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kleinbl00  ·  1257 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Funski: A goofy bit of fun with movie descriptions

This is actually a useful writing exercise for reasons that have been largely lost to time, because Hollywood is bullshit and everything sucks now.

"High Concept" is a term that was used from about 1997 to about 2014 or so. It was never used correctly; "high concept" basically described something that was humongous and expensive because, you see, all good things are "high concept."

The ironic thing is that 'high concept' was a term coined by Michael Eisner and Barry Diller to describe what they were looking for in concepts for the ABC Movie of the Week.

ABC was trailing NBC and CBS by a stupid amount and had no budget for anything and they had time to fill. So they had this weird experimental two-hour slot where they could try out pilots and stuff. And since there was no budget whatsoever, the only advertising they would ever get was in the description in TV Guide.

So. Barry Diller ends up running Paramount until 1984, at which point he starts Fox. Michael Eisner ends up running Disney from 1984 to 2005. And both of them said "high concept" often enough that everyone knew that everyone knew that "high concept" meant "something the heads of Paramount, Fox and Disney demand of you" but almost nobody knew that it literally meant "Gidget Grows Up."

So. "The most boring description of a movie" was originally the best advertising that film was ever going to get, and now it's become a parlor game.