318 92 991KB
English Pages 208 Year 2016
Hollywood Is Everywhere
Hollywood Is Everywhere Global Directors in the Blockbuster Era
Melis Behlil
Amsterdam University Press
Illustration back cover: Scene from Robert Altman’s The Player (1992). Cover design: Kok Korpershoek, Amsterdam Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 90 8964 739 9 e-isbn 978 90 4852 497 6 doi 10.5117/9789089647399 nur 670 © M. Behlil / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2016 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.
To Gezi
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments 9 Introduction: Hello Hollywood Some Basic Questions Documenting “Foreigners” Structure of the Book
11 14 20 23
1. Defining Hollywood “New” Hollywood The Transnationalization of Hollywood Is Hollywood American? Hollywood as a Brand Denationalization and Deterritorialization
27 27 31 33 35 38
2. Cultural Work in a Globalizing World Definitions, Debates, Dimensions Global System Theory and the Transnational Capitalist Class Hollywood and Labor Networking: Representation and Reputation
41 41 43 46 48
3. Histories and Geographies of Global Directors A Brief History of Foreign Talent in Hollywood Talent Flows in “New” Hollywood The Ubiquity of Hollywood Runaway Destinations New Waves and Rising Stars Outsiders and Competitors Creating Connections
55 56 62 66 68 71 74 77
4. A View to a Franchise: James Bond Why Bond? From the Novels to the Films A Bondian History Other Franchises
81 82 83 87 93
5. “Once More with the Volume Up”: Auto-remakes1 97 Why Remakes? 98 European Auto-remakes 100 The “Asian Invasion” 104 Remaking Continues 108 6. I Want My MTV: Advertising and Music Videos 111 Why Advertising? Why Music Videos? 112 The New Aesthetics of Advertising and Music Videos 115 The Scott “Empire”29 117 Convergence and Connectivity 121 7. Conclusion: “Everywhere is Hollywood” “Leaving” Hollywood New Rules of the Game
125 126 129
Notes 131 Bibliography 163 List of Directors
183
Index of Film Titles
187
Index of Names
191
Index of Subjects
199
Acknowledgments This book started out as a dissertation at the University of Amsterdam, and eventually became a “proper” publication. Its creation spanned a decade and a half, during which I had many occasions to be thankful to many people and institutions. So many, in fact, that I’m sure I will overlook a number of them, and I offer them my sincere apologies in advance. As I started working on my dissertation, Istanbul Bilgi University gave me funding for the first year of my studies. It also provided me with employment, something that I likewise later obtained from the Media and Culture Department at the University of Amsterdam and the Film and TV Department at Yeditepe University. Eloe Kingma and Jantine van Gogh from the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis helped me with various bureaucratic matters. Members of the Cinema Europe group and others at the University of Amsterdam (Malte Hagener, Jaap Kooijman, Tarja Laine, Floris Paalman, Ward Rennen, Wanda Strauven, Ria Thanouli, and especially Marijke de Valck) provided a wonderful intellectual environment. Winfried Fluck, Rob Kroes, Patricia Pisters, Kevin Robins and Jan Simons generously agreed to sit on my thesis committee. My Amsterdam friends Armağan and Çimen Ekici, Begüm Fırat, and Nazlı Karabenli made my frequent visits enjoyable and memorable. Other friends and colleagues – Savaş Arslan, Yeşim Burul, İdil Elveriş, Wendy Shaw, Louise Spence, and Ayşe Ünal – were kind enough to read and discuss my work on many occasions. Anıl Bilge and the late (and not forgotten) Emre Yerlikhan helped me with finalizing the print version. It took me a while to recover from finishing my doctorate, but I eventually decided that it was time to revisit my work. I was lucky enough to be invited to the Salzburg Global Seminar as a fellow, which gave me a chance to reassess my research. I want to thank Jaap Kooijman (again), Marty Gecek, and Ronald Clifton for giving me this opportunity. I was convinced that my arguments still held, and in 2014-15 I was able to take time to revise my work. I want to thank everyone at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Comparative Media Studies department for providing me with a peaceful haven in which to focus on my book. William Uricchio was instrumental in arranging my Visiting Scholar position at MIT, where I spent what was undoubtedly some of the best time of my entire life. My stay was funded by a grant from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK). And it was made absolutely unforgettable by the contributions of many people – most importantly, Lauren O’Neal (and her home), Güven Güzeldere, Caroline Reeves, and Mine Nişancı.
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As I struggled to find my post-doctoral voice, comments from Alejandro Pardo, İrem İnceoğlu, Efe Sevin, and Güven Güzeldere (again) were most helpful. I must emphasize the assistance of Peter Krämer, who read and commented on the manuscript at various stages. Special thanks must also go to Kadir Has University, which has been my academic home for almost a decade. I received warm support from my institution at every stage of writing this book. I want to thank Deniz Bayrakdar and Levent Soysal for their patronage while I was still a stressed-out graduate student, Mustafa Aydın and Sevda Alankuş for allowing me to take a very precious timeout, and Defne Tüzün, in particular, for making sure that everything ran smoothly in my absence. Jeroen Sondervan of Amsterdam University Press has been a wonderful commissioning editor, patiently taking me through all the necessary steps. Thomas Elsaesser has been a source of inspiration and support since our very first email exchange; not only during the writing of my dissertation, but also in the publication of this book, and every point in between (and beyond). My father saw only the initial stages of my study, but without his support, I would not have dared enter academia. My mother has stood by me every step of the way, giving me boundless moral support, and often acting as my copy editor. Writing a book is hard work, but it is not a matter of life or death. Conversely, the last few years have not been easy for the people of my country; we have found ourselves wallowing in an incessant news flow of oppression, corruption, war, and misery. The one glimmer of hope for millions has been a resistance movement, sparked by protests that aimed to protect a little park where I played as a child. The impact of that movement penetrated nearly every part of our lives, and found its way into the conclusion and title of this book. I thus feel that it deserves a dedication as well, with hope for a brighter future.
Introduction: Hello Hollywood
My earliest memory of going to the movies is of Superman (Richard Donner, 1978). This must have been at the end of 1979, when the film appeared on screens in Istanbul eleven months after its US release. It was a different era; films were not released simultaneously across the world, we had no notion of pirate copies, and, of course, there was no Internet to download or stream any movies. For many of the urban filmgoers of my generation in Turkey, Superman is the first film they remember seeing in a movie theater.1 This was partly due to the limited choice available at the time. In November 1979, Superman was released in Turkey along with 24 other films. While this may seem like a large number to choose from, many of these films were popular sex comedies (a euphemism for soft-core porn), or “arabesk” melodramas, low-budget musicals that served as star vehicles for local singers, aimed mainly at recent internal migrants from rural areas into the cities. With the advent of network television and the decline of Turkish cinema in the late 1970s, audiences shrank, and the “family audiences” that remained seemed to prefer Hollywood films. The foreign fare released in November 1979 included one Italian-West German co-produced erotic thriller and several Hollywood productions from previous years.2 It was under these circumstances that I saw Superman in Istanbul, as a small child with my parents, in a now-defunct movie theater. I was amazed by the special effects, especially by how the hero really seemed to be flying. Superman may have traditionally stood for “truth, justice, and the American way,” and to many, it must have represented American imperialism through Hollywood dominance. To my five-year-old self, though, what made the film irresistible were the exciting adventures and the smile of Christopher Reeve; or what I would later identify as Hollywood’s high production values and star appeal. At that point, of course, I was unaware of the place that Superman would come to hold in film history. The first of many major big-budget superhero films to come over the following decades, Superman is considered one of the leading films of Hollywood’s blockbuster era. Both the original film and the first of its sequels were the second-highest domestic box-office earners of their respective years (1978, 1981).3 As a popular comic book character, with animations, film serials, TV series and a Broadway musical already produced, 4 Superman was a pre-sold commodity that practically had a guaranteed audience. Heralded by its producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind as one of the most expensive movies ever made, Superman’s estimated budget of $55 million promised its audiences lavish spectacle
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with state-of-the-art special effects. But perhaps even more importantly, and something that would be typical of later Hollywood blockbusters, the film was produced and released by Warner Bros., the owner of which, Warner Communications Inc. (WCI), had purchased DC Comics, publisher of the Superman adventures, ten years previously. Not only did this deal facilitate the development of the project, but it also created other merchandising opportunities within the conglomerate. The Licensing Corporation of America, a WCI subsidiary, allocated merchandising rights to major companies such as Bristol Meyers, General Foods, PepsiCo, Lever Bros. and Gillette.5 Warner Books issued eight Superman-related titles, Warner Records released a soundtrack album and two singles, while another Warner subsidiary, Atari, brought out a Superman pinball machine.6 This was one of the first instances of synergy at work, something that would only increase in subsequent years as all Hollywood studios became part of larger media conglomerates. Superman was a big hit domestically as well as globally, and paved the way for similar endeavors. In his introduction to Hollywood Abroad, Richard Maltby discusses the reception of Hollywood productions by audiences across the globe, and the extent to which these films are construed as “American.” He argues that throughout its history, Hollywood has been identified as “American” largely by its competitors and by European cultural nationalists, while Americans (both supporters and critics of Hollywood) “do not perceive these products as part of a specifically national culture.”7 Andrew Higson contends that Hollywood, in addition to being “the most internationally powerful cinema,” has been “for many years […] an integral and naturalized part of the national culture, or the popular imagination, of most countries in which cinema is an established entertainment form.”8 Globalization and national cinemas have been subjects of much debate in recent decades, not only within academia and specifically film studies, but also within film criticism, and even in daily conversation. “We are all experts about Hollywood,”9 suggests Toby Miller, but the expertise that comes out of familiarity often tends to rely on unquestioned assumptions. Hollywood is forever changing and evolving, and the era of globalization has been one of major transformation. This study on Hollywood in the age of globalization grew out of two core interests, which proved to be related. These are my interest in Hollywood, dating back to my Superman days, and in globalization, a process that I have observed in my own lifetime. Hollywood is perhaps the clearest showcase for this process, in terms of its production, distribution, exhibition, and reception practices. Hollywood is in a continuous dialogue with globalization, both shaping it and, in return, being shaped by it. Thomas
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Elsaesser and Warren Buckland point out that “Hollywood cinema is a world industry, just as much as it is a world language, a powerful, stable, perfected system of visual communication.”10 As such, this world industry recruits its workers from around the world, including its directors. This book therefore uses an examination of the career paths of foreign directors as a way to gain a better understanding of Hollywood as a whole. Hollywood has exerted a centripetal force on foreign filmmakers since its earliest days. The studios hired these directors to make films of all types and genres, ranging from frivolous comedies to “problem pictures,” from “weepies” to action-adventure films. The films that have become embedded in the public imagination, however, are largely those of the émigré generation, those who migrated to the US from Europe just before World War II. It is easier to categorize these directors, as they had clear narratives of emigration, with romantic undertones of escaping an oppressive regime and looming war as refugees. They have also been largely credited with creating the film-noir style. Films such as Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944), Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944), The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang, 1945), Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945), Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945) and The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946) cemented the image of the dark Hollywood films directed by Europeans in exile. Starting from the mid-to-late 1970s, a new generation of foreign filmmakers emerged in Hollywood, including Ridley and Tony Scott from the UK, Ang Lee from Taiwan, John Woo from Hong Kong, Roland Emmerich and Wolfgang Petersen from Germany, and Paul Verhoeven from the Netherlands. The cinema-going public might know that Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) Independence Day (Roland Emmerich, 1996), Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven, 1997) and Face/Off (John Woo, 1997) were directed by non-American directors, even though the directors’ nationalities were not highlighted in the marketing of the films (with the exception of the campaigns in the directors’ respective home countries). It would be very unlikely, however, for anyone in the audience to be aware that the following films were their directors’ Hollywood debuts: the seventh installment of the series Star Trek: Generations (David Carson, 1994), the martial-arts genre movie Double Team (Hark Tsui, 1997), the Oscar-nominated racial conflict drama Monster’s Ball (Marc Forster, 2001), and the comedy hit Legally Blonde (Robert Luketic, 2001) (with directors from the UK, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Australia, respectively). Even Superman, which was made by an American, came very close to having a British director. The film was initially to be shot in Italy by Guy Hamilton, renowned for his James Bond films. However, when production was moved to the UK – the
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director’s native country – Hamilton had to step down for tax reasons. Globally dispersed shooting locations, James Bond, and tax are all themes that re-emerge in this book. In the following chapters, I examine Hollywood as a transnational industry that has attracted talent from around the world throughout its history. I discuss Hollywood’s relationship with other regional and national filmmaking centers, and throughout the case studies, I consider the various strategies employed by Hollywood (and foreign directors) to make transnational cooperation possible. I argue that rather than being a specific geographic location, Hollywood functions as a network of production, distribution and exhibition across the world, spreading through local involvement. This shift from a centralized base to a global network is immensely significant, and has even changed the political economy of the film industry (Elmer and Gasher 2005). I analyze some of the notions taken for granted in discussions of Hollywood, and thereby provide a clearer understanding of the workings of this globally dominant cinema at the end of the twentieth century.
Some Basic Questions This study started out as an attempt to position the global filmmakers of more recent decades within a wider historical context of “émigré” directors in Hollywood. Then, however, I took the inquiry a step further: what does this flow of international talent tell us about cinema in a globalized world, particularly vis-à-vis the positions of Hollywood and other cinemas, as well as about the role played by the transnational corporations that now own and manage Hollywood? This is the “what” that the book is aiming to cover. In order to define the boundaries of the research more clearly, let us continue with some other basic questions, and consider the who, the where, and the when. The answer to the “who” question provides us with our primary subjects of research: a rather large group of filmmakers who are not American-born and who work in Hollywood. My use of the words “global” or “international” directors instead of “émigré” is deliberate.11 The term “émigré director” has come to be firmly associated with the earlier generation of filmmakers who emigrated to the US in the 1930s and the early 1940s, mostly for political reasons. Emigration connotes an act of relocating for good, leaving the old country behind, but many of the directors in the post-1975 era have been more flexible in terms of working across and moving between countries. To
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some extent, this was also the case with the earlier generations, especially in the 1920s, something that is often not mentioned. The categorization here is one that essentially hinges on the question of nationality and citizenship. The directors in question hold the nationality of a country other than the US; only some of them have become US citizens or hold dual citizenship.12 “Alien of extraordinary ability” is the official term used by the US Immigration Services for an individual “who possesses extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics, or who has a demonstrated record of extraordinary achievement in the motion picture or television industry and has been recognized nationally or internationally for those achievements.”13 However, whether these directors really are “aliens” in terms of being foreign to the Hollywood style of filmmaking is an entirely different issue. They are initially identified by their nationality as “foreign,” but this foreignness does not go beyond a basic preliminary identification. “Native” and “foreign” are no longer clear categorizations when it comes to studying Hollywood, meaning that “global” is the key adjective in my discussion. Hollywood is no longer a national cinema – it is debatable whether it ever was – and notions of emigration no longer apply to “foreign” talent in Hollywood. If Hollywood is indeed a global and transnational cinema, speaking of “foreign” talent becomes inconsequential, since Hollywood cannot be construed as the total other, and since “so much of any nation’s film culture is implicitly ‘Hollywood,’”14 as Higson proposed. The use of the term “foreign” in this book is strictly limited to citizenship, but even then, this classification is problematic. Recent debates in citizenship have centered on alternative notions of belonging. The internationalization of capital has led to a process of denationalization, especially in large cities where capital is concentrated. While my main concern here is the denationalized creative class, there are other forms of transnational identities, as posited by Linda Bosniak, such as EU citizenship, citizenship within transnational civil societies, transnational communities constituted through transborder migration and a global sense of solidarity through humanitarian concerns.15 Aihwa Ong suggests the term “flexible citizenship” as a way to theorize contemporary practices amongst the migrating Chinese diaspora of various classes. This flexible notion of citizenship refers “to the cultural logics of capitalist accumulation, travel, and displacement that induce subjects to respond fluidly and opportunistically to changing political-economic conditions.”16 In a world where the nation-state is no longer fixed and unchanging, passports become “less and less attestations of citizenship, let alone of loyalty to a protective nation-state than of claims to participation in labor markets.”17
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In this sense, the dual citizenship of someone like the former president of the Directors Guild of America (DGA), Michael Apted (British/American), is less a statement on where a person’s loyalties lie and more a matter of convenience. To return to issues of classification for the purposes of this book, what should one then make of Christopher Nolan, for instance, who was born in England but is half American? Or James Cameron, who arrived in the US from Canada with his parents at the age of 17? I have opted to include the former and leave out the latter: Nolan’s formative years were spent in the UK, and Cameron was still a minor when he moved. Some cases are very straightforward, such as those where the filmmaker gains experience and fame in his home country, then transfers to Hollywood. The well-known examples cited above, such as Paul Verhoeven, John Woo and Roland Emmerich, belong to this category. But not every director that I have included had an established pre-Hollywood film career. Some, like Alan Parker or Adrian Lyne, were known in the industry as advertising (and not film) directors before directing their first features for a major studio.18 Sam Mendes first made his name as a theater director and then made his film debut with American Beauty, a Dreamworks SKG release and an Academy Award winner. I have thus had to evaluate each case individually, and I have strived to keep my selection consistent. I hope I have done justice to all parties, considering the substantial scope of the study. Although people from all parts of the film industry have worked for Hollywood, I focus on directors alone. In the early days of Hollywood, directors, apart from a few exceptions, tended to be seen as technicians who would fulfill the vision of the studio and the producer. With the collapse of the classical studio system, producers had to become more involved in deal-making and retreat from the actual production process, while directors filled the void. Although the director is now largely regarded as the leading creative force behind a project, his or her control over production is fragile. In a Hollywood studio project, there are so many steps leading up to an actual production that many, if not most, of the creative choices have already been made before the director comes on board and the production process begins.19 The directors who are imported by Hollywood studios are often unfamiliar faces to audiences outside their own countries and regions. Most directors’ nationalities are never brought into the spotlight, especially in cases of directors from other English-speaking countries. The more fame a director accrues, the likelier it becomes that his national background is addressed, as can be seen in the cases of Ridley Scott or Christopher Nolan. The obvious exception is when the films are marketed in their director’s
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native country (see chapter five for a discussion of how Hollywood remakes are marketed in their original countries). The handful of directors who were famous before they started working for Hollywood, like Woo, Emmerich, or Verhoeven, are the names everyone remembers, overshadowing dozens of other, lesser-known directors. Using directors as case studies provides historical consistency and a framework. At the same time, examining the personal networks of the directors draws attention to the importance of other players, such as producers, executives and agents. One needs to acknowledge the director as the person responsible for a film’s creative vision, without losing sight of all the other factors that go into a Hollywood production. These other factors, primarily the studios’ demands, are often seen as limiting the director’s artistic freedom,20 but as Janet Wasko also points out, the primary driving force and guiding principle of the industry is profit, not art (2011). The next question, the “where?” is no less problematic. The one-word answer is “Hollywood,” but the seemingly simple follow-up question, “where is Hollywood?,” is one that demands further attention. The next chapter is dedicated to what Hollywood entails and how it functions, and even where it is. Tom O’Regan pointed out that Hollywood is “[s]imultaneously, […] a national film industry; an international film financing, production and distribution facility; and a name for globally popular English-language cinema.”21 One should start by making a distinction between Hollywood as a location and Hollywood as an industry. While I frequently refer to “arriving in Hollywood,” in this context this is more of a figure of speech, as the ubiquitous presence of “Hollywood the industry” makes a physical arrival in the actual location gratuitous. For now, let me clarify what is meant by “working in Hollywood” in this book. When the American motion picture industry moved from the East Coast to the West Coast in the 1910s, several film studios were constructed in this neighborhood of Los Angeles. By the mid-1920s, “Hollywood” and the “American film industry” had become synonymous. “Studios” or “majors” are also terms that are frequently used in the same sense as Hollywood, as we have seen in previous pages. “Studio” in its most simple sense means a place where motion pictures are made; and while there is a large number of sound studios in and around Hollywood (and the Greater Los Angeles area), this term has been closely associated with the major companies that have been producing the films with the high production values that have come to be expected of Hollywood. As Ben Goldsmith and Tom O’Regan argue in their study of contemporary international studios, a “Hollywood studio” now refers not “to the physical plant but to the ‘command and control’
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distribution and financing operations of the Hollywood majors.”22 These major studios form the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA), the leading trade organization established in 1922.23 While mergers and acquisitions frequently reshape the proprietary landscape, throughout the period of research the members were the Walt Disney Company, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc., Paramount Pictures Corporation, 20th Century Fox Film Corp., Universal Studios, Inc., Warner Bros. (WB) and MetroGoldwyn-Mayer Inc. (MGM).24 These corporations form the first tier of Hollywood, followed by indie subsidiaries and independents. What I refer to as “working in Hollywood” means making a film that is being produced by a company from any of these three tiers. While most global directors work for the majors or their subsidiaries, there have been cases of smaller independent films being directed by a global filmmaker. Nonetheless, even these smaller films are distributed worldwide by the distribution arms of Hollywood studios, making the reach of the majors inescapable. The answer to “when?” emerged out of the initial phases of my research on the directors. In order to gain a more precise understanding of exactly who global filmmakers are, my initial step was to compile an inventory of all non-American directors working for Hollywood studios, as well as of the films they had made. This was followed by quantitative analyses on these inventories in terms of the directors’ national and professional backgrounds and the year of their first Hollywood features. My aim was to find out how many global directors had made their Hollywood debuts and how many films they made in any given year, analyzed further by filmmakers’ origins. This analysis revealed that a divide had opened up in the second half of the 1970s. Several British directors had already started working for Hollywood studios in the second half of the 1960s (e.g. Tony Richardson, John Boorman and John Schlesinger), along with Czech directors like Miloš Forman and Ivan Passer, who released their first Hollywood pictures in 1971. But the numbers show a significant increase towards the end of the 1970s, and climb even higher in the 1980s.25 This book therefore concentrates on the period starting in the mid-1970s, which overlaps with the increasing globalization of the world economy, and with what scholars such as Thomas Schatz (1983, 1993, 2008, 2012) have termed the “New Hollywood.” In New Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction, Geoff King (2002) defines what is new in this era at various levels. Within the industrial context, this is the postFordist Hollywood of giant media conglomerates; and in terms of style, it is the post-classical Hollywood of the MTV generation. Immediately after World War II, the seemingly invincible oligopoly of the Hollywood studios that had existed since the 1920s faced a number of
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challenges. The labor strike of 1945, decline in the box-office from overseas markets, and even more crucially, the “Paramount decision” by the US Supreme Court in 1948, which demanded that the vertical control exercised by the studios over rights of production, distribution and exhibition be dismantled, were all responsible for the studios’ declining profits. To deal with declining profits, studios geared themselves towards fewer productions, which led to a bigger change in the system. Filmmaking personnel were no longer on a payroll; individual projects were put together by producers and brokered through agents, which led to gradual change in the industry’s power structures. “New” waves in European cinema, led by Neorealism in Italy, and technical advancements facilitating location shoots added momentum to these changes. In the 1950s, blacklisting practices caused by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) prosecutions and the growing popularity of television left the American film industry in a difficult position. One should note that while these factors are heterogeneous, ranging from the economic to the political and the cultural, their combination entirely transformed the filmmaking landscape in Hollywood. It was only in the 1970s that the studios started to return to their glory days, due not only to the lucrative blockbusters they released, but also to acquisition activities by large media conglomerates. Although there had been “blockbusters” – namely, high-budget spectacles with great boxoffice ambitions – in earlier decades as well, “the blockbuster syndrome went into high-gear in the mid-1970s.”26 Similarly, while the takeover of individual studios by corporations had already begun in the mid-1960s, this practice became even more pronounced and globalized in the following decades.27 And although major changes occurred in the industry in the 2000s, primarily as a result of digitization, the dominance of blockbusters and conglomerates is ongoing. Nonetheless, the present analysis covers the three decades between 1975 and 2005. These decades represent a period of change, during which the studios regained their lost power and the effects of globalization were inextricably inscribed upon Hollywood. Symbolically, 2005 was the year in which YouTube was launched, almost single-handedly changing the viewing habits of the world. The period that followed was thus an era of digital conversion, and soon afterwards, of economic meltdown. Thomas Schatz argues that the balance in Hollywood between the three tiers of “major Hollywood studios, conglomerate-owned indie subsidiaries, and genuine independents operating in relative harmony”28 started to shift right around the middle of the first decade of 21st century, resulting in the collapse of the independent sector. Jordan Levin, in turn, claims that this is “the largest, most fundamental transformation in the history of the media
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since the advent of typeface, the moving image, and terrestrial broadcast transmission.”29 The post-2005 era has indeed been a very interesting period for Hollywood and foreign directors, but it is a subject that deserves to be addressed in another book. The answers to these three questions define the boundaries of my study. But let me address the one remaining question, namely: “why?” Why is the phenomenon of foreign directors such an inextricable part of Hollywood’s own narrative? The global flow of talent towards Hollywood has always had rather clear motives. Hollywood offers more opportunities, financially and technologically. This means not only higher fees, but also larger production and marketing budgets.30 Even in Germany, where there is an established film (or at least television) industry, directors complain about the low pay they receive in their home country.31 In addition, Hollywood studios can provide filmmakers with more advanced technologies, bankable stars, and the opportunity to reach much larger audiences through their globally supplied and locally established distribution networks. In return, the directors are expected to play the game by the rules and to make films that make a profit. Correspondingly, Hollywood wants and needs global talent for a number of reasons. Clearly, skilled creative labor, of whatever nationality, is desirable for producing high-quality output in entertainment industries. Hollywood has had another incentive to import talent, and that has been to weaken the various local film industries that might pose a threat, a practice dating back to the 1920s with the German and Swedish industries. An added advantage of employing global directors is to service the local markets of the filmmakers’ native countries. In the late 1920s, this was achieved through employing directors such as William Dieterle and Günther von Fritsch to film German-language versions of Hollywood pictures, aimed at the German market. In more recent decades, studios’ interest in East Asian source materials and filmmaking personnel (to be explored in chapter five) can be explained in terms of the substantial Japanese market and potentially enormous Chinese market.
Documenting “Foreigners” In terms of research into foreign filmmakers in Hollywood, the 1940s émigré generation dominates the field. Most of the literature on foreign directors in Hollywood focuses on the intense emigration during the Nazi regime and World War II, starting with John Baxter’s The Hollywood Exiles (1976) and ending with Gerd Gemünden’s Continental Strangers: German Exile
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Cinema, 1933-1951 (2014).32 A few scholars have looked at earlier periods, when economics was a more influential factor than politics, or considered later decades.33 This tendency has also determined the Eurocentric territorial scope of the literature, as until the 1980s, Europe was the sole region seen as a source for foreign talent. Only after 2000 did studies on filmmakers from Asia (Chung 2000, Tesson et al. 2001, Tezuka 2012) begin to appear.34 Research focusing on more recent flows from individual countries is exemplified by Peter Krämer’s (2002a, 2002b) and Christine Haase’s (2007) work on German directors, Ian Scott’s history of lesser-known British émigrés (2010), Christian Viviani’s edited volume on French connections in Hollywood (2007), Michaela Boland and Michael Bodey’s survey of Australian talent (2004), or Kenneth Chan’s account of the Chinese presence in transnational cinemas (2009).35 Several studies stand out in their approaches to theorize the flow towards Hollywood. Graham Petrie’s Hollywood Destinies (2002) looks at the earliest period of emigration (1922-1931), focusing mostly on German and Scandinavian directors. In his discussion of the reception of foreign films in the US in the 1920s, Petrie demonstrates how the perception of “foreign” changed across the decade, colored by the anti-immigration movements, and how the popular mood turned against the qualities that made the European directors attractive for the studios. He argues that this was the decade that defined the “self-evident and universally valid” standards of American entertainment.36 “American” films are expected to display “the truly ‘American’ qualities of wholesome, optimistic, popular entertainment instead of dabbling in the ‘morbid,’ ‘depressing,’ ‘ugly’ side of life favored by too many of the European imports.”37 Even with the later generations, he contends, the only directors to “survive” were those who discarded “the foreignness that made them interesting in the first place” and adapted “to the imperatives of the Hollywood machine.”38 Pitting the “artsy”39 European style against the entertainment-minded mainstream American film, Petrie reasserts the binary oppositions that have traditionally separated these two cinemas and that have been often challenged since. In line with this classical discourse, Petrie also reiterates the idea that the only indication of “success” for a migrating filmmaker is to remain in Hollywood and continue work there. These strict binaries between American/Hollywood and European films are lampooned by Robert Altman’s brilliant satire on Hollywood, The Player (1992). Studio executive Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) finds himself in a situation where he has to listen to a pitch for an “important” film. The director (Richard E. Grant) gives the pitch, and ends it with: “If I’m perfectly honest, this isn’t even an American film. … There are no stars. No pat happy
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endings, no Schwarzenegger, no stickups ... No terrorists. This is a tough story, a tragedy in which an innocent woman dies.” The director, of course, is British. And the “important” film, of course, is turned into a star vehicle with a happy ending after it “tests badly with suburban audiences.” James Morrison approaches the contrast between European and American cinemas more cautiously in Passport to Hollywood (1998), in which he examines European directors in Hollywood (and a few American-born filmmakers in Europe) from the silent period until the 1970s. Morrison’s approach is a textual analysis of a selection of films, problematizing the perceived binary relationship between modernism and mass culture, associated with Europe and the US, respectively. Reflecting Petrie’s approach, the directors he has chosen “were imported to the Hollywood system with the preexistent ‘passport’ of a style, a reputation, a pedigree,”40 which in many cases clashed with what they were expected to create for the studios. Consequently, Morrison argues that this set of films can be thought of as “manifestations of a particular style of subculture within the larger institutional system,” where the subculture is the network of (mostly German) émigrés in Hollywood throughout the 1930s and the 1940s.41 According to Morrison, who uses the term “émigré” as well as “exile,” Europeans in Hollywood found “themselves defined as ‘alien’ in Hollywood culture and in turn produce[d] representations often driven to define […] American culture itself as ‘other.’”42 In the New Hollywood era, however, it is no longer possible to distinctly categorize films by foreign directors as having a different style than that of Hollywood. Furthermore, hardly any of the filmmakers in this book are defined as a part of the “European art-cinema,” either by themselves or by others. Morrison himself notes that the situation may have changed, especially with the influx of directors from areas other than Europe. 43 Thomas Elsaesser (1999) investigates why so many talented European f ilmmakers have ended up in Hollywood, starting from the very early days of cinema. Elsaesser brings trade and competition into the picture; a move that is essential for an analysis of migration flows in recent eras, as political motives have been practically non-existent since the time of the émigré Czech directors of the 1970s. Even countries where the state imposes limitations on filmmakers, such as China and Iran, have not been the source of “emigration” in a political sense. Elsaesser has also put forward an “emulation/emigration” model (2005), where he proposes that certain European (particularly German) directors such as Roland Emmerich and Wolfgang Petersen have adopted a Hollywood-like style, which enables them to be noticed by the studios. He argues that “these directors and
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directors of photography … practiced a deliberate and open emulation of Hollywood: their dream was to make films that either found a large popular audience or pleased an American distributor, in order then to set off and emigrate to New York and Los Angeles.”44 Emmerich himself is clear about his inspiration: “For me German movies were boring and dull, and everything that came from the new Hollywood was cool.”45 The tendency to mimic Hollywood’s style goes as far back as the early days of its dominance. Kristin Thompson points out that Lubitsch often declared that “he was strongly influenced by Hollywood films,”46 and that the influence of these films in Germany during the first half of the 1920s is often underestimated, even disregarded. Similarly, taking advantage of the German tour that Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were on, Murnau hired Pickford’s cameraman, Charles Rosher, as an advisor for his next film to be shot in Germany, Faust (1926). 47 Charles Rosher recalled that Murnau would constantly ask questions about how things were done in Hollywood; as a result, Murnau was already familiar with the Hollywood style when he was offered a contract by William Fox in 1926. 48 Nearly everything that is written on these filmmakers continues to use the migration discourse, even though the notion of emigrating is one of “crushing, definitive finality,” connoting “leaving everything behind.”49 In the globalized world and within global Hollywood, the “migration” to Hollywood is not a final one, nor does it even always require a physical relocation. Contemporary directors who have worked in Hollywood can and do return to their home countries to make other films. This has been the case for Alejandro Amenábar, Paul Verhoeven, and a number of Hong Kong directors such as Ringo Lam, Stanley Tong and Hark Tsui. Even John Woo, the most renowned of the Asian directors, returned to China.50 In fact, many do not even have to move to the US, as Hollywood has gone global; movies are now shot all around the world. In the following chapters, I look at Hollywood as a global site of production as well as a magnet for foreign talent throughout its history.
Structure of the Book This book consists of two parts, each with three chapters. In the first three chapters, various aspects of Hollywood are explored through analyses of theoretical approaches and historical background. Hollywood has been defined in different ways over the years. In the first chapter, I start by focusing on how we can understand Hollywood in the blockbuster era,
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surveying accounts of the transnationalization of the industry and its branding strategies. This is followed by what is admittedly a partial overview of globalization theories in chapter two, relating in particular to the position of labor, and an analysis of how different levels of labor networks in Hollywood interact with the studios and with one another. Chapter three shifts the focus to directors, presenting a brief history of foreign directorial talent in Hollywood, and a categorization of regional and national filmmaking centers across the world with respect to their relationships vis-à-vis Hollywood. The second part comprises three case studies, in which I examine the strategies employed by Hollywood and global directors to facilitate collaboration. The case studies are not of specific directors, but of groupings that consist of different styles and production conditions, representing significant networks visible in blockbuster-era Hollywood. For global directors, the path to Hollywood that we most commonly encounter seems to be to achieve box-office success or a significant reputation in one’s own country or region or on the global festival circuit, possibly leading to an Oscar nomination, something that often translates into a contract with a major studio.51 But there are other ways, as can be seen in the case studies. Many of the global directors have their first experience of Hollywood through co-productions; in particular, franchises such as the Harry Potter or Batman series are often shot outside the US and employ global directors. As pioneers of both co-production and franchise practices, the James Bond films serve as the first case study. “Financed by an American major partly with British film subsidy funds,” the films are “quintessential examples of products tailored for the international market.”52 As demonstrated again and again, studios are in search of new, talented directors who have proven themselves to some extent, or who have potential that is deemed worthy of investment. One way of proving this potential is by already having a script, in order to “have a full hand” and “something to sell,”53 or an already successful film that can be remade with Hollywood’s budget and conventions. Japanese producer Takashige Ichise observes, “once I make it and once they see it they understand what I’m talking about.”54 Chapter five thus examines several sets of Hollywood remakes directed by the same filmmaker as the original. Another avenue for directors since the mid-1970s has been making advertisements and music videos. In addition to being a career path in its own right, directing commercials and music videos has become a way of crossing over to feature filmmaking. The last case study explores directors with these backgrounds, focusing on the production company Ridley Scott
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Associates (RSA) and the talent that it has fostered. RSA uses the various media it creates, such as commercials, music videos, and television series, to provide a “training ground”55 for the young directors it employs, playing a significant role in global production networks. This book is a study of Hollywood as a global phenomenon. The careers of foreign directors are examined in order to gain a better understanding of this ubiquitous and complex cinema on which we all seem to be experts. Using the filmmakers’ careers as a tool also allows us to (re)conceptualize the international flow of directors towards (and, on occasion, away from) Hollywood. The analyses in the following chapters expose the multifaceted nature of contemporary talent flows. Tim Bergfelder has argued that “the influence of exile and immigration have been readily acknowledged as essential to the multicultural composition of Hollywood.”56 While this is a significant acknowledgment, what happens when we go beyond the exile and immigration discourses and explore this phenomenon at the very end of the twentieth century? “Global directors” in the corporate era can only be viewed through the lens of transnational networks, of which Hollywood studios have become a part. Hollywood has always been international in terms of its production, and certainly its reception. Nevertheless, its current transnationality extends to ownership and production, as well as to distribution, exhibition, and reception.
1.
Defining Hollywood
Over forty years ago, John Ford said: “Hollywood is a place you can’t geographically define. We don’t really know where it is.”1 Another filmmaker, Miloš Forman, remarked: “It’s a mistake to regard Hollywood as one entity. Hollywood doesn’t exist – hundreds of Hollywoods exist, and behind every door you’ll find a different Hollywood.”2 If it was difficult to def ine Hollywood in the times of Ford or Forman, it became even more challenging in the final decades of twentieth century, when media industries underwent major changes, particularly in terms of ownership and organization. Conglomerates that specialize in multiple fields are in competition with each other, but as David Hesmondhalgh notes, they are also “connected in complex webs of alliance, partnership and joint venture.”3 Hesmondhalgh highlights the globalization of cultural industries, pointing at the increased circulation of cultural products across national borders, and increasing borrowing and adaptation of images, sounds, and narratives across cultures. In this chapter I show how Hollywood has been approached by scholars, and how the latter have emphasized different aspects of the industry in the last quarter of the 20th century. These include questions of location, globalization, transnationalization, and branding, within the specific context of Hollywood.
