L.A. Magazine has an eye-opening interview with former Paramount head honcho, Barry Diller. He used to run the studio in the ’70s and ’80s before heading to 20th Century Fox in the ’90s.
His doom and gloom outlook on the future of movies is definitely eye-openin I agree with him about the Oscars, but still hold out hope that the movie business will find a way to reinvent itself.
Diller on the Oscars:
“It’s an antiquity. All awards ceremonies were based on this hierarchical process of a movie going to a theater, building up some word of mouth if it was successful, having that word of mouth carry itself over […] That path no longer exists.”
Diller goes on to mention that Oscar-winning movies used to be a mix of audience popularity and success on the awards show circuit. “That disappeared a while ago,” Diller adds. As a result, “[The Oscars] are no longer a national audience worth its candle because that audience is no longer interested […] It should be a ceremony for the industry,” he said, “and not for the consumers.”
Diller doesn’t necessarily like to single out high ticket prices, the pandemic or the surge of streaming as the root cause of theatrical’s issues, rather, he notes that the perfect storm created by all of these, underscored by a business model of quantity over quality that has severely destroyed moviegoing:
“I used to be in the movie business where you made something really because you cared about it”. The very definition of a movie, he went on, “is in such transition that it doesn’t mean anything right now.”
It used to be that movie fans worldwide would, with much-anticipation, tune into the Oscars, and for that matter almost any awards show. The glitz! The glamour! Waiting to see what film wins Best Picture also meant something, both culturally and historically. Not anymore.
Maybe it’s because Hollywood movies just aren’t as culturally relevant as they used to be. One can remember a time when Best Picture winners such as “Gladiator,” “Titanic,” “The Silence of the Lambs,” “Forrest Gump,” and “The Lord of the Rings” were actually seen by millions of Americans. Now? Who's actually seen “CODA”? “Nomadland”? These just aren’t films that Americans get excited about.
A US theatrical rollout is starting Sept. 30 in NYC, will expand to Los Angeles and other markets on Oct. 9 and then roll out nationally via a plan that forgoes selling the film to a studio or independent distributor.