Recently appraising Gladiator 2's box office performance I have inclined to the view that the movie is proving a commercial disappointment at the box office--not a total, The Marvels/Flash-style catastrophe, but far from what it would take to really justify a $300 million movie, and that the outcome was far from unforeseeable.
Consider the first Gladiator film that came out when many of those who voted in the recent presidential election were not yet even born. The movie was basically a blend of "You killed my favorite second cousin!" action movie with Attitude Era WWE in period costume. The approach had enough novelty, narratively, visually and in other ways to make for one of the more original and entertaining summertime spectacles of those years--but the film's cachet owed to its being taken for something more, the period setting evoking the epics of the last days of Old Hollywood, enough so to fool the more superficial critics into mistaking its puffed-up kayfabe (the ultimate wrestling feud!) for Historical Drama, and awarding it a slew of Oscars that action movies usually do not get, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (in a way, epitomizing Ridley Scott's career as a prolific maker of historical "epics" who apparently has no interest in or understanding of history whatsoever).
Alas, I suspect that the movie's just looking like an epic rather than actually being one limited its impression on viewers, with all that meant for any appetite for a return to Scott's Rome (the more in as the movie left even less room for a sequel than most, with hero and villain both dead, and history taking a wildly implausible turn in his story that would not stand up to any serious follow-up). And I dare say that the historical epics of old that Gladiator was able to exploit the existence of some nostalgia for in 2000 are that much more distant from the memory of today's moviegoing audience on the whole--all as, much as people enjoyed it, the original Gladiator doesn't generate much nostalgic pull of its own. (It's no Star Wars that way, no Top Gun, no 2002 Sam Raimi-helmed Spider-Man even.)
The result was that the very belated follow-up was just a transparent cash grab with a blend of sequel and remake as hazy as it is unimaginative, selling much more on spectacle than the predecessor did in an age in which audiences have had so much spectacle that it is ever harder to really make them feel that here is something they have never seen before--while American audiences, certainly, have long been harder to sell on this particular kind of spectacle, even if the movie has the benefit of being less shopworn than, for instance, the superheroic adventures of which they have seen so many. The resulting, tepid, appeal translated to a tepid response from ticket-buyers.
Tuesday, December 3, 2024
Is Gladiator 2 a Flop?
Admittedly the entertainment press doesn't think so.
Still, consider the situation as it stands.
Seventeen days into Gladiator II's international release the movie has collected $209 million internationally, while ten days into its North American release it has made $111 million in that market. Assuming not unreasonably that the movie has already made 80 percent of its international total by this point, and 60 percent of its North American total, one would expect the movie's final take to come to around $445 million. Alternatively were one to take the $185 million figure for the final domestic take implied by the calculations presented above and expect this to amount to 40 percent of the final worldwide gross the way the domestic take did for the original, one gets a figure of $460 million, some $15 million more, while if one is prepared to allow for a margin of $15 million the other way as well we get $475 million.
A gross in the range of $445-$475 million (which may be more than some see it making) may sound like a lot of money. The bullish will point out that this has the movie matching what the original made ($465 million), ignoring the dollar's losing almost half (46 percent) of its purchasing power since 2000 according to the Consumer Price Index. The result is that merely matching the original's gross in current dollars means the movie's making about half what the original did in real terms.
We get an even worse picture when we think in terms of the cost of the film. The original Gladiator was made for a little over $100 million, which permitted a very healthy profit indeed on a gross of (roughly) a half billion. By contrast the sequel would be making a half billion dollars--after an outlay of $250-$310 million on the production, an expenditure of two to three times as much.
We do not ordinarily think of a sequel that made half as much as the original as a success.
We also do not (given the economics of film production and distribution) think of a movie, or anything else, that costs three times as much as its predecessor for the same return a success, with this certainly carrying over to a movie that costs $250 million+ to make (and $120 million more to distribute and market) grossing a half billion dollars. And indeed, as I argued back in April, the bar for profitability may be higher for this one than the range discussed here--a loss still quite plausible even after the post-theatrical income from streaming, TV rights, physical media, etc. is taken into account.
Still, with rare exceptions the press has been fairly upbeat about how Gladiator 2 is doing.
A plausible explanation for the gap between rhetoric and reality is that the entertainment press is on the whole claquing for this one--at least in part because it fits in with the narrative that Hollywood so badly wants to believe, namely that, contrary to the evidence of 2023, and what must be regarded as the ambiguous evidence of the public response to the thinned-out release slate of a 2024 mere weeks short of its end, franchise-addicted Hollywood's formula for generating blockbusters remains viable. And it is not going to let a little thing like movies actually losing their backers money get in the way of that.
NOTE: The item was subject to some minor corrections on December 8, 2024.
Still, consider the situation as it stands.
Seventeen days into Gladiator II's international release the movie has collected $209 million internationally, while ten days into its North American release it has made $111 million in that market. Assuming not unreasonably that the movie has already made 80 percent of its international total by this point, and 60 percent of its North American total, one would expect the movie's final take to come to around $445 million. Alternatively were one to take the $185 million figure for the final domestic take implied by the calculations presented above and expect this to amount to 40 percent of the final worldwide gross the way the domestic take did for the original, one gets a figure of $460 million, some $15 million more, while if one is prepared to allow for a margin of $15 million the other way as well we get $475 million.
A gross in the range of $445-$475 million (which may be more than some see it making) may sound like a lot of money. The bullish will point out that this has the movie matching what the original made ($465 million), ignoring the dollar's losing almost half (46 percent) of its purchasing power since 2000 according to the Consumer Price Index. The result is that merely matching the original's gross in current dollars means the movie's making about half what the original did in real terms.
We get an even worse picture when we think in terms of the cost of the film. The original Gladiator was made for a little over $100 million, which permitted a very healthy profit indeed on a gross of (roughly) a half billion. By contrast the sequel would be making a half billion dollars--after an outlay of $250-$310 million on the production, an expenditure of two to three times as much.
We do not ordinarily think of a sequel that made half as much as the original as a success.
We also do not (given the economics of film production and distribution) think of a movie, or anything else, that costs three times as much as its predecessor for the same return a success, with this certainly carrying over to a movie that costs $250 million+ to make (and $120 million more to distribute and market) grossing a half billion dollars. And indeed, as I argued back in April, the bar for profitability may be higher for this one than the range discussed here--a loss still quite plausible even after the post-theatrical income from streaming, TV rights, physical media, etc. is taken into account.
