Spring Break
Why Art is About to Make a Comeback in Hollywood...
Insights from Mark Gill, Former President of Warner Independent Pictures and Miramax Films
Brenda Vongova, A&E Editor; Film Consultant, HBS Art Appreciation Society
Issue date: 4/30/07 Section: A&E
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Hollywood film executives are oftentimes berated for producing an extraordinary amount of awful and non-artistic films. In the ideal entertainment world, studios would serve as art houses that consistently pumped out content of higher quality. They would not be purely big banks. However, according Mark Gill, former President of Warner Independent Pictures and Miramax Films, "Art is about to make a comeback in Hollywood".
According to Gill, Jaws ruined the movie business because it gave permission for entertainment executives to produce and market a bad movie very well. Unfortunately, Jaws happened to be a good movie that ushered in an era of poor movie making. What followed was a generation of movie producers who focused on film marketability first and then quality as an afterthought. It was considered too risky to try to produce an execution-dependent movie.
On April 12th, 2007, Mark Gill spoke to HBS students on why Hollywood has reached the end of a thirty-year era in the movie industry, where good marketing can no longer save bad films. When the industry truly figures that out--which it is just starting to do--the whole business of making movies will change for the better. Mark Gill provided fascinating industry insights for aspiring film producers:
1. On the script:
The script is the blueprint of the film. Do not be dumb. Always read the script before purchasing it! Gill is astounded whenever he learns of fellow producers purchasing scripts before reading them. Sadly, most scripts are bad. Mark receives approximately five thousand scripts per year. Of this amount, only five hundred are good. Gill has been instrumental in changing the quality of Hollywood films. When Gill served as the former President of Warner Independent Pictures, his studio was the first in film history to have an Oscar nomination in each "Best Picture" category: "Good Night, and Good Luck" for Best Picture, "March of the Penguins" for Best Documentary, and "Paradise Now" for Best Foreign Picture. Currently, Gill is CEO of The Film Department (TFD), a new $200 million company that will focus on star-driven feature films of quality content in the $10-35 million range. According to Gill, the only way to cut the movie budget to $10-$35 million and cutting the salaries of stars is by producing films from cream-of-the-crop scripts...films worthy of Oscar Nominations.
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