THB #600: Zeit Hype!

“Let’s all go to the movies! We are feeling the zeitgeist!”

I like reading Ryan Faughnder in the LA Times. He is a bright, well-intended writer. So what I am about to write about today’s The Wide Shot newsletter piece from the L.A. Times is not personal. And really, it’s not about him. (Nor is it about Steven Zeitchik, whose work I abhor and seems to be making an L.A. comeback… today’s headline is coincidental.) I read and hear this kind of thing all the time and I believe it is at the core of some of the most problematic writing about the film industry, not just now, but for decades. Ryan just happened to post an example of this misguided thinking today in his newsletter.

Does his piece today change anything? Not really. But it’s kind of like watching someone try to play poker thinking that a pair beats a flush. And then telling everyone around them that this is the rule. And people, not thinking about it too much, just accepting it because the stakes in their specific game are too low to care about… until they find themselves pushing all-in with a pair in a game with stakes that can hurt them.

I’m going to hop around the piece on Megalopolis a little before I get to my primary objection.

Disasters like this used to bankrupt studios. With “Megalopolis,” it’s hard to see who’s hurt by the failure, other than Coppola’s estate.

This is just inaccurate. The only two oft-repeated examples of modern “studios” being shut down by the expensive flop are One From The Heart and Heaven’s Gate.

However, One From The Heart wasn’t really a studio movie. Like Megalopolis, it was from the land of Francis and he was the biggest dice roller with is privately owned Zoetrope Studios. The budget was $26 million and was mostly Francis reinvesting the profits on the similarly risky Apocalypse Now. And amazingly, the flop, released by Columbia Pictures, did not end Zoetrope, which continues into the 1980s, making The Escape Artist, Hammett, The Grey Fox, The Outsiders, The Black Stallion Returns, and Rumble Fish in the 4 years after Heart. Only The Outsiders turned a profit… so while the brand continued, the money for the movies it was then a named producer of came from elsewhere. (For the record, Megalopolis was made by American Zoetrope, the brand resurrection.)

And Heaven’s Gate was a major pain for United Artists, costing $44 million and grossing $3.5 million, but the studio kept going. UA also had Raging Bull and Stardust Memories that same year. A Bond, Thief, and the surprisingly profitable Bo Derek Tarzan The Ape Man and Ringo Starr in Caveman the next year. Rocky III and Trail of the Pink Panther in 1982, and then War Games, Octopussy, and Yentl in 1983. Reports of the studio’s death were overstated.

But let’s move on from the impulse that we all have to remember movie history incorrectly…

If “Megalopolis” turns out to be remembered as a curiosity or an extremely expensive museum piece — truly art for art’s sake — that’s fine. If future audiences revere it as a misunderstood gem, all the better.

But it just was never going to hit the zeitgeist, and that’s what makes or breaks movies in 2024.

This is the point of disinformation that makes me want to scream.

No. Movies are not made or broken by zeitgeist.

It has long been an adage of the business and is as true today as ever… if you are chasing trends - a.k.a. zeitgeist - you are a fool… and if you are the dog who catches the tire, you will most likely get your head crushed.

Ryan continues…

As the box office has slowly recovered, it’s become increasingly clear that what determines a movie’s success or failure isn’t some microtrend in audience preferences, as fun as it is to try to identify those. It’s about whether the films in question tap into a current mood in the culture. That’s what the game is all about now, and it’s what makes the business so difficult to predict.

NO!!!

This way lies madness!

The argument gets weird in a hurry because the mega-hits and the moderate hits and the misses all have different standards… and because, again, every single movie has its own story to tell.

Did we go into this last summer thinking that the mood in the culture called for an animated movie about a girl coming of age - something Disney had and buried multiple times under Chapek and intended to do to Inside Out 2 before they changed course to a theatrical - and 2 middle aged men in faceless suits beating the hell out of each other and everyone else while making endless dick jokes? Seriously.

Ryan is right. Finding “microtrends” is not the entire game either. But understanding niches… that is where a lot of money is. Not in expensive studio movies, but he references Longlegs like it captured “the zeitgeist.” Utter bullshit. Neon did a fantastic job finding the niche group that loves the thriller/horror genre and targeted them in a way that the mainstream could never understand and opened their movie to a sensational $22.4 million without tapping the wider audience… which is sensational for a true indie, but soft for a major studio release. The film did 3.3x opening domestically… which is sensational… for a horror movie.

Neon had the gigantic win - in their context - because it did what movie marketers have been doing since the 70s… but really since the late 80s… selling the shit out of their movie. If they opened Longlegs this month instead of in July, would it have done as well? No way to know. But would it be because the zeitgeist changed? Of course not. The job would still be the same. And they would likely have created a great success.

By the way… Maxxxine opened the week before Longlegs and A24 mainstreamed the shit out of it. And it was the most successful of that trio of films. However, it opened to less than a third of the Longlegs opening. Did the zeitgeist change? Or did Neon do better by selling harder to the niche?

What is so weird is that Ryan seems to know that there is nothing real in this zeitgeist claim even as he sells it.

Sure, a good campaign can amplify something that already has the juice, but it can’t create it on its own. “Longlegs” had it. So did “Inside Out 2” and “It Ends With Us.” Good luck trying to mine any universal takeaways from such an eclectic group of hits.

The only thing that unifies this trio of hits - so much easier to claim the trend after it happens - is marketing that made the connection to the audience. These 3 films played to very different audiences with very different thresholds for success and very different box office results.

And yes, it can be argued that the potential ticket-buying audience has moods. Zeitgeist is a thing and it can have some effect… but it is minor and rare when it is significant to be read.

What is the difference between Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick, aside from $800 million+ more for Avatar 2 at the worldwide box office? Maverick captured an older audience than had tended to want to go to the movies coming out of COVID, especially in America… and most importantly, that older audience includes most film industry writers. Avatar 2 grossed 55% more than Maverick… but Maverick was the movie that “saved the industry.” Nice Zeitgeist read.

By the way, does Ryan or any other sane person think that Jim Cameron has ever made movies to “tap into a current mood in the culture?” Cameron’s success has been, first, in the filmmaking… but second, in making films that no one knew they wanted until they arrived. “You know what… in about 7 years, people are going to really want to see giant blue human-ish characters that can fly on pterodactyls they control by attaching their pony tails fighting the U.S. military to keep them from fracking another planet!”

Last summer, yes, there was some magic in the water that made Barbieheimer happen. I wouldn’t call it zeitgeist… but the culture took hold of the idea of these 2 conflicting titles and made them both bigger at the box office as a result. BUT…