Still, with rare exceptions the press has been fairly upbeat about how Gladiator 2 is doing.
A plausible explanation for the gap between rhetoric and reality is that the entertainment press is on the whole claquing for this one--at least in part because it fits in with the narrative that Hollywood so badly wants to believe, namely that, contrary to the evidence of 2023, and what must be regarded as the ambiguous evidence of the public response to the thinned-out release slate of a 2024 mere weeks short of its end, franchise-addicted Hollywood's formula for generating blockbusters remains viable. And it is not going to let a little thing like movies actually losing their backers money get in the way of that.
NOTE: The item was subject to some minor corrections on December 8, 2024.
Why Are They Making a Black Panther 3?
In the end Black Panther 2 made about half what the original film did at the box office in real terms, and less than that in profit. (According to Deadline's calculations Black Panther pulled in a $476 million profit in 2018, the sequel just $259 million four inflationary years later.) Even accounting for the fact that the sequel simply could not be the "event" the original was, and the not insignificant blow dealt the franchise by the loss of the original's star, it was a big drop (the worst seen for the Marvel Phase Four/Five films until the debacle that was The Marvels), with the bottom line reflecting this. The result was that I imagined Disney/Marvel would, facing such a path of diminishing returns reflecting the tougher market for movies generally and its movies particularly, be hesitant to greenlight a third film.
Still, as we have seen franchise-addicted Hollywood is determined to press on with business as usual, so much so that in spite of the numerous financial disasters it has suffered in recent years as a result of persisting in its strategy it is brushing off the failures putting nine-figure holes in its books and seizing on any excuse for acting on the premise that the public is hungry for more, More, MORE! of the same old crapola it keeps shoveling its way (all as it not incidentally lowers the bar again and again for what may be worth giving one more try). Thus it ignores everything but what may be the highly idiosyncratic success of Deadpool vs. Wolverine, and hastens to envision a brand new Age of Marvel Movies, while displaying its propensity for magical thinking in bringing Robert Downey Jr. back (as villain rather than hero), while deciding to give Black Panther one more try at the big screen, rounding out a trilogy after which they can always reboot and start all over again just a few years down the road!
Still, as we have seen franchise-addicted Hollywood is determined to press on with business as usual, so much so that in spite of the numerous financial disasters it has suffered in recent years as a result of persisting in its strategy it is brushing off the failures putting nine-figure holes in its books and seizing on any excuse for acting on the premise that the public is hungry for more, More, MORE! of the same old crapola it keeps shoveling its way (all as it not incidentally lowers the bar again and again for what may be worth giving one more try). Thus it ignores everything but what may be the highly idiosyncratic success of Deadpool vs. Wolverine, and hastens to envision a brand new Age of Marvel Movies, while displaying its propensity for magical thinking in bringing Robert Downey Jr. back (as villain rather than hero), while deciding to give Black Panther one more try at the big screen, rounding out a trilogy after which they can always reboot and start all over again just a few years down the road!
A Remembrance of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! After the Tyson-Paul Bout
As I remarked not long ago, in past decades, and certainly the late '80s, sports games loomed a lot larger within the world of video gaming, just as the world of sports, and its stars, loomed larger within pop culture generally. This all went for boxing, with the most famous boxing game of all time Nintendo's Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, like a lot of sports games of the day trading on the cachet of a then-reigning superstar of the sport to sell a game that really didn't have all that much to do with the celebrity in question, or even sport. (As others have observed many a time, the game was less a simulation of boxing--not so easy to provide in any meaningful sense to a player using a controller with a mere four buttons and crosspad--than a puzzle game/rhythm game in which winning the bouts was a matter of figuring out, or more likely being told or reading in a strategy guide, some trick to defeating your opponents, like taking their opening their mouth as a signal to punch them in the gut, then mastering the particular combination of button pushes needed to do the trick.)
Over the course of that game the player fought a succession of matches with a string of entirely imaginary figures on the way up to their bout with "Iron Mike," up at the absolute pinnacle of the boxing world--with the notorious difficulty of the game, and that final match, reflecting and with many reinforcing Tyson's image as a giant of the sport.
Of course, Tyson's star was not long in falling after his achieving his "undisputed heavyweight champion" of the world status, and the game's release. His defeat by knockout by James "Buster" Douglas, his conviction and prison sentence, his effort to regain his standing in the boxing world that is mainly remembered for his biting off a piece of then-heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield's ear in the ring, and, just like so many post-fifteen-minutes superstars before him, acquiescing in a career of self-parody to pay his bills (exemplified by his voicing himself in seventy episodes of Adult Swim's The Mike Tyson Mysteries), are all notorious. Still, in the wake of Tyson's ridiculous and revolting "bout" with the similarly ridiculous and revolting Jake Paul (eight two-minute rounds of "elder abuse" by an ex-Disney Channel sitcom star pretending to be a big brute barbarian), Tyson has never seemed further than he is now from the days when Nintendo so flattered him in that edition of one of its most classic games--while I find myself reminded yet again that just as in the '90s Tyson was already a scandal and a disaster, the country seemed to be going through a nervous breakdown, one which has just gone on from decade to decade, bringing us to the point where few even possess the ability to see any significances in this all too symptomatic episode anymore.
Over the course of that game the player fought a succession of matches with a string of entirely imaginary figures on the way up to their bout with "Iron Mike," up at the absolute pinnacle of the boxing world--with the notorious difficulty of the game, and that final match, reflecting and with many reinforcing Tyson's image as a giant of the sport.
Of course, Tyson's star was not long in falling after his achieving his "undisputed heavyweight champion" of the world status, and the game's release. His defeat by knockout by James "Buster" Douglas, his conviction and prison sentence, his effort to regain his standing in the boxing world that is mainly remembered for his biting off a piece of then-heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield's ear in the ring, and, just like so many post-fifteen-minutes superstars before him, acquiescing in a career of self-parody to pay his bills (exemplified by his voicing himself in seventy episodes of Adult Swim's The Mike Tyson Mysteries), are all notorious. Still, in the wake of Tyson's ridiculous and revolting "bout" with the similarly ridiculous and revolting Jake Paul (eight two-minute rounds of "elder abuse" by an ex-Disney Channel sitcom star pretending to be a big brute barbarian), Tyson has never seemed further than he is now from the days when Nintendo so flattered him in that edition of one of its most classic games--while I find myself reminded yet again that just as in the '90s Tyson was already a scandal and a disaster, the country seemed to be going through a nervous breakdown, one which has just gone on from decade to decade, bringing us to the point where few even possess the ability to see any significances in this all too symptomatic episode anymore.
