Oh Boy! Movie Scripts Via Statistical Analysis!!!

[Cato]

The title is meant to be sarcastic!   

From today's New York Times online:

The same kind of numbers analysis that has reshaped areas like politics and online marketing is increasingly being used by the entertainment industry.

Netflix tells customers what to rent based on algorithms that analyze previous selections, Pandora does the same with music, and studios have started using Facebook "likes" and online trailer views to mold advertising and even films.

Now, the slicing and dicing is seeping into one of the last corners of Hollywood where creativity and old-fashioned instinct still hold sway: the screenplay...

Bowling scenes tend to pop up in films that fizzle, Mr. Bruzzese*, 39, continued.  Therefore it is statistically unwise to include one in your script. "A cursed superhero never sells as well as a guardian superhero," one like Superman who acts as a protector, he added....

"This is my worst nightmare" said Ol Parker, a writer whose film credits include "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel." "It's the enemy of creativity, nothing more than an attempt to mimic that which has worked before. It can only result in an increasingly bland homogenization, a pell-mell rush for the middle of the road."

Mr. Parker drew a breath. "Look, I'd take a suggestion from my grandmother if I thought it would improve a film I was writing," he said. "But this feels like the studio would listen to my grandmother before me, and that is terrifying."... 

* A professor of Statistics.

I have often said: Hollywood loves nothing like an old idea!  Hence we have Iron Man 3, The Hangover 3, and something which baffles Science on all levels, Fast and Furious...6   

See:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/business/media/solving-equation-of-a-hit-film-script-with-data.html?partner=MYWAY&ei=5065&_r=1&

[Todd]

I have often said: Hollywood loves nothing like an old idea!

True, but then ancient tales have been rehashed time and again in many forms.  And while I cannot disagree with complaints about the average quality of films today, when was it really any different?  Time seems to filter out greats and duds tend to be forgotten.  The 50s and 60s and 70s had masterpieces aplenty, for instance, but Rat Pack movies, Elvis movies, John Wayne steaming piles (The Green Berets, anyone?), Starcrash (possibly the worst movie ever), and untold other embarrassments that sullied the Silver Screen were common.  Why should things be different now?  I mean, Vin Diesel needs a job.

[Cato]

True, but then ancient tales have been rehashed time and again in many forms.  And while I cannot disagree with complaints about the average quality of films today, when was it really any different?  Time seems to filter out greats and duds tend to be forgotten.  The 50s and 60s and 70s had masterpieces aplenty, for instance, but Rat Pack movies, Elvis movies, John Wayne steaming piles (The Green Berets, anyone?), Starcrash (possibly the worst movie ever), and untold other embarrassments that sullied the Silver Screen were common.  Why should things be different now?  I mean, Vin Diesel needs a job.

I will need to check out Starcrash!  Did it ever make it onto Mystery Science Fiction Theater 3000 ?

Yes, Hollywood has pumped out junk, but as you say, popular entertainment has always been plagued by the bottom line of both taste and profit.

Sophocles wrote c. 100 plays, and only seven or so have survived intact, with fragments from others.  Were most of them...maybe...not too good, and that is why not enough copies were made to survive into the future?  Or did they not survive because of bad luck?

Anyway, in the good ol' days in Hollywood sequels were not unknown: e.g. Son of Kong has its moments, but is not nearly on the same level as King Kong.

The Tarzan movies certainly had a good run!   

[Todd]

I will need to check out Starcrash!  Did it ever make it onto Mystery Science Fiction Theater 3000 ?

I don't know, but I do know that when I saw the movie when I was young, at the height of the post-Star Wars sci-fi bonanza, I decided to leave the theater after David Hasselhoff magically found the strength to escape certain death in a "pivotal" (I think) scene.  As to it truly being the worst movie ever, I of course may be inflating its horridness just a bit.  It's not like I ever did an A/B with Highlander II, or anything like that.

Sophocles wrote c. 100 plays, and only seven or so have survived intact, with fragments from others.  Were most of them...maybe...not too good, and that is why not enough copies were made to survive into the future?  Or did they not survive because of bad luck?

A very good point.  How many ancient clunkers were there?  And would these ancient tales, if they were found somehow, be considered great by some literary types only because they are ancient, and not actually, you know, good?

[Brian]

A very good point.  How many ancient clunkers were there?  And would these ancient tales, if they were found somehow, be considered great by some literary types only because they are ancient, and not actually, you know, good?

Not "ancient," certainly, but I took a class on contemporaries of Shakespeare where the scholars took the approach some GMGers take to, say, contemporaries of Beethoven: interesting, but in many ways very obviously not as good, and you really have to squint to look past the flaws if you're going to devote serious time to them. Some are very strong in their ways (Jonson, Marlowe), but with others it was common to wince through a hammy speech, cringe through telenovela-quality emoting, or be baffled by inexplicable shifts in character traits.

[kishnevi]

Not "ancient," certainly, but I took a class on contemporaries of Shakespeare where the scholars took the approach some GMGers take to, say, contemporaries of Beethoven: interesting, but in many ways very obviously not as good, and you really have to squint to look past the flaws if you're going to devote serious time to them. Some are very strong in their ways (Jonson, Marlowe), but with others it was common to wince through a hammy speech, cringe through telenovela-quality emoting, or be baffled by inexplicable shifts in character traits.

John Webster is another good Jacobean.

And then there's Cyril Tourneur, who is in a class of his own.  Trouble is, it's hard to say if he's in a good or a bad class....

