Forgetfulness
FORGETFULNESS is like a song
That, freed from beat and measure, wanders.
Forgetfulness is like a bird whose wings are reconciled,
Outspread and motionless, –
A bird that coasts the wind unwearyingly.
Forgetfulness is rain at night,
Or an old house in a forest, — or a child.
Forgetfulness is white, — white as a blasted tree,
And it may stun the sybil into prophecy,
Or bury the Gods.
I can remember much forgetfulness.
Pinewood Studios could not have wished for a better, or more fitting, birthday present than the news, confirmed this week, that the next Bond movie will be shot on its celebrated 007 stage rather than in Eastern Europe.
It’s 70 years since the unlikely triumvirate of the Sheffield building tycoon Sir Charles Boot, the eccentric jute heiress Lady Yule and the Methodist flour magnate J Arthur Rank joined forces to redevelop Heatherden Hall. Their idea was to turn this Buckinghamshire country house into Britain’s most modern film studios.
Pinewood – the new name had both a Home Counties ring and a Hollywood twang – had much to recommend it. It was within easy reach of London. (When actor and fanatical runner Bruce Dern was starring in The Great Gatsby in 1973, he was able to jog home every evening to his hotel, Claridge’s. “It was only 12 miles. I measured it,” he claimed.) Everything about the new premises conveyed luxury and class. Not only did Pinewood boast the largest private swimming pool in Europe; it had a Turkish bath, squash courts, spectacular gardens and acres of land. Boot even commandeered the old library from the liner Mauritania to lend a little distinction to Pinewood’s boardroom. more…
One need not venture far into The Decline of the Hollywood Empire before stumbling across the first exclamation mark. It is right there, at the bottom of the first page of chapter two: “Digital distribution,” writes author Hervé Fischer, “will end this archaic system of distribution and hasten the decline of the Hollywood empire: two giant steps forward for film in one fell swoop!”
If this is true, the excited punctuation is wholly warranted. The mere idea of the collapse (“imminent” and “inevitable,” apparently) of the planet’s mightiest pop cultural apparatus evokes images worthy of the kind of apocalyptic spectacle Hollywood has been trading in since D.W. Griffith hired his first elephant wrangler: walls crumbling, skyscrapers toppling, seas rising, ships sinking, great cities consumed by conflagration—the whole judgement-day, world’s-end, made-in-California, Day of the Locust shebang.
Like most people who have been prophesying Hollywood’s fall since C.B. Demille was in junior-sized jodhpurs, Fischer—a philosopher, multimedia artist and holder of the Daniel Langlois Chair for Fine Arts and Digital Technologies at Concordia University in Montreal—sees the prospect as a cause for celebration. Ergo, all those excited exclamation points: “Marketing and promotional budgets for A-movies are as staggering as those for the productions themselves!” he exclaims by way of noting just how insanely cost-inefficient current mainstream Hollywood production practices are. Yet, at the same time, “movie-making is a license to print money, which the majors don’t want to let expire!” Yet what is the average cost of your run-of-the-mill blockbuster, as of 2002? “A record $102.8 million!”
While not always quite so breathlessly, doomsayers have been bellowing through the Hollywood hills for years. Clearly, there’s something about this industry, which has held the planet in its twinkly thrall for almost a century, and which has transformed so much, that summons wishful thinking of the deathly variety. Artists would like to see it suffer and die for its philistinism. Small businesses want it dead for its muscular monopolism. Non-American film makers would kill it for killing non-American film industries. Minorities loathe its stereotypes. And really: who wouldn’t like to see Tom Cruise counting his change at the 7-Eleven?
But if there is one reason why the mainstream American movie industry has incurred such biblical wrath over the decades, it has probably got something to do with guilt. If you love movies, you’ve loved Hollywood at some time or another. And if you love movies, you’ve had to hate yourself for that. more…
