I have this picture hanging on the wall of my office.
It is Rene Magritte’s painting called “The Treachery of Images.” The caption (in French) reads: ‘this is not a pipe.’ Magritte said this about the painting;
The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it’s just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture “This is a pipe,” I’d have been lying!
For me, this painting is a kind of litmus test. Most people I interact with in my office don’t know anything about art history and that’s ok – it has limited appeal anyway. But, when they ask about it (and most do), and I explain it to them – I find that their reactions go a long way in helping me understand how they think about art. I think about this painting in the context of what Chip and I mean to do on this site. Like paintings, films are simulacrum of real life – but they are not real life. Even the grittiest documentaries are constructed artifacts that remove us from reality through actual filters and the choices of directors and editors.
I think about this painting quite a bit. You must remember that every time you watch a movie someone, somewhere had to be convinced to give money to the filmmakers in the first place. This is called a pitch and sometimes when I watch films I can’t help but wonder how the pitch went. The Day After Tomorrow was allegedly approved with a 1 sentence pitch: “scientists fight against personified global warming” or some other, tired bullshit. The catch is that the pitch isn’t always what is transferred into the production stage. Sometimes the pitch mutates and becomes deformed. Sam Raimi repeatedly stated that he would never introduce Venom into his films. He evidently wanted Spiderman 3 to focus on the Sandman and James Franco’s Id but a studio executive got involved and we ended up with a hot, hot mess of a film. McG meant for Terminator Salvation to be something else but then he signed Christian Bale and suddenly it wasn’t. If we care, then we’ll have to argue whether or not this is a bad thing. And it presumes that someone is at fault and if that’s true – who’s fault is it that the movie is terrible? After George Cosmatos died, Kurt Russell claimed that his involvement in the direction of Tombstone was so significant that Cosmatos was really the film’s ‘ghost-director’ and Tombstone is probably the greatest western ever filmed.
You see, film, like all art, is an investment in culture, not artistic truth. Generally the investors who fund the film’s production expect the film to make back twice its budget to be profitable. This break-even point increases in proportion to the film’s budget. Disney/Pixar’s upcoming John Carter cost $250 million dollars to produce and market. Industry standards require it to make $400 million to break even. And when I watch a movie that is really, just terrible I think about that first pitch. What provided the momentum to get executives to open their pockets to get that ball rolling?
The Sy-Fy channel is, next to Lifetime, America’s rummage bin for film production. I’ve written about this before so I won’t trot out the Asylum for another beating except that I wonder how they got started and how the filmmakers imagine these productions before they begin. Do they start with visions of art floating in their minds? Or do they understand that they are making films that are not films? I’d love to work for the Asylum. I create ideas for a living – but receiving test scores isn’t a very satisfying product. I’d be so happy to have a film credit to my name. Think about Bowfinger – Steve Martin’s character lives for the chance to receive a script in the mail. That’s a film about the essential compromises that ‘artists’ make on the road to creation. I admire Martin’s perceptions. Maybe we’ll come back to Bowfinger later on; but for now; lets leave the Asylum on the insane/brilliant section of our bookshelf.
In 2010, Sy-Fy ran a 4 hour miniseries production of Jose Farmer’s Riverworld Saga. When I saw advertisements for Riverworld, I suspected that the filmmakers began their project with elaborated, hopes of cheaply producing a high concept Sy-Fy film. It had to have started that way – the texture of the film suggests too much thought for it to have been a slap-dash production. And, I can easily understand that these were devoured by the twin faults of money and talent when the cameras started rolling. I can tell that the wheels are spinning. I always try and give these movies a chance when its clear that, for whatever reason, the project did not quite make the frigid passage from concept to reality. That has to be heartbreaking. And yet, a flawed vision is better than none, right? I have to give credit for people who go big instead of just going home. I think there are geniuses and then there are people who get the job done.
After all, these are not mutually exclusive terms.
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