[Concord]

Something I wrote a while ago seems relevant in this context:


Mr. Wagner sees the light
Most people don't want atonal, vocal, or challenging music on the radio. . . . Why should a commercial or public radio programmer ignore extensive research and devote sizable air time to something that most listeners don't want to hear?
***
Today's owners and programmers get more sophisticated feedback about listeners: Arbitron ratings report how many are listening; Scarborough, MRI and Simmons studies offer profiles on audience income, education, occupation and behavior. And many stations have local listener panels to test new programming concepts. All this feedback gives programmers a much better idea of what works and what doesn't.
—Two letters to the Times


The following excerpts from the diary of Cosima Wagner, wife of the composer Richard Wagner, have been made public by the couple's descendants after more than 130 years of suppression. The entries shed new light on Wagner's decision to abandon work on an ambitious four-opera cycle, whose working title was "The Ring of the Nibelung."

Tribschen, Feb. 27, 1872—Luncheon today with R[ichard]. and Herr Prof. [Friedrich] Nietzsche, our gloomy young philologist. R. in a rancid mood over progress of "Götterdämmerung." Prelim. surveys show Brünnhilde character a washout with women aged 18–27. Killing of Siegfried got positive feedback, but self-immolation was a definite negative. 68% of respondents said Brünnhilde is not sufficiently empowered. R. says he will need to revise the ending, having Brünnhilde live and, possibly, raise Siegfried's child alone while pursuing a career as a lawyer.

Prof. Nietzsche skeptical. He sat thoughtfully a long while, warming his hands around his teacup, then said, "Even the most personal conscience is vanquished by the leveling of great numbers." That boy is developing a disturbing independence of mind. R. says he will need to be watched.

March 14, 1872 — R. spoke feelingly today of the personal tragedies of Beethoven — his rage, his deafness, his incomprehension of niche marketing. "What is the message of the Ode to Joy?" he asked. "All men are brothers. Fine. But only a small percentage of them will ever earn between 75 and 100 thousand a year. The goal of art — all art — is to help us see the good without requiring we actually do anything about it. The upper classes understand this better than anyone."

I implore him to publish his ideas, but he brushes the suggestion aside, preferring to work on his mail-order catalog.

April 2, 1872 — More trouble with Prof. Nietzsche. R. had research data naming Bayreuth as the perfect place to build our festival theater, given its large population of white German males, our key demographic. Prof. Nietzsche argued the numbers were meaningless, since Germany is, as he says, "chock-full" of white German males. The only excuse for having a Germany in the first place, he said, is to give white German males a watering hole.

While conceding the point, R. defended the study, which was prepared by the biggest anti-Semitic think-tank in Vienna. Even if the conclusions were doctored, so to speak, it was done in an effort to be helpful.

"An anti-Semite is not admirable simply because he lies as a matter of principle," Prof. Nietzsche said.

Whereupon R. ordered him out of the house.

Oct. 31, 1872 — Tragically, the names Wagner and Wagnerism evoke no feelings of brand loyalty. This according to focus groups in Bonn and Stuttgart. On average, consumers were "only somewhat" inclined to sit through a four-part, twenty-hour music-drama on incest and deicide. Most identified "leitmotif" as a kind of low-tar cigarette.

Meanwhile, Verdi's Q-rating is through the roof, though R. attributes this less to his music than to the fact that he's licensed his photograph for use on packages of frozen tapioca.

"Oh, sure," he said, "we could get those kind of numbers, too, if we wanted to sell out."

I cringed when Prof. Nietzsche cleared his throat. Our quarrel last spring took a month to smooth over, and lately he's been going on about something he calls "eternal recurrence," which, as near as I can make out, has nothing to do with consumption patterns. I braced for yet another moralistic aphorism, but to my surprise, the prof. spoke quietly, in an offhand, almost distracted manner.

"Your problem," he said, "is a simple residual-to-cost ratio. If you switched the festival to an all-polka format, you'd cut your rehearsal costs in half and gross three times as much. Add a few Irish step-dancers, and you'll have a program you can drag out anytime for fundraisers."

R. smiled — for the first time in weeks. He rose from his chair, lifted the score of "The Valkyrie" from the mantelpiece, and dropped it into the fire.

"All right," he said as he reached for the poker, "let's give them what they want."

The diaries end here. Within a month, Cosima returned home to live with her father, the composer Franz Liszt. Friedrich Nietzsche followed his own path into philosophy. He suffered a mental collapse in 1889. Wagner himself spent the rest of his life touring North America, where he enjoyed popular acclaim as The Accordion King.

[Cato]

Something I wrote a while ago seems relevant in this context:



I implore him to publish his ideas, but he brushes the suggestion aside, preferring to work on his mail-order catalog.

Das erinnert mich an den Stockhausen-Verlag    0:)

April 2, 1872 — More trouble with Prof. Nietzsche. R. had research data naming Bayreuth as the perfect place to build our festival theater, given its large population of white German males, our key demographic. Prof. Nietzsche argued the numbers were meaningless, since Germany is, as he says, "chock-full" of white German males. The only excuse for having a Germany in the first place, he said, is to give white German males a watering hole.

  Very sly stuff!

R. smiled — for the first time in weeks. He rose from his chair, lifted the score of "The Valkyrie" from the mantelpiece, and dropped it into the fire.

"All right," he said as he reached for the poker, "let's give them what they want."

The diaries end here. Within a month, Cosima returned home to live with her father, the composer Franz Liszt. Friedrich Nietzsche followed his own path into philosophy. He suffered a mental collapse in 1889. Wagner himself spent the rest of his life touring North America, where he enjoyed popular acclaim as The Accordion King.

I can see it now: Dick Wagner and the Kings of the Accordion!

[Cato]

Pretender to the throne for Accordion King:

[Karl Henning]

Pretender to the throne for Accordion King:

A Picture I Like

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

Snoopy always cheers me up when I' m down.