The Online Media Bias Check Web Sites
As we have found ourselves deluged by information and opinion online from an unprecedented number and diversity of sources it has been appropriate that we have also seen a number of web sites emerge which have as their purpose helping web users evaluate the information with which others are presenting them. Thus do sites like Snopes provide a fact-checking service. And thus do sites like Media Bias/Fact Check also rate sites according to their usually undeclared political tendencies.
Again, I think this an essentially positive development--but it seems to me that the sites are less useful than they might be because of the narrow and muddled way in which we speak of "right" and "left," "conservative" and "liberal," and so on, which neglects political philosophy and "social vision," and such issues as the economy or foreign policy, to place the stress on one's positions in the culture war, and inclination toward one rather than the other of the two major parties. (Pro-life and Republican-leaning=conservative/right, pro-choice and Democratic Party-leaning=liberal/left, they say, as if there were no more to political life than that!)
I imagine that the editors of many of these sites do not question the received usages, but even those who do find themselves facing a dilemma. Do they go by the standards commonly used in the media and in political discourse generally, and which the public generally has in mind when they bother to evaluate what they are being told? Or do they challenge that usage with a more grounded and rigorous way of making judgments about web site biases even at the risk of leaving the conventional and hasty users of their sites confused and frustrated and perhaps inclined to look elsewhere for clarification?
As it happens every one of these sites of which I know goes with the first choice, accepting the conventional political labels and their uses. This seems to me understandable but also unfortunate, as they could have been more genuinely helpful by promoting other ways to understand the political scene--with, I think, the problem getting worse rather than better with time, and the sites in question becoming less useful as a result, even by their narrowed standards. Consider, for example, the New York Times, as analyzed in the Columbia Journalism Review. One study discussed in that publication showed that the Times' greatly favored the concerns of the right in its selection of stories, even as judged in the flawed, conventional ways--considerably more than did the Washington Post, for example. Yet Media Bias/Fact Check, on the basis of "wording and story selection" (emphasis added) judged the paper to be "moderately favor[ing] the left," warranting its classification as "Left-Center biased." Meanwhile, as Media Bias/Fact Check admits that the op-eds in the paper have failed fact checks, it treats this as not interfering with the "High" credibility they accord the paper. This, of course, ignores the extent to which not only are opinion pieces subject to editorial approval, and many a reader likely to not distinguish too carefully between supposed reportage and declared opinion pieces, but the way in which, in the words of Amber A'Lee Frost, the Times has treated those opinion pieces as a kind of "clickbait" producing "a vast pool of pseudopolitical content, wide as an ocean, shallow as a puddle" to a degree not only "bloating" the paper, but "positioned very prominently, at the very top of the website." (By contrast, she notes, the Financial Times "sticks them at the bottom.") One may add to this the extent to which those opinion pieces have both been increasingly right-wing, and increasingly suspect in their never close to perfect respect for fact (why bother with those when made-up conversations with nonexistent cab drivers will do?), exemplified by the Times' controversial hiring of climate denialist Bret Stephens.
The result is that abiding by the old standards gives us less and less potential for clarity on what really matters here--and it seems to me that those really serious about judging sources are going to need to do a little more work than just quickly checking the handier evaluations. (Like reading a whole article every now and then in a periodical--if not the CJR, then something at least.)
Again, I think this an essentially positive development--but it seems to me that the sites are less useful than they might be because of the narrow and muddled way in which we speak of "right" and "left," "conservative" and "liberal," and so on, which neglects political philosophy and "social vision," and such issues as the economy or foreign policy, to place the stress on one's positions in the culture war, and inclination toward one rather than the other of the two major parties. (Pro-life and Republican-leaning=conservative/right, pro-choice and Democratic Party-leaning=liberal/left, they say, as if there were no more to political life than that!)
I imagine that the editors of many of these sites do not question the received usages, but even those who do find themselves facing a dilemma. Do they go by the standards commonly used in the media and in political discourse generally, and which the public generally has in mind when they bother to evaluate what they are being told? Or do they challenge that usage with a more grounded and rigorous way of making judgments about web site biases even at the risk of leaving the conventional and hasty users of their sites confused and frustrated and perhaps inclined to look elsewhere for clarification?
As it happens every one of these sites of which I know goes with the first choice, accepting the conventional political labels and their uses. This seems to me understandable but also unfortunate, as they could have been more genuinely helpful by promoting other ways to understand the political scene--with, I think, the problem getting worse rather than better with time, and the sites in question becoming less useful as a result, even by their narrowed standards. Consider, for example, the New York Times, as analyzed in the Columbia Journalism Review. One study discussed in that publication showed that the Times' greatly favored the concerns of the right in its selection of stories, even as judged in the flawed, conventional ways--considerably more than did the Washington Post, for example. Yet Media Bias/Fact Check, on the basis of "wording and story selection" (emphasis added) judged the paper to be "moderately favor[ing] the left," warranting its classification as "Left-Center biased." Meanwhile, as Media Bias/Fact Check admits that the op-eds in the paper have failed fact checks, it treats this as not interfering with the "High" credibility they accord the paper. This, of course, ignores the extent to which not only are opinion pieces subject to editorial approval, and many a reader likely to not distinguish too carefully between supposed reportage and declared opinion pieces, but the way in which, in the words of Amber A'Lee Frost, the Times has treated those opinion pieces as a kind of "clickbait" producing "a vast pool of pseudopolitical content, wide as an ocean, shallow as a puddle" to a degree not only "bloating" the paper, but "positioned very prominently, at the very top of the website." (By contrast, she notes, the Financial Times "sticks them at the bottom.") One may add to this the extent to which those opinion pieces have both been increasingly right-wing, and increasingly suspect in their never close to perfect respect for fact (why bother with those when made-up conversations with nonexistent cab drivers will do?), exemplified by the Times' controversial hiring of climate denialist Bret Stephens.
The result is that abiding by the old standards gives us less and less potential for clarity on what really matters here--and it seems to me that those really serious about judging sources are going to need to do a little more work than just quickly checking the handier evaluations. (Like reading a whole article every now and then in a periodical--if not the CJR, then something at least.)
Has the Red State-Blue State Narrative Changed Over the Years?
