American Cinema of the 1990S

INTRODUCTION Movies and the 1990s CHRIS HOLMLUND ■■■■■■■■■■ On the Verge of a New Millennium The World Wide Web. The Internet. Cell phones. Palm pilots. Chat rooms. Spam. Computer viruses. Netscape. E-Bay. Amazon.com. Google. Yahoo. E-mail. Blogs. Webcasts. CD-Rs. Digital cameras. DVDs. Net- flix. Zip drives. Cyber space. iFilm. “See you online.” “The server’s down.” A flood of words and concepts linked to digital technologies changed our lives in the 1990s. A new communications revolution was under way that continues to alter daily life in both developed and developing countries. By 1994, three million people were online; by 1998, one hundred million. At the end of the decade, the number had leapt to almost one billion. Nonetheless, as the 1990s ended, a marked digital divide partitioned the world into those with access to computers and those without. Even in the United States, the richest country in the world, rural areas and the urban poor were underserved. How to assess a decade most of us remember? The movies and the moods of the 1990s depict a period that most Americans experienced as both peaceful and prosperous. Previously unimaginable technological advances in connectivity were promised everywhere we turned. But new dangers also threatened. The mosquito-borne West Nile virus reached American shores. AIDS and tuberculosis became global health threats. Domestic terrorism appeared more widespread, more frequent, and more deadly than ever before. Periodically there were foreign terrorist attacks on buildings and airplanes. Spam clogged our e-mail programs; computer viruses damaged desktop and laptop computers. On the verge of a new millennium, governments, banks, and businesses spent billions backing up the computer systems that now controlled electricity, water delivery, banking, and more—all for fear of a “Y2K” meltdown that never came. Scores of big- and small-budget U.S. films testified to our fascination with, and fear of, these digital revolutions. Who can forget Total Recall 1 2 CHRIS HOLMLUND (1990), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), You’ve Got Mail (1998), or Being John Malkovich (1999)? Would digital technology replace live actors by res- urrecting dead stars? A 1991 Coke ad promised as much: it featured a party that included Louis Armstrong, Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Cagney, Cary Grant, and Groucho Marx. Would digital technology bring about “the end of cinema as we know it,” as the title of Jon Lewis’s 2000 anthology provocatively suggested? Was cinema—that is, celluloid—dying, as George Lucas famously suggested in 1999 when he declaimed, “I love film, but it’s a 19th century invention” (Romano 37)? ■■■■■■■■■■ The American Movie Industry and Production: From Merger Mania to Online Alternatives The media industries that produce, promote, exhibit, trans- mit, and showcase movies were profoundly affected by the decade’s technological, political, and economic transformations. This is hardly surprising. After all, the conglomerates they all belonged to had helped to create and promote these changes. Film after film announced media breakthroughs and became marketing milestones. Dick Tracy (1990) was the first 35 mm feature film with a digital sound track. That same year, testifying to the longevity of hit movies, Top Gun (1986) became the first VHS title to ship more than one million copies. Batman Returns (1992) introduced the six- channel stereo sound system that is now industry standard: Dolby Digital. With computer graphics used for the first time to create “real” animals, Jurassic Park (1993) savored colossal box office success: thanks to global interest and product tie-ins, it grossed $1 billion worldwide. George Lucas’s digitally shot prequel, Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace (1999) inau- gurated digital theatrical screenings on four U.S. screens. On a completely different scale, yet also a portent of things to come, was Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick’s low-budget independent horror film The Blair Witch Project (1999). With no stars and no big special effects, but with savvy online promotion and marketing, Blair Witch was the most profitable (in terms of percentage gross) film of all time, reeling in $248 million on a budget of $35,000.1 What’s behind these signposts? Although Blair Witch and other “indie” success stories testify to the increasing importance of economies of scale within the film industry, they were exceptions. The Big Six—Disney, Warner Bros., Sony, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, and Paramount— continued to dominate moviemaking, consolidating and extending their influence both horizontally and vertically throughout the decade. By 1999 INTRODUCTION 3 all were part of bigger conglomerates, each possessing connections to some combination of broadcast television, cable networks, the recording industry, video and DVD rentals and sales, and more. Several also exerted control over television news coverage.2 What would this centralization mean for freedom of information and expression? The Big Six were oligopolies, controlling and channeling from a huge number of