Swoosh! The Good Thing Just Slipped Through Our Fingers…

The former film business has become a one-stop single-target non-competitive shop

Where’s Monty Hall when you need him?

I used to say that one of the reasons I liked the film biz was that I knew I could get my movies made. And I knew I could get them seen.  I didn’t need for the big studios to like it. I could have a film that very few folks initially believed in and step by step by step I could get a coalition together and make it happen. Eventually the right folks would see it and even champion it. It would sell. We would recoup. Everyone would feel good and want to go at it again. And I found a certain pleasure in proving other folks wrong. Or lacking in taste. It put a smile on my face.

And now those days are gone. I am not confident all the good projects will ever get made, or even be seen when they are completed. How did we let this happen? Why did we let this happen? How can we fix it? Why isn’t everyone up in arms? Are we the frogs lounging in that pot of slowly heating water? It feels good, until….  Well, you know. Have we all got addicted to some sort of stay-at-home-and-don’t-complain drug? Is it too late or can something still be done? Time to stir the pot, right?

You once could have an idea, develop it, and find a rightful home. Be it because of quality execution or a strong concept or commercial elements, you could always anticipate a warm welcome somewhere.  You would have multiple offers if you did it well; you didn’t even need to excel. Shop it. Package it. Build it and they will come. That was all one needed to do. Good films, good material, good people would always sell.

I think those days are over and will never come back unless we enact some legislative changes. Maybe bring some court cases. Get organized. And it is not just state side. It is going to need a global effort. But we can discuss that more, later, for sure; for now I just want us to realize what we had and what we lost. We need to recognize where we now stand, as it is sort of tragic.

It by no means was perfect but the former film business was a bastion of competition and capitalism. Things were built based on the bottom line. Making movies is an expensive proposition (albeit not as costly as we make it out to be) and people not surprisingly like to make their money back. They also know that things change and taste and trends are hard to monitor. The former film biz could count on an outlier to always find its way through the maze and work as a cultural taste course corrector. Don’t worry about the ruts, come something we once thought nuts, would get us all a bit unstuck.

I talk about producing in those days as having to knock on 200 doors to find one interested buyer. That worked because you could count on each and every person on the other side to have their own taste and their own strategy. Even if you had to alter what you were selling in order to make it fit a bit more, that was do-able because there was a home to be had for virtually any variation on a theme. There was no overall mandate. There was no specific audience they were targeting that quarter. Everyone had a different plan and that meant you had a plethora of options, a bounty of paths. There was no right way. There were multiple routes to success.

Now when we go door to door selling our wares, we only meet the same person behind every door. Okay, it might as well be that way, but I am over simplifying a bit. How’s this: we still can look at 200 doors but the person on the other side can only see four colors and even if they see red and you are selling red, there is only one buyer for red. Just like there is only buyer for green, yellow, or blue.  Forget about it if you have orange. They are going to run from fuchsia. Ditto violet. And certainly nothing in between. There is no room for gray. Yeah, so maybe you think the solution is to only plant the red, green, yellow, and blue seeds. Good luck with that, because the buyers are seasonal and come the harvest, they will have changed colors yet again. You are stuck unless you align with some dumb luck.

I am going to have to go back to metaphor school, but I hope you get the picture. It once was inevitable for a producer to sell the good, or at least it was reasonable to think so. In dismantling the former film biz’s ecosystem and betting the ranch on globalstreamingplatforms, we’ve diminished our options and removed competition. Only the biggest get to play now and they set the agenda. The globalstreamingplatforms are something far bigger than distributors or financiers or even studios. They totally control what gets made or seen. You have no say and you have no options. If other folks in the chain do not believe they will buy your wares, you are going to get absolutely no traction.

Everyone everywhere in the former film business is now dependent on the globalstreamingplatforms and their mandates and whomever they are targeting that quarter or month. It is virtually impossible to make a financial model work without their license fee and each and every one wants something a little different. Perhaps we all once hoped that they would want so much it wouldn’t matter. I was convinced we would have a lot more than we do. I am now convinced we will soon have even a lesser few.

Several producers have told me the same thing. They don’t send their material out widely anymore. They send it to the one buyer whom they think it fits with. If it doesn’t fit, then they sit on it until that mandate has been embraced by one of the other platforms. Maybe alter a bit. It is slower. It no longer is inevitable. It is no longer independent. It is anti-competitive.

Could it get worse? You bet your ass it could! And I hate to break it to you, it most likely will.

Read this; do you think it could happen here? Is it already happening here? Is this why no “truth to power” documentaries have been acquired by the GlobalStreamingPlatforms in 18 months? That is the result of the former film business pivoting to a business model reliant on globalstreamingplatforms. We have to recognize they are something larger than studios, larger than distributors, larger than financiers. They are platforms and they should not be allowed to make or distribute the work that offer for sale or rental. They should be required to buy from third party suppliers. And if we believe in democracy, we need to make sure they offer a wide selection of perspectives and viewpoints.