The simple-minded, obfuscating, indeed obscurantist discourse treating American politics as a contest between the irreconcilable national cultures of "Red" and "Blue" states has just gone on and on, but rereading Thomas Frank's old "American Psyche" essay I find myself reminded that the narrative has not been perfectly constant.
One aspect of it that has changed is the way that talk of the division once played into the hype about a "New," information age economy that was still very strong about the turn of the century. Those more favorably disposed toward the "Blue" states of the Northeast, Great Lakes and West coast saw them as at the forefront of that new economy, with their cultures playing an important part in that. Their disproportionate share of the more prestigious institutions of higher learning, the more open and cosmopolitan and accepting culture of their cities and their workplaces, were supposed to be key to attracting the superlative "knowledge" workers and technological and entrepreneurial talent that made such an economy possible--all as they criticized the Red states as looking backward nostalgically to an idealized industrial age past and taking comfort in bigotry rather than accommodating themselves to the rules of the hard but rewarding new game.
The narrative was, of course, nonsense. While there certainly are high-technology industries the broader vision of a profoundly transformative information economy, however interesting it may have been as a theory, was in the form that most came to know it and discuss it ultimately cover for neoliberals deflecting attention from deindustrialization and other problems the country had so that they could press ahead with their policies, as we are reminded when we consider just how much we still live in that insanely unsustainable fossil fuel-guzzling world dominated by "the brute force of things" that figures like George Gilder talked as if we had transcended thirty years ago, and ignore the rules of that still very physical, industrial age world at our cost.
It is a sign of just how much less salable the nonsense became that we now hear so much less of it than we did before.
However, if that has changed much else in the narrative abides with the commentariat--and not to our benefit.
One aspect of it that has changed is the way that talk of the division once played into the hype about a "New," information age economy that was still very strong about the turn of the century. Those more favorably disposed toward the "Blue" states of the Northeast, Great Lakes and West coast saw them as at the forefront of that new economy, with their cultures playing an important part in that. Their disproportionate share of the more prestigious institutions of higher learning, the more open and cosmopolitan and accepting culture of their cities and their workplaces, were supposed to be key to attracting the superlative "knowledge" workers and technological and entrepreneurial talent that made such an economy possible--all as they criticized the Red states as looking backward nostalgically to an idealized industrial age past and taking comfort in bigotry rather than accommodating themselves to the rules of the hard but rewarding new game.
The narrative was, of course, nonsense. While there certainly are high-technology industries the broader vision of a profoundly transformative information economy, however interesting it may have been as a theory, was in the form that most came to know it and discuss it ultimately cover for neoliberals deflecting attention from deindustrialization and other problems the country had so that they could press ahead with their policies, as we are reminded when we consider just how much we still live in that insanely unsustainable fossil fuel-guzzling world dominated by "the brute force of things" that figures like George Gilder talked as if we had transcended thirty years ago, and ignore the rules of that still very physical, industrial age world at our cost.
It is a sign of just how much less salable the nonsense became that we now hear so much less of it than we did before.
However, if that has changed much else in the narrative abides with the commentariat--and not to our benefit.
The "Moral" Teaching That "Those Who Have None of the Power Have All of the Responsibility."
It is, of course, an ancient moral truism that with power comes responsibility--and that, as Ben Parker had it, with great power comes great responsibility.
However, many of those who would pass themselves off as moralists, in practice, tend to apply the extreme opposite principle in making their judgments. In their view it is the powerless who are at fault for everything in their own lives and with society as well.
It is a profoundly illogical position. But it is very convenient for a sniveling conformist coward ever-groveling before power--being which is pretty much a job requirement for the makers of respectable opinion.
However, many of those who would pass themselves off as moralists, in practice, tend to apply the extreme opposite principle in making their judgments. In their view it is the powerless who are at fault for everything in their own lives and with society as well.
It is a profoundly illogical position. But it is very convenient for a sniveling conformist coward ever-groveling before power--being which is pretty much a job requirement for the makers of respectable opinion.
Tuesday, November 5, 2024
The Failure of One Movie, or of a Generation of Filmmakers? David Walsh Discusses Megalopolis
Seeing that David Walsh had reviewed Megalopolis I wondered whether his judgment would challenge the generally negative judgment of the critics. However, the very subtitle of his review makes clear that where the movie's quality was concerned he did not, declaring it a "weak, terribly confused fable about modern-day America." For his part Walsh makes clear that he does not think the movie's being a "fable" is the problem--such in his view capable of "be[ing] revealing and illuminating, bringing out truths in generalized, clarifying form." The film's fault is not that it is a fable but that the fable is "crude and poorly done" in virtually every respect, "technical" ones included, Walsh specifically citing "script," "staging," "acting," "dramatic coherence," and "overall look and 'feel'" before coming to the matter of "social insight," which seems to be really the fatal thing here given the subject matter that Coppola elected to take up (the central conflict in the story between an inventor-architect's aspiration to rebuild a troubled "New Rome" as "Megalopolis" using revolutionary new materials, and the machinations of powerful enemies intent on stopping him, who whip up a reactionary mass movement in opposition). Walsh regards Coppola's evident concerns with fascism and dictatorship as "legitimate" but also thinks that in the movie Coppola "confront[s] a complex society’s immensely complex dilemmas" with "lazy, self-indulgent banalities worthy of the 1970s' 'counterculture'" and indeed a social vision readable as comprised wholly of residues of it, namely "an unhealthy combination of bohemian self-indulgence, quasi-mysticism and extreme . . . individualism." To Walsh this seems especially evident in the tale's centering on "a persecuted, tortured intellectual 'genius'" far above a populace presented here only "as easily manipulated fodder for right-wing demagogues" "retaining his prominence on the world stage and directing its future evolution" being the sole hope of salvation for a world in crisis (which comes off as self-indulgent given how Coppola seems to only too obviously and strongly see himself in the film's "persecuted, tortured intellectual 'genius,'" Adam Driver's inventor-architect Cesar Catalina). Indeed, Walsh proceeds from there to argue that those few critics who have had positive words for the film--it is these and not the far more numerous detractors that he concerns himself with--praise exactly those elements he found unsatisfactory about it, reflecting how they, too, are captive to the same unfortunate way of looking at the world.
