Hollywood Economics: How extreme uncertainty shapes the film industry (Contemporary Politicaleconomy)

Book Description

Just how risky is the Movie industry? Is screenwriter William Goldman's claim that "nobody knows anything" really true? Can a star and a big opening change a movie's risks and return? Do studio executives really earn their huge paychecks?
These and many other questions are answered in Hollywood Economics. The book uses powerful analytical models to uncover the wild uncertainty that shapes the industry. The centerpiece of the analysis is the unpredictable and often chaotic dynamic behavior of motion picture audiences.
This unique and important book will be of interest to students and researchers involved in the economics of movies, industrial economics and business studies. The book will also be a real eye-opener for film writers, movie executives, finance and risk management professionals as well as more general movie fans.

Customer Reviews:

A skeptic looks at the movie business.......2007-05-28

How can you predict the success or failure of a film? Even if you can't predict with perfect accuracy, can you predict which movies will probably be a hit? For example, does a star guarantee a hit? Do big budgets matter? Do ratings ensure a certain level of profit? Does a movie's gross receipts in its first week predict its total gross over the entire run?

The media clearly shows that movie makers go for big stars in expensive racy or violent films that are widely distributed from the first week they open. This is what Hollywood thinks creates true hits. But think twice about trusting Hollywood instincts: Arthur De Vany looks at the empirical evidence on movie revenue and concludes that this conventional wisdom should be rejected.

De Vany shows that while stars and big budgets do indicate a movie's revenue scale, they do not predict its success. Big stars have made expensive turkeys (e.g. Waterworld starring Kevin Costner) while on the other hand huge hits have been produced without stars (e.g. Home Alone). One of the more interesting conclusions is that the old movie studio system understood implicitly that this business was unpredictable. Until the antitrust laws were used to break them up, the studios contracted stars, script writers, directors, distribution networks and movie theaters in order to own the entire stream of revenues all their movies would generate.

This way the old studio bosses could diversify their risk in what was essentially a portfolio of movies. They knew that they could not predict which of their films would be a hit so they insisted on owning them all and on managing costs so that the hits would pay for the turkeys, while leaving shareholders with a healthy return.

These results are fascinating and have a wide range of application beyond Hollywood, particularly in uncertain hit-or-miss industries as unrelated to the movies as are gold mining and oil drilling.

One word of warning. Despite what the blurb says, the book is technical. Each of the twelve chapters is a peer-reviewed academic paper in economics making full use of all the quantitative analysis tools available to a professional researcher. To get the full message, you need enough basic statistics to understand conditional probabilities, first and second moments, cumulative functions, linear regression, etc. However, each of these chapters also comes with an intro and conclusion worded in plain English. So as long as you're willing to trust the peer reviews, you don't actually need to do the math yourself.

Vincent Poirier, Dublin

profound and imaginative treatment of the movie biz.......2005-08-12

De Vany presents a profound and imaginative treatment of the economics of the movie business, one that has implications, not only for similar businesses such as publishing and music, but for our understanding of the dynamics of culture. When Richard Dawkins coined the term "meme" he unwittingly paved the way for tons and tons of sexy but shallow commentary on human culture. Though that is not what he set out to do - "meme" never shows up in the book - De Vany has given mathematical form to the behavior of movie memes and has demonstrated that it is the people who are in change, not the memes.

In the words of screen writer William Goldman, "nobody knows anything" about what happens to movies once they are released to the theatres. Most movies don't even break even, much less make a profit - not in theatrical release, which is what De Vany investigates. [These days, movies make money on DVDs and TV, but that's another story, told by Jay Epstein.] That's no way to run a business, but the problems are inherent in the nature of movies as a business venture. The deep and ineradicable condition of the business is that there is no reliable way to find out whether or not your movie has a market other than putting it on screens across the country and seeing if people come to watch.

Does having "bankable" names of the marquee guarantee that the movie will make bank? No. Does opening big on thousands of screens with PR from here to the moon guarantee that the movie will make bank? No. Does a small opening mean the film is doomed? No. Hence Goldman's remark.

