American Cinema In The 1980s

CLIP: opening of MAKING OF HEAVEN’S GATE (@ 23 min to 27 min ‘BULLWHIP’ scene)

With closed captions

Heaven’s Gate (1980) fall-out:

  • single largest financial disaster ever to hit a major studio when Michael Camino’s $40 million-dollar (5x original budget) adult western was withdrawn from distribution immediately following its release, amid critics’ charges of incomprehensibility.
  • 3 hr. 40 min. epic about the destruction of America’s frontier due to ruthless capitalism nevertheless went down to perdition itself, taking United Artists as a corporate entity with it. —destroyed UA—MGM bought so became MGM/U

Flops and the requirement of huge investment for films necessitated more involvement of Wall St. in decisions to be made… Studios increasingly run by executives recruited from television and talent agencies. …but in the 1980s film budgets, rapidly ascending towards the sky, made it harder to justify financing any project that might be considered risky.

So slew of

Sequels, formulaic genre films & star vehicles

with proven track records and those which were viscerally sensational (i.e., films with graphic sex and/or violence– HIGH CONCEPT – hard edge pitched in 25 words or less)

STAR VEHICLES: Touchstone et al began signing box office favorites to long-term contracts (Eddie Murphy, Bette Midler, and Tom Selleck).  CAA making package deals

RETURN of Studio System – As indie filmmakers found to their displeasure, the 1980s saw something of a return to the studio system.  Stabilization from 50s conglomerate buy-outs—primarily for the films

Vertical Integration In addition, spurred by a Republican administration that was friendly to big business, studios again began buying into theater chains, slowly rebuilding the blocks of the vertically integrated companies that the govt. had painstakingly dismantled forty years earlier. By the end of the decade studios owned 3,500 of 22, 000 screens. Profits due to rise of ticket prices

Marketing of movies attained a standard of excellence that sometimes overshadowed the film being marketed.  The noise of the publicity machine and merchandising tie-in products often obscured the mediocrity of the films being sold.

  • CLIP Of Product Placement in Wayne’s World 2

With closed captions

Resulting American filmmaking in the 80s consisted of aesthetic contraction and financial expansion, of experimentation in methods of production and exhibition and, for the most part, a steadfast retreat from adventurousness in content.  Moving closer to simple formulaic images of routine TV.

Advent of the VCR & Cable Industry Growth changed way films made and seen. Number of revival houses declined.  Use of widescreen processes declined.  Camerawork became increasingly utilitarian, because anything too crowded or visually complex tends not to ‟scan” on the small screen.  By 1984, video rentals surpassed ticket sales as the industry’s leading source of revenue

Independent Film Movement – due to voracious cable and home video markets -by 1985, indie film producers released more motion pics that the major studios for the first time since the early decades of this century

  • 1986 Oscar Winners: Kiss of the Spiderwoman/ A Trip to Bountiful, Dirty Dancing, Room with a View. –with much Indie work has been a movement towards more human drama and values (due to less emphasis on prod values)

WATCH: TRAILER of Kiss of the Spiderwoman

With closed captions

WATCH: clip from A Trip to Bountiful

With closed captions

In 1987, combines video rentals and sales totaled 7.2 bill, or nearly 2 times that year’s record-breaking income from theatrical rentals.

Ends by 1988 stock market crash

Importation of Masterpiece Theater British Offerings (Room with a View) & continued increasing foreign investment

WATCH: Room with a View

            Nude Bathing

https://youtu.be/ZKbBwrsEV5A

            Kiss

With closed captions

Studio/Exhibitor reaction:

Either make films with small screen visual properties

OR

theatrical emphasis on visual dazzle (i.e., TOP GUN)

  • Spectacular 70mm photog
  • Dolby & THX (1993 DTS Jurassic Park)

WATCH: Top Gun trailer

With closed captions

  • Computer Generated Images– (Tron, Lawnmower Man)

WATCH: Lawnmower Man

Lawnmower Man trailer – CC

(1986 drawback of colorization-computer graphics technology by Ted Turner cable/video/ companies–causing controversy as DGA and AFI saw it as ‘destroying our natl. film history and the rich heritage it represents.’

  • THOUGH programmers maintain it makes the films more competitive in program schedules

WATCH: Colorization Controversy

With closed captions

Advent of Multiplexes

Increasing foreign investment in studios-By the late 1980s, the foreign returns for movies like Top Gun far outstripped domestic grosses. 

  • By October 1989, when the Japanese Sony Corporation purchased Columbia Pictures from the Coca-Cola Company–it was apparent that foreign investors would become increasingly involved in studio ownerships—so OVERTLY considering foreign territories as well as domestic when contemplating a prospective film project.
  • By the late 1980s, the foreign returns for movies like Top Gun far outstripped domestic grosses.
  • 1989 – Box office returns of $5 bill

STUDIOS: By end of 80’s the majors remained- Twentieth Century Fox, MGM, UA, Paramount, Columbia, Time Warner, Universal, and Disney.

  • Budgets $4 million to $18 million budget

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