I'm not sure the explanation is right, but I do agree with the author's recommendation:
Exactitude is impossible, but a simple acknowledgement of basic economics would be a giant leap forward. So this summer, let's all strive for accuracy when discussing box office feats.
Interesting. From the Los Angeles Times (5/18):
Even more alarming, especially for studios who've thrived on seducing moviegoers into seeing mediocre product, is the realization that audiences are becoming more quality conscious. In the past, if a forgettable action film hit pay dirt at the box office, it would perform correspondingly well in DVD, allowing studios in greenlight meetings to provide a conversion rate--i.e. that if a movie of a certain genre made $100 million in the theaters, that would equal X millions of units in DVD. But judging from recent DVD sales figures, films that had poor word-of-mouth--signaling significant audience dissatisfaction--were underperforming in DVD, even if they had enjoyed lofty box-office numbers. . . .
No one knows the answer, but in the movie business, executives are unsettled, unsure of what movies to greenlight if they can no longer be sure of which of their old economic models still apply. It's why studios are no longer making deals where talent gets first dollar gross--unless the talent is willing to wait until the studio breaks even first. In Hollywood, executives are a lot like great athletes--if they lose their confidence, they can't do their job well. It takes a lot of built-in swagger to roll the dice on a slate of $100 million-plus movies. But as the DVD numbers continue to slide, studio chiefs are finding it hard to take those big wads of cash out of their pockets. Right now, they're spending a lot of time looking for safe bets.
According to a new academic study, by what Fark calls the institute of "can you believe we get paid to do this?" studies.
They don't have enough from the incredibly talented Thomas Newman, but otherwise it's a pretty good list.
Gene Weingarten, "A Parting Thought".
No one accepted physical deterioration with greater grace and humor than my father. Over the last two decades of his life, his eyesight clouded into a soup -- at first, a nice consomme, but eventually minestrone, and a hearty one.
He was effectively blind, but remarkably cheerful about it. He read The Washington Post front to back every day, all day, on a device that magnified each letter to the size of a fist; polysyllabic words required three screens' worth of letters and a nimble short-term memory. My father understood the absurdity of it. He said that using this machine was like putting on mittens to tie your shoes.
Bill Simmons, "When great ones go, it might hurt us more than it does them."
In the academy award-winning classic Cocktail, Coughlin tells young Flanagan, "Everything ends badly, otherwise it wouldn't end." It's the single greatest yearbook quote ever. Hell, it may be the greatest movie quote ever. Either Coughlin was the Thoreau of bartending, or Thoreau the Coughlin of writing. One or the other. . . .
It's been a sports experience unlike anything I can remember. Red Sox fans refuse to turn against Ortiz. They just can't. They owe him too much for 2004 and 2007. It's like turning on Santa Claus or happy hour. Every Ortiz appearance is greeted with supportive cheers, every Ortiz failure is greeted with awkward silence. The fans are suffering just like he is. Only when he left 12 men on base against Anaheim on May 14 did I receive a slew of angry e-mails from back home, but even those tirades centered more around Terry Francona's steadfast refusal to drop Ortiz in the order. I cannot remember another Boston athlete stinking this long, and this fragrantly, without getting dumped on.
At Pharaoh High can a zero become a hero? "Ten Things I Hate About Commandments".
Excellent.
(And actually, Ten Things I Hate About You was pretty good.)
One of life's little mysteries: among the large--and seemingly growing--number of people who are furious at "the rich", there seems, to me, to be little resentment of leading entertainers.
I could conjecture about the reasons why, but instead I'm going to link to some purported pictures of entertainers' homes.
(If you're in the market for a big house, now might well be a good time to buy. A new, 27,000 square-foot home on two acres in Beverly Hills, originally listed for $45 million, just sold for a mere $31.5.)
These folks "cleaned up good".
