The NYT points out that the movie industry is late in exploiting those Boomer dollars when compared to other industries. We’ve all noticed the aging of the characters selling things in television commercials and the type of products changing in same commercials. I think while popcorn may be a legitimate economic issue, there is a larger problem. The Times also mentions that recent films like “True Grit”, The King’s Speech”, “The Fighter” and “The Black Swan” have pulled in a large over 50 audience. These are movies with some kind of actual story and larger themes than “who’s texting whom and why”. Who would have thought it: a story and a universal theme? Why that would almost elevate movie making to an…I don’t know…an art form.
So as not to go too artsy-fartsy here, I concede that movies are also very much entertainment – sometimes exclusively so. Sam Goldwyn took the extreme position when he said, “If you want to send a message, use Western Union.” Goldwyn’s dedication to film as entertainment is certainly appreciated by me. A film that is inundated with a heavy and dogmatic message is indeed a drag. There should always be room for humor, slapstick, and plain old fun. My life would be poorer without the Marx Brothers and the first Airplane movie. But there should also be room for a lot more than humor, slapstick, and plain old fun.
How many Vegas road movies do we need? How often should we indulge our inner frat boys? (Wasn’t eight years of Bush enough?) Must we wallow the rest of our lives in teen angst? Current Hollywood movies with adult characters seems to want to extend the zit crowds "coming of age" problems way into middle age. (Perhaps it's all they know after the last three decades.) And let’s finally stake those cute vampires and make them “so yesterday”.
While in the NYT article it is mentioned that the movie industry seems to be waking up to the idea of better story telling with more depth as an attraction to Boomers, it is also exploring solutions to wooing this crowd back to the movie houses that, like most of its other solutions, are cosmetic. They include things like theaters taking seat reservations, more sophisticated fare at the concession stands, less sticky floors (which, I guess, is better tolerated by the younger crowd), making older actors prominent in today’s films, and so on.
Don’t get me wrong. I think their ideas for fixing this obvious slighting of the Boomers are great. They should keep working them, but, from my perspective, they're no fix. I mean, I like decent food, but I also like greasy movie popcorn. I like knowing that I am not going to get a lousy seat for $12.00 a ticket. Clean floors are always nice. And Helen Mirren as a gun-toting assassin as in “RED” sounds like a hoot. These things might help but that’s not where the problem is. (“The A-Team” with 57 year old Liam Neeson in the lead was the only time in my life I ejected a DVD after 20 minutes because I was embarrassed for the actors.) These fixes don’t always hold their own. These are great improvements to the moving-going experience, but they're not enough. What Hollywood needs is a giant paradigm shift.
The reason I don’t waste much time or money at movie theaters anymore has nothing to do with dirty floors or random seating or an aversion to popcorn. It has a lot to do with the word “okay”.
“How was that movie?”
“It was okay. The usual.”
This is said way too many times by my contemporaries about today’s theater offerings. For just “okay”, we have broadcast television, Blu-Ray, and Netflix Instant. As the Times article points out, Boomers grew up on movies. I can remember the joy of discovering classic films at the retro theaters that were so prevalent in Boston and around most college cities in the 60's and 70's when I was in high school and college. “Citizen Kane”, “All About Eve”, “A Rebel without a Cause” all come to mind but there were literally 100's of solid, story-telling movies from before I was born. I also consider myself fortunate to see first-run movies that came out at time. They were bold, imaginative, experimental, and controversial as they rode the wave of cultural change. We may have been bell-bottomed hippies, but we knew movies. As a consequence of that time, Boomers now know story-telling, and we know film as a medium capable of more than just pandering to the box office receipts. Then, I was frequently in a theater. Now, I can’t imagine putting down a dime for majority of what I find on my movie app.
The MTV and post-MTV guys have missed out on most of what’s great about film. They are seen as a demographic to be exploited rather than a generation with whom to hold an intelligent conversation – through film or otherwise. I’ve worked with kids all my life. They are always predominantly sharp and they deserve better.
By contrast, the other night my 82 year old father sat with my Boomer sister and me and watched Clint Eastwood’s “The Changeling”. Now my dad is hard to please. He doesn’t like much in modern film. If it doesn't have John Wayne in it, he's not sure why it exists. But as this interesting, well-told story unfolded, there was nothing but intense silence in the TV room. The lack of ongoing critique or flipping through magazines while sort of watching the movie with one eye was very telling. It was a film that was a throwback to the days when a movie was simply a story of substance being told. I would have actually paid for a ticket at the theater to see “The Changeling” had I known the quality of the story telling in this film. While not perfect, it was a pleasant surprise. We need more like that.
So what will it take to bring the Boomers home to Hollywood? The film industry needs to present well-crafted and intelligent stories. Hollywood needs stories with fleshed-out and genuine characters, well-considered conflicts, thoughtful plot and sub-plots, and more universal themes. They need fewer films that are simply surface treatments meant to cater to any particular set of demographic darlings. Until this happens, the film industry will probably get as much attention from the Baby Boomers as they themselves have paid to the Boomers over the last 20 years.
We don’t need gun-toting grannies. We need good stories. And if there happens to be good stories that include gun-toting grannies, all the better.
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