But all is not chaos. Or rather it is, but chaos of the mathematical kind. De Vany shows that about 3 or 4 weeks into circulation movie dynamics (that is, the dynamics of people coming to theatres to watch a movie) hit a bifurcation. Most movies enter a trajectory that leads to diminishing attendance and no profits. But a few enter a trajectory that leads to continuing attendance and, eventually, a profit. Among these, a very few become block busters.

And those few come to dominate the statistics of movie economics. From the point of view of statistics based on the normal distribution those few are movies outliers and should be discounted. De Vany develops a statistical framework - he calls is the stable Paretian model - that gives proper attention to those block busters. The model is stable in the sense that it exhibits the same structure at all scales.

* * * * *

De Vany devotes particular attention to the structure of the movie business. During its glory years the industry was organized by the studio system. The studios owned both the means of production and the means of distribution. Stars, directors, writers, and craftspeople, all were on staff at the studios. When it came time to release films, the studio's distribution system went to work and the films went out to theaters owned by the studios and to independent theaters with long-term booking arrangement. The system worked well.

But in the 1950s an anti-trust action was brought against the studios and they were ordered to divest themselves of their theaters and stop the cozy booking arrangements. The result of that was that was that they lost the stars, directors, writers, and producers - who became independent contractors - and the costs of production went up. And those increased costs were passed on to the movie-goer.

De Vany argues, convincingly, that the studios were not a cartel that drove up prices for their own benefit. Rather, their arrangements, their ownership of theaters, helped them cope with the extreme uncertainty of the business. They had just enough direct control over exhibition practices to stabilize their income so that they could afford to keep the talent on staff. Once that stability was taken from them, they had to let the talent go. And that, in turn, meant that, each time a film was to be made, someone had to go out into the marketplace and put the team together, thus incurring transaction costs that didn't exist in the studio system.

* * * * *

An excellent book. Note that it's thick with mathmatics. But it also has lots of charts. You can read those even if you can't make sense of the equations.

Wow........2005-01-14

I skipped the high-falutin' parts with integral calculus...BUT: Anyone who is investing a nickel in ANY entertainment medium should read this book. The buying public is discerning, fickle and SMART. Crap stinks and the first to catch a wiff of a film that stinks are like Paul Revere coming out of the theater. On the other hand, a great film can fizzle due to any number of peculiar reasons such as distribution decisions or competing releases. There is also interesting treatment of the demise of studio-owned movie houses and an argument in favor of lifting the ban.

William Goldman ("nobody knows nothin'", or something like that) has it figured out: write screenplays and wait. The Princess Bride, case in point. He even wrote the book AFTER the movie hit big.

Let somebody else put his money into film production. There is a fine line between genius and lunacy...the buying public determines which he is.

Movies can be Diverse. Will the execs heed?.......2004-06-14

Hollywood Economics: How Extreme Uncertainty Shapes the Film Industry by Arthur De Vanyn (Routledge) (Hardcover)
What do stars do for a movie? Aside from earning a higher least revenue, a star movie has only a slightly higher chance of making a profit than a non-star movie De Vanyn shows. If the star's agent extracts the higher expected profit in the star's fee, then the movie almost surely will lose money. This De Vanyn calls the curse of the superstar.
Opening big and leading at the box office is a momentary success. A movie has to attain or sustain box-office dominance over many weeks to make major money. The size of the opening does not predict how the ensuing battles will evolve or how much money the film will take in. Why do executives compete so strongly for stars when they can assure no more than a higher expectation of a movie's least revenue? It seems to be based on a belief that the opening predicts how much a movie will make. That turns out to be false, as this study shows.
The articles are grouped into four parts: dynamics, wild uncertainty, judges and lawyers and extremes. There are three chapters in each of these parts. De Vanyn writes a brief introduction to each part noting the main issues, techniques and results of the papers contained therein. De Vanyn has not sacrificed rigor or completeness; these are refereed articles, published in scientific journals and their results have been independently confirmed and replicated by other authors many times over.
De Vanyn also provides a couple of new chapters that were not published previously. One of these concerns artists, primarily actors and directors. It examines how productive they are and how they are paid. De Vanyn establishes the Price-Evans law of artists, estimate the half life of a star and see if one can separate luck from talent in career patterns. In another new work for this book, De Vanyn puts all this work into a more complete model, a model that begins to bridge the gap between standard management and economic models and the reality of the business.
In the Epilogue he muses on how one might manage a business where nobody knows anything. It is here that De Vanyn takes up the fundamental flaws his research reveals about the way the modern corporate studio manages the movie business.
Finally perhaps we will see why conventional models fail spectacularly to explain the movies and why De Vanyn had to invent a new kind of economics to come to grips with this endlessly fascinating business. Perhaps De Vanyn has built a consistent and fundamental model of the industry that is of interest not just to scientists, but to movie fans and moviemakers, too. And De Vanyn shows that these models can be applied to other industries as well.
In science, as in the movies, creativity takes you to unexpected places. This study is exciting because we get unexpected and wonderful discoveries. It is hard to imagine at the outset that by applying high-brow mathematical and statistical science we end up proving Goldman's fundamental truth that, in the movies, "nobody knows anything."
None of these results is more surprising than finding out that, hard-headed science puts the creative process at the very center of the motion picture universe. There is no fool proof formula. Outcomes cannot be predicted. There is no reason for management to get in the way of the creative process. Now tell then that! Character, creativity and good story-telling trump everything else. Now let's see some fresh movies made!

