Focus 580; Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer

Black Angus came to be really dominant in our guest with that program the second hour show is Emma Montgomery and he has written a book entitled A cow's life the surprising history of cattle and how the Black Angus came to be home on the range that's the program for this morning so we hope that you will stick around. Today's broadcast is made possible with support from Owens funeral home at the corner of Elm and university in Champaign a locally owned operated and serving families. Since 1925 Owens funeral home invites you to join them in supporting public radio. Today's broadcast is made possible with support from Christie Clinic association with offices in Champaign Urbana Rantoul and Mahomet Christie Clinic medicine for your life. This is focus 580 glad to have you with us this morning my name is David Inge. In this first part of the program we'll be talking about movies and particularly about blockbuster movies as I mentioned a moment ago. And again the guest for the show is Tom Schoen. He grew up in England. He was between 1994 in 1909 the film critic of the London Sunday Times. He has also written for The New Yorker The New York Times the London Daily Telegraph in vogue and now

makes his home in Brooklyn and his first book has come out fairly recently and it's titled blockbuster Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The. It's published by Free Press. As we talked this morning with Tom Schoen of course questions are welcome do you want to talk about movies. That's great. Doesn't necessarily have to be about the blockbusters but that's kind of what would be concentrating on this morning if you like to call in. The numbers are the same as always. If you're here in Champaign-Urbana where we are 3 3 9 4 5 5. We do also have a toll free line that was good anywhere that you can hear us and that is eight hundred to 2 2 9 4 5 5. No one will expect you to pledge if you're calling into the program. Now we hope that you will do that. We'd really like to hear from people this morning. Your support of this show is very important just as it is with everything else we do here on W. Wilde. If you're not a financial. Supporter of the station. We'd really like to hear from you but if you want to call in this program just use the regular number you'll come right here to the show and you'll have an opportunity

to talk with our guest Tom Schoen. Mr. Schoen Hello. Hi. Thanks very much for talking with us today. Now the talk we certainly appreciate it. First I guess a definition if we talk. If we use that word blockbuster I'm sure that people will think of maybe some recent one or maybe a classic a blockbuster that was a favorite movie but you know one can apply can apply that term to a wide range of films. Sure. So how do how exactly does one define blockbuster. Well I mean the first thing to do is recognize that the definition has changed a bit. You know up until the 70s you know when people were fed to us the movie it was just sure that. Financial you know it was any movie that it you know scored big at the box office and it was kind of basically a time concert by the audience. You know so Sound of Music was a blockbuster. Kramer vs. Kramer was a blockbuster. Star Wars jewels they were blockbusters but with stars into a

world of jewels and Star Wars what happened was it actually began to signify a type of movie. Not just it wasn't just a financial time but like almost a kind of genre you know something released in the sama aimed at the sort of you know younger crowd 18 to 25 year old males that the studio is in a kind of holy grail you know crimes of special effects and action sequences. And Julie high as a blockbuster you know so even for it's out out of the gate the studio roof. It's kind of crop of summer blockbusters. So now it's not now that you know you can fight by the audience but by the studios themselves yeah well it's interesting you have to list here in the book of 50 blockbusters defined by their box office how much. The money they made and on the first list they're the movies that you would expect and their contemporary action special effects movie the number one is Titanic. And then we also have things like The Lord Of The Rings and Harry Potter. Yeah. And Star Wars and Jurassic Park and so forth. And then interestingly

enough though there's another list and this is top 50 all time box office blockbusters adjusted for inflation. Yeah that's really fascinating because they're the number one movie is get ready for it. Gone With The Wind. And it also includes these other movies but in addition it includes the kind of movies that you mentioned like the sound of music and Doctor Zhivago and 101 Dalmatians and Ben-Hur and The staying and The Graduate and The Godfather and Thunderball and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Love Story and Cleopatra and Goldfinger and American Graffiti and around the world in 80 days movies that were big movies that were very popular that a lot of people went to see. But it might not come to mind immediately when we use that word because what people will think about is as you say what the blockbuster movie has become. Yeah. I mean I really like that second list. I mean when you read the first list you go. It makes you depressed and you think Oh God nobody's got attention spans down the last five years because every movie in it

is something released you know just yesterday. And they're all those kind of teens side by you know sort of films. And you sort of think oh my god Hollywood's going to the dogs just like everyone says it is. But then you look at the second best and you think well actually you know the popular the public has some taste unary Actually that's an accurate reflection of kind of a you know this theme in which those movies are held. And and you see this in a Star Wars and jaws although they have their place in that list. They don't completely dominate it. And as you say Gone With The Wind is still there at the top you know the number one sort of box office you know a kind of blockbuster. So in many ways it's kind of reassuring in a way I think we're so used to hearing that. You know that popular success as it is is that it is a mirage and that you know anything that scores big at the box office that will suck. And then you look at that as the sort of thing I know these are these are well you know films that event that place in people's

