Another important factor is that the studios have become essentially a vanity cartel.
They were bought up by larger companies with only a tangential interest in filmmaking, and consolidated into so few players that authority is hyper concentrated, nepotistic, and risk-averse.
This, along with cheap interest rates, produced both identity politics' dominance and the studios' apparent indifference to whether their products actually made money.
Simply put, Hollywood is not a functional market anymore.
Bill Lawrence has added a lot of pathetic woke crap to his Scrubs revival. Sassy nurse Laverne was replaced by two black nurses and one of them is an over the top, annoyingly cliched gay guy.
"But Michigan’s auto industry did not spend twenty years making cars that half its customers didn’t want and then call those customers racist when they bought Japanese. Hollywood did something like that"
...the auto-industry version would be calling them anti-patriotic while paying no heed to end-cost or customer-tastes. Im the end they didn't completelt abandon their own patritoism and tastes, they just realised they had to be more humble, forgiving, adaptable and flexible.
Another thing also not mentioned in this comparison is difference in production between automotive and film, and new technology's role.
I can't build a car in my house but i can make a film.
In fact with my smartphone i can make short movies that can be uploaded to a video-streaming website to entertain people, and then opt for an advertisement or subscriber model if i wished to attempt monetization.
As far as a full plot-based movie or tv show is concerned, all this can also be done remotely. About the only thing i really need in my shooting location is the actors, for a few weeks.
Hollywood had two golden eras as i see it. The 1930s-50s, and the 1980s-90s. Its a studio-driven model but you can have a studio anywhere. The true asset as i understand it was that living costs were low and you could do things there that you couldnt do elsewhere. The political environment was what we would now call libertarian.
If they want the critical mass of creative people back, they have to have an enivironment that creative people like:
-cheap
-easygoing and chilled
-fun and exciting.
Theres other things like crime-safety, clean vs dirty, accessability that have importance but your creative types may tolerate some things other people won't.
Overall, though i sound nitpicky, i would say this is a good amd interesting piece.
Im sure California will one day get over its current nadir, and i dont think it has to mimic other US states to do so. I wouldnt expect the west coast to become deeply conservative anymore than I would expect Utah or Wyoming to become deeply liberal.. California just has to be less mental and browbeating, less regulatory and perhaps try a government which has respect for the things like Law and Order, Fiscal Responsibility and cutting red tape.
Why can’t you build a car in your house, also? Plenty of people do (at least, in their garage).
Granted, it won’t be as good as something built on a factory floor - but your smartphone film will also fall short of the full production quality of a dedicated studio.
For those who would advocate government subsidies, consider this: In his book PLANET HONG KONG, David Bordwell makes some observations about the Hong Kong film industry in the late 20th Century. Hong Kong itself was not large enough a marketplace to sustain its domestic film industry. Hong Kong’s film industry thrived because Hong Kong cinema was popular in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
Bordwell then contrasts Hong Kong with Western Europe. Bordwell notes that without generous government subsidies, Europe’s film industries would collapse. Think about that for a minute. The European Union is a huge marketplace, much bigger than the United States. European filmmakers can’t even make films that are popular in Europe, much less globally.
If you want to see what a Hollywood dependent on government subsidies would look like, look no further than the film industry in Europe.
This is nothing but the byproduct of women breaking through that glass ceiling. Their entire collective goal seems to be to grab power and promote nothing but more women and minorities. This is all done because a woman’s single greatest talent is to virtue signal…. to operate on emotion. Now hollywood, sports coverage, comic, games (all), and so many other things are all now hopelessly compromised.
“ Michigan’s auto industry did not spend twenty years making cars that half its customers didn’t want and then call those customers racist when they bought Japanese.”
Another important factor is that the studios have become essentially a vanity cartel.
They were bought up by larger companies with only a tangential interest in filmmaking, and consolidated into so few players that authority is hyper concentrated, nepotistic, and risk-averse.
This, along with cheap interest rates, produced both identity politics' dominance and the studios' apparent indifference to whether their products actually made money.
Simply put, Hollywood is not a functional market anymore.
Bill Lawrence has added a lot of pathetic woke crap to his Scrubs revival. Sassy nurse Laverne was replaced by two black nurses and one of them is an over the top, annoyingly cliched gay guy.
"But Michigan’s auto industry did not spend twenty years making cars that half its customers didn’t want and then call those customers racist when they bought Japanese. Hollywood did something like that"
...the auto-industry version would be calling them anti-patriotic while paying no heed to end-cost or customer-tastes. Im the end they didn't completelt abandon their own patritoism and tastes, they just realised they had to be more humble, forgiving, adaptable and flexible.
Another thing also not mentioned in this comparison is difference in production between automotive and film, and new technology's role.
I can't build a car in my house but i can make a film.
In fact with my smartphone i can make short movies that can be uploaded to a video-streaming website to entertain people, and then opt for an advertisement or subscriber model if i wished to attempt monetization.
As far as a full plot-based movie or tv show is concerned, all this can also be done remotely. About the only thing i really need in my shooting location is the actors, for a few weeks.
Hollywood had two golden eras as i see it. The 1930s-50s, and the 1980s-90s. Its a studio-driven model but you can have a studio anywhere. The true asset as i understand it was that living costs were low and you could do things there that you couldnt do elsewhere. The political environment was what we would now call libertarian.
If they want the critical mass of creative people back, they have to have an enivironment that creative people like:
-cheap
-easygoing and chilled
-fun and exciting.
Theres other things like crime-safety, clean vs dirty, accessability that have importance but your creative types may tolerate some things other people won't.
Overall, though i sound nitpicky, i would say this is a good amd interesting piece.
Im sure California will one day get over its current nadir, and i dont think it has to mimic other US states to do so. I wouldnt expect the west coast to become deeply conservative anymore than I would expect Utah or Wyoming to become deeply liberal.. California just has to be less mental and browbeating, less regulatory and perhaps try a government which has respect for the things like Law and Order, Fiscal Responsibility and cutting red tape.
Why can’t you build a car in your house, also? Plenty of people do (at least, in their garage).
Granted, it won’t be as good as something built on a factory floor - but your smartphone film will also fall short of the full production quality of a dedicated studio.
For those who would advocate government subsidies, consider this: In his book PLANET HONG KONG, David Bordwell makes some observations about the Hong Kong film industry in the late 20th Century. Hong Kong itself was not large enough a marketplace to sustain its domestic film industry. Hong Kong’s film industry thrived because Hong Kong cinema was popular in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
Bordwell then contrasts Hong Kong with Western Europe. Bordwell notes that without generous government subsidies, Europe’s film industries would collapse. Think about that for a minute. The European Union is a huge marketplace, much bigger than the United States. European filmmakers can’t even make films that are popular in Europe, much less globally.
If you want to see what a Hollywood dependent on government subsidies would look like, look no further than the film industry in Europe.
Hollywood and the system it represented aka CONCENTRATED POWER is now obsolete in the face of DECENTRALISATION.
It would take a heart of stone not to snicker. I'm sorry I suppose but unsurprised.
Hollywood didn't do "something like" that, they did that.
Yeah, great more "incentives" and "tax breaks", so now we can have another massive welfare queen like Elon Musk.
This is nothing but the byproduct of women breaking through that glass ceiling. Their entire collective goal seems to be to grab power and promote nothing but more women and minorities. This is all done because a woman’s single greatest talent is to virtue signal…. to operate on emotion. Now hollywood, sports coverage, comic, games (all), and so many other things are all now hopelessly compromised.
“ Michigan’s auto industry did not spend twenty years making cars that half its customers didn’t want and then call those customers racist when they bought Japanese.”
Well, you are half right.