Pod Insights Well There‘s Your Problem BONUS Episode 56 PREVIEW: The Studio System About this episode folks we finally we had an original idea: a podcast about moviesfull episode on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod/posts/studio-system-161055406?pr=true
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 So anyway, uh, A, number one, most importantly, don't [__] yourself. Number two, um, next slide. Okay, so United Artists, um, just like a side note of United Artists. Um, United Artists is founded by a series of directors, actors, et cetera, including Charlie Chaplin, D W Griffin.
0:20 November Kelly? Yeah, it's fucked up seeing Chaplin without the mustache.
0:23 Speaker 00 It is. It really, it really troubles me. Also, I don't like looking at D W Griffin's face because he does look like, um, like the stand-in for H B Lovecraft. Um, he is the one signing the paper.
0:35 November Kelly? Mary Pickford's so pretty, though.
0:37 Speaker 02 Oh, yes.
0:37 November Kelly? Um, yes.
0:38 Speaker 00 We are getting to the part where I have essentially set aside time for you to go, um, you to go, uh, I think I hope.
0:45 November Kelly? And get 1950s woman dysphoria. Yeah, okay, wonderful.
0:49 Speaker 00 Well, Mary Pickford is 1910s, 20s, and 30s.
0:52 November Kelly? I said to you because you're gonna, like, if it's later, I assume we'll be advancing.
0:57 Speaker 00 1930s and 40s woman dysphoria, sorry.
0:59 November Kelly? Okay, okay, fine.
1:00 Speaker 00 But I, I have set aside time for you to be like, I hope Covid. Um, but specifically in the Hayes Code section. So anyway, uh, so.
1:10 November Kelly? I mean, why do you think I used to do my hair like Veronica Lake, you know?
1:13 Speaker 00 And it looked great, you know, your hair looks great. Anyway, so, uh, the idea is that they wanted to do independent production of films because initially Chaplin could not get a production budget increase, and then Pickford and Fairbanks were under contract but weren't getting that contract renewed. And so they collectively hired a private investigator to look into it, and they discovered that Adolf Zucker was planning to merge a series of production companies together, um, by buying theater chain First National, uh, and adding it on to Famous Players Lasky, which eventually became Paramount, to essentially vertically
1:51 Speaker 00 integrate film and television and fuck them on budget, uh, on, uh, casting and contract terms, et cetera. So they issued, they wrote something that was like a declaration of independence or whatever, and then founded United Artists. Now, the First National merger didn't happen, but Adolf Zucker succeeded in vertically integrated a lot of, um, a lot of theater chains, and he succeeded in doing it by employing a variety of pretty underhanded tactics, which we're gonna talk about in the next slide. Next slide. Okay, so I'm gonna explain this using the films of Dino de Laurentis.
2:29 Speaker 00 So because as as
2:32 Speaker 02 I love her. I love, I love, I love his work on Food Network. Yeah.
2:36 Speaker 00 Okay. So I have met Jada and she honestly whips like she's really nice.
2:40 Speaker 02 I'm really happy to hear that.
2:41 Speaker 00 No, she's, she's a cool gal. So just for the listener, I used to work for Dino de Laurentiis's wife, Martha de Laurentiis, rest in peace, at the de Laurentiis company. So I am using the films of Dino de Laurentiis. So imagine, we're gonna explain block booking. Imagine Dino de Laurentiis is a studio, right? You can see him here, holding his Oscars for Knights in Cabiria and La Strada, which I have held and they are really heavy. Next slide, or hit the next button, please.
3:12 Speaker 02 Yes.
3:13 Speaker 00 So firstly, they will, you want these sort of A films, right? Like your real top tier films. Now, an A film and a B film comes from the idea of having like, it's similarly to having an A side and a B side on a record. It comes from the idea of doing double features. One of them was like the premiere feature that people would come for and one of them was kind of tacked on. In this case, the A films are Serpico and Three Days of the Condor, which I think we can all agree are good films that Dino de Laurentiis produced. Now, next button. The problem is, in order to get Three Days of the Condor and Serpico, Dino de Laurentiis, the studio, is going to force you to buy Kiss the Girls and Let Them Die,
3:59 Speaker 00 the, the Italian James Bond spoof. Next button. He is going to force you to buy Orca, the Killer Whale, the Jaws knockoff. Next button. He is going to make you buy Cat's Eye, which is god awful and is a Stephen King adaptation. Next button. He is going to force you to buy Maximum Overdrive, good truck season pick. Also, the first film that Martha de Laurentiis.
