ION The Web – Issue #76

FILMDRUNK

Last issue we had Vince Mancini of Filmdrunk.com go over what he anticipated to be some of the best and worst movies of the year. For those of you who are just joining us, Filmdrunk is a movie blog with a healthy dose of Steven Segal photoshops and dogs wearing party hats.   – Kellen Powell

It seems like a huge number of movies underperformed at the box office this summer season. Do you have any thoughts as to why that might be?

I think because every studio’s strategy was to make big ‘tentpole movies’ thus the market was over saturated with tentpoles; most of them not very good. They keep trying to make movies that are everything to everyone, and that strategy usually leads to shrug-worthy movies that people tolerate but no one really loves, which gradually erodes people’s love of movies as a whole.

I think movies as a form of entertainment are on the decline and it makes me sad, but it’s easy to see why it’s happening. Everything is an over-hyped commercial explosion-y thing, with too much focus-grouping, committee-writing, and trying to give the audience what studio execs think they already like. That’s not good enough. You have to create something new, that people didn’t even know they liked. Mainstream movies are creating less new markets than they ever have.

Do you think after such poor showing this summer Hollywood will smarten up?

As much as Green Lantern was a big flop, the rebooted X-Men and Planet of the Apes were wildly successful (and much to my surprise, the movies were actually pretty good too). What I hope they take away is that hey, maybe people are tired of movies about explosions, aliens, and the military. Of course that’s never going to happen.

What we maybe CAN hope for is that if they’re going to spend $100 million plus on a remake/reboot/superhero/alien invasion movie, they’ll at least hire a director like Matthew Vaughn who can make chicken salad out of a chicken fart, and not, say Marcus Nispel, who I hear is a competent table tennis player.

Has doing Filmdrunk caused you to like movies more or less?

Both. Seeing so many movies definitely numbs you, and I’m afraid of going insane like every older film critic. Seeing 80 movies a year probably keeps you from maybe forming the emotional attachments you might if you were only seeing 15, but it also forces you to watch a lot of movies you end up liking that you would’ve dismissed out of hand or not even heard about if it wasn’t your job.

Did you work in the film industry or go to film school before starting the site?

I did do some film work, and I got my undergraduate degree in film from UCSD. I didn’t like this kind of work for a few reasons:

1. When you carry sandbags for a living, no matter how smart and good at it you think you are, you can always get replaced by someone’s recovering heroin-addict nephew.

2. A lot of that work doesn’t last long.

3. Most of the people are assholes who are less interested in their own jobs than in proving all the other things they’re capable of (every actor wants to direct, every grip wants to be a DP, and so on).

4. I’m not great at schmoozing, or at making work for myself when there isn’t work to do. (Every production set has at least 10 more people than it has actual job duties).

Do you think what you write has any affect on the people who make or market movies?

On a mass level, no, not at all. On a smaller level, I know a ton of people who work in entertainment do read my site, so I’m sure it’s happened that I’ve written something critical that someone knows is true and hits a little too close to home and ends up altering whatever they’re working on.

I know for a fact that there were some big-time screenwriters working on a major script who said they changed the intro after I wrote something to the effect of ‘In action movies, having a crappy desk job means you’re destined for greatness.’ Hopefully I help people recognize something is a cliché and get them to avoid it on occasion. So it happens on a small scale, but I’m probably invisible to the people making the BIG decisions. Usually people just leave shitty comments, which happens at least once a day.

- Kellen Powell