Year: 2013

Noreen Malone explores the question:

In July, The Wolverine, helmed by supposed movie star Hugh Jackman, opened to relatively underwhelming figures. 2 Guns, last weekend’s big Mark Wahlberg/Denzel Washington vehicle, underperformed too, but not as epically as The Lone Ranger’s flop in July. That movie featured another supposed movie star, Johnny Depp (Hollywood’s third-most valuable, according to Vulture), and movie-star hopeful Armie Hammer. “Tumbleweeds blew through theaters playing The Lone Ranger over the weekend, calling into question Johnny Depp’s star power,” fretted the Times. This calamity came just one week after Channing Tatum’s White House Down took in a disappointing $25.7 million its opening weekend. “[D]oes he even deserve his A-list status?,” wrote Vulture’s Kyle Buchanan. And summer movie season started with After Earth, an appallingly bad Will Smith star vehicle that failed to connect with audiences, prompting The Independent to wonder, “Is Will Smith’s reign at the summer box office over?”

Why all the performance-anxiety when it comes to male leads?

Yes, male movie stars tend to be more bankable than their female counterparts, and so it’s not great for the business as a whole if there are fewer of them. But that doesn’t entirely explain the endless, nervous parsing of what Channing Tatum’s stardom or (non-stardom) means. This isn’t solely a crisis about profits; it’s a cultural identity crisis. We go to the movies to see heroes doing heroic things, unlike the small screen, where the episodic nature of television has given way to the rise of the anti-hero. The emphasis on actors being able to singlehandedly, swaggeringly “open” or “carry”  or “rescue” a  movie seems like an extension of that wish. And now movie stars, like sports and political figures before them, have let us down. Or maybe not “us,” but more specifically, America’s men. Hollywood movies are made to appeal to a male audience, after all. It’s not so much that women are rejecting Hollywood’s vision of what manhood is; it’s more that American men don’t know who they want to be any more.

Update from a reader:

Wow, there are a lot of fudged facts and bad assumptions in the rather uninspired piece you posted by Noreen Malone. As someone in the film business, let me run a few things down:

1) The Wolverine opened just fine and will make a nice profit over its run. I’m not sure where she comes up with “underwhelming”, unless she was expecting it to make $100 million first weekend, which nobody out here expected it to do.

2) 2 Guns opened at #1 at the BO, made more than a third of its budget first weekend, and will end up as a minor hit. It was also made for a lower budget ($61 million) than the names in it would suggest, and marketed at that lower budget, so the success it did have was due in large part to its stars’ likability.

3) White House Down has the unfortunate distinction of being the second White-House-related terrorism movie of the summer. It was destined to fail. The fact that it even opened at $25 million is a testament to Tatum’s fan base. And, other than that one, Tatum has been gold, and he’ll have another huge hit next year with the 21 Jump Street sequel. The guy’s as legit a movie star as exists in the world today.

4) The Lone Ranger has been a well-publicized disaster for two years. Its budget was such that it has essentially no chance to make money, and they pulled a lot of advertising dollars at the end to try to cut their losses. Also, Johnny Depp has said repeatedly that he doesn’t care if his movies make money. He’s an accidental movie star on the strength of the Pirates movies and Alice in Wonderland, but other than that, he’s done quirky, indie things, many of which have failed at the BO. A huge name, but not a guy who does enough promotion or gives enough of a shit that he should be a barometer for the state of movie stardom generally.

5) After Earth was a vanity project for Will Smith that he essentially bought as a present for his son. It’s a complete anomaly and will likely not be repeated. It’s his Battlefield Earth. If he did Men in Black 4 tomorrow, it would be a huge hit.

Most importantly, what Malone says is nothing new. People have been saying that for 20 years. William Goldman wrote about it extensively in his topical books on Hollywood. No movie star has ever been able to get a huge opening for a terrible movie. Adam Sandler had 10 hits in a row … then he did Little Nicky, and nobody came. That doesn’t mean he’s no longer a movie star. It means that people don’t want to see movie stars in shit movies. Which, if you think about it, is actually a reassuring thing to know about American audiences. It’s comforting to know that quality still matters somewhat.

(Unless we’re talking about Grown Ups 2. I don’t know what to make of the fact that that POS is a hit.)