Considering that I think of how one of Walsh's themes as a critic has long been the way which artists' outlook and the work that follows from it reflects their times--and his view of American film having suffered since the '70s from how deadly the last half century has been for any sort of critical, socially-informed perspective, with all the implications this has had for those artists whose subject is human beings. If a half century ago artists like Coppola had displayed a measure of genuine social criticism and dissent in the years since they made their peace with the world they so miserably failed to change, and looked to their own enjoyments in it, as the weakest and least satisfying in their outlook came to the fore. The result was that even what passed among them for social concern was "noisy, energy-consuming thrashing about" reflecting fears for their expectations of "continu[ing] to function 'freely' (and prosperously) in a decaying and threatening world."
Of course, Walsh has repeatedly given his readers the impression over the past couple of years that, amid all that has been happening in the world, artists were beginning to really look about themselves again and think hard about what they saw. Indeed, Walsh wrote glowing reviews to two films in 2023 by filmmakers whose works he had consistently panned in the past--Yorgos Lanthimos' Poor Things, and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer. Meanwhile if Walsh's annual Oscar coverage these past many decades has generally treated the ceremony as a thing to be endured rather than enjoyed by any really thinking and feeling person, he seemed to see what was very possibly the emergence of a different spirit in the ceremony earlier this year (where it seemed to be a good sign that the two movies by Lanthimos and Nolan, in his view deservedly, between the two of them took home eleven statues, including Best Picture, Best Director, three of the four acting prizes, and Best Adapted Screenplay, as the makers of the generally less worthy fare competing with them generally ended up with consolation prizes). In Walsh's judgment, however, rather than Megalopolis being one of the "green shoots" portending a recovery in American cinema, the film as he describes it is instead a monument to the decadence of the past years he has so often described, in which what was least satisfying in Coppola's work even at its Godfather/Apocalypse Now best (the "murkiest and least coherent, and most self-aggrandizing, elements") is pretty much all the director has to offer now. Indeed it can seem to say something that where Walsh so often closes a review of a really unsatisfactory film or ceremony with an evocation of American filmmaking's healthier situation in the past, and the hints of movement toward something better today, his review of Megalopolis closes with its damning judgment of this movie, Walsh offering nothing beyond that at review's end.
Considering that I think of how one of Walsh's themes as a critic has long been the way which artists' outlook and the work that follows from it reflects their times--and his view of American film having suffered since the '70s from how deadly the last half century has been for any sort of critical, socially-informed perspective, with all the implications this has had for those artists whose subject is human beings. If a half century ago artists like Coppola had displayed a measure of genuine social criticism and dissent in the years since they made their peace with the world they so miserably failed to change, and looked to their own enjoyments in it, as the weakest and least satisfying in their outlook came to the fore. The result was that even what passed among them for social concern was "noisy, energy-consuming thrashing about" reflecting fears for their expectations of "continu[ing] to function 'freely' (and prosperously) in a decaying and threatening world."
Of course, Walsh has repeatedly given his readers the impression over the past couple of years that, amid all that has been happening in the world, artists were beginning to really look about themselves again and think hard about what they saw. Indeed, Walsh wrote glowing reviews to two films in 2023 by filmmakers whose works he had consistently panned in the past--Yorgos Lanthimos' Poor Things, and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer. Meanwhile if Walsh's annual Oscar coverage these past many decades has generally treated the ceremony as a thing to be endured rather than enjoyed by any really thinking and feeling person, he seemed to see what was very possibly the emergence of a different spirit in the ceremony earlier this year (where it seemed to be a good sign that the two movies by Lanthimos and Nolan, in his view deservedly, between the two of them took home eleven statues, including Best Picture, Best Director, three of the four acting prizes, and Best Adapted Screenplay, as the makers of the generally less worthy fare competing with them generally ended up with consolation prizes). In Walsh's judgment, however, rather than Megalopolis being one of the "green shoots" portending a recovery in American cinema, the film as he describes it is instead a monument to the decadence of the past years he has so often described, in which what was least satisfying in Coppola's work even at its Godfather/Apocalypse Now best (the "murkiest and least coherent, and most self-aggrandizing, elements") is pretty much all the director has to offer now. Indeed it can seem to say something that where Walsh so often closes a review of a really unsatisfactory film or ceremony with an evocation of American filmmaking's healthier situation in the past, and the hints of movement toward something better today, his review of Megalopolis closes with its damning judgment of this movie, Walsh offering nothing beyond that at review's end.
David Walsh's Review of Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis: Some Reflections
In recent years film and culture critic David Walsh and his colleagues have attended to fewer and fewer major Hollywood releases, frequently going for months without reviewing a single such movie--while their publishing a review of a big "blockbuster" has become especially rare. This year has been no exception. There was a more than five month gap between their review of Alex Garland's Civil War back in April, and their belated publication of their only review of a major Hollywood film of the summer, Lee Isaac Chung's Twisters, at the start of October.
This may seem just as well given that there has been a very great deal else for them to write about in this era of "polycrisis," during which the arts have reflected the troubles in the larger world--with the institutions of the art world facing existential crisis (prominent museums, symphonies, schools withering and dying for lack of funding, and even megabuck film studios floundering) amid post-pandemic economic stress, government austerity, culture war; with artists and members of associated occupational groups finding it ever harder to make a living and being driven to strike action the same way so many other workers are (most recently, in the video game industry); with the horrific events of our times driving artists to take public stands, and those conventional wisdom flatters by calling "leaders" once more showing their colossal hypocrisy in the battles over free speech that rage in their wake; among much, much else. Indeed, if their review page covered previous Mad Max and Planet of the Apes and Deadpool films, their sequels could hardly seem worth the trouble amid all that, making their taking a pass on writing about them quite natural--the more in as from a critical standpoint such as their own there is often not very much to say about them. Indeed, it seems telling of their feeling about the poverty of American filmmaking today that Walsh and his colleagues recently had time for a series of articles to the movies of 1974.
Still, North American audiences do every now and then get a really big-budget, highly-publicized wide release made by people who are at least aspiring to present them with something more than another Big Dumb Blockbuster, at the very least a Big But Not So Dumb Blockbuster (whether successfully or unsuccessfully). Dealing with these Walsh and company usually do rise to the occasion--with Josh Varlin's appraisal of both parts of Denis Villeneuve's Dune outstanding, and Jacob Crosse and Patrick Martin's coverage of Civil War one of the rather small portion of the outpouring of reviews of that film that seemed to me truly worthwhile.
