Stallone on Hollywood


Sly returns to his roots with Rocky Balboa. Are his instincts for filmmaking better than the demands of marketing experts?
It's probably not going to be up past Monday afternoon, but Rush Limbaugh interviews Sylvester Stallone about the new film Rocky Balboa here.

I'm not really fond of movie sequels, and even less fond of movie series, but the internet buzz on this one has been pretty good.

This was the telling Sly quote from the interview.

Well, it's funny, up until like 1980, '82, '83, you had this kind of like pioneer spirit or cowboy mentality or you flew by the seat of your pants and you say, "Ah, you know what, wisdom says I shouldn't do this but I have a gut feeling." That's gone now. Now it really is, believe it or not, 90% of the films are green lit, not by the studio heads, but by the marketing department. You're a slave to them. If they don't think they can sell it or if they don't have a hook then the movie doesn't get green lit no matter how much they say, "I kind of like this film." What's the angle? We're not sure what the angle is. So that thing is thrown to the wolves. So this is the first film I've done just using instinct since, you know, 1990.

Stallone certainly isn't the first to say it. Harry Knowles spent a good portion of his book ranting against it, it is one of the better things in his writing. And I think it is what is wrong with the "Hollywood system" today.

There is no way a film like Chinatown could get made today. I wouldn't exactly call First Blood high art, but today it would be rejected. The Godfather? Forget about it. Coal Miner's Daughter would have been crushed because it isn't sexy enough. Casablanca had a hard enough time when it was made, it would have been axed in the script stage by today's standards.

Marketing may know about marketing, but they seldom know about a product or a film. And when marketing calls the shots, well, you can expect the product to be second rate.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Fri - December 15, 2006 at 05:43 PM  Tag


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