hearts. I do think it's kind of interesting that that Gone With The Wind is the only movie on this list that was made before 940. Yeah and there were no there are no silent movies I was talking about this with my wife last night and she sort of said well what about she said what about Charlie Chaplin for example I don't know how the deuce do we not have the kind of numbers or with the Harvey going audience not that big. Yeah I mean partly it's just a matter of record. You know both of his records were not sort of you know that they weren't kept at all accurately so you know for instance one thing that's missing from that list is you know the birth of a nation or having great sort of being the first blockbuster essentially. But. We're just sort of you know the record from that time just too skimpy and it's a it's a difficult to pull together. But I think it also reflects you know the fact and you know gone in the wind you know we did it was that essentially the kind of the first you know kind of huge kind of across the board sort of hit thanks you know.

Partly it's the fact that it was released in sort of successive years sort of on its anniversary and so on and that helped sort of blow it up. You know kind of repeat viewings films that we go back to again and again of the kind of key blockbuster success at least real success. I mean now we sort of see things that are sort of propelled up to number one one spot on the on the back of one successful weekend. But you know that it's a slightly illusory picture of the real kind of high tech kind of key to it is people that you know films that people will go back to. And that's kind of what the second guest tells us that that's interesting point Jude something that I know many years ago one of things I learned we have a fellow here who's a professor of cinema studies who's occasionally on the program and we chat now and again about movies and that was one of the things I I remember a long time ago him saying he said if a movie's going to make a lot of money you have to somehow get people to go back and see it more than once. Yeah I mean that's kind of where Jordan star was schooled so heavily because they

were incredibly exciting visceral experiences that you just went back to again and again. I mean particular with Star Wars. Which moved so fast I was full of soul. 75 of the things that you've never seen before on screen. But it moves so quickly. At least if you're a sort of teenage boy as I was at the time the only way to kind of get the most out of it was to sort of see it you know 10 times. You know which is kind of it is what I did. I mean and it was it's partly down to that and it's partly down to the way that kind of teenagers kind of watch movies like you know so 4:51 was a big hit in 1981. You know but only pop fans just kind of went home thinking you know that was a good movie. You know I can remember going home from Superman and thinking that was a good movie. But only after I'd seen it 10 times as a kid. And but the post just to try it you know just to test it in Hex we sort of laid siege to them as much as we sort of watch them.

Well that gets to another interesting point again this is something that I was talking about with my wife last night we're talking about the book and I'm sort of made this point that in a lot of people criticize what's coming out of Hollywood these days because they say that Hollywood is too is consumed with capturing a tiny slice of the movie audience which nowadays seem to be the big movie goers and yeah they're teenagers. And she said well she thought though that still the movie might be the only popular culture item left where it was possible. Happen with every movie. But it's possible that you could get an entire family together you know grandparents parents kids little kids and you actually could still find some movies that everybody could be happy sitting down to watch and she said and think maybe that might be right that there may not be much else yet in the world that has that kind of ability to reach across generations. Yeah I mean it's so I think that's that's true I think now. And nowadays it tends to be. The kind of kids movies by not the teenage movies but things like kind of finding the mayor and being credible

I think they kind of get lots kind of family audiences. I mean you know I'm sort of well used now to finding that those are the picks. These are some of the kind of best adult entertainment around. I mean they're just so well scripted. But but yeah I mean it's the you know you still get this. Kind of across the board hits and you will spit it's also become a lot more kind of specialized. So each market has their own sort of particular niche. But I mean it's also true that the sort of teenage dollar is is you know is is of surpassing MT's importance. And you know it wasn't until the 70s that the studios really realized this. You know basically the habit of going to the movies. Sort of every week which is kind of what people did when they went when when audiences went see Gone With The Wind. You know it was part of a kind of sort of a weekly sort of ritual you would go to the movies and you would see what was on you know almost like we treat the TV now. And cinema going was at its height you know sort of back in

the sort of 30s and 40s when movies sort of had this oh this kind of captive audience essentially. And that's been in decline ever sense you know like TV. It had a sort a big impact on sort of audience figures. And they've they've basically gone down sort of the with every successive year and the anything to hold it was in the 70s as Georgian style was in the studios found that that is the last remaining audience so to speak the one they could hang on to teenagers and so they just radically reorient hated their industry kind of around that audience. And of course that sort of leads to sort of complaints that you know the only movies that have made it for kids and so on but it's not the whole picture because of the overflow you know if the studio is feeling rich from its blockbuster it'll feel safe enough to take more of a gamble on a on you know some smaller sort of independent movie. So the blockbuster that you see on Saturday has been some you know in some ways financed

