Art for Art's Sake

According to Jonathan Yardley's review of Edward Jay Epstein's The Big Picture, blockbusters are aimed at children and teenagers and are scripted according to a formula make most of their money out of DVD sales.

Such art as does still emerge from Hollywood can be found in the comparatively modest productions from the "specialty film units -- Miramax Pictures, Sony Classics, Fox Searchlight, Paramount Classics and Warner Independent Pictures," which are a return "not so much to the studio system as to the art-house system, which had at one time coexisted alongside the Hollywood studios." These movies are modest only by Hollywood standards: Their average cost was "an astounding $61.6 million in 2003, nearly two thirds that of studio movies," and "since many of the more adult films produced by the independent subsidiaries did not appeal to the youth-oriented toy, game, and other ancillary markets, they often resulted in huge losses for the studios."

The Big Six swallow these losses not because they're suicidal but because "studio executives seek, along with strictly commercial projects, projects that are likely to attract the sort of actors, directors, awards and media response that will help them maintain both their standing in the community and their own morale." As Epstein says, "as persuasive as the [Midas] formula is from a moneymaking standpoint, it doesn't satisfy the community members' appetite for prestige, recognition, and creative expression.

Well, that's better than no art at all.