Movies Martin Scorsese is Pissed at your Obsession with Box Office Numbers

[skillzdadirecta]

Martin Scorsese Rails Against Box Office Obsession: It’s ‘Repulsive’ and ‘Really Insulting’

VARIETY.COM

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Martin Scorsese is tired of films being judged by their box office grosses.

 

[Kal-El814]

Looks at box office returns for Silence… yea that tracks

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

1 hour ago, Kal-El814 said:

Looks at box office returns for Silence… yea that tracks

 

Silence is quite easily my absolutely favorite of his films!

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Also, I do have to concur with Scorsese on this subject, but it's not strictly limited to within the industry itself as the obsession with box office financial data has permeated into the overall cultural fabric.

[SaysWho?]

I love looking at box office data, but the transition to people using box office data to justify their dislike for a movie is weak and insecure. 

[Bloodporne]

I mean Wolf... alone made 300mil in profits, it's not like he's some salty whiner. If you've ever seen any interviews with Scorsese, he's an old school artist kinda guy through and through. I don't see how this opinion can possibly surprise anyone. 

[Fizzzzle]

Scorsese is a cranky old fart, he's always cranky about something.

[stepee]

Just a weird hill to battle on after all these years, I don’t remember a time it wasn’t like this. It just used to be 100million now it’s a billion.

[Greatoneshere]

3 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

Silence is quite easily my absolutely favorite of his films!

 

Man, Silence is so incredibly underrated. My wife and I loved that film.

[Bloodporne]

13 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

Man, Silence is so incredibly underrated. My wife and I loved that film.

It's fantastic. 

 

We're just in that stage where clickbait sites figured out a while back that Scorsese drama can be made into an ongoing thing. The headline alone is garbage. He was invited to an event and specifically asked for his opinions...because he's a living legend with decades upon decades of a life spent in cinema. No shit he has a lot to say and strong opinions. 

[Kal-El814]

1 hour ago, SaysWho? said:

I love looking at box office data, but the transition to people using box office data to justify their dislike for a movie is weak and insecure. 

 

My confirmation bias can't get swole without a workout tho

[skillzdadirecta]

3 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

Silence is quite easily my absolutely favorite of his films!

Didn't Netflix produce that? I never saw it.

[Kal-El814]

1 minute ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Didn't Netflix produce that? I never saw it.

 

I thiiiiiink that's just The Irishman for him.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

2 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Didn't Netflix produce that? I never saw it.

 

Netflix wasn't involved in the production of Silence as it was for The Irishman.

[Guest]

People using sales numbers as a measure of quality is a problem for every industry.

[skillzdadirecta]

37 minutes ago, stepee said:

Just a weird hill to battle on after all these years, I don’t remember a time it wasn’t like this. It just used to be 100million now it’s a billion.

It didn't really become a thing until the 80's, post blockbuster period. Prior to that the only ones who cared about Box- office numbers were Hollywood accountants and executives. Movies USED to stay in theaters for YEARS so no one really cared about the numbers because it wasn't something the average person could easily track. Once the internet became a thing, regular people started tracking these number. I didn't start really paying attention to this stuff until college and websites like Joblo and The Hollywood Stock Exchange. It definitely hasn't been a forever thing.

[Kal-El814]

6 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

It didn't really become a thing until the 80's, post blockbuster period. Prior to that the only ones who cared about Box- office numbers were Hollywood accountants and executives. Movies USED to stay in theaters for YEARS so no one really cared about the numbers because it wasn't something the average person could easily track. Once the internet became a thing, regular people started tracking these number. I didn't start really paying attention to this stuff until college and websites like Joblo and The Hollywood Stock Exchange. It definitely hasn't been a forever thing.

 

I love it when old movies are in theaters. I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in the theater a couple years back and it fucking ruled.

[SimpleG]

Its become pretty ubiquitous in every industry to use sales or sales adjacent as a metric for consumers.

Most streamed single

Most viewed show on streaming platform X

Which console is the best seller this month

Number 1 selling game of the year/month

Best selling pick up year after year

I wonder if its become more popular to use these metrics as peoples buying power drops to reaffirm their choices 

 

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

1 minute ago, SimpleG said:

I wonder if its become more popular to use these metrics as peoples buying power drops to reaffirm their choices 

 

That's certainly an intriguing socio-economic/psychological insight!

[stepee]

23 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

It didn't really become a thing until the 80's, post blockbuster period. Prior to that the only ones who cared about Box- office numbers were Hollywood accountants and executives. Movies USED to stay in theaters for YEARS so no one really cared about the numbers because it wasn't something the average person could easily track. Once the internet became a thing, regular people started tracking these number. I didn't start really paying attention to this stuff until college and websites like Joblo and The Hollywood Stock Exchange. It definitely hasn't been a forever thing.

