In the latest Harpers, Martin Scorsese has written a wonderful analysis and memoir of sorts about Fellini and his films. It shows his deft director talents, and how much films have meant emotionally and artistically for him. However, Scorsese's essay is marred by his continued inability to understand anything outside himself regarding the film "business." In the early part of the essay, Scorsese rails that the streaming industry is too focused on "content," not whether what is shown, i.e. the "content," is good, bad, or mediocre. He then laments at the end of the essay:
We can’t depend on the movie business, such as it is, to take care of cinema. In the movie business, which is now the mass visual entertainment business, the emphasis is always on the word "business," and value is always determined by the amount of money to be made from any given property—in that sense, everything from Sunrise to La Strada to 2001 is now pretty much wrung dry and ready for the “Art Film” swim lane on a streaming platform.
Scorsese bases his observation on his own limited life of coming of age in the early 1970s and being in NYC in the 1970s, which occurred between the fall of the major studios and the rise of the big independents in the 1980s. Scorsese has no understanding of anything that came before him, or occurred outside his rarified existence that started with his initial success in the early to mid 1970s. I truly doubt Scorsese has read much about the history of Hollywood as an industry, as nothing I've read from him shows any engagement with the overall history. I highly doubt he has read Lawrence Levine's Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America, either of the Lew Wasserman bios by Connie Bruck or Dennis McDougal, or other deeply researched and analyzed works regarding the film industry--and I can guarantee he never even heard of Gilbert Seldes' The Great Audience (1950), which nails the rise and dominance of radio and films, and the early history of television (Gilbert was an entertainment industry executive and journal editor who actually understood how directors and writers got and lost their jobs). It is extraordinary to me how ignorant Scorsese is about anything that can't fit into his continuing autobiography.
Scorsese's essay opens with a clever faux script of a person who is in 1970s Manhattan, and how one could walk to any number of film houses to see all sorts of intriguing and offbeat films there, and one could check the Village Voice for what was playing over the next week. Yeah, Marty. That was true. But, I lived in New Jersey at that time, and, in my deep suburban life, all we had was a bunch of Dirty Harry/Death Wish type films--and if we were "lucky" (sarcasm alert) Willard. And unlike the myriad of film houses in Mahattan, we had film houses that had one screen, and maybe two screens--before superplexes of the late 1980s and forward. For people like me and a hundred million other people, we had to get on a train to get to a major, major city (mine was Manhattan) to see any of the films Scorsese references. I admit I also remember a revival house in Linden, NJ, but that played relatively few foreign films for a few days apiece, and more often gave us offbeat films, which I loved, such as Harold & Maude. That was the best we got. It was not as wide a choice as we get now in our homes through streaming channels. That is much more than a "swim lane," Marty.
Scorsese reminds me of the people who lamented the rise of Border's and B&N in the late 1980s and 1990s, saying, "Oh, they are going to put Shakespeare & Co. in Berkeley out of business!" My response to such people then was, "Whoa! Before Border's, us folks in the deep suburbs or worse had only the B. Dalton/Waldenbooks in a mall which only carried what I called 'Self Help Diet Books By Lee Iacocca.'" I had to travel literally to Berkeley to Shakespeare & Co. to get the latest Chomsky or anything that was from a university press. Borders was outstanding in its selection, and when B&N came in not far behind, it was awesome to be able to get those books in the deep suburbs outside NYC or Los Angeles or any other major, major city. And yes, Shakespeare & Company did eventually close down, but more because the owner got too old to run it, the rise in property values--and rent--on Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue, and of course the Internet. It wasn't Border's. Not by a long shot.
This is what is wrong with Scorsese's argument against "content." Of course the studios are a business, Marty. File that under "No shit, Sherlock." For me, I personally don't give a damn that a lot of the content being produced for streaming television is "crap," to quote Sy Benson in My Favorite Year (1984) talking about Benji Stone's love for Alan Swann movies. What I care about is I now have access, on streaming channels, to see Brief Encounter (1945) on TCM through HBO Max. And La Strata is there, too.
Scorsese is a brilliant director, and I revere so many of his films. But, I remain stunned at his having so little understanding of the history of Hollywood as a business. We can now add that Scorsese has no understanding what it is like to live where 90% of Americans live when it comes to access to films and television series. Scorsese is becoming a grand old man of cinematic history for corporate media, and it is so wrong for anyone who wants to understand the actual history of the film industry. Scorsese's comments regarding Marvel films were bad enough. But now he is revealing in full view how he has never engaged with the way "highbrow" and "lowbrow" in art developed and continues to exist in modern society over the past 140 years.
Whenever Scorsese opines about business trends outside his own life story, he may as well be telling us to get off his lawn. Just as Scorsese missed the remarkable combination of "highbrow" and "lowbrow" exhibited in so many of the Marvel films of this still unfolding century (and yes, I think we are now past peak superhero film genre), Scorsese is missing how our national television experience has been significantly enhanced for those of us who don't live in the rarified world he lives in. Because of the explosion of "content" Scorsese is lamenting, those of us who seek quality film making and television series are able to see such artistic works ANYWHERE and ANYTIME. We don't have to travel and hang in Manhattan any longer. We now can watch La Strada when we want with a click of our clicker. I'll take that over the way things used to be. And the sooner you get your head out of your navel, Martin, the more wise you will be about things you obviously don't understand about the executives who produce and distribute your films.
