Business Morons

I love this business analysis of why the Box Office was actually down this year (despite 3D movies and increased ticket prices).

It is a pretty common refrain heard by anyone who pays attention to movies that this was a bad year for movies. Casual movie watchers struggle to remember their favorites of the year and only reluctantly talk about The Social Network, Inception, The Black Swan, The Kings Speech, The Fighter, and True Grit as potential best movie candidates. All decent movies, none seem to garner the excitement of a No Country or a Sideways or even Zodiac. So it seems obvious to me why movie attendance is down: poorer quality. It has nothing to do with 3D. Nothing to do with competition. It has everything to do with creativity and imagination and the lack of it this year. Business analysis tries to downplay these factors because they can't measure it in excel. But it is beyond obvious to any movie watcher out there. We are in a strange business. You can't measure a story well told. You can't measure freshness. You can't measure originality. And yet, these are the reasons people go to movies. Yes, they may actually go because of word of mouth or good reviews or good previews, but all these exist on a prior level, at an earlier level, at the level of seeing a good story, well told.