Cheap Tricks for the 21st Century

Is Hollywood enters a new millennium, few doubt the film industry’s ability to maintain its high artistic standards. What is of concern, however, is the industry’s ability to hold down costs and to commit its precious resources to projects guaranteed to turn a profit. This is why the future of motion pictures lies not in more beguiling effects, more spellbinding plots or charismatic performers, but in niche marketing and creative cost-cutting.

The first weapon in the battle for risk-free films will be the judicious use of high-quality animation to replace real-life movie stars--an inevitability in an era when Adam Sandler can command $20 million a movie. The concept is this: Studios will approach a Sandler when he cannot possibly take on any more current projects and persuade him to license his persona for a series of films. This strategy will reap benefits both for the studio and the performer. Animated characters can be relied upon to perform demeaning acts that actors would refuse to be a party to. (Well, most actors. People like Jeff Daniels you can get to do just about anything.) The animated character will not become old, fat or bald, and if the actor has annoying tics like George Clooney’s neck crick or Helen Hunt’s squint or Christian Slater’s eyebrow dance, these can easily be eliminated by the computer animators. This means the actors themselves will never actually have to learn to act, and can instead devote themselves to loftier tasks--saving the toucans (Kim and Alec), commanding the armed forces and putting pressure on the Fed to resist raising interest rates (Warren) or competitive archery (Geena). Incarceration of a star because of substance abuse or domestic violence need not shut down production of a film--an obvious benefit to the studio, but of even greater benefit to the actor, who can continue to collect a mammoth paycheck while in rehab or stir. On the other hand, for publicity’s sake, the producers of “edgy” dramas or B-grade shockers can easily leak to Geraldo “clips” in which an animated Robert Downey Jr. or Pamela Anderson Lee behave even more badly than usual.

Another cost-cutting area involves the simultaneous production of several versions of the same film. Back in the 1930s, when the Bela Lugosi “Dracula” was being shot, the studio simultaneously made an identical film using Spanish-speaking actors. Hitchcock also shot German versions of several of his early films. This strategy is sure to be revived. “The English Patient” could easily be repackaged as “The Sri Lankan Patient”; “Braveheart” could just as well be shot in the Alps, with William Wallace giving way to William Tell; and there is absolutely no reason that a version of “Three Kings,” in which the Iraqis win the Gulf War, could not one day see the light of day.

Comedies are especially difficult to export because humor does not translate well across borders, and what may seem hilarious to residents of suburban Walla Walla is not guaranteed to amuse moviegoers in downtown Belgrade. Again, the solution is to release several versions of a film, each tailored to a specific national taste. An obvious example would be a rugby version of “The Waterboy,” and in countries so technologically retrograde that the events depicted in “The Truman Show” could not possibly be envisioned, Jim Carrey could star in a lifelong radio show, with an entire nation eavesdropping on his every move rather than watching it.

Perhaps the most important cost-cutting technique that Hollywood will use in the coming decades will be to vastly augment the duplicity that is already rampant in movie trailers. Movie previews invariably contain upbeat music--usually Motown--to entice baby boomers. Yet frequently the music heard in the trailer is never heard in the film. Since no one ever seems to complain about this deceptive marketing technique, it makes perfect sense for studios to begin releasing trailers that contain shots of Tom Cruise, Barbra Streisand and Harrison Ford, even though these actors do not appear in the Pauly Shore or Jean-Claude Van Damme film. As long as the movies are entertaining, who’s going to lodge a formal complaint? For that matter, who would even notice?

One final Hollywood innovation will be tiered pricing. Just as clothing stores charge more for silk than for denim, film studios will begin charging more to see films like “Titanic” than to see low-budget products like “The Blair Witch Project.” In the not very distant future, some enterprising young unknown will make a film that costs less to produce than it costs to see. Actually, with “The Blair Witch Project,” the director came pretty close.