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CCNY'S INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER   OCTOBER 2000 VOLUME 3, NUMBER 1

I Survived Hollywood’s Summer
By Yechiel Hoffman

If you were one of those, like me, trying to avoid the heat and humidity of a New York summer with some decent, air-conditioned entertainment, there was no solace available in movie theaters this summer. As we sat stranded on our urban island, America tuned into 16 strangers doing their thing on the Survivor island. While Survivor was the big television story of the summer, averaging upwards of 20 million viewers a week, the biggest entertainment story was the lack of a decent story coming out of Hollywood.

So what were we left with? Formula popcorn flicks, gross-out comedies, and a lack of solid indie fare to placate that intelligent urge. Back in May hope was in the air as Gladiator extraordinaire Russell Crowe proved that yes, an engaging chameleon of a dramatic actor can become America’s newest heartthrob and action star. Things were looking up until Hollywood unleashed hell on America in the form of Battlefield Earth and MI-2: two star-driven labors of love that previewed for the public the contrived, formulaic drivel that awaited hungry audiences in the coming months.

Oh, what hope the public had after last year’s runaway successes like Austin Powers, The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project; it really seemed that Hollywood was finally getting it, but no, it was just a joke. This year we were subjected to watching Nick Cage crash a car in 60 seconds, Mel Gibson patriotically murder the British, George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg sink a boat, and the X-Men prequel their coming sequels. Comedy premiered to us the ever-grossening humor of Eddie Murphy, the Farrelys, Martin Lawrence, and Scary Movie. If you don’t agree with me that the summer roster flopped, check out the numbers. Attendance was down fifteen percent from last year, down for the third year in a row. With ever-increasing ticket sales, only strong product can bring the people in, and this year’s films failed to do so. Many executives commented that business was certainly soft because the picking was soft. So without movies to turn to, we turned to Survivor.

A dear friend commented to me that the reason reality shows were such a hit was because they gave the public real people to gossip about during the day and not feel bad about it when they go to sleep. Survivor hit upon a chord in American culture that movies have failed to hit for a long time. Even with a lousy narrator, shifty camera work and fat naked guys, we watched earnestly as 16 folks sabotaged each other for the sake of fame and one million dollars. In this most capitalistic of endeavors we watched as the snake ate the rat. The true moral of the story is not that greed and politicizing relationships pay off (Richard got lucky), but that the network for the aged, CBS, can bring viewers in with original programming, with fresh faces and with a plot that you have not seen before.

The fact is that Hollywood is all about the money. The service of entertainment is only the rainbow the executives take to the pot of gold. It’s up to the public—people like you and me—to cry out for solid, quality entertainment, and while I’m wishing, why not some that delivers a concrete message with sensitivities to the audience at large. Here’s hoping that the fall will bring us some decent entertainment: supposedly that’s when Hollywood serves up its good films for Oscar season. (You’ve already heard my rant on that.) I don’t want to spend my entire fall wasting patriotic pride on American athletes, only to have to wait till the Super Bowl weekend for some real drama. No, I don’t care to see a thousand dot.coms push their drug during breaks in the game; that’s when Survivor II: the Outback premieres. So, brothers and sisters, get ready for another year of hearing Yak rant about the best and worst entertainment has to offer. Welcome back.

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