Hollywood’s malaise era

     Over the past six decades, the trendsetting U.S. film industry has witnessed a dramatic transformation from a creatively driven art form where stardom and prestige were leveraged to feed mouths, to a profit-centric horizontally integrated entertainment complex dominated by tentpole releases, franchises and sequels. Groundbreaking cinema has whittled down to technical achievements and high-concept premises, which all appear to function to the end of feeding safe box office figures. In this article we delve into the structural changes and legislative developments that shaped the entertainment landscape we know today, through the lens of Paramount, an acclaimed studio that wouldn’t exist without these changes. We focus on the period from the late 1960’s to the early 1990’s, when Hollywood experienced sweeping corporate shakeups and conglomeration that ushered in an era of creative malaise, the effects of which permeate trends even today.

The Golden Age of Hollywood ended with the advent of TV and box office performance increasingly made or broke productions.

     The Golden Age of Hollywood, known for its classic pumping artistic freedom and creative ingenuity, began to fade in the dawn of the 1960’s, disrupted by the success of network television and giving way to what I call the “Malaise Era" in the following decade – a phenomenon analogous to other economic woes in the U.S. during the gas crisis years, with businesses large and small scrambling to restructure for an era in which previously profitable practices were now in dire straits. As control over major film studios shifted into the hands of corporate executives with little understanding or appreciation for the art of filmmaking, a focus on profits and a desire for horizontal integration with adjacent industries emerged. The timeline of this transformation starts with the studio takeovers in the late 1960’s and traces its path to the age of greater spending on fewer films in the 1980’s, typically blockbusters, where franchising and sequelization overshadowed creative integrity.

     Network-owned, advertiser pleasing television was now a mainstay, the SAG-WGA guilds just completed a strike and the big players in Hollywood no longer had the cash flow to keep current operations afloat. Downsizing, worse yet, divestiture and takeovers were called for. Suddenly, executives with backgrounds in industries unrelated to film found themselves at the helm of studios like Warner Brothers, United Artists, Paramount, and Universal. The era of "parent companies and subsidiaries" dawned as corporations realized the potential profitability of the entertainment industry. These executives brought a business-oriented mindset to the creative world of filmmaking, leading to a focus on profits over artistic expression. They sought to maximize returns on investment through aggressive marketing and strategic partnerships, thus laying the groundwork for the media entertainment complex we see today.

     Many historic lots with old film pedigree were sold in the 1960’s: 20th Century Fox sold 260 acres of backlots as parking lots and the Century City shopping mall. A similar deal was made for United Artists’ Santa Monica lot before the entire studio was bought up by TransAmerica in 1967. Paramount, which was considering exiting the filmmaking industry altogether, was bought by Gulf+Western, an auto parts company, and lost its Desilu production studio. Kinney National Services, specializing in shoes and obituary services, merged with Seven Arts and Warner Brothers, which had just lost its animation studio. Westinghouse almost took over Universal before being halted by the Justice department. The film industry was taken over by trades businesspeople with no grasp of or appreciation for the art of filmmaking. Studio takeovers resulted in more profitable parent companies and subsidiaries, but they traded that financial security for a lot of the creative integrity and brainpower they had relied on for acclaimed products. Many of the acclaimed productions that came out in the early 70’s were a product of downsizing and riding on inertia from auteur practices of the previous decade, such as Frank Yablans’ restructuring of Paramount Pictures and the release of The Godfather 1 & 2 and Chinatown. Others like Kirk Kerkorian with his acquisition of the struggling MGM looked to property investment in the Las Vegas leisure industry, and paved the way to what proliferated in the 80’s and 90’s as horizontal integration – Greater spending went into fewer films that rode on the laurels of their cast, directors or high-concept titles, with more and more thought put into franchising, sequelization and most profitably, merchandizing.

