UnNews:Hollywood experiments with "mindless movies"
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This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation. |
2 June 2007
LOS ANGELES, CA - Reeling from “astronomical” box office losses, major Hollywood studios have decided to experiment with what one executive described as “mindless movies.” Screenwriters have been instructed by filmmakers to forego even the pretense of plot and concentrate on sex-laden, violence-riddled action sequences. Movies, as American audiences have come to understand them, are likely to become a thing of the past.
Ned B. Muster, a Warner Bros. executive, who wishes to remain anonymous, told Unnews’ reporter Lotta Lies that “the public is more pubic than cognitive, and they want to see nudity, not morals, skin not philosophy.” Films that did well in the 1930’s and 1940’s, such as Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and It’s A Wonderful Life, are passé now, he contended. Instead, audiences want movies like Eyes Wide Shut, Caligula, Last Tango in Paris, Roger Rabbit, and Porky’s which are virtually “senseless, focusing on breasts, buttocks, male and female genitals, and sex, sex, violence, and sex.”
Malcolm Dowd, a Hollywood insider, who also wishes to remain anonymous, agreed with Muster. “The producers aren’t calling the movies ‘mindless,’ of course, because, as stupid as the American people are, the industry’s executives don’t want to risk offending them by implying that they are stupid. If one or two of them were to figure out that by filming mindless movies for their entertainment, Hollywood brass was suggesting their audience isn’t too bright, moviegoers might feel insulted and retaliate by refusing to see more than two or three movies a week.”
For a while, Bernardo (“Bernie”) Bottoms, a movie critic for Instant News said, “special effects and animation saved the day. Moviemakers got rid of plot, theme, and socially redeeming value, the excuses for making movies in the old day, and bedazzled moviegoers with explosions, people on fire, car chases, train wrecks, blood, gore, and, of course, naked people simulating or, in some cases actually having sex, as in Intimacy and 9 Songs, both of which feature live sex of the oral variety.” Even supposedly children’s fare, such as Splash, featured bare-breasted women and shots of women’s (and, less frequently, men’s) bare buttocks. However, audiences soon became jaded, especially with any and all manner of sex available free online. “When Al Gore invented the Internet, he really hurt Hollywood.”
Hollywood also experimented with nude children, such as Brooke Shields (The Blue Lagoon), Jodie Foster (Taxi Driver), and David Bradley (Kes), even filming the rape of one such star, Dakota Fanning (Hounddog). However, many adults, themselves parents, objected to seeing child stars exploited in this manner, so filmmakers started showing sex and violence between inanimate objects, animals, and other non-human characters. Especially in science fiction, sex and violence took, as it were, center stage. Soon, even sex between androids, extraterrestrials, robots, and animated characters such as Roger Rabbit and his voluptuous, nearly naked wife Jessica, failed to hold audience’s attention, and, Bottoms said, “they voted with their feet, abandoning movie theaters in droves.”
The problem, media consultants determined, was not the sex and violence themselves, but, rather, the fact that the movies had plots. “People don’t want to see movies with a story line; they just want to see T & A,” media analyst Myron Moore said. “Movies with plots have themes, and themes are too much like sermons, telling or suggesting that there is meaning, purpose, and value to life. Audiences don’t want to be lectured at or to hear screenwriters preach to them though movies; they just want to be entertained.”
Instead of movies with plots, mindless movies, which the industry is calling “experimental films,” will just present sounds and images. One such film, Butterflies, showed various types of butterflies fluttering among flowers, over fields, and in trees while classical music plays. Nudity is provided by topless sunbathers, whom the butterflies, in an extended “scene,” visit on their migration south before winter. Violence occurs as men and women, armed with nets, seek to capture the insects, killing several in the process as Jim Morrison of The Doors sings, "I want to hear the scream of the butterfly." A disclaimer informs audiences that “No butterflies were harmed in the making of this motion picture.“ The film, which runs 90 minutes, garnered praise and award nominations at the Cannes Film Festival. “This movie is important, because it represents the films to come. In fact, there’s already a sequel to Butterflies in the works, to be called Moths.”
Source[edit | edit source]
- Lotta Lies "Butterflies and Moths: Hollywood’s new “mindless movies”" Instant News, 8 seconds ago