The Hollywood Economist by Edward Jay Epstein Read Free Book Online Page B

injections,and other elixirs may provide a brief respite but eventually every actress comes up against the age stereotyping in Hollywood famously described by Goldie Hawn: There are only three ages for women: Babe, District Attorney, and
Driving Miss Daisy
. Some actresses succeed in breaking through this age barrier but even they find it a daunting challenge to escape Hollywood’s requisite and satisfy the youth culture, as Rosanna Arquette demonstrates in her interviews with Meg Ryan, Holly Hunter, Charlotte Rampling, Sharon Stone, Whoopi Goldberg, Martha Plimpton, and a score of other actresses in her 2002 documentary
Searching For Debra Winger
. Equally illuminating are Nancy Ellison’s photographs in
Starlets: Before They Were Famous
of gorgeously posed actresses who, having failed to make it through the Babe portal, vanished from Hollywood. As Martha Plimpton explains about casting, “It’s either, she’s a starlet or she’s an old hag.” Such ageism proceeds not from malice, ignorance, or disdain for the performers on the part of studio executives, but from their business model.
    When studios found that they could no longer count on habitual moviegoers to fill theaters, they went into the very risky business of creating tailor-made audiences for each and every movie they released. Like in an election campaign, the studioshad to get people to turn out at the multiplexes on a specific date—the opening weekend. The principal means of generating this audience is to buy ads on national television. For this strategy to work efficiently, the studios find a target audience that predictably clusters around programs on which they can afford to buy time. They then bombard this audience—usually seven times in the preceding week to an opening—with thirty-second eye-catching ads.
    The studios zero in on teens not because they necessarily like them, or even because the teens buy buckets of popcorn, but because they are the only demographic group that can be easily motivated to leave their home. Even though lassoing this teen herd is enormously expensive—over $30 million a film—the studios profit from the fact that this young audience is also the coin of the realm for merchandisers such as McDonald’s, Domino’s, and Pepsi. The studios depend upon these companies for tie-deals that can add a hundred million dollars or more in advertising to a single film and can expand the primary audience for DVDs, video games, and other licensable properties on which the studios now bank on for their economic survival. Studios therefore place the lion’s share of their TV advertising—over 80percent in 2005—on the cable and network programs that are watched primarily by people under twenty-five. The studios also incorporate music in their sound tracks that teenagers listen to, and try to cast the sort of babe-actresses that their crucial audience can relate to, if not fantasize about. Adrienne Shelley, the star of
The Unbelievable Truth
, for example, described her casting experience this way: “I get a call in my car on the way to an audition from the agent. He said, ‘What is really important is that they think you are fuckable.’”
    Of course, for the ex-babe actress who is no longer able or willing to play this Hollywood game, there is always the possibility of starring in foreign and independent movies, especially if her name helps raise money abroad. But while roles in these more adult-oriented movies may be more artistically rewarding than roles as fantasy-bait in teen movies, they are rarely, if ever, as high-paying.

THERE IS NO NET
     
    Unlike the dozen or so powerful star actors, directors and producers, such as Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, and Jerry Bruckheimer, who get a cut of the gross revenue of a movie, regardlessof whether the movie is in the red or black, most creative people who produce, write, direct, or act in movies get, in addition to their up front fees, a percentage of the net profits, called