“New” Hollywood The period now called “New” Hollywood, generally accepted to have started in the mid-1970s, has been the subject of a number of studies in recent decades, starting almost simultaneously with the era itself. In 1975, Thomas Elsaesser referred to the New Hollywood of the 1960s as a cinema that was self-conscious of its heritage and inspired by European directors, but this style of filmmaking was only the initial phase of New Hollywood. Geoff King provides two “versions” of the term (2002): “Hollywood Renaissance” and “Blockbuster and Corporate Hollywood.”4 New Hollywood in this latter sense was initially theorized by Thomas Schatz, who identified the rise of the blockbuster as “the key to Hollywood’s survival and the one abiding aspect of its postwar transformation.”5 Following Schatz, Murray Smith called New Hollywood a “reorientation and restabilization of the f ilm industry” that was achieved after 1975, “a return to genre filmmaking,” but with “greater self-consciousness, as well as supercharged by new special
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effects, saturation booking, engorged production budgets and, occasionally, even larger advertising budgets.”6 In the ongoing debates about Hollywood’s industrial structures, two divergent approaches emerge. One is to highlight the specificities of Hollywood as location, an approach that is particularly embraced by scholars of economic geography. They see Hollywood as a typical example of a cluster, defined as “[a] geographically bounded concentration of similar, related or complementary businesses with active channels for business transactions, communication and dialogue that share specialized infrastructure, labor markets, and services and that face common opportunities and threats.”7 Michael Porter has conducted extensive research on various local industries that show how clustering works as an effective model of industrialization (2011). While it may seem like a contradiction to discuss the global nature of Hollywood alongside its local concentration, Porter argues that since clustering causes constant interaction and therefore increased innovation among firms, companies can make more productive use of their inputs. Companies can “mitigate many input-cost disadvantages through global sourcing,”8 yet maintain their headquarters within a cluster. Similarly, Michael Storper and Susan Christopherson have analyzed Hollywood in terms of an agglomeration.9 They have developed a model using “flexible specialization” theory (1987, Christopherson and Storper 1989), arguing that Hollywood has successfully made the transition from the mass production system of the studio era to a system of flexible specialization in New Hollywood. This change is analogous to the transition made in other industries from the Fordist to the post-Fordist mode of production. Such industries are defined by their ability to produce a wide range of products for differentiated markets and by their more flexible division of labor than that in the Fordist system; in these types of systems, “production is organized around the interactions of a network of small firms.”10 They argue that after the studio era, Hollywood survived by turning towards flexible specialization. Following the 1948 “Paramount decision” by the US Supreme Court, demanding that the vertical control exercised by the studios over rights of production, distribution, and exhibition be dismantled, all major studios were required to divest themselves of their exhibition arms, which were their profit centers. By the 1970s, many films in Hollywood were being made by independent production companies, which subcontracted work to smaller, specialized firms – even though the studios still dominated financing and distribution. Since the film industry is largely project-based and “consists of short-term contracts, individual workers experience considerable variation in and uncertainty about the
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amount of work they are offered.” This uncertainty is a major factor in the process of agglomeration, since “workers offset the instability of short-term contractual work by remaining close to the largest pool of employment opportunities in the industry.”11 Similarly, economist Tyler Cowen argues that because of the dynamic nature of film projects, studios “need to assemble a large number of skilled employees on very short notice,” which is why they would “‘fish’ for talent in a common, clustered pool.”12 Storper and Christopherson contend that the process of agglomeration continued throughout the 1970s and the 1980s, even though the actual filming process moved largely outside Southern California.13 Elsewhere, Storper has conceded that the major studios, and not the smaller indepen dent companies, are still dominant in the industry (1989). He argues that through flexible specialization and the increase in intermediary firms, the industry’s degree of centralization is shown largely in distribution activity, and not so much in production.14 Many recent volumes about New Hollywood focus on the industry, either partially or in some cases completely, and often employ approaches from political economy.15 Asu Aksoy and Kevin Robins argue that it is impossible to see Hollywood as a local industry in an age when Hollywood is run by global entertainment mega-companies (1992). They contend that the giant media conglomerates controlling Hollywood can structure the audiences’ choices and produce films according to their own needs, and that this level of synergy and control over ancillary markets is the key to understanding how Hollywood functions. Aksoy and Robins also note that the film industry cannot and should not be seen as just any industry, and that the particular logics of cultural industries must not be overlooked. In Hollywood in the Information Age, Janet Wasko identifies New Hollywood in terms of the changing technologies employed in the entertainment and information industries (1994). These changes coincided with the conglomeration of media companies, simultaneously strengthening an existing trend towards mergers and acquisitions. Wasko defines Hollywood as “a set of corporations” that lie “at the heart of the entertainment business,” not only in the US, but in much of the world; and points out that these corporations are transnational conglomerations that are involved in more than just filmmaking activities. Wasko also suggests that “technological developments, commercial motivations, and globalization trends” have turned Hollywood into “one of the focal points of cultural industries.”16 Tino Balio similarly argues that with the growing worldwide demand for entertainment, Hollywood entered its own age of globalization, ushered in by multiple international mergers (1998). According to Balio, this increase in
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demand is a result of multiple factors, such as “economic growth in Western Europe, the Pacific Rim, and Latin America, the end of the Cold War, the commercialization of state broadcasting systems, and the development of new distribution technologies.”17 One of the most influential works on the changes that occurred in Hollywood during the era of blockbusters and globalization focuses on the international division of labor as the site of Hollywood’s globalization. In Global Hollywood 2, Toby Miller et al. argue that Hollywood’s “real” location lies in its “division of labor,” and that the dispersal of various stages of production and post-production throughout the world is not only how Hollywood is structured, but it is also the source of its continuing global domination.18 Their research is largely based on a dispersed model of labor, in terms of both above-the-line and below-the-line,19 as a result of the dispersal of production as well as post-production locations. They see Hollywood’s globality more in terms of economic relations, where Hollywood “sells its wares in every nation, through a global system of copyright, promotion and distribution that uses the NICL (New International Division of Cultural Labor) to minimize cost and maximize revenue.”20 In Hollyworld, Aida Hozic approaches the globalization of Hollywood from a political scientist’s perspective. She examines the causes of industrial change in Hollywood, and traces these changes through the conflicts between manufacturers (producers) and merchants (distributors and exhibitors) (2001). She argues that Hollywood’s domination relies largely on owning the channels of distribution, and identifies three phases in Hollywood’s history: Hollywood in the studio, on location, and in cyberspace. This categorization, although made on the basis of somewhat different criteria, corresponds to other histories of Hollywood: the studio era dominated the industry from the 1910s until the Paramount decree in 1948, followed by a slump in the 1950s and the 1960s, and ending with New Hollywood. In her periodization, Hollywood began to lose its geographical importance in the 1960s, when studios’ productions became dispersed across the globe. Hozic argues that the dispersal of “manufacturers” across the world led to the rise of “merchants” in Hollywood, resulting in a strong network of not only distributors and exhibitors, but also agents and independent producers, ushering in an era of “package” deals. Along with this dispersal of production, another aspect of globalization in Hollywood was the acquisition of film studios by international corporations. The transnationalization of ownership in Hollywood throughout the 1980s was extensively reported in trade papers and has been documented by scholars.21
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The Transnationalization of Hollywood In his essay “Is Hollywood America? The Trans-Nationalization of the American Film Industry,” Frederick Wasser claims that Hollywood studios “ceased to be institutions of national culture” around the mid-1970s.22 European producers such as Dino DeLaurentiis, Arnon Milchan and Mario Kassar produced films in Hollywood largely financed by European money. These were “‘Hollywood’ pictures independent of American companies and of American financing”.23 As these were “event” films – blockbusters with enormous budgets – they needed to do well not only in the US market, but also globally. Wasser calls this the “transnationalization” of Hollywood, distinguishing it from an “international flow.” As Wasser argues, “[t]ransnationalization is the first order effect of the international flow on the production, supply and consumption of the messages.”24 The more corporate wave of transnationalization came a little later. The trend was started when News Corporation, owned by Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch, purchased 20th Century Fox in 1985.25 MCA, the parent company of Universal Studios, was purchased by the Japanese Matsushita in 1990, and then in 1995 by the Canadian Seagram, which was in turn purchased in 2000 by the French Vivendi. In 2004, following corporate scandals involving the Vivendi CEO Jean-Marie Messier, the company’s film studios, theme parks, and cable TV channels merged with General Electric’s NBC to form NBC Universal, which in 2011 was purchased by Comcast Corporation, the largest broadcasting and cable company in the world by revenue. Japanese multinational giant Sony acquired Columbia Pictures Entertainment, including two studios (Columbia Pictures and TriStar Pictures), home video distribution, a theater chain and an extensive film library in 1989. The last stand-alone studio was MGM, which was purchased by Sony in the summer of 2005. Warner Bros. is a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., whose chairman stated in 2000: “We do not want to be viewed as an American company. We think globally.”26 On a smaller scale, during the second half of the 1990s, Korean business conglomerates (chaebols) such as Samsung, Daewoo and SK invested in independent production companies based in Hollywood in return for exclusive distribution rights in Korea (Shim 2002). Similarly, there is a long history of German investment in Hollywood films (Krämer 2008). In more recent years, trade papers have frequently reported intentions and limited attempts on the part of Chinese and Indian companies to invest in Hollywood studios. Although discussions in this book revolve mostly around the transnational nature of Hollywood production, we also need to take the importance
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of distribution networks into consideration. Distribution of Hollywood productions is often done through the studios themselves or their subsidiaries. Hollywood’s transnational nature and its interest in overseas markets is demonstrated by the leading global distribution company United Pictures International (UIP). UIP is jointly owned by Paramount and Universal; it is based in London, with representation in over 40 countries. Going back to Hozic’s claim that since the end of the classical studio era, power has shifted from the manufacturers (producers) to the merchants (distributors),27 we should acknowledge the vital position of these distribution networks. They are critical for maintaining the studios’ power, as Aksoy and Robins also argue (1992), and have been analyzed closely in recent decades.28 Michael Curtin describes the increasingly complex media environments of this period in terms of “transnational and transmedia alliances.”29 He suggests the term “media capitals” in a discussion of certain cities that “have become centers for the finance, production, and distribution of television programs,”30 and although he largely focuses on television production, he does question the necessity of Hollywood as “anything other than a meeting point for industry personnel, as a place to do the necessary facework to get a production online.”31 But as transnational flows surge, even the facework can be delegated to other actors such as agents; the next chapter returns to the agents as part of the labor experience. “Transnational” has entered the vocabulary of film studies not only in relation to the corporatization of media. Initial definitions of transnational cinema were often limited to “the films of diasporic subjects living in cosmopolitan First World cities,”32 but co-productions and crossovers between film industries are termed transnational throughout the literature as well (Baer and Long 2004, Lo 2001). Despite its initial connotations, the term “transnational cinema” is also, if not more suitably, applicable to Hollywood. In their pioneering volume on the topic, Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden define the transnational as “the global forces that link people or institutions across nations” and assert that the term comprises “globalization – in cinematic terms, Hollywood’s domination of world film markets.”33 The authors draw attention to the role of the transnational as a category in recognizing the hybrid nature of many of New Hollywood’s products, especially in terms of style. One emblematic example, of course, is the influence of Asian martial arts films on Quentin Tarantino’s work. But one needs to add that this influence went further than style. For his Kill Bill films, Tarantino employed the legendary Chinese fight choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping, as well as the renowned Chinese martial artist/actor Gordon Liu, and realized a large portion of the production in China (Klein 2004).34
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Revisiting his conceptualization of national cinema, Andrew Higson points out that the nature of cinema itself is transnational, both in terms of production and reception. Basing his examples largely on the British case, Higson reminds us that “specific nation-states are rarely autonomous cultural industries and the film business has long operated on a regional, national and transnational basis.”35 He also brings filmmakers into question as itinerant figures in larger networks. To exemplify this, Higson refers to two Hollywood productions from the 1990s with British directors: Evita (Alan Parker, 1996) and The English Patient (Anthony Minghella, 1996), whose identities can “be called nothing but transnational.”36 Transnationalization occurs at the personal as well as the corporate level. As a result of processes of conglomeration and transnationalization, all major studios have become part of greater multinational companies. And while some of the studios are still located in Southern California, others are dispersed around the globe, and corporate headquarters are frequently to be found in New York rather than in Los Angeles. At the turn of the millennium, News Corporation (then owner of 20th Century Fox) was based in New York, with studios in Los Angeles, Mexico, and Australia. Viacom (owner of Paramount Pictures and, by 2005, DreamWorks SKG) and Time Warner (owner of Warner Bros.) both had their headquarters in New York as well, as did NBC Universal, owned by General Electric. Sony Pictures Entertainment’s parent company, Sony was based in Tokyo. National executive director and chief executive of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), Robert Pisano, complained: “When Lew Wasserman was head of Universal/MCA, he was here in Los Angeles. Today, the key decision maker sits in Paris.”37
Is Hollywood American? Let us phrase Wasser’s question, “Is Hollywood America?,” slightly differently: is Hollywood American? Taking into account all the developments described in the previous pages, it is not, and has not been since at least the mid-1970s. Although the terms “Hollywood” and “American film industry” are still used interchangeably today, Hollywood was largely de-Americanized after the mid-1970s on multiple levels. While accounts of de-Americanization are based mainly on production, distribution, and consumption patterns, it has permeated the style and language of Hollywood filmmaking as well. In addition to corporate structure, production and distribution, the actual texts produced have also been seen as “not American.” As a result , some praise Hollywood for having become a global
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aesthetic, attributing its “transnational appeal” to this quality (Olson 2001). On the other hand, some critics lament that Hollywood films are no longer “American” in terms of their style or content. Lynn Hirschberg argues that “big studio films aren’t interested in America, preferring to depict an invented, imagined world, or one filled with easily recognizable plot devices.”38 In Hollywood and the Culture Elite: How the Movies Became American, Peter Decherney talks about the reversal of the Americanization process after the 1960s: “The rise of the blockbuster aimed at a global audience has grown in inverse proportion to the desire to address a national audience. With the integration of global film markets it has become less advantageous for Hollywood film to appear principally American.” Charlie Keil points out that the reduced trade barriers championed by the US contribute “to the elimination of any sense of national cinema at all,” and that in the meantime what constituted American cinema has undergone a similar de-nationalizing process.39 Globalization creates a suitable environment for cross-cultural exchange, which, as Tyler Cowen argues: “creates a plethora of innovative and high-quality creations in many different genres, styles, and media,”40 and allows for a much wider range of cultural products. Richard Pells for example, has argued that America has been “Europeanized” as much as Europe has been “Americanized.”41 Hollywood’s cultural cross-pollination was reflected in the films made by the earlier generations of émigrés, as well as by the American directors of the 1970s who were influenced by foreign filmmakers (Pells 2004). A.O. Scott sees the cinematic environment in the Hollywood of the 2000s, with its “remakes, homages and rip-offs,” as “a hybrid of influences from elsewhere, to an extent not seen since the great wave of émigré talent” of the 1930s and the 1940s. 42 While these approaches may be seen as overly optimistic, based on assumptions of equality between different film industries, they do nonetheless reflect trends in world cinema, from earlier and later practices. This hybridization in Hollywood’s products reflects the transnationalization of its production and distribution. As Hollywood has become less “American,” films from other parts of the world have become more “Hollywood.” Scholarship on national cinema within a global context has yielded approaches that reflect a change in the very definition of the term, not only for Hollywood as American national cinema, but also for the world’s other national cinemas. Tim Bergfelder stresses the transnational nature of current European cinema, calling for a re-conceptualization of European film studies, taking into account migration as an “integral element in the discursive construction of national cinemas in Europe itself,” as it has been in discussions of Hollywood. 43 Similarly, Jerry White argues for a more
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nuanced definition of national cinemas in the global age. He contends that “not every film in a national cinema […] will be an example of national cinema,” just like “some films may not be a part of a national cinema at all.”44 Martine Danan’s analysis of “postnational” French cinema highlights the attempts by French production companies to make transnational films emulating the Hollywood style in order to compete internationally. At the same time, she draws attention to the role of state policies in allowing alternative modes of filmmaking to coexist (2000, 2002). This coexistence is necessary for the continuation of a global, yet not homogenized film culture. To bring the discussion back to Hollywood and to its global directors, let me reiterate that Hollywood films are made across the globe, and that directors who become a part of this network perform wherever production is taking place. In an essay about the European filmmakers Verhoeven and Emmerich, Jonathan Rosenbaum asserts that blockbusters, the defining products of Hollywood, stopped being American some time between Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) and Starship Troopers. 45 He argues that while American pop cinema used to be an American product, by the 1990s, “it belong[ed] mainly to global markets and overseas investors, and because so-called ‘American cinema’ is the brand name that sells best in those markets and for those investors, that’s what it says on the label.”46 He continues that “American” package contains something with an identity that “is multinational, not national.”47
Hollywood as a Brand This notion of packaging brings us to one of the most significant and defining qualities of Hollywood today: Hollywood is a brand, and it does not matter which country it belongs to as long as it is making a profit. In No Logo, Naomi Klein argues that globalization is interconnected with the proliferation of a worldwide brand culture created by corporate hegemony (2001). The content of the term “brand” has evolved greatly over the last three decades. Whereas brands used to be confined to consumer goods and services, they now encompass various business sectors, non-governmental organizations, countries, cities, sports teams, political parties, and celebrities (Blackett 2003). In cinema, and particularly in Hollywood, stars and directors have become brands all of their own. 48 Their association with a project gives the prospective audience a sense of familiarity with the film – which can itself become a brand. In fact, even if a brand-name filmmaker is not associated with the production of a film, his or her stamp of approval
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can play a vital part in its release. Films such as Hero/Ying Xiong (Zhang Yimou, 2002), which would most likely otherwise go unnoticed, have been heavily promoted under the banner: “Quentin Tarantino presents.” Hollywood’s relationship with brands had been scrutinized by scholars mainly in terms of product placement 49 until Paul Grainge’s comprehensive Brand Hollywood was published in 2008. Grainge draws attention to the role of marketing and design within the post-Fordist system and situates the film industry in this context. He reminds us that a great part of the profits of media conglomerates are derived from the “control of royalties, licensing fees and the rights to brand names and characters”50 such as major movie franchises. Referencing Rosemary Coombe (1998), Grainge highlights the importance of corporate brands in globalized Hollywood now that actual production has shifted elsewhere: the “power of the corporation in the imaginary space of postindustriality is most evident in the exchange value of the brand name, the corporate logo, the advertising lingo – the “distinction” these signifiers assume in the market.”51 The connotations of a logo is a subject that has been taken up by other scholars, such as Thomas Elsaesser (2012) and J.D. Connor (2015). Charlie Keil contends that studio logos, while interchangeable amongst themselves, signify “quality.”52 In the studio era, studios were strongly branded and each was identified with specific genres. MGM, for instance, was known for its lavish musicals, Warner Bros. for gangster films, and Universal Pictures for horror pictures. Among the current leading Hollywood brands, Disney’s name is immediately associated with family-oriented entertainment. Miramax Films, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company, has become synonymous with foreign art house films and “independent” productions. Dimension Films, founded within Miramax and now a part of the Weinstein Company, specializes in genre films such as the Scary Movie or Spy Kids series. The Weinstein Company was established in 2005, when Harvey and Bob Weinstein left Miramax Pictures, which they had founded in 1979. Although Miramax had become a significant brand within the film world, the Weinstein name itself was sufficiently attractive to investors and thus became the name of the new company.53 But above all, Hollywood itself can be seen as a brand name, as Jonathan Rosenbaum points out. Regardless of its nationality, the package that Hollywood presents to the world is a hugely popular and clearly branded one. In this sense, it is Hollywood’s identity as a “name for globally popular English-language cinema,” as well as a certain style, that is emphasized. Chuck Brymer identifies five traits of successful brands (2003). The first is their consistency in delivering on their promise. Much of Hollywood’s
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success relies on its ability to provide its audiences with reliable and familiar products, whether this is through franchises, adaptations, or remakes. The second trait relates to brands’ superior products and processes. Despite criticisms of juvenile content, the high production values and technical competency of Hollywood films are hardly debated. These are in part achieved through expanding budgets, the size of which most other national film industries are unable to equal. This consistency is ensured through a lengthy process of greenlighting – formal approval of production finance, followed by the eff icient Hollywood mode of production, with a clear division of labor and studio management and producers keeping close control of all expenses. While Arthur DeVany and W. David Walls argue that the uncertainty of the market and the box office deems all executive control imaginary, it is nonetheless this control that ensures the level of technical and narrative quality in Hollywood films (1999). However, it is also this very process of constant controlling and playing safe that has led to Hollywood’s homogenization, contributing to the widespread criticism of the mind-numbing nature of its cinematic products. The third trait of successful brands is their distinctive positioning and customer experience. Hollywood presents its audiences with films featuring stars and special effects that other cinemas can rarely afford. For audiences around the world, the Hollywood brand signifies a certain level of technical competence, engrossing narrative and an emotional catharsis. Despite challenges to the Hollywood/European binary model, where the former signifies high budgets, attractive locales and extravagant action and the latter low budgets, local settings and quotidian daily life stories, Philippe Meers’ study of young Flemish audiences (2004) demonstrates that these separations still exist in the minds of the audiences, reaffirming the strength of Hollywood as a brand. On a more complex level, the fourth trait that a successful brand needs to possess is the alignment of internal and external commitment to the brand. Since Hollywood as a brand consists of multiple corporations, internal commitment is not provided as intentionally as in specific corporate examples. Nonetheless, since the early studio days, Hollywood as a town has promoted its glamorous inhabitants, fostering the cult of celebrity that is now promoted through media such as magazines and television shows that are owned by the same companies as the studios. Ever since stars began to matter in the 1910s, audiences have been encouraged to admire not only what they see on the screens, but also what happens – or what they are led to believe happens – behind the scenes in Hollywood. Another strategy to create commitment to the brand is the diversification
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of products. Diversification has been defined as “a means of spreading the base of a business to achieve improved growth and/or reduce overall risk that may take the form of investments that address new products, services, customer segments, or geographic markets.”54 Sylvia M. Chan-Olmsted and Byeng-Hee Chang point out that this diversification can be studied from the “geographic” or “product” perspective.55 On a macro-level, media conglomerates expand their presence across various regions, providing familiar yet globalized products in a variety of places, and they branch into related products within media, aiming to create synergy among their businesses. More specifically for Hollywood studios, companies aim to diversify the films they release through their specialty divisions. While the clichéd image of a Hollywood picture by Disney or 20th Century Fox may be of a blockbuster aimed at the male teenage population, the same companies foster subsidiaries such as Miramax and Fox Searchlight Pictures, respectively, which cater to different audiences. The last trait of a great brand is the ability to stay relevant. By incorporating changing styles and creating new stars, Hollywood always manages to remain relevant to mainstream audiences. The potentially dangerous prospect of network television in the mid-20th century turned into an opportunity when studios started producing for television as well. One can argue that while the individual independent studios did not survive the challenge of globalization at the end of the century, Hollywood as a larger entertainment industry not only survived, but also thrived, spreading globally and becoming more relevant than even before. In such a collaborative medium as film, where authorship is open for debate, multiple brands often need to join forces – whether it is the studio, the director, or the stars – all within the Hollywood brand. Who legally “owns” a film is also a matter of debate, and practices differ across countries. In France, the copyright of a film belongs to its director, as per the “droit d’auteur” copyright law (Kamina 2002). By contrast, studios hold copyright in Hollywood.56 Certain cases, like the lawsuits filed over the Lord of the Rings series, demonstrate that even actors collaborating within the network can find themselves at odds with one another.57
Denationalization and Deterritorialization Hollywood the brand may be controlled largely from Southern California, but its current mode of production is neither completely flexible and fleeting, nor squarely established around Los Angeles alone. “Clustering”
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arguments that uphold Hollywood’s position as the leader of global media production tend to undervalue the spread of Hollywood in terms of production. As Mark Lorenzen points out, the nodes, namely the clusters in the global network of film industries, are becoming less and less important in comparison with the linkages (2007). Chris Lukinbeal’s study of production centers in North America outside of Hollywood demonstrates that while Los Angeles remains the industrial core for production, “on location” shooting has increasingly spread across other states and Canada (2004). Called “runaway productions,” these are defined as productions that are developed “and are intended for initial release/exhibition or television broadcast in the US, but are actually filmed in another country.”58 Saskia Sassen’s suggestion that Manhattan as a financial hub “is a highly specialized functional or institutional realm that has become denationalized”59 also holds true for Hollywood, in that it has become a denationalized node within the deterritorialized network of media and entertainment production. The global nature of Hollywood lies in the transnational nature of its financing, production and distribution. Although many different approaches and agendas shape the various accounts of New Hollywood, it is quite evident that processes of globalization and corporatization have been the crucial determining factors in this era. In view of these changes, one can argue that “Hollywood” is no longer equated with “American”, certainly not at the level of ownership, nor even that of production. Clearly this is hyperbole, but while “Hollywood” does contain nearly all the American film industry, and the American film industry does consist for a large part of Hollywood companies, “Hollywood” is a larger concept that goes beyond the borders of the US and spreads across the globe. Herbert Schiller, one of the strong advocates of the American cultural imperialism thesis in the 1970s, proposes an approach that takes account of the changing context of global media. He contends that American national power is no longer the exclusive dominant force of world culture, and that it has been replaced by “transnational corporate culture domination.”60 Although this is an extension of Schiller’s cultural imperialism thesis, a transnational approach such as this avoids the problems that arise from a nation-based concept of cultural imperialism and addresses recent developments in global production and distribution networks. These transnational corporate networks are where Hollywood’s global talent operates. In the next chapter, I present some of the wider debates on globalization and transnationalization, also touching upon the notion of cultural imperialism. I then look at the impact of these approaches on issues of labor and class, including a discussion of labor in Hollywood.
2.
Cultural Work in a Globalizing World
In 2000, David Hesmondhalgh questioned why the study of “cultural” work had been marginalized. Since then, a significant body of work has emerged on “production studies” within cinema studies, examining the conditions of labor within different levels of production in Hollywood and elsewhere.1 Many new developments shaped labor in Hollywood over the last decades of the century, but these changes did not happen in a cultural vacuum, nor should they be addressed in one. It is therefore imperative to consider the wider discourses on globalization that frame these discussions. A ubiquitous keyword in the social sciences in the 1990s, globalization commands a vast literature. This being a book on cinema, I refrain from making an extensive review of this literature, and focus only on some of the relevant approaches. Globalization has often been, and still is, discussed with reference to three main dimensions: the political, the economic and the cultural. And in almost every single discussion of cultural globalization, Hollywood is mentioned, whether in celebratory or accusatory fashion.2 Hollywood has not only been transformed by processes of globalization, but it is also seen as one of the leading forces that made globalization possible in the first place.
Definitions, Debates, Dimensions While various definitions highlight different aspects of globalization, there is widespread consensus that it is a multifaceted process that entails greater integration across the world. David Held and Anthony McGrew point out that the material aspects of globalization, namely “flows of trade, capital and people across the globe” are facilitated by “physical (such as transport or banking systems), normative (such as trade rules) and symbolic (such as English as a lingua franca)” infrastructures. In this sense, “globalization refers to these entrenched and enduring patterns of worldwide interconnectedness.”3 This clearly includes global media networks and the language of popular cinema that is understood by audiences worldwide. Anthony Giddens stresses the dialectical nature of the process, defining globalization as “the intensification of world-wide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa.”4 Referencing shrinking spaces and more intense interaction, David Held et al. propose that we should think of globalization as a set of processes that embody “a transformation in the spatial organization of social
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relations and transactions – assessed in terms of their extensity, intensity, velocity and impact – generating transcontinental or interregional flows and networks of activity, interaction, and the exercise of power.”5 What has created controversy is not so much whether and how globalization is happening (although there are diverging opinions on these issues as well), but what it means for the world, the people who work in it, and their cultures. Theodore Levitt, among the earliest advocates of globalization in the early 1980s, spoke of “the liberating and enhancing possibilities of modernity,” and argued that the persistence of national preferences is inefficient, costly and confined.6 Similarly, taking his cue from Levitt, who claimed that “the earth is flat,”7 Thomas Friedman claims in his book, The World is Flat, that the playing field is now level (2005). He argues that individuals from anywhere in the world, and especially from India, China and the former Soviet Union, are able to globalize and become part of a global competitive workforce. This sense of globalization’s equalizing qualities is reflected in other globalists’ works as well; for instance, Tyler Cowen remarks, “individuals are liberated from the tyranny of place more than ever before.”8 According to Cowen, the cross-cultural exchange that is part of globalization’s nature will “support innovation and creative human energies.”9 While these idealizations of a global and equal workforce may hold true to some extent for a small minority (that includes above-the-line Hollywood talent), the playing field is nowhere near level for the millions of employees performing outsourced tasks across the globe.10 Offshore outsourcing by US companies increased significantly for both the service and manufacturing industries at the turn of the century. In cultural industries, this resulted in the New International Division of Cultural Labor (NICL) (Miller at al. 2005), which for the most part, especially for below-the-line workers, has resulted in precarious labor conditions. There are other concerns about globalization, in particular regarding its homogenizing effects on culture. One of the most outspoken critics of globalization, Benjamin Barber, coined the term “McWorld”, arguing that global corporate culture, rooted in consumption and profit, would lead to a culturally homogenized world (1995). Barber’s point of view is reflected by other skeptics of globalization, particularly with respect to cultural imperialism. As early as the 1970s, media scholars such as Herbert Schiller were expressing concerns about the cultural aspects of globalization (1976). Schiller used cultural imperialism to explain how large multinational corporations from developed countries were able to dominate developing countries, especially in the media sphere.11 However, the notion of cultural imperialism was also criticized on multiple levels in the following decades,
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most notably by Christine Ogan (1988) and John Tomlinson (1991). The rise of newly industrialized countries such as the Asian tigers, China, and India, and the proliferation of their cultural products, indicates that “the West”, the core countries including Japan, is no longer in a position to impose its culture on “the Rest”. The cultural component of imperialism is much harder to measure than the economic, and the reception of cultural imports should be analyzed separately. Furthermore, the creative use of cultural goods across the globe should not be overlooked. How mainstream media products are consumed and how meaning is created does not necessarily depend on producers alone.12 Moreover, as Internet usage has increased and allowed for the free circulation of media, cultural imperialism discourses have been challenged even further. The consumption and reception of Hollywood’s products are very important and extensive issues, but they are not the subject of this book. Therefore, I shall now focus on the question of the production networks in which global directors operate. In his study of the cultural dimensions of globalization, Arjun Appadurai considers a wide range of actors: “nation-states, multinationals, diasporic communities, as well as subnational groupings and movements, and even intimate groups, such as villages, neighborhoods, and families.”13 He asserts that the new global cultural economy requires a new framework that goes beyond the existing models such as “center-periphery,” “push and pull,” “surpluses and deficits,” or “consumers and producers.”14 The framework that he suggests looks at the relationships between five dimensions of global cultural flows, which he terms ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes.15 These landscapes are the “building blocks” of “imagined worlds,” “the multiple worlds that are constituted by the historically situated imaginations of persons and groups spread around the globe.” It does not take much of a stretch to see Hollywood’s global production network as another imagined world, in addition to creating imaginary worlds. Appadurai focuses on the various flows across these landscapes. Global directors can be seen as situated firmly in Appadurai’s global landscapes. They form part of the moving groups and individuals that constitute the ethnoscape, and function within the media- and ideoscapes, with support from the techno- and financescapes.
Global System Theory and the Transnational Capitalist Class Initial theorizations of globalization, especially those more concerned with the political dimensions of the phenomenon, relied on the paradigm of the
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nation-state. The four dimensions identified by Giddens, for example, are to be found at the macro-level: the world capitalist economy, the nationstate system, the world military order, and the international division of labor.16 As early as the 1970s, however, it was suggested that the state-centric model should be replaced with a transnational relations model.17 In the 1990s, scholars started to herald the “end” of the nation-state (Ohmae 1995). Scholars increasingly highlighted the central position of transnational corporations (TNCs) within these processes.18 Leslie Sklair suggested a move to global system theory, a concept based on transnational practices (2002). As the balance of power between state and non-state actors and agencies shifts, this approach transcends the boundaries of the nation-state paradigm, yet avoids positing a globalism that ignores the persistence of states. Similarly, rather than “global”, Ulf Hannerz prefers to use what he considers the more humble term “transnational”, since globalization is used “to describe just about any process or relationship that somehow crosses state boundaries,” while “many such processes and relationships obviously do not at all extend across the world.” He argues that “transnational” highlights the fact that states have been replaced by “individuals, groups, movements and business enterprises” as corporate actors.19 In this sense, the transnationality of Hollywood is connected with that of its corporations, managers, producers, filmmakers, and agents. Nonetheless, I use the term “global” to refer to the f ilmmakers discussed in this book, taking into account not only the production sites, but also the distribution net cast wide over the globe. While terms such as transnational and multinational are often used interchangeably in certain contexts, such as when qualifying and defining corporations, including the conglomerates that own Hollywood studios, I prefer to use “transnational” for a number of reasons. The first relates to the nature of the companies. TNCs have been defined by the United Nations in relation to four criteria: their size, oligarchic nature, their large number of foreign subsidiaries and branch offices, and their origins in developed countries.20 “Multinational” implies that “the economic interests of several countries are involved as equal partners,” and “international” similarly implies “equal principles based on internationalism,” both of which are rarely found in reality.21 The interest lies strictly with the corporation and its shareholders, sustaining TNCs as key players in the system. This prioritization is also telling in terms of concerns about cultural imperialism. The cultural imperialism thesis often inherently emphasizes a nation-state order, and in the cinematic context almost always presents Americanization
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as the main problem. However, not unlike Schiller, who claimed that transnational corporate culture is the exclusive dominant force in world culture, Leslie Sklair suggests that it is the global consumerist system that lies at the core of imperialism, and not necessarily any specific nation-state. Similarly, Mike Featherstone suggests that consumer culture has to be seen as the central part of any emergent global culture (2007). This brings us back to the question from the last chapter, of whether Hollywood is American. Sklair proposes that we “replace Americanization with capitalist consumerism in the argument”22 in order to evaluate the role of TNCs properly. He argues that to equate cultural and media imperialism with the US or even US capitalism alone would be reductionist and misleading. Studies on non-US media products, such as Brazilian soap operas that are intended to turn a profit as well as sell products, are an alternative case in point (Oliveira 1993). In addition to the corporate aspect, Hollywood has always employed talent from around the globe, and it only increased its use of such talent in the post-1975 period. These individuals, often described as “global” and “international”, are also transnational in the sense that they produce at the intersection of their own backgrounds and the Hollywood mode and vernacular of film. Aihwa Ong elaborates on the meaning of “trans”, which denotes both a movement and a change. She argues that transnationality “alludes to the transversal, the transactional, the translational, and the transgressive aspects of contemporary behavior and imagination that are incited, enabled, and regulated by the changing logics of states and capitalism.”23 Likewise, global directors traverse borders and translate between cultures; they transgress the boundaries set by their original filmmaking environments to reach greater audiences. Leslie Sklair argues that the global system operates on three levels, which she terms economic, political, and culture-ideology (sociological). Within these structures, the TNC is “the major locus of transnational economic practices,” the transnational capitalist class – which Sklair introduces as the dominant class of the global system – is “the major locus of transnational political practices,” and in the cultural dimension of the global system, the major locus is “to be found in the culture-ideology of consumerism.”24 The transnational capitalist class comprises TNC corporates and affiliates, globalizing bureaucrats and politicians, globalizing professionals, and last but not least, merchants and media.25 This final fraction, which clearly includes global directors, is seen as responsible for the reproduction and recreation of the consumerist culture-ideology, having “assumed leadership of the culture-ideology of consumerism in the
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interests of global capitalism in the twentieth century.”26 As above-the-line creative talent, global filmmakers enjoy a privileged position. In his study on Japanese personnel who have worked for Hollywood (co-)productions shot in Japan, Yoshiharu Tezuka also argues that becoming a part of the global production network of Hollywood is considered becoming a part of the transnational capitalist class, and something to strive for within the Japanese film industry (2012). Let us return to Aihwa Ong’s work on transnationality, and the notion of “flexible citizenship,” which provides a very useful tool for thinking about the members of the transnational capitalist class. The notion of “flexibility” is one that often appears in the globalized, post-Fordist world, if one thinks back on the “flexible specialization” thesis. Ong refers to various strategies employed by professionals “to both circumvent and benefit from different nation-state regimes by selecting different sites for investments, work, and family relocation.”27 Global directors, as members of a creative class with flexible citizenships who go where their work takes them, are relatively free from the “tyranny of place.” Nonetheless, while Hollywood’s labor is spread across the world, the importance of Hollywood, CA, as a location has not been entirely diminished.
Hollywood and Labor In this rendering of Hollywood as a global construct versus a specific location, perhaps the point where location becomes most pertinent is on the issue of labor. Discussions of labor are mostly concerned with the production stage of the film industry, and as Storper, Christopherson and Scott have all demonstrated, a significant portion of production remains in California. Goldsmith and O’Regan explain this with reference to the change in the very meaning of location, which is now “the bundle of physical sites and services available in a place for filmmaking.” They argue that while “Los Angeles will continue to be the vortex, the design center,” it is also just another location (albeit an advantaged one).28 To quote a Hollywood screenwriter: There is still some truth to the notion of Hollywood as a place located in Southern California. The district of Hollywood is still more or less the geographic center of a cluster of production facilities, soundstages, office buildings, and studio ranches … At some point, every major figure in world entertainment has to come to Hollywood, if only to accept an Academy Award.29
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Hollywood is a cultural industry system that “can be conceived as a social structure, as a configuration of social actors joined to one another by basic ties.”30 Alan Paul and Archie Kleingartner draw attention to the position of the labor unions in Hollywood, and how these unions played a role in the transition from the studio system to flexible production (1994). Labor unions in the film industry have a long and colorful history, going back to the days before film. The National Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, now called the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), the largest below-the-line labor union with approximately 100,000 members, was founded in 1893.31 Having survived a major racketeering and bribery scandal in the early 1940s, and despite a weakening of its power in the 1980s, the IATSE is still influential in the industry. In fact, this influence is one of the reasons why studios have chosen to move their production overseas, to countries with looser labor regulations and lower labor costs. In the concluding chapter of Global Hollywood 2, Miller et al. stress how runaway productions have put Hollywood’s local below-the-line labor in a difficult position. It is the “proletariat [of Hollywood], on the margins of the ‘creative class’”32 that has felt the effects of globalization most severely. Unlike the directors, technical and other workers are immobile, unable to move where the productions go, at least not without losing their bargaining power, salary level and rights. In this sense, the below-the-line workforce is not much different than the workers of any other manufacturing industry. Members of the IATSE include not only creative personnel such as art directors, story analysts, animators, set designers and decorators, scenic artists, and graphic artists, but also artisans and craftspersons such as set painters, grips, electricians, property persons, set builders, teachers, costumers, make-up artists, hair stylists, camerapersons, sound technicians, editors, script supervisors, laboratory technicians, projectionists, first aid employees, and inspection, shipping, booking and other distribution employees within theater, film and television production. A former studio executive claims, “[The IATSE] is worse than the United Auto Workers in having rules designed to ensure mediocre work as well as getting benefits to the sky.”33 If this is the general view held by the studios, it is not surprising that runaway productions have become so widespread. In terms of below-the-line personnel, runaway productions are the equivalent of the outsourcing seen in other industries. In addition to the prevalence of runaway productions, with technological developments, production outsourcing has also become particularly common in animation. US animation is frequently outsourced to India, and Japanese studios outsource parts of their work to the Philippines and South
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Korea. John Lent pointed out that by 2000, 90 percent of all “American” television animation was being produced in Asia. However, as Tschang and Goldstein remind us, the most creative processes, namely, “conceptualization, pre-production, and post-production, ‘stay home.’”34 Allen Scott, who claims that runaway productions have failed to pose a vitally serious threat to Hollywood, and that they “may well never become life-threatening, at least in the more creative segments of the industry,”35 asserts that even though Hollywood is likely to lose projects to lower-cost locations, this will not “imply any reversal of growth at the managerialcum-creative” level.36 Unlike the proletariat on the margins of Hollywood’s creative class, this level constitutes its nexus. Scott argues that to promote continued growth, Hollywood needs to make sure that “its central dealmaking and innovative capacities remain healthy,” in order to “safeguard its position as the world’s leading center of conception, design and content development of popular culture.”37 This dependence on its managerial and above-the-line talent is resonant of an increased reliance on producers and agents, brought on by flexible specialization. At the same time, it is a reflection of the greater shift towards knowledge-based economies at the global level. Within this context, global filmmakers lie between the center and the periphery; while they are members of the creative class, they need not be, and cannot be, constantly at the center of the decision-making process. Unless a director is part of this process, either because he commands power through previous box-office success or acts simultaneously as a producer, he also faces the risk of being pushed to the margins.
Networking: Representation and Reputation Concurrently, the administrative rank, namely the studio executives, agents and managers who create the deals, put the projects together and make the Hollywood “machine” run smoothly, need closer inspection. Hollywood functions as a network of personal connections, and as in most industries, but here more so than any other; whom you know is the key to survival.38 Producers and agents play a huge role in an industry primarily dependent on relationships, especially with the changes in the industry since the end of World War II. After the studios lost their dominance, the importance of independent producers increased substantially. Among the most pivotal of these producers was Dino DeLaurentiis, whom Frederick Wasser credits with introducing “global thinking to American film financing,”39 and who was instrumental in the careers of several global directors throughout the
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1970s and the 1980s. Another typical example comes from the 1960s: Albert Broccoli, the Italian-American producer of the Bond films, specifically chose British directors to take the helm in the franchise. After Broccoli’s death, when his daughter Barbara Broccoli and his stepson Michael Wilson took over producing duties, they continued the tradition somewhat differently. The Bond films produced by Broccoli and Wilson have had directors from New Zealand and Canada, as well as the UK, but never an American. The Bond films and their producers are discussed further in chapter four. In the following decades, David Puttnam was an influential figure in boosting the Hollywood careers of several British directors. His involvement in various projects and his position at Columbia Pictures helped the likes of Ridley Scott, Adrian Lyne, Michael Apted, Bill Forsyth, Brian Gilbert, Pat O’Connor, Roland Joffe, Mike Figgis and Michael Caton-Jones. Ridley Scott later took on a similar position himself as a producer, a role that I examine in chapter six. Other major figures of the 1980s were the Lebanese-born producer Mario Kassar and his Hungarian partner Andy Vajna40 at Carolco, who put projects together that brought in European directors, often working with filmmakers such as Paul Verhoeven, Adrian Lyne, and Alan Parker. More recently, Mike DeLuca, who is known for “taking chances on no-names and first-timers”, 41 consistently worked with global directors during his tenure at New Line. Similarly, Roy Lee was instrumental in creating the Asian remake boom, not only by using foreign-sourced material, but also by frequently working with international directors. I return to Lee in chapter five. Harvey and Bob Weinstein, the founders of Miramax, one of the most influential distribution and production companies in recent decades, played a similarly significant role in terms of talent flows. Initially a specialized art house and foreign language films distributor, Miramax opened up the US market to a number of European and Asian films. Their first Oscar for a foreign film, for the Danish Pelle the Conqueror (Bille August, 1987), was immediately followed with the great success of My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan, 1989). After being purchased by Disney in 1993, Miramax, which the two brothers continued to run until 2005, also started producing films and often worked with international directors.42 Even though the Weinstein brothers were often accused of interfering with the films they distributed or produced, 43 they were also powerful facilitators of filmmakers’ mobility. With the rise of dealmaking in the blockbuster era, agents came into the game as major players. They play a similar role to producers in terms of building projects and networks, but are often less visible – with the exception of the neurotic, fictional agent Ari Gold in the Entourage television series. A classical example is Paul Kohner, who started out as a producer in
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the 1920s and founded his eponymous talent agency in 1938. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, there was hardly a renowned European film artist who was not part of the “Kohner family” (Blum 2001). 44 In the era of New Hollywood, as individual packaging for each film became the norm, the role of agents gained prominence. Thomas Schatz points to the increasing influence of the talent agents and agencies in the 1970s, drawing attention to how many of the top studio executives in this era rose from the agency ranks (1993). 45 Among the directors included in this study, nearly all were represented by an agent as their work in Hollywood continued. About 85 percent of them were represented by one of the five major agencies: Creative Artists Agency (CAA), International Creative Management (ICM), William Morris Agency (WMA), Endeavor, and United Talent Agency. 46 Certain names stand out, however, and the fact that these agents have signed more than one director from the same country on various occasions points to the effectiveness of networking in Hollywood. For example, Robert Newman at ICM47 was known for his ability to spot talent early. He brokered deals with studios for his clients, who were mostly not widely known in Hollywood at the time he started working with them; they included Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Danny Boyle, Alex Proyas and Lee Tamahori. Another of his clients, Baz Luhrmann, argues that Newman “directly contributed to the phenomenon of outsiders being able to tap into Hollywood’s resources in order to make the films they want.”48 One of the few women in the field, Beth Swofford at CAA, is credited for having launched the Hollywood careers of Sam Mendes and Paul Greengrass. Similarly, John Ptak, also at CAA,49 represented Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford and others at the beginning of their Hollywood careers. In the three-leveled model of executive, above-the-line, and below-theline labor, the executive level is located mostly in and around Hollywood, because that is where the deals are made; the dealmaker has to be “at the right dinner parties, at the right cocktail parties”50 to make the right connections and secure the necessary financing. At this level of social networking, location still matters. Directors are located within the most mobile level of this model: above-the-line talent. These figures – namely producers, directors, writers and actors – are all those whose salaries are individually negotiated and who stand as individual items in a film’s budget. As the names expected to draw audiences to see a completed film, they enjoy a special status.51 The major organizations representing above-the-line crew and cast are the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the Directors Guild of America (DGA) and the Writers Guild of America (WGA),52 founded in 1936, 1937 and 1954, respectively. Producers, on the other hand, founded the
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Producers Guild of America (PGA) in 1962, through the merger of the Screen Producers Guild and the Television Producers Guild. However, it has not been recognized by the studios as a union on the grounds that producers form part of the management.53 Above-the-line talent, especially stars, who at times have been identified by leaders of below-the-line unions as the real reason behind the high cost of movie-making, hold much greater power in negotiations. In the case of runaway productions, one can see that above-the-line talent is largely part of a negotiated deal by the studio and is taken to the shooting location, whereas below-the-line workers are often supplied by the host country. Hence, above-the-line talent is more mobile than either of the two other classes discussed above. For these members of the filmmaking community, their actual presence in Hollywood can be delegated through agents. Membership of the DGA is another type of delegation. The DGA is located in Los Angeles, with offices in New York and Chicago. Over 80 percent of the global directors researched for this book are members of this organization.54 Being members gives directors a presence in Hollywood, even if they are not there physically. Members include Michael Apted, who served as the DGA president for three terms between 2003 and 2009. This British-born director, who holds dual citizenship, was the first nonAmerican to occupy the position. Robert R. Faulkner and Andy B. Anderson suggest that filmmakers, like any other artists or technicians in the film business, accumulate “a history of performance results.” These results are “part economic, part artistic, and part collegial industry-relevant outcomes imputed or attributed to the contributions of an individual in the community.”55 They argue that industry players acquire performance “ratings” from the film community, and that these ratings frequently result in recurrent patterns, in which the same names are frequently entrusted with major blockbusters. When global directors are recognized and invited to work in Hollywood, it is because they have already built a certain reputation. No global director is likely to be bestowed with a mega-budget for their Hollywood debut. Even major figures, such as the Scott brothers, Emmerich, or Petersen, started with smaller budgets and had to prove their bankability. As the visibility and value of talented directors grow, they are pursued by agents irrespective of their nationality and country of residence. As Michael Storper notes, despite its similarity to other industries in economic terms, film production functions differently, relying heavily on “interpersonal relational networks and conventional reputations.”56 Even if directors are not physically present in Hollywood, their agents stand for
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their presence. Similarly, in his study of why some Hollywood directors achieve critical attention while others do not, Mark Lutter points out that “talent or quality per se is not the most important factor in success.” While talent is certainly important, it is not sufficient; “what matters in the art world are signals for talent.”57 These signals are Faulkner and Anderson’s “ratings”, allowing filmmakers to go further in their careers, whether with greater budgets or greater freedom over their work. In this process of ratingconstruction, festival networks play a significant role. They not only help create a filmmaker’s reputation, but bring industry people close together for short but intense periods of time, facilitating a network of personal deal-making and generating possibilities for future projects (De Valck 2007). Lutter also argues that one needs to focus on the social structures and contexts of these directors’ careers, and shows that the networks within which they situate themselves play a critical part in reputation-building. Gino Cattani and Simone Ferriani have conducted research on the types of networks that shape an individual’s success in Hollywood (2008). They show that the nature of the film industry, with its flexible and short-term projects, relies on enduring networks. They categorize actors in the industry as “core” and “periphery”. Those closer to the core have a greater chance of recognition and legitimation. However, a peripheral position can have its advantages, in that peripheral actors can “elude the homogenizing influences typical of an established institutional framework and therefore attend to divergent ideas without the anxiety of contrasting accepted norms of the field.”58 Global directors emerge as peripheral players with weak social ties and possibly the freshness that is expected of them, which comes as a result of being an outsider. Indeed, Cattani and Ferriani discuss the example of Jim Sheridan, the Irish director whose transfer to Hollywood was facilitated by Harvey Weinstein: “He was clearly very talented, yet it is apparent that without the kind of endorsement and recognition that Weinstein facilitated through his contacts, Sheridan’s rise to fame would have been much harder.”59 Within the complex webs of personal connections and corporate networks, the transnational capitalist class emerges as the culturally prevailing force within global system theory, helping recreate the consumerist ideology. The crucial position held by TNCs also determines the networks that form contemporary Hollywood. The conflict between Los Angeles as the command center and as just another location can be seen as another reflection of the tensions between multiple levels of networks and capitals. William I. Robinson and Jerry Harris point out that “It is increasingly difficult to separate local circuits of production and distribution from the globalized
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circuits that dictate the terms and patterns of accumulation worldwide.” Moreover, new economic arrangements such as “outsourcing, subcontracting, transnational intercorporate alliances, licensing agreements, local representation,” and so forth have resulted in “vast transnational production chains and complex webs of vertical and horizontal integration across the globe.”60 In the three case studies in this book, I focus on more specific examples. But before that, let us briefly consider the history of global directors in Hollywood, as well as a potential categorization of some of the film industries around the world, based on the defining trends of the last three decades.
3.
Histories and Geographies of Global Directors
Nationality and citizenship are problematic issues when it comes to people; they are no less so when it comes to films. In 2004, how to determine the nationality of a film sparked a significant controversy in France. The film in question was the French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Un long dimanche de fiançailles/A Very Long Engagement. It was an adaptation of a French novel, shot in France and in French, with a French cast, crew and post-production lab. When the film’s producers applied for financial support, an “agrément,” from the Centre National de la Cinématographie, their request was initially granted. An “agrément” is issued to all films with a French or European producer that qualify for the government’s audiovisual support fund, and its criteria are based on a “barometer” system of points assigned in accordance with the nationalities of a f ilm’s participants. However, a group of French producers went to court to block the support for the film. The court subsequently ruled that Un long dimanche was not a French film, because its French production company, 2003 Productions, although based in France, was partly owned by Warner Bros. In addition to the 32% directly owned by Warner France, another 43% of the shares were divided among the senior executives of Warner France. The court ruled that 2003 Productions had been created solely “to benefit from [state] financial help even though [the fund] is reserved for the European cinematographic industry.”1 Around the same time, Oliver Stone’s Alexander (2004), with Colin Farrell in the title role, did receive the financial support that was denied to Un long dimanche. Alexander was shot mostly in Morocco, in English, with an international cast and crew. Nonetheless, one of its producers was the French Pathé, its post-production was completed in France, and Oliver Stone holds dual French and US citizenship.2 Despite the great talk of the globalization of Hollywood and f ilm industries in general, the notion of national cinemas and the discourses surrounding them still exist, in tandem with, and sometimes in opposition to, transnational networks.3 Although I analyze talent flows within a transnational framework, I do acknowledge the initial definition based on nationality and the persistence of the national discourse. But the case of Un Long Dimanche underlines where the nationality of a film ultimately matters today: not in its cultural content, as a reflection of society, but in its funding. A film that scores 99 out of 100 points on the “barometer” in terms
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of being French4 can at the same time be a product of Hollywood. Keeping in mind all these questions, in this chapter, I present a brief survey of the history of non-US directors in Hollywood, followed by a categorization of a number of national cinemas as per their interaction with Hollywood. While Hollywood has become increasingly transnational, the idea of national cinemas – however loosely defined – persists across the world.