the small indie movie that you see on Tuesday evening. So there's a kind of relation to the kind of ecosystem. And it's very rare that you'll find a movie these days even the small the teeny House ones that have been in some way been touched by kind of blockbuster dollars. But you know it's is it tends to get sort of forgotten I bet. Our guest in this our focus 580 times shown he was for a number of years film critic of the London Sunday Times and now lives in the United States and has written for. For a number of publications including The New Yorker in the New York Times his new book his first is titled blockbuster how Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the summer which was kind of about the golden what I'm some people I'm sure would consider to be the golden age of the Block Buster starting with jaws and going through movies like Star Wars and Close Encounters and Blade Runner and alien. But he's like that. And also in the book contains some conversations that he has had with some of the people who are the

directors of these movies people like Steven Spielberg and James Cameron and Ridley Scott and others. Book is published by the Free Press. It's in the bookstore if you'd like to read it. And we of course would welcome your calls 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 that's for champagne Urbana. We also have toll free line good anywhere that you can hear us 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 and we. Do have someone that one talk with someone listening this morning in India. A line for hello hello. Since you more or less open the door by that second column and using the inflationary characteristics of the movies to sequence them from here on you know I was wondering if anybody has ever done anything like the movies that the blockbuster movies are you to find them analyzed in terms of the special effects what that does for its sequence in the column or a particular director or particular production

group or I have even a particular though there is not too many companies we have now. But something along those lines something more social logical than gee whiz I'm 12 years old and I've got almost 10 years maybe 15 years of watching wonderful movies before I have to do something else. Well I mean I have netspeak to conduct it in the night but. But just generally you can see names are very real. You know if you look at the list. You know Disney. Have a kind of big showing. Said of the James Bond movies. In terms of the directors. The names that sort of come up again and again. Spielberg George Lucas James Cameron Robert Zemeckis who just did either express and did back to the future. There are sort of four you know four or five kind of you know blockbuster you know guys who've kind of got the kind of golden touch. And then apart from

that it sort of tends to be you know things that have just been pushed in there. Anything old said to be the male has a sort of few showings. But yeah I mean you're right also in that you know there's a large preponderance of sort of big special effects laden movies. The something about the Cher spectacle of going to see those things that sort of encourages kind of mass that of you know mass audiences to kind of congregate on them. Funny enough you see very few kind of comedies in there. Is that the companies you do see at things like kind of Ghostbusters or back to the future which have like a kind of special effects kind of component but there's something about those. There's kind of a big slightly humorous epics that that really kind of draws us and. But yeah in terms of the other kind of breakdowns you can sort of do on the list. I mean it. You know I think it's because you say it's the big special effects because like Lord Of The Rings the school must have a thing.

It's it's interesting you look at some of these movies that you see it is possible and maybe it's more likely if you look at the blockbusters of recent years to make a movie like this without big movie stars you know how some people who performed in some of those movies went on to become big stars but they weren't big movie stars when when they started. And However of course some of the classic blockbusters did indeed have people who were who even then were big movie stars and oh how did how does the fact that you have somebody who is who is a big star and who is who you would expect to generate box office just because of their name. How does that how does that go into the mic. It's a really good question because it's sort of a little bit up in the air as to how much of an impact it has. I mean when one of the kind of key things about Jaws and Star Wars when they're ped is that they were effectively without stars you know in the 70s

the foreman had been with movies like The Towering Inferno and the Poseidon Adventure. You know you take a big natural disaster and you top load it with his manly A-list names as you possibly can from Paul Newman to Fred Astaire. And it's sort of like those pictures a slightly kind of heavy fail you kind of knew who would survive it was always going to be you know the A-list stars with maybe one sacrificing himself and I told him Heston at the end of the earth quake. But the. But what's Pillbug did with Jaws is he populates that with people whose faces you do you sort of knew and could identify with but you didn't they weren't necessarily big household names. Roy Scheider Richard Dreyfuss. And he told Roy Scheider you know I don't want to ever believe that you could kill that shot. In other words like you costs of you know stars slightly lower down the list and it kind of increased the suspense because you weren't sure who was going to survive. And same with alien you know Sigourney Weaver was in the big star when they made it and she was the least likely to succeed in that movie you didn't really have her pegged as the one who would make it to the final

rail. And so the earliest you know that the early kind of summer blockbuster was when it got started you know relied very much on not having big star names in them. But gradually the stars returned you know there was a big influx of kind of 80s action heroes you know starting with kind of raids of last stock. But it's important remember that like House and four was not a big star at that point you know he'd been in Star Wars but he'd made a couple of sort of Duff movies sense and say rage is sort of established him you know Bruce Willis Alice what they got they were all kind of started to return you know. Is that stars kind of really regained that kind of foothold in the in there in the summer blockbuster as the 80s kind of wore on but it's still a fluffy kind of you know volatile mix you know. Did Kenny Reeves make the matrix a success. It's kind of doubtful. I mean he said he was in a perfect for that movie but really it was the special effects of that movie that he kind of played second fiddle to. And sometimes you know you start just get propelled into the stratosphere by virtue of the