     Emerging as a new breed of executives from other industries, individuals like Robert Evans and Frank Yablans saw potential in pioneering the art of synergy, and throughout the 70’s successfully integrated various forms of media to promote films. They recognized that movies could be marketed more effectively by leveraging other platforms like books, soundtracks, and merchandise. While this approach proved to be profitable, it also signaled a shift away from the traditional focus on storytelling and filmmaking being the main attention grabbers, for better or for worse.

     As studio executives, Yablans and Evans brought their business acumen from non-entertainment industries and applied it to the film world. Evans, who served as the head of production at Paramount in the early years of the Gulf+Western merger, brought financial success to the floundering, currently ninth largest studio with acclaimed films like Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Godfather (1972) and Chinatown (1974), which became critical and commercial successes, overshadowing several duds the studio produced in-between. Yablans, while at Paramount and later MGM, focused on a doctrine of franchising, developing sequels, and building on successful properties to ensure long-term profitability.

     In this evolving media entertainment complex, individual productions of what we would call art films today, featuring less than A-list celebrities and intimate stories, became increasingly risky to finance. A shift occurred towards greater spending on fewer films, which could gather crowds and offset production costs with a spectacular theatrical run – the be profitable no longer meant breaking even at the box office. The solution were “high concept” movies, which would sell well with a simple yet compelling premise. The 1975 film Jaws is often cited as the first true high concept blockbuster, with its unprecedented marketing campaign and massive box office success. This success set a precedent for the industry, leading to an increasing focus on high-budget spectacles rather than thought-provoking storytelling. As the 70’s went into the 80’s corporate executives recognized the potential for enormous profits in these mega-productions that could carve off a piece of the cultural zeitgeist for themselves as intellectual properties, so studios could look forward  to more predictable profits with franchisable premises and established fan bases.

     With the advent of high concept high-grossing films, speculative productions that weren’t to the current era’s increasingly outrageous box office hit standards of profitability could spell disaster. UA’s Heaven’s Gate (1980) did fine at the box office, but cost so much to produce that it was written off as a bomb, bankrupting United Artists and leading the studio to be acquired by MGM.

     The effects of this ever more aggressive corporate-driven agenda were scrutinized in Pauline Kael's 1980 essay, "Why Are Movies So Bad?" Kael, a prominent journalist and film critic for The New Yorker, pointed out that the pursuit of profits had stifled creativity and resulted in a wave of formulaic, uninspired films. She lamented the lack of risk-taking and artistic integrity, as studios increasingly churned out sequels and franchises to capitalize on established intellectual properties, rather than risking to invest in original and daring projects.

     Amidst this changing climate, the 1970’s and 1980’s saw the rise of male-centric martial arts, action, and exploitation movies, which have often been pinned as bad by critics. For all their formulaic mediocrity, however, these films garnered significant mass-market appeal and commercial success. Increasingly outrageous premises like Road House, Rocky, Dirty Harry, Tango & Cash and Die Hard resonated with audiences, reflecting (problematic) societal values and capturing the zeitgeist of their respective eras. Once the audience was there, the high concept formula would end up being stretched to the extremities of budgetary constraints. Entire studios like Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus’ Cannon Films proliferated in the era of cheaply produced action like the Ninja, Death Wish, Delta Force and Breakin’ franchises. These films were designed to entertain and often relied on spectacle, explosions, and fast-paced action sequences, even musical numbers. Their simplicity and formulaic nature made them accessible to a broad audience, further contributing to their virality and financial success. Despite criticism from some circles for lacking depth, these films became cultural touchstones and established the foundation for the blockbuster era that some argue never really went away.

     To understand the mass-market appeal of male-centric martial arts, action, and exploitation movies of the 70’s and 80’s, one must turn to Jeffrey Sconce's insightful article, "The Golden Age of Badness." Sconce argues that these "bad" movies were, in fact, cultural responses to the disillusionment of the era. In the wake of the OPEC crisis, Vietnam War, Watergate scandal and general economic downturn, audiences sought catharsis through larger-than-life heroes who could single-handedly conquer evil. These movies, often dismissed by critics as lowbrow and shallow, were paradoxically celebrated for their visceral escapism. The rise of charismatic action stars like Patrick Swayze, Kurt Russel, Chuck Norris, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and more contributed to the enduring popularity of this genre, both in “serious” big-budget productions and cheap fodder from the likes of Cannon Films. The "badness" of these films, characterized by over-the-top action sequences and one-liners, resonated with audiences seeking relief from the grim realities of the time. At the same time, this era of film production encapsulated the many insecurities of the generation that conceived it, and would spell its own demise in due time.