buyers. Although independent films, documentaries, and fiction shorts offered alternatives, how many people saw them? Topping the list of Big Six companies in 1999 was Walt Disney, head- quartered in Burbank, California. Everyone knows the Disney brand: it’s stamped all over theme parks, merchandise, and movies. By the end of the decade, Disney owned several film- and television-related divisions, among them Hollywood Pictures, Buena Vista Pictures Distribution and Home Video, and Walt Disney TV. (It closed Touchstone Pictures in 1998.) Add to this empire the lucrative lifelong loyalty of Disney viewers. Like all Big Six studios, Disney expanded during the 1990s. In 1993, the company acquired Miramax. In 1996 it bought ABC television and radio. And by decade’s end Disney also owned and operated several ABC stations, the ESPN sports networks, the Arts & Entertainment (A&E) television network, the History Channel (partially), the Disney Channel, and Lifetime. It also had music holdings (Hollywood Records). And that’s just a partial list. A second Big Six company, Warner Bros., had become part of New York–based TimeWarner in 1993. In 1996 TimeWarner bought Turner Broadcasting and New Line, thereby ensuring it would have cable “down- stream” channels and advertising venues. (Turner Broadcasting housed CNN and TNT.) Add to that HBO, Cinemax, Turner Classic Movies, Warner Home Video, music, magazine and other publishing holdings, the Six Flags theme parks, D.C. Comics, the Atlanta Hawks basketball team, and the Atlanta Braves baseball team. Talk about diversifying with an eye to what interested the nation! Sony Pictures, allied with Columbia Pictures, Tri-Star, and other film and television companies, and owned by Tokyo-based electronics giant Sony Corporation, constituted a third Big Six company. Sony also owned Epic Records, Sony Music International, and other music companies, and a vast array of electronic and electrical equipment manufacturing firms. Thinking globally, Sony was a partner in the Hispanic Telemundo broadcast group. Within the United States, Sony controlled broadcast TV stations in various cities. In 1997, the corporation made trade headlines when, with Seagram, it merged the Sony Loews Theaters into Loews. As a result, Sony and Sea- gram could ensure exhibition for their various film and TV production 4 CHRIS HOLMLUND companies when the 1990s ended. Only Paramount’s owner, Viacom, could do the same. By 1999 a fourth Big Six company, Twentieth Century Fox, owned Fox television, certain stations, Fox Video, Sky Channel satellite in Europe, STAR TV in Asia, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and many widely read newspa- pers. News Corporation was Twentieth Century Fox’s parent company, with Rupert Murdoch at the helm managing all this (and more) from Sydney, Australia. For Murdoch and News Corp., TV and print journalism were more important than film. All over North America we tuned in each week to Fox TV’s “The Simpsons,” “The X-Files,” and NFL football programming. The Seagram Company owned a fifth Big Six studio, Universal Pictures, with headquarters in Montreal. Seagram had part ownership in the Home Shopping Network and was in the process of creating the USA cable network. In addition to substantial liquor and beverage companies, Seagram boasted big music holdings, owning MCA, Decca, Motown, and others. It also owned the Sony Cineplex movie theater chain (in partnership with Sony Entertainment) and the Universal Studios theme park. And in 1997 Seagram bought independent film production company October Films. Last: Paramount Pictures. New York–based Viacom bought Paramount in 1993. By 1999, Viacom owned several popular cable TV shows, includ- ing MTV, Nickelodeon, Showtime, the Movie Channel, and Comedy Cen- tral. In 1999 it bought CBS. It also owned and operated broadcast TV stations in several larger cities, smaller movie theater chains at home and abroad, video production and distribution companies, Blockbuster Music and Famous Music, and publishing houses like Simon & Schuster, Prentice- Hall, and Macmillan. Crucially, it owned the world’s largest video retail and rental chain, Blockbuster Entertainment (Allen 37). Like Disney and Warner Bros., moreover, Viacom operated a chain of amusement parks. Every Big Six company employed a different strategy as the decade pro- ceeded. All these economic tactics represented attempts to negotiate rising costs (Gomery, “Film Industry” 366). Star salaries were rising, thanks to powerful agents. Top talent like Sylvester Stallone, Tom Cruise, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mel Gibson, and Julia Roberts earned $15–$20 million per picture. Increasingly, they also garnered a share of the profits.3 Similarly, top directors like James Cameron and Steven Spielberg also commanded hefty fees and a share of the profits. Writers were typically paid much less, but a few bankrolled $1 million or more per film. Two of the highest paid were Joe Eszterhas, who earned $3 million for Basic Instinct (1992), and Shane Black, who received $4 million for The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996).

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