Whenever I call my parents, which is about once a week, we go through the usual formalities, such as am I drinking juice and eating right? No. How the hockey team is doing – we’re currently 1-2 in league play. Do I have a girlfriend yet? No, but you and Dad didn’t meet until grad school so what’s your point? How’s the weather? Dismal with a 100 percent chance of rain. What do I have to complain about? Too much.
The complaint portion of this week’s call eventually became a discussion about how there’s nothing to do – such as go to the movies – and then shifted focus to how there aren’t any movies I feel like paying eight hard earned dollars for. And to be honest, I’m really puzzled as to why not.
I just finished reading a book, which is rare, because my short attention span usually only permits periodicals, but this was no ordinary book. It was a fictional novel with a good plot, quirky characters, and a certain literary flair that made it surprisingly enjoyable.
The book is “The Pleasure Of My Company,” and the funny thing is, it was written by Steve Martin. The “Bringing Down The House” Steve Martin. How can the same Steve Martin write a witty, insightful, emotional book, and on the flip side be in less-than-funny movies such as “Bowfinger” and “The Out Of Towners”?
The closest thing to an inside source I have is my friend Kristin who’s a TV, Radio & Film major at Syracuse University. She said that a movie script usually gets written and re-written and tweaked as to appeal to the lowest common denominator of an audience member, and that often a final picture will bear little resemblance to the original screenplay.
Books, on the other hand, tend to have a writer and an editor, and that’s about it – what one sees on the page is darn close to the author’s original words.
This seemed to make sense, but in the sort of way that ARAMARK says that our food costs 10 times market value because the economy is rough. But then shouldn’t any diner experiencing the rough economy also have terrible and terribly expensive food? Unfortunately, there’s no great solution to this problem. On the one hand, we have independent filmmakers, but quite often, there’s a good reason they don’t have studio backing. On the other, we have potentially talented writers having their work torn to shreds by the studio execs.
The only way to send a message they could understand would be a boycott, as it’s been proven that they like making money. We the educated know this, and if someone organized it, I’d certainly give up paying $8 on a regular basis for the chance to improve the quality of our media.
Unfortunately, there are too many lowest common denominators out there. To better visualize this, think about how almost half the country voted for George W. Bush. A boycott is now officially out of the question.
Granted, there have been a precious few movies in recent years that did actually demonstrate talent and intelligence, but they were few and far between. I think I’m going to call Woody Allen and tell him to stop being weird and make one more movie of “Annie Hall” or better quality, just to show people what they’re missing.
Voigt can be reached at svoigt@campustimes.org.
