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This topic comprises 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
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Author
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Topic: Why is there such a stupid hub-bub over "Bully?"
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Edward Havens
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 614
From: Los Angeles, CA
Registered: Mar 2008
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posted 03-16-2012 08:31 PM
quote: Mike Frese
Pay Cable: A lot great stuff if being made on these channels and much of hollywood's great talent is making it there. One of many significant reasons for declining theater attendance. I guess most adults to not care too much do they.
Two slights problem with that supposition, Mike...
1) Which of Hollywood's "great" talents have shunned movies for cable television? Mike Nichols made two great movies for cable, nine and eleven years ago. One could have been a feature film, probably distributed by Miramax, but the other was simply too big a project for one feature film. Speaking of the latter project, that did star Al Pacino, who also did a cable movie with Barry Levinson two years ago, but a feature film about Jack Kevorkian was never going to be a feature film anyway.
Hollywood's great talents aren't shunning feature films for cable. They are making movies for cable that would have never been features to begin with, and then they are going right back to features. Cable's biggest talents, like David Chase, David Milch, Matthew Weiner and Larry David, were never features guys. They were and still are television guys who left network television for pay cable, in order to make the shows they wanted to make.
2) The ratings for pay cable's biggest "hit" shows pale in comparison to the drop in theatre attendance. About 4.6m less people go to the movies per week now than did during the peak of 2002. But what has happened to entertainment in the past ten years. Netflix streaming from the internet, televisions that can stream movies directly from the internet, devices like the iPad that can stream movies directly from the internet...
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 03-16-2012 10:56 PM
Anyone can knock premium cable all they like, but the fact remains that premium cable channels do air more edgy content than one is ever going to find in the movie theater multiplex.
Sex is a very obvious example. It's almost a very rare thing for a R-rated American movie to have an exposed pair of female tits in it anymore. Hollywood feature movies have little problem with gory violence, even violence that ventures into what I would consider NC-17/X-rated territory. Drive had a couple scenes in it I thought were particularly gruesome. Just a R-rating for that. If a Hollywood movie were to feature some of the sexual content I see even on channels like HBO the movie would likely get a NC-17 rating, even if a major studio released the show. Full frontal male or female nudity will tempt the MPAA with slamming a movie with a NC-17 rating. Throw in some thrusting or Lord forbid anyone show a woman taking pleasure (or having an orgasm) from an encounter and the NC-17 will come down like a guillotine. Premium cable channels have little problem with showing a woman's v-jay-jay or showing her grimace from reaching a climax. Mind you, we're not talking about showing explicit in/out hardcore stuff, even if the scene is simulated/acted the NC-17 rating will still hit movies with certain levels of simulated sexual content.
Premium cable channels tend to be the outlet where more Americans see certain indie movies and things like edgy documentaries. Last week I watched Saving Face on HBO, the award winning documentary about Afghan women who were horribly disfigured by tiny dicked, little misogynistic men. That show would never have played at the local multiplex. And it sure wouldn't be aired uncut on ABC-TV either.
This gets into where Hollywood movies are very BLAND when it comes to attempting to be edgy. Sorry. They are NOT. Hollywood movies have very little venue to push the envelope. Pay cable does it better. The Internet does it better.
Movie studios are grasping at straws on how to market their content as still being the most edgy, but they've basically been lying to the public for a decade now with "UNRATED" movie releases on home video that do absolutely nothing to push the level of a R-rating than what the theatrical cut did. American Pie was one of the first to pull this stunt. They even got Wal-Mart to bite on the bullshit hook until someone out in Bentonville actually watched that cut of the movie and found it no more R-rated than anything else. It didn't take long for that bullshit "unrated" cut to wind up on Wal-Mart store shelves. Now, whenever a major Hollywood studio releases an "unrated" cut of a movie most people laugh and say, "oh yeah, the theatrical cut was PG-13, they threw in an F-bomb and labeled it 'unrated', whatever!"
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Mike Frese
Master Film Handler
Posts: 465
From: Holts Summit, MO
Registered: Jun 2007
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posted 03-18-2012 10:21 AM
quote: Edward Havens
Which of Hollywood's "great" talents have shunned movies for cable television? Mike Nichols made two great movies for cable, nine and eleven years ago. One could have been a feature film, probably distributed by Miramax, but the other was simply too big a project for one feature film. Speaking of the latter project, that did star Al Pacino, who also did a cable movie with Barry Levinson two years ago, but a feature film about Jack Kevorkian was never going to be a feature film anyway.
Hollywood's great talents aren't shunning feature films for cable. They are making movies for cable that would have never been features to begin with, and then they are going right back to features. Cable's biggest talents, like David Chase, David Milch, Matthew Weiner and Larry David, were never features guys. They were and still are television guys who left network television for pay cable, in order to make the shows they wanted to make.
I should not say a complete shun, but certainly spending more time and resources on TV than before.
Walking Dead is arguably the hottest show on "TV" now: Created by Frank Darabont a 3-time Oscar nominee (Green Mile and Shawshank Redemption). Some of the other directors and writers have been active in making feature movies in the past.
Boardwalk Empire: Martin Scorsese and Mark Walhberg (also involved with Entourage & In Treatment)
The Big C: Laura Linney and Oliver Platt
Glenn Close - 6 time Oscar Nominee has been more active in TV than theatrical features the past few years.
Game of Thrones-David Beniof (Troy, 25th Hour, X-men)
There are many more but do not have the time to look them all up.
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Martin McCaffery
Film God
Posts: 2481
From: Montgomery, AL
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 03-27-2012 10:01 AM
And bringing all back home again:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-mpaa-successfully-bullies-bully-into-being-rel,71470/
quote:
The MPAA successfully bullies Bully into being released unrated
By Sean O'Neal March 26, 2012
After several weeks of the MPAA essentially sitting on Bully, slapping the documentary with its own hands, and saying, “Stop censoring yourself, stop censoring yourself,” The Weinstein Company has opted to give up on its quest for a PG-13 and release the film unrated—which is sort of the equivalent of just pulling their kid out of gym class. Or not really, we guess, as the Weinsteins’ decision was born of necessity rather than cowardice or noogies: As previously reported, the MPAA refused to budge on its R rating for Bully’s excessive profanity, hoping to spare young people from being exposed to the harmful foul language that they themselves were filmed saying.
And despite a campaign by Harvey Weinstein, director Lee Hirsch, and one of the film’s subjects to lower the rating, thereby allowing Bully to reach the very teens it’s about, the MPAA ultimately overruled their appeal by one vote, leaving it up to the theaters as to whether they want to expose innocent children to the horrible behavior of innocent children. “We believe theater owners everywhere will step up and do what’s right for the benefit of all of the children out there who have been bullied or may have otherwise become bullies themselves,” The Weinstein Company’s Stephen Bruno said in a statement, presumably while holding theater owners’ homework over a sewer grate.
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