A Brief History of Foreign Talent in Hollywood Hollywood’s history can be and has been narrated with reference to various criteria, emphasizing aesthetic tendencies, technological changes, transformations in the industry, or a combination of these. Here, I present a division in terms of the influx of global directing talent into Hollywood. This periodization, not surprisingly, runs parallel to one based on the ups and downs of the financial fortunes of the studios. The first period roughly corresponds to the “golden age” of Hollywood, where the studios functioned in a vertically integrated system from the early 1910s until the mid-1940s. The second period is “the slump”, when the studios were trying to adjust to the new realities brought on by various factors in the post-war period. This is followed by the era with which this book is concerned, that of “New Hollywood”, starting in the mid-1970s. Already in the earliest days of film production in the US, when production was consolidated on the East Coast, the idea of “importing” directing talent from Europe was proposed by an executive of the Edison Manufacturing Company, Frank Dyer. Frustrated by how difficult it was “to get a good competent stage director, a man with sufficient originality to get up and direct the acting of a picture,” he suggested in a letter to the managing director of the Edison Manufacturing Company in Europe: “such a man might be found in Paris, either out of employment or who might be willing to take a better position in this country.”5 In the end they were unable to find a good, competent stage director in Paris, but this does demonstrate the beginning of an enduring pattern. In the meantime, a number of French filmmakers had actually arrived on the East Coast, starting with Alice Guy and her husband Herbert Blaché. They were joined by others throughout the 1910s. Particular attention should be paid to Maurice Tourneur, who arrived in the US in 1914 to manage the newly rebuilt French-owned Éclair studios. While he made the initial move for a French company, Tourneur later worked for a number of Hollywood studios as well, establishing himself as one of the leading directors
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of his time. He returned to France in the 1920s, reportedly frustrated with the restrictions imposed by the studio system, and unwelcome in France because he had spent the war in the US. Nonetheless, he continued his career in his native country until the end of the 1940s.6 The émigré paradigm proper begins with the “founding fathers” of Hollywood, the entrepreneurs who founded the studios. A very large majority of these businessmen were East European Jews who had emigrated to the US as children or teenagers (Gabler 1988). Carl Laemmle, who founded Universal Pictures, came to New York from Germany at the age of seventeen. William Fox was born as Wilhelm Fried in Hungary; he later went into the business of film exhibition in New York. Adolf Zukor of Paramount Pictures came from Hungary to Chicago; and of the founders of the future MetroGoldwyn-Meyer, Louis B. Mayer, Nicholas and Joseph Schenk came from Russia, Marcus Loew from Austria, and Samuel Goldwyn (né Goldfisch) from Poland.7 In a way, they are also reminiscent of Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, the two young friends, both children of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, who created Superman. The studios built by these men saw Europe as a provider of fresh talent, starting from the 1920s. Even earlier, one of the greatest future directors, the British Charles Chaplin, was poached from his vaudeville company as it toured the US in 1914. Ufa, the heart of the German film industry, was where the producers primarily looked for new talent. Germany had the largest film industry in Europe, and it was the only one that could possibly challenge Hollywood. The high inflation rate and the volatile financial markets at the end of World War I made it possible for German production companies to produce films very cheaply. High-level executives from the American studios made frequent trips to Europe for “trophy-hunting,” as Fritz Lang called it. These hunts served two purposes: first, to make American pictures more popular worldwide, and second, to diminish Germany’s role in the film industry. It was a strategic move on the studios’ part, as Paramount executive Sidney R. Kent explained: “[W]e are trying to lessen sales resistance in those countries that want to build up their own industries … by internationalizing this art.”8 The fact that the German film industry faced a major financial crisis in the mid-1920s when the national economy started to expand, only helped the studios, and the latter put the German market in an even tighter spot by flooding it with their films. On the brink of bankruptcy, Ufa was forced to accept a four-million-dollar loan offered by Paramount and MGM. In exchange, these studios were given ownership of all cooperation rights with Ufa, covering production, exhibition, and personnel. The Parufamet agreement, named after the studios involved,
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was signed in early 1926 and was clearly to the advantage of its American partners. By the end of the year, Ufa’s losses had reached twelve million dollars.9 The trophy hunts and Parufamet agreement resulted in the first big wave of European personnel to move to Hollywood. One of the people who facilitated the move of the Ufa directors was the German producer Erich Pommer, who was already active in Hollywood between 1926 and 1927. As a German Jew, Pommer would be forced to leave Germany for good in the following years, and he moved frequently between several European countries and the US. With the exceptions of Ernst Lubitsch and Michael Curtiz (Mihaly Kertész),10 many of the directors who worked in Hollywood at this time were not able to deliver the box-office success expected of them. Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau passed away at a young age in the US as he was preparing to return to Germany, where Paul Leni lost his life at a similarly young age. Alexander Korda and Lothar Mendes went to the UK, while Ludwig Berger returned to Germany. Ewald André Dupont, who, after a brief stint in Europe, returned to the US in the 1930s because of the war, never became popular as a director.11 Around the same time, the “founders” of Scandinavian cinema, Victor Sjöström (Seastrom) and Mauritz Stiller, were also invited to work for the studios. By the end of the decade, however, Sjöström had retired and Stiller had died after directing several run-of-the-mill productions. The apparent failure of these filmmakers is often ascribed to the opposing Hollywood and European styles of filmmaking. Invited to Hollywood on the strength of the films they had made in Europe, these directors were expected to remain European and be “exotic,” but at the same time to adapt to the norms and expectations of the American studios. These “temporary” residents of Hollywood are often neglected in accounts of foreign talent, which almost exclusively focus on Germans12 before and during World War II. Another signif icant aspect of the transnational flow is that of the personnel who accompanied the f ilmmakers. Popular European stars were desirable assets for Hollywood studios, and certain directors were considered to be capable of delivering these stars. Elsaesser notes that Lubitsch brought along Emil Jannings as well as Pola Negri, whereas Mauritz Stiller was responsible for Greta Garbo’s arrival in Hollywood (1999). Less visible than the stars, but nonetheless probably more significant, were the producers. Erich Pommer’s “vast network of contacts and incessant travels”13 in France, England and the US enabled many German filmmakers to move beyond Germany. Similarly, it was Pommer’s predecessor at the UFA, Paul Davidson, who arranged for Lubitsch to go to Hollywood. Paul Kohner was hired by Laemmle in 1920, then worked as a supervising producer in a
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number of films directed by fellow Europeans for Universal. Only later did he become an agent and play an instrumental role in the careers of many of the émigrés in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s (Blum 2001, Horak 2005). The importance of these producers cannot be overestimated; as the power structures evolved in Hollywood, their roles evolved, but never diminished. While the focus was on German and Scandinavian filmmakers during the 1920s, the initial group of political émigré filmmakers arrived in Hollywood in the same decade. These directors, often neglected in film history, left their country for reasons just as political as the later, more famous Western European émigrés. They were the Russian refugee directors who made their way to the US via Europe in the second half of the 1920s. Having fled from Russia to Paris and Berlin, these filmmakers continued to believe that the Bolsheviks would be defeated one day. In this regard, they aimed to shelter their culture in Hollywood for as long as it would take for them to return to their homeland. Obviously, this remained an unfulfilled dream. Russian directors such as Richard Boleslawski, Fyodor Otsep, and Dimitri Buchovetski adapted to their new land, even modifying the classically tragic endings of their films to the happy endings preferred by Hollywood. This extended as far as an Anna Karenina script worked on by Buchovetski, in which Anna appeared to be dreaming that she jumped in front of the train (Nussinova 1997). The conversion from silent film to sound from 1927 onwards, which occurred around the same time as the first big wave of Europeans hit Hollywood, was less of a substantial change for the directors from abroad than it was for the actors. In fact, several directors, including Warner Bros.’ imports from Germany, William Dieterle and Günther von Fritsch, were specifically hired to direct foreign-language versions of American films aimed at foreign markets. Before the advent of technology for subtitling and dubbing, the same script and sets were used to shoot versions of a film in several different languages. These were called multiple language versions (MLVs), and although the practice was abandoned after a few years, many of these MLV directors remained in Hollywood. Hollywood was not the only location where the studios produced MLVs, however; in 1930, Paramount purchased the Gaumont-St. Maurice studios at Joinville near Paris and quickly equipped them for sound production. Joinville became the primary location for European MLVs, producing the same script by different crews in up to fourteen languages (Vincendeau 1988). Paramount’s financial troubles in the US and the move towards subtitling and dubbing resulted in the studio’s French venture being cut short.14 Nonetheless, Joinville can be considered one of the
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earliest examples of a substantial overseas investment for a major studio, anticipating the 1990s and onwards, when 20th Century Fox built studios in Australia and Mexico,15 and all studios entered local-language productions (LLPs) in various countries using various strategies (Donoghue 2014). The second large wave of directors to arrive in Hollywood during the peak of the studio era headed West following the Nazi party’s seizure of power in Germany in 1933. This is also the most widely documented wave, as I mentioned in the introduction. Still, one should keep in mind that although these directors left Germany, Austria, and in the later years, France and the Netherlands, for political reasons and to flee from war, some of these names probably would have made the transition to Hollywood even if the political climate had been different. For instance, Fritz Lang is said to have left Germany right after being approached to cooperate with the Nazi regime; but when he signed his deal with David O. Selznick in 1934, he was aware that there were other producers interested in him, and it was likely that he would arrive in the US at some point in his career.16 Fred Zinnemann arrived in the US as early as 1929 in order to find work as a cameraman.17 Alfred Hitchcock, possibly the most famous foreigner of the later years, came to Hollywood after the start of the war in Europe. Nonetheless, when he visited America in 1938, it was quite clear that he would accept Selznick’s offer of four films, and his delay was caused largely by administrative rather than political troubles.18 Billy Wilder would become the iconic figure among these directors on account of his Jewish roots, early arrival, and subsequent success. Then just an aspiring scriptwriter, he was one of the first to arrive via France in 1933. Anatole Litvak, a Jew who was born in Ukraine and worked in the Soviet system, had to leave Russia for Germany in the 1920s, and Germany for France in the 1930s. When he was offered a four-year contract by Warner Bros. on the success of his hit, Mayerling (1936), he moved to the US. Following pioneers such as Wilder and Otto Preminger throughout the 1930s were Robert Siodmak, Curtis Bernhardt, John Brahm, and Wilhelm Thiele. Having waited in Paris for conditions to return to “normal,” and initially having no intention of emigrating to the US, these directors can be seen as the “true” political émigrés.19 The last group from this time included Reinhold Schünzel, Frank Wisbar and Douglas Sirk from Germany, and Max Ophuls, Jean Renoir, René Clair, and Julien Duvivier from France. Most Germans and Austrians arriving in this period acquired American citizenship. While Sirk’s name became synonymous with classical Hollywood melodramas, Preminger became famous for films addressing the social problems of his new homeland. The French, on the other hand, considered themselves to be in temporary exile and made films aiming to support their fatherland
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from afar. As expected, they returned to France after 1945, but could not achieve the status they had enjoyed before the war (Bergstrom 1998). Fritz Lang also went back to Germany in the late 1950s to direct several films, but eventually settled in Los Angeles. Most of the directors who had arrived in the US before and during the war subsequently remained there. The period between World War II and the mid-1970s, however, was the most barren for global directors going to work in Hollywood. Noteworthy British exceptions such as David Lean, and to some extent, Carol Reed, shot their Hollywood-backed films on location around the world without fully relocating to the US and presaging the later generations. A reverse stream from the US was started by Joseph Losey, who moved to Britain to avoid being blacklisted (Prime 2014). Richard Lester and in later years Stanley Kubrick were other directors who left the US and made Britain their home. Nonetheless, they continued their collaborations with Hollywood studios. Opportunities provided by British studios and the internationalization of film production during these decades resulted in many other American directors preferring Europe as their shooting location. These early instances of runaway productions included émigré directors such as Wilder, Preminger, Zinnemann, and so forth. Some of these directors had had a great influence on European film culture during this period, even before working in Europe again. The authors of Cahier du Cinéma, birthplace of “la politique des auteurs” in the 1950s, had canonized a number of Hollywood directors, including Europeans such as Lang, Wilder, Preminger, and Hitchcock. The concept of director as an artist, until then reserved for European “art” films, was hereby adapted to the directors of the studio system, whose films were openly cited as influences by the directors of the Nouvelle Vague. It has been argued that in the later decades of the European film movements, the directors of the New German Cinema adopted Hollywood directors such as Murnau, Lang, Sirk, John Ford, Nicholas Ray and Sam Fuller (Elsaesser 1998). Two key names from the British social realism movement, Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz, continued their careers primarily in Hollywood from the mid-1960s onwards. They were followed by fellow citizens John Boorman and John Schlesinger (I. Scott 2010). Widely popular in France, Roger Vadim worked on various projects in Hollywood, starting from 1971, never quite reaching the same level of popularity as with his French films. Also in the early 1970s, one of the few names to later frequently be included among that of “émigré” directors was Miloš Forman of socialist Czechoslovakia. Although the Czech Ivan Passer and the Polish Roman Polanski joined him as well, Forman was the only one of the three to be fully embraced by
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Hollywood, even winning two Oscars for his directing, for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and Amadeus (1984). Polanski preferred to work in France and the US on different projects, until he had to leave the US after his much publicized statutory rape case. By the early 1970s, Hollywood had undergone major changes. In addition to the decline of the studios and the abolition of the Production Code,20 universities started opening film departments, paving the way for the generation of filmmakers that would be instrumental in the “Hollywood Renaissance.” These young American directors provided an alternative style of film from within Hollywood. It was during this period that some of the leading names of “European art cinema” collaborated with Hollywood. Ingmar Bergman directed The Touch (1971), a Swedish co-production shot in English (Ford 2002). Even though the film was poorly received, in 1977 Bergman made another co-production, The Serpent’s Egg. This second attempt, shot in West Germany, again in English, was also a critical and commercial failure. It is worth noting that both productions were Dino De Laurentiis projects.21 In a way, De Laurentiis took on the role that had been assumed by German producers in the 1920s and the 1930s, facilitating the move of “artsy” European directors to Hollywood, and not always with great success. Similarly, another key director of post-war European art cinema, Michelangelo Antonioni, made Blow Up (1966) for MGM, a project developed by the famed Italian producer Carlo Ponti. A prime example of what Peter Lev has termed the “Euro-American art film” (1993), Blow Up is a classical art film, shot in swinging London. But at the same time, it became a commercially successful Hollywood production, the first in a three-picture deal for Antonioni with MGM (Brunette 1998).22 The other two films, Zabriskie Point (1970) and The Passenger (1975), also did fairly well in the US art house box office, but Antonioni never became a mainstream Hollywood director and he continued his work in Europe. Following the relative commercial success of his films, renowned figures of European art cinema such as Ken Russell and Richard Attenborough from Britain, Louis Malle from France and Wim Wenders from Germany also worked on projects in Hollywood in the 1970s. In doing so, they echoed the pattern of the 1920s, when importing directors from Europe had been a source of prestige for the studios.
Talent Flows in “New” Hollywood The post-1975 flows had several characteristics. As pointed out in the introduction, the number of directors who made their first Hollywood film in
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a given year first started to increase during the mid-1970s; it saw a sharper rise a decade later, as can be observed in Figure 3.1. In the earlier years, a large proportion of these directors came from the UK, as a continuation of the 1960s and the early 1970s. Britain had been the largest foreign market for Hollywood, until Japan took over in the 1980s.23 From the early 1920s onwards, sharing a common language and Anglo-Saxon culture resulted in Britain being viewed almost as an extension of the American film industry. Ultimately, this connection would reach its apex in the “British invasion” of the late 1970s and the early 1980s. Famous names from the advertising industry such as Alan Parker, Hugh Hudson, Adrian Lyne and Ridley Scott were already anticipating invitations from Hollywood in the late 1970s. David Puttnam, the producer whose name is often mentioned together with these directors, became a key figure for this group, due to the international productions he put together and his brief stint as the chairman and CEO at Columbia Pictures.24 Parker and Lyne directed their feature debuts in Hollywood, where they had been invited by the studios,25 whereas Ridley Scott had already directed a feature film in Britain, The Duellists (1977), before his arrival in the US. Mike Newell and John Irvin, both with television backgrounds, also directed their first feature films in Hollywood.26 In the following years, Ridley Scott founded his own production company, helping
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Figure 3.1 First Hollywood releases by non-American directors over the years
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other European directors, including his brother Tony Scott and Marco Brambilla, to transfer to the US, and remains active in both advertising and filmmaking today. The tradition of looking to Europe for talented filmmakers was nothing new for the studios in the 1970s. What was different, though, was that the studios had now become willing to import directors who had made their name only through advertising, with no feature film success to their credit. This was indeed one of the major changes in the transfer of talent to “new” Hollywood. Although the practice was essentially the same, fresh blood had to be found and snatched as quickly as possible, at least before a rival studio could poach it. In the 1980s and the 1990s, music video directors joined these advertising directors (Richard Wainwright, Stephen Norrington, Michel Gondry, and so forth), along with directors whose short films or feature debuts had created a stir in festival circles (Danny Boyle, Christopher Nolan, Ellory Elkayem, Robert Luketic, and so forth). Another major difference in the New Hollywood era is that the source for new talent is no longer limited to Europe. While there was no flow towards Hollywood from anywhere outside Europe prior to the 1980s, this was changed with the rise of the Australian film industry. Led by Bruce Beresford, Fred Schepisi and Peter Weir, all celebrated Australian directors eventually worked in Hollywood. The next continent to shine was Asia, which showed a similar pattern. In particular, the dominant Hong Kong film industry saw many of its directors go to Hollywood, either early on (Corey Yuen, John Woo) or after the transfer of sovereignty to China in 1997 (Hark Tsui, Stanley Tong, Ronny Yu). Although most of these directors did eventually return to Hong Kong, they exercised significant influence on Hollywood’s style (Hunt and Wing-Fai 2008, Morris et al. 2005). From the second half of the 1990s, Latin American and especially Mexican directors became more visible: Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo Del Toro all started working for the Hollywood studios during this period. The changed circumstances of New Hollywood, namely the shortening of directors’ “discovery time” and the widening of their geographical backgrounds, can both be seen as natural results of technological developments and globalization (two factors that are not mutually exclusive). Technology facilitated the ability of directors to move between countries and alternate between production bases. The distance that separates continents has now been narrowed to a few hours by plane, or nothing, using digital communication technologies. Furthermore, films are now frequently shot on location in numerous countries. This mobility allows directors such as
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Michael Apted, Brambilla and Del Toro to work in completely different styles in very short periods of time. Apted frequently works in Hollywood (Nell, 1994; Extreme Measures, 1996; Enough, 2002), while continuing his British documentary career with the Up series and filming co-produced projects such as Enigma (2001) in Britain. After shooting Demolition Man (1993) and Excess Baggage (1997) in Hollywood, Brambilla focused on advertising and conceptual art projects. In 2001, Del Toro directed both the sequel to Blade and the Spanish production El Espinazo del Diablo. The post-World War II changes within the studio system also facilitated this mobility. Whereas in the classical studio era, the studios had to keep a director on the payroll or make multiple-picture deals with filmmakers, they now work on individual projects. Faulkner and Anderson contend that single-project organizations foster workforce mobility, and that successful projects result in rehiring and renewals,27 as they increase the directors’ “ratings.” This, in a way, can be seen as a euphemism for the classic Hollywood maxim, “You’re only as good as your last movie.” Mobility and the disappearing need to relocate physically to Hollywood are the defining factors that differentiate the newer generations from the older ones. Added to this mobility is the prevalence of runaway productions, which makes it possible for directors to work for Hollywood studios yet still remain in their native country. A very significant and well-known example is the Lord of the Rings trilogy, shot by Peter Jackson in his native New Zealand.28 The films were written, shot, and completed in New Zealand by a local director, with post-production work done mostly in Wellington, New Zealand. With the global popularity of the series, “Wellywood” became established on the international filmmaking map and a significant nodal point in cinematic networks. Since the mid-1990s, post-production work has also gone “runaway,” particularly for live-action films that require considerable amounts of computer-generated imagery (CGI). Jackson’s trilogy is significant in this respect as well, since nearly all of the post-production work was completed in Wellington. The Lord of the Rings franchise not only created an economy while it was being shot, but also gave a huge boost to New Zealand’s tourism industry (Thornley 2006). Many of the directors who arrived in the 1980s continued to work in Hollywood for at least several years, and their numbers grew. As a result, the number of f ilms made by global directors in Hollywood each year has increased over the last three decades, occasionally surpassing 80 (see Figure 3.2). A crucial point that is revealed by this particular chart is that the number of films made by global directors reached an all-time high in the late 1990s and subsequently stabilized. This indicates that not all of these
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50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10
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Figure 3.2 Number of Hollywood films directed by non-Americans over the years
directors continued to make films in Hollywood, for if they had, the number of films made by these filmmakers would continue to increase, assuming they would carry on making films at their usual pace. The plateau shows that this was not the case, and that there appears to be a large turnover in global talent in Hollywood. These data support my claims about mobility in the previous pages. An additional reason why directors do not have to stay in the US is that unlike the World War II generation, they are no longer political émigrés, and are thus free to return to their homelands. The last director to start working in the US for at least partially political reasons, Andrei Konchalovsky, went back to Russia for various projects and is no longer a member of the DGA. Since the collapse of the bipolar world system, any director with a political stance has essentially made films critical of American hegemony, thus invalidating the political émigré narrative.29
The Ubiquity of Hollywood Leading Brazilian director of the 1960s, Glauber Rocha, wrote: “Every discussion of cinema made outside Hollywood must begin with Hollywood.”30 Indeed, Hollywood plays a vital role as the measure against which all national cinemas define themselves, whether in emulation or differentiation. Part of the reason why Hollywood’s products are so prevalent lies in
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the success of its globally dispersed distribution networks. Joseph Garncarz draws attention to the fact that the hypothesis of Hollywood’s dominance is structured largely on supply, not demand (1994). Nonetheless, even though the studios do push their films into global markets, one cannot deny that these products enjoy a popularity that other regions’ films often cannot. Film scholars have long tried to identify the reasons for Hollywood’s worldwide appeal. One of the most frequent lines of argument, as suggested by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (1985) and Scott R. Olson (2001), is that Hollywood films are so popular because they come from a country in which a multicultural “melting pot” audience, comprised of all kinds of different peoples, acts as a microcosm to develop and create productions that will be to the liking of audiences everywhere. Along these lines, the easily comprehensible plots and transparent film language of “classical Hollywood style” are seen to have contributed to the popularity of Hollywood products. These explanations are not sufficient however, and have on occasion been rejected as too simplistic at a time when the global spread of Hollywood has reached a point at which it is inscribed in practically every nation’s film culture (Miller et al. 2005). Alternatively, even when Hollywood is seen as the absolute “other” for any national cinema, it approaches all its global viewers as “potentially equal customers,”31 reflecting the idealized democracy constructed in its films’ texts, and thereby confirming its popularity. Hollywood’s dominance has been enhanced in the blockbuster era. The advantages that come with the global financing strategies employed by the studios consistently enable Hollywood films to be made and marketed on budgets that far surpass those in any other film industry. Blockbusters are designed to reach the highest number of audiences and distributed with elaborate marketing schemes, with full market saturation. The enormous production and marketing costs involved function as a barrier to entry for the film market, leaving the few giant studios that can afford to make blockbusters without any other substantial rivals. This is aided by centrally organized and locally specified massive advertising campaigns. Films are often marketed on whatever their strong suit might be in a specific country, be it its stars, director, or subject, and they can be popular in different markets for different reasons. The synergy created by the studios and the other subsidiaries under the same ownership helps to “anticipate, nurture and challenge”32 consumer preferences, thus ideally maximizing box office revenues. Integrated networks of production, distribution, exhibition and advertising work alongside one another, creating maximum profit for the studios. In worldwide sales, Hollywood has no rivals that pose a direct threat to its dominance. At the national and regional levels, however, some
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film industries have been largely successful in capturing domestic and sometimes also foreign audiences. This competition comes in different forms. Some filmmakers emulate, copy, or parody Hollywood pictures, reaffirming the impossibility of “maintaining a strict dichotomy between Hollywood cinema and its ‘others,’”33 whereas others distinguish themselves through “heritage” cinema.34 Countries such as France, Hungary, Italy, and South Korea have tried controlling their local markets with quota systems, although it is debatable whether these measures actually make a difference (Lee and Bae 2004). Within discussions of globalized cinema, I would like to reiterate Tom O’Regan’s point that “generalized cultural matters such as gender, sexual preference, political orientation, psychological type and social class” constitute a more relevant point of discussion and that “‘national’ and ‘international’ issues are not the important fault lines for distinguishing between Hollywood and other cinemas.”35 Nonetheless, it is still useful, even if only as a thought experiment, to categorize the world’s film industries into several groups in terms of their relationships with Hollywood, forming categories that are established by a few determinants. These include the proportion of Hollywood productions screened in these countries, the frequency with which they are used as shooting locations by major studio productions, and the amount of talent they supply for Hollywood. There is indeed a strong correlation between Hollywood’s local market penetration and the frequency of local talent working in Hollywood.36 This is not the only factor to explain why one country tends to export more talent than another, but it seems to be a noteworthy one. The f irst category covers the countries seen as ideal runaway destinations, those in very close contact with Hollywood at the production level. The second category is that of “new waves,” or emerging film industries. These first two groups are not mutually exclusive and do sometimes overlap. The last category consists of countries that have either reasonably large film industries of their own, and/or have been home to a new wave of films, but have not sent a considerable number of directors to Hollywood.
Runaway Destinations The two film industries to which Hollywood has been closest historically, those of Canada and the UK, have both in turn been defined in terms of their relation to Hollywood. They also both suffer from sharing a language with the US. British producer Leon Clore protested in 1982 that “If the United
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States spoke Spanish, we would have a film industry.”37 In fact, there is a significant film industry in Britain; it just happens to be largely financed by transnational Hollywood corporations.38 From 1916 onwards, the share of Hollywood films screened in British cinemas was never below 50 percent, and frequently exceeded 90 percent (Murphy 1992). In the 1960s Britain was the “place to be,” aided by The Beatles and James Bond, but this popularity was less the reason for studios’ shooting in the UK than the affordable production conditions in the new British studios. In 1966, 75 percent of production financing in Britain came from Hollywood companies, and this number reached 90 percent the following year.39 As a result, the bonds between the two industries, already strong, continued to grow and paved the way for the aforementioned “British invasion.” Paul McDonald coined the term “British Hollywood film” for films “made with a majority of British creative input,” which nonetheless “integrate US talent in leading performance and/or production roles,” receive UK funding but reach completion through financing from Hollywood studios, and are distributed globally by the studios. 40 These films allow British Hollywood directors to join the global Hollywood production network without ever leaving Britain. Britain has long been known for having the best technicians in the world. Its major studios, namely Pinewood, Elstree, and Twickenham, have consistently produced films, albeit mostly financed with Hollywood money. What has been a historical reality for Britain became a new situation for Canada, whose film industry both suffers and profits from its geographical proximity to Hollywood. It is an ideal destination for runaway productions because of its location, language and lower labor costs. At the same time, its market is too small to absorb films produced by Canadian companies, and thus it is almost wholly dependent on Hollywood. The sharp increase in the number of economic runaways throughout the 1990s caused alarm in the Los Angeles-based sections of the film industry, becoming a top priority for various guilds and unions. The Monitor Report (1999), commissioned by the SAG and the DGA, identified Canada and its cultural policies as the main culprit. 41 The report eventually resulted in the formation of the Runaway Production Alliance, composed of nineteen organizations including the SAG and the DGA (McKercher 2008). While runaway productions are one of the ways in which Hollywood has become more global, these productions mean a direct loss of business for filmmakers, especially for below-the-line talent based in the US. In addition to British studios substituting for their Los Angeles counterparts, more and more Canadian cities are standing in for American cities. So much so that The New York Times called Vancouver “the city that can sub for all of America.”42
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Beyond the seemingly simple decision to cut costs, there are numerous other factors that bring about runaway productions. In addition to the cost of production facilities and labor, favorable exchange rates, government rebates, and tax incentives draw producers outside of the US. Throughout the 1990s the number of films shot in Canada continued to grow, resulting in the moniker “Hollywood North.” Although not featured as a separate destination in the Monitor Report, Ireland also became an attractive locale in the late 1990s due to a tax incentive law passed in 1997, allowing filmmakers to recoup up to US$2 million before shooting even began. 43 Another reason is a more indirect one: local involvement promises higher box office returns in the markets involved, which can be a very strategic move, especially in large markets such as the UK, Japan, and China. Several other countries had become popular destinations for Hollywood productions by the turn of the millennium; two were Australia and New Zealand. They were attractive because of their reportedly low labor costs, Anglophone and skilled crews, reverse seasons and a variety of locations. At the same time, they have been considered among the best markets for Hollywood since the early 1920s (Walsh 2011). Mexico must also be briefly mentioned in this section, for being the first non-English speaking country with a Hollywood-owned studio (20th Century Fox in Baja). Although already popular as a shooting location for Westerns in the 1960s and the 1970s, Mexico became a prime target for blockbusters in the 1990s, the most famous of which involved the construction of a near-life-size replica of the Titanic for James Cameron’s eponymous film of 1997. Mexico’s geographic proximity to Hollywood and its economic and climate advantages make it a desired destination. More and more of its technicians are being trained in the US and are gaining experience working on telenovelas. These three countries, which have all attracted international attention for their new “waves” at various points, are discussed in the next category as well. 44 All of the runaway destinations show that familiarity with Hollywood filmmaking, at both the exhibition and production levels, is an important factor in the transfer of local talent to Hollywood. When grouped together, Anglophone directors comprise the majority of global talent. They are discussed less often than their counterparts, and they are never seen as émigrés; their English names make them less easy to identify as “foreign.” And due to the frequency of runaway productions in their own countries, many of these directors do not have to leave their home countries to work for Hollywood. Some, like Michael Apted, move between countries; others, like Hugh Hudson, stay in Britain and claim they do not work for Hollywood, 45 even though their films are produced largely by Hollywood studios; and
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yet others, like Peter Jackson and Baz Luhrmann, move their productions to their native countries, almost single-handedly contributing to economic runaways.
New Waves and Rising Stars This category is a fluctuating one, comprising different countries at different points in time as they gain in strength and visibility, either on festival circuits or in regional markets. Some of these countries, such as the UK and Australia in the 1980s, have already been discussed as sites of frequent Hollywood productions. However, not all new waves and strong industries are featured here, since those that rarely export talent to Hollywood fall into the third category. When a series of acclaimed films begins to emerge from a particular country’s film industry, Hollywood tends to take notice. Production companies soon start making offers to the filmmakers of that country. Kenneth Chan has called this “Tinseltown’s current cultural flavor of the month,” pointing out that any flavor is quickly replaced by “the next big thing.”46 This practice, which goes back to the “trophy-hunting” of the 1920s, provides fresh talent for Hollywood and keeps possible local competition under control. 47 After World War II, the West German film industry had a considerable share of the local market, but it was not internationally renowned as it once had been. Using the resources of state television and the Young German Film Board, and grants from the Film Subsidies Bill, the “New German Cinema” of the 1970s became one of the most striking film movements of its time. Its directors, most notably Wim Wenders and Volker Schlöndorff, made forays to the US to collaborate with studios, with varying degrees of critical and commercial success. Arguably the most famous member of New German Cinema, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, did not live long enough to try his luck in Hollywood, but judging from his statements in Robert Fischer’s documentary Fassbinder in Hollywood (2002), one can presume he meant to go: “I’d rather be unfree that way [in Hollywood] than imagine I was free in Germany.” Even though the directors of New German Cinema mostly stayed away from Hollywood, other personnel, such as set designer Rolf Zehetbauer, actors Klaus Kinski, Klaus-Maria Brandauer and Armin Müller-Stahl, cinematographer Michael Ballhaus and musicians Giorgio Moroder and Hans Zimmer, were recruited by Hollywood. 48 This generation was followed a few years later by two of the most notable German directors to work in Hollywood: Wolfgang Petersen and Roland
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Emmerich. Krämer argues that it was actually the New German Cinema generation that led to these later directors’ move to Hollywood, 49 because it allowed many young f ilmmakers to study and make f ilms from the 1970s onwards, and drew attention to the German film industry. After World War II, although Germany was seen as a fertile market for Hollywood f ilms, German f ilms were still popular. Throughout the 1950s, West Germany was the fifth largest producer of films in the world.50 By the 1970s, however, this system had collapsed and the choice of German films at the cinema was reduced to sex comedies, which were often commercial failures, or products of New German Cinema, which refused to strive for profit.51 New German Cinema received great critical acclaim abroad, but these f ilms were not popular with the German audiences, and neither were mainstream German films successful at the home box office any more. Hollywood productions rushed to fill the void. As a result of having been raised on these films, this next generation became more likely to adopt and emulate the Hollywood style, and eventually be “discovered” by the studios. Producer Bernd Eichinger played a pivotal role during this period, reviving the tradition of having powerful European producers with strong international connections (Elsaesser 2005). Under Eichinger’s direction, Constantin Film AG became a major player in European cinema, taking part in several big-budget English-language co-productions such as The Name of the Rose (Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1986) and Smilla’s Sense of Snow (Bille August, 1997), as well as a number of diverse Hollywood co-productions directed by European or American filmmakers.52 In 2014, Variety reported that Martin Moszkowicz, the head of film and TV production at Constantin Film,” recently has been getting a lot of calls from L.A. talent agents inquiring after Teutonic helmers.” Apparently, history does repeat itself – again and again.53 A similar pattern developed in Australia. After the social and economic transformations of the 1960s, the Australian Film Development Corporation (AFDC)54 was founded in 1970, followed by state-funded government film agencies in all states but Tasmania. The second half of the 1970s saw an expansion in Australian cinema, led by Bruce Beresford, Fred Schepisi, Peter Weir, George Miller, Phillip Noyce, and Gillian Armstrong, all of whom started working for Hollywood in the 1980s. Some of these directors continued to work for Hollywood studios but frequently shot in their native country, contributing to the increase in runaway productions. Ultimately, Australia became one of the largest runaway destinations for Hollywood, with 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. opening studios in Sydney and Queensland, respectively.
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New Zealand, which had a minuscule film industry that made only seventeen motion pictures between 1930 and 1970, similarly turned itself into a major hub in global filmmaking networks. Following in Australia’s footsteps, New Zealand founded its own Film Commission in 1978. Within a few years, many more films were produced and received international attention. The first director to be noticed among the new generation was Roger Donaldson, who, after a Hollywood co-production of Mutiny on the Bounty (1984) shot in New Zealand, left for Hollywood in 1987. The New Zealand film industry continued its success throughout the 1990s and supplied Hollywood with a number of directors, ranging from Golden Palm winner Jane Campion to Peter Jackson and Ellory Elkayem.55 Lee Tamahori, whose Once Were Warriors (1997) was an international festival hit, went on to direct Hollywood thrillers and a James Bond movie. While these cinemas were critically successful, this did not necessarily translate into immediate box-office income. Other film industries however, have managed to capture audiences across borders. One of the best examples, Hong Kong cinema, was not only popular throughout South East Asia through the 1960s and the 1970s, but also influential in Hollywood. Among the booming economies of South East Asia in the 1980s, mainly Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea, Hong Kong was the only one to see matching growth in its film industry (to be followed by South Korea in the 1990s). Sek Kei (1994) proposes several reasons as to why the film industry blossomed in Hong Kong in particular. In this small, densely populated island, cinema had always been the leading form of mass entertainment, and was not affected by competition from TV or video. Compared to its neighbors, Hong Kong has traditionally had more liberties in terms of freedom of expression. As a Chinese language cinema open to Western influences, Hong Kong cinema succeeded in striking a balance between East and West. According to Kei, this has helped the industry reach all the overseas markets where the Chinese are active. Hong Kong’s close ties with the West and the popularity of its cinema in the US caused many of its leading directors to move to Hollywood in the 1990s, during the period leading up to the Chinese handover in 1997. With a volatile political situation and many of its major stars leaving with the directors, the Hong Kong film industry entered a slump. Nonetheless, it started to show signs of recuperation from the mid-2000s, in part due to its newly developed ties with Mainland China (May and Ma, 2014). Mexican cinema experienced a new popularity at the turn of the millennium. What has been termed “New Mexican Cinema” or the “Mexican New Wave” initially relied on the success of three films: Amores Perros
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(Iñárritu, 2000), Y Tu Mamá También (Cuarón, 2001), and El Crimen del Padre Amaro/The Crime of Father Amaro (Carlos Cariera, 2002). These films, funded by the private sector and using Hollywood conventions and genres (Menne 2007), garnered critical attention as well as box office success. But Cuarón, who had been making Hollywood films since the 1990s, and Iñárritu left Mexico to work for Hollywood, joined by Del Toro and many highly skilled technical workers.56 The networks between Spain, Mexico, and other Latin American countries allow Spanish-speaking directors to work across these and larger geographic areas. Their rising popularity in Hollywood in the 2000s is testament not only to their international success, but also to the rapidly increasing Hispanic market within the US. The Mexican industry was unable to keep up the momentum of the new wave, having lost so many of its skilled filmmakers. Another recent example of a blossoming film industry has been South Korea. The Korean Film Council (KOFIC), founded in 1973, has been instrumental in shaping film policies, supporting local productions, and promoting Korean cinema abroad. Following a flood of Hollywood films onto Korean screens in the early 1990s, the government started imposing a quota on locally produced films in order to guarantee their distribution. From the late 1990s, Korean blockbusters such as Shiri (Kang Je-gyu, 1999) and Friend (Kwak Kyung-taek, 2001) dominated the local box office and regularly outperformed Hollywood productions (Choi 2010). Following the popularity of Korean films and television series around the world, some of the films were remade in Hollywood. Despite a decrease in the quotas in 2006, the Korean audiovisual industry maintained its significance. And although no Korean directors were working for Hollywood during the time frame of this study, Park Chan-wook and Kim Ji-woon both later directed Hollywood films.57 There are other examples, such as the Taiwanese New Wave, leading to Ang Lee’s career in Hollywood, or the popularity of Japanese horror films, which has brought Hideo Nakata and Takashi Shimizu deals to remake their films in English. At the same time, Taiwan and Japan happen to be two of Hollywood’s largest markets outside of the US. The countries in the next group, however, are definitely not among Hollywood’s large markets, which is both telling and unsurprising.
Outsiders and Competitors The third and last category comprises countries that have established film industries and/or have been home to a new wave, but that have not sent a
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significant number of their personnel to Hollywood. The most significant of these are India, Iran, and China, and their greatest common denominator is that they have had limited access to Hollywood films due to government regulations. These regulations, quotas or bans on film imports are politically and economically motivated, depending on the country. India has been among, and has usually led, the top f ilm-producing countries in the world since World War II. In addition to its huge domestic market, the Mumbai-based Hindi-language popular cinema (later dubbed “Bollywood”) in particular has drawn audiences from around the world.58 Starting in the 2000s, these films reached Western markets via non-resident Indians (NRIs), the Indian diaspora. The Film Finance Corporation (FFC), founded in 1961, was reborn as the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) in the 1980s. The NFDC supported local “quality cinema” through its monopoly on foreign film imports. The NFDC’s monopoly ended only in 1992, after which several successful Hollywood films appeared in the Indian market. However, these claimed no more than 10 percent of the box office, due not only to Indian audiences’ loyalty to local productions, but also to the fact that tickets for foreign films cost several times more than those for Indian films. As many as 7 billion tickets are sold in Indian cinemas each year,59 making it unnecessary for Indian directors to work for Hollywood to reach large audiences. There are several Indian directors in Hollywood, all of whom have close personal ties with the UK and the US; in fact, they can be considered NRIs themselves. Mira Nair studied Sociology at Harvard as a graduate student, and started making documentaries and independent films in India. Following the success of her feature narrative film Salaam Bombay! (1988),60 she received offers from studios and continued her work mostly in the US. Shekhar Kapur, who worked as a chartered accountant in London in the 1980s, returned to India to direct films and made a name for himself in the West for his British-Hollywood co-produced historical dramas Elizabeth (1998) and The Four Feathers (2002). Another important Indian in Hollywood is Tarsem Singh, who arrived in the US to study film and went on to become an acclaimed music video and advertising director. He directed The Cell for New Line Productions in 2000 and continued both his advertising and feature film work. His celebrated position within advertising and music video networks has allowed him to work relatively independently, relying on his connections and using locations of his current assignments while shooting The Fall (2006). In the 1980s, films from two distinct, but in certain ways also similar countries created a stir in festival circles. China and Iran both had anti-American
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regimes that underwent major changes in the 1980s. In China, the Beijing Film Academy reopened in 1978. Members of its first graduating class of 1982, along with a few working directors, formed what came to be known as the Fifth Generation. Although they became internationally renowned, these directors chose to remain in their homeland. Wu Tiangming, a former actor, emigrated to the US after the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989, but after teaching at prestigious American universities for several years he returned to China to resume his work as a director. Chen Kaige became the first Mainland Chinese filmmaker to work for a major studio when he directed Killing Me Softly (2002) for MGM in London, with a largely British cast and crew. But like the Indian directors discussed above, Chen had briefly lived in New York at the end of the 1980s, and his earlier films such as Farewell My Concubine (1993) and The Emperor and the Assassin (1999) were international co-productions. Regrettably for Chen, Killing Me Softly proved to be a commercial and critical disaster. Calling it “a jaw-dropping catastrophe of a movie,” Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian added, “Kaige has no feeling for the suspense genre, and clearly no sense of when his English-speaking stars are either being wooden or going way, way, way over the top.”61 Bradshaw was joined by David Rooney of Variety: “… [Chen’s] first experience with English-speaking actors reveals an uncertain hand with the cast.”62 This erotic thriller went straight to video in the US and did not fare better anywhere else. Chen returned to China, which he had said he would do, even before the failure of his Western debut.63 One must note that in China, exposure to Hollywood films had been rather limited until the 1990s. In 1994, the Ministry of Radio, Film & Television (RFT) issued a reform measure, allowing the annual import of ten international blockbusters, the criteria for which were loosely defined as “reflecting up-to-date global cultural achievement and representing excellence of cinematic art and technique.”64 These have included Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone, 1995), Broken Arrow (John Woo, 1995), Twister (Jan De Bont, 1997), Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995), True Lies (James Cameron, 1995), Waterworld (Kevin Reynold, 1995), Bridges of Madison County (Clint Eastwood, 1995), and Jumanji (Joe Johnston, 1995); films that generated huge revenues and accounted for 70-80 percent of all box-office returns in 1995.65 This quota was gradually increased to 20 and then to 34, while simultaneously allowing foreign companies to keep a bigger share of the box office gains than before. All of this resulted in China becoming the largest foreign market for Hollywood films by 2013. In addition to accounted-for movie sales, China has a very high level of piracy, and many Hollywood films are widely (even if not legally) available. Stanley Rosen
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argues that the popularity of Hollywood films has led Chinese cinema to adopt Hollywood-style narratives (2003). This trend has been strengthened by the return of Chinese directors with Hollywood experience, such as John Woo, and might eventually translate into a talent flow towards Hollywood. Iran, home to one of the strongest national cinemas to emerge in the 1980s, has had an even more problematic relationship with Hollywood. Immediately after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, foreign films, some of which had been banned under the Shah regime, flooded the Iranian market. However, as early as July of the same year, efforts to curb film imports began, firstly with a limitation on B-movies from Turkey, India, and Japan, then a ban on “imperialist” and “anti-revolutionary” films, followed by the exclusion of all American films (Naficy 1992). This allowed Iranian filmmakers a space where they could create their own films without having to worry about the market share. In an interview, Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf likened this situation to “bringing up a flower in a greenhouse,” sheltered from the “commercial hurricane” of Hollywood.66 Makhmalbaf argued that having had no choice but to watch non-Hollywood films, the Iranian audiences’ tastes changed, and they became more open to Iranian films. That may well be true, but the popular domestic films are “of mindnumbing banality,”67 in Iranian scholar Hamid Dabashi’s words, and the Iranian films that are major international critical hits have the hardest time being distributed in Iran. This is not only due to governmental restrictions, but also to falling ticket sales; as pirated videos and satellite dishes become more widespread, there are alternatives to local films. Moreover, although a number of Iranian filmmakers have become popular in the West, none have opted to work for Hollywood, although they have made co-productions with Western European or other Middle Eastern countries. In fact, Makhmalbaf and Bahman Ghobadi started living in exile in the second half of 2000s, and Abbas Kiarostami has mostly worked in Europe. Nonetheless, anti-American feeling in Iran (and vice versa) throughout the 1980s and 1990s seems to have created too wide a gulf for Iranian directors and the studios to feel comfortable working with each other. And after 9/11, it became a challenge for some of these directors even to step onto US soil.68
Creating Connections These categorizations have aimed to map out some of the connections, patterns, and networks in world cinema, starting from the mid-1970s. The classical scenario goes as follows: a strong or flourishing local industry
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attracts the attention of Hollywood, which then recruits directors from that industry. This can result in a mass migration of talent, as in the case of Mexico, or it can turn out to be economically beneficial for the industry, which becomes the receiving end of runaway productions, like in the case of Australia. This system does not work however, if the directors in question are not sufficiently familiar with Hollywood-style filmmaking. Joseph Garncarz (2002) argues that the necessary precondition for the imported films to become popular in any context is the cultural affinity between the producing and the importing country. According to this assumption, a film industry’s economic strength increases in proportion to its audience’s cultural assimilation. Having dominated the world markets for decades, Hollywood’s “expansion is increased and the globalization process of the film industry is accelerated.”69 This is one aspect of understanding how the talent flows between Hollywood and other parts of the world function. Hollywood is both the agent of transformation and the manifestation of this change in the process of globalization, resulting in a cycle that clearly operates in its favor. Within this context, it is much more useful to construe blockbuster-era Hollywood as a global filmmaking network rather than just a center where filmmaking activity is agglomerated. Hollywood in Los Angeles County is indeed the primary node within this network; nonetheless, there are other nodal points.70 Some of these are other media capitals, such as London or New York, where executives, producers, and directors are situated. Film festivals are clearly another set of critical nodes; they are mobile and are positioned at different locations only for a brief period of time. However, this does not diminish their significance, as they have become an alternative distribution network. They are showcases for independent productions waiting to be “discovered” and purchased by Hollywood’s distribution companies. This is especially true of the Sundance Festival in Utah, which saw the blossoming of the careers of many independent American directors, including Steven Soderbergh, Todd Solondz and Ed Burns. Marijke de Valck points out that the festival network “operates both with and against the hegemony of Hollywood”; that it is not “closed to Hollywood products, but, in fact, offers alternative and secondary platforms for marketing and negotiation.”71 In this regard, the Cannes Film Festival plays a key role among the festivals, providing an opportunity for the studios not only to scout global talent, but also to showcase their “quality” products. Every year, global media zestfully cover Hollywood stars and directors visiting Cannes, supplying their films with invaluable PR coverage. Stars are often contractually obliged to accompany the films to festivals and give interviews to
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the press. An award at one of the major festivals (Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Toronto) means even more international recognition and credibility; and for Hollywood films, attending a festival is an executive decision taken as part of the marketing strategy by the production company. This project-based industrial model, which sets great store on personal relationships, once again confirms the significant role of producers and agents as actors within this network. At the same time, it shows us that as Faulkner and Anderson have argued, a successful performance is a massive career advantage, even before working in Hollywood. But the performance itself is not sufficient, either. As Mark Lutter maintains, “only within socially structured opportunities can individual ability bloom and achieve major success, but without the right opportunities, talent alone will not be enough.”72 These “socially structured opportunities” are provided by producers, agents, and existing networks. In the introductory chapter, I discussed some of the networks that enable global directors to work in Hollywood, and in chapter two, I looked at the roles played by producers and agents. In the following chapters, I examine several case studies that function as sub-networks within Hollywood. These cases also demonstrate certain strategies adopted by filmmakers, resulting in their employment in Hollywood.
4. A View to a Franchise: James Bond In Casino Royale (Martin Campbell, 2006),1 the first film in the Bond franchise to star Daniel Craig, there is a peculiar series of events early in the film; a chase sequence, in which Bond follows a suspected terrorist through construction sites in Madagascar, ends at the Nambutu Embassy. While this is not out of the ordinary, throughout the scenes at the embassy of this imaginary African country the use of security cameras and screens is highlighted, much more so than in any earlier Bond film. At the end of the sequence, as Bond shoots the suspect and blows up the embassy, his actions are all distinctly recorded on one of the security cameras. The audience soon finds out that the man was indeed a terrorist bomb-maker, which is meant to justify Bond’s actions to some extent. Nonetheless, it is the information age and the rules have changed; in the following scenes, Bond’s actions, along with the security camera footage, are reported on news sites and newspapers, read by Bond’s nemesis Le Chiffre, and his boss M. The new Bond, played by a new actor, is as susceptible to global information networks as any other citizen in the world. Sony Corporation, which was responsible for Casino Royale, is itself embedded in transnational networks on various levels. Originally an electronics firm, Sony was founded in Japan in 1946. It has since entered the music, film, and video games businesses, as well as finance and biotech. With offices in almost 40 countries and regions, Sony is truly a transnational corporation.2 As the parent company of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony is a major player in Hollywood. It purchased Columbia Pictures and Tristar Pictures in 1989 to benefit from potential synergies between hardware and software. Sony also acquired MGM and its subsidiary United Artists, which traditionally produced the Bond films, in 2005.3 Although Sony no longer owns MGM, 4 in 2011 it entered a partnership with MGM in order to co-finance and distribute the films in the franchise. The franchise has consistently been a great source of profit, but for Sony, the benefits of Bond go beyond the box office or even home market sales. One needs to see James Bond as a part of this global conglomeration, and keep in mind that the films are not just entertainment, but also serve as marketing tools for Sony’s other products, such as the PlayStation Bond games or the products featured in the films, such as the limited edition “James Bond Silver Sony Ericsson K800i” phone in Casino Royale. As Daragh O’Reilly and Finola Kerrigan point out, the presence of Sony products in the franchise significantly increased after the acquisition of MGM by Sony (2011).
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Why Bond? Within this context, the James Bond film franchise is relevant to this study on multiple levels. The very nature of a franchise producing blockbusters is an important element of New Hollywood. As pre-sold commodities, these films are familiar to audiences through different channels. They are event films, released worldwide to millions of audiences with great fanfare, and come with a collection of merchandising products. Janet Wasko defines a film franchise as “a property or a concept that is repeatable in multiple media platforms or outlets with merchandising and tie-in potential,” which “works particularly well if the franchise includes reoccurring and copyrightable characters and story elements.”5 As the ultimate blockbuster franchise, James Bond came into being much earlier than Star Wars or any of the other well-known harbingers of New Hollywood. From the early 1960s onwards, Bond films became a global phenomenon.6 The films initially appealed to viewers familiar with the novels, and later became events in their own right. The commercial brands that existed in the novels to characterize Bond became product placements in the films, spurring the sales of a wide variety of products, like the later Sony placements.7 The James Bond franchise is one of the most successful examples of branding in film history. Holly Cooper et al. have looked at the uses of brands in the franchise, identifying three dominant luxury brand narratives (2010). These are exemplified by the Bollinger, Aston Martin, and Jaguar brands, and epitomize the archetypal myths of lover, hero, and outlaw, respectively. Cooper et al. argue that “James Bond’s brand consumption becomes increasingly central to the development of a masculine and heroic character.”8 Going beyond the brands used in the films, O’Reilly and Kerrigan approach James Bond as a case study to form a theory of film as a brand (2011). They identify people brands, character brands, product placement, place/tourism brands, studio brands, and country of origin as six elements of a film brand. James Bond, with recognizable actors and soundtracks, an iconic title character supported by “Bond girls” and memorable villains, myriad products and worldwide locations that are promoted, and a strong studio presence, is an ideal model of a film brand. Due to the nationalities of the characters and some of the brands used, O’Reilly and Kerrigan also see Bond as a British brand. Bond films have always been multinational, however, in terms of their financing, locations, cast, and crew. As Tino Balio noted in his historical account of United Artists, these films are “financed by an American major partly with British film subsidy funds, produced by two expatriates who
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had incorporated in Switzerland, ... shot in exotic locales featuring a cast of mixed nationalities that was headed by a star of universal appeal,” and are thus “quintessential examples of products tailored for the international market.”9 While Bond films initially appeared as British productions, the main funding always came from Hollywood. Moonraker (Lewis Gilbert, 1979) was a French/British production for tax reasons, and Casino Royale was released as a “United Kingdom/Czech/German/United States” production. As such, the Bond franchise is an early example of transnationally produced, globally popular cinema. Within the context of global talent, Bond’s earlier British directors continued their careers with other Hollywood projects, and since Goldeneye (Martin Campbell, 1995), the Bond franchise has employed relatively established global directors, something I discuss in more detail in the following sections.