movie to which they're attached it's the other way around. You know chain of Reeves to suddenly hos as a result of the Matrix but you know he was very much kind of catching a lift off if one fails. Yeah well are they are these movies where where. The where the effects are supreme or do we say that that's still there in the service of the story so really what it is is it. It is a movie that's a thing that's kind of a pure storytelling medium. Well I mean I think it is I mean if Festing stays I mean I'm a big fan of special effects I mean I'm sort of a you know I sit in the cinema when it started was was was very much about sort of spectacle and putting on sites that you know people had never seen before. You know when the first Nickelodeon started up it was very much on that sort of price and station a state level. They say they were. You know but on the other hand you know it's all too easy to name the pitches we've seen

recently where they've kind of completely ever written store you know the story line and it's a resurrect that can that can handle up you know handle effects and it tends to be with glee. The guys who have. Had a kind of Ceuta ledge in the low budget down and dirty and of moviemaking. So James Cameron who you know had huge success on the on the back of the Terminator movies and in Titanic you know started out making kind of models you know for Roger Coleman's workshop. And him and the Terminator emerge from very much in that kind of low budget end of movie making and the same with a Peter Jackson the guy the Lord Of The Rings you know he was schooled in all these kind of you know sort of small b movie horror flicks. And I don't know quite why that should be but I think it's something to do with like learning to you know watch your compost strings. I mean it had to be very canonical with the way they use effects as a result. So when you then hand them 600 million dollars to go and

shoot Lord Of The Rings that completely is that had where some of the guys who have come along and that's almost their first point of entry into like movie making is a huge hundred million dollar movie. They're the movie they're the guys who get sucked under a little bit and the effects but reign supreme. I guess I'm thinking in particular things like kind of Independence Day and Godzilla. You know where you know the guys that made that a little bit sort of you know green and fresh to that for that amount of money and therefore you know the money ended up winning. You know I guess my my faith. An example of that would be the fifth element. Right exactly. And that and that also makes me wonder about even some of the directors who talked about the people who really did who really were journeymen and who worked their way up and then managed in some cases against all odds to do a very successful movie of this kind. And then based on that success then they got the blank check. So right under you know OK what what happens even with somebody like that when they get the blood Well that's fair enough.

I mean you know there was such good brothers who did the matrix are a good example of that because they had that blank check for the city for the sequels and and they sort of screwed up royally. You know even James Cameron you know had his wobble you know back in 1999 with the Abyss although it's you know it's bad up pretty well today I got to say whenever it's on TV the way it's sort of watch it but yeah I mean it's true the moment they kind of get a free hand they tend to sort of tend in a clunk up and spill back to you know he it's the forgotten film in his filmography in 1941 the huge spectacular that he sort of followed up close encounters with this kind of giant wild bull too far off that kind of got completely out of hand. You know and he said you know you know by the fifth day I felt like the movie was directing me rather than the other way around. But but the thing is he kind of right you know he can overcome it and he you know he's a very good sort of listen that's what the box office tells him so if a movie fails he sort of listens and takes it on board. And

so you have this kind of developments in his career. Whereby he makes jaws and it doesn't count as on the back of that if he ever reaches himself and then fails with a 1041 so therefore he scales everything back down again makes right as an upstart and then E.T. and Raiders of their big success is essentially quite a small movie and it's a low budget one. You know that that kind of conversation that goes on between an audience and a filmmaker is I think a little bit rarer today like because the box office is so distorted by various different things you know like you know the Matrix sequels made more money than the original you know like even though nobody would say no not even the most die hard fan that they were in a way superior to the original movie. So what kind of message is that sending the directors of these movies if the movies that they make that are unfair are actually being judged kind of greater. You know the box office figures have in a sense been corrupted a bit. The information that filmmakers are getting back from the audience

is not quite as reliable as it used to be. Well and that's also an whole interesting area of the accounting techniques of the movie business. You never it's very difficult to know things like how truly how much movies how much did a movie cost it right and how do you figure it's profits and because there were so many different ways that movies now make money next not just and how much money people are willing to pay. Up front to go down to the theater and see the movie. Yeah I mean if the studio is doing its job the most profitable movie of the year will show up in the red for them you know. So even though there's vast amounts of money kind of funneling through the thing and going off to you know X Y and Z it technically looks as if it hasn't made any money which is good from their point of view so Batman Francis is a really good example of that which sort of several years in was still showing up in the red. But yeah now the accounting of sort of of the movies is a very kind of dark sort of

