TheWrap: Amy Pascal interview
Last week, TheWrap posted this: editor-in-chief Sharon Waxman interviewing Sony Pictures Entertainment co-Chairman Amy Pascal. Title of the piece: “The Movie Theater is Our Soul; We Just Need Better Films.” Some highlights:
Amy Pascal: I’m not willing to concede that the sky is falling. I just don’t feel like it is. I feel like the box office always expands with people’s desire to see movies. I think you wrote an article maybe 5 years ago about how the movie business was over and box office was down and nobody was going to the movies. And it’s not a very original thought of mine but it’s a fickle business. It sometimes expands. The other thing that’s interesting that you’re seeing this summer is there are some movies where people are jumping to the conclusion that they haven’t worked, like ‘How to Train Your Dragon.’ That movie’s done fantastically well, all over the world. I think it’s got a fantastic multiple because it was a good movie. Good movies are working, and I think that we need to be buoyed by that.
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AP: To be fair to all of us, nobody sets out to make a crappy movie. Nobody says, “Let’s make this one bad.” You’re always trying to make it good. Now, sometimes you succeed in making it good, sometimes you really succeed at making it great, and sometimes you massively fail and make a bad movie. Which you …
SW: Which you still have to sell.
AP: Which you still have to sell. But it wasn’t as if he thought, “Oh, this one doesn’t have to work.”
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SW: With greater ethnic diversity among moviegoers, does that mean you’re thinking about making more movies that will appeal to that audience?
AP: No, I wouldn’t do it that way. I think you make movies about authentic human experiences and then people find themselves in it. I would never segment movies that way.
SW: But I would think that that would be a logical thing to do, although I have noted that Hollywood has tried over the past 10 years and they have not been particularly successful when they tried to do niche movies.
AP: I really think people go to movies where they can recognize humanity and characters they relate to, and I think segmenting a movie for a certain demographic is not good to do.
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SW: Are you not under pressure from the people who you report to, for the lack of a better word, to be focusing on the bigger projects that you can guarantee big returns on?
AP: Oh yeah, 100 percent. I mean, of course. And, every day, if you look at what’s made money last year and this year, in 2008 and 2009, and what been true so far, all the movies that make all the money are brand names. You know, except for maybe “The Hangover,” and “Up,” and “2012,” and “Blind Side,” everything else is a book, a remake …
SW: It’s an “Iron Man,” a sequel —
AP: … a comic book, a remake of a television show, or an intellectual property that everybody knows. I think that when half, or not half — that would be wrong — a quarter of the marketing job is done for you by it being a brand name and not a new business that you have to launch, that’s what the big movies are about. That’s for sure. But not every movie is gonna make $200 million of profit.
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AP: I’m a complete believer in movie theaters. Movie theatres are the heart and soul of what we do, and always will be, because viewing movies is a communal experience. And the best experience that any of us has had at the movies is in a dark theatre with the lights turned off. Because in that experience, you can let yourself go, and letting yourself go and be transported is an essential part of the storytelling experience. When you are not watching it in the theater, you’re in control of how you are viewing it, right? You can get up, you can do this, you can do that, you can take it with you, you can a watch it a little bit here and there. You have not made yourself open to the storytelling experience. You’re in control of it. In a movie theater, you have no control, and there’s something great about that. It’s one of the few places any of us are comfortable giving up control, and that is why the experience of a movie theater is different than from anywhere else.
SW: That’s a really good point. I hadn’t thought of it as a control kind of thing, but I think that is a really interesting way of thinking about it.
AP: Because otherwise you are the one allowing it to come in. You’re the one turning it on or off, or the size of it, or the anything of it. And, in order to fully drown out everything that’s happening, you need to give up your control. You have to, and that’s why it’s such a great experience … ’cause there’s so few places in the world that any of us get to do that, except when we are watching something that someone else is doing. That’s why concerts are so great, that’s why sporting events are so great. We can’t control what those people are doing, and we want to remain in awe of things because that’s the whole point of entertainment! That’s like, art! You know, you go and see art in a museum, they’re like, unbelievable! You have nothing to do with it, except to be inspired by it.
A couple of things. First it’s nice to see the head of a major studio who still has passion for movies. Not just the business, but the actual communal experience of people sitting together watching a movie. Movie-making can’t just be about numbers, there have to be decisionmakers involved who love to watch movies. Second consider this: As a screenwriter, you are in effect a seller. Studio execs are buyers. Therefore anytime you find an interview with the head of production, you would be wise to read it. Why? Because their words represent the mindset of the buyers. And if you can write a great story with a strong story concept, great characters, and fits the studio’s market needs, you’re much more likely to set up the project.
So after you read the interview, try this exercise: Imagine Amy Pascal sitting down to read your screenplay. Do you think she would respond to it, connect with it, see how it could find a big enough audience to justify acquiring, developing, producing, marketing, and distributing it as one of Sony’s movies?
Here’s some of the interview on tape:
Supposedly this is “the first in a series of interviews with industry leaders discussing the state of the entertainment industry in 2010.” Good news.
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