What the Hell Do I Know?

I am seeing reports that the latest Harry Potter movie is on schedule to gross $140 million this weekend.

I wonder why that is? Maybe because the whole series has been well done? Maybe because these movies do what a movie is supposed to? Entertain you? No preachy garbage, no gratuitous sex or violence; they are just good stories, convincingly told.

What do you want from the entertainment industry? Me? I want to be ENTERTAINED!

I want to spend my money for a product that will allow me to lose myself in a pleasant place for awhile. A place where I know things will turn out well in the end. Where the bad guys get their comeuppance, and aren’t elected President.

Sorry, drifted a little off track there.

Seriously, have you ever looked at a list of the highest grossing movies of all time? Here’s one (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm) (just box office, no tape or DVD sales included) that I find interesting. I have maintained for years that since probably 1985 the Oscars have stopped being about the best movie and started being about the most politically correct picture. Not so much about the film people want to see, but the film Hollywood WANTS people to see.

You have to go back to 1997 to find a Best Picture winner on the list of moneymakers, and that was Titanic; the film that just couldn’t be ignored (even though I have managed to). Forrest Gump (1994) is on both lists and afterward they get few and far between. I couldn’t find what I wanted, a list of the highest grossing Oscar winners adjusted for inflation, but the top of that list would be Gone With the Wind. Which has a lot in common with Harry Potter; good story, convincingly told.

Of the top ten grossers I have seen 8, liked 4 well enough to see them multiple times. Of the top twenty I’ve seen 17; Top 40 I’ve seen 32. Of those 32 I have seen 13 in the theater, and the majority of those were Disney cartoons. And other than the Disney cartoons and the Star Wars series, I don’t believe I have more than 10 of the top 50 on tape or DVD. I wonder what that says about my taste in movies?

Back on topic, of the top 50 that I have seen, they all have one thing in common: -you guessed it- a good story, convincingly told, without preaching. Some of these movies I haven’t seen because I don’t like the genre (such as The Exorcist {although I have read the book}), or because I have heard things about the movie that turned me off (I never could stand the Godfather series), or because I perversely don’t like some things just because they are so flippin’ popular (Titanic and E.T. come to mind).

Apparently, based on where the money is spent a lot of movie goers agree with me. Take 2005 (my favorite year to hate the Oscars); none of the best picture nominees was in the top 20 grossers. Closest was Brokeback Mountain at 22nd. The winner (Crash, incase you forgot who won) was 49th. Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was a higher grossing film than the Oscar winning best picture. What does that tell you about the Oscars?

Just for the record, Good Night and Good Luck didn’t break the top 100. The incredibly lousy Dukes of Hazzard movie did better at the box office than all of the Best Picture nominees, except Brokeback Mountain, and only lost to Brokeback Mountain by $3 million.

So here I am, some redneck from Kentucky who figured out what makes a movie put butts in the seats, which in my opinion is the vote that counts on how good a picture is, why can’t the ‘experts’ in Hollywood do the same?

I do believe that as the economy sinks lower you will see fewer and fewer films that don’t make money, and are done for ‘arts sake’, just because Hollywood won’t have the cash to make junk that don’t sell, only to ‘make a statement’. Whatever the Hell that means.