science. And but yeah now we're into the sort of slightly crazy realm whereby you know movies like. Let me see a man in black who had. Because there was so much of its profits going out to the best participants and it's back to the stuff you know. It actually had to make over 200 million before Sony the studio would even start to make money on it and I actually had to break records in order to even break even. Now it gets kind of crazy that the profit margins on the midsize slim particularly with let's say a sequel to a successful film which is really expected to. You know it's a work. Everybody knows it's going to work and so they carve out these huge sort of you know profit participations in the in the in the movie and it ends up like making very little as a result best that they've been so it's a little bit like the kind of the Indians one reads about who learned how to kind of see

the skin and fill it to within an inch of it you know so that every bit of the Ox was completely used in a different skin to his hide his muscle. That's kind of how the blockbuster is for the studio is something that I think is really interesting in the book when you think about some of these directors and now how how influential they are how powerful they are how much money they have made. And they're considered to be at least in terms of the box office very important people like Spielberg and James Cameron and Robert Zemeckis and George Lucas. How difficult it was for them when they were starting out and when they were making that first movie which where them was the breakout. And it wasn't easy and there were parts which I'm certain they thought there they might not even be able to finish or they wondered you know is anything is it has this it's hard sort of hard to believe that they might think of a movie like that like Star Wars they might ask a question of themselves. Is this movie. Has this movie

ruined me even before it's OPOWER Yeah. But if that's true yeah I mean did you know that the mosque in the palm of the fox had sort of come down with a judgment that said any movie with Stalin was in the title is just dead at the box office. And I made fault. You know look at every inch of the way. You know and the plug was you know almost pulled on it as it was you know with jeweler's. And it's the same with the Terminator which is it's a terrific battle to get that movie made and back to the future. It's one of the kind of it's one of the kind of great ironies of the movies kind of Nephi now a very successful film franchises of the first movie you know in the sequence was you know it's hard to make as you know the most. Sort of precious art house offering of some of the kind of you know the more respected directors like Scorsese you know say look at the five star was just as much as Scorsese had to fight as a taxi driver. And I mean I think it shows

too because one of the great things about these movies you know that the if the director has to fight for the movie you know it generally means this kind of fight in the picture. You know like well it is just such a kind of great you know kind of combative kind of war picture. And that kind of goes out of all the people you watch the prequels and all the fights seem to have been sucked out of the out of the Star Wars sort of sequence you know it. There are no clear enemies there's no set you know back when Star Wars was being made you know it had that kind of you know up an atom kind of energy about it which I think is very much to do with his own energy as a young filmmaker trying to make his name here and the same with. Same with Spielberg. So yeah I mean it's funny like you know the Terminator with the rights to the Terminator was sold to Galen and James Cameron's producer for $1 you know which is it was it was just quite a bargain given what the Terminator then turned into well and it does a guess it reinforces the idea and this is not a particularly profound

sort of generalization but that is that people in the movie business that. It is the people who are who are the who run the studios and who make decisions about what movies are made what movies aren't there. They're pretty risk averse they don't like taking chances and whether that's taking chances with an art film or taking chances with a film that's really pitched toward a big general audience it doesn't matter in anything that seems to take a chance to them. It sounds like it makes them really uneasy. Yeah definitely. I mean Peter Guber the producer of Batman sort of put it like that he said I made it essentially the cost of making these great movies is so great that essentially that the studio is not really in the business of making movies they're in the business of coming up with good reasons not to make movies you know essentially the process is one of kind of profound in you know like in the movies get made which the studio can come up with no good reason not to make.

An awful lot of time trying to come up with reasons not to make them. And in order to get that green light is a kind of incredibly cover lengthy process in which you have to sort of persuade them by means of you know the stars involved of the director of the matter especially the fact that all that much and dies in jail that in fact they're on terrestrial thing. You know and you know to an extent they've kind of worked. I mean the number of summers that come by and you know all these sort of show things you know come in and they scoop up the amount of money they were supposed to on that opening weekend and then they disappear. You know I mean the system kind of works in a depressing kind of way. The studios can be fairly certain that many bacteria will make them out it well and that Julie does along with all the other kind of blockbusters that some have but they're very few of them seem to sort of get a sort of place in you know in people's hearts in other words it's kind of world will blockbusters but very few hits.

