Debunking the Myth
Every week it seems, a few films enter the Cineplex with big stars and big budgets and they look AWFUL. You know that feeling when you see the trailer and you just know, deep down inside, that it is going to be incredibly bad, but you don’t know why a studio would drop 50 million dollars on a sci-fi comedy love drama with Will Ferrell and Christina Ricci. The whole process boggles the mind especially when so many films are being made and you one going into thousands of theaters that obviously has no chance of making the money back.
When seeing these films, I begin to wonder: A) Did the stars in this film think it was going to be great and something happened along the way to make it bad (marketing, editing, the director was crazy), or B) They did it just for the paycheck.
Now, I have only quizzed one actress on this so far, and I’ll be sure to try and probe others with it, but the one answer I got back was pretty funny. On the last film I worked on, one unnamed actress told me about one film that she did where this exact conundrum applies. On one of the rides home that I was giving her, I asked the very same question. Do actors know the film is going to suck BEFORE it comes out, or do they just do it for the money?
In answering, she said that some do it for the money, some others have to do the bad films because they have contracts with the big studios (you can’t make the oscar-worthy film without making some crap ones), and some, like her, had a feeling the film would be terrible but they weren’t completely sure. When she started to discuss the film that went in the wrong direction (I asked the name and she didn’t really hold back), I initially was like “oh, I’ve never heard of that film before.” But, the more she discussed the premise, when it came out, and who starred in it, it all started to sound familiar. I decided to ask again what the name was, and in fact, I misunderstood what she originally said. I had heard of the film she was talking about, and I even SAW IT IN THE THEATER.
After she laughed about that for a good five minutes she says “well I think you were one of the ten people that did see it.”
Hopefully in the future, I’ll have more statistics to add to this list, but right now I only have one. Thankfully, that one was one I’d actually heard of and seen.
Every week it seems, a few films enter the Cineplex with big stars and big budgets and they look AWFUL. You know that feeling when you see the trailer and you just know, deep down inside, that it is going to be incredibly bad, but you don’t know why a studio would drop 50 million dollars on a sci-fi comedy love drama with Will Ferrell and Christina Ricci. The whole process boggles the mind especially when so many films are being made and you one going into thousands of theaters that obviously has no chance of making the money back.
When seeing these films, I begin to wonder: A) Did the stars in this film think it was going to be great and something happened along the way to make it bad (marketing, editing, the director was crazy), or B) They did it just for the paycheck.
Now, I have only quizzed one actress on this so far, and I’ll be sure to try and probe others with it, but the one answer I got back was pretty funny. On the last film I worked on, one unnamed actress told me about one film that she did where this exact conundrum applies. On one of the rides home that I was giving her, I asked the very same question. Do actors know the film is going to suck BEFORE it comes out, or do they just do it for the money?
In answering, she said that some do it for the money, some others have to do the bad films because they have contracts with the big studios (you can’t make the oscar-worthy film without making some crap ones), and some, like her, had a feeling the film would be terrible but they weren’t completely sure. When she started to discuss the film that went in the wrong direction (I asked the name and she didn’t really hold back), I initially was like “oh, I’ve never heard of that film before.” But, the more she discussed the premise, when it came out, and who starred in it, it all started to sound familiar. I decided to ask again what the name was, and in fact, I misunderstood what she originally said. I had heard of the film she was talking about, and I even SAW IT IN THE THEATER.
After she laughed about that for a good five minutes she says “well I think you were one of the ten people that did see it.”
Hopefully in the future, I’ll have more statistics to add to this list, but right now I only have one. Thankfully, that one was one I’d actually heard of and seen.
posted by The PA @ 12:55 PM
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