The Big Picture: Hollywood History 101: Part 1

Jou

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I agree with a lot of the other people. You do a great job teaching history Bob. You should make a series doing that and pitch it to the university systems to make some extra cash.
 

Fiz_The_Toaster

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trooper6 said:
Fiz_The_Toaster said:
That much I already knew about Hollywood, and the sad part is that movie studios also "owned" actors and they couldn't work outside the studio. We, they could, but it was really hard sometimes for them to get work in a different studio.

Now I'm really excited about how tv changed Hollywood, I think I have a vague idea what it is, but I'm pretty sure that it's gonna be big.
I have to agree with these two posts.
MovieBob says you can't argue with the result...greatest films, blah, blah.

I think you can't talk about the Studio Era without 1) Talking about the Hayes Code (which wasn't replaced until 1968!)--and the negative impact that had on artistic output (for example, ending Mae West's film career) and 2) Talking about the effect of the studio system on those that labored under it. You have to talk about the abuse of a Judy Garland and the extremely shoddy treatment of a Lena Horne, you have to talk about the gang rape of Girl 27, the treatment of gays, women, minorities, children.
I agree, but like MovieBob said, he just wanted to give a very very VERY condensed history of Hollywood. I'm sure he will go into that some day since there was a lot of dark and shady things going on with studios in that time period.
 

Avistew

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I'll have to watch it a few times. It's a sad fact that I have problem focusing on stories that don't have a main character to grip me. That's why I always failed history class.
It's frustrating because I'm actually interested in the stuff. Meh, I'll just watch it over and over again until I can get the sentences to make concrete sense in my head.
 

Aureliano

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Interesting stuff. I was kinda hoping for a brief Hays code discussion here too, but since it didn't end until '68 perhaps that can wait until another time.
 

silent-treatment

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If you were to spend the next six months doing nothing but tell the history of movies, I would not care.

Edit: and I mean this in a good way.
 

008Zulu_v1legacy

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I thought the reveal was the state of Nevada and subsequently, porn. I don't live in America, so I have no idea what higgletipigilty shapes your states are, except Texas, which looks like a frying pan apparently.
 

Smokescreen

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So the massive inflexibility and greed of an organization was what brought about its massive downfall?

Huh. I wonder if any other industries will learn from that-

Nevermind.
 

Ninja Tank

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I loved you work ever since I joined this site, this just made everything click into place for me. thank you for the episode.
 

MovieBob

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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.
 

PhiMed

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Ah, the Sherman Antitrust Act. How I wish the SEC had the balls to invoke you to bust up banks.
 

Poisoned Al

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Aw, I was expecting the other type of Hollywood History, you know the type where America won World War 2 all by itself and all those other wars they won and weren't jingoistic costly cluster-fucks.

Still, this is good too. I didn't know it was to escape patents they moved west. I thought it was just cheap land.
 

MonkeyPunch

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Good watch. Looking forward to next weeks.

I have a slightly OT gripe and that gripe is the disparity between the volume of this show and the yellow advert with house music playing and the ZP imp dancing - is just too much.
If you don't hit the volume switch before the ad starts, your neighbours are sure to know you've just finished watching a show on the Escapist.
 

Chadling

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Speaking as one who has absolutely no knowledge about the history of Hollywood and filmmaking in general, this was a really interesting episode, definitely one of your best. Heck, I'm resisting the temptation to go on a Wikipedia binge--I want to learn more.
 

Frankfurter4444

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While I'm usually more of a fan of the videos with some analysis (Green Lantern Part 1) over the ones that are simply just history lessons (Green Lantern Part 2) I will admit I prefer the history lesson when it is interesting, on a topic I don't know much about, and when the facts themselves give me the opportunity to do my own analysis.

I'm actually really interested in what will happen in next week's episode. Looking forward to it.
 

TitanAura

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Moeez said:
Oh cool, at which period did you work at Disney?
I was only ever a low level employee cleaning toilets at a Disney World resort but I did take the opportunity to study independently as an animator whilst I was there. That was a few years ago. I still have a bunch of my old flipbooks from that time.
 

Redd the Sock

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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.