HE'S RIGHT, THE FILM BUSINESS IS DEAD:  Barry Diller is a Hollywood old timer and his pronouncements are taken seriously.  This one is particularly important, and I believe he's correct.  Hollywood is kaput, and so are the Oscars.  "The End" is a deserved ending.  From Los Angeles Magazine:

The Oscars have been in shocking decline for years—from plummeting ratings, representation issues, the irrelevance of Old Hollywood in the face of streamers (not to mention the Andrea Riseborough controversy, Envelopegate and Will Smith’s handsy tantrum).

Recently, Former Paramount CEO Barry Diller offered his own prognosis of the beleaguered industry showcase. Spoiler alert: The situation’s terminal.

“It’s an antiquity,” the current IAC and Expedia chairman told Firing Line‘s Margaret Hoover of the awards process. Citing the Riseborough Affair, Diller noted the internal collapse the movie and awards-show industry have long been suffering. “All awards ceremonies were based on this hierarchical process of a movie going to a theater, building up some word of mouth if it was successful, having that word of mouth carry itself over,” Diller said. “That path no longer exists.”

This isn’t the first time Diller has warned that the sky is falling on the film industry. In 2021, he proclaimed to NPR that the movie business was dead with no path toward revival. Where some may lay blame on increasing ticket prices, the pandemic, the surge of streaming platforms’ critical and consumer popularity, Diller notes the perfect storm created by all of these, underscored by the quality over quantity dilemma.

“I used to be in the movie business where you made something really because you cared about it,” he told NPR. The very definition of movie, he went on, “is in such transition that it doesn’t mean anything right now.”

The sudden cultural ambiguity of movies and how we both define and value them is having an impact on how we access them as well. Last year, Regal Cinemas parent company Cineworld Group filed for bankruptcy after struggling with low admissions and a limited slate of films. As a result, nearly 40 theaters across the country will be shuttered this month. Meanwhile, the number of movies released to more than 2,000 theaters is down more than 30 percent from 2018 and 2019. 

COMMENT:  It's been a long ride down for the movie business.  In the early 1970s, ABC made a TV documentary called, I believe, "Whatever happened to Hollywood?"  That was half a century ago.  And ten years earlier than that, Frank Sinatra warned in an Oscar speech that the business was being taken over by lawyers and agents, neither of whom made movies.  We have been lamenting the death of Hollywood for some time. 

There was once a period when 90 million Americans a week went to "the movies."  They were our primary form of entertainment.  Free television ended that, along with Hollywood's curious obsession with self-destruction.  The industry lost touch with its audience, forgot how to tell stories, and became politicized.  The notion that giving people two hours of pure entertainment was a noble enterprise was laughed at.  And musicals disappeared because the great composers and lyricists disappeared. 

I agree with Diller that there's not much hope.  There is vibrance in television today, but the big screen, once as American as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, has lost its place.  It once had a touch of greatness.  And yes, you can see those "old" movies on your 40-inch living-room TV, to get a feel for that era, and what made it special.

February 9, 2023