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Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

we don;t, but the idiot's point of view is what shapes what gets made by hollywood, and HOW it is made. you know this.

no way, no. that's a paranoid/conspiracy version. like "the illuminati control everything." i don't buy that vision at all.

the reality is artists have their dreams and tastes, the MANY PUBLICS have their tastes, producers want their money, etc., you shake that in a cocktail shaker and it gets done. it's ultimately a chaotic/random process. the perfect is the enemy of the good.

commercial pressures have always been present in art, and great art still gets made. you mentioned gatsby-- fitzgerald too had to eat. so you have to balance what you reeeeeeeally want to write (e.g., finnegan's wake, which nobody understands) to what the mass public wants to buy (e.g. romance paperbacks).

too many artists are invoved in hollywood for it to be mere brainwash. LA may be a sick town but it's also *stuffed* with talent.

part of the reason good writing migrated to cable TV was because it was cheap to produce and so there is much less risk and you can have "boutique" shows made for smaller audiences, not for mass consumption.

the opposite occurs in film where you need dumb trilogies of everything because it costs so much to make you have to *try* to guarantee massive revenues.

but funny thing-- good writing begets success, and blam, small things become massive (you were just talking about nirvana elsewhere, for example).

educated adults have flocked to sopranos and mad men partly in a way because there are no more godfathers or deer hunters at the movies. ok, we still had no country for old men but those things are rare now. so fargo is on tv too.