4:25 Speaker 02 Fucking movie. Great fucking movie.
4:29 Speaker 00 And then he's gonna make you buy Danger Diabolic.
4:33 November Kelly? I mean, that's worth, actually. Like, this is the thing. You kind of take your weirder shots with your B-movies, and some of them whip.
4:43 Speaker 00 Um, did you watch the original one?
4:45 November Kelly? Yeah, yeah, it's good.
4:46 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah, you did. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Sorry, I forgot about that. Yeah, I'm not a fan, but I do, I have to say, I'm glad it got remade a bunch of times.
4:57 Speaker 00 He will also make you buy Barbarella, which I think that is a real Nova I Hope Covid movie.
5:04 Justin Roczniak? I, what I'm seeing here is a good thing, because it's, you know, you need to have the crappy movies made in order to make the good ones.
5:12 Speaker 00 Well, you see, the thing is, you might think that, but the thing that Paramount developed and that every studio adopted was the practice of essentially forcing independent distributors and independent theatrical companies to buy a shit-ton of bad movies that were churned out very quickly and with very little effort put into them, in exchange for also buying one or perhaps two good movies, and then you would have to exhibit them all, right? And you would pay through the nose for the privilege, because of the corporate consolidation. Now, the other portion of it that makes it worse is that sometimes you are like blind buying, right? So rather than saying, "I am buying Serpico, I am buying N. Al Pacino picture," right?
5:56 Speaker 00 Which could be Serpico, but it could also be Devil's Advocate, right?
5:59 November Kelly? Yeah, for sure.
6:01 Speaker 00 You don't know what you're buying, and the studios have enough economic leverage that they can make you buy whatever the fuck they are gonna put out. So you, as an independent distributor, are completely at the mercy, pricing structure-wise and content-wise, of the studios. Meanwhile, the studios have bought out this whole distribution chain, where not only do they own the distribution, but they also own a bunch of actual first-party theaters in which these films are exhibited. So they can adjust their film repertoire, and you cannot, because you have paid for a bunch of, you have paid to screen Cat's Eye constantly, right?
6:37 Justin Roczniak? As the theater owner, I like this a lot because it takes a lot of work off of, you know, my end. It's just like, yeah, I'll screen whatever film you tell me.
6:47 Speaker 00 Yeah.
6:48 Speaker 02 Give me my slop.
6:50 Speaker 00 Yeah.
6:50 Speaker 02 I eat my slop.
6:52 November Kelly? People went to the movies way more than they do now. So like, you can just be like, yeah, we'll go and see whatever Al Pacino picture. It's kind of like less intense on both ends, you know?
7:05 Speaker 00 Yeah.
7:05 Justin Roczniak? Yeah, it's like this. This is the only place with air conditioning.
7:08 Speaker 00 Everybody's gonna go see.
7:10 November Kelly? It's the only place to hide when you've just assassinated the president of the United States.
7:15 Justin Roczniak? Exactly.
7:16 Speaker 00 Everybody's gonna go see, uh, the movie Waterloo directed by Sergey Bodorchuk.
7:23 November Kelly? They should. They should do.
7:25 Speaker 00 Uh, yeah, everybody's gonna go see, uh, I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm going through Dino's, uh, work. Pauline Doctor. Um, everybody's gonna go see, uh, you know, uh, Anzio or Evil Dead 2 or From the Hip, you know?
7:42 November Kelly? Some bangers here.
7:44 Speaker 02 They should be seeing Evil Dead 2. Hell yeah.
7:47 Speaker 00 Or like, you know, I don't know, uh, Rumpelstiltskin 1995, American fantasy horror comedy.
7:55 Justin Roczniak? I run the only theater in like Atumwa, Iowa, and I, I have to, uh, do a screening of Come and See.
8:06 Speaker 00 I mean, kind of. Yeah, yeah, basically. Um, I run, I run the only filmmaker, uh, the only, uh, film.
8:13 Justin Roczniak? The entire town was changed after that.
8:16 Speaker 00 I run the only theater in like Fremont, California, and I'm forced to screen Amityville 2: The Possession like every 30 minutes. Um, so anyway, so this is a, this is an amount of monopolistic control that is exerted by the, uh, by the studios that makes it very difficult. I mean, it encourages really shitty filmmaking because you just, you don't need to have a good movie. You just need to have a movie that they can bundle. But it also screws over independent theaters and distributors. Next slide. The other tactic they use is what's called run zone clearance, right?
