The Big Picture: Hollywood History 101: Part 1

octafish

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At first the examples of the greatness of the studio system left me cold. Then up popped Ethan Edwards carrying Debbie and I thought "FUCK YES. THE STUDIO SYSTEM IS AWESOME!"
 

scott91575

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brazuca said:
Uhum, but don't linger too much on Tv story please. There is still the silver era, the decadence of western the Hollywood crash, nowadays, I mean lot of material just about movies. Best episode so far. Waiting for part II and possible III.
It's hard not to discuss TV at length. It was essentially the most influential invention of the 20th century. Sure, the nuclear bomb and the internet are right there with it. Yet for day to day life throughout much of the 20th century the television was king, and you really can't talk about the evolution of movies without discussing in length the effect of television.
 

Luke5515

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One day, I will be rich and famous, and I will hire movie bob to tell me bedtime stories about all the wonderful things I should know about such as this.
 

Saint of M

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Loved it Bob. Want to see at least two more of these vids (only way I can see this breif history getting any justice).

That all said, I want to hear about the animation part as the advent of TV was about the time cartoons had their balls ripped out.
 

adro91

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Great Big Picture this week! If you wanna know more about the period in detail, Paul Merton's Birth of Hollywood was a great series that might still be knocking around on iplayer (for all the Brits). If not I'm sure its on the net somewhere. Anyhow that's well worth a watch if you're into movies.
 

maximara

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mrblakemiller said:
I appreciate the vid. I usually prefer Bob's videos when he actually gets into opinion and one-man debate, but I know little enough of the early days of film for this to be worth a look.

Sadly (likely for time) the fact the famous sign was an ad for a housing development and 1923-1949 said HollywoodLAND was left out.

I wonder if the sponsor era of TV will get left out for time in the next video. It's an interesting era with its own wonkyness--Rod Serling commented that even in the early 1960s it was so bad "that you couldn't ford a river if Chevy was your sponsor"
 

Hungry Donner

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Redd the Sock said:
Hmmm. Do I smell an ulterior motive here? Could this "history lesson" be just the setup for a rant about how we (they) need to accept and adapt to technology to survive? I'm not against that. I'm just smelling a bait and switch in the topic.
Possibly, but the movie industry seems more ontop of recent technology developments now. I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement but they're taking steps into streaming and what not, even if it's largely handled by middlemen.
 

BOBdotEXE

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I spent a 14 week Class learning about the film industry, And this one part summarized about 70% of it, I could have saved a lot of money!
 

tobimaro

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I'm a history buff, and it's good to look at where we came from every once in a while. I'm liking the history lesson.
 

maximara

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MovieBob said:
Spot1990 said:
The studios still have all the power with movie theaters. When we got Transformers 3 it was under the condition we run it in the two biggest screens. Bridesmaids was still able to fill the largest screen but we had to bump it down. If we didn't we wouldn't get Transformers and Paramount probably wouldn't deal with us in future. They're also the reason theaters are so expensive. Most of the ticket price just goes back to paying to get the film in. All other expenses and any profit comes from the concession stand which is why 1 liter of coke costs the customer almost 5 euro.
The return of that way of doing business is a relatively recent development, dating only as far back as the mid-1980s when the Reagan Administration began dismantling the anti-trust regulations on media and entertainment companies (this same deregulation, incidentally, is what created the explosion of right-wing talk radio around the same time.)

From the 50s until then, though, studios and theaters were largely prohibited from colluding - which led to the rise of independent theaters, arthouses, the urban "grindhouse" screens and drive-ins during that whole period.
It should be mentioned that other factors that came to a head in the 1980s that caused many of the above to die off--home video, cable, and real estate value being the major ones.

As time has gone on I think some people are waking up to the fact it is far cheaper to wait until the DVD comes out then risk getting behind the person with the screaming kid, the MST3K want a bes, or the guy who want to chat on his cell phone. I personally haven't watched a mainstream movie in a theater since 1986 when I saw Star Trek IV.