AWARD NIGHTThis evening, in Los Angeles, CA. The handing out of Oscar images takes place.
Indications are, that, while the theater will be packed, the home audience with TV seating promises to be small. One survey, being conducted all morning on the Internet, reports about 22 per cent of those polled plan to be there; 65 per cent are planning to be elsewhere, and 12 per cent of them are still “Not Sure” of anything.
That’s a little over one of fifth of potential reporting for “duty” and not good box-office any way you choose to look at it.
Why is this sort of shunning taking place?
The quickie polls don’t ask for “reasons why”, but in talking with non-goers and goers I find more people upset with subject matter of this years . Homosexuality is not a favorite subject for after-dinner chit-chats nor is it a prime entertainment theme – especially when tough, outdoorsy cowboy characters are really shown to be, seemingly more authentic, sheepherders.
The steady decline of the movie business is too often attributed to writers. We hear “they just don't write the good stuff any more!” What might well be said is that producers do not present a market for good writing! All they want is more and more tinseled trash they can spin off for a stupefied public now totally unaware of how entertaining and rewarding a good movie can be. Pointing, pandering, pimping press people make up the membership of much of the so-often highly esteemed film critic corps.
None of this can be changed for the better as long as we continue our present and well-entrenched system of determining the worth of a film by the amount of money paid by a few viewers to have it run off one time in their presence. With today's box office prices the final figure is pure fiction.
A.L.M . March 5, 2006 [c331wds]
