Review of Hollywood Vault: Film Libraries Before Home Video , by Eric Hoyt (Oakland: University of California Press, 2014). Quarterly Review of Film and Video 33.3 (2016): 274-6. (original) (raw)
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The Political Economy of Hollywood: Capitalist Power and Cultural Production
Routledge, 2022
In Hollywood, the goals of art and business are entangled. Directors, writers, actors, and idealistic producers aspire to make the best films possible. These aspirations often interact with the dominant firms that control Hollywood film distribution. This control of distribution is crucial as it enables the firms and other large businesses involved, such as banks that offer financing, to effectively stand between film production and the market. This book analyses the power structure of the Hollywood film business and its general modes of behaviour. More specifically, the work analyses how the largest Hollywood firms attempt to control social creativity such that they can mitigate the financial risks inherent in the art of filmmaking. Controlling the ways people make or watch films, the book argues, is a key element of Hollywood’s capitalist power. Capitalist power—the ability to control, modify, and, sometimes, limit social creation through the rights of ownership—is the foundation of capital accumulation. For the Hollywood film business, capitalist power is about the ability of business concerns to set the terms that will shape the future of cinema. For the major film distributors of Hollywood, these terms include the types of films that will be distributed, the number of films that will be distributed, and the cinematic alternatives that will be made available to the individual moviegoer. Combining theoretical analysis with detailed empirical research on the financial performance of the major Hollywood film companies, the book details how Hollywood’s capitalist goals have clashed with the aesthetic potentials of cinema and ultimately stymied creativity in the pursuit of limiting risk. This sharp critique of the Hollywood machine provides vital reading for students and scholars of political economy, political theory, film studies, and cinema.
In 1998, in a paper in which he explained the mechanisms used in Hollywood to divide the revenue generated by feature films among different stakeholders, Mark Weinstein (1998) argued that only ten to twenty percent of these projects actually were showing a positive figure under the heading “net profits”. Ten years later, the United Nations (2998) also acknowledged that; as it was widely recognized, yet without mentioning any empirical study that might corroborate the use of such a precise figure, only 20 percent of movies were making a profit. Moreover, as this report informed, the surplus generated by these extremely successful projects was so large that it offset the cumulated losses generated by the remaining 80 percent of feature films. The implications of the existence of uncontested and long lasting belief about the high risks that companies in the filmmaking business have to face and overcome, should not to be neglected: when policy makers accept that the outcome of a movie is highly unpredictable and the gap in terms of income between a success and a failure can be substantial, they are also more inclined to accept concentration in this sector as a way to reduce risk and increase investments. Epstein‟s book “The Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies” does not reveal what percentage of feature film is likely to pass the break-even point, nor it denies that filmmaking can be a risky business in financial terms. The main contribution to knowledge from this book comes from his explanation of the financial practices of the producers-distributors that are now part of the largest info-entertainment conglomerates and are the descendent of the major Hollywood studios (i.e. the „Majors‟). After reading this book, the reader will understand that making movies for these companies and for the conglomerates they are part of, is a rather stable, low-risk and very profitable activity.
Hollywood and the world: the geography of motion-picture distribution and marketing
Review of International Political Economy, 2004
Production and distribution activities in Hollywood are secured by two main types of firms, majors and independents, complemented by a third type represented by majors' subsidiaries. The characteristics of these firms are detailed, first, in terms of their functions within the Hollywood production agglomeration itself, and second, in terms of their roles in external distribution and marketing. The structure of domestic motion-picture markets is described, with special reference to the geography of exhibition. A statistical analysis of film releasing activity is presented. It is argued that the industry is segmented into three overlapping market tiers, and a hypothetical model of this phenomenon is proposed. Export markets for Hollywood films are shown to have expanded greatly in recent years, partly as a result of strategic trade initiatives underwritten by the US government. The paper ends with a brief commentary on the cultural predicaments raised by the globalization of Hollywood and on the sources of possible future competitive threats to its hegemony.