Directed by Steven Spielberg: Poetics of the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster

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Directed by Steven Spielberg: Poetics of the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster
Warren Buckland
Manufacturer: Continuum International Publishing Group
ProductGroup: Book
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ASIN: 0826416918

Book Description

Although the blockbuster is the most popular and commercially successful type of filmmaking, it has yet to be studied seriously from a formalist standpoint. This is in opposition to classical Hollywood cinema and International Art cinema, whose form has been analyzed and deconstructed in great detail. Directed By Steven Spielberg fills this gap by examining the distinctive form of the blockbuster. The book focuses on Spielberg's blockbusters, because he is the most consistent and successful director of this type of film - he defines the standard by which other Hollywood blockbusters are judged and compared. But how did Spielberg attain this position? Film critics and scholars generally agree that Spielberg's blockbusters have a unique look and use visual storytelling techniques to their utmost effectiveness. In this book, Warren Buckland examines Spielberg's distinct manipulation of film form, and his singular use of stylistic and narrative techniques. The book demonstrates the aesthetic options available to Spielberg, and particularly the choices he makes in structuring his blockbusters. Buckland emphasizes the director's activity in making a film (particularly such a powerful director as Spielberg), including: visualizing the scene on paper via storyboards; staging and blocking the scene; selecting camera placement and movement; determining the progression or flow of the film from shot to shot; and deciding how to narrate the story to the spectator.

Book Description

There was a time when no one would have left Dick Haymes (1918-1980) out of the top class of his contemporaries such as Frank Sinatra and Perry Como. But now the Argentine-born baritone is known only to those ardent fans and music historians who still claim him as one of the most talented popular singers of the twentieth century.

He worked with several great bandleaders, including Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey, before beginning a solo career that vaulted him to Hollywood stardom. In 1944, he worked with Twentieth Century Fox, headlining such hit musicals as Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe and State Fair. Popular recordings such as "Little White Lies," "The More I See You," "How Blue the Night," "For You, For Me, For Evermore," "Speak Low," and "Another Night Like This," made him a top draw at the box office.

In the 1950s, when television took over the media landscape and the appeal of musicals declined, Haymes's career suffered. Despite efforts in the 1970s, he never re-established success. In The Life of Dick Haymes: No More Little White Lies, Ruth Prigozy uses over forty personal interviews with singers, musicians, composers, arrangers, and Haymes's family members. She searches archival recordings of "The Dick Haymes Show," films, recordings, music studies, and histories to present a full portrait of this complicated man. Prigozy chronicles Haymes's childhood, his rise in the 1940s, his decline into alcoholism, his multiple marriages—to such leading stars as Rita Hayworth and Joanne Dru—and divorces, and the minor resurgence of his career in Europe during the last years of his life.