It's a strange kind of topsy turvy mean a place to be in the past few years the box office take has continued to go up. But we are told that the reason is not because more and more people are going to the movies but because the ticket prices keep going up. I actually haven't read the number of people who are going actually has declined. Do you or does one explain that simply by saying that there are not enough good movies or is there something else that's going well. I mean it's you know the decline of the year by year fluctuations in sort of orders levels which is very difficult to work out sort of you know quite what's behind that. Often it is the kind of quality the movies or you know it might it might be some other fact you know but I mean it's Yeah I mean it's curious the I mean the studios kind of want you know as as many as p people as possible but the number of the actual audience they're aiming for it's finite you know it remains roughly the same. So you know it's so in terms of the kind of the box office records that you hear being

broken all the time it's really worthwhile taking into account inflation every kind of to get slightly forgets about inflation every time they sort of say you know to do this but maybe X is going through the roof and broken a light thing we can record. Well you know that's because you know the dollar has risen in value and because ticket prices have gone up. And the same with kind of all this sort of number one hit movies that you hear about I mean there are so numb and so many number one hit movies in any given year that it's kind of hard to find a movie that hasn't been number one at some point. To me because they now process through that number one position so quickly you know something open it'll be number one for a week and then I'll take it back now and I'll make way for the next movie which is also number one for the next weekend. So it's become like a meaningless kind of accolade. You know but you know Hollywood sort of lives on on the hype. You know as much sort of the internal hype of you know being able to boast about having a number one movie. And so it sort of you know it carries on. But I mean the big the genuine

hits still come through. But but now they have to sort of get somewhere in the 400 million. I mean inconceivable amounts of money you know jewels was like the first movie to break the back of a hundred million and that was considered like the sound barrier you know like the barrier that nobody believed would ever be broken. And now you know as a semi-successful you know a summer blockbuster is takes in 200 million like Men in Black 2 and. And but the real success has to kind of get in excess of 400 million. But I mean incredible amounts of money but they don't really necessarily relate to how much a kind of movie is is loved by the public. I mean oftentimes. You know we'll go along to see a movie on the first weekend if I need to see that you know it's as bad as everyone says it is just out of curiosity to see what the fuss is about. It was a very different thing from the way the movie you know the way that movies used to open and then spread by kind of word of mouth. And so by the fourth or fifth week people were still insisted it was generally

because that movie is pretty well loved. You know very little about something again if you look at all the kind of earlier blockbusters rated the stock E.T. they will stick around for have a long time like nine or ten weeks. Whereas now they just sort of up and gone and in a couple weekends we're down to the point where we just have a couple minutes no left and I know we got who let you go just a bit early. Maybe just as a final question I know there are a lot of people who would make the argument that they think that the blockbuster wrecked Hollywood that it was that was the worst thing that ever happened and I think your take on it is because really differ. And at least if you look at what was going on at the time of the first contemporary sort of first modern blockbuster which a lot of people would say would be Jaws and the movies we talked about afterwards. In your take on it a little bit different with this the two arguments one of which I don't think is ever going to really get settled which is the kind of aesthetics that you know like you know to the audience who read on sort of movies like Chinatown and Main Street and so on the Star Wars must have seemed like a par and

plastic kind of toy town kind of movie that appeared from nowhere. It's just I think it's a generational thing. You know I kind of grew I own the country I grew up with those movies you know I kind of lived the next tailback and Lucas movie and was that first night to raise the stock and sort of grew up with them and you know have enormous kind of affection for the part they played in my kind of you know cinematic upbringing so you know that argument I don't think it's ever going to get so although you know Spielberg and Lucas are not close to kind of the way that the movie business started I mean they're in the great tradition of filmmakers like Griffith and wholesome Hitchcock and. And that kind of great sort of narrative tradition but doesn't the benefit of financial argument which is that they you know these buses come out and sort of suck the life out of out of you know the rest of the movie making kind of world so that only the big giants could live. And I'm not so sure that it worked out like that. Because what happens you know and that was that

you know the money from these things ended up finding its way back into the you know the kind of indie barium of the 90s. And there was this kind of you basically now have this system whereby what we have is big movies on the one hand like you know you know finding Nimo whatever. And and The Incredibles and then on the other hand you have the kind of smaller independent movies like Sideways or Mystic River. And that system to me seems to work you know as long as you've got those two strands you've got a fairly kind of healthy opposition in there between those two things but disappeared I think is the sort of middle sort of ranking movie. You don't see so much these days of it. That sort of slightly kind of middlebrow middle sort of market maybe like ordinary people which I rather doubt that's maybe 1980 On Golden Pond Driving Miss Daisy. Those things tend to a pair. It's that sort of middle middle band that's been eliminated. You know I'll sort of leave that to your

listeners to see to decide how much they had that they missed On Golden Pond but. You know it's the system that we have now I think actually works pretty well. Well we're going to have to stop there. And Tom I really appreciate you talking with us this morning maybe on another day week talking again. Absolutely thanks very much for having me. Well thank you Tom shone he was a former film critic of the London Sunday Times that was from 94 to 99. You know lives in the United States he writes for has written for a number of publications among them the New Yorker The New York Times vogue. He's now making his home in Brooklyn and his first book is Blockbuster how Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the summer it's published by Free Press. We're not take the opportunity to encourage you to call in and support this strange art form that we call public radio. Jack Brighton is with us in the studio and also out in pledge central Tom Rogers our news director and we talk with him too. And I'm really actually glad that we have a little bit of time here