Francis Ford Coppola's Neo-Roman science fiction epic Megalopolis is another such film, and after its release last month Walsh undertook its review. Alas, his assessment was not positive--but certainly more interesting than most of what I have seen of the outpouring of negative comment, not least for what the film seems to say about a whole epoch in the history of filmmaking.
This may seem just as well given that there has been a very great deal else for them to write about in this era of "polycrisis," during which the arts have reflected the troubles in the larger world--with the institutions of the art world facing existential crisis (prominent museums, symphonies, schools withering and dying for lack of funding, and even megabuck film studios floundering) amid post-pandemic economic stress, government austerity, culture war; with artists and members of associated occupational groups finding it ever harder to make a living and being driven to strike action the same way so many other workers are (most recently, in the video game industry); with the horrific events of our times driving artists to take public stands, and those conventional wisdom flatters by calling "leaders" once more showing their colossal hypocrisy in the battles over free speech that rage in their wake; among much, much else. Indeed, if their review page covered previous Mad Max and Planet of the Apes and Deadpool films, their sequels could hardly seem worth the trouble amid all that, making their taking a pass on writing about them quite natural--the more in as from a critical standpoint such as their own there is often not very much to say about them. Indeed, it seems telling of their feeling about the poverty of American filmmaking today that Walsh and his colleagues recently had time for a series of articles to the movies of 1974.
Still, North American audiences do every now and then get a really big-budget, highly-publicized wide release made by people who are at least aspiring to present them with something more than another Big Dumb Blockbuster, at the very least a Big But Not So Dumb Blockbuster (whether successfully or unsuccessfully). Dealing with these Walsh and company usually do rise to the occasion--with Josh Varlin's appraisal of both parts of Denis Villeneuve's Dune outstanding, and Jacob Crosse and Patrick Martin's coverage of Civil War one of the rather small portion of the outpouring of reviews of that film that seemed to me truly worthwhile.
Francis Ford Coppola's Neo-Roman science fiction epic Megalopolis is another such film, and after its release last month Walsh undertook its review. Alas, his assessment was not positive--but certainly more interesting than most of what I have seen of the outpouring of negative comment, not least for what the film seems to say about a whole epoch in the history of filmmaking.
Announcement: This Blog Has Nothing to Do with Fake Countries
Apparently one of the many hobbies people pursue together on the Internet is make up fake countries with fake histories. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the similarity of the name to Anthony Hope's famous "Ruritania" and all that has been associated with it (and to "Raritan," a river, bay and borough in northeastern New Jersey within the New York Tri-State Area) "Raritania" seems a popular choice of name for such countries, profiles of at least two of them cropping up high in the search rankings when I type in this blog's name.
I hereby announce as officially as anything can be announced here that this blog, which was established in and has been continually operating since 2008, has no connection whatsoever with any of those imaginary countries. It is simply the personal blog of an individual, its owner and sole writer--myself.
I hereby announce as officially as anything can be announced here that this blog, which was established in and has been continually operating since 2008, has no connection whatsoever with any of those imaginary countries. It is simply the personal blog of an individual, its owner and sole writer--myself.
How Much Money Might Joker 2 Lose?
Joker 2 opened in North America with a mere 30 percent of even the low end of the figure at the bottom end of the range in the forecast that Boxoffice Pro issued a mere month before the movie's release (just $37 million, against the $115 million that had been the "floor" of their expectation). After that no one seems to have thought "legs" might save the movie, but the movie's first-to-second weekend drop confirmed the expectation of the collapse continuing--the figure a rarely seen 81 percent--with the third weekend seeing another drop almost as bad (68 percent). Thus after ten days in release the movie had made a mere $52 million, after seventeen days just $56 million. (By contrast even that likely biggest loser of last year, the similarly DC debacle The Flash, managed $55 million in its first three day period, and had just under $100 million when its third weekend take was in.)
At this rate Joker 2 may not even reach the $60 million mark domestically, while it is hard to picture it getting very far over the $200 million mark globally. Assuming the studio keeps half of that it will end up with $100 million or so net, while (barring this being one of those movies that fails in theaters but explodes in post-theatrical venues) doing only as well in streaming and the other post-theatrical arenas, leaving it with a net not much above $200 million, against outlays that may have been in the $300 million+ range. That works out to a $100 million+ gap, with a recent Variety report indicating the loss as possibly twice that ($150-$200 million).
The worst loss posited for any movie so far this year, this makes it a very strong candidate for the top of Deadline's list of the year's biggest losers next spring. However, that is far from the whole story, the film's performance also a reminder of the prospect that the entertainment press does not want to talk about, namely that the theatrical market has changed structurally. On average the public goes to the movies twice a year now instead of the 3-4 times they went in the 2010s and the 4-5 times they went before, all of which has made them pickier about what they give those trips to the theater over to--all as the old blockbuster model may be failing in getting them to do that. Admittedly Joker did not fit that model very closely, and the sequel may have been even further removed from that model still (with its distance from the pretense of being an origin story for a supervillain, its sharp generic shifts from the original, etc.), but the expectation that people would show up for Number Two because they responded to Number One is very much part of that model, and part of what the backers were counting on, and did not work this time--though I doubt anyone who counts for very much in the film world will take the lesson. Instead they will cleave to the old saws about keeping the creatives under tight control rather than letting them chase visions, as, drawing confidence from Deadpool's delivering the boffo b.o. they were so desperate to see a franchise film make (the $1.3 billion they might have hoped the Joker would make), they go on trying to shamelessly milk any and every franchise they can for generic material--and then make excuses for people not showing up irrelevant to the real issue.
At this rate Joker 2 may not even reach the $60 million mark domestically, while it is hard to picture it getting very far over the $200 million mark globally. Assuming the studio keeps half of that it will end up with $100 million or so net, while (barring this being one of those movies that fails in theaters but explodes in post-theatrical venues) doing only as well in streaming and the other post-theatrical arenas, leaving it with a net not much above $200 million, against outlays that may have been in the $300 million+ range. That works out to a $100 million+ gap, with a recent Variety report indicating the loss as possibly twice that ($150-$200 million).