From the Novels to the Films James Bond is one of the most recognizable film characters of all time. The character created by Ian Fleming reached a wide audience first through the novels, then through the film adaptations, which in turn made the books even more popular. Of the nearly 28 million James Bond paperbacks sold in Britain between 1955 and 1977, almost 20 million copies were sold between 1963 and 1966, when the first Bond films were released.10 Over the course of the 40 years between 1962 and 2006, 21 Bond films achieved ticket sales of over 1.5 billion. It has been estimated that 25-50 percent of the world’s population has seen at least one Bond film.11 This popularity is clearly visible in the hundreds of fan books, websites, and discussion groups devoted to everything about James Bond.12 As well as being “highly visual films”,13 their iconic character, exotic locales, and action-packed narratives may be responsible for a great part of the James Bond films’ popularity. But another factor in their profitability is the transnational nature of the franchise. In their discussion of co-production as a business strategy, Colin Hoskins et al. identify nine major benefits of co-produced film and television productions (1997). While some of these benefits, such as the pooling of financial resources, cultural goals, or learning from production partners, are more relevant for co-productions among smaller filmmaking countries, there are clear advantages for Hollywood companies as well. Having access to the partnering government’s incentives and subsidies, cheaper inputs in the partner’s country, and desired foreign locations are all motives that drive studios to make runaway
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productions. Another benefit that co-productions provide to all parties involved is access to partners’ markets. In terms of Hollywood companies, this ensures higher profits in overseas markets, but more importantly, for their counterparts, this can be seen as a way to overcome the barriers to entry to the US market. This has been the case not only for directors such as Paul Verhoeven and Roger Donaldson, but also for producers like Dino DeLaurentiis (Wasser 1995). The James Bond franchise has been a US/UK co-production with input from countless other nations, making the films significantly transnational. As with other co-productions, the question of the films’ nationality has arisen within the Bond franchise. Bond films have been identified as “British” or as “Hollywood”, depending on the standpoints and agendas of the identifiers. Compared to Bond’s popularity among audiences, the scholarly world was significantly less interested in the series in the early days. While prominent studies on the novels had already been published by Kingsley Amis in 1965 and Oreste Del Buono and Umberto Eco in 1966, the first volume on the Bond films did not appear until 1987 (Bennett and Woollacott), with a slew of scholarly publications appearing only in the 21st century.14 Among the earliest scholars of Bond films, James Chapman argues that this early neglect of the Bond series in film scholarship was due to the nature of the “orthodox film criticism […] in Britain, with its emphasis on ‘realism’ […] and notions of ‘quality.’”15 But even after the 1980s, when film scholars started showing an interest in films outside the traditional British canon, the Bond series failed to gain attention. Chapman argues that this is in part due to the big-budget values of the films, but mostly because of their “sexist, heterosexist, jingoistic, xenophobic and racist” nature, as well as their apparent endorsement of these qualities.16 Studies published since Chapman’s book not only acknowledge these characteristics of the films, but often focus on issues of representation in terms of gender, nationality, and ethnicity. Although few characters are as well known as Bond, relatively little is known about either the character or the series by the wider public, save for the truest fans. Possibly the most “British” figure in all contemporary film and literature, this member of MI6, the British secret service, was transferred to the silver screen in the 1960s, starting with Dr. No (Terence Young, 1962). Going through a number of lead actor (and style) changes over the decades, the installments have continued with Daniel Craig in the title role since Casino Royale, with Bond still saving the world and serving his queen. However, if we take a closer look, we see that Bond’s “Britishness” is rather questionable. James Bond, the character, was born to a Scottish
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father and a Swiss mother. The film franchise is the brainchild of Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, an Italian-American and a Canadian producer, respectively, who obtained financing for the films from an American company, United Artists. United Artists later merged into MGM, which was then purchased by Sony Pictures.17 The scriptwriter for most of the films, Richard Maibaum, also is an American, in later stages accompanied by Michael Wilson, Broccoli’s stepson. Bond’s gadgets have included a Swiss watch and a Swedish cell phone, and in a few films he drove a German car instead of the usual Aston Martin. The title songs have frequently been sung by American singers or bands, one Norwegian band and several British performers. Exotic locations, an integral part of a Bond film, frequently span the entire world, and on occasion, outer space. The films’ directors come from different regions, mainly from Britain, but also Canada, New Zealand, and Switzerland (in 2008). Earlier directors, who were all British, retained their close ties with the studios, directing Hollywood action films in their subsequent careers. As a result, although James Bond films are on occasion quoted as “the great last gasp of British film-making”18 or “some of the best-known British successes,”19 and the limited academic discussion of the films can be found in works on British cinema,20 calling the films themselves “British” is problematic at the very least. It should be noted that one of the main reasons behind the decision to have a British production base was not loyalty to the novels’ pedigree, but because the films would qualify for the Eady Levy (Chapman 2003).21 The films thus needed to be “registered as British, regardless of their source of finance.”22 The levy attracted many Hollywood (as well as European) productions to the UK until it was terminated in 1985. Defining any country’s films is a difficult task, but defining a British film is particularly difficult. The colossal presence of Hollywood capital invested in the British film industry is the primary cause of this difficulty. The prevalence of co-productions with other European countries is another factor. Britain’s Secretary of State for Culture, Chris Smith, announced in 1999 that all films that spent 75 percent of their budget in the country and employed mostly British, EU or Commonwealth citizens as crew would qualify as British.23 This definition is a rather wide one, but at least it is more concrete than some other suggested definitions. An editorial published in the June 2003 issue of Sight & Sound discussed what should be considered a British film. Despite arguments to the contrary, Sight & Sound’s designation of British films was limited to “the national location of the production companies involved.”24 By this definition, the British-ness of the James Bond series is very dubious, due to the presence of MGM/UA behind it. In fact,
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in her discussion of British cinema’s emulation of Hollywood, Sally Hibbin suggests that Bond films are the opposite of British cinema.25 But even according to the “official” definition, which requires shooting in the UK, the Bond series risked ceasing to be British. Despite the location shootings around the world, sets at Pinewood Studios in England had been used for all Bond films. Some time before shooting for Casino Royale began in early 2006, trade papers announced that production might be transferred from Pinewood to Barrandov Studios in the Czech Republic. The Secretary of State for Culture, Tessa Jowell, commented that “everything possible is being done” to keep Bond in the UK,26 but most of the shooting was eventually done in Prague. Ultimately, production returned to Pinewood Studios for the subsequent installments of the franchise. While it may be difficult to classify the James Bond series as British, it is not possible to define these films as American products, either. After all, they come from a British literary tradition, they have a British protagonist and usually British directors and lead actors, and are shot on a variety of locations, including sets in England. The impossibility of assigning a specific nationality to these films again brings into question the nationality of films as an essentialist category. Initially, the identification of Bond films as “British” was partly for financial reasons, due to the Eady Levy. Cultural branding was an issue as well, as evinced by the portrayal of Bond by nonAmerican actors.27 The transnationality of Bond not only reflects that of Hollywood, but it is also what makes the franchise so popular around the globe. The films are concoctions that can be tied to any specific nationality, but thrive on their own traditions and conventions. In terms of story structure and narration, the films are close to the Classical Hollywood narration, although by now, with twenty films and countless spawns, they almost have their own filmic language. The narrative structure has unchangeable elements such as the opening sequence, the climax at the villain’s hideout and the ending, often in the arms of a Bond girl. Iconographic details such as the Walther PPK gun, the gadgets, and the women are everpresent, as well as the fixed characters, such as M or Q, the two Bond girls, the power-hungry villain, his principal henchman, and so forth. The score, not only in terms of the famous theme, but also where and how the theme is employed, is also part of what makes a Bond picture. In the last analysis, these films are more “Bondian” than anything else, to employ a term used by Broccoli and other members of the production team (Woollacott 1983). The persistence of this “comforting” consistency is another element, possibly the most important, that makes Bond f ilms so popular. The hero and the distinction between good and evil have always been easily
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identifiable, prompting John Brosnan to approach Bond films as “fairy tales” and “twentieth-century folk epics.”28 James Chapman suggests that the Bond films need to “find the right balance between repetition and variation, […] so that they can simultaneously provide the sort of entertainment pattern which audiences expect while at the same time providing new thrills.”29 Despite their Anglo-Saxon origins, the films were “able to achieve an international appeal in much the same way as did the cartoons of Walt Disney.”30 The non-US box-office returns of Bond films vary between 55 and 78 percent of total revenues, which is a relatively high percentage compared to other studio films of the time. Within this structure of repetition and continuity, the producers have been the constant force behind the Bond series. Their role has been more important and dominant than that of the directors, who frequently change between films, as one can see from a brief look at the history of James Bond films.
A Bondian History An evaluation of the history of the Bond films reveals four major periods. These periods are separated by changes in production, but also correspond to other milestones. The first period, with Broccoli and Saltzman acting as producers, is from Dr. No (1962) to The Man with the Golden Gun (Guy Hamilton, 1974), and can be seen as the birth of the franchise. The second period started when Saltzman left the franchise and the films were first produced by Broccoli alone, then by Broccoli and his stepson Michael Wilson. This period begins with The Spy Who Loved Me (Lewis Gilbert, 1977) and ends with License to Kill (John Glen, 1989). The third period starts in 1995 with Goldeneye (Campbell) and concludes with Die Another Day (Tamahori, 2002). The producers in this period were Wilson and Albert Broccoli’s daughter, Barbara Broccoli. This period brought several significant changes; not only did the franchise enter a very profitable era at this point (See Figure 4.1), but the directors’ backgrounds became more varied (the directors working on the films in the first two periods had all been British). This trend clearly mirrors the changes discussed in chapter three in terms of Hollywood’s global directors’ backgrounds. With Casino Royale, the Bond franchise entered a fourth period and underwent a “reboot.” A new Bond, portrayed as a young agent at the beginning of his career, and a reduced reliance on gadgets and special effects appear to be this period’s pointers.31 This is also a new era on the production level, since Bond is now part of the Sony group.
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Figure 4.1 Worldwide ticket sales for James Bond films, 1962-200632
Even before the first period, however, there was a pre-film Bond era, starting when Casino Royale was published in 1953. From the very beginning, Ian Fleming was convinced that James Bond was a hero suitable for the silver screen. Despite offers during 1950s, including one from the famed Hungarian-born British producer Sir Alexander Korda, no film project actually materialized. The very first adaptation of James Bond came in the form of an hour-long television film based on Casino Royale, directed by William H. Brown Jr. This version, in which James Bond became Jimmy Bond, an American agent played by Barry Nelson, aired on CBS in October 1954 as part of the dramatic anthology series Climax! Dr. No, the first theatrical adaptation in the Bond franchise, was inspired by an unrealized film project called James Gunn-Secret Agent, again with an American title character. Although this was later changed, the details of Doctor No’s character and the Caribbean location remained largely the same. Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli was born in New York to an Italian-American family. Having started out as a tea-boy at 20th Century Fox, he eventually moved up to the position of assistant director. After a stint at the Famous Artists Agency following the war, he founded the British production company Warwick Films with Irving Allen in the 1950s. Harry Saltzman was born in Canada, but eventually moved to New York. After various jobs in show business, he co-founded the Woodfall production company. Saltzman
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was the one to first meet with Fleming in 1960, although Broccoli had been entertaining the idea of Bond adaptations for several years at that point. The two producers met in May 1961 and formed the Danjaq production company in Switzerland, as well as its subsidiary, Eon Productions, for their operations in Britain. To secure financing, they first spoke to Columbia, but it was United Artists that accepted their project. The director, Terence Young, had already worked with Broccoli, as had one of the three scriptwriters, Richard Maibaum. After selecting a Scottish actor to play Bond (Sean Connery) and a Swiss actress to be the original Bond girl (Ursula Andress), location shooting began in Jamaica. Thus from the outset, the franchise’s multinational formation was in place. Dr. No was initially released in the UK, and did not open in the US until May 1963. Although not favored by the critics, it made a profit large enough to ensure the second film. Setting the standards for the franchise, From Russia With Love (Young, 1963) included a pre-credits sequence and credits accompanied by the title song. Made by the same producerdirector-scriptwriter team and the same lead actor, the film was set largely in Istanbul, with Italian and German actresses playing Russian spies and a Mexican actor playing a major Turkish character. This trend, with similar crew members, some of the same actors and with international locations, continued throughout the rest of the films. Guy Hamilton and Lewis Gilbert took over direction from Young for several films each, and later, Peter Hunt, an editor on the Bond films, directed On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969). In the meantime, earlier directors such as Young and Hamilton had started working in Hollywood, as would Hunt later in his career. Among others, Young directed the well-received thriller Wait Until Dark (1967). Hamilton, although chosen to direct the original Superman (1978), had to back out for tax reasons when production moved from Italy to England; nonetheless, he worked on other, less well-known Hollywood films. All of these directors continued working on British, Hollywood, and co-produced projects, having already entered the British Hollywood network through the Bond franchise. In addition, having successfully delivered as part of a franchise largely controlled by producers may have given them extra credibility in the eyes of other Hollywood producers and executives. In this regard, Eon Productions is at least partially responsible for the transnational careers of these directors, having served as a network spanning both the US and the UK, and interweaving with studio networks. The initial period of the franchise ended in 1975, when Saltzman sold his 50 percent share in Danjaq to United Artists. The second period, from The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) to License to Kill, (1989), covers seven films.
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The first four of these were produced by Broccoli alone and starred Roger Moore, who had replaced Sean Connery in 1973. The last three, two of them starring Timothy Dalton, were produced by Broccoli and Michael Wilson. Wilson was originally a lawyer who specialized in international business, but had come on board the Bond franchise in 1974, when Broccoli and Saltzman were in a legal tangle. Wilson became a co-scriptwriter with Maibaum in For Your Eyes Only (Glen, 1981), and co-scripted the following four films, until the end of what I have called the second period. The directors in this period were Lewis Gilbert, who had already directed one Bond film, and John Glen, who had edited and acted as second unit director on three Bond films. This was a challenging era, since James Bond had become an icon and subsequently turned into a cliché. Roger Moore played up the comedy element in the films, and the presence of Jaws (Richard Kiel), a gigantic villain with steel teeth, was blamed for steering the films towards a juvenile audience. One review read: “Jaws [seems to be] created to appeal to anyone under the age of ten.”33 Despite the criticism from older fans, the films did well at the box office, each bringing in over US$ 150 million. When Roger Moore was replaced by Timothy Dalton in The Living Daylights (Glen, 1987), the films took on a more serious tone in an attempt to return to their earlier style, but were faced with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Dalton starred in just two Bond films, and after License to Kill (Glen, 1989), the series went into a hiatus for six years, marking the end of the second period. The two directors of this period made several Hollywood pictures after and between their Bond films, but did not attract much attention. This is not surprising, considering that this period was the one with the lowest popularity in the franchise history. In 1995, Goldeneye ushered in a new era. Not only was this the first Bond film after the end of the Cold War and the first outing for Pierce Brosnan in the title role, but it was also the first time Albert Broccoli delegated production to his daughter Barbara Broccoli and stepson Michael Wilson. It was also the first film after the death of Maibaum, who had scripted thirteen of the sixteen previous films. Moreover, because Pinewood Studios were fully booked, the film ended up using a new studio space: Leavesden Aerodrome, an abandoned plane engine factory outside London, was rented by Eon Productions and quickly converted into a sound studio.34 At six years, the gap between Goldeneye and License to Kill was much wider than the usual two-year cycle. Although this was an era of new blood, there were essentially no major changes in the Bondian universe. The pattern had been set and the franchise stayed within the family. One change worthy of note relates to the selection of directors. Until Goldeneye, the sixteen Bond
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films had been directed by four directors only, two of whom had already been on the crew as editors. It was a close-knit circle, a way of avoiding taking risks with a possibly more creative director. Martin Campbell, from New Zealand, became the first director of this new post-Cold War era as his first experience with the Bond franchise. He had a solid career in British TV series and experience with US action films (No Escape, 1994). The success of the Bond films, however, is not solely due to the capabilities of the director or the producers. Goldeneye opened with a massive ad campaign, positioning the film not as the grandfather of the 1980s’ and the 1990s’ action blockbuster, which the franchise arguably was, but as a contemporary, thrilling action-adventure.35 This very New Hollywood-type campaign pushed the film as an update on the global franchise everyone knew and loved, without any specific references to Bond’s nationality. After the substantial success of Goldeneye, the next Bond film was produced very quickly, this time under the direction of British-raised Canadian Roger Spottiswoode, who had started out as an editor first in the UK, and continued in Hollywood working on the films of Sam Peckinpah. His career as a director included action films such as Under Fire (1983), Air America (1990) and (the universally reviled) Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992). Although Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) did well at the box office and even surpassed Goldeneye, much friction was reported between the director and the producers, much like on the set of Goldeneye with Campbell. Broccoli and Wilson had complete control over the films. As Wilson noted in an interview, when asked if there was a line they would not cross in terms of MPAA ratings: “You can ask [Martin Campbell] how many times we asked him to get some cover on that and do it another way.”36 This friction between the production company and the directors led to the selection of new directors for every subsequent film. The choice for The World Is Not Enough (1999) was Michael Apted, who fit the criteria: a British director with several Hollywood thrillers under his belt (Blink, 1994; Extreme Measures, 1996). Curiously, though, Apted was also known for his documentary work in the UK (Up series) and more ‘dramatic’ films (Coal Miner’s Daughter, 1980; Gorillas in the Mist, 1988). The World Is Not Enough is considered to be one of the darker Bond films, so much so that the review in Sight & Sound found the film to be almost non-Bondian: “The makers of The World Is Not Enough, of whom director Michael Apted should be singled out for blame, have attempted to depict all-too fleshy characters who desire, lack and feel. It is what is valued in a Ken Loach film, but it acts as an explosive and unsettling expulsion from the fantasies Bond films invite us to.”37 This was followed by yet another change
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of director. Die Another Day (2002) was directed by Lee Tamahori: half Maori, half British, born and raised in New Zealand. Tamahori made his international breakthrough with a drama about the Maori, Once Were Warriors (1994), and quickly transferred to Hollywood to direct a series of thrillers (Mulholland Falls, 1996; The Edge, 1997; Along Came a Spider, 2001). The Guardian called Tamahori, probably one of the most famous directors in the franchise, an “expert, solid, faintly anonymous director, [he is] tailor-made for the next Bond movie.”38 The director himself was clearly aware of the limitations, saying, “they have a very loyal fan base and after 19 pictures, I’m not the guy to come in here and say that my idea is right and theirs is wrong.”39 He argued that the limitations were imposed by the genre itself, not by the producers or the studio. The producers and the studio, however, were the creators of this very particular sub-genre. For the rebooting of the franchise with Casino Royale, Martin Campbell was chosen to direct again. He had ushered James Bond into a new era once before, with Goldeneye, and that film’s enormous popularity clearly justified this selection. In addition, Campbell’s career after Goldeneye, with two Zorro films, proved that he was an ideal Bond (and Hollywood) director: skillful, action-oriented yet consistently “invisible,” and most importantly, profitable. Casino Royale did breathe new life into the franchise, bringing audience numbers back up to the early Bond era. Initially, Daniel Craig’s selection as the new Bond sparked heated debates on the web and in the press. His blondness and his rough features, especially when compared to the previous Bond, Pierce Brosnan, drew a lot of criticism. 40 Nonetheless, the film opened to rave reviews41 and proved to be a great critical and commercial success. Casino Royale took the series back to its beginnings, when Bond first received his “license to kill.” The opening sequence, shot in black and white with sharp camera angles and intercut with shots of an unusually bloody fistfight, signaled to the audiences that this was a different Bond. While the rest of the film is closer to what is expected of a Bond film, James Bond’s awkwardness around classical features such as his tuxedo and his drinks, and the highlighted romantic subplot set Casino Royale apart. James Bond had been born in the Cold War era, but this Bond was fighting “the War on Terrorism.” The villain is not a madman trying to take over the world, but a banker who holds global terrorists’ fortunes. The film even suggests that the events of September 11, 2001 were not ideologically motivated, but instead were part of a stock market scheme to depreciate the values of airline companies. After September 11, Slavoj Žižek had compared Osama Bin Laden to Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the villain of numerous Bond films, and asked whether single-hero movies like Bond
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could survive. 42 Casino Royale answered this question by setting Bond up against not an individual terrorist villain, but against the very source that sustains terrorism. About global stock markets and an international poker game, with villains from multiple regions, the film’s plot is a reflection of the age of transnational corporations, and Bond is renewed for a new generation.
Other Franchises To better comprehend the impact of franchises on the film industry, it is helpful to take a quick look at the top ten films in the box-office list for worldwide grosses. For the time period covered in this book (1975-2005), the top grossing films are all part of franchises, with the sole exception of Titanic (James Cameron, 1998). 43 This includes The Lion King (Rob Minkoff, Roger Allers, 1994); even though the film did not have a theatrical sequel, it did lead to two direct-to-video sequels, a spin-off television series, video games, and various merchandise, as well as a popular Broadway show. Considering that studios earn even higher revenues from merchandising, tie-ins, and DVD sales, franchises truly become gold mines for their studios. Similar to James Bond, most of the successful franchises are transnational in terms of their production. Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings, both from the English literary tradition, were runaway productions with multinational casts and crew. The first two Harry Potter films were directed by the American director Chris Columbus, the third by the Mexican Alfonso Cuarón, and the rest by the Englishmen Mike Newell (4) and David Yates (5-8). All were shot at Leavesden Studios, which had been constructed for GoldenEye. This was also where Die Another Day was filmed, as were episodes I and II of Star Wars. The Lord of the Rings series, already discussed in chapter three, was made in New Zealand with an international cast and mostly local crew. At the same time, the three films were produced and distributed by Hollywood companies and are perceived, not incorrectly, to be Hollywood films. Even the most “American” of superheroes, Superman, had his farmhouse, including its surrounding cornfields, built from scratch in Australia for Superman Returns (Bryan Singer, 2006). Warner Bros. produced the first four Batman films with PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, a London-based subsidiary of the Dutch music company PolyGram. While Batman (Tim Burton, 1989) and Batman Returns (Burton, 1992) were shot partially at British studios, Batman Forever (Joel Schumacher, 1995) and Batman &
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Robin (Joel Schumacher, 1997) were produced in-house, at Warner Bros.’ Burbank Studios. With the reboot Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan, 2005), however, the franchise took another step away from the US, where the fictional Gotham City is located. Batman Begins had an English/American director, a Welshman (Christopher Bale) in the title role, and an assortment of international acting talent in supporting roles. 44 A cartoon published prior to the release showed Batman in his classic pose, perched atop a building, high over the city. Albeit, the building is Big Ben, and Batman is sipping tea from a floral cup. The film eventually grossed over US$ 350 million, 55 percent of which came from the US market, which did not seem to mind Batman’s new multinational makeup. The Bond films are among the earliest examples of franchises, but many others have joined them since. Successful franchises provide audiences with familiar diversions and studios with guaranteed revenues. While the content of these films may be homogenous and standardized, their production conditions are certainly not. The Bond films are created transnationally, aiming for the largest common denominator for audiences across the world, thus the largest possible profit. The transnational space within which the Bond franchise is produced, distributed, and consumed encompasses more than one “nation” or its cinema; it is global. The significance of Bond franchise for this study is twofold. The first is that this transnational space had been created as early as the 1960s by Bond, which acted as a blueprint for many blockbuster action films in the decades to come. The second aspect involves the position of directors within this space. The name, nationality, and style of a Bond director are of little importance compared to the franchise, producers and studio. While the émigré auteur narrative has often been employed for some of the famous global directors, such as Paul Verhoeven or John Woo, many others have been ignored in their capacity as any other industry filmmaker. 45 In this light, it is not surprising that Bond directors continued their careers in other Hollywood films. Instead of being seen as émigré auteurs who wanted to leave a mark on the films they made, they were seen as (and were) highly skilled craftsmen who were capable of providing the studios with the products that could lure audiences to cinemas. For the studios, that has always been more important than a director’s nationality. In fact, when Christopher Nolan was selected to direct Batman Begins, the discussion on fan forums revolved around his status as a dark, indie director, and not his national background. 46 This mirrors the irrelevance of nationality, as repeatedly stressed by Leslie Sklair when discussing the transnational capitalist class (2001).
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Several months after its release, Casino Royale had its China premiere, becoming the first Bond film to be officially released there. This was the biggest launch ever for a foreign film in China, on 1,000 screens. Despite this, Sony did not expect to make a significant profit, since China’s stateowned distributor retains the bulk of the box-office returns. Nonetheless, the film’s stars Daniel Craig and Eva Green, as well as Martin Campbell, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, were present at the premiere. This event highlighted two of the key issues in contemporary cinema. The first is copyright issues, as the filmmaker Campbell was confronted with pirate copies of his own film on the streets of Beijing. 47 Piracy is a great concern to the studios, but at the same time it transforms global film viewing practices and opens China to the world, even when only a limited number of foreign films are allowed official releases. The second is the importance of Asian markets, especially the Chinese. Asia, both in terms of audiences and in terms of talent, started to play a significant role in world cinema in recent decades. In the next chapter, I discuss the practice of remakes and touch upon Asia’s growing importance in the global industry.
5.
“Once More with the Volume Up”: Auto-remakes1
Jean Renoir famously (and allegedly) said: “A director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it into pieces and makes it again.” While he may have been referring to auteurs who dwell on particular themes and employ a consistent style within their oeuvre, this is a literal description of the practice of certain filmmakers who have remade their own works. This practice of remaking one’s own film, labeled the “auto-remake” by Michel Serceau and Daniel Protopopoff (1989), has been a sporadic but steady feature of remakes in general. In this chapter, I consider global directors who have remade their films within the Hollywood context. Every single one of these remakes also marks its director’s first collaboration with a studio, possibly as a stepping-stone for a Hollywood career.2 The auto-remake provides a way into the global network, as it is based on proven material. Whether they are by the same director or not, Hollywood remakes are almost without exception bigger and louder. As Cameron Crowe commented on Vanilla Sky, his own remake of Alejandro Amenábar’s Abre los ojos / Open Your Eyes (1997), the original is acoustic, whereas the remake is the rock cover version at full volume.3 Although remaking is as old as f ilmmaking itself, scholarship on remakes is significantly more recent. Following a few general surveys, 4 numerous studies have taken theoretical approaches to remakes,5 while others have focused on remakes with specific national or generic origins.6 Robert Eberwein suggests a preliminary taxonomy of the different kinds of remakes (1998). Across fifteen categories, he takes into account a film’s origins, cultural setting, and genre, as well as other factors that may differ between the original and the remake. The first category is concerned with silent films, and one of the sub-categories is “a silent film remade by the same director as a sound film.” The second category encompasses sound film auto-remakes of three types: a film remade by the same director (a) in the same country, (b) in a different country in the same language, or (c) in a different country in a different language. Remakes became common in the late 1920s, with the advent of sound. Since silent films lacked recorded dialogue, they were easily screened in different countries. With the coming of sound, this convenience disappeared. In addition to remakes of silent films into sound films, as in Eberwein’s first category, the early days of sound saw many films shot as multiple
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language productions, as briefly discussed in chapter three. The same sets were utilized to shoot different language versions of the same story with different casts. Ewald André Dupont, hired in 1929 by British International Pictures to direct the English and German versions of Atlantic,7 was one of the first directors to shoot multilanguage films. Dupont had already worked in Hollywood and he was a German national, hence he was an ideal candidate. The practice of multilanguage versions was abandoned when film-makers started to use cheaper methods such as dubbing and subtitling. Auto-remakes that are made in different countries reflect the differing conditions of production and different expectations, both on the part of producers and presumed on the part of the audiences. From a scholarly point of view, comparing “original” and Hollywood versions of films, particularly by the same director, can provide an insight into how the content and style of the film are translated when transposed from a national to a global context. In a naïve sense, these projects can be seen as a new chance for directors to improve on their initial work, but this is rarely – if ever – the motivation. The reason that these particular films are remade is to the reap the profits of a product with proven appeal; and the task facing the director is to provide at least the same level of profitability with the remake as with the original film. Hollywood remakes secure larger budgets, potentially and hypothetically allowing filmmakers greater financial freedom (although this financial freedom is not equal to, and often limits, creative freedom). At the same time, these remakes give their directors an opportunity to distribute their films in countries that would otherwise be out of reach – a scope guaranteed by Hollywood’s vast distribution network.
Why Remakes? Luc Besson’s La Femme Nikita (1990) was remade as Black Cat (Stephen Shin, 1991) in Hong Kong before it became Point of No Return (John Badham, 1993) in Hollywood. Unauthorized remakes, particularly of Hollywood films, were and still are commonplace in film industries in countries such as India and Turkey (Arslan 2011, Wright 2009). While this type of off icial and unoff icial remaking happens between all f ilm industries, Hollywood productions of foreign films attract the greatest attention due to the wide international distribution and PR offensives that accompany them. Hollywood’s interest in remaking films from other countries has been a constant feature of the business since the very early days of sound film; this tendency has only increased in the blockbuster era. The popularity of
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remakes in this era is related to the studios’ desire to use sources that are “presold” and have already proven their popularity, much like the franchises. This trend is supported by the limited (or at times non-existent) distribution of foreign films in the American market.8 As Robert Eberwein notes, every remade film is bound to encounter new audiences, and since the foreign originals can reach only a small portion of the world market, the remakes are certain to broaden their reach (1998). Not all remakes have proven to be financially successful, but those that have managed to combine the allure of the original narrative and the appeal of a blockbuster have done very well at the box office. Among the most notable examples are the aforementioned Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise, True Lies (James Cameron, 1994) with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead role, and The Birdcage (Mike Nichols, 1996) with Robin Williams.9 Asian remakes can been added to this list after the phenomenal success of The Ring (Gore Verbinski, 2002) with Naomi Watts. A remake of the Japanese horror film Ringu (Hideo Nakata, 1998), The Ring was followed by a sequel directed by Nakata himself, to be discussed shortly. This pattern is a partial answer to an essential question: why are films remade and not simply shown in the US and global markets in their original versions? Star appeal cannot be underestimated in terms of its role in attracting crowds to cinemas, and the relatively little-known actors in the original films lack the familiarity audiences appear to desire. Director Brad Silberling contends that casting a film with “notable actors” is the most significant part of the process and “does the work for you.”10 The other part of the answer relates to language. Wherever they are shown, films in a “foreign” language need to be subtitled or dubbed. Especially in the US, subtitles cause a film to be received as an “art film” with limited distribution, even if the film hails from its original country’s popular cinema. Conversely, and somewhat ironically, distributors claim that the American public is too “cinematically sophisticated” for dubbed films.11 As a result, instead of simply translating the spoken language of the original film, remaking, and in the process possibly translating the filmic language of the original, is a more financially viable choice for American distribution. Remakes are invariably shot with larger budgets and often involve changes not only to the cast, but also the narration, and in some instances, the narrative. The studios get originality in terms of a new story, but familiarity in terms of a proven formula. The question of turning “foreign” films into Hollywood productions is one not only concerned with the US market, but with global markets. Atom Egoyan and Ian Balfour point out that “all films are foreign films, foreign to some other audience.”12 However, a Hollywood
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film is not as foreign as a film from any other culture. Hollywood “has become a part of the popular imagination”13 of audiences worldwide and remade versions of films open in more markets than the originals ever can. Even the British are not exempt from this process of “Hollywoodization”, as numerous television series remade in the 2000s demonstrate. As early as the 1940s, Samuel Goldwyn wrote in a letter to Alexander Korda while working on The Elusive Pimpernel (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1950), a remake of the latter’s The Scarlet Pimpernel (Harold Young, 1934): “Some time ago I read an article … the author made the point that many splendid British pictures did not receive their box-office due in America simply because the diction of actors was a little too British to be easily understood by American audiences.”14 Goldwyn then warned Korda not to make “the English more English than they really need to be.”15 Lastly, a Hollywood remake is likely to draw larger audiences, because it carries the Hollywood brand. For most audiences around the world, this brand signifies high technical standards and promises an entertaining experience.
European Auto-remakes During the first decades of sound era, several auto-remakes were made that converted the directors’ silent works into sound films. Abel Gance remade his silent 1919 film J’Accuse in 1937, and in 1941, Ernst Lubitsch directed That Uncertain Feeling, a sound remake of his 1925 Kiss Me Again. During the studio era, some directors remade their own films not only in the same country and the same language, but often for the same studio as well. Sometimes it was just the stars that changed, as in Leo McCarey’s Love Affair (1939) and An Affair to Remember (1957). At times, they changed the genre: Raoul Walsh’s crime picture High Sierra (1941) became his Western Colorado Territory (1949). Or musical numbers were added: Howard Hawks’ Ball of Fire (1941) became a musical, A Song is Born (1948).16 Among the auto-remakes made into Hollywood films, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, with its 1934 British and 1956 Hollywood versions, is possibly the best-known example. It is also an interesting case, since the language of the original and the remake are the same. Even earlier, Anatole Litvak and Julien Duvivier made their Hollywood debuts with autoremakes.17 Roger Vadim, who alternated between France and Hollywood throughout the 1970s and the 1980s, remade his classic Et Dieu Créa la Femme / And God Created Woman (1956) in Hollywood in 1987. There
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is a significant time difference between the originals and the remakes of Hitchcock and Vadim’s films, and this time lag is getting significantly shorter. From the 1980s, Hollywood studios produced more auto-remakes, which were rather easy to classify by region and genre: French comedies, North European thrillers, and Japanese horror films. The comedies include Francis Veber’s Les Fugitifs / The Fugitives (1986) / Three Fugitives (1989) and Jean-Marie Poiré’s (Gaubert) Les Visiteurs (1993) / Just Visiting (2001). Comedy as a genre tends not to travel well, and both films received scathing reviews. Disney tried to avoid the negative comparisons with the original for Three Fugitives by not distributing the original Les Fugitifs in the US market, but even that did not help.18 The Washington Post proclaimed: “Three Fugitives, a Disney remake of a French farce, recalls Three Men and a Baby, a Disney remake of a French farce, which recalled Down and Out in Beverly Hills, a Disney remake of a French farce. Aside from a lack of Yankee ingenuity, what we have here is an advanced case of déjà view.”19 Despite the negative reviews, the film did exceptionally well at the box office, bringing Veber another Hollywood studio project, Out on a Limb (1992). In addition to reviews even worse than those for his previous film, Out on a Limb grossed only about $2 million in the US, a ghastly box office figure by any standard, and much lower than the $40 million Three Fugitives had earned. This was to be Veber’s last studio project, proving the old Hollywood adage “you’re only as good as your last movie.” Just Visiting, Poiré’s Hollywood debut, also received negative reviews, exacerbated by the fact that Les Visiteurs had been released in the US by Miramax in 1996: “Just Visiting not only microwaves what is already four-day-old fish in Paris, but lets the original director, screenwriters, and stars do the reheating.”20 Unlike Three Fugitives, Just Visiting failed to earn enough money at the box office,21 and brought Poiré’s Hollywood career to a rapid end. Another set of Hollywood-debut auto-remakes includes two thrillers,22 one by a Dutch and the other by a Danish director: George Sluizer’s Spoorloos (1988) / The Vanishing (1993), and Ole Bornedal’s Nattevagten (1994) / Nightwatch (1998).23 The originals of both films were extremely successful in their native countries, and received several awards at international festivals. Spoorloos was distributed in the US, and in addition to receiving positive reviews did well at the box office. Shortly thereafter, 20th Century Fox, which had purchased the rights of Spoorloos, hired Sluizer to remake his own film, this time set in the US with American actors and a budget of $33 million (as opposed to the mere NLG 1.5 million, roughly $3 million, spent on Spoorloos).24 One of the most striking elements of the original
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film, adapted from Tim Krabbé’s novel The Golden Egg, was its final scene, where the protagonist lies inside a coffin, buried alive. It was this ending that many critics claimed to be the most stunning part of the movie, despite its claustrophobic and gloomy nature. The Variety reviewer remarked of the original, “Should Sluizer decide to issue a dubbed version of the film, it might find a large audience in the US. It has all the ingredients of the best American suspense film and could do well. Its ending, while a little bleak and not for all tastes, is a sensible choice that is almost a signature for the film.”25 But this ending was changed in the remake. Almost seven decades (and numerous new waves in Europe as well as the US) after the period Graham Petrie discusses in Hollywood Destinies, it appeared that the “truly ‘American’ qualities of wholesome, optimistic, popular entertainment” still beat out the “‘morbid,’ ‘depressing,’ ‘ugly’ side of life.”26 The producers of The Vanishing wanted to make sure that audiences would not be alienated by seeing the protagonist die and made a safe choice by requesting Sluizer to change the ending. In the Hollywood version, the protagonist’s new girlfriend, a role significantly expanded for the remake, kills the villain and rescues the protagonist from the coffin, still alive. Sluizer started the project knowing full well that he would have to change his film quite drastically. In an interview given prior to the shooting of The Vanishing, the director said that in order to make a film in Hollywood, one had to play the game by Hollywood’s rules, and that otherwise one could end up sharing the fate of Fatal Attraction (Adrian Lyne, 1987).27 Sluizer also contended that his main reason for accepting the project was not to tell the same story differently, but to direct different actors in similar roles. Tim Krabbé, the author of the novel and the writer of the original script, ascribes Sluizer’s choice to a desire to work in Hollywood: “It was, at 61, his one chance to work in Hollywood, so I can understand that he yielded to the pressure that made him spoil his own masterpiece.”28 Much like the Japanese directors interviewed by Yoshiharu Tezuka, Sluizer demonstrated a desire to be part of the transnational capitalist class.29 Unlike The Vanishing, there are barely any differences between Nattevagten and its remake, Nightwatch. There was, however, a major difference in distribution. When Nattevagten became a hit in Denmark and received awards at several European festivals, Dimension Films, the genre division of Miramax, purchased the distribution rights and promptly put the original film on the shelf. Nattevagten was never released in the US, thus the audiences and most of the critics did not have the chance to compare Nightwatch to the original. Some critics mention the failure of The Vanishing as a factor in Dimension Films’ decision not to show the
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original film. Roger Ebert writes: “[Dimension] kept [Nattevagten] off the market here while producing the retread, no doubt to forestall the kinds of unfavorable comparisons that came up when the Danish [sic] director George Sluizer remade his brilliant The Vanishing (1988) into a sloppy, spineless 1993 American film.”30 Despite this strategy, Nightwatch did not achieve any critical or financial success. Critics have the tendency to dismiss remakes as inferior to the original, just by virtue of not being the original.31 But in these cases, the public did not show an interest in the films, either. Although there have been attempts to theorize a model for predicting the success of a motion picture, there is (luckily) still no clear formula as to which films become profitable at the box office.32 In the case of The Vanishing, the main reason seems to have been the drastic change in the ending. The new ending gave the audiences a sense of safety and familiarity, but failed to provide the originality of the first version. Beyond the content of the film, much also hinges on the release pattern and the marketing efforts. In the case of Nightwatch, Dimension Films did not release the film until 1998, although shooting had been wrapped up in late 1996. While there was no official explanation, this delay was reported to be due to some last-minute changes and “fixes” with the script, and in order to avoid going up against the lead actor Ewan McGregor’s other 1997 releases (Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book and Danny Boyle’s A Life Less Ordinary) (Schneider 2002). Whatever the reasons, this lag in the release appears to have had a negative effect on the film’s box-office success. In addition, although both films featured wellknown actors, neither had bankable major stars nor special effects, which have become a major star in their own right in the age of the blockbuster. As for Veber and Poiré, these films were Sluizer and Bornedal’s Hollywood debuts. Bornedal went back to Denmark, but Sluizer did a second Hollywood project, Dark Blood. The production was cut short when its leading actor River Phoenix died of an overdose in 1993.33 Steven Jay Schneider concludes that these remakes “prioritize spectacle and action at the expense of character development and plot subtlety,” are “less psychological and less philosophical,” “more conventional and more predictable,” and lack the sense of humor found in the originals (2002). One can see these auto-remakes as an extension of the close relationship that Hollywood has had with Europe throughout its history. As a source of inspiration and talent, Hollywood has often followed Europe, even as European auteurs themselves, like the filmmakers of the New Wave era, admired and appropriated the works of Classical Hollywood. The dualities between Hollywood and Europe that uphold European films as “unique works of art”
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versus Hollywood’s “standardized commodities”34 reappear in much of the discourse surrounding these remakes, even though the European originals themselves are popular genre films. Looking to Europe in search of new ideas was standard practice for Hollywood until the late 1990s. Thereafter, the large Asian market and the rising popularity of Asian films in festival circles and cult video distribution networks added Asia as a viable alternative.
The “Asian Invasion” The final sets of remakes are a rarity in the sense that they seem to have found a good balance between familiarity and originality. They form part of a trend that has been called the “Asian Invasion” in Hollywood (Pham 2004). This cycle of Hollywood remakes of East Asian films constitutes one of the most important changes in Hollywood’s transnational composition. The auto-remakes in question are The Ring Two (Nakata, 2005), the sequel to The Ring, itself the remake of Hideo Nakata’s Ringu; and two films by Takashi Shimizu: The Grudge (2004) and The Grudge 2 (2006), the remakes of Shimizu’s Ju-on: The Grudge (2003) and Ju-on: The Grudge 2 (2003), which are themselves remakes of his straight-to-video Ju-on films.35 The fact that the “original” films themselves are adaptations and remakes opens up a new set of questions. Unlike in Europe or the US, the question of “originality” is not central to cultural debate in these cases. Thus, in Japan, the remakes are not necessarily labeled “inferior” from the onset. This may be one of the reasons why The Ring surpassed Ringu in terms of box office success in its home market. The other and probably more important reason is that Japan was the largest foreign market for Hollywood films at the time. This position, along with the recent surge in the popularity of Japanese horror films, can explain the closer relationship between Hollywood and Japan. The remade films discussed here are part of a larger trend, analyzed in depth by Valerie Wee (2014), who highlights the cross-cultural exchange between Japanese cinema and Hollywood. Koji Suzuki’s popular novel Ringu (f irst published in 1989), about a videotape that kills anyone who sees it within a week, was first adapted to television in 1995 by Chisui Takigawa. It became a great hit with international audiences when Nakata made a theatrical version in 1998. Rasen (Joji Iida), a sequel based on the novel’s sequel of the same name, was produced and released simultaneously with Ringu, but failed to receive the same popularity. Since he was the director of the more popular version, Nakata was asked to make a sequel independently of the novels, which became
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Ringu 2 (1999), with an original storyline. Ringu 2 had several of the same characters as the original film, and tried to shed more light on the character of Sadako, the dead little girl who kills people through the mysterious tape. This was followed by Ringu 0 (Norio Tsuruta, 2000), a prequel, as well as an unofficial Korean-Japanese co-production remake, Ring (Dong-bin Kim, 1999), and two television series based on Ringu and Rasen. The enormous success of Ringu around the world attracted the attention of a young studio executive, Roy Lee. Lee, a Korean-American who served as the intermediary in selling the remake rights of the Japanese film to DreamWorks, is billed as one of the executive producers of The Ring. Vertigo Entertainment, the company he co-founded with Doug Davison, functions as the gatekeeper of the Asian remake market in Hollywood. Roy Lee himself is seen as almost entirely responsible for this trend. Including The Grudge, Lee and Davison are behind the remakes of many famous Asian films of the 2000s, such as Nakata’s Honogurai Mizu No Soko Kara (2002), remade by Walter Salles as Dark Water; the Hong Kong crime picture Infernal Affairs (2002), remade by Martin Scorsese as The Departed (2006); as well as a number of South Korean films, including Siworae (Hyun-seung Lee, 2000), remade as The Lake House (Alejandro Agresti, 2006).36 The fact that a leading Hollywood director like Martin Scorsese remade an Asian film (and won his first Academy Award with it) shows that the stature of these films has grown quickly. Given all his involvement, Roy Lee has quickly become “the go-to guy for Asia” in Hollywood, and he is also known as the “remake king” (Friend 2003). Although he does not speak any Korean, Japanese or Chinese, he has discovered that his Asian appearance gives him an advantage both in the US and in Asia. His role in this new wave of Asian remakes is fundamental and is an excellent example of the importance of individual producers, agents and managers in cinematic trends.37 Vertigo Entertainment, based at Universal Pictures but with close ties to Warner Bros., is a key node in the remakes network spread across the globe. This network features dense linkages between Hollywood, Asian production hubs such as Tokyo and Seoul, and film festivals. Lee was shown Ringu by the director of Puchon Fantastic Film Festival,38 where he goes to meet the filmmakers, even though he has seen all the films. His strategy of attending festivals and networking highlights the “facework” necessary to put a production together, but his frequent travels are a reminder that Hollywood is not fixed in a single location. The Ring, the Hollywood adaptation/remake (the opening credits acknowledge both the novel and the Nakata film) was released in 2002
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and opened the floodgates to remakes of Asian films. The remake moved the location to the Pacific Northwest, which shared the rainy atmosphere of Ringu’s Japan. The story included elements from both Ringu and Ringu 2, as well as added components, to make it less ambiguous and less “spiritual.”39 The greatest change was probably the budget: compared to Ringu’s $1.2 million, The Ring cost $45 million to make. A sizeable portion of this budget was spent on computer-generated effects. This success led to a sequel, this time shot by the director of the original, Nakata. Admittedly, it is somewhat difficult to call The Ring Two a true remake, since the storyline differs completely from that of Ringu 2. Some elements from Ringu 2 had already been used in The Ring, and unlike the Japanese version, where the first film’s lead character is killed off in the sequel, the producers wanted to keep Naomi Watts, who played a large part in The Ring’s popularity. Nakata’s first Hollywood film thus became a variation on a theme with which he was already thoroughly familiar. With a budget of nearly $50 million, The Ring Two earned over $160 million, more than half of which came from overseas markets. Although this was less than the $250 million made by The Ring, it was still considered a financial success. Another f ilm for which Roy Lee helped sell the remake rights, The Grudge, was released between The Ring and The Ring Two. Takashi Shimizu first wrote and shot Ju-on and its sequel for the television and the video market in 2000. The films, about a haunted house and its family of ghosts who kill later residents, had minuscule budgets and were shot within a matter of days. They were remade in 2003, again by Shimizu, for theatrical release. The Hollywood remake, The Grudge, was also a relatively lowbudget production, costing $10 million. The story remained in Japan in this case, but the protagonists were Americans living in Tokyo, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jason Behr. Director Shimizu said in interviews that he was changing the story only a little, arguing, “if the American producers didn’t think the original version was scary then they wouldn’t have wanted to do the remake.”40 Japanese media called The Grudge remakes “Hollywood productions made in Japan by Japanese filmmakers,”41 mirroring the definition of “British Hollywood films.” In addition to the horror sequences, which remained identical, the same shooting location was employed for the haunted house, and the family that started the curse was played by the same three actors. Changes served to simplify the story and make it less ambiguous. Shimizu had the advantage of releasing the film after the success of The Ring and amid the buzz surrounding Japanese horror films and their remakes. His use of Tokyo as the location again reflects the fragile balance between the familiar and the original: a foreign location, where
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familiar faces confront an unexplainable horror. This formula appeared to satisfy American audiences, earning the film nearly $40 million on its opening weekend in the US. A remade film, especially by the same director, is easier to sell in its native country. The DVD cover of Nightwatch for the Danish market reminds the viewers in bold letters that this is “Ole Bornedal’s Hollywood-version of Nattevagten.” The blurbs are from a Danish (Jyllands-Posten) and an American (The Washington Post) newspaper, and they both feature Bornedal’s name prominently. Nonetheless, Denmark is a small market as world markets go, unlike Japan. Hence, it should not come as a surprise that the Japanese poster for The Grudge uses the original name of the films, with only a hint of Hollywoodization; the new version is called “The” Ju-On in Japan. This strategy of highlighting the local component in remakes is in fact similar to the localization policies adopted by TNCs such as McDonald’s, a global corporation with specific advertising campaigns and even specific products for individual markets.42 Additionally, a remake often increases the interest in the original film in terms of DVD sales and rentals worldwide. Two years after the first film, Shimizu remade its sequel; The Grudge 2 was released in 2006. Again, he shot the film in Tokyo with American actors, but this time the storyline was different from the Japanese version. Nonetheless, with a relatively low budget of $20 million, the film was profitable; the second sequel, The Grudge 3, was released in 2009, this time directed by the British Toby Wilkins. But what was it about these films that made them so much more popular than the European thriller remakes? Obviously, there is no clear formula as to which films succeed at the box office. As Barry Litman says, “it takes the right thing at the right moment to catch the public fancy,” in addition to the right marketing efforts. 43 The remakes of Japanese horror films appear to have caught that fancy. Their reliance on suspense at a time when slasher films and slasher parodies such as the Scream series dominated the market, responded to an unforeseen demand. Moreover, at least a portion of Western audiences had already become familiar with Asian horror films, due to the increase in alternative distribution networks such as cult video stores (not only in large Western cities, but also on the Internet) and fantastic film festivals. 44 Laura Grindstaff argues that films that are already “Americanized from [their] inception” have a better chance at getting remade and succeeding, and that Hollywood searches “for its own shadow” in remakes. 45 This is quite understandable, since the studios want the familiarity of a presold project to guarantee maximized profits. Gang Gary Xu argues that Ringu
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possessed “Americanized” or at least Hollywood-type features: “the strongminded yet vulnerable female as the ‘final girl’, unambiguous sexuality, and thrilling yet non-threatening horror.”46 Nakata himself professes to having been influenced by the Amityville horror films (Totaro 2005). And while Ju-on: The Grudge relied on Japanese horror conventions, these conventions are becoming more familiar territory to Western audiences after The Ring. David Bordwell calls Infernal Affairs, the film on which Academy Award-winning The Departed is based, a Hollywood film made in Hong Kong, mainly because of its “comprehensible exposition, intricate plotting, and well-earned twists,”47 reflecting Grindstaff’s argument that Hollywood searches for its likeness in its remakes. Xu points out that “many East Asian films aimed at commercial success now have a built-in ‘remaking mentality’, which self consciously measures the films against Hollywood standards and actively exercises self-censorship.”48 These approaches are reminiscent of Elsaesser’s argument that German directors emulated Hollywood films in order to be “discovered” by the studios. In this sense, what Petersen and Emmerich did in the 1980s can later be seen in the works of Asian, mostly Japanese and South Korean directors, making it even easier for executives like Roy Lee to find potential candidates for remaking. Like many of the earlier examples, these remakes were their directors’ Hollywood debuts. After the successes of the two films, both directors received offers to direct other Hollywood pictures. When asked in an interview whether he had thought about permanently moving to Hollywood, Nakata gave an answer that reflects the attitudes of many other global directors: “Ideally, I would love to work in both countries, because although Japanese film production is really limited in terms of budget and schedule, I can have creative control during the shoot. But I’d love to be able to enjoy the good things about both countries.”49 Considered along with Shimizu’s practice of directing Hollywood films in his home country, this statement – and the craving for flexibility that it entails – corresponds to Aihwa Ong’s notion of flexible citizenship, where subjects (at least those who belong to the transnational capitalist class) can respond to changing professional circumstances relatively easily.
