-of-the-road movies account for more than (this ain’t scientific) 3/4′s of the titles put out in wide release (2,000-plus screens). He gives meager compelling or reliable reasons for us to buy his argument. The main problem, and the mass cultural reality is that, just as money rules the world, or most of ours, Hollywood is itself a beacon of that.
Hollywood veered toward the new, original voices two generations ago, when Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were striving and toiling to establish themselves, around the time of 1973′s “American Graffiti.” Theirs was the film school generation of 20th-Century film lore; Hollywood played with them, Martin Scorsese and several others, and kept those who made and kept making money. But there after, they discovered and clutched the blockbuster.
The phenomenon was described pithily in a more than 10-year-old episode of “Law & Order,” that took place in Los Angeles. The line is “we don’t make anything we haven’t seen before.” It’s terrible and repulsive if you presumably want to be engaged in a cinema or film experience and not to just check-out as the French philosopher acknowledged before. The meager if also middle-class sliver of society that subscribes to public radio is probably part of, if not the heart, the indie crowd.
Bottom-line is that his argument is silly without stronger reporting, compelling data and quotes that speak specifically to the situation. Mr. Barnes’ essay is disappointing and lazy. It matches the French verb “essayer’s” definition, which is “to try.”
Upon seeing this week’s headlines indicating that the Los Angeles and Toronto Film Critics Associations and the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC) had all lifted “The Social Network” as 2010′s best film, a question leaped to mind: what?! That?!
Yes. The masses typically highlight conventional, studio-produced films as “the best.” Those films also typically have brawny budgets lifting their wings.
Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg in David Fincher's "The Social Network"
A different question, one of money and exposure or hype pops to mind as much as the incredulousness. So which criteria did these groups use? How much of the choice came down to the intensity of the promotion? Was there some budget-based bias?
When a film critic hasn’t seen a film, and when he or she has scant if any interest, they’re a fool to write about it. Hoards are preoccupied by and have latched onto Facebook, fascinated with its lifestyle utility. People are hungry to see the backstory, particularly if that boasts dirt.
A vital question: why don’t the New York film critics, in that metropolis that hosts New York University’s film school (i.e., a storied training ground for indie film-makers: Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Oliver Stone, Jim Jarmusch, among other lesser icons), at least consider an independent movie, a phenomenal one? The NYFCC is the one organization that stands out from its East Coast and Canadian peers by declaring, on the history page of his website, in part, to “…have consistently recognized, championed and defended films that may otherwise have been slighted by audiences and the entertainment industry.” Neither the Toronto nor the Los Angeles groups’ websites distinguish themselves with that stance on behalf of film art.
But Metropolis’ film critics circle has stood up for a film that needs no one to stand for it.
Hmm. What should a viewer make of that when the circle lauds a movie that suffered from no want for publicity? That’s ironic. It’s incongruent. After you’ve lived long enough, you learn, accept or resign yourself to the fact that organizations don’t always walk their talk. But it would be nice.
Out of a few engrossing independent stories, at least one stands out: “Winter’s Bone.” This isn’t a story many people have yet seen: a young resilient, perseverant woman must engage an odyssey in order to keep her family together, even while some of that family clash with her.
This story made its Minnesota premier this summer, around early June. What an awesome treat. It’s a new, innovative story about a young woman whose strength is way beyond her years, beyond the call of family. Also, “Winter’s Bone” was made by a woman. As a feminist, the chronic, persistent want for strong, engrossing female characters is old and tired – just backwards.
People will say that independent movies are just less popular or less profitable than profit-oriented ones. Reportedly according to Motion Picture Association of America’s numbers from early 2005, “approximately 15% of US domestic box office money came from independent films.” 2010′s Academy Awards broadcast had an average of about 41.3 million viewers over its more than three-hour-long program.
With the U.S. population at 310 million that stacks up to about 13% of America that watched the Oscars. An equal percentage of film-lovers seem to attend commercial movies as attend independent ones. Even if twice as many movie lovers attend movie theaters as watch the Oscars, that still connotes that commercial movies aren’t bludgeoning independent movies by the numbers.