The worst loss posited for any movie so far this year, this makes it a very strong candidate for the top of Deadline's list of the year's biggest losers next spring. However, that is far from the whole story, the film's performance also a reminder of the prospect that the entertainment press does not want to talk about, namely that the theatrical market has changed structurally. On average the public goes to the movies twice a year now instead of the 3-4 times they went in the 2010s and the 4-5 times they went before, all of which has made them pickier about what they give those trips to the theater over to--all as the old blockbuster model may be failing in getting them to do that. Admittedly Joker did not fit that model very closely, and the sequel may have been even further removed from that model still (with its distance from the pretense of being an origin story for a supervillain, its sharp generic shifts from the original, etc.), but the expectation that people would show up for Number Two because they responded to Number One is very much part of that model, and part of what the backers were counting on, and did not work this time--though I doubt anyone who counts for very much in the film world will take the lesson. Instead they will cleave to the old saws about keeping the creatives under tight control rather than letting them chase visions, as, drawing confidence from Deadpool's delivering the boffo b.o. they were so desperate to see a franchise film make (the $1.3 billion they might have hoped the Joker would make), they go on trying to shamelessly milk any and every franchise they can for generic material--and then make excuses for people not showing up irrelevant to the real issue.
Joker 2's Fortunes: An Analogy
A relatively low-budgeted, noirish, drama of a marginal, lonely, man losing his shaky grip on reality who crosses paths with a candidate seeking office in a decaying "Gotham" in post-post-war boom America culminating in chaotic violence becomes a critical darling (Best Picture nominee!), and good-sized box office hit. Flush with success the movie's now lionized director brought back its star for his next film, which is a musical with a way bigger budget--and the movie fails catastrophically with critics and audiences alike, as the entertainment press reported that the "auteur," misusing the considerable good will his prior success had won him, was out of control and made a horrible mess of things.
That description could be of Martin Scorsese going from Taxi Driver to New York, New York. However, it could also be of Todd Phillips going from (the Martin Scorsese-inspired and Martin Scorsese-produced and, I thought, Martin Scorsese-imitating-to-a-fault) Joker to its recently released sequel, an analogy that has been on my mind ever since I heard Joker 2 would have a musical element, but which only a few seem to have drawn, and that only recently.
Perhaps this is because the movie was something of a low point for the still highly lionized Scorsese, all as that particular film, in spite of the fact that Scorsese's productivity and good repute have outlasted those of so many of his contemporaries, contrasts with how many of the less successful films of the stars of the Hollywood new era (most obviously Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now and Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, but also others like William Friedkin's Sorcerer) never enjoyed redemption in the eyes of the critics, and has lapsed into obscurity.
Or perhaps they thought of the analogy, but didn't speak up about it in public, because citing the notorious flop would have been at odds with their role as Les Claqueurs du Cinema. (Granted, King of Comedy was a commercial failure at the time, but it is at least pretty well respected as the gap in the Rotten Tomatoes score shows--King having an 89 percent fresh rating against the 57 percent rotten rating of the poorly regarded New York, New York.)
In either case it just did not come up much, but will probably come up more in the years ahead when people talk about the film--especially if Joker 2, like New York, New York, does not find its way to the kind of redemption for which those few who have spoken in praise of the film might regard as its rightful due.
That description could be of Martin Scorsese going from Taxi Driver to New York, New York. However, it could also be of Todd Phillips going from (the Martin Scorsese-inspired and Martin Scorsese-produced and, I thought, Martin Scorsese-imitating-to-a-fault) Joker to its recently released sequel, an analogy that has been on my mind ever since I heard Joker 2 would have a musical element, but which only a few seem to have drawn, and that only recently.
Perhaps this is because the movie was something of a low point for the still highly lionized Scorsese, all as that particular film, in spite of the fact that Scorsese's productivity and good repute have outlasted those of so many of his contemporaries, contrasts with how many of the less successful films of the stars of the Hollywood new era (most obviously Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now and Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, but also others like William Friedkin's Sorcerer) never enjoyed redemption in the eyes of the critics, and has lapsed into obscurity.
Or perhaps they thought of the analogy, but didn't speak up about it in public, because citing the notorious flop would have been at odds with their role as Les Claqueurs du Cinema. (Granted, King of Comedy was a commercial failure at the time, but it is at least pretty well respected as the gap in the Rotten Tomatoes score shows--King having an 89 percent fresh rating against the 57 percent rotten rating of the poorly regarded New York, New York.)
In either case it just did not come up much, but will probably come up more in the years ahead when people talk about the film--especially if Joker 2, like New York, New York, does not find its way to the kind of redemption for which those few who have spoken in praise of the film might regard as its rightful due.
Finding Interest in the Quotidian
It has been the longstanding view in modern times that really serious artistic work is "realistic," with work that conspicuously departs from reality justly marginal--better-suited to, for example, children than adults, and people who are less than totally adult in some sense (the "nerd" who likes cartoons and video games, certainly, seen as less fully adult than their peers, and the inverse of the "cool" kid who appears more autonomous and sophisticated and grown-up than their peers). There have always been exceptions, of course, but the point is that they have been exceptions, this very much the rule.
Much of this may seem a matter of the general silliness that we get when people of conventional mind try to make distinctions about what is proper and what is not--which produce such absurdities as the idea that Fantasy Football is a pastime worthy of adults, but not playing football on a video game console. But it may be that there are more substantial factors inclining the young more toward the fantastic, the not so young toward the realistic--and especially the everyday. The young lead very limited lives, and the big wide world of which they have seen less--and the worlds beyond that--may have an attraction for them that they do not to a more experienced, more world-weary adult who has already seen a bit of the world, often on terms that have not been particularly pleasant, and been disillusioned by it, so that such things as long journeys to faraway places have not the same romance for them.
That sounds negative, and I have no intention of pretending it is not, but at the same time I do not think all the factors are negative ones. Alongside what they lose is there what probably is more likely to come with age than in any other way, the ability to take an interest in the little things, and the everyday things--mastery of the handling of the details of which is, after all, an area where realism has been stronger than those forms of fiction which incline to flights of fancy.
Much of this may seem a matter of the general silliness that we get when people of conventional mind try to make distinctions about what is proper and what is not--which produce such absurdities as the idea that Fantasy Football is a pastime worthy of adults, but not playing football on a video game console. But it may be that there are more substantial factors inclining the young more toward the fantastic, the not so young toward the realistic--and especially the everyday. The young lead very limited lives, and the big wide world of which they have seen less--and the worlds beyond that--may have an attraction for them that they do not to a more experienced, more world-weary adult who has already seen a bit of the world, often on terms that have not been particularly pleasant, and been disillusioned by it, so that such things as long journeys to faraway places have not the same romance for them.
