2015 may go down as the first summer where cable television series made an impact on the mainstream box office. Tentpoles such as Pixels, advertised for months, or sequels such as Ted 2, came and went. You didn't hear anything about the story, nor talk to one person who saw them. Forgettable is what they were. Yet True Detective, The Walking Dead, and others had people talking at work. We finally had the sleeper hit of the summer if not the year with Straight Outta Compton. It apparently is a personal story, appealing to African American, white, musical audiences. That covers a lot of ground, but it's also personal.
I've been reading Sharon Waxman's excellent book Rebels on the Backlot. It's about six directors who clashed/worked with the major studios in the '90s. They made such unique hits as Three Kings, Being John Malkovich, and Fight Club, all of which came out in 1999. These people had visions, stuck to their stories and butted heads with just about every studio suit mentioned in the book. And many of them made money and are still working today. A sequel to this book could easily be in order. What's missing today are those unique stories that really went out on limbs, yet didn't sink. The studios knew talent when they saw it, or in the case of Malkovich, it just went below the radar during a merger. Filmmakers should be so lucky in this teaser-trailer-buzzfeed-Youtube era.
I've been reading Sharon Waxman's excellent book Rebels on the Backlot. It's about six directors who clashed/worked with the major studios in the '90s. They made such unique hits as Three Kings, Being John Malkovich, and Fight Club, all of which came out in 1999. These people had visions, stuck to their stories and butted heads with just about every studio suit mentioned in the book. And many of them made money and are still working today. A sequel to this book could easily be in order. What's missing today are those unique stories that really went out on limbs, yet didn't sink. The studios knew talent when they saw it, or in the case of Malkovich, it just went below the radar during a merger. Filmmakers should be so lucky in this teaser-trailer-buzzfeed-Youtube era.
