Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Anne Thompson reports on a screening of "Lady in the Water" that didn't go too well. Nice line: "Most of them [bigtime film directors] are parented badly by Hollywood, coddled, indulged, and ego-inflated by agents, producers and studio executives into believing that they are, in fact, God's gift to filmmaking." She also writes about the prospects for the digital downloading of movies. (I like the way she refers to one source as "one Sony digital executive.") Key passage:

The reality is that the studios are so invested in such brick-and-mortar video retailers as Wal-Mart and Best Buy and Target that they can't afford to alienate them. The big box retailers represent about 60% of the studios' $24.5 billion in annual DVD revenue. At the recent quarterly meeting at Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., where the studios bid for positioning in their stores, Wal-Mart made clear to the assembled studio home video reps, according to sources, that it does not view digital downloading favorably. And the prospect of Wal-Mart ordering fewer copies of just a title or two sends a chill into studio hearts.

Best,

Michael

Maybe we'll be saved when the "long tail" theory gets around a little more. The book just came out. The theory is that with so cheap a production and distribution mode as DVD's on Internet, it's possible to profit from the sale of some obscure movie from the past or a foreign country that only a dozen people in the whole USA want -- all you have to do is let them know it's available. This doesn't interfere at all with physical buildings that sell a bazillion copies of the latest piratical nonsense. Same with music and even books, if you think about "print on demand." (Right now, used books online are doing something similar.)

This suits me fine! I avoid best-sellers and dive for the remainder pile.

Prairie Mary

Posted by: Mary Scriver on July 19, 2006 1:51 PM






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