That sounds negative, and I have no intention of pretending it is not, but at the same time I do not think all the factors are negative ones. Alongside what they lose is there what probably is more likely to come with age than in any other way, the ability to take an interest in the little things, and the everyday things--mastery of the handling of the details of which is, after all, an area where realism has been stronger than those forms of fiction which incline to flights of fancy.
The Waning of Nostalgia for the Rat Pack
I remember that in the late '90s there was a resurgence of interest in the old "Rat Pack" and its members and their works. Thus did we see, for example, a homage of sorts to the group in Doug Liman's Swingers, the Steven Soderbergh remake of Ocean's Eleven that launched a whole cinematic franchise, and such oddities as Larry Bishop's Mad Dog Time, as Ray Liotta played the actual Frank Sinatra in HBO's film The Rat Pack. (Meanwhile remembrances of the group cropped up in a good many smaller ways--as with Brent Spiner's rendition of Dean Martin's "Sway," as seen in the film Out to Sea--itself a piece of nostalgia in its reunion of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.)
The boom in Rat Pack nostalgia waned, but something of it seemed to come back a decade or so later, helped perhaps by the obsession of a culturally influential stratum with the aesthetic of the '50s as Mad Men became a hit.
However, a decade after there was no repeat of that. The only really significant usage of the Rat Pack's work in pop culture in the late '10s was in Todd Phillips' Joker--a film which, significantly, was itself a throwback (to the work of Martin Scorsese in the '70s and early '80s), and in which the particular theme of "Send in the Clowns" was highly relevant (and probably the reason the film also used Sinatra's rendition of "That's Life" in the end credits).
Some might see cultural politics in that, identifying nostalgia for the Rat Pack with a kind of machismo of which the mainstream has been less and less approving, with the #MeToo era a low point for such tolerance. However, one can also see it as a matter of how in popular memory even as grand a legacy as that of Frank Sinatra and his cohorts fades--perhaps the more quickly with pop culture getting ever more fragmented, and popular memory getting shorter all the time.
The boom in Rat Pack nostalgia waned, but something of it seemed to come back a decade or so later, helped perhaps by the obsession of a culturally influential stratum with the aesthetic of the '50s as Mad Men became a hit.
However, a decade after there was no repeat of that. The only really significant usage of the Rat Pack's work in pop culture in the late '10s was in Todd Phillips' Joker--a film which, significantly, was itself a throwback (to the work of Martin Scorsese in the '70s and early '80s), and in which the particular theme of "Send in the Clowns" was highly relevant (and probably the reason the film also used Sinatra's rendition of "That's Life" in the end credits).
Some might see cultural politics in that, identifying nostalgia for the Rat Pack with a kind of machismo of which the mainstream has been less and less approving, with the #MeToo era a low point for such tolerance. However, one can also see it as a matter of how in popular memory even as grand a legacy as that of Frank Sinatra and his cohorts fades--perhaps the more quickly with pop culture getting ever more fragmented, and popular memory getting shorter all the time.
The Copyright Nazi Sheds Crocodile Tears for the Struggling Artist
It is rare that anyone in this society expresses sympathy for the struggling artist. Quite frankly, with very few exceptions, no one cares about struggling artists but the struggling artists themselves--not even their more successful brethren. (As Balzac put it when writing of the publishing world in Lost Illusions, "the most brutal bookseller in the trade is not so insolent, so hard-hearted to a newcomer as" they, for where a "bookseller sees a possible loss of money" in a newcomer's manuscript, a successful author sees--"dreads"--in the newcomer "a possible rival," with the result that "the first shows you the door, the second crushes the life out of you.")
The result is that such expressions of sympathy from people who were not struggling artists have tended to get my attention in the past--until time and again the reference to the troubles of artists proved to be just a hook for another rant about the glories of copyright and attack on anyone not taking a maximalist view of such rights as scum. That said, I will not get into the rights and wrongs of copyright here--but the plain and simple matter of the fact is that sterner enforcement of copyright laws is just not going to do much for the newcomer. Such laws defend the interests of those who possess intellectual property. They do nothing for those who have yet to produce any of commercial value. The standard copyright supporter's position is that a strong copyright regime incentivizes the creation of such property--but those struggling artists need a lot more than that if they are to do so successfully, and those professing concern for them show no interest in that whatsoever.
After all, if we grant what copyright's supporters say, and that a more stringent copyright regime does leave, for example, publishers with fatter profits, what are they likely to do with them? Give newcomers more chances? Only those who have no understanding of publishing, business or the neoliberal age can imagine that they would prefer this to a course of new mergers and acquisitions, or financial engineering, because publishers exist to make money, not produce books (and not even necessarily make money by producing books if they can get more, faster, with greater certainty in some other way)--the monuments that young authors rear with their life's blood, as Balzac put it, to them "simply a good or a bad speculation," and in the view of publishers, generally a bad one, whatever the merits of the work. Alas, a refusal to acknowledge such facts is a requirement in those given platforms from which one can reach an appreciable audience in our time, helping make the reference to the interests of struggling writers the cynical thing that it is.
The result is that such expressions of sympathy from people who were not struggling artists have tended to get my attention in the past--until time and again the reference to the troubles of artists proved to be just a hook for another rant about the glories of copyright and attack on anyone not taking a maximalist view of such rights as scum. That said, I will not get into the rights and wrongs of copyright here--but the plain and simple matter of the fact is that sterner enforcement of copyright laws is just not going to do much for the newcomer. Such laws defend the interests of those who possess intellectual property. They do nothing for those who have yet to produce any of commercial value. The standard copyright supporter's position is that a strong copyright regime incentivizes the creation of such property--but those struggling artists need a lot more than that if they are to do so successfully, and those professing concern for them show no interest in that whatsoever.
After all, if we grant what copyright's supporters say, and that a more stringent copyright regime does leave, for example, publishers with fatter profits, what are they likely to do with them? Give newcomers more chances? Only those who have no understanding of publishing, business or the neoliberal age can imagine that they would prefer this to a course of new mergers and acquisitions, or financial engineering, because publishers exist to make money, not produce books (and not even necessarily make money by producing books if they can get more, faster, with greater certainty in some other way)--the monuments that young authors rear with their life's blood, as Balzac put it, to them "simply a good or a bad speculation," and in the view of publishers, generally a bad one, whatever the merits of the work. Alas, a refusal to acknowledge such facts is a requirement in those given platforms from which one can reach an appreciable audience in our time, helping make the reference to the interests of struggling writers the cynical thing that it is.
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