Remaking Continues There were more Asian auto-remakes after 2005: the Pang Brothers from Thailand remade their Bangkok Dangerous (2000/2008), and Yam Laranas, from the Philippines, his Sigaw (2004) / The Echo (2008).50 Despite its recent
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problems, the Philippine film industry was popular locally throughout the 1990s and is keen to re-establish its popularity.51 For all of these directors, their remakes were their Hollywood debuts, reconfirming the practice of establishing oneself with a presold product that is likely to succeed both in the US and global markets. Every one of these films (with the exception of Bangkok Dangerous) also involved Roy Lee in the capacity of producer or executive producer, and they were picked up as potential remakes via Lee’s Vertigo Entertainment, once again confirming the importance of key figures such as facilitators. It is worth noting that many of the Hollywood remakes of Asian films have been directed by other international filmmakers. These include the aforementioned Dark Water by Walter Salles of Brazil, The Lake House by Alejandro Agresti of Argentina, and the 2007 releases My Sassy Girl, directed by the Frenchman Yann Samuell, and The Eye, by French directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud, among others. Roy Lee claims that things just happened to fall this way, but that “the studios like to take risks with tried and true directors from other countries.”52 Here we see the analogy between remake films and global directors: just as remakes appear safer because the original has already succeeded with audiences in a different context, foreign directors who have demonstrated their accomplishments elsewhere are considered less risky, as already established in the emulation model and for the directors of James Bond films. These auto-remakes reflect wider trends, which are aptly illustrated by Takashi Shimizu’s The Grudge. Shimizu worked in his homeland for a transnational conglomeration, Columbia Pictures (owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, part of Sony Corporation). The project had a Japanese source, an international cast and crew, transnational financial backing, and was a runaway production. The films also highlight the growing importance of Asia in terms of the film trade. Until recently, Europe, including Britain, was the most important international market for Hollywood studios. In fact, Tom O’Regan even argued that “Hollywood” is “culturally specific to a general ‘European’ or ‘Western’ cultural frame.”53 However, in 2013 the Asia-Pacific surpassed Europe (with Middle East and Africa) for the first time as the largest foreign regional market for Hollywood, the same year China became the largest foreign market. The market share of the Asia-Pacific region rose from 21.6 percent in 2004 to 30.1 percent in 2013,54 and still holds further potential for the studios. Mutual influence between Hollywood and Asian cinemas has become more and more visible over recent decades. Asian martial arts have become a staple of Hollywood action films and the polished Hollywood style is prevalent in larger-budget
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Asian pictures (Klein 2004, Joo 2007). Compared to the aging population of Europe, Asia presents much greater potential, but at the same time, many challenges, most significantly in the case of China with its bureaucracy and piracy. With a larger Asian market, and a globalized China, there is no doubt that more Asian directors will be making Hollywood films in the following decades.
6. I Want My MTV: Advertising and Music Videos One of the most famous television commercials of all time is a 60-second spot for Macintosh called 1984, shot by Ridley Scott for the Chiat\Day advertising agency. Within a drab dystopian setting, as suggested by the George Orwell novel of the same name, a young woman in vivid color, clutching a sledgehammer, is seen running towards a giant TV screen amidst hollow-eyed workers dressed in gray. She hurls the sledgehammer at the screen, shattering it. A voice-over is heard saying: “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you will see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.” Although it ran only once, on January 22, 1984,1 during the Super Bowl game in the US, it received four major advertising awards that year, and in 1995 went on to be declared the best advertising commercial of the last 50 years. Its $400,000 budget allowed for high production values, reminding audiences of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, which had just been released in 1982. 1984 is significant on a number of levels. An ad that used cinematic language and was presented on television (yet only once), it is one of the earlier examples of media convergence, a term Henry Jenkins introduced to describe the “flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences.”2 Beyond being just a commercial or a movie, 1984 was an event (Twitchell 2001). It was an instance of an already famous feature-film director working on a commercial, a practice that has since become commonplace. As regards its production company, Ridley Scott Associates (RSA), 1984 is an example of a transnational production. Moreover, what happened to the advertising agency responsible for the commercial in the following years is a classical example of the conglomeration process that media and advertising companies have undergone since the 1980s. Chiat\Day was an agency based in Los Angeles, called “the hottest shop” in US advertising in the 1980s.3 In addition to working with the London-based RSA, the agency was the first in the US to adopt the British strategy of account planning. Nonetheless, Chiat\Day was still largely a national agency. Even though it purchased the Australian firm Mojo to become Chiat\Day\Mojo in 1990, it stood only at number 18 on the list of the largest US agencies based on worldwide income. This was largely due to its limited international involvement; Chiat\Day\Mojo’s non-US gross income made up only 33 percent of
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its overall income, much below the average 60 percent among the leading agencies. 4 In 1993, after it sold Mojo, the agency was dropped by one of its largest clients, Reebok, because it did not have “the global resources the company needed.”5 Soon after this incident, Chiat\Day was acquired by the Omnicom Group and merged with TBWA, becoming part of one of the largest global marketing groups.
Why Advertising? Why Music Videos? As the story of Chiat\Day exemplifies, the need to build transnational networks is as inescapable for advertising corporations as it is for media conglomerates. These networks reveal exact parallels with the global film industry, as Hollywood studios extend their presence in world markets via local production and distribution. The patterns and processes of globalization and conglomeration within the advertising, music, and media industries, which all happened during the time period covered by this research, strongly resemble one another. Over the last few decades, directing commercials and music videos has become an increasingly common rite of passage into directing feature films. Music videos are in fact a form of advertising, made to publicize the songs. As acknowledged by Peter Wollen: “In origin and, from the point of view of the music industry, in function, music videos are an advertising vehicle, promoting the sale of records.”6 Advertising has been called “the most creative” and “the most daring” domain by French director Étienne Chatiliez, who directed commercials for fifteen years before turning to feature films.7 Similarly, novelist John Updike noted in 1984: “I have no doubt that the aesthetic marvels of our age, for intensity and lavishness of effort and subtlety of both overt and subliminal effect, are television commercials.”8 The 1980s was a time when commercials started being taken seriously as a unique form of media. Indeed, many of the global directors working in Hollywood today began their careers in this fashion, as did many American directors. Members of the “British invasion” of the 1970s and the early 1980s, namely Ridley Scott, Alan Parker, Adrian Lyne and others, all well known for the commercials they directed in the UK in the 1970s, are considered the pioneers of this trend. This chapter looks at the advertisement and music video sectors in regards to the role they play in global media networks; and how these networks, within which advertising and media industries interact, provide a space that allows global directors to transition between different types of productions and different geographies.
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I then discuss the works and positions of Ridley and Tony Scott, as directors, producers and shapers of the industry.9 The development of the advertising industry in the 20th century shows many parallels with that of the film industry. The history of moving image advertising is nearly as old as cinema itself; the first cinema advertisement is widely considered to have been for Dewar’s Scotch, dated 1898. These advertisements continued in cinemas and were later transferred to television. The first TV advertisement was for a Bulova watch, shown during a baseball game in 1941 in the US. With the spread of network television, commercials became a staple in viewers’ homes across the world. The internationalization process in service industries such as advertising that started in the 1970s gave rise to a number of multinational agencies (Roberts 2000). These changes not only mirrored, but also facilitated the internationalization of capital, including the transnationalization of media conglomerates that purchased the Hollywood studios. In 2005, the world’s top advertising holdings by revenue were transnational conglomerates such as Omnicom Group, WPP Group, Interpublic Group, Publicis Groupe, and Havas.10 Each of these holdings owns numerous individually transnational advertising agencies. Omnicom and Interpublic are headquartered in New York, WPP in London, and Publicis and Havas in Paris. All of these groups earn their revenues largely from advertising services, but at the same time offer services such as public relations, branding, and even healthcare. Like the media conglomerates that own the studios, these corporations are globally flexible and aim to profit from synergy. As the conglomeration of these companies continued in the 1980s, the transnational brands they serviced started launching international advertising campaigns. With the parallel transnationalization of media industries, media buying and planning became globalized as well; one company can use the same agency to advertise on the channels of the same media conglomeration across the world. While this does not bode well for diversification or independent voices, it certainly serves the TNCs.11 Through market segmentation based on socio-economic factors such as income, and independent of nationality, advertising companies created a global space. Within this space, like Hollywood’s role in global filmmaking, New York plays a central role as a major node, albeit with further emphasis on localized versions of global campaigns.12 As suggested by the slogan adopted from ecological campaigns, “think global, act local”, global companies offer and sell their products in as many countries as possible, but allow for the differences between individual markets, with the help of similarly globalized advertising corporations.13 This practice, termed “glocalization,”
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has been the leading factor in creating this global space while maintaining the uniqueness of each local market.14 Professional networks also help bring the advertising world together. The International Advertising Association (IAA) is represented in over 70 countries, whereas the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) is represented in 55. These associations facilitate the globalization of advertising both in terms of the connections they enable and the international standards and self-regulatory parameters they set. To see how advertising and media conglomerates function as networks facilitating the flow of filmmakers, it is useful to look at Stefan Krätke’s analysis of “global media cities.”15 Krätke covers a variety of entertainment and media industries, namely “theatres and orchestras, music production, film production, television and radio productions, the printing and publishing trade, as well as design agencies, advertising design and the advertising industry.”16 The main criterion is that they are global, meaning that they have a presence “in at least three different national economic areas and at least two continents or ‘world regions.’”17 His inclusion of advertising agencies alongside entertainment companies demonstrates the interconnectedness of these industries, which have also been termed “creative.” Cities function as the “nodal points” of these networks, as they do for other industries.18 The companies in question are locally anchored to specific centers of cultural production and are networked within their local business area, but at the same time, they are integrated into the supra-regional and transnational networks of the global media companies. This bi-directionality allows local talent to form global alliances and be mobile within this network. It is not surprising, then, that talent can move around more quickly and freely than ever before. The patterns followed by the music industry in recent decades were similar to those in the film and advertising industries. Conglomerations built through mergers and acquisitions started dominating the industry from the 1980s. Much like the situation in the f ilm industry, by 1994, more than 90 percent of gross sales of recorded music worldwide came from albums, singles, and music videos owned or distributed by one of six multinational corporations: Time Warner, Sony, Philips, Bertelsmann, Thorn-EMI and Matsushita (Burnett 1996). Similarly, due to the constantly shifting nature of media industries, there were changes in this landscape (Bishop 2005, Peltier 2004). But the changes did not lead to diversification; on the contrary, by 2014, just three companies dominated the industry. With the “three majors” – Vivendi-subsidiary Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Warner Music – the global music business looks much like the global film business. The film and music businesses also faced similar
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challenges with the spread of digital technologies. The music industry had to go through a complete reshaping after the formation of Napster and other peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing systems. Consumption of music evolved from vinyl, cassette and CD sales to downloading from digital media stores like iTunes or membership to streaming sites like Spotify. A similar process took place in the film industry, gaining particular momentum after 2005 with YouTube’s ubiquity, but these developments happened largely after the end of the period of this study. The predecessors of music videos date back to Oskar von Fischinger’s animated films synchronized with jazz and classical music. These were followed by American “Soundies” in the 1940s and French “Scopitones” in the 1960s. In 1975, Jon Roseman and Bruce Gowers produced Bohemian Rhapsody for Queen, often credited as the first video clip (Goodwin 1992). Music videos entered an entirely new age with the launch of MTV in 1981. Incidentally, the very first video to be broadcast by MTV was The Buggles’ Video Killed the Radio Star, directed by Australia’s Russell Mulcahy, who then went on to direct feature films, including Highlander (1986) and Ricochet (1991), both fairly high-profile Hollywood pictures. MTV Networks was acquired by Viacom in 1986, putting MTV under the same umbrella as Paramount. As if to cement the connection between films and music videos even further, MTV Films was founded in 1996 as the motion picture production arm of MTV, to produce youth-oriented, relatively lowbudget films.19 In addition to expanding into other forms of entertainment, MTV spread geographically as well, establishing itself across the world with regional (MTV Europe, MTV Latin America, and so forth) and national channels.20 These attempts at localizing within a global framework closely mirrored the concurrent developments in advertising.
The New Aesthetics of Advertising and Music Videos The pervasiveness of music videos, along with the launch of home theater systems, is considered to have practically transformed the film form. 21 Dubbed “the video decade” by Billboard magazine,22 the 1980s brought about major changes in filmmaking style, often associated with music video aesthetics. The style was also largely influenced by global advertising; it has been argued that in order to gain international appeal, advertisements “with a strong visual or musical component” were often emphasized.23 This new style, characterized by very rapid editing and flashy visuals, was embodied in the blockbusters of the period and proved to be immensely successful.
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These films had ambitious soundtracks, and videos of the songs from the films’ soundtrack albums were played on MTV, promoting not only the song, but also the film, thus doubling the commodification process. One of the earliest and most quoted examples of this is Tony Scott’s Top Gun (1986), which combines songs specifically written for the film with classics such as “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” by the Righteous Brothers. As John Mundy argues, even more important than the mutual “commercial exploitation”, which is clearly manifest, “is the impact the music exerts on film style. With a rather bare storyline, what the film offers is the spectacular, whether in the extensive shots of in-flight combat or in sequences such as the beach volleyball game. It is a prime example of the contemporary ‘cinema of attractions’ based on both visual and audio seductions.”24 Justin Wyatt discusses advertising and the music video as part of the “high concept” idea that lies behind blockbusters and their marketing (1994). “High concept” connotes an idea that can be easily summarized and marketed; the term itself has been credited to different people, including former ABC executive Barry Diller and former Disney president Michael Eisner. Wyatt argues that large parts of these blockbusters are composed of extended montages, which are “in effect, music video sequences.”25 Music videos, as well as the films they influenced, were meant to attract global audiences. MTV’s slogan from the mid-1980s, “One World: One Image: One Channel,” signaled mostly non-verbal entertainment, to be grasped and consumed wherever it was shown. Commenting on the internationality of music videos, MTV’s European Chief Executive Officer said: “for the bulk of our music programming, the words are practically irrelevant.”26 This global appeal is reflected in films that adopt music video aesthetics: less dialogue and spectacular action scenes, all combined at breathtaking speed, became the blockbuster staple throughout the 1980s and the 1990s; and directors with backgrounds in advertising and music videos were clearly the perfect candidates to direct these films. MTV’s localized broadcasts with subsidiaries like MTV Italy, MTV Poland, MTV India, MTV China, and so forth, and the proliferation of indigenous 24-hour music channels across the world resulted in an ever-increasing number of new directors working on music videos. The same process occurred in advertising, and a whole new generation of directors from different national backgrounds gained worldwide fame within the industry, and sometimes even among audiences, before ever having directed a feature film. As music videos created their own “auteurs”, DVDs devoted solely to the work of individual music video directors were released. Launched by the New York-based distributor Palm Pictures, the Directors Label series came
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out in 2003 with three DVDs that brought together works by Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, and Chris Cunningham. The three directors, from the US, France, and the UK, respectively, commanded worldwide popularity as music video directors. By that point, Jonze and Gondry had already directed features.27 In 2005, the Directors Label series released four more collections: Jonathan Glazer, Mark Romanek, Anton Corbijn, and Stephane Sednaoui. Again, this international selection (Glazer is from the UK, Romanek from the US, Corbijn from the Netherlands and Sednaoui from France) echoes the global reach of music videos. Having made their names in music videos, all but Sadnaoui went on to direct features. Contrary to expectations, Glazer’s first feature, Sexy Beast (2000), was a gangster film focused on dialogues. Glazer chose this as a strategy, in order to avoid being labeled as yet another “style-over-substance” director (Olsen 2001). The Directors Label series and the directors it featured provided music videos with artistic legitimacy, and enabled these works to be screened publicly at international film and digital arts festivals,28 inserting their makers (in addition to music video and advertising networks) into the global festival network.
The Scott “Empire”29 In this web of advertising, music videos and feature films, and among Hollywood’s global directors themselves, Ridley Scott and Tony Scott enjoy a unique position. What sets them apart is their status as not only directors, but also as producers, as the link between local and global networks. Within this capacity, they have been instrumental for the entry of other global directors into the Hollywood network. Their backgrounds as advertising directors and their role as owners of an advertising production firm (Ridley Scott Associates, including Black Dog Films, a music video production house), a film and television production company (Scott Free Productions), shareholders in a post-production company (The Mill)30 and Britain’s leading film studios (Pinewood Studios Group) position them very strategically. Pinewood Studios Group, which in the UK consists of Pinewood, Shepperton and Teddington Studios, is a significant node in the links between Hollywood and the British film industry. The Pinewood group later also established studios in Canada, Germany, Malaysia, and the Dominican Republic, as well as in Atlanta, Georgia, in the US, creating a vast production network of its own. Ridley Scott originally trained as a set designer at the Royal College of Art. During his college years, he became interested in cinema and consequently
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started working for the BBC, as many British feature directors have done. From set design, he moved on to directing. After directing several series for the BBC, he founded his own commercial production company, RSA, in 1968. He directed over 2,000 commercials, including the famed 1984 spot for Macintosh. His earlier work, most notably his commercials for Hovis bread and Maxwell House coffee, paved the way for his feature film career. In 1976 he was the top-prize winner at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival for a commercial he directed for French Elle magazine.31 His feature debut, The Duellists (1977), was produced by David Puttnam’s Enigma Pictures. Made in the UK, the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it received the award for “Best First Work.” David Puttnam played an important role at this point by recommending Scott to a Paramount executive. The executive had been impressed by Alan Parker’s Bugsy Malone (1976) at Cannes and had asked Puttnam if there were other British filmmakers like Parker.32 While the Paramount project of an adaption of Tristan and Isolde never materialized, Scott relocated to a Los Angeles production office, and was ready for a chance to work in Hollywood; he admitted to having been very envious of Alan Parker, who had been invited to Hollywood earlier.33 Scott was then offered the opportunity of directing Alien (1979) for 20th Century Fox, his first Hollywood film. Throughout his long Hollywood career, some of Ridley Scott’s films have reconfigured entire genres, including Alien, Blade Runner and Gladiator (2000). Like many other directors with backgrounds in advertising, his style is characterized by stunning visuals. Some critics argue that these come at the expense of the story or character depth; among those who criticize his work, David Thompson complains that Ridley Scott is “[beset by] disastrous ‘stylishness.’”34 However, the negative criticism Ridley Scott has faced is considerably little compared to the disparagement Tony Scott often received. Tony Scott followed in his older brother’s footsteps, and went to the Royal College of Art to study painting. With his brother’s encouragement, he started directing for RSA soon after his graduation. Over the following decade, he directed commercials, an episode of a French TV series,35 and his first feature film, The Hunger (1983) for MGM. The Hunger was a fairly small-budget film that failed critically and commercially, but it would gain cult status over the next decades. Scott received his first great breakthrough with Top Gun, already mentioned for its music video aesthetics; it was mostly his work on a commercial that pitted a Saab car against a fighter jet that earned him the job.36 By the mid-1990s, the combined worldwide revenue of Tony Scott’s films at the box office had surpassed the billion-dollar mark, a feat achieved
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by few directors. He is often seen as the more profitable but less celebrated of the two brothers, and reviews of his films frequently make allusions to his past as a commercials director. His later work on Man on Fire (2004) and Domino (2005) pushed the limits of music video aesthetics, and reflected the work he did on his longer commercials, such as BMW’s The Hire. He also stated that he used his commercials as testing grounds for what he could do in feature films, such as the GM commercials about surveillance, which were then translated into the surveillance shots dominating Enemy of the State (1998).37 Since its foundation, RSA has been a major player among the commercial production companies. It expanded in 1986, opening its New York branch and establishing RSA USA, Inc. A few years later, RSA moved its US headquarters to Los Angeles “to be at the center of production activity” (according to its website), and later established offices in Hong Kong and Chicago. It has produced campaigns for Philip Morris, Ericsson, Coca-Cola, Visa, Kodak, Nokia, Nike, American Express, BMW, and many others. Black Dog, the music video production company founded by Ridley Scott’s son, Jake, is not the only firm functioning under the umbrella of RSA. Little Minx, a semi-independent commercial/music video production house, was founded by Rhea Rupert38 in 1999 and formed an association with RSA in 2002. JOY@RSA UK emerged when director Mehdi Norowzian’s Joy Films, London, merged with RSA Films, London, in 2003.39 There has been “La Division” geared to the Latin American market and a “Special Division,” formerly called “Top Dog,” specialized in sourcing film directors such as Sam Mendes and the Polish Brothers. 40 The growth RSA has achieved through the acquisition of smaller, more specialized firms reflects, to a smaller degree, the expansion of larger media companies since the late 1970s. By having separate yet related units in different media capitals, RSA utilizes a wider network of businesses. As of 2005, Ridley Scott and Tony Scott were still closely involved in the company and worked “closely with productions”;41 at the time of writing, Ridley Scott is still reported to do so. 42 RSA has been a nucleus for new ideas and directing talent over the last two decades, having been dubbed the “School of Scotts.”43 Filmmakers who trained as commercial directors and crossed over into feature film say that they feel protected at the company, and the executives emphasize their belief that talent needs to be cultivated and encouraged (Natale 1999). Ridley Scott stated in 2000: “Now, and essentially for the last ten years, everyone has been looking into the advertising game and the music video game for directing talent.” Tony Scott agreed that “movie studios routinely steal from the spot world; they just haven’t figured out
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how to avoid some of the pitfalls that come along with it.”44 Anna Notaro points out that after various incarnations, the auteur was transformed into “the figure of the ‘technically savvy’ director,”45 appropriately epitomizing the filmmakers who come from advertising and music videos, and who are obliged to be not only familiar with, but also have full command of cutting-edge technologies. Many directors who worked or still work for RSA have moved on to feature film directing. The early generation – the Scott brothers, Hugh Hudson and Alan Parker – are frequently mentioned as the forerunners of directors with a background in commercials. There are also those who have made shorts and/or independent British films, such as Jake Scott, who directed Plunkett & Macleane (1999). However, to keep the focus on the global filmmakers of Hollywood, we need to look at three directors who followed their careers at RSA with a Hollywood career: Marek Kanievska, Marco Brambilla, and Marcus Nispel. Marek Kanievska is a British director, well known for his work on TV and in commercials in Australia and the UK. In 1984 he directed his feature debut, Another Country, which was quite well received. His first Hollywood film came in 1987 as an adaptation of the Brett Easton Ellis novel Less Than Zero for 20th Century Fox. Alongside his feature film career, Kanievska continued directing commercials and worked largely for RSA London. His return to features in 2000, Where the Money Is, was produced by the Scott brothers’ production company, Scott Free. Scott Free Productions carries out projects in collaboration with other production companies. These can be European co-productions, as was the case for Where the Money Is, or with Hollywood majors or their subsidiaries, as in most projects directed by Ridley or Tony Scott. The involvement of Scott Free was highlighted in one of the many negative reviews: “Trading in coherence for flash, underlining each event with portentous music, remaining content with half-drawn characters and never missing an opportunity to pander, director Marek Kanievska works in the tradition of the film’s producers, Ridley and Tony Scott.”46 Kanievska made just one more feature film after that, A Different Loyalty (2004), and then retired. Marco Brambilla, originally from Italy, moved to Canada to study film, where he started his career as an advertising director. He transferred to the US in 1990, and worked for RSA USA. His first feature film, Warner Bros.’ Demolition Man (1993), forms the subject and the title of a chapter on cultural globalization in Thomas Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree. 47 Friedman discusses the film, set in a future where “globalization reigns across the land, and all culture and environment is homogenized, standardized and sanitized”, as chilling, but not without a grain of truth.
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The only restaurant left is Taco Bell, and the only music that still survives is advertising jingles, which play non-stop on the radio, even at the “fancy” Taco Bell where the characters have a very formal and official dinner. It is ironic, of course, that the film itself was made by members of global advertising and production networks that have been instrumental in creating a globalized world, and who, as members of the transnational capitalist class, are considered responsible for the reproduction of the very same consumerist culture-ideology that the film appears to mock. 48 Like other directors with his background, Brambilla’s origins in advertising surfaced in several reviews, and not favorably: “[a] director who made his name in commercials, which shows”;49 “Brambilla betrays his origins in TV commercials. Demolition Man is sleek and empty as well as brutal and pointless. It feels computer engineered, untouched by human hands.”50 Despite the scathing reviews, Demolition Man was a commercial success. His next feature film, Excess Baggage (1997), was unable to perform as well at the box office, and Brambilla returned to commercials, though no longer with RSA. He directed a mini-series called Dinotopia (2002) for Hallmark Entertainment, broadcast on ABC and shot at Scott Brothers’ Pinewood Studios. In the 2000s, Brambilla continued his career mostly as a video artist.51 German-born Marcus Nispel initially worked as an art director in Germany, then moved to the US and became a director of music videos. In New York, he founded his own company, Portfolio Artists Network, which he then folded into RSA USA in 1994. In 2000, his ties with RSA were severed due to a controversial print advertisement protesting the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) strike.52 At this point, he had already made a very good reputation for himself, and quickly moved on to the MJZ Production Company. His first feature film was a remake of a horror classic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), produced by Michael Bay, himself a prominent director with a background in advertising. Again, Nispel’s pedigree was brought up frequently: “The slick and witless remake [is] the feature debut of music-video veteran Marcus Nispel.”53 Nispel continued directing a number of horror remakes through the 2000s, always with sufficient commercial but never critical success.54 References to these directors’ professional backgrounds are much easier to come by than references to their national backgrounds.
Convergence and Connectivity Ridley Scott says that he is interested in commercials and RSA films out of loyalty, but also to “bring in new talent.”55 In addition to cultivating new
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talent, RSA has worked with established transnational filmmaking figures. In 2001 and 2002, RSA launched one of the most renowned ad campaigns in history. The Hire was a series of short films made for BMW, made available online only. Eight films in total, the series was then screened at festivals and ultimately released on DVD. Like its distribution channels, the entire project was global from the outset. The list of directors reflected this global nature: Alejandro González Iñárritu, John Woo, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-Wai, John Frankenheimer, Joe Carnahan, Guy Ritchie, and Tony Scott. Among other awards, the films won the Cyber Lion Grand Prix at the 2002 Cannes International Advertising Festival Awards, and John Woo’s The Hostage received the “Best Action Short” prize at the 2002 Los Angeles International Short Film Festival. In 2003, The Hire joined the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). The films were promoted as “an unprecedented example of media convergence” by BMW56 and blurred the boundaries between art and commerce, as well as between different forms of spectatorship. The filmmakers who work for RSA are typical examples of the transnational creative class, as they move competently between countries, styles and types of production. They belong to the transnational capitalist class, working in global networks of media and culture, or more specifically, of advertising and film. RSA’s position within international urban networks is anchored by the locations of its offices in London, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Making innovative use of the Internet fairly early as a distribution platform for its work, especially for The Hire, RSA took full advantage of existing networks, thereby facilitating the global flow of talent it employed. Sklair argues that the “systemic blurring of the lines between information, entertainment, and promotion of products” is central to “creating the political/cultural demand for the survival of capitalism.”57 The parallel networks of film and advertising are connected through institutions such as RSA and other transnational production companies and advertising agencies. As Stefan Krätke and Peter J. Taylor point out, global firms are “connecting the internationally distributed urban clusters of media and cultural production with one another,” enabling “the large media groups to tap the globally distributed creative potential of cultural production.”58 The small-scale conglomeration Scott Brothers built, encompassing RSA, Black Dog Films, Scott Free, and The Mill, along with their share in Pinewood Studios, demonstrates the connectivity of the media and advertising industries between themselves and across the globe.59 As globally networked institutions, firms such as these provide global talent with high-quality work regardless of their location. In the case of RSA,
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these networks are connected to Hollywood via the Scott Free film production company and the Pinewood Studios Group. At an individual level, as decision-makers within Hollywood, Ridley and Tony Scott hold a powerful position not enjoyed by many other global directors. The importance of this position held by producers has been underlined throughout all the case studies.
7.
Conclusion: “Everywhere is Hollywood”
Steve Erickson’s novel Zeroville, about a “cineautistic” editor in Hollywood in the 1970s, is very much about filmmaking and the industry itself. One of the main characters in the book, who is in Spain, shooting a film set in Morocco, observes: “It’s all Hollywood, everywhere is Hollywood, the only place on the planet that’s not Hollywood anymore is Hollywood.”1 The scene takes place at the beginning of the New Hollywood era. If anything, shooting and even post-production have been dispersed more widely around the world since then, and now “everywhere is Hollywood” indeed. “Hollywood” is no longer a locative signifier; it denotes complex global networks of media production and distribution. Earlier in this book, I argued that Hollywood is not American. While reiterating this argument, and noting that it is somewhat hyperbolic, I also questioned why this matters, or whether it matters at all. Barry Langford, who has asked the same question, rightly points out that it depends on where one is standing; and that when viewed from overseas, Hollywood’s “American-ness” is often a cause for concern.2 This concern is very much one about cultural homogenization, often with a focus on global brands such as McDonald’s. But nearly all of the brands that dominate the world’s high streets belong to transnational corporations, and are not necessarily American. In fact, McDonald’s itself is a publicly traded company that operates in over a hundred countries, where the restaurants may be run by the corporation itself, its affiliates or franchises. The company has a mixed record on labor, environmental, and health issues, but the same could be said of many transnational corporations. Hollywood, as the dominant power in world cinema, is criticized for its hegemony over other filmmaking cultures, co-opting talented personnel and exploiting cheaper labor in local film industries. While this is largely true, this does not mean that Hollywood is American, but that it is driven by the capitalist-consumerist logic that is the prevailing ideology in the world today. In fact, making “Americanization” into the central issue and demonizing “the American film industry” without paying attention to the underlying financial conditions shift the focus from the significance of transnational corporations’ role in the global system. Benjamin Barber, who espoused the idea of McWorld as a globalized, Americanized new world, claims that Total Recall (Paul Verhoeven, 1990), a “French-financed movie
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made by a Dutch director and an Austrian star,” “feels wholly American.”3 His positioning of Verhoeven as a “foreign auteur gone Hollywood big time with an assiduously nonauteur corpus” sets Hollywood and European cinemas against each other, labeling the products of the former “commercial” and the latter “art” – binaries that have been strongly challenged time and again. 4 “McWorld” is indeed a globalized world; it is the world of transnational brands (an extreme example of which would be the future world of Demolition Man, with Taco Bells everywhere). But whether these are American or not is less significant than the fact that they exist and dominate all the global markets. Barber also addresses the issue of foreign filmmakers in Hollywood in general, and claims that “the best and most successful filmmakers” who “emigrate to Hollywood” are not likely to want to, or be able to, go back home.5
“Leaving” Hollywood Since the decline of the classical studio system, Hollywood has been run on a project-based model of production. Directors are not employed on salary, but are hired for specific productions. These defining characteristics of Hollywood mean that global directors can be mobile, floating actors. The “ticket to Hollywood” is not a one-way ticket, as can be seen from the cases of directors who alternate between Hollywood and other film industries. Hollywood, with its allure, financial possibilities and large audiences, is attractive, but the pressure to deliver box-office success is even higher than in the directors’ home countries, and interference by the studios and producers in the creative process can be unbearable for some. The turnover rate for global directors is considerably high, with most directors eventually no longer working for Hollywood. In fact, looking at the number of Hollywood films made by individual foreign directors gives us a clear picture. For the time period covered in this book, those filmmakers who directed only one film in Hollywood comprise the largest group by far, at around 30 percent. Adding directors with two films, this becomes nearly half of the entire group. What this indicates is that after one or possibly two feature projects in Hollywood, many choose to work elsewhere. Part of this, of course, is due to the box office failure of some of these films; those who do not succeed no longer try, or are not likely to be offered any other major projects. But there is also the fact that some directors choose not to work for Hollywood. As they have a home base to fall back on, they are not solely dependent on Hollywood studios for their careers. Taking a closer look at
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8+ 12% 1 31% 6-7 12%
4-5 12%
2 17% 3 16%
Figure 7.1 Number of films made in Hollywood per foreign director, 1975-2005
directors who have made one or two films in Hollywood and no longer work there reveals that the largest portion of the said filmmakers direct feature films in their home countries. This holds true for some of the previously mentioned directors as well: the later careers of some of the earlier James Bond directors, such as Terence Young and Guy Hamilton, or directors whose auto-remakes did not do well commercially, namely Francis Veber, Jean-Marie Poiré, and Ole Bornedal. George Sluizer, whose second Hollywood project Dark Blood was cut short when its star River Phoenix died during production, even saw this as a financing model at the time: “Make a European film, make the Hollywood remake, then, with they money you get, you’ll be able to make another European film.”6 After the success of The Ring Two, Hideo Nakata was under contract to direct a remake of the Pang Brothers’ The Eye (2002) for Paramount, but after he became frustrated with the extended greenlighting process, he stepped out and returned to Japan.7 During the time he spent in Hollywood waiting to hear from MGM, he made a documentary on his experience called the Foreign Filmmakers’ Guide to Hollywood (2009). In the
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documentary, he talks to a number of executives and employees, trying to make sense of the whole process. What Nakata seems to have felt is also clearly expressed by the Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Beristain: “It’s an industry. I’m an employee, not a collaborator with intellectual input.” Nakata later worked in the UK as well, making Chatroom (2010), but has said that if he likes the idea and the script, he “is willing to make films in any countries [sic].”8 Even Paul Verhoeven, one of the most significant foreign directors in Hollywood throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, returned to his native Netherlands to shoot Zwartboek (Black Book, 2006). A Dutch/Belgian/British/ German co-produced period piece set during World War II, Zwartboek was both a critical and a commercial hit. As a major Hollywood director, Verhoeven’s name had become an internationally recognizable brand, facilitating the sale of his multinationally produced and transnationally promoted European film. Hence, Verhoeven has left global Hollywood to work in a transnational Europe. A number of filmmakers remain in the Hollywood network, directing television productions. They include Ellory Elkayem, Peter Hunt (until his death in 2002), Mikael Salomon, and Carl Schultz. Robert Dornhelm works for Hollywood as well as for German television, living in Los Angeles and Vienna. Other directors return to their own countries, but work on projects that have partial Hollywood financing. Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Un long dimanche de fiançailles is one of the most noted cases. While the mobility and flexibility of directors has increased over time, even during the period covered in this book, the case of foreign filmmakers returning to their homelands as a conscious choice goes back to 1920s. Even Maurice Tourneur, who can be considered the first European director in the US, returned to France after a little over a decade. The often-mentioned sad stories of Murnau, Stiller, Sjöström and the like are a prevalent narrative, but there have been many cases that were much more cheerful, including that of Tourneur. Similarly, Jacques Feyder, Pal Fejös and Benjamin Christensen all returned Europe after a few years in Hollywood at the end of the 1920s. They had all been able to function within the studio system, but were frustrated with the lack of creative freedom (Petrie 2002). Upon their return, they continued with relatively successful careers outside of Hollywood. Feyder was instrumental in what came to be known as poetic realism, Fejös worked across various European countries, ultimately becoming an anthropologist, and Christensen alternated between stage and film directing. Because the émigré paradigm is almost exclusively associated with the World War II-era generation and many of those directors were refugees who
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remained in Hollywood, cases of directors leaving Hollywood voluntarily are often overlooked. In academia as well as the media, there is a strong tendency to separate directors into two strict categories, those of successes and failures, where the former continue to direct feature films in Hollywood and the latter do not. But the underlying premise of “Hollywood or bust” is not only unsound, but it also gives too much credence to Hollywood as the sole production network in the world. The question is, however, whether other production hubs that are significant in terms of their products’ popularity provide an alternative to Hollywood when it comes to the consumerist culture-ideology the latter reproduces. Looking at the popular products coming from post-2005 regional strongholds in film and television production, such as South Korea or Turkey, my answer would have to be a definitive no.
New Rules of the Game In the introduction, I presented 2005 as the cut-off year for this study, with the launch of YouTube as just one of the reasons – albeit the most symbolic one – for this date. In the decade after 2005 alone, there were enormous developments in filmmaking and communication technologies that transformed production, distribution, and exhibition practices around the world. This included not only the legitimate channels of distribution, but also the “informal” distribution or “piracy” networks. Various aspects of the changes brought about by digital technologies have been and continue to be analyzed and documented in depth.9 Beyond the technological advances, there have been shifts in the economic and political balance. The financial crisis of 2008 and the following downsizing trend across US industries affected the film industry, which already had much of its production dispersed around the world. Studios chose, even more than before, to opt for safer films that guaranteed box office success, such as franchises, and riskier middle-budget projects were often foregone (Christopherson 2013). The growth of the Asian, and particularly the Chinese market, and the strengthening of the South Korean and Turkish industries are all developments that continue to shape the global mediascape. All of these changes have only made Hollywood more decentralized and the issues in this book more pronounced. Also after 2005 – the following year, in fact – Superman returned. When I went to see Superman Returns, nearly 27 years after my initial Superman experience, things were quite different. One of the biggest changes was that I did not have to wait for months to see the film in Turkey; it was released
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almost simultaneously across the world. It was not the only superhero movie coming to the theaters; X-Men: The Last Stand had opened a few weeks before, the Batman franchise had been revived successfully the previous year, and Spider-Man 3 was to be released in 2007. In the meantime, the 1978 version had been released on VHS, then DVD, and Blu-ray, with eight minutes worth of extra footage seamlessly integrated into the original. The rebooted Superman looks very much like the original; the producers chose Brandon Routh for the title character, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Christopher Reeve.10 The locations look familiar as well, although I happened to know that most of the film was shot at Fox Studios Australia in Sydney. This new Superman does not settle for saving only the inhabitants of Metropolis. Newscasts from locations as diverse as the Philippines, Germany, Egypt, China, Australia, and France come flooding in, informing the people of the earth that Superman is back, and that he knows no boundaries. But more strikingly, when Clark Kent’s boss, the Daily Planet editor Perry White, gathers his team after Superman’s return and demands that his staff find out everything about the hero, who once stood for “truth, justice, and the American way,” he asks: “Does he still stand for truth, justice, … and all that stuff?” To conclude, I want to comment on the title of this chapter. To an Istanbul resident like myself, these three little words clearly echo the first part of the most popular slogan of the 2013 protests: “Everywhere is Taksim.” The protests began in opposition to a plan to raze a park in the city center in order to make space for a new mall – the quintessential symbol of global consumerist culture. A mall that most likely would have included a multiplex showing the latest Hollywood fare and the popular Turkish films that emulate the Hollywood style. But despite the violent crackdown by the police, the protests grew and ultimately stopped the destruction of the park, at least for the time being. This movement, which challenged the notion that global consumerist ideology is invincible, was a source of inspiration for me and for many others. Likewise, while Hollywood is everywhere and dominates the global film culture, alternatives remain, and even thrive. For better or for worse, cheaper digital technologies now allow anyone to make a film if they so desire. Festivals across the world provide a distribution network for films that would otherwise go unseen. Online viewing platforms have mushroomed since 2005, providing access not only to kitten videos, but also to potential auteurs and grassroots documentaries. Just as we will never have only Taco Bell, we will never have only Hollywood. Because, as the second part of the slogan goes: “Everywhere is resistance!”
Notes Introduction: Hello Hollywood 1. 2.
3. 4. 5.
6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
13.
14.
While this is a personal observation, I do rely on discussions on online film forums such as beyazperde.com, sinemafanatik.com, and eksisozluk.com. Considering that these were more adult-oriented films, such as All the President’s Men (Pakula, 1976), The Deep (Yates, 1977) and The Deer Hunter (Cimino, 1979); parents would have been hard-pressed to find suitable entertainment for their children. Langford, Berry. Post-Classical Hollywood. Film Industry, Style and Ideology since 1945. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010: 193. In 1941, 1948, 1952, and 1966, respectively. Wyatt, Justin. “From Roadshowing to Saturation Release: Majors, Independents, and Marketing/Distribution Innovations.” The New American Cinema. Ed. Jon Lewis. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1998: 65-86, 81. Shone, Tom. Blockbuster. How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer. New York: Simon & Shuster, 2004: 99. Maltby, Richard. “Introduction: ‘The Americanization of the World.’” Hollywood Abroad. Audiences and Cultural Exchange. Eds. Melvyn Stokes and Richard Maltby. London: British Film Institute, 2004: 1-20, 5. Higson, Andrew. “The Concept of National Cinema.” Screen, vol. 30 no. 4 (Autumn 1989): 36-46, 39. Miller, Toby. “Introduction.” The Contemporary Hollywood Reader. Ed. Toby Miller. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2009: xv-xvii, xv. Elsaesser, Thomas and Warren Buckland. Studying Contemporary American Films: A Guide to Movie Analysis. London: Arnold Publishers, 2002: 4. Another term that comes from the same root, “migrant,” lacks the political connotations of “émigré,” but is almost always associated with the working classes, and thus fails to provide a viable alternative term for these directors. In other words, directors famous for their roots outside the US, such as Robert Rodriguez, M. Night Shyamalan, Martin Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola, are not included if the directors themselves were born and raised in the US. The rationale for this is explained above: I want to focus on the talent recruited around the globe by this world industry. Definition available on the Official Website of the Department of Homeland Security. 17 November 2014. < http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/ temporary-workers/o-1-individuals-extraordinary-ability-or-achievement/o1-visa-individuals-extraordinary-ability-or-achievement>. Thomas Elsaesser: “Chronicle of a Death Retold: Hyper, Retro, or CounterCinema.” Monthly Film Bulletin, vol. 54 no. 641 (June 1987): 164-167, here 166.
