John Landis Rails Against Studios: 'They're Not in the Movie Business Anymore'
MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina – “The studios are not in the movie business anymore,” said filmmaker and producer John Landis to a group of reporters in the Mar del Plata Film Festival, which is holding a retrospective selection of his work. “Some of us were very lucky. I started to make movies for the studios in the ‘70s. They were dying, but at least they were still studios.”
While in some respects, I absolutely agree with these statements (I.E. studios and corporations are more nations than anything else), I find it unfair to categorize those who watch Youtube and the likes as complete pirates.
I think when you get down to the nitty-gritty of it all, it’s a rebelling against the corporate structure, and more times than not, pirating isn’t about doing it just because one’s lazy, or one is really trying to stick it to the man. Most of the time, Pirating is about access, or lack thereof.
We have services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, yet there are those really great word-of-mouth movies out there that, due to Studios holding back the rights, or maybe even because the production is so small, their agents can’t make solid deals with distribution companies, that the only option is to download.
Not saying that I’ve done this, but in my own experience, as recently as this month, V For Vendetta was taken down on all streaming fronts, forcing us as a group to watch an older DVD version of the movie in 4:3 format with the worst compression on Earth, simply because their contract was up. This is exactly what would normally lead to the piracy of clean, fast, and simple versions of movies based on accessibility.
It’s high time Studios get with younger generations of filmmakers and watchers (you know, roughly 70 percent of the film industry right now), who understand streaming and downloading, and brainstorm with these individuals who may have proper and viable solutions and techniques that will benefit future movie-goers in the first place. I feel a round-table discussion would be their best bet.
Also, just as a side-note: If you make a good movie, people will inevitably want to come and see it. I would love to make a challenge to at least ONE studio to release ONLY original, well-placed and good material for at least ONE WHOLE YEAR. Just to test and see how much money they actually make in both the short term, and long term. Netflix and Amazon are already on top of that… And last I heard, they’re not doing so poorly.