     By the 1980s, Hollywood had become a landscape dominated by formulaic blockbusters and franchise sequels. Creative risks were increasingly discouraged, as studios prioritized surefire hits to appease shareholders and sustain corporate growth. As a result, many talented filmmakers found it difficult to get their unique visions greenlit, leading to a creative crisis within the industry. At the fringes of the industry, auteurs like John Waters created filthy and unsettling pictures like Pink Flamingos (1972) or Female Trouble (1974) out of protest, which were unsellable but gained niche acclaim for their counterculture appeal. Around the same time ideas posited by Susan Sontag in her essay “Notes on Camp” gained traction in film discourse, the term “camp” entering the lexicons of queer and other counterculture viewers. Their resistant readings established a new canon for the ironic enjoyment of bad films, whether intentionally bad (like the works of Waters) or not.  70’s and 80’s action/thriller mainstays were not immune from being viewed as camp, and many saw renewed fandom post release, such as the sweaty action-packed roles of Stallone, Swayze or Russel being reinterpreted as comical homoerotically suggestive texts. The end of this era was near and the camp spectatorship would assure decades of ridicule for it.

     The unsustainable nature of the trends set at the end of the 60’s could be seen as the executives of the malaise era tried to apply their formula two decades later. In the mid-’70s, Robert Evans left the executive suite to become an independent producer. While Chinatown was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, his later pictures like Marathon Man (1976), Black Sunday (1977) and Urban Cowboy (1980) never met previously set standards for theatrical dynamite. Notably Frank Yablans cowrote and produced Mommy Dearest (1980), which would later become a hallmark of unintentionally produced camp. As a result of that film’s intentional comedic misreading by cult audiences, much of Joan Crawford’s career (and by extension that of Faye Dunaway who portrayed Crawford in the biopic) was immortalized as overly dramatic camp. Both Paramount executives departed their careers in the 80’s after more and more box office flops produced by their doctrine. The culture had already been changed however, and “new” Hollywood would remain.

     The synergistic practices in Hollywood pioneered by the Robert Evanses of the 70’s are largely to blame for the horizontally integrated modern production sensibilities which rely more aggressively monetized adjacent industries for maximum profit out of any given IP. Sconce attributes much of the badness since the 80’s blockbuster era to an unrelenting impetus to maximize return of investment over rather subjective sounding artistic merits. Catering to the highest ticket and merchandise sales therefore meant that the more cerebral everyday films of yesteryear began a shift toward lowest common denominator exhilarating content that was just fun to engage with. Hence the hypermasculine war and martial arts era and later an increasing pivot toward the sci-fi, adventure and superhero genres. This would end up in a marketing race between studios to come up with a plethora of homogenized blandness in the form of reboots and sequels to IP’s that already had some resonance with multiple generations of viewers.

The legacy of Hollywood’s Malaise Era left a profound impact on the film industry, shaping the landscape of predictably bankable franchise films we see today. While it brought forth technological advancements, it also perpetuated a corporate-driven agenda that prioritized profits over creative expression. The transformation from creative freedom to corporate control reshaped the way films were produced and marketed, ultimately leading to the dominance of IP-driven narratives throughout the 1990’s and into our current day. The era's legacy continues to influence the media entertainment complex, with both positive and negative repercussions on the art of filmmaking, as many legacy studios simply would not be around today had these concessions not been made. As the industry moves forward, it is crucial to strike a balance between commercial success and artistic integrity to preserve the essence of cinema that once organically captivated audiences worldwide.