because one of the things that Jack I know wanted to have a chance to chat a little bit about was something that's going on on the web side of things here. He has as people probably know he has still continued to host now and again focus was the producer of this program for a long time and then went on and he is now heads up our web operations and looking for different ways to use the Internet to bring. What we do to people absolutely and perhaps also know there are lot of people who take advantage of the the web archives that we have. We hope so you can listen to past programs but we do have something really new that we're offering to folks. Well right before I mention what's up let me just mention the phone number because if you want people to to pick up the telephone and give us call our pledge line 2 1 7 2 4 4 8 9 4 5 5 this is one of those weeks where we are coming to you. We really need your support because you know federal funding state funding university funding are all in decline. We know our listener ship is growing so we need to bring more people into the Friends of

oil well. And this is our pitch to you. Please pick up the telephone and make a pledge to 1 7 2 4 4 9 4 5 5 and also on our website. Let let us not forget to or to mention the web address because you can make a pledge online with a credit card instantly on a secure server at UIUC dot edu. There's a pledge link on the top of every single web page on our site so we hope you will use that. And you know speaking of the streaming service we stream live in Real Audio Windows media and also quick time we add the quick time stream. Over the past couple of months and a lot of people are using that. We also have been putting our archives up since 1998 actually on the Web site so people can time shift they're listening they can go back and listen to focus 580 any time they want. And about six months ago we started offering MP 3 downloads on the site of every show that we do so people can actually put them on their computer and listen to them on their

iPod or whatever device they have a portable device at the gym. I know a lot of people have told me they appreciate that and it's something that they have encouraged us to do more of. And I want to encourage those people to support that because it takes a lot of time and effort and actually money bandwidth the number of the costs that go along with streaming. And you know we have to pay that and we want to make the service available and expand it. But we need you to support it. So please make your pledge call now to 1 7 2 4 4 9 4 5 5 if you appreciate the streaming service or go to the website. And please make a web pledge that would make me feel really good. You know because I know people are really responding. They're using the site and are willing to support it. The thing that you mentioned and will go out to Tom in a minute is I want to get an update on where we stand with the pledge tolls. Is this thing called podcasting. You know people around Champaign-Urbana may have seen an article in the news because that on Monday in the circuit section about podcasting. And it's

simply a way for users to subscribe to certain information sources on the web through a program that could. It's an RSS feed reader is technically what it's called RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. And we're about to use a bunch of buzzwords and acronyms you know a language alert here folks technical language that is. And basically what it does is allows you to subscribe to an MP 3 feed so that every day you get the MP 3 files from that source. So you basically punch in an address of the website that has this RSS feed that closes an MP 3 file and it automatically goes to your computer every day you don't have to do a thing. And if you have your iPod attached to your computer or another portable portable music player device it will download the file into your portable player automatically so you can just grab it and go wherever you want and listen to it in your own.

In your own manner in your own time. So this is a thing that we're starting to do and we put a link up this week in fact on the Focus 580 page I want to add it to the afternoon magazine pages. We'll probably do it for agriculture for Media Matters and another number of other shows so you could actually subscribe and get these things without having to really think about it. And so you know another way we're trying to improve the service and serve people better. I'm just an analog guy in a digital world and I feel I'm lost. But I will guide you through it David. I appreciate it. I'm I'm looking to younger younger people like you to help me out. Yes well there are some actually on the page where we put this stuff there is a you know on our site there is an RSS page which you can get to from the home page the edu slash RSS that will get you to that. And it has a good sort of tutorial resources and other kinds of information that if you're totally new to it you're like What is this. Come on it's another acronym for something on the web just what we needed

right. You can get some good help and some really good basic sort of descriptions of what it's all about. And it really is useful for folks now. Here's an example. WGBH which is one of the premier public broadcasting stations in the country. In Boston they started podcasting the weekly show AMERICAN STORIES. Now the first week that they started offering this podcast feed. They had 30 downloads but within By December they had fifty seven thousand downloads for the month. So a lot of people are using this. I mean it is still kind of in the early adopter phase of the technology. But as people discover how useful it is like TiVo. OK TiVo was something oh yeah sure. I'm going to you know just tell my my television to record my programs and you know then I can come and watch them anytime I want. Well that's just a fancy VCR except it's programmable and it's much better quality. And you can just you know like scan your TV guide and tell it I want these programs it'll go out there and get them podcasting the

same way. It's like TiVo for your radio. So yeah I think it's going to catch on in from from what we're seeing in terms of use. It's very very fast. Well I know that over the years that's one of the questions we've gotten a lot from people they've said look at the. I'd like to listen to focus 580 Are there particular programs that I'd like to hear. Just for example for talking about focus 580. That said but I can't be I can't be listening to the radio rant. Is there some device that I could go out and buy that I could set. Like you said the VCR that says OK record this program Wednesday at 10:00 o'clock. And it was possible but it was not easy. Right now it's easy now it's easy with a PC a Mac Linux a Unix box whatever there is this program called Potter which is free. You can download it iPod or dot com and it basically gives you the scheduling abilities to say I want this feed and you can say every 12 hours you can specify a particular time a day to go and check the fee there's a new MP 3 file that you can download. It'll

