Rufus won't play villians.....

[ukelelehip]

I love this idea so much. For his birthday, let's give him a business plan He'll have to come up with the money though...

[maxx02]

admin said:

I love this idea so much. For his birthday, let's give him a business plan He'll have to come up with the money though...

I'd just like to convince him he needs a publicist. As to the other... surely we know someone who knows someone.

[ukelelehip]

Imdbpro says his publicist is "ID Public Relations". However, that info could be old.

[maxx02]

Would you come work for me Uke? I would love to have someone who anticipates and acts on my every whim.

Let me see what I can find out--

[quoll]

I'd be happy to join in the project but my only talent would be to make the tea I'm afraid! (Unless you think you may need a psychologist!)

[ukelelehip]

quoll said:

I'd be happy to join in the project but my only talent would be to make the tea I'm afraid! (Unless you think you may need a psychologist!)

You'll have to be the psychologist, I'm making the tea, missy!!

[britfan2]

Can I be the gofer?

[quoll]

I doubt you guys would actually need a psychologist! Which only leaves mundane tasks like tea making for the likes of me as I cant possibly do anything creative ..... I keep a mean database though if that could be any use!

[Tinkerdog]

Frances, your commentary is absolutely what I needed to read today - you should be a motivational speaker!

Personally, I have become so frustrated with films that I hate going to the theater because I know I am throwing away my money. A number of good actors are lowering their standards for a job. I totally respect Ruf for challenging/fighting the system but the sacrifice of not seeing him again rips at me.

You frequently hear comments of Hollywood not getting the return on their dollar. It takes at least 18 months for a film to hit the big screen and then they are panned before anyone gets to see them. E! and nightly news stories, etc... make Hollywood look like Sodom and Gomorrah - at times it makes you think the US should be building a wall around them to keep them in. Hollywood need an enema!

Yes, the foo-foo side of me thinks Rufus is absolutely beautiful to look at - every little imperfection that is so real and endearing, that I am besotted. But the well-established fact that he is an incredible actor who uses every layer and level of creativity and natural talent to excel and master every role makes me proud to be able to recognize true talent. He is absolutely entertaining and leaves me wanting more after every performance. I believe that is the sign of true talent.

I too wish he had all the pieces there before him to make that kind of move.

[frances]

THE PIGS'nSH*T THEME CONTINUES.......
The other thing I've been thinking about of late is the production model itself. The whole assembly-line technology grew out of the abbatoirs of Chicago. A future car manufacturer (I think it was Ford), was given a tour of the novel way pigs were being rendered en mass. He understood in a flash how he might apply those strategies to manufacturing. Thusly the assembly line mentality was born.

Hollywood soon followed suit. Taking scripts and breaking them down into logistically-easier-to-assemble patterns, trying to reduce costs and minimize renegade novelty. Always remember that Hollywood began as a concession operator (back in the days when we watched shorts in coin-operated booths or in travelling caravans)....

This assembly-line method was also employed to keep actors in their place. Especially during the studio heydays of contract actors, an ownership scheme that turned performers into indentured slaves who dared not voice preference in creative matters. We may imagine actors now have all the power in the world, what their agents and eponymous production companies. Don't be fooled. The restraints are still in place, only they're hidden in an unspoken code of dos and don'ts. And the price is still the same. Be a good boy or girl or you'll never work in this town again.

The assembly-line strategy was designed to keep costs under control. Ironic that, since Hollywood went on to become what it is today, the most self-inflationary industry in the world.... meaning it consistently inflates its own cost of doing business because the players and peripheral industries involved think there is no limit to what the market (our stupidity) will bear. So floortime on a commercial shoot is so outrageously expensive, you have to scramble in the most artificial of settups to scrimp and save and suffer so above-the-line bovines can, as Rufus put it, pay for their swimming pools and the buff boys that clean them.

