Ron D Schaefer
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East Coast, West Coast
EAST COAST, WEST COAST: FILM AS CULTURE Commentary by Ron Schaefer If you’ve watched movies – Hollywood movies – long enough, you may notice that there are (at least) two distinct cultures going on within the movie industry that produces two different types of product, similar in many ways but also different enough to tap into the mindset that produces them. And I’m not talking about genre, or budget size, or independent versus corporate; although all of that plays an influence. Just like Billy Joel will sing about a "New York State of Mind," so too there is a California state of mind that permeates the film industry as a cultural entity that's different from the rest of the country and the rest of the world. It doesn't matter where the writer/director was born: they could be from Dearborn, Michigan, graduated from Princeton, and did a doctorate at Oxford -- when they come to LA they become part of the system, a cog in the machine. And they start turning out product that looks like what everybody else does. This is partially due to marketing, and partially to tradition. Outsiders as well as natives lose their identity and produce work that looks like they've never been outside the Hollywood bubble at any point in their lives. And to guys like me -- that's very noticeable in the work that appears on the screen.
By Ron D Schaefer3 years ago in FYI
East Coast, West Coast
EAST COAST, WEST COAST: FILM AS CULTURE Commentary by Ron Schaefer If you’ve watched movies – Hollywood movies – long enough, you may notice that there are (at least) two distinct cultures going on within the movie industry that produces two different types of product, similar in many ways but also different enough to tap into the mindset that produces them. And I’m not talking about genre, or budget size, or independent versus corporate; although all of that plays an influence. Just like Billy Joel will sing about a "New York State of Mind," so too there is a California state of mind that permeates the film industry as a cultural entity that's different from the rest of the country and the rest of the world. It doesn't matter where the writer/director was born: they could be from Dearborn, Michigan, graduated from Princeton, and did a doctorate at Oxford -- when they come to LA they become part of the system, a cog in the machine. And they start turning out product that looks like what everybody else does. This is partially due to marketing, and partially to tradition. Outsiders as well as natives lose their identity and produce work that looks like they've never been outside the Hollywood bubble at any point in their lives. And to guys like me -- that's very noticeable in the work that appears on the screen.
By Ron D Schaefer3 years ago in FYI