do it automatically doesn't cost a thing. And it's very very easy to use I installed it in about 30 seconds. Anyone with a computer can do that. OK. Well that is just one of the ways that we're trying to we're looking for as many different ways to try to get programming to the people that we possibly can. And this isn't a new one which we're doing. Of course you can still use the old fashioned way and you can turn on your AM radio and pick up your telephone and you can call and ask questions. But the bottom line here is see. We need your financial support to continue to do what we've been doing all along to look for new things to do. The money has to come from someplace NL. Half of it really has to come from people who listen. So if you're not a financial supporter of the station now is the time. Why don't we bring Tom into the teleporter been in been in pled central but don't tell Ohio Thompson. I'm going out for coffee. It's been a fascinating conversation. Welcome to talk to you. Technically savvy guy our news director and so we hope that we can get the phones ringing I see we've

got some open lines in our pledge Center 2 1 7 2 4 4 9 4 5 5. Where do we stand right now. Plenty of open lines right now. I'd like to say thanks first of all because up to now we've had 93 new friends are calling in Bill since the pledge drive began over the weekend. Ninety three people who are coming either coming back to AM 580 to say you know all this innovation that you're doing is worth my financial support. I want to see it keep going. Or people have just not gone up for people who discover the station for the first time and we say thank you thank you to to all of you who are just coming into the AM 580 fold and becoming a friend of WRAL 93 so far. Three hundred sixty five pledges overall through through the week so far. But we want to pick up the pace. 2 4 4 9 4 5 5 is how you get your financial contribution into AM 580. We've raised more than thirty two thousand dollars. We would like to by the end of the week get to 100 15000. So it's very important that you take this opportunity between now and the end of the week sooner the better how about right now. 2 1 7

2 4 4 9 4 5 5 or as Jack mentioned if you listen online if you appreciate the you know the fact that you can pick up Focus 580 and other programs whenever. Go to UIUC dot edu where you can find all those programs. Click the link that says pledge now and you can make that contribution as soon as possible. Or of course find volunteers who are starting to pick up the pace a little bit and can take your call right now at 2 4 4 9 4 5 5. Now I want to see something about the economic model of public broadcasting and public broadcasting on the web. Some people have suggested that since we've begun streaming and offering archives for people to download or listen to on the Web we want to charge people for that that we want to make them logon with a username and password and a credit card number in order to get our archive that's a pretty usual business model right. But you know what. I think that's a terrible idea for public broadcasting because what we're doing is we're serving the informational needs of a democracy. We're partly writing news and public affairs for people to understand their world regardless

of their ability to pay or their wealth. And what we need to do on the web is the same thing we do on the air we say look we are going to provide this service for the community so that you can continue to understand your world lifelong learning citizenship information all the things that you need as as a member of the community as as a voting informed citizen. So we want to be able to do that on the web as well and say to you if you if you value that we need your support. I mean we're not going to charge you for it but we want you to voluntarily come back and say Here is my contribution so please do that now. This is radio on the honor system and it's a right it's a business model as you mentioned that we've been following ever since Public Radio began 30 35 40 years ago. It's important that you step up and help contribute to the programming that we put on every day. Make that call now to 1 7 2 4 4 9 4 5 5. Thanks very much Tom and Jack and we will talk some more later I do have I want to thank you a couple of longtime supporters of AM 580 our programs are made possible with support from the

art mart in the Lincoln Square Mall Urbana the art Mart is pleased to support public radio in east central Illinois. Also the broadcast today is made possible by a grant from Remax realty associates currently handling for over 30 percent of the real estate sales transactions in Champaign County. Information at 3 5 to 50 700 RE MAX encourages you to join them in supporting public broadcasting later today as part of the afternoon magazine Celeste Quinn will talk with travel guru Rick Steves. He's host of a popular travel series on public television. He's the author of twenty eight bestselling European travel guide books including Europe through the back door. That title expresses his travel philosophy get off the beaten path and make some new friends and he'll talk with Celeste following the 1 o'clock news here on AM 580. We're going to take a break as usual will have news at one minute past the hour first an update on the markets the current Center for rural health and farm safety is proud to underwrite agricultural programming on WRAL. The cider helps residents our communities with education and training and farm safety. For more information call 2 1 7 3 8 3 4 6 0 6.

Now with this update on the markets now at 10:59 Central time I'm Jay Pierce Good morning March weed on the Chicago Board of Trade it to me.