The Lost Ones.
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Growing up there was always a permanent carpet indention where my lean body would sit, way too close to the television with my feet kicked up in the air, hands firmly rested under my chin, fully immersed in one movie or another. With little to no exception, the movies were almost always genre films; westerns, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, adventure/action. “The Goonies”, “The Warriors”, “Willow”, “Ferris Bueller”, “A League of their Own”, and all the various versions of their like were my chosen darlings well into my late teens. It is therefore shocking and perplexing to me how few of those movies make it into our cineplexes these days. I don’t think future me could have convinced younger me that one day these types of films would disappear completely from our landscape. Were teens going anywhere? Was Romance? My dad grew up on westerns and gangster films, and I grew up on Clint Eastwood and Walter Hill whom even when they weren’t doing westerns were still doing westerns. I had Scorsese who made so many gangster films that even to this day over a broad and multifaceted career, he still gets accused of only being that – where possibly could it all go, I might’ve asked? “What do you watch in their stead?
“What interests me is treading on familiar territory. With the motorcycles and vampires, it makes the audience comfortable to know that there’s something familiar; i.e. there’s the genre thread through it. Then I try to turn the genre on its head or make an about-face, and just when I make the audience a bit uncomfortable, I go back and reaffirm—“Yes, its alright”
The quote above is from a 2017 profile with director Kathryn Bigelow in Interview magazine. Within its confines lie the intersection at which genre introduces commerce to art. The recognizable conventions, tropes, settings, are all apart of its commercial appeal, which makes it viable for consistency as a consumable good in the marketplace of image making. The “about-face” is the introduction, or injection of art into the commercial. This space where the artist stares into the reflections of past creations (and thusly contemporary expectations ) and challenges them by reupholstering trope, relocating the settings, transforming the identities of the heroes, transferring the power, or other number or reformations challenging the audience - which either heightens or hinders it’s immediate success in the present, while sometimes setting up its appreciation for the future. When Kathryn Bigelow takes the vampire film trapped in a contemporary setting, and splices it with the western, it causes a chain reaction of mutations and re-combinations that produce something refreshing enough, exigent enough to fulfill the demands of art while existing fully within the safer confines of ritual enjoyment. When John Carpenter mixes elements of the adventure, fantasy, comedy, and action film and then shifts those very same expectations we get something wholly of the legacy of these genres and yet distinctly apart enough to feel singular, fresh, which emotionally can feel just as good as brand new. The genre used to have what I like to call sitters, of which there were all kinds from big names like Ridley Scott, and Michael Mann, smaller ones like Craig R. Baxley, and everywhere in between Simon West and Irvin Kershner. They were likely to move into other types of films, just not very far from where they started. The jumps made were in sub-genre, or in budget, but they did not move out of making genre pictures.
“I was very sympathetic and identified with the New Hollywood”. But his films “are, or were, rather retro. That is to say, I didn’t tackle subjects. I wanted to do genre films”
Consider this; when Kathryn Bigelow made “Near Dark” in 87’ it was made on a paltry budget of 5 million dollars, it only made 3.4 at the box office. Ridley Scott’s “Legend” (1985) was made for 25 and made 23.5 at the box office. Walter Hill’s “Streets of Fire” was made for 14.5 million and made back 8. The point here is two fold; A. To quote Mel Gibson’s character in “The Patriot” “Aim small, miss small”, a small budget most likely means a small loss and B. Great ideas do not have to cost upwards of 100 million dollars. Hollywood’s undignified obsession with big returns is a product of late capitalism’s effect on an industry that formerly at least faked a desire to produce and foster artists as well as profit- has led them into a noose wherein they have become their own worst enemy. It has disintegrated the idea of “niche”. Every movie is try to appeal to every quadrant, to every person possible, and yet the consistently modest budgets of horror have constantly proved an almost MCU like record of success at the box office. Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” was made for just under 5 million dollars, it made nearly 300 million at the box office. “M3GAN”, “Barbarian”, and this year’s major “Longlegs” were made on 10 million or less and grossed anywhere from 4 to 30 times their budgets, and yet execs in all their myopic wisdom have only brought from that that only horror is worth investing in. Despite the fact that historically Nora Ephron’s seminal rom-com classic “Sleepless in Seattle” made over 200 million on a 21 million dollar budget. That Penny Marshall’s “Big” made just over 150 million on 18. That “Predator” made 100 million on 18 and that the very next year when that same John Mcteirnan helmed “Die Hard” it made 140 on a 35 million dollar budget. Despite the fact that more recently the first entry in the John Wick franchise made nearly three times it’s budget back, and that trend would trend upwards as it went along. That last years “Anyone But You” garnered 220 million on a 25 million dollar budget. It might long since have been forgotten that The Matrix made almost half a billion on a 63 million dollar budget. I’m being exhaustive on purpose, because the evidence is overwhelming. No one seems to realize how vital the pocket films were to George Lucas (THX, American Graffiti), Steven Spielberg, (Sugarland Express, Jaws) and James Cameron, furthermore they have discouraged up and coming directors from even wanting to be one. Save for horror, directors today only aim for the extreme poles in which Hollywood has forced them to exist. No one seems interested in being the next Sam Peckinpah, Nora Ephron, or Kevin Smith, let alone a Michael Apted, or Kenneth Branagh, and even if there are some that should want to, they aren’t allowed to. Hollywood remains steadfastly willing to lose massive amounts of money on these titanic undertakings who’s marketing arms cost almost as much as it does to make the movie (“Fall Guy” I’m looking at you) in the first place. Movies that place directors who may not be ready for such largesse, and politics in career defining positions (Josh Trank) much too early.
