Mysterious Dude
12-24-2009, 03:17 AM
I've started to think of Hollywood as something of a modern-day Athens. In the fifth century B.C., Athens produced a ridiculous number of great writers: Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Plato, Socrates, Thucydides and Herodotus, just to name a few. I don't think any city can compete with Athens until London, about two thousand years later (which gave us Shakespeare, Marlowe, Ben Jonson and the King James Bible). There were great writers who wrote great things in between those time periods, but they were anomalies. Athens seemed to simply breed greatness. You might prefer to credit the individual writers rather than the city they lived in, but if Shakespeare had been born fifty years later, he would not have found London a very good place to write plays. Maybe he would have found some place else to write, but I don't know.
Hollywood has dominated cinema for almost a century. Other cities have produced great films, but it never lasted very long. Consider the French New Wave. Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer, Chabrol, Resnais and Varda all emerged out of the New Wave. Those filmmakers continued to make great films after the end of the New Wave, but only a few truly great French filmmakers began their careers after 1965. We've seen similar movements in other countries, and all were similarly short-lived. Hollywood has outlived them all. People from all around the world come to Los Angeles to make movies.
Can Hollywood stay on top forever? The golden eras of Athens and London did not last long. In both cases, it was a war that ultimately destroyed them. The Peloponnesian War ended in 404 B.C. with the defeat of Athens. In 1642, all London theaters were closed during the English Civil War. Both cities would recover from the war, but the theater never returned to its former glory in either city. Los Angeles has had the good fortune not to be bombed during any wars so far, and I can't see it happening anytime soon. But there are other things that can destroy a city. Detroit has suffered considerably from the collapse of the auto industry and California's economy isn't doing too well, either. But Hollywood has survived one depression already. Then again, Hollywood may suffer the same fate as the music industry, which has also crumbled over the last ten years.
We have seen a dearth of new talent coming out of Hollywood over the last few years. It has continued to produce great films, but they were nearly all directed by the already-established filmmakers of the 70's, 80's and 90's. How long can these old men sustain the industry? Compare the last decade to the 70's, when many of the greatest films were made by new or relatively new filmmakers (Jaws, Taxi Driver, Star Wars, The Godfather). And then there's the 90's, which gave us Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, Wes Anderson, Darren Aronofsky and Spike Jonze. We've had a few new filmmakers in the 00's, but how do they hold up against those guys? Whatever it was that encouraged those filmmakers, it doesn't seem to be working anymore.
I know the last time ( http://www.match-cut.org/showthread.php?t=1829 ) I made this observation, many people disagreed with me (and felt compelled to list some new directors who impressed them), but dammit, I still think I'm right, and I see a dark cloud over Hollywood if they don't come up with some new talent. I am not prepared to make a prediction one way or the other, but I think either we will see a lot of new talent in Hollywood in the 2010's, or Hollywood will have to pass the torch once and for all.
I don't think any other city will replace Hollywood right away, if ever. Like Athens, Hollywood may have no equal. What other city can produce a film that even comes close to matching the spectacle of 2012 or Avatar? We may, instead, enter a more global period for cinema, as well as more locally-produced films in the United States.
Anyway, thanks for reading my ramblings.
Hollywood has dominated cinema for almost a century. Other cities have produced great films, but it never lasted very long. Consider the French New Wave. Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer, Chabrol, Resnais and Varda all emerged out of the New Wave. Those filmmakers continued to make great films after the end of the New Wave, but only a few truly great French filmmakers began their careers after 1965. We've seen similar movements in other countries, and all were similarly short-lived. Hollywood has outlived them all. People from all around the world come to Los Angeles to make movies.
Can Hollywood stay on top forever? The golden eras of Athens and London did not last long. In both cases, it was a war that ultimately destroyed them. The Peloponnesian War ended in 404 B.C. with the defeat of Athens. In 1642, all London theaters were closed during the English Civil War. Both cities would recover from the war, but the theater never returned to its former glory in either city. Los Angeles has had the good fortune not to be bombed during any wars so far, and I can't see it happening anytime soon. But there are other things that can destroy a city. Detroit has suffered considerably from the collapse of the auto industry and California's economy isn't doing too well, either. But Hollywood has survived one depression already. Then again, Hollywood may suffer the same fate as the music industry, which has also crumbled over the last ten years.
We have seen a dearth of new talent coming out of Hollywood over the last few years. It has continued to produce great films, but they were nearly all directed by the already-established filmmakers of the 70's, 80's and 90's. How long can these old men sustain the industry? Compare the last decade to the 70's, when many of the greatest films were made by new or relatively new filmmakers (Jaws, Taxi Driver, Star Wars, The Godfather). And then there's the 90's, which gave us Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, Wes Anderson, Darren Aronofsky and Spike Jonze. We've had a few new filmmakers in the 00's, but how do they hold up against those guys? Whatever it was that encouraged those filmmakers, it doesn't seem to be working anymore.
I know the last time ( http://www.match-cut.org/showthread.php?t=1829 ) I made this observation, many people disagreed with me (and felt compelled to list some new directors who impressed them), but dammit, I still think I'm right, and I see a dark cloud over Hollywood if they don't come up with some new talent. I am not prepared to make a prediction one way or the other, but I think either we will see a lot of new talent in Hollywood in the 2010's, or Hollywood will have to pass the torch once and for all.
I don't think any other city will replace Hollywood right away, if ever. Like Athens, Hollywood may have no equal. What other city can produce a film that even comes close to matching the spectacle of 2012 or Avatar? We may, instead, enter a more global period for cinema, as well as more locally-produced films in the United States.
Anyway, thanks for reading my ramblings.