Customer Reviews:

A cautionary tale well worth reading.......2006-07-18

Ruth Prigozy has done an admirable job in bringing Dick Haymes life story to light. He is certainly someone who had been forgotten and whose story deserves to be told. I found this to be a well-researched biography that held my interest and which I enjoyed reading.

This book shows how a person can totally mess up his life by not addressing some basic problems -- for instance, the way he was raised clearly was responsible for his inability to foster healthy relationships. He kept repeating the same mistakes, drinking too much, etc. Certainly this was a man with a lot of troubles -- many self-inflicted. Interestingly enough, this book shows he never really did find stability and peace in his personal life. I agree with a previous reviewer who said high school students should read this book -- how NOT to live your life.

However, at times I think author Prigozy is too quick to excuse some of these faults and too willing to make allowances for Haymes' behavior. Here is an intelligent man who was handsome and talented, who nonetheless "blew it" in both his professional and personal life. He does not seem to be a very nice person -- cheating on his wives, mean or neglectful to his kids, a drunk, selfish, a deadbeat, at times arrogant, etc. He may not have been "Mr. Evil," as he has been dubbed, but he apparently wasn't "Mr. Nice Guy" either.

I think it would have been interesting for the author to explore more of his professional decline and the reasons for it. Why exactly did he fail to become an established movie star? Why did his popularity fade in the late 1940s and early 1950s? What happened to his radio career? His record contract was cancelled several years before the rock revolution -- was it his style of music that was passe, was the public tired of him, or did he exhibit a lack of range or an inability to adjust with changing tastes and times?

This book doesn't delve into that as much as I would have liked, but it's still an excellent read, and very worthwhile in bringing the story of this forgotten star to today's public.

High school requisite.......2006-07-12

Many better biographies have been written over the years, but none more urgent than this. High schoolers should read this book and discuss it with friends. Dick Haymes was a great talent, and intelligent. But he couldn't seem to make the right decisions in life, his values were screwed, and he suffered dearly because of it. The comedown was crushing.

"I Couldn't Put it Down".......2006-05-25

Ruth Prigozy has written a balanced account of the life of a man who was tipped for mega stardom in his formative professional years but who through bad judgement and sometimes fate was destined to struggle for the rest of his life.

Several marriages including to film beauties Joanne Dru and Rita Hayworth not to mention the sultry Fran Jeffries kept his name in the press but after a short term contract with Capitol Records in the middle 1950s failed to interest the public or music industry his career faltered. In the early 1960s after the failure of his marriage to Fran Jeffries he left the USA and headed for Europe, which was to be his home for almost a decade.

South African born BBC DJ and Record Producer Alan Dell rediscovered Haymes in 1969 and managed to get him into a recording studio for an album entitled "Then & Now" which was instrumental in getting him back to the USA and giving him another chance.

Ruth Prigozy unravels the story of a man who was a complicated gentleman almost from another age. Loved and respected by his peers Ruth delves into the insecurities that dominated his life.

A mix of facts, memories via interviews with family, friends and those associated with Haymes and even extracts from his own unfinished autobiography. Plenty of excellent pictures too. This is an "I couldn't put it down" book.

A compelling read full of highs and lows, surprises and sometimes despair. This long awaited biography addresses many of the stories that had been circulating around Hollywood about Haymes and presents the facts for the first time.

A must for any fan of the 1940s, musicals, crooners and film stars.

THE BEST OF HAYMES EVER.......2006-05-11

Ruth Prigozy writes a poignant biography of an otherwise neglected big band and beyond singer whose rich baritone rivaled Bing Crosby's. Ruth Prigozy is an accomplished author and English professor at Long Island's Hofstra University. She spent a number of years researching this story and presents it faithfully and validly engaging many in interviews to promote accuracy. She has covered all the bases in this very meritorious book that is a long time coming. It tells the truth. And makes it a very valid book.It places Dick Haymes in his rightful place in music and singing.

American History And Contemporary Hollywood Film

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American History And Contemporary Hollywood Film
Trevor B. McCrisken , and Andrew Pepper
Manufacturer: Rutgers University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0813536219

Book Description

Hollywood has always been fascinated by America's past, but never more so than in the past fifteen years. Bringing exciting new perspectives to how and why Hollywood has sought to repicture American history, this book offers analysis of more than twenty mainstream contemporary films, including The Patriot, Amistad, Glory, Ride with the Devil, Cold Mountain, Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, Pearl Harbor, U-571, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Heaven and Earth, JFK, Nixon, Malcolm X, Ali, Black Hawk Down, and Three Kings.

