Word: studio
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...when Jack Valenti was named the head of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the studio system was largely intact. Industry pioneers like Jack Warner and Darryl Zanuck were still running the companies they had founded. Old lions like Cary Grant, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Charlie Chaplin continued to make pictures. Jerry Lewis, Doris Day and Elvis were starring in their two anodyne movies a year. Virtually all income came from box office receipts and showings on broadcast TV stations. There were no home computers, cable networks, videocassettes or DVDs. No four-letter word had been spoken...
...like Medium Cool, were serious, intense, mature social studies; and one, Midnight Cowboy, won the Oscar for the best picture of 1969. But two things changed. The MPAA had copyrighted its other classification, but not the X, which was soon appropriated by the early-'70s wave of porno features. Studios quickly became reluctant to release X-rated films, and an important avenue for frank artistic initiative was closed off. The director was still "free to make any movie he wants to make"; but now his studio contract obliged him to trim an X down to an R. Freedom of expression...
...warned that the infant cable industry would become "a huge parasite in the marketplace, feeding and fattening itself off of local television stations and copyright owners of copyrighted material. We do not like it because we think it wrong and unfair." Today, cable earns billions for the studios, as both a second home for feature films and gold-mine subsidiaries in studio-owned channels like MTV, HBO and Comedy Central...
...know people who hated Jack Valenti, or rather hated the ratings system he created and sustained. Kirby Dick's documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated makes a good case for the prejudice the MPAA showed in favor of major-studio product and against the more adventurous indies. Francis Coppola once said that all of modern cinema, from art films to blockbusters, uses only about 5% of the medium's potential artistic vocabulary. We may need another revolution - not of content but of the means of distribution - to allow filmmakers to explore the other...
...unusual beats. Tamborello released his last solo effort, “Life Is Full of Possibilities,” in 2001, and received rave reviews. Critics praised Tamborello’s honest dedication to collaboration and his ability to work with fellow artists to create new sounds in the studio. The style of blending seemingly clashing tones that earned Tamborello staunch defenders in 2001 remains dominant on “Dumb Luck,” and once again proves to be the shining facet of the album. Like a car that hasn’t been driven in a while...