 

We’ll yeah, I was born in 82, so I don’t remember a time that wasn’t like this! :P But it’s been like that for about four decades now so it’s just kind of an old thing to only notice now. 

[skillzdadirecta]

17 minutes ago, SimpleG said:

I wonder if its become more popular to use these metrics as peoples buying power drops to reaffirm their choices 

BINGO! Gamers are DEFINITELY guilty of this especially Company fanboys and console warriors. I was having a discussion with a friend the other day about the merits of a certain hip hop artists' claims of genius and when he couldn't rebut the points I made regarding this artists OBVIOUS mediocrity, he started resorting to how much money the person has made 

I ended the conversation right there. The minute we start using sales as a barometer of artistic quality... we're done. I guess that's why these discussions never meant much to me. I always consumed what I liked and didn't feel constrained due to finances to "pick a side". 

[TwinIon]

As someone who has spent far too much time looking at and analyzing box office numbers, I do it because this art form is a business, and the business side necessarily has an impact on the creative side. I find that interaction itself interesting, but I don't really conflate box office performance with creative success or failure. It's easy to point at bad movies that make lots of money and good ones that bombed, and argue that there is no relationship, but I still think it can be true that a movie can bomb because it's bad (Amsterdam) or succeed because it's good (Knives Out). The two factors are linked, but they're not direct analogs for each other, nor are they dependent on each other.

 

Also, like rooting for a sports team, I want to see the art I enjoy rewarded and enjoyed by wider audiences. I like to see a film like Knives Out over perform expectations, both for the artists themselves, and the knock on effects. The direct repercussions for that commercial success are that we get move Knives Out movies, a delay to a (possible) Rian Johnson Star Wars trilogy, and a higher likelihood that similar movies get made in the near future. When I see the box office numbers for a film like Blade Runner 2049, I worry about what it might mean for Villeneuve's future prospects and the likelihood that someone else will green light another expensive Sci-Fi art film. Similarly, I loved the recent Dune movie, and I know that if it didn't make enough money, we wouldn't get the second half.

 

Scorsese's own career is a great example of this tension. When I read about how hard it was for him to get sufficient money to make The Irishman, I think about the other projects that never get made, no matter the pedigree of the creatives behind them, because of the box office.

 

I know that this isn't what Scorsese is complaining about. He's specifically talking about the NY Film Festival more than he is addressing the general discourse.

[skillzdadirecta]

10 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

I know that this isn't what Scorsese is complaining about. He's specifically talking about the NY Film Festival more than he is addressing the general discourse.

No, he's talking about the general discourse. He's using the NYFF as an example of a place that is FREE from such this type of valuation. 

 

Quote

“Since the ’80s, there’s been a focus on numbers. It’s kind of repulsive,” Scorsese said. “The cost of a movie is one thing. Understand that a film costs a certain amount, they expect to at least get the amount back… The emphasis is now on numbers, cost, the opening weekend, how much it made in the U.S.A., how much it made in England, how much it made in Asia, how much it made in the entire world, how many viewers it got. As a filmmaker, and as a person who can’t imagine life without cinema, I always find it really insulting.”

 

Scorsese added, “I’ve always known that such considerations have no place at the New York Film Festival, and here’s the key also with this: There are no awards here. You don’t have to compete. You just have to love cinema here.”

 

The article also cites Edgar Wright

 

Quote

Edgar Wright, an outspoken Scorsese lover, shared similar thoughts earlier this month during his BBC Maestro course. Wright recalled how his cult classic “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” bombed over its opening weekend, and yet it’s hardly considered a disappointment all these years later.

“I’ve said this to other filmmakers since who’ve maybe had a similar initial reaction to a film like ‘Scott Pilgrim’ did, is that the three-day weekend is not the end of the story for any movie. People shouldn’t buy into that idea,” Wright said. “Rating films by their box office is like the football fan equivalent to films. Most of my favorite films that are considered classics today were not considered hits in their time.”

Wright added, “You can point to hundreds of classic movies, whether it’s ‘Citizen Kane’ or ‘Blade Runner’ or ‘The Big Lebowski.’ So how a film does in its first three days is never the end of the story, and the further we get away from that discourse about box office numbers being the totality of a movie, the better.”

 

[GoldenTongue]

On 10/14/2022 at 8:12 AM, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

Silence is quite easily my absolutely favorite of his films!

SILENCE may be the greatest movie I never want to watch again.