I prefer the European ideal, even more so the DOGMA95 manifesto. Write something really spectacular. Engage creatives who fearlessly bring their genius to bear on things, and @$&! the begrudgers. Get technically simple. Work reasonable hours and keep the story in sequence so that actors can take it to the very highest level of absorption in their roles. Everybody should be eating and living together. Like mental patients in the asylum.... The director should be made to feel more midwife to a process larger than him/herself, less fascist controller of tweeny, bullS**t details, and producers, lawyers, accountants, and their families should never be allowed on set. Period.

It may sound radical, but the great beast slouching to the promised land is on its last legs. All it takes is a few radical successes to push the damn thing back into the sea where it will get the burial it deserves.

Ah. I feel so much better now.
Frances

[meiju]

Frances,
that was interesting. Just a quick and shallow notes

- taste and style issues also play some part in this. Also european art-movie has it's own discourse with power issues connected to it. With this I mean that there exists prejudice against Hollywood in general and there are european conventions that work as symbols of non commercial, high art film. Art film can be kitsch and popular commercial film art.

- dogma was a good purist exercise, but a film is always an illusion. I don't think one should prefer or reject any technical means to reach an end.

- but I belive what you described so insightfully, that all other things are easier to solve than the huge costly industry factors that prevents new ideas to com up

[britfan2]

So well said, frances, but sadly, I think that the issues you point to can be seen in all walks of life (& business & politics) Just throw in the component of the Peter Principle & you have a recipe for failure everywhere. I think that is why a lot of us are drawn to Indie films. We are starved for the ingenious, the adventurous, the unique work of the mavericks.

[rugirl]

I agree with Frances in theory, but the practical aspect of the equation is such that as long as audiences pay $10 - $11 US to go see Rocky Part 45, or Die Hard Again and Again and Again, the studios will continue to produce the same formulaic pap that is now the unfortunate hallmark of Hollywouldn't.

That's why Indie films and art-house films are such gems in a sea of s**t that we are offered up time and again.

[frances]

When an art form turns to crap, you don't look to the very forces that poisoned it in the first place. You give them not a second thought as you busy yourself with doing it the rogue way.... once you've blazed your trail, others will follow, or not. Its what you do with your own vision and ability that counts.

People pay $20 for S**t films and crap concessions because of the monopoly distributors have on cineplexes. Not to mention the great need NorthAmericans have to visit space-ship like amusement parks where they can eat like pigs out of a bucket.

It always seems impossible when you're at the bottom, looking up, way up the holy mountains. But that's just a posture of mind brought on by the fear we all have to venture newly, to start climbing the damn things. Trust me. It would take little time at all of a suddenly find ourselves living in a world where small, funky playhouses with good food and drink returned to the street featuring the independant good works of local artists. Business always follows art, never the other way around.

Its not imagination lacking here. Its faith that failure can come to good.

Dear sweethearts....... believe........

[mcr5137]

I agree with you, Rugirl, as long as people will shell out the bucks, the movie industry will keep making "those" films, crap or not. And I agree with Britfan in that this isn't just in films, it's across the board. I do see it more in entertainment however. Studios will continue to make sequel after sequel after sequel, remake after remake after remake, as long as the public plucks down their hard-earned $10. If people refused to watch that drivel and refused to ever pay to see those films (whether at the theater or in rental fees), then studios would be forced to change their thinking.........but that hasn't happened and, personally, I don't see it happening. Because the public, overall, has been lobotomized (that's just my opinion, of course) and there aren't that many that stand up and demand better!

The same goes for music, as long as people pay money to buy any CD Britney Spears puts out, she will continue to record trashy crap (again, just my opinion). And as long as people will pay any amount of money to watch Peyton Manning or Shaquille O'Neal........then those people will be paid millions of dollars to play a ballgame once a week for a few months.

The buying public has control of what is made and put out there............we just aren't smart enough (as a whole, not individually) to make a difference. I've no doubt if Stallone made Rocky XII at age 90, people would buy tickets to see it.........even though he should have stopped at the first one (ok, there was another good one, just can't remember which one it was), because we have been dumbed down to accept the worst of filmmaking. Studios make to the lowest common demonator, not to the intelligent among us.

And I don't see that happening anytime soon, no matter how much we (those of us with higher standards) want it! Which is beyond sad!

Michelle