Thursday, October 01, 2020
Will Congress Save Cinema? Hollywood’s Top Filmmakers Issue Stark Warning
www.forbes.com: America’s most influential film directors sent America’s top lawmakers a fact-filled letter overflowing with powerful sentiment, urging Congress to use funds left over from the CARES Act to either bail out or at least temporarily save the country’s giant community of small to medium-sized theaters.
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Although I am saddened to see that many small movie theatres are going under, I think that it will be very difficult for them to start making money after the pandemic. As we have seen with big movie makers like Disney and Netflix, these companies have decided to completely skip entering the theatres and going directly into people's houses during the pandemic. My guess is this concept will continue to thrive well after the pandemic as it wouldn’t make financial sense for most Americans to spend an exorbitant amount of money going to the theatre as opposed to simply renting the movie online for 30 or so dollars. You can even split the cost with friends to make it even cheaper. Plus, you will not have to travel anywhere so renting directly at home will be more convenient for most consumers. Although movie theatres have been great, at this point in time I think it no longer makes financial sense to continue running a theatre.
I do think that the entertainment industry is struggling right now and the pandemic has hit them very hard. I am very conflicted on this article however, I do think the entertainment industry needs saving however I can't help and think about all the other industries and problems that this pandemic is brought on. I think those problems will definitely need financial support and people's lives and health are very important to be taken care of. The loss of the entertainment industry has definitely hit the smaller movie creators and crew harder than the people who actually wrote this letter. The entertainment industry seems to be just a few big companies, specifically streaming companies, which is probably why the people that are consuming entertainment do not feel an intense loss however the people working in it are. If congress does choose to give aid to the entertainment industry I do hope it goes to smaller creators and companies rather than big streaming companies and large production companies who have a better chance of financially recuperating from these hardships.
This article highlighted how people are more reluctant to invest in the entertainment industry, so now it must turn to the government for help, which I’ve never seen acknowledged. It was also interesting for giving a brief history on the movie cinema industry; although, despite being interesting to learn, I feel as though this time in history is incomparable to any other time in history for this industry. Only in 1918/19 has the movie cinema industry been significantly disrupted, and the economy of that time is incomparable to that of today’s; therefore, leaving this article I feel a sense of uncertainty since it is unpredictable what will come of the pandemic’s impact on this industry. I do wonder if Congress will accept the agreement to help with smaller theaters all over the nation. As stated, the big companies like Regal and AMC will remain open due to their influence, and it will reveal a lot about the country if Congress chooses to prioritize these big businesses by not agreeing. Overall, this article gives readers a lot to think about and reflect on.
The topic of movie theaters is a bit of a tricky spot for me because while I do agree their should be help for theaters, are the big names signing this document actually seeking to help theaters out, or do they not want to release their films on digital? You are going to get more people to watch your film digitally (maybe not for how much Mulan was going for) than getting people in theaters. Even if theaters fully reopened, I don't think that hoards of people will be swarming to them (I jokingly said that if the movie I have been waiting for for a long time gets released in theaters, I might show up in several layers of clothing and masks, then throw them all away if I was desperate enough to watch it). Theaters just have too much foot traffic and a lot of objects that can be handled and you can't possibly expect them to be cleaned fully every time, especially if you are still paying employees a low wage. I do agree that Hollywood should also step in, as it's not like they don't have the money to spend, but it's obvious that they don't actually care about the theaters they are trying to "save", they just don't want their market success to become a failure.
There have been many instances where people have been drawing parallels between the COVID-19 crisis and the recession in 2007. When I think about the recession in 2007, while I do not remember much of substance, I do remember always hearing about the federal bailout that saved the American Automotive Industry from bankruptcy. While that occurred under a COMPLETELY different administration, I am curious as to why a similar bailout is so hard for the live event industry to even get on the agenda on Capitol Hill. America's greatest export is entertainment whether that be films or live events. How the federal government fails to see the importance of assisting with the resurrection of the countries greatest export baffles me. With a presidential election less than a month away, hopefully, someone in Washington will soon acknowledge the importance of the entertainment industry and offer some much-needed support.
Okay, well, that is not a good sign. I do not have any faith that our capitalistic federal government will do anything to help. They have fallen short at every turn so far in their attempts to mitigate the economic impact of the pandemic, and I see no reason to think otherwise now. Things are bad (and getting worse) and our government is locked in a petty, selfish fight that will cause an immeasurable amount of harm to the citizens it is bound to serve. The author of the article makes a good point - the “Hollywood institution” could invest in the movie theatres to save them - but it seems like a slippery slope to the monopoly described earlier in the article. In fact, there are so many similarities between the events of the Spanish Flu and current events that it’s fairly alarming. Since then, however, the movie industry (and American consumption of it) have seen so much change, and it’s hard to imagine that they would buy into movie theatres, which were teetering long before the pandemic began.
What is this journalist’s stance on anything? This article seemed like one more call to action for Congress among the myriad of organizations already calling for them to save the entertainment industry. Then the piece kept taking left turns. First of all, who is saying this is survival of the fittest? What absurdist take it is that certain sectors need to re-adapt. Theaters can’t “re-adapt” to a pandemic. Social distancing and live entertainment are just inherently incongruent with each other. There is no alternative way to do business. Movie theaters just need to be supported so they wait it out, until it’s safe to be together again. Sure, there may be less self-serve, more sanitization, and fewer points of contact to spread disease in the future but that’s not a feature unique to the entertainment industry. That’s going to become the norm across all consumer interactions. Second of all, is this article advocating for film studios (all 3 of them) to form vertical monopolies and buy out the theaters. When people say save the mom-and-pop theaters, they don’t mean let Disney buy them. That’s not saving them. Also, these theaters don’t need to be bought out. If they were still standing in February of this year, then they likely are profitable. They just need government assistance because there’s a pandemic.
We've been talking about live theater so much I almost forgot that movie theaters existed... I think that is indication to how hard they have been hit: not only have they been closed down and people have lost their jobs and the companies have lost so much money, but people are getting too used to the idea of movie releases on Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Disney+ (the list goes on). They're getting so used to it that I'm afraid thee movie theater industry will never recover from the lasting effects this has been having on our generation. An interesting idea from the article that caught my eye was this rule in Hollywood, something I had never heard before: only invest in entertainment with OPM, other people's money. Though I laughed when I first heard it, I realized that is quite hypocritical of these well-to-do famous filmmakers. I'm sure their request for Congress to save the industry is genuine but... have they done all that they can?
I think there’s kind of two issues at play here - will the movie industry make it through this, and will the movie theaters make it through this. I don’t think the movie/TV industry is going anywhere due to the increasing popularity of streaming as a format, but the extended covid crisis might just be the catalyst for killing off movie theaters. I was listening to a podcast recently in which the hosts joked about new movie releases this month, framing it as a debate over ‘which ones am I willing to get covid to see’, which I think kind of sums up the problem. Going to a movie theater hits the sweet spot of both being a relatively high covid risk and being generally unnecessary, particularly because of the increase in direct online releases. Am I willing to risk covid to see something I could see right now from my couch, and save $20? Probably not. I don’t think any of this is the fault of movie theaters, who seem to be doing all they can to stay open, but I agree that for them to survive will take a bailout from Congress. Unfortunately I have very little faith in the current administration to make that decision.
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