speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

The Illusion of Private Freedom
into screenplays, who will write, direct, and act, and how much to
spend on production and promotion. The lessons of commercial
failure are illustrated by "Radio Flyer," a 1992 flop costing $40-45
million. A despondent executive kvetched:
Even if this film worked, how do you get an audience? Ifyoutellan
audience it's about child abuse, they won't come. So you tell
them it's about childhood. So an audience shows up and sees the
movie, and they say, "Hey, wait a minute. This is not what we
paid seven bucks for. A kid is being beat." They walk out. They
feel betrayed. They hate you!
It is not surprising that Hollywood, which invests an average of $38
million per film, tests audience reaction before releasing at least 75
per cent of the top 200 movies each year. According to the Columbia
Pictures marketing president: "It's the same thing you do with a
product. You sample it: Is it too sweet? Is it too hot?" Ron Howard,
who directed the highly successful films "Parenthood" and
"Cocoon," starts with a 3—4 hour rough cut and chops it in half on
the basis of audience reaction to as many as 16 test screenings. The
ending of "Fatal Attraction"—perhaps the most profitable movie
ever made—was changed after negative test screenings. 86
Non-economic considerations also shape film content. Tristar and
Columbia Pictures were collaborating on "Hell Camp," a movie
about sumo wrestlers, which Milos Forman had agreed to direct.
After Sony bought Columbia it cancelled the project, claiming it
could not get the Sumo Association to cooperate. When Matsushita
bought Universal Pictures it had the studio substantially rewrite the
script for "Mr. Baseball," about a boorish American joining a
Japanese team, to make it more sympathetic to Japan. 87 The industry
collectively shapes content through its rating system. Fearing that a
ban on children under 17 would exclude "Basic Instinct" from some
theatres, the producers wanted to cut the objectionable scenes.
Director Paul Verhoeven and actor Michael Douglas resisted, convinced
that the sex and violence would attract publicity and thus
viewers. The studio won, although Verhoeven maintained he had
only "replaced things from different angles, made it a little more
elliptical, a bit less direct." At the same time, he dismissed protests
by gays and lesbians about the bisexual murder suspect, who
seduces women and men, keeps ice picks around the house, and
writes books about fictional murders resembling the movie's
events. 88
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