A reader writes:

I see that in the context of your Spotify conversation, a reader has claimed that musicians make “all their money from touring, and to a lesser extent, merchandise.” The music industry is sort of unusual in that many people have strong opinions about how musicians “ought” to be making money, despite not having any first-hand experience in how musicians actually DO make a living. We actually surveyed over 5000 musicians about their income and among the things we’ve learned is that only 27% comes from touring – much less than many people assume.  And only 2% comes from merchandise, like t-shirts, posters, etc.

With regard to Spotify and streaming services, an important thing to understand is that what works for some artists may not work for others. In particular, streaming services are set up in a way that makes sense for labels and artists whose goals are based on mass-audience assumptions, like the major labels (which own equity stakes in the services).  They may not work as well for artists who are trying to build sustainable careers on a more intimate scale.  Here’s a blog post we wrote on the subject.  In general we’d like to see systems that allow people who aren’t Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift to make a living.

Update from a reader:

The statistics offered by your reader are very misleading.

It would appear that the 5,000 musicians surveyed include very few who actually record and release records as featured artists for a living.  The survey appears to be dominated by orchestra players, music teachers, studio musicians, and others.  None of this is relevant to the issue at hand, which is whether Spotify and the other streaming services reduce the income recording artists make from their recordings and whether or not this is significant.

If one were to survey recording artists, I think you would find that a much larger percentage of their income is derived from live performance, particularly since record sales have declined in the last decade.

Your reader also misunderstands the nature of the relationship between major record companies and the streaming services.  Sure, the three majors have equity interests in Spotify and in some other services.  But they also have licensing agreements with the services under which the labels are paid royalties.  I have some familiarity with this area and I can tell you that the equity interest owned by the major record companies doesn’t lead to a lower royalty rate under the licenses.

The real divide is between current artists who release new albums and so-called “catalog” artists. Anecdotal evidence suggests that streaming services have had a negative impact on sales of new releases.  On the other hand, for older artists who have aging catalogs of recordings, sales of physical records and downloads have in many cases withered away, and for those artists, streaming services, as well as digital radio services, provide a new source of income.

Another reader:

I found the discussion of artist royalties very interesting. Two years ago I earned my masters degree in music business and focused my final paper on independent artist and what the business looks like for them. I’ll agree that royalties earned through Spotify, Pandora, and other similar free services are very low. But I’d argue that the alternative to those services isn’t people purchasing a download, but finding other free ways to access the music.

The bottom line for artists is that the cat is out of the bag with regards to getting music for free. It’s been over a decade since the Napster years, and the consumer expectations have changed drastically. Big-name artists like Thom Yorke can get away with pulling their music from Spotify because dedicated fans will pay for it anyway. For new artists, though, it is unlikely that unfamiliar fans would be willing to invest money up front in something they haven’t heard before. They’ll look for it for free, and if it’s not on Spotify or YouTube then there are other means to get the same thing without even a fraction of a cent going towards the artist. There are still dedicated music fans out there willing to invest their time and money to find the music they want, as the niche vinyl market shows, but they’re the minority.

I do feel sorry for people working to make it in music today. Technology has made it easier to record music and distribute it worldwide instantly, but harder to get noticed. Few artists have ever been able to make their living only through music, but more people than ever are trying to with little success. I’m currently working at SoundExchange, a performing rights organization that processes royalties for public performances of sound recordings on digital radio stations, so I know what those numbers look like.

In an interview with Slate, David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene, argues that downplaying the genetic aspects of athletic talent is harmful:

I think it’s become really detrimental, because now there’s this early hyperspecialization in sports, and there are very few sports where the science shows that actually helps and others where it shows it’s detrimental. What the more recent science is suggesting is that you should have a sampling period, when you find what activity and training fits your genome best before you specialize in your mid-teen years. And so I really think we’re doing some athletes a disservice with that message, but some of the scientists, sports psychologists particularly, have felt like saying, “Well, you can achieve anything,” is the message you should put forward. Well, the converse of that is, if you didn’t get to the NBA, it’s because you didn’t work hard enough. It’s a theme which maximizes the sort of “free will” message, and it’s self-helpy, which is why people enjoy it, even when most people in the back of their head realize that they have proclivities which make them better at one thing than another.