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Bosniak, Linda. “The State of Citizenship: Citizenship Denationalized.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, vol. 7 no. 2 (2000): 447-510, 482. 16. Ong, Aihwa. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999: 6. 17. Anderson, Benedict. “Exodus.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 20 no. 2 (Winter 1994): 314-327: 323. 18. For the record, Parker did say: “I always get pissed off when I get put into that category of people who come from commercials.” Apted, Michael. “One on One: Michael Apted and Alan Parker.” American Film, vol. 15 no. 12 (September 1990): 42-45. 19. These processes have been documented quite thoroughly in recent decades. See Finler, Joel W. The Hollywood Story. Third Edition. London: Wallflower Press, 2003; Litwak, Mark. Reel Power: The Struggle for Influence and Success in the New Hollywood. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1986; McDonald, Paul and Janet Wasko, eds. The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008; Wasko, Janet. How Hollywood Works. London [etc.]: Sage Publications, 2003. 20. How Hollywood has limited the artistic vision of its European directors is a theme often discussed in relation to the foreign directors of the 1920s, such as Murnau and Stiller. In 2012, Brazilian director José Padilha was reported to have said that his first Hollywood experience of remaking RoboCop was hell, and that “for every 10 ideas he has, 9 are cut.” See Jagernauth, Kevin. “Director Jose Padilha Says RoboCop Reboot Is ‘Hell.’” Indiewire. 27 August 2012. 15 January 2015. . 21. O’Regan, Tom. “Too Popular by Far: On Hollywood’s International Popularity.” Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media & Culture, vol. 5 no. 2 (1990): 302-351, 305. 22. Goldsmith, Ben and Tom O’Regan. Cinema Cities, Media Cities: The Contemporary International Studio Complex. Sydney: Southwood Press, 2003: 64. 23. Initially, the MPAA was founded as Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). It was renamed the MPAA in 1945 as part of an overhaul by its new president, Eric Allen Johnston. Leff, Leonard J. and Jerold Simmons. The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production Code. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001: 139. 24. Following its acquisition by Sony in 2005, MGM’s membership in the MPAA terminated. At the same time period, Dreamworks SKG was founded as an attempt to create a new Hollywood major. It never became a member of the MPAA, and was ultimately purchased by Viacom in 2006. 25. For a chart illustrating this increase, see Figure 3.1 in chapter three. 26. Schatz, Thomas. “The New Hollywood.” Film Theory Goes to the Movies. Eds. Collins, J., H. Radner, and A.P. Collins. New York: Routledge, 1993: 8-36, 9. Schatz argues that this is mostly due to new media technologies and delivery systems, but one also needs to take into consideration the concen-
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tration of these films in the summer, their positioning towards a younger audience, the intensity of marketing campaigns accompanying them, and the wide-release strategies studios have adopted. Also see King, New Hollywood Cinema, Shone, Blockbuster, and Stringer, Julian, ed. Movie Blockbusters. London: Routledge, 2003. 27. Schatz. “The New Hollywood”: 15. 28. Schatz, Thomas. “Seismic Shifts in the American Film Industry.” The WileyBlackwell History of American Film 4. Eds. R. Grundmann, C. Lucia and A. Simon. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012: 15. For the changes in this era, also see Wasko, Janet. “The Death of Hollywood: Exaggeration or Reality?” The Handbook of Political Economy of Communications. Eds. J. Wasko, G. Murdock, and H. Sousa. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, 2011: 307-330. 29. Levin, Jordan. “An Industry Perspective: Calibrating the Velocity of Change.” Media Industries: History, Theory and Method. Eds. Jennifer Holt and Alisa Perren. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009: 256-63. 30. According to the Motion Pictures Association (MPA, the international branch of the MPAA), the average negative cost of a film made by its members was $60 million in 2005. With marketing costs, this number adds up to almost $100 million. For more details, see Motion Picture Association. “US Theatrical Market: 2005 Statistics.” 2006. 31. Oliver Hirschbiegel, director of the Oscar-nominated Der Untergang (2004), was quoted as saying “The pay is just crappy in Germany.” “Geld ist auch ein Argument.” Der Tagesspiegel, 12 February 2006: 29. 32. Baxter, John. The Hollywood Exiles. London: Macdonald and Jane’s, 1976 and Gemünden, Gerd. Continental Strangers: German Exile Cinema, 1933-1951. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. This literature goes as far back as 1944. Kafka, Hans. “What Our Immigration Did for Hollywood – and Vice Versa.” Aufbau, 22 December 1944, pp. 40-41. For other sources, see the following books: Brook, Vincent. Driven to Darkness: Jewish Émigré Directors and the Rise of Film Noir. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009; Koepnick, Lutz. The Dark Mirror: German Cinema Between Hitler and Hollywood. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002; Phillips, Gene D. Exiles in Hollywood: Major European Film Directors in America. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1998; Smedley, Nick. A Divided World. Hollywood Cinema and Émigré Directors in the Era of Roosevelt and Hitler. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2011; Taylor, John Russell. Strangers in Paradise: The Hollywood Émigrés 1933-1950. London: Faber and Faber, 1983; Wallace, David. Exiles in Hollywood. Pompton Plains, NJ: Limelight Editions, 2006. Articles: Asper, Helmut G. and Jan-Christopher Horak. “Three Smart Guys: How a Few Penniless German Émigrés Saved Universal Studios.” Film History, vol. 11 no. 2 (1999): 134-153; Horak, Jan-Christopher. “German Exile Cinema, 1933-1950.” Film History, vol. 8 no. 4 (December 1996): 373-389; Kupferberg, Feiwel. “From Berlin to Hollywood: German-Speaking Refugees in the American Film Industry.” Intellectual Migration and Cultural Transforma-
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tion. Eds. Edwards Timms and Jon Hughes. Vienna and New York: Springer, 2003: 139-154; McElhaney, Joe. “Survival Tactics: German Filmmakers in Hollywood, 1940-1960.” Lola 5. November 2014. 26 November 2014. ; Moeller, Hans-Bernhard. “German Hollywood Presence and Parnassus: Central European Exiles and American Filmmaking.” Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, vol. 39 no. 2 (1985): 123-136. See even two exhibition catalogues: Angst-Nowik, Doris and Jane Sloan. One-Way Ticket to Hollywood. Film Artists of Austrian and German Origin in Los Angeles (Emigration 1884-1945). Exhibition catalogue. Los Angeles: The Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies, University of Southern California, 1986; and Schürmann, Ernst, ed. German Film Directors in Hollywood: Film Emigration from Germany and Austria. Exhibition catalogue. San Francisco: Goethe Institutes of North America, 1978. 33. Rodek examines the founding years of Hollywood in Rodek, Hans-Georg. “Europäische Filmemigration in die USA vor 1920.” Kintop-Jahrbuch 10. Basel, Frankfurt am Main: Stroemfeld Verlag, 1992. For studies of emigration during 1920s, see Elsaesser, Thomas. “Ethnicity, Authenticity, and Exile: A Counterfeit Trade?” Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media and the Politics of Place. Ed. Hamid Naficy. London and New York: Routledge, 1999: 97-123; Horak, Jan-Christopher. “Sauerkraut & Sausages with a Little Goulash: Germans in Hollywood, 1927.” Film History, vol. 17 no. 2/3 (2005): 241-260; Petrie, Graham. Hollywood Destinies: European Directors in America, 1922-1931. Revised Edition. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2002. For later periods, see Blum, Heiko R. Meine Zweite Heimat Hollywood. Berlin: Henschel, 2001; Langman, Larry. Destination Hollywood: The Influence of Europeans on American Filmmaking. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2000; Morrison, James. Passport to Hollywood: Hollywood Films, European Directors. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998; Whittemore, Don and Philip Alan Cecchettini. Passport to Hollywood: Film Immigrants Anthology. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976. 34. See Chung, Pei-Chi. “Asian Filmmakers Moving into Hollywood: Genre Regulation and Auteur Aesthetics.” Asian Cinema, vol. 11 no. 1 (2000): 3350 and Tesson, C., C. Paquot and R. Garcia, eds. L’Asie à Hollywood. Paris: Cahiers du Cinéma, 2001: 129-179. More recently, Yoshiharu Tezuka has published a study of Japanese directors, documenting observations as well as interviews, and employing the notion of the transnational capitalist class that is also used in this book. See Tezuka, Yoshiharu. Japanese Cinema Goes Global. Filmworkers’ Journeys. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. 2012. 35. A popular subgenre of research has focused on individual directors’ journeys. Again, while many studies focus on the 1940s and convey general biographies, Serena Formica’s work on Peter Weir (2012) is a welcome exception in the sense that she spends a significant proportion of the book discussing migration and transnationalism in cinema. On the opposite end of the spectrum, one study attempts to catalog all noteworthy foreigners who worked in the US: Waldman, Harry. Hollywood and the Foreign Touch:
Notes
36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.
51.
52. 53. 54. 55. 56.
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A Dictionary of Foreign Filmmakers and Their Films from America, 1910-1995. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996. Petrie. Hollywood Destinies: xii. Ibid.: 231-232. Ibid.: xi. “Artsy” came to be used almost as an insult by the critics of the period, meaning “too sophisticated,” thus not “entertaining” enough. Morrison. Passport to Hollywood: 5. Ibid.: 16. Ibid.: 17. Morrison: 272-273. Elsaesser, Thomas. European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005: 306. Shone. Blockbuster: 235. Thompson, Kristin: Herr Lubitsch goes to Hollywood. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005: 17. Incidentally, Rosher was not only one of the first cameramen in Hollywood, but he was also British; adding an extra layer to the international nature of talent flows. Baxter. The Hollywood Exiles: 68. Hoffman, Eva. Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language. New York [etc.]: Penguin Books, 1989: 3. Born in China but raised in Hong Kong, Woo followed his illustrious career in his native country with an equally successful foray into Hollywood filmmaking in the 1990s. But a few years after the handover, he went to China to shoot Red Cliff (2008) and Red Cliff II (2009); based on an epic battle from 208 AD. The films became a huge success in China and Japan, “rebooting China’s film biz” (O’Hehir, 2009). Although he continues his work largely in China, Woo remains a member of the DGA. Variety reports that out of the 50 director nominees of the previous decade for Best Foreign Language Film, almost all “have gotten calls from Hollywood agents testing their interest in coming to California.” See Gaydos, Steven. “Directors Bask in Hollywood Spotlight.” Variety 13 January 2003: A4. Balio, Tino. United Artists: The Company That Changed the Film Industry. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987: 253. Litwak. Reel Power: 131. Interviewed in Herbert, Daniel. Transnational Film Remakes: Time, Space, Identity. PhD Dissertation. Los Angeles: University of Southern California, 2008: 526. Natale, Richard. “Commercial Break.” Ridley Scott: Interviews. Eds. Laurence Knapp and Andrea Kulas. Jackson: University of Mississippi, 2005: 172-179: 176. Bergfelder, Tim. “National, Transnational or Supranational Cinema? Rethinking European Film Studies.” Media, Culture & Society, vol. 27 no. 3 May 2005: 315-331, here 320.
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1.
Defining Hollywood
1.
John Ford in a 1964 BBC Interview, quoted in (among others) Bordwell, D., J. Staiger and K. Thompson. The Classical Hollywood Cinema. Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960. London: Routledge, 1985: xiii. Miloš Forman quoted in Cowie, Peter. Revolution! The Explosion of World Cinema in the Sixties. London: Faber&Faber, 2004: 243. Hesmondhalgh, David. The Cultural Industries. Third Edition. London [etc.]: Sage Publications, 2013: 2. I prefer using Diane Jacobs’ term “Hollywood Renaissance” (1977) when referring to the late 1960s and the early 1970s, and reserve “New Hollywood” for the era of corporatization that came slightly later. Schatz. “The New Hollywood”: 8. Also see Schatz, Thomas. Old Hollywood/ New Hollywood: Ritual, Art, and Industry. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1983. Smith, Murray. “Theses on the Philosophy of Hollywood History.” Contemporary Hollywood Cinema. Eds. Steve Neale and Murray Smith. London and New York: Routledge, 1998: 3-20, 11. Rosenfeld, Stuart. A Governor’s Guide to Cluster-Based Economic Development. Washington, DC: National Governors Association, 2002: 9. Porter, Michael. “Clusters and the New Economics of Competition.” Harvard Business Review, vol. 76 no. 6 (November-December 1998): 77-90. What Porter calls “global sourcing” is a euphemism for what Miller et al. (2005) have termed the New International Division of Labor, as their model is a response to the cluster model. Economists frequently use the terms clustering and agglomeration interchangeably, while economic geographers distinguish clusters by the synergy they create among firms, instead of a simple geographical grouping. See Athreye, Suma. Agglomeration and Growth: A study of the Cambridge Hi-Tech Cluster. Milton Keynes: Open University, 2000. Storper, Michael and Susan Christopherson. “Flexible Specialization and Regional Industrial Agglomerations: The US Film Industry.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 77 no. 1 (March 1987): 104-117, 105. Ibid.: 113. Cowen, Tyler. Creative Destruction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002: 88. Storper and Christopherson. “Flexible specialization and regional industrial agglomerations” 104. As of 2005, Los Angeles was home to 72 studios with 369 soundstages. Forty percent of these soundstages’ total square footage was owned by the six majors (Disney, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Universal, Warner Bros.), 10 percent by the three television networks (ABC, CBS, NBC), and the rest was operated by independent studios. See Scott. On Hollywood, 85.
2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
9.
10. 11. 12. 13. 14.
Notes
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In addition to the works discussed in the following paragraphs, see McDonald and Wasko. The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry; Steve Neale and Murray Smith, eds. Contemporary Hollywood Cinema. London and New York: Routledge, 1998; Perren, Alisa. Indie, Inc.: Miramax and the Transformation of Hollywood in the 1990s. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013; Wasko. How Hollywood Works. 16. Wasko, Janet. Hollywood in the Information Age. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994: 4. 17. Balio, Tino. “‘A Major Presence in All of the World’s Important Markets’: The Globalization of Hollywood in the 1990s.” Contemporary Hollywood Cinema. Neale, Steve, and Murray Smith, eds. London and New York: Routledge, 1998: 58-73: 58. Also see Balio, Tino. “Adjusting to the New Global Economy. Hollywood in the 1990s.” Film Policy. International, National and Regional Perspectives. Ed. Albert Moran. London and New York: Routledge: 1996: 23-38. 18. Miller, T., N. Govil, J. McMurria, R. Maxwell and T. Wang: Global Hollywood 2. London: BFI Publishing, 2005: 7. 19. Above-the-line workers are those workers “whose salaries are individually negotiated and who are named explicitly as line item entries in any project budget,” such as the director and the stars. Below-the-line workers’ remuneration is “set impersonally according to wage schedules defined in collective bargaining agreements.” These workers comprise the majority of the crew on the set. See Scott, Allen. On Hollywood. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005: 121. 20. Miller et al. Global Hollywood 2: 362. 21. In addition to Miller et al. (2005), see Balio. “Adjusting to the New Global Economy”; Balio. “‘A Major Presence in All of the World’s Important Markets’” Schatz, Thomas. “The Studio System and Conglomerate Hollywood.” The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry. Eds. Paul McDonald and Janet Wasko. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008: 13-42; Schatz. “Seismic Shifts in the American Film Industry”, and perhaps most significantly, Wasser, Frederick. “Is Hollywood America? The Trans-Nationalization of American Film Industry.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication, vol. 12 no. 4 (1995): 423-437. I focus on transnationality within film studies in this chapter, and revisit the issue in a wider context in chapter two. 22. Wasser. “Is Hollywood America?” 23. Ibid.: 431. 24. Ibid.: 425. 25. News Corporation was reorganized in 2013 and split into two publicly traded companies. The publishing arm was spun off as News Corp (also known as New News Corp); its more profitable entertainment assets, including the 20th Century Fox movie studio and the Fox broadcasting network, formed 21st Century Fox.
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26. Schechter, Danny. “Long Live Chairman Levin!” Mediachannel.org. 5 July 2000. 23 November 2014. . 27. Hozic, Aida. Hollyworld. Space, Power and Fantasy in the American Economy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001: 25. 28. See the related chapter in Miller et al. (2005), as well as Drake, Philip. “Distribution and Marketing in Contemporary Hollywood.” The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry. Eds. Paul McDonald and Janet Wasko. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008: 63-82; Scott, Allen. “A New Map of Hollywood: The Production and Distribution of American Motion Pictures.” Regional Studies, vol. 36 no. 9 (2002): 957-975; Scott, Allen. “Hollywood and the World: The Geography of Motion-Picture Distribution and Marketing.” Review of International Political Economy, vol. 11 no. 1 (2004): 33-61. 29. Curtin, Michael. “Media Capital. Towards the Study of Spatial Flows.” International Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 6 no. 2 (2003): 202-228, 203. 30. Ibid.: 203. 31. Ibid.: 212-213. 32. Roberts, Martin. “Baraka: World Cinema and the Global Culture Industry.” Cinema Journal, vol. 37 no. 3 (Spring 1998): 62-82, 63; also see Naficy, Hamid. “Phobic Spaces and Liminal Panics: Independent Transnational Film Genre.” Global/Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary. Eds. Rob Wilson and Wimal Dissanayake. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1996: 119-44. 33. Ezra, Elizabeth and Terry Rowden. “General Introduction: What is Transnational Cinema?” Transnational Cinema, The Film Reader. Eds. Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden. London and New York: Routledge, 2006: 1-12, 1. 34. Tarantino also proved instrumental in the American releases of Wong KarWai’s Chungking Express (1994) and Zhang Yimou’s Hero (2002). 35. Higson, Andrew. “The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema.” Cinema & Nation. Eds. Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie. London and New York: Routledge, 2000: 63-74, 68. 36. Ibid.: 68. 37. Satzman, Darrell. “Once All-powerful, Labor Adjusts to Decline of Influence – Who’s Who Entertainment – Hollywood Unions.” Los Angeles Business Journal, 23 September 2002. If it is any consolation, after the sale of Vivendi’s majority shares to General Electric, the key decision-maker no longer sat in Paris. 38. Hirschberg, Lynn. “What Is an American Movie Now?” New York Times Magazine, 14 November 2004: 88-93, 91. 39. Keil, Charlie. “‘American’ Cinema in the 1990s and Beyond: Whose Country’s Filmmaking Is It Anyway?” The End of Cinema as We Know It: American Film in the Nineties. Ed. Jon Lewis. New York: New York University Press, 2001: 53-60, 53. 40. Cowen, 18.
Notes
41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.
49.
50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.
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Pells, Richard. Not Like Us. How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture. New York: Basic Books, 1997. Scott, A.O. “What Is a Foreign Movie Now?” New York Times Magazine (14 November 2004): 79-86, 86. Bergfelder. “National, Transnational or Supranational Cinema?”: 320. White, Jerry. “National Belonging. Renewing the Concept of National Cinema for a Global Culture.” New Review of Film and Television Studies, vol. 2 no. 2 (November 2004): 212-232, 228. Rosenbaum, Jonathan. “Multinational Pest Control: Does American Cinema Still Exist?” Film and Nationalism. Ed. Alan Williams. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002: 217-229, 217-218. Ibid.: 221. Ibid.: 221. See Desai, Kalpesh Kaushik and Suman Basuroy. “Interactive Influence of Genre Familiarity, Star Power, and Critics’ Reviews in the Cultural Goods Industry: The Case of Motion Pictures.” Psychology & Marketing, vol. 22 no. 3 (March 2005): 203-223; Levin, A.M., I.P. Levin, and C.E. Heath. “Movie Stars and Authors as Brand Names: Measuring Brand Equity in Experiential Products.” Advances in Consumer Research. Eds. Merrie Brucks and Deborah J. MacInnis, vol. 24 (1997): 175-181. See Bente, Klaus. Product Placement: Entscheidungsrelevante Aspekte in der Werbepolitik. Wiesbaden: Deutscher Universitäts-Verlag, 1990; Gupta, Pola B. and Kenneth R. Lord. “Product Placement in Movies: The Effect of Prominence and Mode on Audience Recall,” Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising, vol. 20 no. 1 (Spring 1998): 47-59; Karrh, J.A., K.B. McKee, and C. J. Pardun. “Practitioners’ Evolving Views on Product Placement Effectiveness.” Journal of Advertising Research, vol. 43 no. 2 ( June 2003): 138-149. Grainge, Paul. Brand Hollywood. Selling Entertainment in a Global Media Age. London and New York: Routledge, 2008: 6. Coombe, Rosemary. The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties: Authorship, Appropriation and the Law. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. Keil. “‘American’ Cinema in the 1990s and Beyond”: 56. These investors include the investment bank Goldman Sachs and the luxury goods producer LVMH. See Carr, David. “Placing Bets on Miramax the Sequel.” New York Times, 31 October 2005. Chan-Olmsted, Sylvia M. and Byeng-Hee Chang. “Diversification Strategy of Global Media Conglomerates: Examining Its Patterns and Determinants.” Journal of Media Economics, vol. 16 no. 4 (2003): 213-233: 215. Ibid.: 215. Also see Schatz, Thomas. “The Return of the Hollywood Studio System.” Conglomerates and the Media. Ed. Eric Barnouw. New York: The New Press, 1997: 73-106. With digital technologies and the rise in illegal distribution, copyright has become a major concern for the MPAA. For a history of copyright issues in
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Hollywood, see Decherney, Peter. Hollywood’s Copyright Wars: From Edison to the Internet. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. 57. In February 2005, Jackson sued New Line, a subsidiary of Time Warner, claiming that he was owed money and demanding an independent financial audit of the company. In the following months, New Line declared that Jackson would no longer be considered to direct The Hobbit, the prequel to the famous trilogy. New Line holds the rights to The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, for which the box office receipts alone approached US$ 3 billion. The case was settled in 2007, and Jackson went on to direct three films in the Hobbit series. The estate of J.R.R. Tolkien also sued New Line for the same reason, and settled out of court in 2009. 58. The Monitor Company: “US Runaway Film and Television Production Study Report.” June 1999. 12 January 2015. : 2. For more on runaway productions, see two edited volumes: Elmer, Greg and Mike Gasher, eds. Contracting Out Hollywood: Runaway Productions and Foreign Location Shooting. Lanham, MD [etc.]: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005 and Wasko, Janet, and Mary Erickson, eds. Cross-Border Cultural Production. Economic Runaway or Globalization? Amherst and New York: Cambria Press, 2008. 59. Sassen, Saskia. Losing Control? New York: Columbia University Press, 1996: 30. 60. Schiller, Herbert I. “Not Yet the Post-Imperialist Era.” Media and Cultural Studies: KeyWorks, Revised edition. Eds. Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas M. Kellner. Oxford [etc.]: Blackwell Publishing, 2006: 295-310, 297. An early New Hollywood era film, Network (Lumet, 1976) presents a prescient diagnosis of these conditions. To quote from one of the many memorable speeches in the film: “You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. …There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars.”
2.
Cultural Work in a Globalizing World
1.
See Beck, Andrew. “Introduction: Cultural Work, Cultural Workplace – Looking at the Cultural Industries.” Cultural Work. Understanding the Cultural Industries. London and New York: Routledge, 2003: 1-11; Caldwell, John Thornton. Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008; Ganti, Tejaswini. Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012; Mayer, V., M.J. Banks, and J.T. Caldwell, eds. Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries. New York and London: Routledge, 2010; Szczepanik, Petr, and Patrick Vonderau, eds. Behind the Screen: Inside European Production Cultures. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Notes
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3. 4. 5.
6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
13. 14. 15. 16. 17.
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See, in addition to the aforementioned Cowen. Creative Destruction, Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996; Barber, Benjamin. Jihad vs. McWorld. New York: Ballantine Books, 1995; Featherstone, Mike. Undoing Culture. Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity. London [etc.]: Sage Publications, 1995; Friedman, Thomas. The Lexus and the Olive Tree. New York: Anchor Books 2000; Held, David and McGrew, Anthony, eds. The Global Transformations Reader. Cambridge [etc.]: Polity Press, 2000; Scholte, Jan Aart. Globalization: A Critical Introduction. Second Edition. Hampshire and New York: 2005; among others. Held, David and McGrew, Anthony. “The Great Globalization Debate: An Introduction.” The Global Transformations Reader. Eds. David Held and Anthony McGrew. Cambridge [etc.]: Polity Press, 2000: 1-45: 3. Giddens, Anthony. The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991: 64. Held, David, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt, and Jonathan Perraton. “Rethinking Globalization.” The Global Transformations Reader. An Introduction to the Globalization Debate. Second Edition. Eds. David Held and Anthony McGrew. Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2003: 68. Levitt, Theodore. “The Globalization of Markets.” Harvard Business Review, vol. 61 no. 3 (May-June 1983): 92-102, 101. Ibid.: 100. Cowen. Creative Destruction: 5. Ibid.: 17. For a leading account of how economic globalization has been unable to provide stability and an equal distribution of wealth, see Stiglitz, Joseph E. Globalization and Its Discontents. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002. For a brief historical discussion of the term, see Van Elteren, Mel. “US Cultural Imperialism Today: Only a Chimera?” SAIS Review, vol. 23 no. 2 (Summer-Fall 2003): 169-188. Among the most renowned studies are Ang, Ien. Watching Dallas. London and New York: Methuen, 1985 and Liebes, Tamar and Elihu Katz. The Export of Meaning: Cross-Cultural Readings of Dallas. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Also see Willis, Paul and Chris Barker: Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. London [etc.]: Sage Publications, 2003. Appadurai. Modernity at Large: 32. Ibid.: 32. Ibid.: 33. Giddens. The Consequences of Modernity: 71. See Burton, John W. World Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972 and Keohane, Robert Owen, and Joseph S. Nye. Transnational Relations and World Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press: 1973.
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18. 19. 20.
21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.
32. 33. 34.
35.
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See Dicken, Peter. Global Shift: Transforming the World Economy. Third Edition. London: Paul Chapman, 1998 and Dunning, John H. The Theory of Transnational Corporations. London and New York: Routledge, 1993. Hannerz, Ulf. Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places. London and New York: Routledge, 1996: 6. See Guback, Thomas and Tapio Varis: “Transnational Communication and Cultural Industry.” Reports and Papers on Mass Communication. No. 92, Paris: UNESCO, 1982. For an analysis of California-based transnational corporations in terms of globalization, see Sklair, Leslie. “Globalization and the Corporations: The Case of the California Fortune Global 500.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 22 no. 2 (June 1998): 195-215. The analysis includes Walt Disney Corporation as the only media company, and its sector is listed as “miscellanous.” Burnett, Robert. The Global Jukebox: The International Music Industry. London and New York: Routledge, 1996: 12. Sklair, Leslie. Globalization: Capitalism and its Alternatives. Third Edition. Oxford [etc.]: Oxford University Press, 2002: 169. Ong. Flexible Citizenship: 4. Sklair. Globalization: 8. Ibid.: 99. Ibid.: 110. Ong. Flexible Citizenship: 112. Goldsmith, Ben, and Tom O’Regan. The Film Studio: Film Production in the Global Economy. Lanham, MD [etc.]: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005: 20. Christopher Vogler, quoted in Wasko. How Hollywood Works: 40. Faulkner, Robert R., and Andy B. Anderson. “Short-term Projects and Emergent Careers: Evidence from Hollywood.” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 92 no.4 (January 1987): 879-909: 882. The full name of the organization is the “International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States, Its Territories and Canada.” It was changed from “national” to “international” when Canadian unions started joining as early as 1898. While Canadian unions are part of the IATSE, different local unions use different price scales, making Canada an ideal destination for runaway productions. For a comparison of fees between IATSE Hollywood and IATSE British Columbia, see Droesch (2002). Miller et al. Global Hollywood 2: 368. Litwak. Reel Power: 85. Tschang, Feichin Ted, and Andrea Goldstein. “The Outsourcing of ‘Creative’ Work and the Limits of Capability: The Case of the Philippines’ Animation Industry.” IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, vol. 57 no. 1 (February 2010): 132-143. Scott. On Hollywood: 55.
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36. Ibid.: 76. 37. Scott. On Hollywood: 76. 38. Insider histories on Hollywood are a good source to grasp the inner workings of the industry. In addition to Litwak, see McDougal, Dennis. The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA, and the Hidden History of Hollywood. New York: Da Capo, 2001, and Rensin, David. The Mailroom: Hollywood from the Bottom Up. New York: The Random House Publishing Group, 2003. 39. Wasser. “Is Hollywood America?”: 429. 40. Vajna ultimately returned to his home country to become the “government commissioner for the renewal of the Hungarian film industry” in 2011, taking on a position that ironically represents the very concerns stemming from the binary opposition between Hollywood and Europe. 41. Brown, Corie, and Jeff Giles. “Hollywood’s Bad Boy Makes Good.” Newsweek, 6 September 1999: 58. 42. They include Jane Campion, Anthony Minghella, John Madden, Marc Forster, Stephen Daldry, Oliver Parker, Tom Tykwer, and Lasse Halström. 43. Harvey Weinstein earned the nickname “Harvey Scissorhands” for his close involvement in the editing process at Miramax films, often at the expense of the directors’ wishes. For a detailed and rather subjective account of Weinstein Brothers’ career, see Biskind, Peter. Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film. New York: Simon & Shuster, 2004. 44. It was Paul Kohner who allowed Max Ophuls to obtain a US visa and a French exit visa by cabling him a non-committal, yet still sufficiently convincing offer (Bacher 1996). 45. For further studies on talent agents in Hollywood, see Kemper, Tom. Hidden Talent: The Emergence of Hollywood Agents. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2010. Wilson, Koh Siok Tian. “Talent Agents As Producers: A Historical Perspective of Screen Actors Guild Regulation and the Rising Conflict with Managers.” Loyola Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review, vol. 21 no. 3 (2000): 401-415. Zafirau, Stephen. “Reputation Work in Selling Film and Television: Life in the Hollywood Talent Industry.” Qualitative Sociology, vol. 31 no. 2 (2008): 99-127. 46. While frequent changes in representation are inherent in the nature of agencies, these data are based on the standings in 2005, at the end of the research period. In 2009, Endeavor and William Morris merged to form William Morris Endeavor. 47. In 2007, Newman moved to Endeavor, then to William Morris Endeavor. 48. Brodie, John. “Secret Agent Man.” Details (February 1997). 49. In May 2006 Ptak founded his own company, Arsenal. 50. Litwak. Reel Power: 160. 51. Although no name is by any means a 100 percent guarantee for box-office success. For an analysis of star power as a factor in ensuring financial success, see DeVany, Arthur and W. David Walls. “Uncertainty in the Movie
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52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.
58.
59. 60.
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Industry: Does Star Power Reduce the Terror of the Box Office?” Journal of Cultural Economics, vol. 23 no. 4 (November 1999): 285-318. For a critical history of the WGA, see Banks, Miranda. The History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014. Studio executives are seen as part of the management, hence they do not have a labor union either. Those who are not members either no longer work for Hollywood, or have shot all their films outside of the US. The DGA had about 13,000 members in 2005, and by 2015 this number was over 15,000. Faulkner, Robert R., and Andy B. Anderson. “Short-term Projects and Emergent Careers: Evidence from Hollywood.” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 92 no.4 (January 1987): 879-909, 889. Storper, Michael. The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy. New York and London: The Guilford Press: 1997, 97. Lutter, Mark. “Creative Success and Network Embeddedness: Explaining Critical Recognition of Film Directors in Hollywood, 1900-2010.” Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies Discussion Paper 14/11. 9 July 2014. 26 January 2015. : 2. Cattani, Gino, and Simone Ferriani. “A Core/Periphery Perspective on Individual Creative Performance: Social Networks and Cinematic Achievements in the Hollywood Film Industry.” Organization Science, vol. 19 no. 6 (2008): 824-844, 827. Ibid. 838. Robinson, William I., and Jerry Harris. “Towards a Global Ruling Class? Globalization and the Transnational Capitalist Class.” Science & Society, vol. 64 no. 1 (Spring 2000): 11-54, 38.
3.
Histories and Geographies of Global Directors
1.
Quoted in “Film ruled ‘not French enough.’” BBC News. 27 November 2004. 11 January 2015. Nonetheless, Un long dimanche was nominated for twelve César Awards and won five. For an analysis of the case, see Maxwell, Winston, and Julie Massaloux. “Defining ‘Control’ of Motion Picture and Television Companies under French Law.” Entertainment Law Review, vol. 16 no. 4 (April 2005): 94-95. Lichfield, John. “One of these films is officially French – but it’s not the one in French, shot in France, by a Frenchman.” The Independent. 5 December 2004. 26 January 2015. . A similar controversy occurred in the UK in 2014, when Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity (2013) won the BAFTA Award for “Outstanding British Film”, despite having a Mexican director and American stars, and Warner Bros.’ involvement. The concept of national cinemas has been a popular one in film studies, along with myriad volumes on individual nations’ cinemas. See Crofts,
2.
3.
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4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.
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Stephen. “Reconceptualizing National Cinema/s.” Quarterly Review of Film & Video, vol. 14 no. 3 (1993): 49-67; Crofts, Stephen. “Concepts of National Cinema.” The Oxford Guide to Film Studies. Eds. John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998: 385-394; Higson, “The Concept of National Cinema”; Higson, Andrew. Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995; Higson. “The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema”; Hjort, Mette, and Scott MacKenzie, eds. Cinema and Nation. London & New York: Routledge, 2000; Vitali, Valentina, and Paul Willemen. Theorising National Cinema. London: British Film Institute, 2006; Williams, Alan, ed. Film and Nationalism. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002. Many of these studies, however, such as Higson’s (mentioned in the previous chapters), also question the difficulty of assigning a specific nation to a film, and highlight the transnational nature of all cinema. Buchsbaum, Jonathan. “‘The Exception Culturelle Is Dead.’ Long Live Cultural Diversity: French Cinema and the New Resistance.” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, vol. 47 no. 1 (Spring 2006): 5-21: 16-17. Musser, Charles. Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991: 447. Taylor. Strangers in Paradise: 18-19. Also see Suchenski, Richard. “‘Turn Again, Tourneur’: Maurice Tourneur between France and Hollywood.” Studies in French Cinema, vol. 11 no. 2, 2011: 87-100. Strictly speaking, Samuel Goldwyn was never directly involved with MGM. He sold Goldwyn Pictures to Metro Pictures Corporation in 1924 and continued with Samuel Goldwyn Productions. Quoted in Miller et al. Global Hollywood 2: 131. This debt was later paid by the Prussian businessman Alfred Hugenberg, who returned Ufa to 100 percent German ownership. The fact that Hugenberg was also the leader of the German Nationalist People’s Party (DNVP) paved the way to Ufa becoming a Nazi propaganda machine in later years. Lubitsch came to the US in 1922 through an agreement with Paramount, and Curtiz in 1926 for Warner Bros., both independently of Parufamet. See Horak. “German Exile Cinema, 1933-1950.” For a more detailed analysis of Dupont’s career, see Elsaesser. “Ethnicity, Authenticity, and Exile.” Strictly speaking, “German-speaking” might be the more correct term, as Austrians and former subjects of the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire are also often lumped together. Ibid.: 105. The studio was active between 1930 and 1933. Crisp, Colin G. The Classic French Cinema, 1930-1960. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993: 23. 20th Century Fox sold the Baja California studios, where Cameron’s Titanic (1997) was shot, in 2007 to a group of local investors. Taylor. Strangers in Paradise: 47-48, 59-62.
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17. 18.
19. 20. 21.
22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.
29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.
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See Keser, Robert. “Fred Zinnemann.” Senses of Cinema 31. April 2004. 25 November 2014. . See Cook, David. A History of Narrative Film. Third Edition. New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1996: 296-297. As of the early 1930s, the studios were not yet quite aware of the gravity of the political situation in Europe. Their regular trophy-hunts to the old continent continued as before, even though meetings with German and Austrian directors frequently took place in France or the UK instead of their home countries. Elsaesser. “Ethnicity, Authenticity, and Exile”: 104. The Production Code, a set of rules that determined what was ‘proper’ to show on screen and dictated as a form of self-censorship by the MPAA, had been effective since the 1930s. In 1968, it was replaced by the ratings system. To be fair, The Serpent’s Egg did moderately well at the German box office, coming in at #17 for 1977 (insidekino.com). For the production of the film and its place within European “international” strategies, see Elsaesser, Thomas. “Ingmar Bergman’s The Serpent’s Egg: Reflections of Reflections on Retro-Fashion.” Ingmar Bergman Revisited: Performance, Cinema and the Arts. Ed. Maaret Koskinen. London: Wallflower Press, 2008: 161-179. Lev actually claims that Blow Up was a separate project from the threepicture deal and that the third film of that deal was never produced. Lev, Peter. The Euro-American Cinema. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993: 93. Japan retained this title until 2013, when it was taken over by China. He held this position between June 1986 and September 1987. Parker to direct Bugsy Malone (1976) and Lyne for Foxes (1980). Newell made The Awakening (1980) and Irvin The Dogs of War (1980). Faulkner and Anderson. “Short-term Projects and Emergent Careers”: 881. Two book-length studies focus on this phenomenon: Mathijs, Ernest, ed. The Lord of the Rings: Popular Culture in Global Context. London and New York: 2006 and Thompson, Kristin. The Frodo Franchise: The Lord of the Rings and Modern Hollywood. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. One should note however, that Guillermo del Toro, who left his native Mexico after the kidnapping of his father for ransom, considers himself in exile. Glauber Rocha quoted in Armes, Roy. Third World Filmmaking and the West. Berkeley [etc.]: University of California Press, 1987: 35. Semati, M. Mehdi and Patty J. Sotirin. “Hollywood’s Transnational Appeal: Hegemony and Democratic Potential?” In Journal of Popular Film & Television, vol. 26 no. 4, Winter 1999: 176-188, 183. Aksoy, Asu and Kevin Robins. “Hollywood for the 21st Century: Global Competition for Critical Mass in Image Markets.” Cambridge Journal of Economics, vol. 16 no. 1 (March 1992): 1-22,13. Ezra, and Rowden. “General Introduction”: 2. Andrew Higson defines heritage film as quality cinema aimed at a middleclass British audience that values an “iconography” of the “national past, its people, its landscape, and its cultural heritage.” He states that “the adapta-
Notes
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37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.
45. 46. 47. 48.
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tion of heritage properties, whether novels and plays or buildings and values” is central to this cultural impulse. See Higson, Andrew. Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995: 17. O’Regan. “Too popular by far.” Saskia Sassen makes a similar statement in her work on international investment and migrant labor flows. She points at the connection between international labor migration and the internationalization of production, showing that the “major immigrant-sending countries are among the leading recipients of the jobs lost in the US and of US direct foreign investment.” Sassen, Saskia. The Mobility of Labor and Capital. A Study in International Investment and Labor Flow. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988: 13. Quoted in Roddick, Nick. “If the United States spoke Spanish, we would have a film industry…” British Cinema Now. Eds. Martyn Auty and Nick Roddick. London: British Film Institute, 1985: 3-18, 5. Some scholars, such as Lev, even exclude British directors from the category “European.” Lev. The Euro-American Cinema: 33. Murphy, Robert. Sixties British Cinema. London: BFI Publishing, 1992: 258. McDonald, Paul. “Britain: Hollywood, UK.” The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry. Eds. Paul McDonald and Janet Wasko. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008: 220-231: 224. As an amusing coincidence, “Blame Canada,” the Oscar-nominated song from South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Trey Parker, 1999) was released ten days before the report. Elias, Justine. “The City That Can Sub for All of America.” The New York Times. 17 November 1996. 26 January 2015. . Kit, Borys. “Dublin’s ‘Attraction’ Includes Tax Breaks.” Hollywood Reporter. 15 April 2004. 6 December 2014. . Similarly, South Africa became a prime destination, initially for advertising productions, but later also for feature films. After 2005, two South African directors, Gavin Hood and Neill Blomkamp, started directing major Hollywood blockbusters. Personal interview with Hugh Hudson, 23 April 2004. Chan, Kenneth. Remade in Hollywood: The Global Chinese Presence in Transnational Cinemas. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009: 1. Local competition can also be beneficial for the studios, assuming that the domestic films are being distributed by a Hollywood distribution company such as UIP or Warner Bros. Krämer, Peter. “Hollywood and Germany: Notes on a History of Cultural Exchange.” Paper presented at “Media in Transition: Globalization and Convergence” Conference at MIT, Cambridge, MA. 10-12 May 2002. 1 December 2014. : 9-10.
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49. Ibid.: 10. 50. Cook. A History of Narrative Film: 658. 51. Garncarz, Joseph. “Germany Goes Global: Challenging the Theory of Hollywood’s Dominance on International Markets.” Paper presented at “Media in Transition: Globalization and Convergence” Conference at MIT, Cambridge, MA. 10-12 May 2002. 6 December 2014. . 52. Including Wrongfully Accused (Pat Proft, 1998), Slap Her… She’s French (Melanie Myron, 2002), Resident Evil (Paul W.S. Anderson, 2002), and Uli Edel’s two Hollywood productions, Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989) and Body of Evidence (1993). Bernd Eichinger died of a heart attack in 2011 in Los Angeles. 53. Barraclough, Leo. “Hollywood Calling for a New Generation of German Directors.” Variety. 13 May 2014. 25 January 2015. . 54. After 1975 it was called the Australian Film Commission (AFC). 55. Elkayem is a 1972-born director whose first feature film Eight Legged Monsters (2002) was produced by Roland Emmerich on the strength of his short films. 56. These three directors, often alluded to as the “three amigos,” became very influential in Hollywood in 2010s. In 2014, Cuarón became the first Mexican to win a Best Director Academy Award with Gravity, immediately followed by Iñárritu in 2015 for Birdman. They often collaborate with Emmanuel Lubezki and Guillermo Navarro, two enormously successful Mexican cinematographers who also work in Hollywood. 57. Kim directed The Last Stand (2013) and Park directed Stoker (2013), which was co-produced by Scott Free, the Scott Brothers’ production company to be discussed in chapter six. While Bong Joon-ho made his English-language debut Snowpiercer (2013) for a Korean company, he did work with a Hollywood cast and experienced conflict with a studio executive. Harvey Weinstein, who held the film’s distribution rights in the US, wanted to release a shorter version. Ultimately, the film received a limited theatrical release in the US and was launched on Video on Demand (VOD) very soon afterwards. 58. For an overview of Indian films’ penetration of Asian, Middle Eastern and Eastern European markets, see Iordanova, Dina, et al. “Indian Cinema’s Global Reach: Historiography Through Testimonies.” South Asian Popular Culture, vol. 4 no. 2 (October 2006): 113-140. 59. Rosen, Stanley. “Hollywood, Globalization and Film Markets in Asia: Lessons for China?” Conference paper from Fudan University, Shanghai. 2324 November 2002. 7 December 2014. : 17. 60. Salaam Bombay! received the Golden Camera award at Cannes and an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.
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71. 72.
Bradshaw, Peter. “Killing Me Softly.” The Guardian. 21 June 2002. 7 December 2014. . Rooney, David. “Killing Me Softly.” Variety 19 March 2002: 38. Mei, Feng. “Killing Me Softly.” Beijing Youth. 22 January 2001. 6 August 2004. . Zhu, Ying. “Chinese Cinema’s Economic Reform from the Mid-1980s to the Mid-1990s.” Journal of Communication, vol. 52 no. 4 (1 December 2002): 905-921, 915. Also see Jihong, Wan; Kraus, Richard. “Hollywood and China as Adversaries and Allies.” Pacific Affairs, vol. 75 no. 3 (Fall 2002): 419-434. Ibid.: 915. Walsh, David. “A Moment of Innocence: Interview with Mohsen Makhmalbaf.” September 1996. 7 December 2014. . Dabashi, Hamid. Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, and Future. London and New York: Verso, 2001: 276. A scandal erupted in 2002, when Abbas Kiarostami was denied a US visa by the American Embassy in Paris. He was to attend the New York Film Festival, where his latest film was to be screened. As a sign of solidarity, Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki withdrew from the festival as well. Garncarz. “Germany Goes Global”: 18. One should also note that many media corporations such as the Walt Disney Company or Warner Bros. Entertainment are now actually located not in Hollywood but in Burbank, another city within Los Angeles County. De Valck. Film Festivals: 15, 87. Lutter. “Creative Success and Network Embeddedness”: 20.
4.
A View to a Franchise: James Bond
1.
While the scope of research for this book extends to 2005, I have made one small concession for this illuminating example from 2006. James Bond films starring Daniel Craig continued after 2006, with Quantum of Solace (Marc Forster, 2008), Skyfall (Sam Mendes, 2012) and Spectre (Mendes, 2015). For a detailed analysis of Sony as a multinational corporation, see Rosenzweig, Philip M., and Sea Jin Chang. “After Foreign Market Entry, Then What? Managing the Post-entry Phase of Foreign Direct Investment.” Managing the Global Network Corporation. Ed. Bruce McKern. London and New York: Routledge, 2003: 185-200. I am concerned only with the “official” James Bond films made by Eon Productions, and will leave out Columbia Pictures’ spoof Casino Royale (Ken Hughes, John Huston, Joseph McGrath, Robert Parrish, Val Guest, 1967) and Never Say Never Again (Irvin Kershner, 1983), the Warner Bros. remake of Thunderball (Terence Young, 1965).
62. 63. 64.
65. 66. 67. 68.
69. 70.
2.
3.
150
4. 5. 6.
7.
8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
13. 14.
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MGM has had a very tumultuous history, going through multiple acquisitions and restructurings, and declaring bankruptcy in 2010. Wasko, Janet, and Govind Shanadi. “More Than Just Rings: Merchandise for them All.” The Lord of the Rings: Popular Culture in Global Context. Ed. Ernest Mathijs. London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2006: 23-42, 23-24. For a detailed analysis of Bond’s global popularity, see Albion, Alexis. “Wanting to be James Bond.” Ian Fleming & James Bond. The Cultural Politics of 007. Eds. E.P. Comentale, S. Watt, and S. Willman. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2005: 202-220. In addition to product placements of brands such as Smirnoff and Aston Martin, these products included 007 pajamas, coats, cufflinks, and gilded lingerie for women inspired by Goldfinger. Albion. “Wanting to be James Bond”: 205. See also Jaffe, Aaron. “James Bond, Meta-Brand.” Ian Fleming & James Bond. The Cultural Politics of 007. Eds. E.P. Comentale, S. Watt, and S. Willman. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 2005: 87-106. Cooper, Holly, Sharon Schembri, and Dale Miller. “Brand-Self Identity Narratives in the James Bond Movies.” Psychology & Marketing, vol. 27 no. 6 (June 2010): 557-567: 561. Balio. United Artists, 253. Bennett, Tony and Janet Woollacott. “The Moments of Bond.” The James Bond Phenomenon. Ed. Christoph Lindner. Manchester: Manchester University Press 2003: 13-33, 17. Chapman, James. Licence to Thrill. A Cultural History of the James Bond Films. London: I.B. Tauris, 1999: 14. In addition to the official websites (007.com and jamesbond.com), there are dozens of sites devoted to everything about Bond (a few examples: jamesbondlifestyle.com, mi6-hq.com, universalexports.net, jamesbond007.net, commanderbond.net, 007james.com, 007.info). There is also a large selection of books, mostly picture-heavy companion volumes focusing on production. Brosnan, John. James Bond in the Cinema. London: Tantivy Press, 1972: 11. In addition to the aforementioned Chapman (1999), see the following volumes: Black, Jeremy. The Politics of James Bond. From Fleming’s Novels to the Big Screen. London: Praeger 2001; Brittany, Michele, ed. James Bond and Popular Culture: Essays on the Influence of the Fictional Superspy. McFarland, 2014; Comentale, E.P., S. Watt, and S. Willman, eds. Ian Fleming & James Bond: The Cultural Politics Of 007. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2005; Frenk, Joachim, and Christian Krug, eds. The Cultures of James Bond. Trier: WVT, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2011; Held, Jacob M., and James B. South, eds. James Bond and Philosophy: Questions are Forever. Vol. 23. Open Court Publishing, 2006; Lindner, Christoph, ed. The James Bond Phenomenon. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003; Savoye, Daniel Ferreras. The Signs of James Bond: Semiotic Explorations in the World of 007. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013; Weiner, R.G., B.L. Whitfield, and J. Becker,
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eds. James Bond in World and Popular Culture: The Films are Not Enough. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2011; Yeffeth, Glenn, and Leah Wilson, eds. James Bond in the 21st Century: Why We Still Need 007. Dallas: BenBella Books, Inc., 2013. For a thorough yet somewhat dated bibliography focusing on books and articles about the Bond films, also see BFI’s National Library 16+ Guide (2006) 12 December 2014. . 15. Chapman. License to Thrill: 11. 16. Ibid.: 13. 17. This purchase is quite ironic, since James Bond’s holding company, Danjaq LLC, was involved in a court battle with Sony between 1997 and 1999. Sony had purchased copyrights of Kevin McClory, a former collaborator of Ian Fleming, and made clear its intention to produce Bond films. Sony settled out of court with MGM in 1999, and purchased MGM in 2005. The dispute was finally settled in 2013, giving MGM all of the rights to the 007 franchise. 18. Lee Tamahori, quoted in Lawrenson, Edward. “Bond for Beginners (The Latest James Bond Film Die Another Day, and its Director, Lee Tamahori).” Sight & Sound, vol. 12 no. 11 (November 2002): 16-19, 17. 19. Cowen. Creative Destruction: 84. 20. See Armes, Roy. A Critical History of British Cinema. London: Secker & Warburg, 1978; Curran, James, and Vincent Porter. British Cinema History. London: Widenfeld and Nicolson 1983; Murphy. Sixties British Cinema; Street, Sarah. British National Cinema. London and New York: Routledge 1997. 21. The Eady Levy was established in 1958 to assist the British film industry. In order to avoid criticism from American companies, it was set up as an indirect levy. A proportion of the ticket revenue was to be pooled; half was to be retained by exhibitors and half to be divided among qualifying “British” films in proportion to UK box office revenue, with no obligation to invest in further production. For a more detailed account of the levy, see Stubbs, Jonathan. “The Eady Levy: A Runaway Bribe? Hollywood Production and British Subsidy in the Early 1960s.” Journal of British Cinema and Television, vol. 6 no. 1 (May 2009): 1-20. 22. Street. British National Cinema: 20. 23. Andrews, Sam. “British Resolve: England’s Venerable Film Industry Marshals its Resources and Renews Its Commitment to Producing World-Class Cinema.” American Cinematographer – The International Journal of Film & Digital Production Techniques, vol. 80 no. 5 (May 1999): 72-76, 75. 24. “British not British.” Sight & Sound, vol. 13 no. 6 (June 2003): 3. 25. Hibbin, Sally. “Catastrophic Cycles. Film and National Culture.” Cultural Work. Understanding the Cultural Industries. Ed. Andrew Beck. London and New York: Routledge, 2003: 142-146: 145. 26. Briggs, Caroline. “Government bid to keep Bond in UK.” BBC News World Edition 17 May 2005. 12 December 2014. .
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27.
