Pork chops, the MPAA and movies
p2p news / p2pnet: “I believe that no technology exists, or will ever exist, that replaces the experience of watching towering images in the dark with a crowd of people who laugh, cry and feel terrified at the same moment you do. The question is, are people like me a dying breed?”
The words are MPAA boss China Dan Glickman’s and they came at the 2006 Las Vegas Showest glitzorama during his ’state of the movie industry’ speech.
And in a typical Glickman non sequitur, “it’s just a matter of time until the competitive marketplace makes high-tech home entertainment more affordable and accessible to everyone,” he declared. “Not to mention the expanding competition for our customers’ time and entertainment dollar – from video games to pay-per-view sporting events, to the Internet.”
Earlier, Glickman admitted the operative word for 2005 was down – audience numbers were down, profits were down, although they, “remained near $9 billion, a barrier broken for the first time only three years ago,” and the global box office was down.
So how to make things go up?
“If there is a silver bullet answer it is, very simply, that everyone must perform their respective roles and perform them well” and, he said, “I’d suggest first – and quite obviously – that movie-makers must continue to turn out quality movies with compelling and entertaining stories that audiences want to see.”
“Continue to” should, of course, be, “start to”.
“It is your job to ask, why should they come to my theater rather than staying at home?” – he instructed the cinema owners. “Why should they sit in my seats and eat my popcorn rather than on their sofa with the microwave variety?”
Perhaps because home-made popcorn is fresh and flavoured with real butter instead of some kind of oily taste-alike, and it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. Moreover, there are no sticky floors, ushers with night-vision scopes, loud-mouths or cell phones to ruin the experience.
Of pork, beef and milk
Glickman said the MPAA was strategizing to, “bolster our own effectiveness” and that it was important to, “better understand consumer attitudes about our industry”.
“I’ve directed the staff of the MPAA to conduct research into these and other important questions the first time we as an association have undertaken such a project,” he went on.
“When I was at the Department of Agriculture, industries like pork, beef and milk spent a lot of money promoting generically the value of these products. Not any specific brand name, but the foods themselves. Not to suggest that the movies are like pork chops.”
With pork chops in mind, you can now look forward to a National Movie Week, next year, “to generate enthusiasm, excitement and better understanding of movies”.
As usual, Hollywood expects US taxpayers to fund it.
The MPAA, “will be working to get Congress to pass a resolution recognizing a week in March as ‘National Movie Week’,” said Glickman.
School invasion
Finally, “it wouldn’t be an MPAA speech if I didn’t talk about piracy,” he concluded, and, “making sure consumers actually pay for the movie experience continues to be at the core of our mission,” again emphasising that congress needed to be roped in to help Hollywood continue to haul down outrageous profits.
“We are advocating legislation at the federal and state levels to fight movie piracy,” he declared. “From enacting anti-camcording laws that punish people who go into your theaters with the sole purpose of stealing movies, to promoting digital anti-piracy laws designed to stop people from stealing movies from the comfort of their homes, we are aggressively moving forward to protect the value of the movies we all love.”
Glickman also warned that school marketing invasions disguised as ‘educational’ programs, with school staffs acting as unpaid Hollywood reps, will be escalated.
“We have a plan to go to Universities and High schools and spread the word that illegally downloading our movies is both morally and legally wrong, and such activity does have consequences,” he said.
“This is important, because if we don’t teach the children to respect copyrights, we will lose the next generation of customers.”
As Charles Darwin once observed, “It is not the strongest or the most intelligent of species that survive, but the ones most responsive to change,” observed Glickman.
Also See:
anti-camcording laws – MPAA vs Kids with Camcorders, March 13, 2006
March 15th, 2006 at 7:47 pm
Guys like this make me want to gag and then hurdle a rock at something….
March 16th, 2006 at 1:48 am
3 small points:
1) He’s right, it’s the sole job of theater owners to figure out how to attract customers. By analogy, it’s the sole job of Hollywood to figure out how to deal with ‘piracy’, not the government’s job.
2) If he wants to talk about morals and legality, I guess then there’s nothing morally or legally wrong with the contents/portrayals in the actual movie itself.
3) Interesting he observes Darwin…… so why not be the most responsive to Internet change then?
March 16th, 2006 at 4:17 am
Definitely a man afraid of taking massive pay cuts for himself and his Hollywood cronies. What a moron!! The party is over Glickman!! Get a clue and a new strategy.
March 16th, 2006 at 6:42 am
What do they mean “will lose the next generation of customers”? They already have lost them, the damned morons! Why else would they be bitching about the state of the industry in the first place?
March 16th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
He is obviously lost in space.
It’s done. The old system is finished.
Anyone can make a ‘Hollywood’ movie with a $1500 camcorder and free software for video editing and on a $500 budget to boot.
We don’t need actors who are payed tens of millions of dollars and movie executives and middle men. Anyone can make a web site and promote their film for $20 a month.
The party’s over hollywood, read my lips ‘over’.
Look at the facts.
duh.