Large budgets being conflated with better films a (most readily assumed because of availability of tech and resources) is a short sighted mistake, but a common one. An essential aspect of the genre film is necessity, the very same necessity that has been phrased as the “mother” of invention. The problem with making 100 million genre films is that by necessity it inhibits, impedes, and sometimes asphyxiates the other vital aspects of the genre film, like personality, deviation from expectation, and strange genre bedfellows, all of which involve risk, something that that much money on the line has discouraged studios from allowing to the point of near madness. Making movies for cheaper doesn’t guarantee a lack of this kind of interference, but it damn sure helps. Many of the greatest things we’ve ever seen on film were born out of the need to create when there wasn’t enough resources, this was true from Chaplin to Spielberg and beyond. This does not simply relegate itself to the physical, or in what we see. There is something about the charms of films made on relatively modest budgets, that many times when they didn’t have the resources to invest in more time-consuming dazzling sequences, they invested heavily in other aspects of the prodcution that woiuld make it pop, or end up enhancing the experience. The Sam Raimi of Spider Man and far worse “Dr Strange” is markedly different than the Sam Raimi of “The Evil Dead”, “The Quick and the Dead”, or “Drag me to Hell”. The inability of Spielberg and crew to get that very expensive shark to work properly, famously caused them to have to cut a lot of scenes of the shark, which allowed the movie to build up its legendary sense of tension. The beating heart, the central draw of the Russell Mulcahy’s Highlander movies are not its special effects but the relationship between Connor MacLeod and Ramírez. The western is powered by it’s themes and it’s simplicity, not by the audacity of its ambitions, this was the failure of “Wild Wild West”. Without personality, the distinct quality of the person behind the camera that becomes something the audience connects with and identifies readily, we lose out on Jerry Zucker’s to make “Airplane” or “Ghost”. Russell Mulcahy to make a “Highlander” or “Ricochet”. No Joel Schumacher to make The “Lost Boys” or a “Time to Kill”. No Ivan Reitman (his son now another casualty of the two stop indie darling to Tentpole pipeline) to make “Stripes”, “Ghostbusters”, or “Kindergarten Cop”. No Andrew Davis to make “Above the Law” or “A Perfect Murder”, all of which christened some movie star or another from Patrick Swayze to Steven Seagal, to Viggo Mortensen. The death of the genre film, is the death of the mid-budget, is the death of the movie star, is the death of our variety. The loss of our ability to enjoy a movie without the weight of being the next best movie ever made or a monument to cultural impact.
“I made movies to satisfy the studios production schedule, to see that those movies are received enthusiastically overseas today is something I never dreamed of. I never imagined such a thing happening”
Both art and commerce co-exist when you have plenty of choices in between the polar extremes of a casino like environment. What we have now is not a co-existence, it is an oppression, it Is corporate tyranny over artistic expression. In a way our cinema has become a mirror image of our society, at this point there are only two classes; the supreme money makers and the impoverished. There is no in between, there is no middle class, there is no upper middle class. If horror as a genre seems to be “elevated” it is simply by its way of its isolation, as arguably the only genre film currently en-vogue, it has no one besides itself to mirror its artistic flexibility, not only in quality but discipline. Film critic André Bazin had this to say in his book “What is Cinema” about an observable set of westerns coming out of the evolution of the genre; “The superwestern is a western that would be ashamed to be just itself and looks for some additional interest to justify its existence - an aesthetic, sociological, moral, psychological, political, or erotic interest, in short some quality extrinsic to the genre and which is supposed to enrich it”. The words should sound familiar to not only those tired of hearing about “elevated horror” but to those who insists upon its existence as an example of “nothing new under the sun” and of a key element in the making of a “superwestern” or elevated horror film – a disdain for the genre in and of itself. One listen to any of the tidbits of conversation Osgood Perkins had on the subject of horror, and that dissent Bazin mentions is made explicitly clear. What is also clear that these things are vital to a healthy eco-system. That competing interests, niche targeting, and paradoxical points of view are integral ingredients to that health.
“I think one of the things about being a director is, you should always try to re-create within yourself the kind of emotions you had watching film when you were very young.”