How About a Glass of Real Lemonade?
Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Jane who wanted to create the best lemonade in the land. She worked very hard. Every day for four years, she picked fresh lemons, tested different water to lemon to sugar ratios. (I know lemons are seasonal…just go with me on this.) And finally, she came up with the perfect mix. So in the summer, she submitted her lemonade to numerous state fairs and local beverage contests. She waited an entire year to see who would accept her wonderful, extraordinary lemonade. And though her lemonade was the best, she didn’t get into one. NOT ONE. You know why? She didn’t market herself and didn’t have any social media following to speak of and so the big event planners were not interested in her.
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Sorry about that…
Anyway, this sounds ridiculous, but this is what artists face every single day of their lives. Make a great film? Work for years on it? Who cares? How many followers do you have? How many articles have been written about you? Is your movie about an “in” topic? How much is your PR budget? Who is in your movie? (“Good actors? No, that’s not what we mean,” say the laughing mainstream distributors. “We don’t care if they are good…are they ce-le-bri-ties? Are they NAME actors?”) It goes on and on.
I’d like to say that all of my actors have names. Some of them have two. They have a name on their birth certificate and a “screen” name. So there.
It’s so insane. No one asks: is your film creative? Did you make something new that no one has ever seen? Are you changing the form? Is your DP amazing? Did you create a beautiful film or an offbeat film or something extraordinary? Is your sound design out of this world? Do you have GOOD actors? Is your story unique or surprising?
This is why the calibre of mainstream films in many ways is going downhill. Sure there are exceptions. There are films that have tons of money, names and artistic filmmaking, but they are few and far between. Most are predictable, have lots of CGI and are full of glorified violence and/or nudity.
Listen, I love a superhero movie now and then and I have no issues with the naked body being shown on screen. YAY for nudity. Whatever. The hippies got us past all of that conservative pilgrim way of thinking decades ago. MOVE ON ALREADY. But can we just consider that people need more than just that? Humans are not dumb. I know, I know…the rule of thumb is to work to the lowest common denominator. However, we are not living in “Idiocracy” yet and if we want to avoid that, we need to alter our media. (Idiocracy is a film by Mike Judge. Not a great film in my humble opinion, but makes a great point about where we are headed so check it out and realize we are on the road to ruin before its too late.)
There are filmmakers out there who are doing some amazing things with very little money. They turn lemons into lemonade EVERY SINGLE DAY. They are creating innovative content with bizarre storylines and off-beat formats. They are discovering no-name actors with more talent in their pinky then some of the people with the biggest PR created following.
The world is missing out on some of the greatest lemonade out there and settling for artificial, chemically enhanced water.
JMHO.