David Mamet on Current State of Hollywood

Taken from JRE #1801 w/David Mamet:

[Riclmnopp]

Amy Schumer said that she is traumatized and is taking a month off. So i just want to say thank you Will Smith.

[OldMovieRob]

He's not wrong. "30 people at a board table" making films today is why so many have given up on modern Hollywood and go looking for real films in the past.

[darkscienceyt]

This is all very similar to what Frank Zappa said about the direction the music industry was headed in the late 90's. Zappa said, and you can find this video on Youtube, that in the early 1960's the music producers were cigar chomping businessmen who just took a swing at the music industry. If an artist sold, it was a good investment. Ultimately the businessmen were picking artists that showed promise of return, meaning they had the talent and the chops to perform well. At some point, the businessmen got replaced by younger more pop-oriented businessmen and producers who began to nip and tuck artists into an ideality that followed a corporate formula that guaranteed album sales. Here we are today, with the likes of Justin Beiber, Taylor Swift and Bhad Babie.

[geverniveup]

I had a really fucked up childhood and movies were my greatest escape from that trauma…I can’t even begin to describe how important they were to me. Today, in my 30’s, I couldn’t care less about them. Completely fell out of love with modern cinema

[davidodonnellfilm]

Here is what he is struggling to articulate -- the mid level film that he made has mostly disappeared. The $10-30M film. Why? Because it costs around $50M+ to open a film theatrically these days (in promotion). So studios would rather invest 100M to do spider-man reboot #5, have a property that everyone knows, and recycle the same story with confidence they can get the $. There will also be the occasional $3-5M film made or mid budget level by studios with the hopes of winning an Oscar. But it's the exception not the rule. The decisions about what films are made are largely with marketing in mind. Not artistry. SO, the answer is -- yes, it's because of money. It's not viable to make the mid level films that Mamet is talking about. Thus we've seen film lose it's place as an important place of cultural conversation. It's mainly corporate output. It's cultural fast food.
Streamers prefer to make TV/series than film. Why? Attention economy, they want your eyeballs for longer.

[dertythegrower]

Hollywood is crumbling fast, along with Disney..

Great to watch 🍿

[CoreChamber]

They used to pay directors to go off and make the movies that the directors wants. Now they pay the director to make their movie. So the movie relates more to a board of people than a world full of possible directors, I agree. Video games have this same dilemma, Studios bring you more of the same where indies have to explore new ideas to get noticed.

[vicmusic]

That last line means the world to anyone ever told, “I can’t hire you at this entry level position because you don’t have experience.”

[azchick]

This conversation with Mamet was spot on in showing the huge emotional uplift that films used to have to current obsequious and vacuous films of today. Great to hear another adult brave enough to even mention what’s happened in Hollywood film making. Hollywood won’t excoriate him because he’s “old” and not a threat to mainstream bubble that is Hollywood .

[BluVie]

I think he’s slightly off. The biggest thing killing the arts like movies is the decision used to be based on “Is there a big enough audience to make this worthwhile” and then it became “But what will the critics and Twitter Mafia say if we do this?” When you force art to be palatable to the critics who are triggered by everything you’re left with something so bland and boring, or propagandizing, that there’s few people willing to pay for it. This is what makes distributors and financiers scared to take risks with indie artists. The outrage mob has enforced insane amounts of paranoid self-censorship and it’s killing all creativity, honesty, and all forms of communication/connection.

[kermitfrog]

The movie experience has certainly changed. When I was a kid and the Ninja Turtles movie came out, it was like a seismic event. You'd have the movie poster almost a year in advance, you couldn't wait. Then in the mid nineties, summer blockbusters like Titanic and Independence Day were like cultural touchstones, everyone saw them. Things have changed. We watch movies on our laptops, alone in our rooms. So much variety means everyone has their own idiosyncratic taste, watches their own films. When you actually do try going to a movie theater, it's expensive, the popcorn is flavorless, and goddamn but people don't know how to behave in public anymore. Went to see Batman recently and I shit you not, tweens were on their phones and running up the aisles for three hours. You don't feel that sense of a communal experience. That said, it's not all bad news. The indy horror scene has been stellar post 2000s. Good indy films still get made, you just have to surf the internet and find them.

[Cadinho]

Will Smith is a real one.

I could never defend someone else's girl like that.

[yannick]

David Mamet as a guest is a real surprise.
Joe has been killing it lately!

[staytrue]

"Whoever owns twitter owns commerce."

Elon: Hold my beer.

[Geronimo_Jehoshaphat]

_"Pig-Latin with each other's pronouns"_ 😆 😆 😆

That deft Mamet dialogue! Classic.

[ArsalanKhan-ynwi]

Glengarry Glen Ross is one of the greatest screenplays of all time.

[stardustchild]

David Mamet has made a bunch of really great movies..I really miss the old Hollywood

[ohjesswhatamess]

I have to agree with him. That’s why we keep getting remakes and franchises. They have a successful superhero, they make the merch, they then follow up with another subpar movie to keep the character relevant and the merch selling…
I hope we’ll be blessed with more Tarantinoesque people creating new, thought provoking movies soon. 🤞

[XBadluckchuckX]

“Who owns Twitter controls the commerce” hits different all of a sudden…

[thor]

This was such an interesting video. He's right, the only thing Hollywood is capable of is reusing old ideas. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle despite having endless resources