Digest 8/31/2020

Hollywood invests in straight-to-streaming releases; Tenet is not very good; Study Hallers recommend the AlphaSmart word processor

HOW HOLLYWOOD IS RESPONDING TO THE PANDEMIC

It all started with Trolls World Tour — that was the movie that provided the blueprint for pandemic-era releases. When the animated movie musical’s early April theatrical release was derailed, Universal Pictures decided to make it available for digital rental on Apple TV for $19.99. Within three weeks, the movie had made nearly $100 million — more revenue than its 2016 predecessor Trolls had made during its five-month theatrical run. Universal would go on to release Judd Appatow’s The King of Staten Island straight to VOD at the same rental price of $19.99; it quickly rose to the top of VOD charts, and the test to see if an R-rated comedy could fare as well as a family movie paid off.

The experiment was so successful that Jeff Shell, the head of the studio’s parent division, NBCUniversal, told the Wall Street Journal that even when theaters reopened, they would continue releasing movies straight to PVOD (premium video on demand) simultaneously. Shell also noted he’d planned on experimenting with the format even before the pandemic began — studios had been watching the success of Netflix with straight-to-streaming releases and had begun quibbling with theater requirements to show a film for two months before releasing it to home viewers. They were also constricted by the Academy’s requirement that a film must play in a Los Angeles theater for a week in order to be eligible for an Oscar. (During the pandemic, of course, the Academy has loosened that rule and allowed streaming-only films to compete.)

Even before the pandemic, releasing movies in theaters before streaming was beginning to seem outdated, propped up by aesthetic preferences, nostalgia, tradition, and industry rules. In her Substack newsletter dedicated to the Disney empire, Musings on Mouse, Julia Alexander noted that Disney is releasing two highly anticipated films in different formats. The new X-Men film The New Mutants will be released only in theaters (and drive-ins), while the live-action Mulan will be available on streaming service Disney+ for a whopping price of $30 (that’s on top of the $6.99 monthly subscription cost).

“Can a blockbuster title be profitable as a premium video-on-demand exclusive?” asks Alexander. “Bypassing theaters can hurt the film’s revenue prospects — but considering that Disney will take anywhere between 70 and 100% of the profit from Mulan’s sale compared to the 60 to 65% cut Disney could make from a theatrical release, does selling enough ‘copies’ make-up for that maneuver?” The tactic could work — Disney+ has more than 60 million subscribers — but it depends on a lot of variables, like whether viewers buy the movie directly from the Disney+ website rather than through a service like Apple TV or Roku, which would take a cut of the profits. Also, this is largely a question of domestic success. Mulan will be given a full theatrical release in China, where it is expected to perform well.

Any model for blockbuster success seems to involve theatrical releases in some form; it seems unlikely they’ll be cut out altogether. The anticipated success or failure of each release in the pandemic era — and the calculation of whether to go straight to VOD or go the theatrical route — varies wildly case-by-case, based on factors like budget, audience, and genre.

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TO SEE TENET OR NOT TO SEE TENET

Tenet, Christopher Nolan’s much-hyped action-thriller, premiered internationally this past week and will be released domestically, in select theaters, on September 3. Nolan told the Wall Street Journal there was no path to profitability for the movie — which had a budget of $200 million — without a theatrical release. It’s “not just an artistic choice,” he insisted. The film is playing in theaters at a time when viewers are balancing health and safety concerns, and as theater chains are trying to make a comeback after several months of closure.

But the mystique surrounding the film and cult-like devotedness of Nolan’s fans are driving viewers to theaters. Some are crossing state lines and shelling out for airline tickets in order to see the film. At this point, as the release rolls out, quite a few articles have been written spotlighting movie-goers weighing the risks. So far, the international release has generated $53 million — an impressive number considering everything stacked against it — but the domestic release may face unique challenges considering coronavirus infection rates remain high in the US. And as a result, theater openings will be spotty — movie theaters remain closed in Los Angeles and New York.

But what is it like to go to a theater now? I asked writer Soraya Roberts, formerly of Longreads, who saw the film in Toronto last week. “It was very…COVID-oriented,” she said. Viewers had to wait in line six feet apart, and only six people were allowed to enter the theater at a time. Only two movie-goers could sit together, and masks were mandated (except while eating or drinking). “I decided to go because the IMAX seats something like 500 people and they are only allowed 50 in there so I figured it would be VERY socially distanced,” Roberts said. The theater was also handing out IMAX-branded masks. 

Roberts described seeing a movie during the pandemic as a “weird luxury.” But as she watched others enjoy maskless outdoor dining — something she has chosen not to partake in — she decided going to the movies was worth the risk to her. “It’s not like I would go to the cinema as often as I used to, but I’m also someone who really likes movies so it’s like…that’s kind of what I do for fun,” she said. “I don’t give a shit about eating in a restaurant or on a patio, but I see TONS of people doing that. So whatever risk they are taking, I just take elsewhere.”

Roberts noted there were some Nolan fanboys talking very loudly (with masks on). “If I get COVID from a bunch of geeks I’ll be pissed,” she said.

As for the movie itself, Roberts wasn’t a huge fan. Neither was Study Hall’s own Chris Erik Thomas, who called it “the dumbest movie I’ve ever seen” and compared it to “watching Christopher Nolan suck his own dick for two and a half hours.” Who wouldn’t risk COVID for that?

