The
Hollywood Economist
The numbers behind the industry.
“Everything's
geared to 15-year-olds... I have girlfriends who are 25
in L.A. who are lying about their age because people tell
them they're too old. That's
how pathetic it is.” —Morgan Fairchild
In
Hollywood, where the radioactive half-life of a starlet's
fame may be briefer than her high school education, the
effective career of an actress can be nasty, brutish, and
short, or, in the lingo, “way harsh.” “The opportunities
for a pretty starlet in the romantic comedies, horror films,
and the amusement-park films that are made for the Clearasil
crowd tend to dry up when they hit 30,” one of Hollywood's
most insightful producer notes in an email. “They have to
start ‘acting' as opposed to simply gracing the screen with
their gorgeous presence and many of those starlets are just
not equipped for this second step.” Anti-aging camouflage,
such as plastic surgery, botox, collagen injections, and
other elixirs may provide a brief respite but eventually
every actress comes up against the age stereotyping in Hollywood
famously described by Goldie Hawn: “There are only three
ages for women: Babe, District Attorney, and Driving Miss
Daisy.”
Some actresses succeed in breaking through this age barrier
but even they find it a daunting challenge to escape Hollywood's
requisites to satisfy the youth culture, as Rosanna Arquette
demonstrates in her interviews with Meg Ryan, Holly Hunter,
Charlotte Rampling, Sharon Stone, Whoopi Goldberg, Martha
Plimpton and a score other actresses in her 2002 documentary
Searching For Debra Winger . Equally illuminating
are Nancy Ellison's photographs in Starlets :
Before they were Famous of gorgeously posed actresses
who, having failed to make it through the Babe portal, vanished
from Hollywood. As Martha Plimpton explains about casting,
“It's either, she's a starlet or she's an old hag.” Such
ageism proceeds not from malice, ignorance, or disdain for
the performers on the part of studio executives, but from
their business model.
When
studios found that they could no longer count on habitual
moviegoers to fill theaters, they went into the very risky
business of creating tailor-made audiences for each and
every movie they released. Like in an election campaign,
the studios had to get people to turn out at the multiplexes
on a specific date—the opening weekend. The principle means
of generating this audience is to buy ads on national television.
For this strategy to work efficiently, the studios find
a target audience that predictably clusters around programs
on which they can afford to buy time. They then bombard
this audience—usually 7 times in the preceding week to an
opening—with 30 second eye-catching ads.
The
studios zero in on teens not because they necessarily like
them, or even because the teens buy buckets of popcorn,
but because they are the only demographic group that can
be easily motivated to leave their home. Even though lassoing
this teen herd is enormously expensive—over $30 million
a film—the studios profit from that the fact that this young
audience is also the coin of the realm for merchandisers
such as McDonald, Domino Pizza, and Pepsi. The studios depend
upon these companies for tie-deals that can add a hundred
million dollars or more in advertising to a single film
and can expand the primary audience for DVDs, video games,
and other licensable properties on which the studios now
bank on for their economic survival.
Studios
therefore place the lion's share of their TV advertising—over
80 percent in 2005—on the cable and network programs that
are watched primarily by people under 25. The studios also
incorporate music in their sound tracks that teenagers listen
to, and try to cast the sort of babe-actresses that their
crucial audience can relate to, if not fantasize about.
Adrienne Shelley, the star of The Unbelievable Truth
, for example, described her casting experience this
way: “I get a call in my car on the way to an audition from
the agent. He said, ‘What is really important is that they
think you are f***able.'”
The
silver lining for the ex-babe actress who is no longer able
or willing to play this Hollywood game is that there is
now an Indie game. Independent movies, as I have previously
written , often finance their productions by arranging
presales abroad. Since foreign distributors usually require
a recognizable American star (if only to increases the chance
of DVD and TV sales in their countries), actresses who have
earned name recognition as babes in Hollywood's horror,
coming-of-age, and amusement park entertainments often are
needed to lock up these deals. But while roles in adult-oriented
Indie movies may be more artistically rewarding than roles
as fantasy-bait in teen movies, they are rarely, if ever,
as high paying. Such is the starlet's dilemma in babeland.
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