Both authoritative and engaging, American History and Contemporary Hollywood Film is the first book to comprehensively explore the post-cold war period of filmmaking, and to navigate the complex ways that film mediates history—sometimes challenging or questioning, but more frequently reaffirming traditional interpretations. The authors consider why such films are becoming increasingly integral to the ambitions of a globally focused American film industry.

Structured by historical periods, chapters cover significant events and eras such as the American Revolution, slavery and the Civil War, World War II, the sixties and seventies, civil rights and black nationalism, the Vietnam War, and post-cold war global conflicts. The lessons learned from the examples will be illuminating for general readers and college students alike.

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The Dolby Era: Film Sound in Contemporary Hollywood (Inside Popular Film)
Gianluca Sergi
Manufacturer: Manchester University Press
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Sound Theory, Sound Practice (AFI Film Readers)

ASIN: 0719070678
Release Date: 2005-04-14

Book Description

Since the 1970s Hollywood cinema has been the site of remarkable developments in film sound. New revolutionary sound technologies have been developed, a new generation of filmmakers have learned to use them as powerful storytelling tools, and audiences have enjoyed a different way of experiencing films, both theatrically and at home. For the first time, through historical analysis and interviews with key players, such as Ray Dolby (founder and creator of Dolby Laboratories), Ioan Allen (the initiator of the Dolby Stereo program), sound designer Gary Rydstrom (Titanic, Terminator 2, Toy Story, Saving Private Ryan, Finding Nemo), and supervising sound editor Bruce Stambler (The Fugitive, Batman Forever, Clear and Present Danger, The Fast and the Furious, XXX) this book aims at providing a substantial account of sound in contemporary Hollywood cinema since the early 1970s.

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Contemporary Hollywood Cinema
Steve Neale
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0415170109

Book Description

Contemporary Hollywood Cinema examines recent changes in American filmmaking, from ballooning budgets to the evolving aethetics of the modern audience. Throughout, the contributors assess new and defining features of contemporary Hollywood such as the growth in star marketing, rather than movies or directors and the rise of the "major independent" production/distribution companies. Completely up-to-date, this collection tells us where Hollywood is today, and where we can expect it to be in the future. Contributors: Michael Allen, Tino Balio, Warren Buckland, Steven Cohan, Pam Cook, Elizabeth Cowie, Kevin Donnelly, Thomas Elsaesser, Douglas Gomery, Barry Keith Grant, Peter Kramer, Tommy Lott, Richard Maltby, Hilary Radner, James Schamus, Gianluca Sergi, Justin Wyatt.

The Films of Tim Burton: Animating Live Action in Contemporary Hollywood

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Disappointing and hurried

The Films of Tim Burton: Animating Live Action in Contemporary Hollywood
Alison McMahan
Manufacturer: Continuum International Publishing Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0826415679

Customer Reviews:

Disappointing and hurried.......2006-08-30

This is a rather peculiar and disappointing book that reads as if it was written in a hurry. There are points where the text breaks down into short, disjointed and purely descriptive sentences that - given that this is supposedly an academic book - really makes one wonder what point the author is trying to make. Whilst the basic information is all good, there were a few inaccuracies, such as in the chapter on Danny Elfman - the score of is Batman is NOT at the University of Texas in Austin, and the source she cites for the information is simply misquoted. Overall, in terms of Burton and his films, this doesn't offer anything obviously new, and parts of the book read like a precise of other authors rather than her own arguments. Her single unique selling point is looking at Burton's film making in the context of Alfred Jarry's pataphysics and the idea of surrealism (Jarry was one of the late 19th/ early 20th century figures who inspired surrealism). Nothing wrong with this - "surreal" is a commonly used adjective when discussing Burton's work - but overall the book comes across as rushed and flimsy. There's a good book in here struggling to get out, but it needed a good hard edit before being published.

