Because You Never Asked

     I just saw a first run movie (or as much of it as I could endure), which can only mean one thing: my annual escape to the Spanish Mediterranean has finally come upon me and my feeble contribution to the polemic surrounding the human condition is now being written by the parched shores of the azure Roman Sea. (As explained in the essay "The Movies", I only see first run movies while in trans-Atlantic flight.)

     This year's aerial cinema offering was in perfect harmony with the tasteless cuisine, cramped quarters, pungent toilets, and predictable lack of well being afforded one in "serf" class on a long flight cross the endless sea. The film, as usual, was a box office smash by the name of "Jerry Maguire". Although it might be said the movie was about a sports agent representing a black athlete with a body suspiciously smooth and cuddly for the kind of aggression so gleefully dished out in the NFL, this is not what I'd consider the film's true philosophical thrust. The true reason for "Jerry Maguire" was to have us serfs gaze upon the beauty of the film's star, Tom Crews, until we are no longer willing to do so. Judging from the success of the movie, such time has not yet arrived. A more detailed examination of the film's essence would reveal a preoccupation with the Crews smile, which, if it must be said, is a dazzling rendition of genetic accident. My personal concept of Tom Crews doing anything is intrinsically linked to this mischievous, adolescent smile, which is a light that never seems to go off in any of his cinema outings.

     If Tom Crews is ever to win some kind of award for his show biz career, it would only seem proper to share it with his dentist. (And the Oscar for the best bridgework in a musical comedy .).

     Surprisingly enough, the film "Jerry Maguire" was not the inspiration for this essay. That came in a book review I read in the British paper "The Times", which I found sitting forlornly abandoned in the lobby of the hotel I hang out in. (I never buy newspapers). The book being reviewed was entitled "How to Make it in Hollywood", by one David Puttnam, an Englishman who worked many years in southern California. It caught my attention because its idea of making a successful film, as they say here in Spain, is "la vuelta de la tortilla" (the other side of the tortilla) from what I think good filmmaking is all about. (See any of the essays in the Arts section of this book about cinema).

     Mr. Puttnam's book is an attempt to explain the almost complete dominance of the Hollywood film industry in the world market, and what might be done in Europe to rescue a movie making industry that seems to be breathing its last, wheezing, consumptive gasps of survival. In illustrating this fact, the author explains that films made by California studios account for 80% of the revenues in Europe, while European films add up to less than 1% of the American market. Why is this so? Are American films so much better than their foreign counterparts?

     As it turns out, if we read between the lines and give the proper translation to Puttnam's words, the reason for Hollywood's success is based upon consciously making films that are not too good. The author's extended stay in "Tinseltown" has jaded his concept of what filmmaking should be, making him into a "bottom line" practitioner. He has become an agent of "anti-cinema".

     Mr. Puttnam --- and I'm quite sure his evolution was a slow, unconscious process, similar to one who moves to a new place and ends up speaking with the local accent --- has somehow succumbed to the American idea that commercial success is justification for whatever artistic degeneration it might cause. He chastises the European filmmaker for not being more sensitive to the tastes of the consumer. I quote . the Europeans ". have remained overwhelmingly focused on the needs of the producers and not sufficiently on the expressed desires of the audience". I'm not quite sure what these "expressed desires" are, but judging from the usual sludge seen these days, they must have something to do with fists, guns, explosions, cleavage (my personal favorite), lava, dinosaurs, karate chops, cruise ships ending up on I-95, meteors hurling towards Earth, and other such tawdry devices used to so easily separate the masses from their money.

     I would like to remind Mr. Puttnam that film making is still, in some quarters, considered an art form. Any artist operating under the delusion that the "desires of the audience" must be taken into account before their art is produced, has gone from being an artist to a salesman, which is a much lower strata of human endeavor.

     Puttnam continues, "Hollywood films always set out to attract and seduce. Even now, too few European film makers appear to see that as an asset or obligation". I would like to remind the author that any artist worthy of such designation is not obliged to do anything other than whatever it is that inspires them. Once an artist feels obliged to do anything, they have ceased being an intellectual force in society, one who leads the rest of us on to whatever new experience might be out there.

     I cannot imagine Pablo Picasso taking the needs of the consumer into account and then sitting down to sketch "La Guernica".

     From a financial point of view, I have no doubt that Mr. Puttnam's analysis of Hollywood's success is impeccably correct. But his concept of the film industry is something I have long lost use for. As a "consumer" of the cinema product, I can't think of anything more depressing than to see a film that had been specifically made with my needs in mind, as if it were a tube of toothpaste or a "family car". The producers of such cinema are no more relevant to the enlightenment of our species than the producers of pro wrestling.

     Obviously, it is far more difficult to create a financially rentable product in strict compliance with artistic integrity, but I would sooner sit through a thousand failed attempts at artistic achievement in search of something truly worthwhile, than one hour of all the Whoopie-Willis-Jerry Maguire mediocrity that sells so well.

     I would say Mr. Puttnam's book is little more than a euphemism for the following: if you Europeans want to rescue your film industry, start making more adolescent films.