7/5/23
Newsletter #387
The Crack of Dawn
Way back when in the late 1990s when I was living in Santa Monica, my good buddy Marvis was a movie set carpenter. After more than 20 years of building movie sets, Marvis managed to remove the ends of three of his fingers with a router. His offhanded (har har) comment was, “I don’t think I’m getting any more coordinated as I get older.” So, Marvis began to explore other work options, and he also went back to college. Marvis took Economics 101, and he and I would go over his lessons. The econ book said that there were three economic perspectives: conservative, liberal and Laissez faire. Marvis and I added a fourth category: que será, será. One basic old economic theory is: price does not affect demand, which Marvis and I both found fascinating. The concept being: if people want something, they’ll pay for it, no matter what the cost; if they don’t want it, they won’t pay for it, no matter what the cost. It makes a lot of sense, but it’s sort of counterintuitive. I think your average person, like me, believes that if you lower the price sufficiently eventually you’ll get rid of it, and there’s a certain level of truth in that, too.
In any case, my dear old dad, who considered himself an economics genius, often quoting the likes of Milton Friedman, found the theory absurd. From his standpoint as a real estate owner, if he lowered the price enough, he’d get a customer. Since he didn’t own anything that wasn’t well-located, eventually, if the price was low enough, someone would buy or rent. However, if you create a product that people want, even if it has no actual value – like a Pet Rock, for instance – people will pay whatever it costs (to an extent).
It's an interesting theory, and probably not entirely true, but mostly true. However, since it didn’t fit in with my father’s worldview, all I had to do was bring it up and he’d get mad. He’d then accuse me of being an idiot, and I’d remind him that I didn’t make it up, I read it in an econ textbook. He’d look at me skeptically, his expression saying, “Why would you look at an econ textbook?”
Ultimately though, he and I just liked pushing each other’s buttons. He once asked me, “How much does a roll of film cost?” I said, “A 400-foot roll of 35mm film is $100. Then it’s another $100 to process it, then another $100 to print it.” My dad said, “So, a roll of film has an inherent value of $100, and then you get your hands on it, ruin it, and then it’s worth nothing.” I shrugged, “Or it’s ET, and worth a billion dollars. Or anything in between.” Since at that time I was making crap like (Stan Lee’s) Harpies (2007), he didn’t seem convinced. He would then burst out with something like, “Only idiots make movies.” My response was, “You mean idiots like Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock?” However, since I was already about 48 years old, his priceless look back at me clearly said, “I’m sorry to inform you that it’s too late for you to be Hitchcock, Kubrick, or anything of the sort.”
I would then pull out my hidden derringer and shoot him in his Republican ass. I’d ask, “Which world leader had the most impact and influence in the last 50 years?” I could depend on him saying something absurd like, “Richard Nixon, who opened China.” I would then inform him, “No, not Nixon, or Reagan, either. No question it would be Fidel Castro. He outlasted nine U.S. presidents and inspired a hundred revolutions all over Africa.” Then all I had to do was sit back and watch the fireworks.
But my dad and I had at least one bond – we both liked movies. As a kid my whole family usually went to the movies once a week. With two sisters and my mother, the women outnumbered the men, so we never went to action movies, war movies or westerns. Therefore, maybe every two or three weeks my dad would say to me, “Let’s see a movie,” meaning let’s see a “boy’s” movie. As we exited the theater, both of us lighting cigarettes, my father often had pithy comments. One of his more prescient comments was made coming out of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Dad said, “When did the serial become the feature?”
Flashing even further back to 1974, my dad and I came out of theater after seeing the late John Wayne movie, McQ (1974), wherein the Duke is trying to challenge Dirty Harry as the toughest, meanest cop. Instead of a .44 Magnum, the Duke has a Schmeisser grease gun with a silencer, which is a really cool weapon. He fires that thing at anybody, without aiming, and hits them twenty times, then their car blows up. As my dad and I lit our cigarettes, in the lobby, we both agreed that was a pretty good picture considering the Duke was at the advanced age of 67. Just then who should come out of the same theater behind us but Bruce Campbell and his dad, Chuck. Neither of them smoked, but we all agreed it was a pretty good picture.
Our day will come, when we’ll have everything. But where will we put it?
It is a good title.
If I ever write a history of Hollywood from 1977 (or maybe 1975) to the present, it should be called, “When Did the Serial Become the Feature?”