From Hobbits to Hollywood: Essays on Peter Jacksons Lord of the Rings (Contemporary Cinema 3) (Contemporary Cinema)

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From Hobbits to Hollywood: Essays on Peter Jacksons Lord of the Rings (Contemporary Cinema 3) (Contemporary Cinema)

Manufacturer: Editions Rodopi BV
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 9042020628

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Peter Jacksons film version of The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) is the grandest achievement of 21st century cinema so far. But it is also linked to topical and social concerns including war, terrorism, and cultural imperialism. Its style, symbols, narrative, and structure seem always already linked to politics, cultural definition, problems of cinematic style, and the elemenal mythologies that most profoundly capture our imaginations. From Hobbits to Hollywood: Essays on Peter Jacksons Lord of the Rings treats Jacksons trilogy as having two conditions of existence: an aesthetic and a political. Like other cultural artefacts, it leads a double life as objet dart and public statement about the world, so that nothing in it is ever just cinematically beautiful or tasteful, and nothing is ever just a message or an opinion. Written by leading scholars in the study of cinema and culture From Hobbits to Hollywood gives Jacksons trilogy the fullest scholarly interrogation to date. Ranging from interpretations of The Lord of the Rings ideological and philosophical implications, through discussions of its changing fandoms and its incorporation into the Hollywood industry of stars, technology, genre, and merchandising, to considerations of CGI effects, acting, architecture and style, the essays contained here open a new vista of criticism and light, for ardent fans of J.R.R. Tolkien, followers of Jackson, and all those who yearn for a deeper appreciation of cinema and its relation to culture.

Tracking King Kong: A Hollywood Icon in World Culture (Contemporary Film and Television Series)

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Tracking King Kong: A Hollywood Icon in World Culture (Contemporary Film and Television Series)
Erb Cynthia , and Cynthia Marie Erb
Manufacturer: Wayne State University Press
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ASIN: 0814326862

Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film (A Midland Book)

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Periodizing the 80s

Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film (A Midland Book)
Michael Ryan , and Douglas Kellner
Manufacturer: Indiana University Press
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0253206049

Customer Reviews:

Periodizing the 80s.......2007-04-16

Camera Politica is a must for all who are interested in studying the development of film studies. In this book, Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner offer a plethora of studies of films from the late 60s to the 80s in order to make a larger argument about that period of history. Their basic premise is that these films are in a dialectical relationship to the rise of conservative politics in the 80s. Meaning, the growing sentiment of conservativism informs films like Dirty Harry and Rambo, but at the same time, the development of a full fledged conservative popular culture, in which these films are involved, creates a social milieu in which conservative politics appears attractive and the remedy to growing economic and social disturbances.
They also criticize liberals for feeding into conservative filmic representations, often identifying the same ills as conservatives in their own attempts at cultural production. But, more significantly, liberal critics did not offer counter-representations that would do the same culture work that the conservative films of the late 70s and 80s did.
Thus, they call for a new radical cinema. They are Marxist in orientation (though they are clearly aligned with feminisms, radical race theorists, and student radicals), and so they are suggesting that a Marxian culture and a Marxist cinema must come into being. This cinematic culture must diagnose problems but it also must offer remedies that speak to the large majority of people. Perhaps, most provocatively (especially for the time this book was written), Ryan and Kellner claim that this new Marxian cinema can take the form of the popular Hollywood film, and in fact it must if it wants to reach mainstream society.
Though this book is a periodization of films, it also offers new theoretical devices. The first is the notion of transcoding: a film transcodes social attitudes. The second is ideology: the ideological work of Hollywood cinema is to try and offer remedies for social ills, but in so doing, it must admit ills do in fact exist. Thus ideology is double-edged. The third is diagnostic critique: the method of reading films that excavate both the ideological containment and the problem being identified.
At this point in history, Camera Politica might appear a bit dated. But if anyone is interested in doing a historical periodization of American culture, this book is simply a MUST. If anyone is new to the area of visual and film culture and wants a book that might offer some theoretical methods as well as demonstrations of readings, then, they might want to pick this book up.
This book is a bit of an overlooked classic, and it should be considered a staple in film studies.

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