A number of American actors were indeed considered for the role at different times: Burt Reynolds, Clint Eastwood and Robert Wagner all supposedly turned down the role because they felt an American was not right for the part. See Hardy, Max. “‘The name’s NOT Bond, James Bond.’ Seven actors who turned down the chance to play 007.” The Star. 2 August 2012. 12 January 2015. . Brosnan. James Bond in the Cinema: 11. One could argue that films starring Craig as Bond are closer to their literary source material in the sense that they slightly blur these lines. Chapman. “A License to Thrill”: 94. Brosnan. James Bond in the Cinema: 11. For a detailed analysis of the reboot, see Arnett, Robert P. “Casino Royale and Franchise Remix: James Bond as Superhero.” Film Criticism, vol. 33 no. 3 (2009): 1-16. Adjusted by the inflation data at boxofficemojo.com. Anez, Nicholas. “James Bond.” Films in Review, vol. 43 no. 11-12 (NovemberDecember 1992): 30-36, 32. Goldsmith and O’Regan. The Film Studio: 143-146. For a detailed analysis of the campaign, sea Lukk, Tiiu. Movie Marketing. Opening the Picture and Giving It Legs. Los Angeles: Sillman-James Press, 1997. Ashton, Richard. “The Michael G. Wilson Interviews 1989-1999.” Her Majesty’s Secret Service, vol. 3 no. 2 (1995). 21 November 2002. . Arroyo, Jose. “The World Is Not Enough.” Sight & Sound, vol.10 no. 1 (January 2000): 62-63. Brooks, Xan. “The Name’s Tamahori, Lee Tamahori.” Guardian Unlimited. 11 January 2002. 13 December 2014. . Topel, Fred. “Lee Tamahori Talks Die Another Day.” About.com (2002), 13 December 2014. . A CNN poll from October 2005 showed that while 11 percent of the participants agreed with the selection of the new Bond, 35 percent did not. 54 percent said they “did not care” . The web site of the anti-Craig movement, danielcraigisnotbond.com, continues functioning as an unofficial fan page. On rottentomatoes.com, a website that categorizes positive and negative reviews for films, Casino Royale received a 95 percent positive rating, ranking third among all films released in 2006, and surpassed only by the first three Bond films in the franchise. Žižek, Slavoj. Welcome to the Desert of the Real. New York: The Wooster Press, 2001: 21, 39.
28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.
41.
42.
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43. The list of top-grossing films after 2005 is similarly filled with franchises, if not more. 44. Morgan Freeman and Katie Holmes were the only Americans in a cast that mainly consisted of British actors (Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson, Cilian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson, among others), and included a Dutchman (Rutger Hauer) and a Japanese star (Ken Watanabe). The sets were said to be modeled on the now-demolished slums in Kowloon, Hong Kong. See Gritten, David. “Batman Now Speaks with a British Accent.” New York Times, 19 December 2004. 17 December 2014. 45. See some of the franchise films directed by global filmmakers, often as their Hollywood debuts: Jaws 2 (Jeannot Szwarc, 1978), Omen 3 (Graham Baker, 1981) Rambo 2 (George Cosmatos, 1985), Beverly Hills Cop 2 (Tony Scott, 1987), Nightmare on Elm Street 4 (Renny Harlin, 1988), Bride of Chucky (Ronny Yu, 1998), Blade 2 (2002), Lara Croft 2 (Jan de Bont, 2003), and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Alfonso Cuarón, 2004). 46. Owczarski, Kimberly Ann. Batman, Time Warner, and Franchise Filmmaking in the Conglomerate Era. PhD Dissertation. Austin: University of Texas, 2008: 346. 47. “Beijing Pirates Skimming Bond’s Profits.” The Washington Post. 29 January 2007. 13 December 2014. .
5.
“Once More with the Volume Up”: Auto-remakes
1.
An earlier version of this chapter has been published as “‘Let Me Rephrase That’: Auto-remakes in Hollywood,” in The Theme of Cultural Adaptation in American History, Literature and Film: Cases When the Discourse Changed. Eds. Laurence Raw, Tanfer Emin Tunç, and Gülriz Büken. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2009. Unlike remakes of Hollywood films in other countries, auto-remakes are unique to Hollywood, as no director has ever remade his/her own Hollywood production in a different country. Morris, Mark. “Once more with the volume up.” The Guardian. 20 January 2002. 26 January 2015. . See Druxman, Michael B. Make it Again, Sam: A Survey of Movie Remakes. New York: A.S. Barnes and Company, 1975; Milberg, Doris. Repeat Performances: A Guide to Hollywood Movie Remakes. New York: Broadway Press, 1990; Nowlan, Robert A., and Gwendolyn Wright Nowlan. Cinema Sequels and Remakes, 1903-1987. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1989. See Forrest, Jennifer, and Leonard R. Koos, eds. Dead Ringers: The Remake in Theory and Practice. Albany: SUNY Press, 2002; Horton, Andrew, and Stuart Y. McDougall, eds. Play It Again Sam: Retakes on Remakes. Berkeley
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6.
7. 8. 9. 10.
11. 12. 13.
14. 15. 16.
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[etc.]: University of California Press, 1998; Loock, Kathleen, and Constantine Verevis, eds. Film Remakes, Adaptations and Fan Productions: Remake/ Remodel. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012; Varndell, Daniel. Hollywood Remakes, Deleuze and the Grandfather Paradox. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014; Verevis, Constantine. Film Remakes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006; Zanger, Anat. Film Remakes as Ritual and Disguise: From Carmen to Ripley. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006. The aforementioned Chan (2009) focuses on remakes of Chinese films; the following titles are self-explanatory in their subjects: Durham, Carolyn A. Double Takes: Culture and Gender in French Films and Their American Remakes, Hanover: University of New England Press, 1998; Lukas, Scott A., and John Marmysz, eds. Fear, Cultural Anxiety, and Transformation: Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy Films Remade. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2009; Mazdon, Lucy. Encore Hollywood: Remaking French Cinema. London: BFI, 2000; Moine, Raphaëlle. Remakes. Les films français á Hollywood. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2007; Wang, Yiman. Remaking Chinese Cinema: Through the Prism of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Hollywood. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013; Wee, Valerie. Japanese Horror Films and Their American Remakes. London and New York: Routledge, 2013. Admittedly, most of these recent studies opt for a textual analysis of the works rather than focusing on the conditions of production underlying the remaking process. Elsaesser. “Ethnicity, Authenticity, and Exile”: 119. Mazdon. Encore Hollywood: 13-14. True Lies is the remake of La Totale! (Claude Zidi, 1991), The Birdcage of La Cage aux Folles (Edouard Molinaro, 1978). Quoted in Morris. “Once more with the volume up.” Silberling’s own City of Angels (1998) was a remake of Wenders’ Himmel über Berlin / Wings of Desire (1987), starring Meg Ryan and Nicolas Cage. The remake did change significant portions of the original, and while it was critically snubbed, it did very well at the international box office. Mazdon. Encore Hollywood: 24. Egoyan, Atom, and Ian Balfour, eds. Subtitles: On the Foreignness of Film, Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 2004: 21. Higson. “The Concept of National Cinema”: 42. While Higson made this observation for British audiences, it can be extended to others as well. At the time Higson wrote this essay, Britain was the largest overseas market for Hollywood; that position was later assumed by Japan, and subsequently, China. Drazin, Charles. “Anglo-American Collaboration: Korda, Selznick and Goldwyn.” World Cinema’s ‘Dialogues’ with Hollywood. Ed. Paul Cooke. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007: 52-68, 58. Ibid.: 59 Forrest, Jennifer, and Leonard R. Koos. “Reviewing Remakes: An Introduction.” Dead Ringers: The Remake in Theory and Practice. Eds. Jennifer Forrest and Leonard R. Koos. Albany: SUNY Press, 2002: 1-36, 21.
Notes
17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.
23.
24. 25. 26. 27.
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Litvak remade L’ Équipage (1935) as The Woman I Love (1937) and Duvivier remade Un Carnet de Bal (1937) as Lydia (1941). Grindstaff, Laura. “A Pygmalion Tale Retold: Remaking La Femme Nikita.” Camera Obscura, vol. 16 no. 2 (2001): 132-175, 142. Kempley, Rita. “Three Fugitives.” The Washington Post. 27 January 1989. Atkinson, Michael. “Expired Ham.” Village Voice. 9 April 2001. With a $40 million budget and less than $5 million at the US box office, Just Visiting was a huge flop. One could include yet another remake here, but it was made without major studio involvement and did not receive a wide distribution: Dick Maas’s De Lift / The Lift (1983) / The Shaft (2001). The original, De Lift, was the first Dutch film to be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Although Maas was allegedly approached by studios for a remake immediately, he chose to wait. The remake, referred to as “American” in most sources, was shot in English, mostly in Amsterdam except for a few exterior shots in New York, with James Marshall and Naomi Watts. The film was produced by Maas’s company First Floor Features, in collaboration with the European MNC CLT-UFA. The Shaft (called Down outside of the US) was only released in the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Austria; it went straight to video/DVD in the US. For an in-depth analysis of these two remakes, see Schneider, Steven Jay. “Repackaging Rage: The Vanishing and Nightwatch.” Kinema, no. 17 (Spring 2002). 14 December 2014 . Voorham, Anita. Remakes. De Europese film weerkaatst door Hollywood. Thesis, University of Amsterdam, 1995: 66-67. “Spoorloos.” Variety, 19 October 1988. Petrie. Hollywood Destinies: 231-232. See Van Lierop, Peter. “Jeff Bridges en Kiefer Sutherland in Hollywood-versie van Spoorloos.” Utrechtse Nieuwsblad (January 1992). Directed by another European, Fatal Attraction’s finale was drastically altered when test audiences gave a negative response to the ending where Glenn Close’s character committed suicide. In the released film, the wife played by Anne Archer kills Close’s character, saving the unity of her family. Quoted in Morris. “Once more with the volume up.” Tezuka. Japanese Cinema Goes Global: 116. Ebert, Roger. “Nightwatch.” Chicago Sun Times. 17 April 1998. 28 January 2015. . For further discussion of remakes’ reception by critics, see Mazdon (2000) and Durham (1998). This is a subject frequently discussed by media economics scholars. See Chang, Byeng-Hee, and Eyun-Jung Ki. “Devising a Practical Model for Predicting Theatrical Movie Success: Focusing on the Experience Good Property.” Journal of Media Economics, vol. 18 no. 4 (2005): 247-269; Litman, Barry R. “Predicting Success of Theatrical Movies: An Empirical Study” Jour-
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34. 35. 36. 37. 38.
39.
40. 41. 42.
43. 44. 45. 46.
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nal of Popular Culture, vol. 16 no. 4 (Spring 1983): 159-175; Sharda, Ramesh, and Dursun Delen. “Predicting Box-Office Success of Motion Pictures with Neural Networks.” Expert Systems with Applications, vol. 30 no. 2 (February 2006): 243-254; and Sochay, Scott. “Predicting the Performance of Motion Pictures.” Journal of Media Economics, vol. 7 no. 4 (1994): 1-20. Sluizer put together the footage that had already been shot and presented a rough cut of the film shortly before his own death in 2014. It premiered at the 2012 Netherlands Film Festival and was only screened at a few international film festivals. Elsaesser. European Cinema: 491. For a detailed account of The Grudge 2 remake process, based on interviews with the line producer and cinematographer of the film, see Tezuka (2012). Lee also expanded into non-Asian remakes, with the remake of the popular Spanish horror film [Rec] (Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, 2007) as Quarantine (John Erick Dowdle, 2008). Lee’s role has also been documented in several scholarly articles (He 2010, Tsai 2009, Xu 2008) Warren, Chris. “The Celluloid Prospector.” Los Angeles Times. 6 October 2002. 15 December 2014. . Puchon Festival is held in a small town near Seoul and is specialized in horror films. For example, in the original film, Ryuji Takayama (Hiroyuki Sanada), one of the leading characters, can relate to the spiritual world. His counterpart Noah Clay (Martin Henderson) on the other hand, goes through most of the film without even believing anything supernatural is at hand. Gilchrist, Todd. “Crossover director Takashi Shimizu is intent on holding a Grudge for Western audiences.” Sci Fi Wire (2004), 11 June 2005. . Tezuka. Japanese Cinema Goes Global: 116. Global and local advertising networks and practices will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter. For a general overview, see De Mooij, Marieke K. Global Marketing and Advertising: Understanding Cultural Paradoxes. Third Edition. London [etc.]: Sage Publications, 2010; for McDonald’s specifically, see Vignali, Claudio. “McDonald’s: ‘think global, act local’ – the marketing mix.” British Food Journal, vol. 103 no. 2 (March 2001): 97-111. Similarly, for an analysis of local advertising campaigns for global films, see Danan, Martine. “Marketing the Hollywood Blockbuster in France.” Journal of Popular Film & Television, vol. 23 no. 3 (Fall 1995): 131-140. Litman. “Predicting Success of Theatrical Movies”: 159-160. The European Fantastic Film Festivals Federation was launched in February 2005, and represents over twenty festivals in Europe, Asia, and North America. See . Grindstaff. “A Pygmalion Tale Retold”: 145-147. Xu. “Remaking East Asia, Outsourcing Hollywood”: 192.
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47. Bordwell, David. “The Departed: No Departure.” Observations on Film Art. 10 October 2006. 15 December 2014. . 48. Xu. “Remaking East Asia, Outsourcing Hollywood”: 195-196. 49. Hilson, David. “Nakata makes Hollywood debut with The Ring Two.” Daily Yomiuri. 19 June 2005, 26 January 2015. . 50. These are joined by Georgian/French Géla Babluani’s 13 Tzameti (2005)/13 (2010). Another (controversial) auto-remake was Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (1997/2007), but even though the remake was shot in English in the US, with an international cast (with Naomi Watts in another remake), it was financed by European production companies. 51. See Pasadilla, Gloria O., and Angelina M. Lantin Jr. “Audiovisual Services Sector: Can the Philippine Film Industry Follow Bollywood?” Philippine Institute for Development Studies: Discussion Paper Series, no. 2005-31 (December 2005). 15 December 2014. . 52. Interviewed in Herbert. Transnational Film Remakes: 534. 53. O’Regan. “Too Popular By Far”: 308. 54. Motion Picture Association of America. “MPA Snapshot Report: 2004 International Theatrical Market.” (2005) and Motion Picture Association of America. “Theatrical Market Statistics 2013.” (2014).
6.
I Want My MTV: Advertising and Music Videos
1.
Technically, the commercial was shown twice. To qualify for 1983’s advertising awards, it also aired right before midnight on December 31 at a small TV station in Idaho (KMVT). Higgins, Chris. “The True Story of Apple’s ‘1984’ Ad’s First Broadcast.” Mental floss. 4 February 2012. 15 December 2014. . Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU Press, 2006: 2. Fox, Stephen. The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997, xix. Leslie, Deborah. “Global Scan: The Globalization of Advertising Agencies, Concepts, and Campaigns.” Economic Geography, vol. 71 no. 4 (October 1995): 402-426, 404. Yip, George S., and Tammy L. Madsen. “Global Account Management: The New Frontier in Relationship Marketing.” International Marketing Review, vol. 13 no. 3 (1996): 24-42, 31. Wollen, Peter. “Ways of Thinking About Music Video (and Postmodernism).” Critical Quarterly, vol. 5 no. 2 (1986): 167-170, 168. Again, while the industry has evolved significantly, there is still a correlation between music videos and album sales. See Kretschmer, Tobias, and Christian Peukert. “Video
2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
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7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.
19.
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Killed the Radio Star? Online Music Videos and Digital Music Sales.” CEP Discussion Paper, no. 1265 (April 2014). 16 December 2014. . Quoted in Mattelart, Armand. Advertising International. Trans. Michael Chanan. London and New York: Routledge, 1989: 142. Fox. The Mirror Makers: xix. Tony Scott committed suicide by jumping off the Vincent Thomas Bridge in Los Angeles in August 2012. As I focus on the research period, I write about him largely in the present tense. This list remained essentially the same for the continuing decade, the only exception being the inclusion of Dentsu, a Japanese-based company with subsidiaries in India and the UK. Global advertising has been studied thoroughly in recent decades. See Aaker, David A., and Erich Joachimsthaler. “The Lure of Global Branding.” Harvard Business Review, vol. 77 no. 6 (November-December 1999): 137-144; De Mooij. Global Marketing and Advertising; Green, R.T., W.H. Cunningham, and I.C.M. Cunningham. “The Effectiveness of Standardized Global Advertising.” Journal of Advertising, vol. 4 no.3 (1975): 25-30; Leslie. Global Scan; Sinclair, John. Advertising, The Media, and Globalisation. London: Routledge, 2012. For meta-research on research about global advertising, see Taylor, Charles R. “Moving International Advertising Research Forward.” Journal of Advertising, vol. 34 no. 1 (Spring 2005): 7-16. Taylor, P.J., G. Catalana, and D. Walker. “Multiple Globalisations: Regional, Hierarchical and Sectoral Articulations of Global Business Services through World Cities.” The Service Industries Journal, vol. 24 no. 3 (May 2004): 63-81, 73. See Hallenberger, Gerd. “Aesthetic Conventions in European Media Cultures.” Emergences, vol. 11 no. 1 (May 2001): 117-131. Similarly, the cases of how some remakes are marketed in the countries where the originals were made have already been discussed in chapter five. Krätke, Stefan. “Global Media Cities in a World-wide Urban Network.” European Planning Studies, vol. 11 no. 6 (September 2003): 605-628. Ibid.: 607. Ibid.: 613. See Krätke, Stefan, and Peter J. Taylor. “A World Geography of Global Media Cities.” European Planning Studies, vol. 12 no. 4 (June 2004): 460-477. Krätke and Taylor adapt Saskia Sassen’s global city concept specifically to cities with a high concentration of media companies. Among the first films produced by MTV Films were feature versions of MTV’s such as like Beavis and Butt-head Do America (Mike Judge, 1996) and Jackass: The Movie (Jeff Tremaine, 2002). Some of the company’s other films were vehicles for music stars such as Britney Spears in Crossroads (Tamra Davis, 2002) and 50 Cent in Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (Jim Sheridan, 2005). Others were received very well by the critics and garnered Academy Award
Notes
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22. 23. 24.
25. 26. 27.
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nominations: Election (Alexander Payne, 1999), Hustle and Flow (Craig Brewer, 2005), and Murderball (Alex Rubin/Dana Adam Shapiro, 2005). Many of these have become defunct in the post-YouTube era. For an account of changes in this time period, see Edmond, Maura. “Here We Go Again: Music Videos After YouTube.” Television & New Media, vol. 15 no. 4 (2014): 305-320. Most early scholarship on music videos involved approaching the subject through postmodern theories. See, for example, Goodwin (1992) and Wollen (1986), quoted above, as well as Frith, S., A. Goodwin, and L. Grossberg, eds. Sound and Vision: The Music Video Reader. New York and London: Routledge, 1993; Kaplan, E. Ann. Rocking Around the Clock. Music Television, Postmodernism, and Consumer Culture. London and New York: Routledge 1987. Some of the later work focused on case study analyses from a gender or ethnic perspective. McCullaugh, Jim. “1980-1990: The Video Decade.” Billboard, vol. 102 no. 1 (6 January 1990): 6-7. Leslie. “Global Scan”: 414. Mundy, John. Popular Music on Screen. From Hollywood Musical to Music Video. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press 1999: 227. “Cinema of attractions” is Tom Gunning’s term for the very early examples of cinema, where showing moving images was more important than telling a story. Gunning argues that spectacle cinema, namely the blockbusters of 1970s and 1980s, full of effects and style over substance, reaffirmed the early “exhibitionist” filmmaking. See Gunning, Tom. “The Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde,” Wide-Angle, vol. 8 nos. 3-4 (1986): 63-70. Wyatt. “High Concept”: 17. Morley, David, and Kevin Robins. Spaces of Identity. Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries. London and New York: Routledge, 1995: 63. Spike Jonze’s directing debut was Being John Malkovich (1999), which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Director. As the husband of Sofia Coppola, Jonze was of course a Hollywood insider. Michel Gondry’s first feature, Human Nature (2001), did not garner much interest; his second, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) was a commercial and critical success, winning an Academy Award for best screenplay. Both directors’ works were hailed as new and original, and were produced by the specialty divisions of major studios. International Film Festival Rotterdam has been among the leading showcases for screenings of music videos. Similarly, resfest, a global traveling digital festival, has a special section devoted to music videos. For a report from 2012, see Galloway, Steven. “Scott’s Global Media Empire.” Hollywood Reporter, 15 May 2012. 16 December 2014. . In February 2007 The Mill was bought out by the Carlyle Group, a global private equity firm. Scott Brothers retained a very small minority share in
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43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.
49.
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the company. See Kemp, Stuart. “Carlyle aids Mill management buyout.” The Hollywood Reporter, 7 February 2007. 13 January 2015. . Mattelart. Advertising International: 142. Robb, Brian J. Ridley Scott. London: Pocket Essentials, 2001: 20. Barber, Lynn. “Ridley Scott: ‘talking to actors was tricky – I had no idea where they were coming from’.” The Guardian. 6 January 2002. 16 December 2014. . Thomson, David. “The Riddler has his Day.” Sight & Sound, vol. 11 no. 4 (April 2001): 18-21. Nouvelles de Henry James (1976). Delaney, Sam. “Jets, Jeans, and Hovis.” The Guardian. 24 August 2007. 15 August 2015. . Quoted in Figgis, Mike, ed. Projections 10. Hollywood Filmmakers on Filmmaking. London: Faber and Faber, 1999: 130. Rhea Rupert changed her name to Rhea Scott when she married Jake Scott. Jake Scott, his brother, Luke Scott, and his sister, Jordan Scott, are also directors at the company. Joy was completely absorbed into RSA in 2009. Later also folded into RSA. Wilde, Trevor. (RSA London). Email to the author. 6 September 2005. Foundas, Scott. “Exodus: Gods and Kings’ Director Ridley Scott on Creating His Vision of Moses.” Variety. 25 November 2014. 15 December 2014. . Williams, David E. “Stormy Weather.” (1996) Ridley Scott Interviews. Eds. Laurence F. Knapp and Andrea F. Kulas. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005: 116-128: 118. Saunderson, Lizzie. “The Scotts.” Boards (October 2000): 21. Notaro, Anna. “Technology in Search of an Artist: Questions of Auteurism/ Authorship and the Contemporary Cinematic Experience.” The Velvet Light Trap, no. 57 (Spring 2006): 86-97, 87. Mairs, Gary. “Where the Money Is.” Culturevulture.net. 26 January 2015. . Friedman. The Lexus and the Olive Tree: 276-305. The film is often referenced in scholarship on product placement (Balasubramanian 1994, Karrh 1998, Nitins 2005, among others). Most accounts also mention the fact that the international releases of the film featured Pizza Hut instead of Taco Bell. Co-owned by the same company, Pizza Hut had a wider network outside the US. Canby, Vincent. “Waking Up In a Future Of Muscles.” New York Times. 8 October 1993. 16 December 2014. .
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50. Travers, Peter. “Demolition Man.” Rolling Stone. 8 November 1993. 16 December 2014. . 51. One major exception was the music video he directed for Kanye West’s Power in 2010. West and the critics positioned the video alongside Brambilla’s artwork rather than his earlier commercial work. 52. Armburst, Roger. “SHOOT Chief Gives Apologia For RSA Ad.” Back Stage, vol. 41 no. 23 (9 June 2000): 3. 53. Lumenick, Lou. “Doesn’t Cut It.” New York Post, 17 October 2003. 14 January 2015. . 54. Nispel was once listed among “10 Directors Who Have Never Made a Good Movie” by Complex Magazine. Barone, Matt. “10 Directors Who Have Never Made a Good Movie.” Complex, 3 August 2012. 28 January 2015. . 55. Campbell, Lisa. “Maverick moviemaker set to make a return to advertising.” Campaign (UK). 1 March 2002. 16 December 2014. . 56. In fact, this exact phrase was repeated by different executives on at least three occasions: the introduction of the second series of The Hire in 2002, the release of the DVD at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003, and the addition of the films to MoMA’s permanent collection a month later. 57. Sklair. Globalization: 108. 58. Krätke, Taylor. “A World Geography of Global Media Cities”: 462. 59. South Africa, one of the most attractive locales for commercial production due to its reliable infrastructure, trained professionals, production values, and varied geographies, became a strong nodal point in global production networks in the 2000s. In fact, the controversy that caused Marcus Nispel to be fired from RSA involved a not-so-subtle threat to the SAG by referring to union-free production sites such as South Africa.
7.
Conclusion: “Everywhere is Hollywood”
1. 2. 3. 4.
Erickson, Steve. Zeroville. New York: Europa Edition, 2007: 121. Langford. Post-classical Hollywood: 273. Barber. Jihad vs. McWorld: 95. To revisit some of these arguments, see for example Elsaesser, European Cinema: 317, 491-492. Ironically, a number of film critics, including Brian D’Amato and David Rimanelli of Art Forum, Adrian Martin, and Jacques Rivette, himself a film director and a former critic for Cahiers du Cinema, where the auteur concept was born, would firmly disagree with Barber’s stance on Verhoeven. See Martin, Adrian. “The Offended Critic: Film Reviewing and Social Commentary.” The Best Australian Essays 2000. Ed. Peter Craven. Melbourne: Bookman Press, 2000: 438-452, D’Amato, Brian, and David Rimanelli. “Dutchman’s Breaches.” Art Forum, vol. 6 (Summer 2000): 150-155, and
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7. 8.
9.
10.
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Rivette, Jacques. “La séquence du spectateur.” Les Inrockuptibles. 25 March 1998. 26 January 2015. . Barber. Jihad vs. McWorld: 331. Macnab, Geoffrey. “Dark Blood: The Vanishing of a Hollywood Star.” The Independent. 10 September 1998. 25 January 2015. . The Eye (2008) was ultimately remade by the French directing duo David Moreau and Xavier Palud. Lambie, Ryan. “Hideo Nakata interview: on directing Chatroom, the Internet, and making films in the UK.” Den of Geek. 8 June 2011. 25 January 2015. . See Elsaesser, Thomas, and Kay Hoffmann, eds. Cinema Futures: Cain, Abel or Cable? The Screen Arts in the Digital Age. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1998; Iordanova, Dina, and Stuart Cunningham. Digital Disruption: Cinema Moves On-line. St. Andrews: St. Andrews Film Studies, 2012; Jenkins. Convergence Culture; Lobato, Ramon. Shadow Economies of Cinema: Mapping Informal Film Distribution. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012; Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001; and Vonderau, Patrick, and Pelle Snickars, eds. The YouTube Reader. Stockholm: National Library of Sweden, 2009, among others. When the franchise continued in 2013 with Man of Steel (Zack Snyder), the role of Superman was taken on by the British actor Henry Cavill. This, and the fact that Batman and Spiderman are also portrayed by British actors (Christian Bale and Andrew Garfield, who holds dual US and UK citizenship), was later mocked in a short film made for Vanity Fair’s 2015 Hollywood issue. The Jason Bell-directed Hollywood’s British Invasion is narrated by British actor James Corden, who is seen demanding a franchise of his own.
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Walsh, Mike. “From Hollywood to the Garden Suburb (and Back to Hollywood).” Explorations in New Cinema History: Approaches and Case Studies. Eds. Richard Maltby, Daniel Biltereyst and Philippe Meers. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Wang, Yiman. Remaking Chinese Cinema: Through the Prism of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Hollywood. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013. Warren, Chris. “The Celluloid Prospector.” Los Angeles Times. 6 October 2002. 15 December 2014. . Wasko, Janet. Hollywood in the Information Age. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994. Wasko, Janet. How Hollywood Works. London [etc.]: Sage Publications, 2003. Wasko, Janet. “The Death of Hollywood. Exaggeration or Reality?” The Handbook of Political Economy of Communications. Eds. Janet Wasko, Graham Murdock and Helena Sousa. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, 2011: 307-330. Wasko, Janet and Mary Erickson, eds. Cross-Border Cultural Production. Economic Runaway or Globalization? Amherst and New York: Cambria Press, 2008. Wasko, Janet and Govind Shanadi. “More Than Just Rings: Merchandise for them All.” The Lord of the Rings: Popular Culture in Global Context. Ed. Ernest Mathijs. London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2006: 23-42. Wasser, Frederick. “Is Hollywood America? The Trans-Nationalization of American Film Industry.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication, vol. 12 no. 4 (1995): 423-437. Wee, Valerie. Japanese Horror Films and Their American Remakes. London and New York: Routledge, 2013. Weiner, Robert G., B. Lynn Whitfield and Jack Becker, eds. James Bond in World and Popular Culture: The Films are Not Enough. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2011. White, Jerry. “National Belonging. Renewing the Concept of National Cinema for a Global Culture.” New Review of Film and Television Studies, vol. 2 no. 2 (November 2004): 212-232. Whittemore, Don and Philip Alan Cecchettini. Passport to Hollywood: Film Immigrants Anthology. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976. Williams, Alan, ed. Film and Nationalism. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002. Williams, David E. “Stormy Weather.” Ridley Scott Interviews. Eds. Laurence F. Knapp and Andrea F. Kulas. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005: 116-128. Willis, Paul and Chris Barker: Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. London [etc.]: Sage Publications, 2003. Wilson, Koh Siok Tian. “Talent Agents As Producers: A Historical Perspective of Screen Actors Guild Regulation and the Rising Conflict with Managers.” Loyola Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review, vol. 21 no. 3 (2000): 401-415. Wollen, Peter. “Ways of Thinking About Music Video (and Postmodernism).” Critical Quarterly, vol. 5 no. 2 (1986): 167-170. Woollacott, Janet. “The James Bond Films: Conditions of Production.” British Cinema History. Eds. James Curran and Vincent Porter. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1983: 208-225. Wright, Neelam Sidhar. “‘Tom Cruise? Tarantino? ET?... Indian!’ Innovation through Imitation in the Cross-Cultural Bollywood Remake.’ Cultural Borrowings: Appropriation, Reworking, Transformation. Ed. Iain Robert Smith. Nottingham: Scope, 2009: 194-210. Wyatt, Justin. High Concept. Movies and Marketing in Hollywood. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994. Wyatt, Justin. “From Roadshowing to Saturation Release: Majors, Independents, and Marketing / Distribution Innovations.” The New American Cinema. Ed. Jon Lewis. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1998: 65-86.
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Xu, Gang Gary. “Remaking East Asia, Outsourcing Hollywood.” East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film. Eds. Leon Hunt and Leung Wing-fai. London and New York: IB Tauris (2008): 191-202. Yeffeth, Glenn and Leah Wilson, eds. James Bond in the 21st Century: Why We Still Need 007. Dallas: BenBella Books, Inc., 2013. Yip, George S. and Tammy L. Madsen. “Global Account Management: The New Frontier in Relationship Marketing.” International Marketing Review, vol. 13 no. 3 (1996): 24-42. Zafirau, Stephen. “Reputation Work in Selling Film and Television: Life in the Hollywood Talent Industry.” Qualitative Sociology, vol. 31 no. 2 (2008): 99-127. Zanger, Anat. Film Remakes as Ritual and Disguise: From Carmen to Ripley. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006. Zhu, Ying. “Chinese Cinema’s Economic Reform from the Mid-1980s to the Mid-1990s.” Journal of Communication, vol. 52 no. 4 (1 December 2002): 905-921. Žižek, Slavoj. Welcome to the Desert of the Real. New York: The Wooster Press, 2001. “Beijing Pirates Skimming Bond’s Prof its.” The Washington Post. 29 January 2007. 13 December 2014. . “British not British”. Sight & Sound, vol. 13 no. 6 (June 2003): 3. “Film Ruled ‘Not French Enough.’” BBC News. 27 November 2004. 11 January 2015. . “Geld ist auch ein Argument.” Der Tagesspiegel, 12 February 2006: 29. “Spoorloos.” Variety, 19 October 1988.
List of Directors
Adamson, Andrew Akerlund, Jonas Allen, Kevin Amenabar, Alejandro Amiel, Jon Amurri, Franco Anderson, Paul Annaud, Jean-Jacques Apted, Michael Arau, Alfonso Armstrong, Gillian Armstrong, Vic Attenborough, Richard August, Bille Avis, Meiert Babenco, Hector Baird, Stuart Baker, Graham Barreto, Bruno Barron, Zelda Bell, Martin Bennett, Bill Beresford, Bruce Berliner, Alain Bird, Antonia Bogayevicz, Yurek Boorman, John Bornedal, Ole Boyle, Danny Brambilla, Marco Branagh, Kenneth Butterworth, Jez Campbell, Martin Campion, Jane Caro, Niki Carson, David Caton-Jones, Michael Chan, Peter Chechik, Jeremiah Chelsom, Peter Chen, Kaige Clifford, Graeme Collet-Serra, Jaume Cornell, John Cosmatos, George
Costa-Gavras Cox, Alex Cuarón, Alfonso Daldry, Stephen Damiani, Damiano De Bont, Jan Del Toro, Guillermo Dick, Nigel Donaldson, Roger Donovan, Martin Dornhelm, Robert du Chau, Frederik Duguay, Christian Edel, Uli Elkayem, Ellory Emmerich, Roland Faiman, Peter Figgis, Mike Firstenberg, Sam Forman, Milos Forster, Marc Forsyth, Bill Franklin, Richard Frears, Stephen Garcia, Rodrigo Gibson, Brian Gilbert, Brian Glazer, Jonathan Glen, John Gondry, Michel Green, David Greengrass, Paul Guillermin, John Hafstrom, Mikael Haggis, Paul Hallstrom, Lasse Hamm, Nick Harlin, Renny Harris, Damian Hicks, Scott Hodges, Mike Hogan, PJ Holland, Agnieszka Hopkins, Stephen Hough, John
184 Hudson, Hugh Hughes, Terry Hunt, Peter Hytner, Nicholas Inarritu, Alejandro Gonzalez Irvin, John Jackson, Mick Jackson, Peter Jennings, Garth Jeunet, Jean-Pierre Joffe, Roland Jordan, Neil Kaminski, Janusz Kanievska, Marek Kaosayananda, Wych Kapur, Shekhar Kassovitz, Mathieu Kaye, Tony Kidron, Beeban Konchalovsky, Andrei Lam, Ringo Lee, Ang Leterrier, Louis Llosa, Luis Loncraine, Richard Luhrmann, Baz Luketic, Robert Lyne, Adrian Lynn, Jonathan Mackenzie, John MacKinnon, Gillies Madden, John Malle, Louis Mandoki, Luis Maylam, Tony McGuigan, Paul Mendes, Sam Menges, Chris Michell, Roger Miller, George Miller, George T. Minghella, Anthony Molinaro, Edouard Moore, John Moorhouse, Jocelyn Morahan, Andrew Mulcahy, Russell Murphy, Geoff
Holly wood Is Every where
Naess, Petter Nair, Mira Nakata, Hideo Natali, Vincenzo Newell, Mike Niccol, Andrew Nispel, Marcus Nolan, Christopher Norrington, Stephen Noyce, Phillip O’Connor, Pat Palcy, Euzhan Parker, Alan Parker, Oliver Passer, Ivan Petersen, Wolfgang Poire, Jean-Marie Polson, John Pope, Tim Proyas, Alex Puenzo, Luis Radford, Michael Reisz, Karel Reitman, Ivan Richardson, Tony Richet, Jean Francois Roddam, Franc Rose, Bernard Rusnak, Josef Russel, Ken Rymer, Michael Salles, Walter Salomon, Mikael Sax, Geoffrey Schenkel, Carl Schepisi, Fred Schlesinger, John Schlondorff, Volker Schroeder, Barbet Schultz, Carl Schwentke, Robert Scott, Ridley Scott, Tony Shimizu, Takashi Silberg, Joel Simoneau, Yves Singh, Tarsem Sinyor, Gary
185
List of Direc tors
Siri, Florent Skolimowski, Jerzy Sluizer, George Softley, Iain Spottiswoode, Roger Stainton, John Szwarc, Jeannot Tamahori, Lee Tass, Nadia Temple, Julien Tong, Stanley Torres, Fina Tramont, Jean-Claude Troell, Jan Trueba, Fernando Tsui, Hark Vadim, Roger
Veber, Francis Verhoeven, Paul Wainwright, Rupert Waller, Anthony Wan, James Wang, Wayne Ward, Vincent Weir, Peter Wenders, Wim West, Simon Wincer, Simon Wong, Kirk Woo, John Yu, Ronny Yuen, Corey Zwart, Harald
Index of Film Titles
13 157n 1984 158n 13 Tzameti 157n [Rec] 156n A Different Loyalty 120 A Life Less Ordinary 103 A Song is Born 100 A Very Long Engagement (see also Un long dimanche de fiançailles) 55 Abre los ojos (see also Open Your Eyes) 98 Air America 91 Alexander 55 Alien 118 All the President’s Men 131n Along Came a Spider 92 Amadeus 62 American Beauty 16 Amityville 108 Amores Perros 73 An Affair to Remember 100 And God Created Woman (see also Et Dieu Créa la Femme) 100 Anna Karenina 59 Another Country 120 Atlantic 98 Ball of Fire 100 Bangkok Dangerous 108-109 Baraka 138n Batman franchise 24, 94, 130 Batman (1989) 93 Batman & Robin 93-94 Batman Begins 94 Batman Forever 93 Batman Returns 93 Beavis and Butt-head Do America 158n Being John Malkovich 159n Beverly Hills Cop 2 153n Birdman 148n Black Book (see also Zwartboek) 128 Black Cat 98 Blade 65 Blade 2 153n Blade Runner 13, 111, 118 Blink 91 Blow Up 62, 146n Body of Evidence 148n Bohemian Rhapsody 115 Bride of Chucky 153n Bridges of Madison County 76 Broken Arrow 76 Bugsy Malone 118, 146n
Casino Royale (1967) 149n Casino Royale (2006) 81, 83-84, 86-88, 92-93, 95, 152n Chatroom 128, 162n Chungking Express 138n City of Angels 154n Climax! 88 Coal Miner’s Daughter 91 Colorado Territory 100 Crossroads 158n Dark Blood 103, 127, 162n Dark Water (see also Honogurai Mizu No Soko Kara) 105, 109 De Lift (see also The Lift) 155 Demolition Man 65, 120-121, 126, 161n Der Untergang 133n Detour 13 Die Another Day 87-88, 92-93, 151-152n Dinotopia 121 Double Indemnity 13 Double Team 13 Down (see also The Shaft) 155n Down and Out in Beverly Hills 101 Dr. No 84, 87-89 Eight Legged Monsters 148n El Crimen del Padre Amaro (see also The Crime of Father Amaro) 74 El Espinazo del Diablo 65 Election 159n Elizabeth 75 Enemy of the State 119 Enigma 65 Enough 65 Entourage 49 Et Dieu Créa la Femme (see also And God Created Woman) 100 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 159n Evita 33 Excess Luggage 65, 121 Exodus: Gods and Kings 160n Extreme Measures 65, 91 Face/Off 13 Farewell My Concubine 76 Fassbinder in Hollywood 71 Fatal Attraction 102, 155n For Your Eyes Only 88, 90 Foreign Filmmakers’ Guide to Hollywood 127 Foxes 146n
188 Friend 74 From Russia With Love 89 Funny Games 157n Get Rich or Die Tryin’ 158n Gladiator 118 Goldeneye 83, 87-88, 90-93 Gorillas in the Mist 91 Gravity 144n, 148n Harry Potter franchise 24, 93 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 153n Hero (see also Ying Xiong) 36 High Sierra 100 Highlander 115 Himmel über Berlin (see also Wings of Desire) 154n Hollywood’s British Invasion 162n Honogurai Mizu No Soko Kara (see also Dark Water) 105, 109 Human Nature 159n Hustle and Flow 159n Independence Day 13 Infernal Affairs 195, 108 J’Accuse 100 Jackass: The Movie 158n James Bond franchise 13-14, 24, 49, 73, 81-95, 109, 127, 149n-151n James Gunn-Secret Agent 88 Jaws 2 153n Ju-on 104, 106 Ju-on: The Grudge 104, 108 Ju-on: The Grudge 2 104 Jumanji 76 Just Visiting 101, 155n Kill Bill 32 Killing Me Softly 76, 149n Kiss Me Again 100 L’ Équipage 155n La Cage aux Folles 154n La Femme Nikita 98, 155n La Totale! 154n Lara Croft 2 153n Last Exit to Brooklyn 148n Laura 13 Legally Blonde 13 Les Fugitifs (see also The Fugitives) 101 Les Visiteurs 101 Less Than Zero 120 License to Kill 88 Lord of the Rings franchise 38, 65, 93, 140n, 146n, 150n Love Affair 100 Lydia 155n
Holly wood Is Every where
Man of Steel 162n Man on Fire 119 Mayerling 60 Mildred Pierce 13 Monster’s Ball 13 Moonraker 83, 88 Mulholland Falls 92 Murderball 159n Mutiny on the Bounty 73 My Left Foot 49 My Sassy Girl 109 Nattevagten 101-103, 107 Natural Born Killers 76 Nell 65 Network 140n Never Say Never Again 149n Nightmare on Elm Street 4 153n Nightwatch 101-103, 107, 155n No Escape 91 Omen 3 153n On Her Majesty’s Secret Service 88-89 Once Were Warriors 73, 92 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 62 Open Your Eyes (see also Abre los ojos) 98 Out on a Limb 101 Pelle the Conqueror 49 Plunkett & Macleane 120 Point of No Return 98 Quantum of Solace 149n Quarantine 156n Rambo 2 153n Rasen 104-105 Red Cliff 135n Red Cliff II 135n Resident Evil 148n Ricochet 115 Ringu 99, 104-107 Ringu 0 105 Ringu 2 105-106 RoboCop (2014) 132n Salaam Bombay! 75, 148n Scary Movie 36 Scream 107 Sexy Beast 117 Shiri 74 Sigaw (see also The Echo) 108 Siworae 105 Skyfall 149n Slap Her… She’s French 148n Smilla’s Sense of Snow 72 Snowpiercer 148n South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut 147n Spectre 149n
189
Index of Film Titles
