#thecheckin: Ep. 34 - Seinfield and movie business, AFS update
You'd know what they were talking about. That's what the, you know, the importance of film was in our cultural zeitgeist. And that seems to be something that is lost and is getting smaller and smaller. I've heard Tarantino talk about it and feel as if that movies have kind of become this thing where they are a thing unto themselves. It's not a broad spectrum. I think we're more fascinated with the definition of, if not the concept of what media is more than ever
I think the idea of the movie business as it was understood decades ago, that probably it seems like the powers that be not thinking of the correct lingo at the moment are still hanging onto and trying to cling to and thinking it's going to still work because they're so out of touch with what people want or how they're being shifted or changed in what it is that they want based on, you know, the other facets of our culture, social media, etcetera
And it's just hard for me to, like, take that with just such a, like, a straight face reception, like, because it doesn't make sense. Like, historically, the film industry and the entertainment industry changes very quickly. You have institutions of certain directors like Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese, and now in the modern era, you know, your spike Lees, your Steven Soderbergh, Steven Spielberg, and so on and so on, that remain constant in the discussion of filmmaking
And even these Disney plus series a 24 is putting out smaller films. Neon is putting out smaller films. A lot of companies are returning to that $15 to $50 million sweet spot of budgeting, and we're seeing great responses from it. Civil War spent, maybe, I want to say, about two weeks at the box office and at the top of the box office, and it was only made for about $50 million. That movie didn't cost 50 million
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@homosanity · 5:00
I think that Seinfeld's very old school, and I think when he's thinking of that, he's thinking of the, you know, the time when theaters were the only thing around in movies were, you know, in the theaters and people went to the theaters to see movies. And I think when you're talking about it, you're thinking about it in all the context of movie forms. I don't think he is
And so, rather than doing that, research, you get stuck one way anyway, so these corporate people at the top in the movie business, it seems like they've got their ideas of how things are supposed to be done or should be done. And it's sometimes hard to shift and evolve thinking like that. When you've been in the position for a long time, when the quote unquote movie business machine has been rolling for so long in particular ways, I don't know
I personally have said that film has lost a lot of nuance in the main of shallow diversity. But regardless of that, it's a new generation that has to develop itself before we start getting into an era of hopefully more classics. It's literally what happened with the fifties when we ran that film noir and that very safe era of filmmaking drive
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@homosanity · 1:52
Yeah, I agree with you. And it's kind of odd that he's making a film and maybe he's getting older and he wants to try and do something, but he really doesn't have anything going. You know, I can't remember. You know, I know that him and Larry David created Seinfeld and who really was the genesis of all that and who was the genesis of comedians and cars getting coffee, but it just seems like he doesn't have any creative ideas beyond that