Razib Khan enjoyed Epstein’s interview with NPR:

[Epstein] reports that 17 percent of men over the the height of seven feet (2.14 meters) between the ages of 20 and 40 in the United States are playing in the NBA!

Obviously there is no gene which is guaranteed to make you an NBA star, but having the allelic profile which predisposes you to being seven feet tall obviously helps. It also illustrates the ridiculousness which the “10,000 hour rule” has been taken to in popular culture. Practice matters, and, talent matters. At extremely high levels of performance one often needs to have focus to engage in repetitive tasks over and over. But, one also likely needs a preternatural complement of genes. Most of the children of NBA players do not become professional basketball players, but the probabilities are far higher. Epstein outlines these sorts of facts in a breezy and concise manner in the interview, as well as dismissing the infantile disorder of genetic determinism which results in the purchasing of DNA kits which will tell you if your child is an athlete or not.

In an interview with The Atlantic, Epstein explains how the field of genetics is already being used to improve athletic performance:

I think genetically tailoring your diet is already a thing; for example, one of the doctors I talked to for the book also does genetic testing for retired athletes. And he knows who’ll respond better to fish oil supplements for brain health, things like that. I think we’ll start to see more of that.

One other thing that’s happened organically is individualized training. Great coaches sometimes do this intuitively: They have these intuitions about genetics, in that they recognize that certain athletes are responding to certain types of training while others aren’t. There’s one scientist I talked to who actually takes biopsies, so that he has the muscle-fiber types of athletes—percentages of fast-twitch and slow-twitch, stuff like that—and develops training regimens for them accordingly. Most athletes are recreational and won’t be getting muscle biopsies, but hopefully we can start paying more attention to what individuals respond to.

Earlier Dish on Epstein’s book here.

Julia Ioffe supports the president’s cancellation of the impending Moscow summit, but nevertheless lays the blame with Obama for letting things reach this point:

You can’t back Putin into a corner and leave him no options. If you are a world leader worth your salt, and have a good diplomatic team working for you, you would know that. You would also know that when dealing with thugs like Putin, you know that things like this are better handled quietly. Here’s the thing: Putin responds to shows of strength, but only if he has room to maneuver. You can’t publicly shame him into doing something, it’s not going to get a good response. Just like it would not get a good response out of Obama.

The Obama administration totally fucked this up. I mean, totally. Soup to nuts. Remember the spy exchange in the summer of 2010? Ten Russian sleeper agents—which is not what Snowden is—were uncovered by the FBI in the U.S. Instead of kicking up a massive, public stink over it, the Kremlin and the White House arranged for their silent transfer to Russia in exchange for four people accused in Russia of spying for the U.S. Two planes landed on the tarmac in Vienna, ten people went one way, four people went the other way, the planes flew off, and that was it. That’s how this should have been done if the U.S. really wanted Snowden back.

Samuel Charap expects Russia-reset skeptics like McCain to now “seize on Obama’s decision in order to proclaim that they were right all along”:

Obama’s Russia policy did produce a long list of important results, from the New START agreement, which verifiably reduced both countries’ nuclear arsenals, to Russian WTO membership, which signaled Russia’s integration into the global economic order. And while the space for pluralism in the Russian public sphere has narrowed significantly since Putin’s return to the presidency, Russia is not North Korea — or even neighboring Belarus.

And despite notable differences over issues like the conflict in Syria, Russia has actually been a crucial partner for achieving U.S. objectives internationally. Just take the agreements Obama reached with then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in 2009 that allowed for overflights and rail-based transit through Russia to support the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. Without that northern route, it’s hard to imagine the U.S. risking closure of the other major transit route — through Pakistan — with the operation to take out Osama bin Laden.

Drezner downplays the chill in relations:

Essentially, each government got what they wanted from the other — arms control, WTO accession, Afghanistan — a few years ago.  Besides counter-terrorism, there ain’t much left on the table where there is any kind of bargaining core — and neither country matters all that much to other for core issues.  The question going forward is whether the lack of agreement about future issues will compromise existing cooperation.  My hunch is that it won’t, and that the tit-for-tat ends here.