Film Fund-amentals: Yuletide Before the End of Civilization

 First published December 14, 2011

I’m not a big fan on prophesies, so I’m not too concerned about this being the final Christmas season before the end of civilization next year. I try not to be particularly superstitious (though I’m knocking on wood as I say that), and most likely the biggest change next year will be the roman numerals at the end of every other movie title.

However, I’m also painfully aware that I’m currently adrift in film history, free floating between what once had been the cinema and what is now something quite different and strangely dim and ill-defined. A cinema of the past that almost makes sense and a movie industry of today that…well, it just doesn’t make much sense of any kind.

Take for example the recent and highly dubious survey by Men’s Health magazine that proclaims Jennifer Aniston to be the sexiest woman in history. This could be a sign of the final days (or at the very least proof that Aniston has Satan for a press agent). The announcement is nonsensical enough to cause a person to rethink that Mayan stuff and start packing the bunker with supplies.

Yet my real attention has focused on the recent death of Bert Schneider. The news not only invoked a blast from the past but was another sign that an age has ended. Though his career largely crashed by the early 1980s, Schneider was one of the major figures behind the short-lived but explosive New Hollywood movement of the 1970s. He only produced eleven films, but they included such titles as Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Picture Show, Hearts and Minds and Days of Heaven. Schneider was also instrumental in boosting the careers of such folks as Jack Nicholson and Terrence Malick. It was a short career and Schneider had a troubled life. He also left a legacy that most producers working three lifetimes could never equal.

Of course this was back in the Bronze Age when a movie could be made for a low budget and a film might actually be about characters who had problems and experiences that related to the real world. It was another era, full of bluff and vigor as a long, strange list of filmmakers came and went in a whirlwind of self-destructive experimentation. The death last month of Ken Russell was, for better or worse, another milestone to this lost world. A master of shock effects and the phantasmagoric approach to biographical presentation, Russell had an approach to filmmaking that ran the range from transcendental beauty to brutal trash — often in the same scene (and on purpose).

The critic Pauline Kael once attacked Russell by claiming that his movies looked as if they were edited by a blind man wielding a meat cleaver. She didn’t mean to, but she almost paid Russell a high compliment, since he was totally opposed to the “invisible” style of the old Hollywood system. Besides, the guy actually got an X rating from the MPAA for blasphemy, which gets him some sort of footnote in the history books. Good or bad, Russell had an old-fashioned idea of filmmaking as an exercise in artistic expression. He was a jaded romantic in an extremely anti-romantic age.

But that was then, this is now. Movies have always been a commercial commodity, and despite Hollywood’s repeated insistence that the film industry isn’t really a business, it is one of the largest businesses around. At their best, the old dream merchants of Southern California used to strike a balance between the dream and the merchandising. At their very best, they could even achieve a potent mix of artistic verve and populist kick in a pop cultural mix that was capable of pleasing an audience and meeting basic box office demands. At their worst, most of the movies at least could fall back on a few established tricks, basic story lines, and if it failed it wasn’t as if they had spent a king’s ransom on the dang thing.

Today it’s all commerce. Movies have to be focused this way because of the gigantic price tag attached to their production. So it’s all commerce and packaging. Which brings us back to Jennifer Aniston, because that is what she’s all about — packaging. Her movie career is largely mediocre. Out of 27 feature films, only about five have actually made a clear profit. Of those five, she only had the actual female lead role in two of them (Aniston has primarily fared best in ensemble productions). The most successful of those two movies was Marley and Me. Let’s be honest — that movie was a hit because of the dog (Marley). Heck, she wasn’t even the Me in the title.

Technically, Jennifer Aniston wouldn’t qualify as a movie star let alone anything else. But that’s not the point. She’s a marketing concept. A California concept of the girl next door with a come hither (but not too close) look who fits a certain advertisers’ concept of modern acceptable sexuality for mainstream American consumption. She fits that model so well that the odd lack of significant commercial success isn’t (at this moment) a problem. She is more active as a commercial product than as a movie star. That’s why you see her on more magazine covers than movie screens.

The same is true of a long of list of other so-called movie stars. Basically, they’re products, not movie stars. Which is sort of OK. Nobody really makes movies anymore. Once in a blue moon, a big-budget behemoth comes along that resembles a movie. I almost hate saying this, but that’s part of the reason for the success of Avatar. In lots of ways, it was a pretty old-fashioned flick. But most modern big-budget movies are closer in type to something like The Green Hornet — two-plus solid hours of a cast and crew in search of a screenplay.

There are various reasons for this decline in major mainstream movies. However, it can really be summed up in a nutshell. Modern mainstream movies are all about spending money. Not making money. They’re actually focused on spending money. I don’t mean this as some kind of hip, sly, ironic statement. I seriously mean that they are weirdly, exclusively and overwhelmingly focused on spending money. This may not be the conscious goal of the major media companies, but it is clearly their subconscious drive and desire. No wonder Jennifer Aniston is their poster girl. A lot of her movies have been slightly pricey and she doesn’t work for a dime, either.

Which is also why I’m spending this upcoming yuletide season thinking a lot about the past and trying desperately to sidestep the present. A long time ago, the film business almost made sense. These days, oh heck, let’s not even go there. No wonder the ancient Mayans stamped next December with an expiration date. They, too, heard about Jennifer Aniston.