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Hollywood That Wasn’t
Sometimes it’s best to continue what you do well or at least have a plan for something else. The Academy did neither.
In grand anticipation of last Sunday evening, Maureen Dowd, Opinion Columnist for The New York Times, wrote of the Oscars that no one knew or cared about.
“Sex, glamour, excitement and mystery are all relics of a bygone era. Hollywood is focused on worthy, relevant, socially conscious and lugubrious” — Maureen Dowd
Movies watched along side strangers to the smell of popcorn have taken yet another hit from a variant of their old nemesis — TV. This time it’s streaming — mostly a personal experience done anywhere, played and stopped with a button we control and spread to all our devices. The content for which was achieved by a devolution of power to small and talented crews in all corners of the globe and collected and delivered to us by Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and a growing list. The star is no more and it doesn’t matter. There are genres and specialties from which to choose. Movie entertainment doesn’t have to come from Hollywood — anymore than wine has to come from Bordeaux and Burgundy. But Hollywood offers something distinct. It’s big and out of the common world. It’s dreamtime and all that life can’t be. There’s still real yearning for this stuff that Maureen and her friends point out.