8:47 Speaker 00 Basically, it is a way of staggering when movies are released. So basically keeping them in-house for a very long time. And then eventually parceling them out to a variety of other geographical zones and third-party theaters. So first it only plays in like downtown theaters. Then, you know, and primarily those owned first party by the company. Then it gets sort of parcelled out to less downtown theaters. And so you only get, I don't know, Kiss the Girls and Let Them Die like a year after it's actually been released. If you live in Podunk, Iowa, right? So, um, you know, these.
9:26 Speaker 02 You live in Ross's theater alone.
9:28 Justin Roczniak? That's a, that's a, that's a double feature with Come and See.
9:33 Speaker 00 Honestly terrible double feature. But maybe, maybe you learn something from it. So, uh, anyway, so the problem is that this makes a whole shit ton of money, right? Because you can charge as, because you are the first to have, as the first party exhibitor. You are the first to have the movie that people, you're the first to have Serpico, for instance. You can charge premium prices for that and people will pay it, right? And so you make a lot of money at every stage of the operation by essentially vertically integrating it all. And using your market power and leverage to crush the competition. Next slide. So if we talk about the built environment, you end up with a lot of physical production studios, right?
10:16 Speaker 00 In Los Angeles, because that is where movies are being produced. And you end up with a lot of like facilities, many of which are still here today, like the Paramount Studios lot, or the Universal lot, or the Warner Brothers lot, et cetera. But the other thing is that it doesn't just take production facilities, it takes people. And this is where we get into the weird, uh, awful shit. Next slide.
10:38 November Kelly? Yeah, this is where we get into playing the movies and when you start picking guys up and putting them in plastic surgery.
10:43 Speaker 00 Exactly.
10:45 Justin Roczniak? It was, it was funny taking the Coast Starlight out of Los Angeles to, uh, San Francisco. Cause we did go by a couple of back lots and I was like, holy shit, they're real.
10:54 Speaker 00 Yeah. Oh, dude, I could have gotten you on the Paramount lot. I should have done that. Fuck.
10:59 Justin Roczniak? Nah, well, next time.
11:00 Speaker 00 Next time, next time I'll get you on the actual.
11:02 November Kelly? You're gonna see La Sombrita, you're gonna see Paramount.
11:06 Speaker 00 You're gonna see, you're gonna see La Sombrita, you're gonna see that 20th century Fox studio where I once worked with Angela Bassett.
11:12 November Kelly? But like, actually?
11:14 Justin Roczniak? Yes, we'll go around the corner this time.
11:18 Speaker 00 I will say I have worked on a variety of studio lots. Universal sucks because you have to use a golf cart to get anywhere. The 20th Century Fox lot is good because you can walk basically all over it. I worked in the sound.
11:30 Justin Roczniak? This kind of walkable.
11:34 Speaker 00 It literally is. The Warner Brothers lot I don't like, but I did get to work on the, in the soundstage where they shot the TV show Bones. Because I worked as a.
11:46 Justin Roczniak? Bone storage?
11:48 Speaker 00 Yeah, I was at the bone storage. And so I worked on 911 and the guys who did all of the production design for 911 are also the guys who did the production design for Bones. So they had all sorts of like stories about Bones. And back to this.
12:06 Speaker 00 The, so you're seeing on the left Olivia De Havilland and on the right you're seeing Betty Davis. So here's a couple of things about being an actor, right? Initially, people did not know who stars were, right? Like in any real sense. The, the people that were in the movies were essentially, you know, anonymous, right? And therefore, for a while, you could just kind of get away with throwing whomever in there. And you know what? Actually, I'm sorry. I just looked at the slide and I think I put in two photos of Olivia De Havilland. So.
12:51 November Kelly? That's always legal to do, in my opinion.
12:54 Speaker 00 But I'm gonna paste Betty Davis in here. Real quick.
12:58 November Kelly? Is there any relation? Side of the Davis Crawford feud, yes.
13:02 Speaker 00 Correct.
13:03 Justin Roczniak? Any relation to the aircraft manufacturer?
13:06 Speaker 00 I think so, actually, right?
13:08 November Kelly? Yeah, I think so. I'm not, don't quote me on that, but I think so.
13:12 Justin Roczniak? Okay, good.
13:13 Speaker 00 Hold on.
13:13 Justin Roczniak? Glad I got the hat with me right here.
13:15 Speaker 00 On the backend and there we go. Does that now show?
13:22 Justin Roczniak? I love Betty Davis, but Jesus Christ.
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