A critic suffers through a disappointing summer at the movies and decides to do something about it: Write Hollywood and give it some tips for success

By Jim Emerson
Special to MSN Movies

Mr. and Ms. Hollywood
666 Hollywood Blvd.
Hollywood, CA 90028

Dear Mr. and Ms. Hollywood:

Don't get defensive. I understand. I know that you are not in the entertainment business. I realize it's much more serious and complicated than that. First and foremost, you are in the content-provider business, supplying product and licensing opportunities for corporate entities much larger than yourself. Next, you are in the risk-management business. Which means that if you fail too spectacularly in public, it's gonna cost you your corner office. You try adhering to tried-and-true formulas, you do all that prerelease focus-group product testing, but it doesn't work.

OK, you pretty much suck at your jobs.

But I do understand the precarious position you're in. It's not much of a long-term business for you. You're just a cog in a globalized wheel, and it's not the public you have to satisfy -- just the shareholders. To greatly oversimplify the intricate machinery of corporate deal-making, there will always be a Gulf Western that will sell Paramount Pictures to Viacom; always a Kinney National conglomerate that will merge Warner Bros. with Time Inc. so it can be purchased by AOL; always an MCA that will partner with Matsushita and sell Universal Pictures to Seagrams, which will be bought by Vivendi and then sold to General Electric ... or something like that. A percentage here, a stock swap there, a back-catalog fire sale there -- the players are always changing.

Are you feeling ill, Hollywood? Everybody seems to think you are, and that you may have to join Lindsay Lohan in rehab. You look peaked, but I think you're just self-medicating. And although the rush of big summer hits may feel good in the short term, it's not so healthy in the long term. Or even the near-long term. The future arrived the day before yesterday and you're still pretending it's due next week.

You say there's nothing wrong, you're just fine, that it's always been kinda like this. But "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry," "Hostel Part II" -- these are cries for help, whether you realize it or not. Won't you consider the following pleas for moderate behavior modification? They're not the cure for everything that ails you, but you're looking wan and they might perk you up a bit.

Invest in careers, not crapshoots.

In these days of free agency, you're not likely to return to the era when studios signed talent to multipicture or multiyear contracts. But almost everybody likes to work and to feel that each movie he or she does is not a make-or-break career move. Remember when Warners spent considerable time, money and effort to make a star out of Lauren Bacall? It paid off, didn't it? Remember how Columbia Records put out underperforming records by a guy named Bruce Springsteen, before he hit it big with "Born to Run" and then "Born in the USA" nine years later? Paid off, didn't it?

I don't know anything about the stock market, but I always hear that the investors who are in the game to win learn to stick with their bets. If you start treating your most valuable assets (actors, directors, writers) as disposable commodities, then you can hardly blame the public for being fickle and treating them the same way. And then you're back to zero. I'll wager (and I'm not a gambling man) that there's a lot of talent out there that hasn't been given an opportunity to fail or succeed yet. And Sundance, which you treat like a quick trip to Vegas, is not the answer.

As the great director Carl Theodor Dreyer (Who? Look him up) said: "My apprenticeship [at Nordisk Film studio in Copenhagen, Denmark] lasted five years, and I don't think many have had a better schooling. After all, it's from the daily grind of making films that you learn the craft." More moviemakers need those kinds of apprenticeships before they can produce a blockbuster (or a masterpiece) for you, and if you don't build a sense of loyalty to your artists, their breakthrough hit will more than likely end up making a mint for somebody else.

Don't drag out a franchise until people resent you for it.

This may seem like a contradiction to the previous item, but despite whatever the latter "Alien," "Matrix" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" sequels may have grossed, they cost you a lot in consumer confidence and goodwill. It's nice to have trilogies or tetralogies for DVD box sets, because you get to charge for an extra disc or two that nobody's going to watch -- like "Jaws 3-D," "Alien vs. Predator" or "Matrix Revolutions." But you know a lot of people feel ripped off by the final installment or two of a series. I know it's an alien concept, but whatever happened to the showbiz tradition of leaving 'em wanting more?

Don't push audiences over the edge.

Along similar lines: As increasingly deathlike gore and so-called "torture porn" get more extreme, and more mainstream, how far are you willing to push it before audiences just get sick of it? Sure, these films are targeted primarily at a younger audience -- including those who are supposedly too young to see R-rated movies without a "parent or guardian." But we, and they, know better than that.

It's only natural to keep "upping the stakes" or "pushing the envelope" or whatever you want to call it. But don't forget you can go up so far and push so hard that you go right over a cliff. In other words, there's a downside, too. What are you gonna do when you have your Wile E. Coyote moment, look down, and find there's nothing there anymore? What's next?

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