Spider-Man 3 130 Spoorloos 101, 155n Spy Kids 36 Star Trek: Generations 13 Star Wars 35, 82, 93 Starship Troopers 13, 35 Stoker 148n Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot 91 Superman 11-13, 89 Superman Returns 93, 129 That Uncertain Feeling 100 The Awakening 146 The Birdcage 99, 154n The English Patient 33 The Cell 75 The Crime of Father Amaro (see also El Crimen del Padre Amaro) 74 The Deep 131n The Deer Hunter 131n The Departed 105, 108, 157n The Dogs of War 146n The Duellists 63, 118 The Echo (see also Sigaw) 108 The Edge 92 The Elusive Pimpernel 100 The Emperor and the Assassin 76 The Eye 109, 127, 162n The Fall 75 The Four Feathers 75 The Fugitives (see also Les Fugitifs) 101 The Grudge 104-109 The Grudge 2 104, 107, 156n The Grudge 3 107 The Hire 119, 122, 161n The Hobbit 140n The Hostage 122 The Hunger 118 The Killers 13 The Lake House 105, 109 The Last Stand 148n The Lift (see also De Lift) 155 The Lion King 93 The Living Daylights 88, 90 The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934/1956) 100 The Man with the Golden Gun 87-88 The Name of the Rose 72
The Passenger 62 The Pillow Book 103 The Player 21 The Ring 99, 104-106, 108 The Ring Two 104, 106, 127, 157n The Serpent’s Egg 62, 146n The Shaft (see also Down) 155n The Spy Who Loved Me 87-89 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 121 The Touch 62 The Vanishing 101-103, 155n The Woman I Love 155n The Woman in the Window 13 The World Is Not Enough 88, 91, 152n Three Fugitives 101, 155n Three Men and a Baby 101 Thunderball 88, 149n Titanic 93, 145n Tomorrow Never Dies 88, 91 Top Gun 116, 118 Total Recall (1990) 125 Toy Story 76 True Lies 76, 99, 154n Twister 76 Un Carnet de bal 155n Un long dimanche de fiançailles (see also A Very Long Engagement) 55 Under Fire 91 Up series 65, 91 Vanilla Sky 97, 99 Video Killed the Radio Star 115 Wait Until Dark 89 Where the Money Is 120, 160n Wings of Desire (see also Himmel über Berlin) 154n Wrongfully Accused 148n X-Men: The Last Stand 130 Y Tu Mamá También 74 Ying Xiong (see also Hero) 36 Zabriskie Point 62 Zorro 92 Zwartboek (see also Black Book) 128
Index of Names
50 Cent 158n Aaker, David A. 158n Agresti, Alejandro 105, 109 Aksoy, Asu 29, 32, 146n Albion, Alexis 150n Allen, Irving 88 Allers, Roger 93 Altman, Robert 21 Amenábar, Alejandro 23, 97 Anderson, Andy B. 51-52, 65, 79, 142n, 144n, 146n Anderson, Benedict 132n Anderson, Paul W.S. 148n Andress, Ursula 89 Andrews, Sam 151n Anez, Nicholas 152n Ang, Ien 141n Angst-Nowik, Doris 134n Annaud, Jean-Jacques 72 Antonioni, Michelangelo 62 Appadurai, Arjun 43, 141n Apted, Michael 16, 49, 51, 65, 70, 91, 132n Archer, Anne 155n Armburst, Roger 161n Armes, Roy 146n, 151n Armstrong, Gillian 72 Arnett, Robert P. 152n Arroyo, Jose 152n Arslan, Savaş 98 Ashton, Richard 152n Asper, Helmut G. 133n Athreye, Suma 136n Atkinson, Michael 155n Attenborough, Richard 62 August, Bille 49, 72 Auty, Martyn 147n Babluani, Géla 157n Bacher, Lutz 143n Badham, John 98 Bae, Hyuhn-Suhck 68 Baer, Hester 32 Baker, Graham 153n Balagueró, Jaume 156n Balasubramanian, Siva K. 160n Bale, Christopher 94, 162n Balfour, Ian 99, 154n Balio, Tino 29, 82, 135n, 137n, 150n Ballhaus, Michael 71 Banks, Miranda J. 140n, 144n Barber, Benjamin 42, 126, 141n, 161-162n Barber, Lynn 160n Barker, Chris 141n Barnouw, Eric 139n
Barone, Matt 161n Barraclough, Leo 148n Basuroy, Suman 139n Baxter, John 20, 133n, 135n Beck, Andrew 140n, 151n Becker, Jack 150n Behr, Jason 106 Bell, Jason 162n Bennett, Tony 84, 150n Bente, Klaus 139n Beresford, Bruce 50, 64, 72 Bergfelder, Tim 25, 34, 135n, 139n Bergman, Ingmar 62, 146n Bergstrom, Janet 61 Beristain, Gabriel 128 Bernhardt, Curtis 60 Besson, Luc 98 Bin Laden, Osama 92 Bishop, John 114 Biskind, Peter 143n Blaché, Herbert 56 Black, Jeremy 150n Blackett, Tom 35 Blomkamp, Neill 147n Blum, Heiko R. 50, 59, 134n Bodey, Michael 21 Boland, Michaela 21 Boleslawski, Richard 59 Bong, Joon-ho 148 Boorman, John 18, 61 Bordwell, David 108, 136n, 157n Bornedal, Ole 101, 103, 107, 127 Bosniak, Linda 15, 132 Boyle, Danny 50, 64, 103 Bradshaw, Peter 76, 149n Brahm, John 60 Brambilla, Marco 64-65, 120-121, 161n Brandauer, Klaus-Maria 71 Brewer, Craig 159n Bridges, Jeff 155n Briggs, Caroline 151n Brittany, Michele 150n Broccoli, Albert 49, 85-90 Broccoli, Barbara 49, 91, 95 Brodie, John 143n Brook, Vincent 133n Brooks, Xan 152n Brosnan, John 87, 150n, 152n Brosnan, Pierce 90, 92 Brown, Corie 143n Brown Jr., William H. 88 Brucks, Merrie 139n Brunette, Peter 62 Brymer, Chuck 36 Buchovetski, Dimitri 59
192 Buchsbaum, Jonathan 145n Buckland, Warren 13, 131n Büken, Gülriz 153n Burnett, Robert 114, 142n Burns, Ed 78 Burton, John W. 141n Burton, Tim 93 Cage, Nicolas 154n Caine, Michael 153n Caldwell, John Thornton 140n Cameron, James 16, 70, 76, 93, 99, 145n Campbell, Lisa 161n Campbell, Martin 81, 83, 87, 91-92, 95 Campion, Jane 73, 143n Canby, Vincent 160n Cariera, Carlos 74 Carnahan, Joe 122 Carr, David 139n Carson, David 13 Catalana, Gilda 158n Caton-Jones, Michael 49 Cattani, Gino 52, 144n Cavill, Henry 162n Cecchettini, Philip Alan 134n Chan-Olmsted, Sylvia M. 38, 139n Chan, Kenneth 21, 71, 147n Chang, Byeng-Hee 38, 139n, 155n Chang, Sea Jin 149n Chaplin, Charles 57 Chapman, James 84-85, 87, 150n, 151n, 152n Chatiliez, Étienne 112 Chen, Kaige 76 Choi, Jinhee 74 Christensen, Benjamin 128 Christopherson, Susan 28-29, 46, 129, 136n, Chung, Pei-Chi 21, 134n Church Gibson, Pamela 145n Cimino, Michael 131n Clair, René 60 Clore, Leon 68 Close, Glenn 155n Collins, Ava Preacher 132n Collins, Jim 132n Columbus, Chris 93 Comentale, Edward P. 150n Connery, Sean 89-90 Connor, J.D. 36 Cook, David 146n, 148n Coombe, Rosemary 36, 139n Cooper, Holly 82 Coppola, Francis Ford 131n Coppola, Sofia 159n Corbijn, Anton 117 Corden, James 162n Cosmatos, George 153n Cowen, Tyler 29, 34, 42, 136n, 138n, 141n, 151n Cowie, Peter 136n Craig, Daniel 81, 84, 92, 95, 149n, 152n
Holly wood Is Every where
Crisp, Colin G. 145n Crofts, Stephen 144-145n Crowe, Cameron 97 Cruise, Tom 99 Cuarón, Alfonso 64, 74, 93, 144n, 148n, 153n Cunningham, Chris 117 Cunningham, Isabella C.M. 157n Cunningham, Stuart 162n Cunningham, William H. 157n Curran, James 151n Curtin, Michael 32, 138n Curtiz, Michael (Kertész, Mihaly) 13, 58, 145n D’Amato, Brian 161n Dabashi, Hamid 77, 149n Daldry, Stephen 143n Dalton, Timothy 90 Danan, Martine 35, 156n Davidson, Paul 58 Davis, Tamra 158n Davison, Doug 105 De Bont, Jan 76, 153n De Mooij, Marieke K. 156n, 158n De Valck, Marijke 52, 78, 149n Decherney, Peter 34, 140n Del Buono, Oreste 84 Del Toro, Guillermo 64-65, 74, 146n Delaney, Sam 160n DeLaurentiis, Dino 31, 48, 62, 84 Delen, Dursun 156n DeLuca, Mike 49 Desai, Kalpesh Kaushik 139n DeVany, Arthur 37, 143n Dicken, Peter 142n Dieterle, William 20, 59 Dissanayake, Wimal 138n Donaldson, Roger 73, 84 Donner, Richard 11 Donoghue, Courtney Brannon 60 Dornhelm, Robert 128 Dowdle, John Erick 156n Drake, Philip 138n Drazin, Charles 154n Droesch, Audrey 142n Druxman, Michael B. 153n Dunning, John H. 142n Dupont, Ewald André 58, 98, 145n Durham, Carolyn 154n Duvivier, Julien 60, 100, 155n Dyer, Frank 56 Eastwood, Clint 76, 152n Ebert, Roger 103, 155n Eberwein, Roger 97, 99 Eco, Umberto 84 Edel, Uli 148n Edmond, Maura 159n Egoyan, Atom 99, 154n Eichinger, Bernd 72, 148n
193
Index of Names
Eisner, Michael 116 Elias, Justine 147n Elkayem, Ellory 73, 128, 148n Ellis, Brett Easton 120 Elmer, Greg 14, 140n Elsaesser, Thomas 13, 22, 27, 36, 58, 61, 72, 108, 131n, 134n, 135n, 145n 146n, 154n, 156n, 161n, 162n Emmerich, Roland 13, 16-17, 22-23, 35, 51, 72, 108, 148n Erickson, Steve 125, 161n Ezra, Elizabeth 32, 138n Fairbanks, Douglas 23 Farrell, Colin 55 Fassbinder, Rainer Werner 71 Faulkner, Robert R. 51-52, 65, 79, 144n, 146n, Featherstone, Mike 45, 141n Fejös, Pal 128 Ferriani, Simone 52, 144n Feyder, Jacques 128 Figgis, Mike 49, 160n Finler, Joel W. 132n Fischer, Robert 71 Fleming, Ian 83, 88-89, 151n Ford, Hamish 62 Ford, John 27, 61, 136n Forman, Miloš 18, 27, 61, 136n Formica, Serena 134n Forrest, Jennifer 153n, 154n Forster, Marc 13, 143n, 149n Forsyth, Bill 49 Foundas, Scott 160n Fox, Stephen 157n, 158n Fox, William 23, 57 Frankenheimer, John 122 Freeman, Morgan 153n Frenk, Joachim 150n Friedman, Thomas 120, 141n, 160n Frith, Simon 159n Fuller, Sam 61 Gabler, Neal 57 Galloway, Steven 159n Gance, Abel 100 Ganti, Tejaswini 140n Garbo, Greta 58 Garfield, Andrew 162n Garncarz, Joseph 67, 78, 148n, 149n Gasher, Mike 14, 140n Gaydos, Steven 135n Gellar, Sarah Michelle 106 Gemünden, Gerd 20, 133n Ghobadi, Bahman 77 Giddens, Anthony 41, 44, 141n Gilbert, Brian 49 Gilbert, Lewis 83, 87, 89-90 Gilchrist, Todd 156n Giles, Jeff 143n
Glazer, Jonathan 117 Glen, John 87, 90 Goldblatt, David 141n Goldsmith, Ben 17, 46, 132n, 142n, 152n Goldstein, Andrea 48, 142n Goldwyn, Samuel 57, 100, 145n Gondry, Michel 64, 117, 159n González Iñárritu, Alejandro 64, 122 Goodwin, Andrew 115, 159n Govil, Nitin 137n Gowers, Bruce 115 Grainge, Paul 36, 139n Grant, Richard, E. 21 Green, Eva 95 Green, Robert T. 158n Greenaway, Peter 103 Greengrass, Paul 50 Grindstaff, Laura 107-108, 155n, 156n Gritten, David 153n Grossberg, Lawrence 159n Grundmann, Roy 133n Guback, Thomas 142n Guest, Val 149n Gunning, Tom 159n Gupta, Pola B. 139 Guy, Alice 56 Haase, Christina 21 Hallenberger, Gerd 158n Halström, Lasse 143n Hamilton, Guy 13-14, 87, 89, 127 Haneke, Michael 157n Hannerz, Ulf 44, 142n Hardy, Max 152n Harlin, Renny 153n Harris, Jerry 52, 144n Hauer, Rutger 153n Hawks, Howard 100 He, Hilary Hongjin 156n Heath, C. Edward 139n Held, David 41, 141n Held, Jacob M. 150n Henderson, Martin 156n Herbert, Daniel 135n, 157n Hesmondhalgh, David 27, 41, 136n Hibbin, Sally 86, 151n Higgins, Chris 157n Higson, Andrew 12, 15, 33, 131n, 138n, 145n, 146n, 147n, 154n Hirschberg, Lynn 34, 138n Hirschbiegel, Oliver 133n Hitchcock, Alfred 69-61, 100-101 Hoffman, Eva 135n Hoffmann, Kay 162n Holmes, Katie 153n Hood, Gavin 147n Horak, Jan-Christopher 59, 133n, 134n, 145n Horton, Andrew 153n Hoskins, Colin 83
194 Hozic, Aida 30, 32, 138n Hudson, Hugh 63, 70, 120, 147n Hugenberg, Alfred 145n Hughes, Jon 134n Hughes, Ken 149n Hunt, Leon 64 Hunt, Peter 89, 128 Huston, John 149n Ichise, Takashige 24 Iida, Joji 104 Iordanova, Dina 148n, 162n Irvin, John 63, 88, 146n Jackson, Peter 65, 71, 73, 140n Jacobs, Diane 136n Jannings, Emil 58 Jenkins, Henry 111, 157n, 162n Jeunet, Jean-Pierre 50, 55, 128 Jihong, Wan 149n Joachimsthaler, Erich 158n Joffe, Roland 49 Johnston, Eric Allen 132 Johnston, Joe 76 Jonze, Spike 117, 159n Joo, Jeongsuk 110 Jowell, Tessa 86 Judge, Mike 158 Kafka, Hans 133n Kamina, Pascal 38 Kang, Je-gyu 74 Kanievska, Marek 120 Kaplan, E. Ann 159n Kapur, Shekhar 75 Karrh, James A. 139n, 160n Kassar, Mario 31, 49 Katz, Elihu 141n Kaurismäki, Aki 149n Kei, Sek 73 Keil, Charlie 34, 36, 138n, 139n Kemp, Stuart 160n Kemper, Tom 143n Kempley, Rita 155n Kent, Sidney R. 57 Keohane, Robert Owen 141n Kerrigan, Finola 81-82 Kershner, Irvin 149n Keser, Robert 146n Ki, Eyun-Jung 155n Kiarostami, Abbas 77, 149n Kiel, Richard 90 Kim, Dong-bin 105 Kim, Ji-woon 74, 148n King, Geoff 18, 27 Kinski, Klaus 71 Kit, Borys 147n Klein, Christina 32, 110 Klein, Naomi 35
Holly wood Is Every where
Kleingartner, Archie 47 Koepnick, Lutz 133n Kohner, Paul 49-50, 58, 143n Konchalovsky, Andrei 66 Koos, Leonard R. 153n Korda, Alexander 58, 88, 100 Krabbé, Tim 102 Krämer, Peter 21, 31, 72, 147n Krätke, Stefan 114, 122, 158n, 161n Kraus, Richard 149n Kretschmer, Tobias 157n Krug, Christian 150n Kubrick, Stanley 61 Kupferberg, Feiwel 133n Kwak, Kyung-taek 74 Laemmle, Carl 57-58 Lam, Ringo 23 Lambie, Ryan 162n Lang, Fritz 13, 57, 60-61 Langford, Berry 125, 161n Langman, Larry 134n Lantin Jr., Angelina M. 157n Laranas, Yam 108 Lasseter, John 76 Lee, Ang 13, 74, 122 Lee, Byoungkwan 68 Lee, Hyun-seung 105 Lee, Roy 49, 105-106, 108-109, 156n Leff, Leonard J. 132n Leni, Paul 58 Lent, John 48 Leslie, Deborah 157n Lester, Richard 61 Lev, Peter 62, 146n, 147n Levin, Aron M. 139n Levin, Irwin P. 139n Levin, Jordan 19, 133n Levitt, Theodore 42, 141n Lichfield, John 144n Liebes, Tamar 141n Lindner, Christoph 150n Litman, Barry R. 107, 155n, 156n Litvak, Anatole 60, 100, 155n Lobato, Ramon 162n Loew, Marcus 57 Long, Ryan 32 Loock, Kathleen 154n Lord, Kenneth R. 139n Lorenzen, Mark 39 Losey, Joseph 61 Lubezki, Emmanuel 148n Lubitsch, Ernst 23, 58, 100, 145n Lucas, George 35 Lucia, Cynthia 133n Luhrmann, Baz 50, 71, Lukas, Scott A. 154n Luketic, Robert 13, 64 Lukinbeal, Chris 39
195
Index of Names
Lukk, Tiiu 152 Lumenick, Lou 161n Lumet, Sidney 140n Lutter, Mark 52, 79, 144n, 149n Lyne, Adrian 16, 49, 63, 102, 112, 146n Ma, Xiao Lu 73 Maas, Dick 155n Macnab, Geoffrey 162n Madden, John 143n Madsen, Tammy L. 157n Maibaum, Richard 85, 89-90 Mairs, Gary 160n Makhmalbaf, Mohsen 77, 149n Malle, Louis 62 Maltby, Richard 12, 131n Manovich, Lev 162n Marmysz, John 154n Marshall, James 155n Martin, Adrian 161n Massaloux, Julie 144n Mathijs, Ernest 146n, 150n Mattelart, Armand 158n, 160n Maxwell, Richard 137n Maxwell, Winston 144n May, Anthony 73 Mayer, Louis B. 57 Mayer, Vicki 140n Mazdon, Lucy 154n, 155n McCarey, Leo 100 McClory, Kevin 151 McCullaugh, Jim 159n McDonald, Paul 69, 132n, 147n McDougal, Dennis 143n McDougall, Stuart Y. 153n McElhaney, Joe 134n McGrath, Joseph 149 McGregor, Ewan 103 McGrew, Anthony 41, 141n McKee, Kathy Brittain 139n McKercher, Catherine 69 McKern, Bruce 149n McMurria, John 137n Meers, Philippe 37 Mei, Feng 149n Mendes, Lothar 58 Mendes, Sam 16, 50, 119, 149n Menne, Jeff 74 Messier, Jean-Marie 31 Milchan, Arnon 31 Miller, Dale 150n Miller, George 72 Miller, Toby 12, 30, 42, 47, 67, 131n, 136n, 137n, 138n, 142n, 145n Minghella, Anthony 33, 143n Minkoff, Rob 93 Moeller, Hans-Bernhard 134n Moine, Raphaëlle 154n Molinaro, Edouard 154n
Moore, Roger 90 Moran, Albert 137n Moreau, David 109, 162n Morley, David 159n Moroder, Giorgio 71 Morris, Mark 153n, 154n, 155n Morris, Meaghan 64 Morrison, James 22, 134n, 135n Moszkowicz, Martin 72 Mulcahy, Russell 115 Müller-Stahl, Armin 71 Mundy, John 116, 159n Murdoch, Rupert 31 Murnau, Friedrich Wilhelm 23, 58, 61, 128, 132n Murphy, Cilian 153 Murphy, Robert 69, 147n, 151n Musser, Charles 145n Myron, Melanie 148 Naficy, Hamid 77, 138n Nair, Mira 75 Nakata, Hideo 74, 99, 104-106, 108, 127-128 Natale, Richard 119, 135n Navarro, Guillermo 148n Neale, Steve 137n Neeson, Liam 153n Negri, Pola 58 Nelson, Barry 88 Newell, Mike 63, 93, 146n Newman, Robert 50, 143n Nichols, Mike 99 Nispel, Marcus 120-121, 161n Nitins, Tanya 160n Nolan, Christopher 16, 64, 94, Norowzian, Mehdi 119 Norrington, Stephen 64 Notaro, Anna 120, 160n Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey 67 Nowlan, Gwendolyn Wright 153n Nowlan, Robert A. 153n Noyce, Phillip 72 Nussinova, Natalia 59 Nye, Joseph S. 141n O’Connor, Pat 49 O’Hehir, Andrew 135n O’Regan, Tom 17, 46, 68, 109, 132n, 142n, 147n, 152n, 157n O’Reilly, Daragh 81-82 Ogan, Christine 43 Oldman, Gary 153 Oliveira, Omar Souki 45 Olsen, Mark 117 Olson, Scott R. 34, 67 Ong, Aihwa 15, 45-46, 108, 132n Ophuls, Max 60, 143n Orwell, George 111 Otsep, Fyodor 59 Owczarski, Kimberly Ann 153n
196 Padilha, José 132n Pakula, Alan J. 131n Palud, Xavier 109, 162n Pang Brothers 108, 127 Paquot, Claudine 134n Pardun, Carol J. 139n Park, Chan-wook 74, 148n Parker, Alan 16, 33, 49, 63, 112, 118, 120, 132n, 146n Parker, Oliver 143n Parker, Trey 147n Parrish, Robert 149 Pasadilla, Gloria O. 157n Passer, Ivan 18, 61 Paul, Alan 47 Payne, Alexander 159n Peckinpah, Sam 91 Pells, Richard 34, 139n Peltier, Stéphanie 114 Perraton, Jonathan 141n Perren, Alisa 137n Petersen, Wolfgang 13, 22, 51, 71, 108 Petrie, Graham 21-22, 102, 128, 134n, 135n, 155n Peukert, Christian 157n Pham, Minh-Ha T. 104 Phillips, Gene D. 133n Phoenix, River 103, 127 Pickford, Mary 23 Pisano, Robert 33 Plaza, Paco 156n Poiré, Jean-Marie 101, 103, 127 Polanski, Roman 61-62 Polish Brothers 119 Pommer, Erich 58 Ponti, Carlo 62 Porter, Michael 28, 136n Porter, Vincent 151n Powell, Michael 100 Preminger, Otto 13, 60-61 Pressburger, Emeric 100 Prime, Rebecca 61 Proft, Pat 148 Protopopoff, Daniel 98 Proyas, Alex 50 Ptak, John 50, 143n Puttnam, David 49, 63, 118 Raw, Laurence 153n Ray, Nicholas 61 Reed, Carol 61 Reeve, Christopher 11, 130 Reisz, Karel 61 Renoir, Jean 60, 97 Rensin, David 143n Reynold, Kevin 76 Reynolds, Burt 152n Richardson, Tony 18, 61 Rimanelli, David 161n Ritchie, Guy 122
Holly wood Is Every where
Rivette, Jacques 161-162n Robb, Brian J. 160n Robbins, Tim 21 Roberts, Martin 113, 138n Robins, Kevin 29, 32, 146n, 159n Robinson, William I. 52, 144n Rocha, Glauber 66, 146n Roddick, Nick 147n Rodek, Hans-Georg 134n Rodriguez, Robert 131n Romanek, Mark 117 Rooney, David 76, 149n Roseman, Jon 115 Rosen, Stanley 76, 148n Rosenbaum, Jonathan 35-36, 139n Rosenfeld, Stuart 136n Rosenzweig, Philip M. 149n Rosher, Charles 23, 135n Routh, Brandon 130 Rowden, Terry 32, 138n, 146n Rubin, Alex 159n Rupert, Rhea (Scott, Rhea) 119, 160n Russell, Ken 62 Ryan, Meg 154 Salkind, Alexander 11 Salkind, Ilya 11 Salles, Walter 105, 109 Salomon, Mikael 128 Saltzman, Harry 85, 87-90 Samuell, Yann 109 Sanada, Hiroyuki 156n Sassen, Saskia 39, 140n, 147n, 158n, Satzman, Darrell 138n Saunderson, Lizzie 160n Savoye, Daniel Ferreras 150n Schatz, Thomas 18-19, 27, 50, 132n, 133n, 136n, 137n, 139n Schechter, Danny 138n Schembri, Sharon 150n Schenk, Joseph 57 Schenk, Nicholas 57 Schepisi, Fred 64, 72 Schiller, Herbert 39, 42, 45, 140n Schlesinger, John 18, 61 Schlöndorff, Volker 71 Schneider, Steven Jay 103, 155n Scholte, Jan Aart 141n Schultz, Carl 128 Schumacher, Joel 93-94 Schünzel, Reinhold 60 Schürmann, Ernst 134n Schwarzenegger, Arnold 22, 99 Scorsese, Martin 105, 131n Scott, Allen 46, 48, 136n, 137n, 138n, 143n Scott, A.O. 34, 139n Scott, Ian 21, 61 Scott, Jake 119-120, 160n Scott, Jordan 160n
197
Index of Names
Scott, Luke 160n Scott, Ridley 13, 16, 49-51, 63, 111-113, 117-123 Scott, Tony 13, 50-51, 64, 113, 116-123, 153n, 158n, 159n Sednaoui, Stephane 117 Selznick, David O. 60 Semati, M. Mehdi 146n Serceau, Michel 97 Shanadi, Govind 150n Shapiro, Dana Adam 159n Sharda, Ramesh 156n Sheridan, Jim 49, 52, 158n Shim, Doobo 31 Shimizu, Takeshi 74, 104, 106-109, 156n Shin, Stephen 98 Shone, Tom 131n, 133n, 135n Shuster, Joe 57 Shyamalan, M. Night 131n Siegel, Jerry 57 Silberling, Brad 99, 154n Simmons, Jerold 132n Sinclair, John 158n Singer, Bryan 93 Singh, Tarsem 75 Siodmak, Robert 13, 60 Sirk, Douglas 60-61 Sjöström, Victor (Seastrom, Victor) 58, 128 Sklair, Leslie 44-45, 94, 122, 142n, 161n Sloan, Jane 134n Sluizer, George 101-103, 127, 156n Smedley, Nick 133n Smith, Chris 85 Smith, Murray 27, 136n, 137n Snickars, Pelle 162 Snyder, Zack 162n Sochay, Scott 156n Soderbergh, Steven 78 Solondz, Todd 78 Sotirin, Patty J. 146n South, James B. 150n Spears, Britney 158n Spottiswoode, Roger 91 Staiger, Janet 136n Stiglitz, Joseph E. 141n Stiller, Mauritz 58, 128, 132n Stone, Oliver 55, 76 Storper, Michael 28-29, 46, 51, 136n, 144n Street, Sarah 151n Stringer, Julian 133n Suchenski, Richard 145n Sutherland, Kiefer 155n Suzuki, Koji 104 Swofford, Beth 50 Szczepanik, Petr 140n Szwarc, Jeannot 153n Takigawa, Chisui 104 Tamahori, Lee 50, 73, 87, 92, 151n, 152n Tarantino, Quentin 32, 36, 138n
Taylor, Charles R. 158n Taylor, John Russell 133n, 145n Taylor, Peter J. 122, 158n, 161n Tesson, Charles 21, 134n Tezuka, Yoshiharu 21, 46, 102, 134n, 155n, 156n Thiele, Wilhelm 60 Thompson, David 118 Thompson, Kristin 23, 135n, 136n, 146n Thornley, Davinia 65 Tolkien, J.R.R. 140n Tomlinson, John 43 Tong, Stanley 23, 64 Topel, Fred 152n Totaro, Donato 108 Tourneur, Maurice 56, 128 Travers, Peter 161n Tremaine, Jeff 158n Tsai, Peijen Beth 156n Tschang, Feichin Ted 48, 142n Tsui, Hark 13, 23, 64 Tsuruta, Norio 105 Tunç, Tanfer Emin 153n Twitchell, James 111 Tykwer, Tom 143n Ulmer, Edgar G. 13 Updike, John 112 Vadim, Roger 61, 100-101 Vajna, Andy 49, 143n Van Elteren, Mel 141n Van Lierop, Peter 155n Varis, Tapio 142n Varndell, Daniel 154n Veber, Francis 101, 103, 127 Verbinski, Gore 99 Verevis, Constantin 154n Verhoeven, Paul 13, 16, 23, 35, 49, 84, 94,125-126, 128, 161n Vignali, Claudio 156n Vincendeau, Ginette 59 Vitali, Valentina 145n Viviani, Christian 21 Vogler, Christopher 142n Vonderau, Patrick 140n, 162n Von Fritsch, Günther 20, 59 Voorham, Anita 155n Wagner, Robert 152n Wainwright, Richard 64 Waldman, Harry 134n Walker, David 158n Wallace, David 133n Walls, W. David 37, 143n Walsh, David 149n Walsh, Mike 70 Walsh, Raoul 100 Wang, Ting 137n Wang, Yiman 154n
198 Warren, Chris 156n Wasko, Janet 17, 29, 82, 132n, 133n, 137n, 140n, 142n, 150n Wasser, Frederick 31, 33, 48, 84, 137n, 143n Wasserman, Lew 33 Watanabe, Ken 153n Watt, Stephen 150n Watts, Naomi 99, 106, 155n, 157n Wee, Valerie 104, 154n Weiner, Robert G. 150n Weinstein, Bob 36, 49, 143n Weinstein, Harvey 36, 49, 52, 143n, 148n Weir, Peter 50, 64, 72, 134n Wenders, Wim 62, 71, 154n West, Kanye 161n White, Jerry 34, 139n Whitfield B. Lynn 150n Whittemore, Don 134n Wilde, Trevor 160n Wilder, Billy 13, 60-61 Wilkins, Toby 107 Wilkinson, Tom 153n Willemen, Paul 145n Williams, Alan 139n, 145n Williams, David E. 160n Williams, Robin 99 Willis, Paul 141n Willman, Skip 150n Wilson, Koh Siok Tian 143n Wilson, Leah 151n Wilson, Michael 49, 85, 87, 90-91, 95
Holly wood Is Every where
Wisbar, Frank 60 Wollen, Peter 112, 157n, 159n Wong, Kar-Wai 122, 138n Woo, John 13, 16, 23, 64, 76-77, 94, 122 Woollacott, Janet 84, 86, 150n Wright, Neelam Sidhar 98 Wu, Tiangming 76 Wyatt, John 116, 131n, 159n Xu, Gang Gary 107-108, 156n, 157n Yates, David 93 Yates, Peter 131 Yeffeth, Glenn 151n Yip, George S. 157n Young, Harold 100 Young, Terence 84, 89, 127, 149n Yu, Ronny 64, 153n Yuen, Corey 64 Yuen, Woo-Ping 32 Zafirau, Stephen 143n Zanger, Anat 154n Zehetbauer, Rolf 71 Zhang, Yimou 36, 138n Zhu, Ying 149n Zidi, Claude 154n Zimmer, Hans 71 Zinnemann, Fred 60-61 Žižek, Slavoj 92, 152n Zukor, Adolf 57
Index of Subjects
2003 Productions 55 20th Century Fox Film Corp. (20th Century Fox) 18, 27, 31, 33, 38, 60, 70, 72, 88, 101, 113, 118, 120, 136n, 137n, 145n ABC (American Broadcasting Company) 116, 121, 136n above-the-line (labor) 30, 42, 46, 48, 50-51, 137n Academy Award (Oscar) 13, 16, 24, 46, 49, 62, 105, 108, 133n, 147n, 148n, 158n, 159n advertising advertising directors 16, 63-65, 75, 116-117, 119-123 advertising for films 28, 67 advertising industry 63, 111-117, 156n, 158n AFC (Australian Film Commission) 148n AFDC (Australian Film Development Corporation) 72 agglomeration 28-29, 78, 136n alien of extraordinary ability 15 Americanization 34, 44-45, 126 animation 47-48 Asian Invasion 104 Australia 13, 21, 31, 33, 60, 64, 70-73, 78, 93, 111, 115, 120, 130, 148n auto-remakes 97-99 Asian auto-remakes 104-109 European auto-remakes 100-104 Baja California studios 70, 145n BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) 118 Beijing Film Academy 76 below-the-line (labor) 30, 42, 47, 50-51, 69, 137n Berlin Film Festival 79 Bertelsmann 114 Billboard 115 binary opposition 21, 143n Black Dog Films 117, 119, 122 blockbuster blockbuster era 11, 23-24, 30, 49, 67, 78, 98, 103 blockbuster films 12, 19, 27, 31, 34-35, 51, 67, 82, 91, 94, 99, 115-116, 159n Korean blockbusters 74 BMW 119, 122 Bollywood 75 branding 24, 27, 82, 86, 113 British Hollywood film 106 British International Pictures 98 British invasion 63, 112 Burbank 94, 149n CAA (Creative Artists Agency) 50 Cahier du Cinéma 61, 161n
Canada 16, 39, 49, 68-70, 85, 88, 117, 120, 142n, 147n Cannes Film Festival 78-79, 118, 148n, 161n Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival 118, 122 Carlyle Group 159n Carolco 49 CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) 88, 138n Centre National de la Cinématographie 55 César Awards 144n chaebols 31 Chiat\Day (Chiat\Day\Mojo) 111-112 China 70, 75-77, 95, 109-110, 129, 135, 146n, 154n cinema of attractions 116, 159n citizenship 15-16, 55, 60, 162n classical studio system (era) 16, 32, 65, 126 cluster (clustering) 28-29, 38-39, 46, 122, 136n Cold War (era) 90-92 Columbia Pictures 31, 49, 63, 81, 89, 109, 149n Comedy 13, 90, 101 conglomerates (conglomeration) 12, 18-19, 27, 29, 31, 33, 36, 38, 44, 81, 109, 111-114, 122 Constantin Film AG 72 consumerist (culture, ideology) 45, 52, 121, 125, 129-130 convergence 111, 121-122 corporatization 32, 39, 136n creative class 15, 46-48, 122 cultural imperialism 39, 42-45 cultural industries 27, 29, 33, 42, 47 Czechoslovakia / Czech Republic 18, 22, 61, 83, 86 Daewoo 31 Danjaq 89, 151n Denationalization 15, 34, 38 Denmark 49, 101-103, 107 Dentsu 158n Deterritorialization 38-39 DGA (Directors Guild of America) 16, 51, 66, 69, 135n, 144n Dimension Films 36, 102-103 Directors Label series 116-117 distribution (practices, process) 12, 14, 17-19, 25, 28-34, 39, 47, 49, 52, 67, 74, 78, 98-99, 102, 112, 122, 125, 129, 138n, 139n, 147n, 148n, 155n distribution networks 20, 32, 39, 44, 67, 78, 98, 104, 107, 130 diversification 37-38, 113-114 domestic market 11, 68, 75 Dreamworks SKG 16, 33, 105, 132n dual citizenship 15-16, 51
200 Eady Levy 85-86, 151n Éclair studios 56 Edison Manufacturing Company 56 Elstree studios 69 émigré (directors, filmmakers, paradigm) 1314, 20-22, 34, 57, 59-61, 66, 70, 94, 128, 131n, 133n emulation 22-23, 66, 86, 109 Endeavor 50, 143n Enigma Pictures 118 Eon Productions 89-90, 149n exhibition (networks, practices, process) 12, 14, 19, 25, 28, 39, 57, 67, 70, 129 exile (filmmakers) 13, 20, 22, 25, 60, 77, 146n Famous Artists Agency 88 FFC (Film Finance Corporation) 75 film-noir 13 Fifth Generation 76 First Floor Features 155n flexible citizenship 15, 46, 108 flexible specialization 28-29, 46-48 Fox Searchlight Pictures 38 Fox Studios Australia 130 France 21, 31, 35, 38, 55-58, 60-63, 68, 83, 100-101, 109, 112, 115, 117-118, 125, 128, 130, 143n, 146n, 155n, 157n, 162n franchises 24, 36-37, 49, 82-84, 93-94, 99, 125, 129, 153n, 162n Gaumont-St. Maurice studios 59 General Electric 31, 33, 138n Germany 11, 13, 20-23, 31, 57-62, 71-72, , 83, 85, 89, 98, 108, 117, 121, 128, 145n-146n, 155n global system (theory) 30, 44-45, 52, 125 globalization 12, 18-19, 24, 27, 29-32, 34-35, 38-39, 41-44, 47, 55, 64, 78, 112, 114, 120, 141n-142n glocalization 113 Golden Camera 148 Golden Palm (Palme d’Or) 73 Goldman Sachs 139n Havas 113 heritage (cinema, films) 68, 146n high concept 116 Hollywood brand 35-38, 100 Hollywood North 70 Hollywood Renaissance 27, 62, 136n Homogenization 37, 125 Hong Kong 13, 23, 64, 73, 98, 105, 108, 119, 135n, 153n horizontal integration 53 horror 36, 74, 99, 101, 104, 106-108, 121, 156n HUAC (House Committee on Un-American Activities) 19 Hungary 49, 57, 68, 88, 143n 145n
Holly wood Is Every where
IAA (International Advertising Association) 114 IATSE (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) 47, 142n ICM (International Creative Management) 50 independents 18-19, 28-31, 36, 38, 48, 78, 136n India 31, 42-43, 47, 75, 77, 98, 148n, 158n International Film Festival Rotterdam 159n Interpublic Group 113 Iran 22, 75, 77 James Bond (novels) 83-84 Japan 20, 24, 31, 43, 46-47, 63, 70, 74, 77, 81, 99, 101-102, 104-109, 127, 134n, 135n, 146n, 153n, 154n, 158n Jimmy Bond 88 Joinville 59 JOY@RSA UK 119 Jyllands-Posten 107 KOFIC (Korean Film Council) 74 La Division 119 la politique des auteurs 61 labor markets 15, 28 Leavesden Studios 90, 93 Little Minx 119 LLP (local-language productions) 60 London 32, 62, 75-76, 78, 90, 93, 111, 113, 119-120, 122 Los Angeles 17, 23, 33, 38-39, 46, 51-52, 61, 69, 78, 111, 118-119, 122, 128, 136n, 148n, 149n, 158n LVMH (Moët Hennesy Louis Vuitton SE) 139n Macintosh 111, 118 Matsushita 31, 114 MCA (Music Corporation of America) 31, 143 McWorld 42, 125-126 media capitals 32, 78, 119 melting pot 67 Mexico 33, 60, 70, 74, 78, 146n MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.) 18, 31, 36, 57, 62, 76, 81, 85, 118, 127, 132n, 145n, 150n, 151n Miramax 36, 38, 49, 101-102, 143n MJZ Production Company 121 MLV (multiple language versions) 59 Mojo 111-112 Morocco 55, 125 MPA (Motion Pictures Association) 133n, 157n MPAA (Motion Pictures Association of America) 18, 91, 132n, 133n, 139n, 146n MTV 18, 115-116 MTV Films 115, 158n multinational 31, 33, 35, 42-44, 82, 89, 93-94, 113-114, 128, 140, 149 music business (music industry) 114 music videos 111-115, 157n-158n music video aesthetics 115-116, 118-119 music video directors 64, 75, 116-117, 120-121
201
Index of Subjec ts
Napster 115 national cinemas 12, 15, 33-35, 55-56, 66-67, 77, 144n-145n nation-state 15, 33, 43-46 Nazi period 20, 60, 145n NBC (National Broadcasting Company) 31, 136 NBC Universal 31, 33 Neorealism 19 Netherlands Film Festival 156 networking 50, 105 New German Cinema 61, 71-72 New Hollywood 18, 22-23, 27-30, 32, 39, 50, 56, 62-64, 82, 91, 125, 140n New Line 49, 75, 140n New York 23, 33, 51, 57, 76, 78, 88, 113, 116, 119, 121, 122 New York Film Festival 149n New Zealand 49, 65, 70, 73, 85, 91-93 News Corporation 31, 33, 157n NFDC (National Film Development Corporation) 75 NICL (New International Division of Cultural Labor) 30, 42 nodal points 65, 78, 114, 161n Nouvelle Vague 61 Nouvelles de Henry James 160n NRI (non-resident Indians) 75 oligopoly 18 Omnicom Group 112-113 outsourcing 42, 47, 53 P2P (peer-to-peer) 115 Palm Pictures 116 Paramount decision 19, 28, 30 Paramount Pictures 18, 32-33, 57, 59, 115, 118, 127, 145n Paris 33, 56, 59-60, 113, 138, 149n Parufamet agreement 57-58, 145n Pathé 55 PGA (Producers Guild of America) 50-51 Philippines 47, 108-109 Philips 114 Pinewood (Studios, Studios Group) 69, 86, 90, 117, 121, 122-123 Piracy 76, 95, 110, 129 PolyGram 93 post-classical Hollywood 18 post-Fordist (Hollywood, mode of production) 18, 28, 36, 46 post-production 30, 48, 55, 65, 117, 125 pre-sold commodity 11, 82 production co-productions 24, 32, 62, 72, 73, 76, 77, 83-85, 105, 120 production companies 24, 28, 31, 35, 49, 55, 57, 63, 71, 79, 85, 88-89, 111, 117-120, 122, 148n
production networks (circuits, chains) 25, 43, 46, 52-53, 67, 69, 114, 117, 121, 129 production process 12, 14, 16-17, 19, 23, 25, 28-39, 46, 56, 67-73, 86-87, 93-94, 105-106, 108, 126, 129, 147n production values 11, 17, 37, 111, 161n Production Code 62, 146n Production Studies 41, 140n Publicis Groupe 113 Puchon Fantastic Film Festival 105, 156n Queen 115 quota (systems) 68, 74-75, 76 ratings 51-52, 65 ratings system 91, 146n remakes 17, 24, 34, 37, 49, 74, 95, 97-101, 103-109, 121, 127, 149n, 153n-156n, 158n reputation 22, 24, 48, 51-52 RFT (Ministry of Radio, Film & Television) 76 Ringu (novel) 104-105 RSA (Ridley Scott Associates) 24-25, 111, 118-122, 160n, 161n runaway productions 39, 47-48, 51, 61, 65, 68-72, 78, 83, 93, 109, 140n, 142n Russia 57, 59-60, 66 SAG (Screen Actors Guild) 33, 50, 69, 121, 161n Samsung 31 School of Scotts 119 Scopitones 115 Scott Free Productions 117, 120, 122-123, 148n Seagram 31 short-term contracts (projects) 28-29, 52 Sight & Sound 85, 91 silent film (period) 22, 59, 97, 100 SK 31 Sony (Corporation) 31, 33, 81-82, 87, 109, 114, 132n, 149n, 151n Sony Music 114 Sony Pictures 18, 33, 81, 85, 95, 109, 136n sound film (period) 59, 97-98, 100 Soundies 115 South Africa (as production location) 147n, 161n South Korea 68, 73-74, 105, 108, 129 Special Division 119 Spotify 115 straight to video/DVD 76, 104, 155n subsidiaries 18-19, 32, 38, 44, 67, 83, 116, 120 Sundance Film Festival 78 Sweden 20, 62, 85 Synergy 12, 29, 38, 67, 81, 113, 136n Taco Bell 121, 126, 130, 160n Taiwan 13, 73, 74 talent agents/agencies 50, 72, 143n TBWA 112 television
202 television commercials 111-113, television production 32, 38, 47, 83, 114, 117, 128, 129 television series 25, 49, 74, 93, 100, 105 The Buggles 115 The Golden Egg 102 The Guardian 76, 92 The Mill 117, 122, 159n The Monitor Company 140n The New York Times 69 The Washington Post 101, 107 The Weinstein Company 36 Thorn-EMI 114 Time Warner Inc. 31, 33, 114, 140n Tokyo 33, 105, 106-107 Top Dog 119 Transnational Capitalist Class 43, 45-46, 52, 94, 102, 108, 121-122, 134n transnational cinema 15, 21, 32 transnational corporations (TNC) 14, 39, 44-45, 52, 81, 93, 107, 113, 125, 142n transnationalization 24, 27, 30-31, 33-34, 39, 113 Tristan and Isolde 118 TriStar Pictures 31, 81 trophy-hunting 57-58, 71, 146n Turkey 11, 77, 98, 129 Twickenham studios 69 tyranny of place 42, 46 Ufa (Universum Film-Aktien Gesellschaft) 5758, 145n UIP (United Pictures International) 32, 147n Unions 47, 51, 69, 142n, 144n, 161n United Artists 81-82, 85, 89 United Kingdom (Britain) 13, 33, 58, 75-76, 82-89, 100, 109, 111, 117-119, 128, 144n, 146n, 158n British film industry 24, 68-71, 82-83, 144n-145n, 151n
Holly wood Is Every where
filmmakers from the UK 13, 16, 18, 21-22, 33, 49, 51, 57, 61-63, 65, 69-70, 83, 85, 91-92, 107, 112, 117-118, 120, 135, 147n, 153n, 162n United Talent Agency 50 Universal/MCA 33 Universal Music Group 114 Universal (Pictures, Studios Inc.) 18, 31-32, 36, 57, 59, 105, 136n Vancouver 69 Variety 72, 76, 102, 135n Venice Film Festival 79 vertical integration (vertical control) 19, 28, 53, 56 Vertigo Entertainment 105, 109 Viacom 33, 115, 132n Vivendi 31, 114, 138n Walt Disney Company 18, 36, 142n, 149n Warner Bros. 12, 18, 31, 33, 36, 55, 59, 60, 72, 93-94, 105, 120, 136n, 144n, 145n, 147n, 149n, 155n Warner France 55 Warner Music 114 Warwick Films 88 Wellywood 65 WFA (World Federation of Advertisers) 114 WGA (Writers Guild of America) 50, 144n William Morris Endeavor 143n WMA (William Morris Agency) 50, 143n Woodfall 88 WPP Group 113 YouTube 19, 115, 129, 159n Zeroville 125
Film Culture in Transition General Editor: Thomas Elsaesser
Thomas Elsaesser, Robert Kievit and Jan Simons (eds.) Double Trouble: Chiem van Houweninge on Writing and Filming, 1994 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 025 9 Thomas Elsaesser, Jan Simons and Lucette Bronk (eds.) Writing for the Medium: Television in Transition, 1994 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 054 9 Karel Dibbets and Bert Hogenkamp (eds.) Film and the First World War, 1994 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 064 8 Warren Buckland (ed.) The Film Spectator: From Sign to Mind, 1995 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 131 7; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 170 6 Egil Törnqvist Between Stage and Screen: Ingmar Bergman Directs, 1996 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 137 9; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 171 3 Thomas Elsaesser (ed.) A Second Life: German Cinema’s First Decades, 1996 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 172 0; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 183 6 Thomas Elsaesser Fassbinder’s Germany: History Identity Subject, 1996 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 059 4; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 184 3 Thomas Elsaesser and Kay Hoffmann (eds.) Cinema Futures: Cain, Abel or Cable? The Screen Arts in the Digital Age, 1998 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 282 6; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 312 0 Siegfried Zielinski Audiovisions: Cinema and Television as Entr’Actes in History, 1999 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 313 7; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 303 8
Kees Bakker (ed.) Joris Ivens and the Documentary Context, 1999 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 389 2; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 425 7 Egil Törnqvist Ibsen, Strindberg and the Intimate Theatre: Studies in TV Presentation, 1999 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 350 2; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 371 7 Michael Temple and James S. Williams (eds.) The Cinema Alone: Essays on the Work of Jean-Luc Godard 1985-2000, 2000 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 455 4; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 456 1 Patricia Pisters and Catherine M. Lord (eds.) Micropolitics of Media Culture: Reading the Rhizomes of Deleuze and Guattari, 2001 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 472 1; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 473 8 William van der Heide Malaysian Cinema, Asian Film: Border Crossings and National Cultures, 2002 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 519 3; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 580 3 Bernadette Kester Film Front Weimar: Representations of the First World War in German Films of the Weimar Period (1919-1933), 2002 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 597 1; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 598 8 Richard Allen and Malcolm Turvey (eds.) Camera Obscura, Camera Lucida: Essays in Honor of Annette Michelson, 2003 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 494 3 Ivo Blom Jean Desmet and the Early Dutch Film Trade, 2003 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 463 9; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 570 4 Alastair Phillips City of Darkness, City of Light: Émigré Filmmakers in Paris 1929-1939, 2003 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 634 3; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 633 6
Thomas Elsaesser, Alexander Horwath and Noel King (eds.) The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s, 2004 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 631 2; isbn hardcover 978 905356 493 6 Thomas Elsaesser (ed.) Harun Farocki: Working on the Sight-Lines, 2004 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 635 0; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 636 7 Kristin Thompson Herr Lubitsch Goes to Hollywood: German and American Film after World War I, 2005 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 708 1; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 709 8 Marijke de Valck and Malte Hagener (eds.) Cinephilia: Movies, Love and Memory, 2005 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 768 5; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 769 2 Thomas Elsaesser European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood, 2005 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 594 0; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 602 2 Michael Walker Hitchcock’s Motifs, 2005 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 772 2; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 773 9 Nanna Verhoeff The West in Early Cinema: After the Beginning, 2006 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 831 6; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 832 3 Anat Zanger Film Remakes as Ritual and Disguise: From Carmen to Ripley, 2006 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 784 5; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 785 2 Wanda Strauven The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded, 2006 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 944 3; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 945 0
Malte Hagener Moving Forward, Looking Back: The European Avant-garde and the Invention of Film Culture, 1919-1939, 2007 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 960 3; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 961 0 Tim Bergfelder, Sue Harris and Sarah Street Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination: Set Design in 1930s European Cinema, 2007 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 984 9; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 980 1 Jan Simons Playing the Waves: Lars von Trier’s Game Cinema, 2007 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 991 7; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 979 5 Marijke de Valck Film Festivals: From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia, 2007 isbn paperback 978 90 5356 192 8; isbn hardcover 978 90 5356 216 1 Asbjørn Grønstad Transfigurations: Violence, Death, and Masculinity in American Cinema, 2008 isbn paperback 978 90 8964 010 9; isbn hardcover 978 90 8964 030 7 Vinzenz Hediger and Patrick Vonderau (eds.) Films that Work: Industrial Film and the Productivity of Media, 2009 isbn paperback 978 90 8964 013 0; isbn hardcover 978 90 8964 012 3 François Albera and Maria Tortajada (eds.) Cinema beyond Film: Media Epistemology in the Modern Era, 2010 isbn paperback 978 90 8964 083 3; isbn hardcover 978 90 8964 084 0 Pasi Väliaho Mapping the Moving Image: Gesture, Thought and Cinema circa 1900, 2010 isbn paperback 978 90 8964 140 3; isbn hardcover 978 90 8964 141 0 Pietsie Feenstra New Mythological Figures in Spanish Cinema: Dissident Bodies under Franco, 2011 isbn paperback 978 90 8964 304 9; isbn hardcover 978 90 8964 303 2
Eivind Røssaak (ed.) Between Stillness and Motion: Film, Photography, Algorithms, 2011 isbn paperback 978 90 8964 212 7; isbn hardcover 978 90 8964 213 4 Tara Forrest Alexander Kluge: Raw Materials for the Imagination, 2011 isbn paperback 978 90 8964 272 1; isbn hardcover 978 90 8964 273 8 Belén Vidal Figuring the Past: Period Film and the Mannerist Aesthetic, 2012 isbn 978 90 8964 282 0 Bo Florin Transition and Transformation: Victor Sjöström in Hollywood 1923-1930, 2012 isbn 978 90 8964 504 3 Erika Balsom Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art, 2013 isbn 978 90 8964 471 8 Gilles Mouëllic Improvising Cinema, 2013 isbn 978 90 8964 4551 7 Christian Jungen Hollywood in Canne$: The History of a Love-Hate Relationship, 2014 isbn 978 90 8964 566 1 Michael Cowan Walter Ruttmann and the Cinema of Multiplicity: Avant-Garde Film ‒ Advertising ‒ Modernity, 2014 isbn 978 90 8964 585 2 Temenuga Trifonova Warped Minds: Cinema and Psychopathology, 2014 isbn 978 90 8964 632 3 Christine N. Brinckmann Color and Empathy: Essays on Two Aspects of Film, 2014 isbn 978 90 8964 656 9
François Albera and Maria Tortajada (eds.) Cine-Dispositives: Essays in Epistemology Across Media, 2015 isbn 978 90 8964 666 8 Volker Pantenburg Farocki/Godard: Film as Theory, 2015 isbn 978 90 8964 891 4 Paul Cuff A Revolution for the Screen: Abel Gance’s Napoléon, 2015 isbn 978 90 8964 734 4 Scott Loren and Jörg Metelmann (eds.) Melodrama After the Tears: New Perspectives on the Politics of Victimhood, 2015 isbn 978 90 8964 673 6 Steve Choe Sovereign Violence: Ethics and South Korean Cinema in the New Millennium, 2016 isbn 978 90 8964 638 5