"Just imagine how good The Godfather could have been, if only it had been part-funded by the government."I was going to write a post about the UK Film Council, but the Mash piece covers it so well that I'm going to redirect you there.
On The Tenth Day Of Trumpmas, Twitter Gave To Me…
18 hours ago
Indeed. That's probably why Hollywood movies are the best - they don't get any govt funding.
ReplyDeleteThe only counter-example I can think of is Top Gun where they were allowed to use those ships very cheaply - and it was probably a worse film as a result.
That's a really interesting example, because the US Military won't co-operate in any movie that isn't basically a pro-military film. Crimson Tide had to have help from the French Navy because the US Navy wouldn't (despite it not being an anti-war film).
ReplyDeleteBut I really don't see why anyone can't just make a movie for themselves now. The gear and the number of people you need is so small now, what with digital video and computer editing. Ken Loach's crappy movies cost about £3-4m, which is just nuts (Soderbergh makes the odd low-budget experimental movie that costs $1m)
The US military also let the Village People use their facilities to record the video for "In the Navy" for reasons I'm guessing they didn't entirely think through.
ReplyDeleteRoss,
ReplyDeleteThere's a rumour that the Village People and the song were going to be used for a campaign for the Navy, until someone pointed out that it might not be a great idea.
Ironically, it was recently discovered that only one of the Village People was actually gay.