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In Reply to: Re: Niche market.... posted by Victor Khomenko on January 12, 2003 at 14:56:41:
...to regard the mass market phenomenon as a recent artifact of Hollywood. It really isn't. The handful of Hollywood gems from the past were accumulated over a century of filmmaking. There were thousands of unexceptional B and lower pictures the studios churned out by the hundreds each year using contract actors. Reagan starred opposite a chimp - remember? Is that really so far removed from Dumb and Dumber? Hardly a vision of an idyllic past. And foreign films have never done serious business in the US except for the occaisional British import by the major studios...joe
Follow Ups:
Well, you got me thinking. It is impossible to have the right answer without running a complete number crunching analysis, but my gut feel still is that there were more good films made in the forties, etc, than we see today. In addition I presume that the total output of the US movie industry is higher today - is this correct?
First question - I'm not so sure. My dad went to the movie theater every Saturday morning when he was a kid in the 1940s and early 50s as did many others of his generation. B movies, serials and cartoons were the fare of the day. Can you say the Three Stooges? There was a clear demarcation in quality that was more explicit than today. B movies were a staple. Gangster movies, Westerns, War movies, love stories and melodramas. All produced to rather predictable and quite purposeful formulas with contract actors. Then there were the road show engagements. Major hollywood properties shown only in the best theaters and a more limited number of premium screens. I saw the tail end of this era in the '60s back in Houston as a child at the Windsor Cinerama. A roadshow engagement theater with a HUGE curved cinemascope screen made from three screens edge to edge. I still remember this huge single screen premium theater. Balcony seating. a total audience that had to exceed 700. Intermissions. I saw the first few Bond films, Lawrence of Arabia, How the West Was Won and few others in the place. An experince that is not recreated anywhere today. They tore it down years ago. Even at their peak there would only be a handful of roadshow engagement theaters in even a large city, so there were never very many.And then there were the drive in theaters. Believe me, quality was not the driver in these, but there were surprises. I saw The Good the Bad and the Ugly, A Fistfull of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and Once Upon A Time In The West at the South Main Drive in back in the Houston of my childhood. Of course I saw a couple of Godzilla double bills there too.
Your second question - are there more movies made now? I don't really know. There were quite a few made in the pre TV era, so the quantity differential might not be quite so great as you imagine.
joe
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