A Concise Handbook of Movie Industry Economics
Journal of Cultural Economics, 2006
In his tongue-in-cheek account of life as a television writer, Rob Long (1996) suggests that Hollywood runs according to the "Hollywood Inversion Principle of Economics" which suggests that, ".. . every commonly understood, standard business practice of the outside world has its counterpart in the entertainment industry. Only it's backwards." For example, there are few other industries where the success of a product is determined by its gross revenue. At first glance, this may seem an accurate representation of the movie industry, given its idiosyncrasies. However, as A Concise Handbook of Movie Industry Economics makes clear, such idiosyncrasies result from the way the industry has evolved. The volume contains six papers from a conference held at the Washington University of St Louis in April 2003. The title arguably conceals a key strength of this book-the range of disciplines represented includes economics, political economy, finance and marketing. Each chapter provides an overview of a particular aspect of the industry: industrial and social context, production, financial structure and contracting, release timing, exhibition and performance in ancillary markets are all covered. Whilst the chapters can be read in isolation, a sequential reading allows the reader to draw out the common themes running through this book-particularly that, despite its reputation and idiosyncrasies, most of what we see in the motion picture industry can be explained in terms of standard economic analysis. Janet Wasko's essay provides an introduction to the political economy of Hollywood and shows the benefit of taking a step back and looking at the movie industry in its social and political context. Such an approach reveals that some of the widely held perceptions about the movie industry are not entirely true. Wasko focuses on four illusions in particular: that the motion picture is a unique and risky business, that it is highly competitive, that its output is led by audience demand and that it is a trivial topic of study. Each of these is shown in turn to be, to some extent, false. S. Abraham Ravid reviews the decisions taken in producing a new motion picture, particularly whether to make a family film, rated G or PG, or a more violent film, rated R. Fewer G rated films and more R rated films are made. This would seem to be irrational, given the
A new map of Hollywood and the world
Culture, Economy and Place: Asia-Pacific Perspectives, 2002
In this paper, I offer a reinterpretation of the economic geography of the so-called new Hollywood. The argument proceeds in six main stages. First, I briefly examine the debate on industrial organization in Hollywood that has gone on in the literature since the mid-1980s, and I conclude that the debate has become unnecessarily polarized. Second, I attempt to show how an approach that invokes both flexible specialization and systems-house forms of production is necessary to any reasonably complete analysis of the organization of production in the new Hollywood. Third, and on this basis, I argue that the Hollywood production system is deeply bifurcated into two segments comprising (a) the majors and their cohorts of allied firms on the one hand, and (b) the mass of independent production companies on the other. Fourth, I reaffirm the continuing tremendous agglomerative attraction of Hollywood as a locale for motion-picture production, but I also describe in analytical and empirical terms how selected kinds of activities seek out satellite production locations in other parts of the world. Fifth, I show how the majors continue to extend their global reach by means of their ever more aggressive marketing and distribution divisions, and I discuss how that this state of affairs depends on and amplifies the competitive advantages of Hollywood. Sixth and finally, I reflect upon some of the challenges that Hollywood must face up to as new cultural-products agglomerations arise all over the globe, offering potential challenges to its hegemony.
I n this essay we wish to reflect on the particular relevance to the topic of early cinema's distribution in the digital age. A decentralization of production -e.g. in terms of creative and discursive input -and the increase of cultural participation have fundamentally changed the traditional cultural and economical function of distribution. Now that we live, work, consume, and watch in a networked society, we can invent radically new systems of distribution -systems more attuned to the current demands for the circulation of cultural goods. In light of the new possibilities for (digital) distribution of today and tomorrow, the basic conception of distribution as the complex of access, circulation, and exchange as based on historical practices and market dynamics, needs rethinking. Our main concern, here, is the impact of digitization on archival practices and how this may have its effects on contemporary distribution of archival films. At the end of this book we think it is useful to consider what happened, or what may happen, to the distribution of those films that were first distributed and exhibited a hundred years ago. The possibilities for restoration, storage, and exhibition, or "emanation", have changed radically as a result of digitization. This calls for a re-conceptualization not only of what distribution is, but also of what it can be. In the past, both archivists and researchers have shown ambivalent and sometimes rather conservative attitudes towards the possibility for distribution of archival films. While on the one hand we register a more conventional protectiveness of cultural heritage, more recently, however, we also witness enthusiastic, if not fairly a-critical attitudes towards the possibilities for ubiquitous and permanent availability as a result of digitization. These contradictory attitudes shift between the traditional ideal of "making available" -a push model -and ideals of individual, immediate, and ondemand access -a pull model, if you will. In the case of early cinema we are intrigued by the way in which archival films have made a transition from being part of a "living" film culture -a culture in which contemporary films are distributed for theatrical screening -to being part of an archival collection and being distributed digitally -in on-line catalogues, on DVDs, for theatrical screenings, or life performances. This transition is taken a step further, to a maybe more radically new "new life", when archival films become content -a content which is not distributed, but grabbed by the user. This material as well as functional transition may lead to what we can consider as an effacing of distribution.