Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

First published at the Huffington Post on June 22, 2009.

Working for a major studio and having friends at other studios, it’s hard to ignore the doom and gloom talk that pervades this business when the topic turns to feature films.

“Why would anyone go to the theater when they have HD at home?”

“Movies have to be bigger than home theaters to get them to pay the ticket price.”

“It’s all about 3D!”

I shake my head and laugh to myself. Am I the only one who’s been paying attention to the last 50 years of film history? First television was going to kill the movies. Then it was color television that would be the end of feature films. Then people were going to stop buying tickets because of cable, then the VCR, the laserdisc, the DVD… and now… beware! HD is going to kill the feature the film!

And the only way to save it is big, loud , and, something new, 3D!

Oh, wait, but there’s this movie that just opened two weeks ago. A comedy that’s already raked in $153 million in the US alone. You don’t have to wear glasses and nothing explodes (unless you count the bellows of laughter from the audience).

The Hangover may be the funniest movie I’ve ever seen and I can tell you that Warner Brothers doesn’t need to spend another dime on marketing or advertising if they don’t want to, because an extremely high percentage of those 15 million or so people who have already seen it will tell there friends, coworkers, and family, “You must see The Hangover!” Now. Not when it’s on HBO or Netflix has it. Now!

So are all those execs at the studios wrong? Can they get away with not spending hundreds of millions of dollars on every theatrical release from now on? Well yes and no. They must spend that kind of dough on production and marketing if they’re going to continue to make crap (and even so, crap in 3D is still crap).

The Hangover is ridiculously successful for one reason and one reason only. It’s a good movie in every sense of the word. And I’ll bet there were plenty of executives, producers, and development people who turned it down or were certain it was destined for failure (and, in case you were wondering those are the people in the theater who are crying whilst everyone else is in hysterics).

The brilliant William Goldman’s assertion about show business that “nobody knows anything” is still true to this day. It’s both the frustration accompanying trying to work in this business and the hope that, as it always has, anything can happen.

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Monday, June 22nd, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

I’m one of those people who hasn’t had to worry about health care for the past 25 years or more. I’ve always worked for companies that provided decent health insurance, and as monthly costs and out-of-pocket increased, my salary did as well. I continue to have no worries.

This is true for me. Now, put those words in the mouth of every pundit and elected official speaking-out these days against healthcare reform. Of course they’re against it. They don’t need it and don’t care about those who do. Many of the politicians with the loudest voices railing against sweeping reforms are in the pockets of the insurance industry  to boot, so their vested interest in the status quo has no limit.

I live in California and have my entire life. I make a good living and don’t pay much state income tax (never have).  I watch year-after-year as a supposedly liberal state congress led by a usually conservative governor allow education and social services to suffer at the effect of budgetary deficiencies.

But raising taxes on the oil companies or the wealthiest individuals in the state (and there are a great many of them here) is entirely out of the question. Even though young teachers who have recently entered the teaching profession are losing their jobs. Even though education graduates have no prospects whatsoever as they exit even the best universities with high honors. Even though everyone is in agreement that a well-educated populace has a positive effect on absolutely every aspect of the quality of life of a community.

The mentally ill live a life of horror on the streets because the state no longer provides mental health facilities for them. They and the homeless whose ranks increase daily are left to the good graces of the private NGO’s who have seen their own revenues decline in the face of the current crisis.

Every state in the country is suffering along these lines. Many are much worse-off than California because they don’t have a ridiculously wealthy mother-lode of residents to even consider tapping.   But people like me and those running things in the state capitals and Washington haven’t felt any of this pain directly. We’re insulated and only see and feel what is demanded by our respective consciences.

We have our health insurance. If the public schools start to suck again the way they did in the past, we’ll put our kids in the private schools, just as we have before. We might give a little more to the Midnight Mission or make a contribution to our local school, but there is absolutely no substitute for political will.

And the conservative clowns on the right like Beck,  Hannity, and Limbaugh, along with the myopic  cynical, conservatives in politics like Schwarzenegger, Michael Steele, Olympia Snowe, and all the other usual suspects we come to know and despise, continue to decry any effort at taking  responsibility for those less fortunate. They call it socialism. Warn that we’ll be “like Canada or England” (I have friends who live in both countries, and, as shocking as it may seem, none of them are plotting their escape to the USA for some strange reason…)

Screw socialism, whatever happened to plain old human decency? I’m for that. Call it socialism or call it Bob for all I care.  I want everyone to feel the same sense of security I do about healthcare. I can pay a little more in taxes to keep the bright, young, teachers in my kids’ classrooms.  Let’s stop listening to those who have a not-so-hidden agenda in these matters and do what’s right for a change.

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