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The RNC May Have Existed in an Alternate Reality, But That Doesn’t Mean Media Coverage Should Play Along

How do you responsibly cover a political convention for a president and his party when they’ve dug themselves so far into an alternate universe that reality doesn’t exist anymore? Please do not ask The New York Times’ print edition because, as Soledad O’Brien said, they are busy running awful headlines like this: “Accepting Bid, Trump Paints Biden as Unsafe.” Setting aside the grammatical headache, the headline continues the trend of normalizing a man who turned the Republican National Convention into a fascist fan fiction expo. On Twitter, the Times headline was compared with a series of takes from the Huffington Post, including “Fascist Fireworks: Gaslight-in-Chief Goes For Broke.” Over the top? Yes, but I’d rather have an aggressively melodramatic headline calling out fascism than see the Times twist itself into a pretzel to normalize Trump. 

The president’s acceptance of his party’s nomination was a 70-minute spectacle that capped off a convention that felt beamed from whatever reality Republicans are living in lately. At the RNC, coronavirus is a thing of the past, evil Democrats plot to abolish suburbs, and Kim Guilfoyle is a good orator — all while in the real world, right-wing commentators are praising a Trump-loving teenager who killed Black Lives Matter supporters in Kenosha. Just because Trump has spent four years rewriting history doesn’t mean it’s fine to just give up and go with the flow. A headline from the Times saying that “Trump paints Biden as unsafe” without mentioning that Trump’s rhetoric helped lead to murder isn’t just bad writing, it’s dangerous. — Chris Erik Thomas

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STUDY HALLERS RECOMMEND The pandemic has made me appreciate the simplicity of a writer’s tools: give us a computer or a notebook, and we’re set. But I’m also writing outside more often than I used to, and that has revealed a gap in my toolbox. I like to get on my bike, ride for a while, pause to write, then ride again. I bring my laptop, but I worry about falling and breaking it. I thought about buying a cheap laptop, but even the simplest used ones cost hundreds of dollars. There’s always the paper notebook, but transcribing takes so long. I needed some kind of in-between machine.

Several Google searches into my quest, I found it: the AlphaSmart word processor. It’s a visibly ’90s piece of technology: the keyboard of an IBM laptop with the screen display of a TI-83 graphing calculator. It eats AAA batteries and spews out text directly into Word via a cable. It does not have the qualities usually desired in a contemporary portable device — it’s not cute, or light, or miniature — but it’s solid, simple, and correspondingly cheap, at roughly $25-$50 used on eBay. It’s kind of a piece of shit, but in a great way: I can skip the being-careful phase that usually follows buying new tech. My AlphaSmart set me back just under $20, which is $5 less than what I paid for my last Moleskine notebook. If it breaks, I won’t cry over it (hopefully). — Sarah Ruth Bates

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EVERYTHING ELSE 

— In the New York Times, Kevin Roose proposed that Trump’s “silent majority” is only silent when we’re not on Facebook. And truly, besides Boomers and Trump supporters, who is? On the powerful social media platform, the constituency that could carry Trump to victory are in fact very loud. On Facebook, Ben Shapiro is king, Breitbart is a widely shared “news source,” and the most popular posts containing the term “Black Lives Matter” are ones from right wing commentators calling the movement a “lie.” (It is also worth noting that Facebook has been historically soft on moderating right-wing groups.)

— Speaking of Facebook, BuzzFeed senior tech reporter Ryan Mac shared some internal messages from Facebook employees frustrated with the continued leaks to the press, presumably over detailed stories about the platform’s failure to remove a militia page and event that encouraged members to bring weapons protests in Kenosha, where 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed two protestors last week. A Facebook spokesperson reprimanded whoever was responsible for hurting “our culture and your colleagues.”

— Anne Helen Peterson wrote in her (now full-time) Substack Culture Study about twin Mormon influencers Brooklyn and Bailey, Baylor University seniors who have a paid partnership with the school. The girls now have COVID and are documenting their journey with the illness for their followers, in the process stressing how not-at-fault the university is (despite returning to in-person classes) and how careful they have been as individuals (despite recently launching a series in which one of them goes on 10 dates with 10 guys, not masked and not socially distanced). 

— Popula editor Maria Bustillos is leading the launch of journalism cooperative Brick House, which will be totally worker-owned and home to projects that got their start on the now-defunct crypto startup Civil, including Sludge, FAQ NYC and Tom Scocca’s Hmm Weekly (now a newsletter by Scocca but formerly Civil newsroom HmmDaily). 

— Lest you think everyone in the media industry is suffering, New York Times food editor Sam Sifton has swapped his Red Hook condo for a $2 million townhouse in the same neighborhood. Congrats, I guess.

— Actress Bella Thorne launched an OnlyFans, presumably to research for a role, and became the first creator on the platform to make $1 million in a single day. It’s a slap in the face to sex workers who have depended on the platform for their livelihoods — Thorne is contributing to the saturation of the platform when she’s already a rich celebrity who doesn’t need the extra income. Sex workers on the platform claim OnlyFans changed the rules after Thorne joined, limiting how much they can make on the platform. She’s apologized since the backlash, claiming she wanted to help destigmatize sex work. (Also, Sean Baker, the director she claimed she made the account in collaboration with, has said he has nothing to do with it.)

— BuzzFeed Ben profiled Andrew Sullivan as he makes the transition from New York Magazine (where colleague Sarah Jones called him the “office bigot”) to his own Substack — a move that has taken his salary from less than $200,000 to $500,000, so pardon me while I walk into traffic. Anyway, it’s an interesting look at his influence in the ’90s and early aughts, but his mainstream influence seems to have waned and the piece gave him space to expound on his racist views in the Times. Indeed, “Why publish this” seems to be the prevailing view on Media Twitter.