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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  1279 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.





goobster  ·  1278 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I've always loved this description of the film. Totally inappropriate and totally correct.

But also slightly off the mark of the intent of my post, which - I think? - is to obfuscate the plot and make it sound dull.

kleinbl00  ·  1278 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That's the point, though: for 30 years, plots have been about cutting through obfuscation. "A small town sheriff goes fishing to make his beaches safer" still sounds kinda dope. "Farm boy leaves home to return misdelivered mail" - you'd watch that even if you didn't know the farmboy is Luke Skywalker. It's the navel-staring movies that fall apart - do a boring capsule for Syriana and no one will know what the fuck you're talking about. See, you can't even do it - "band seeks (yet another) drummer" is plenty to engage you and it isn't even what Spinal Tap is about. Rock Star did pretty good ratings.

A good movie you have to lie about what it's about to obfuscate it properly. "Annoyed with traffic, commuter abandons vehicle and walks home." That's the inciting incident, not the plot - the plot is "retiring cop must tie up one last loose end" and even that language is loaded with meaning.

This is how "The Emoji Movie" gets made - nobody gives a fuck what it's about, it's two hours worth of emojis so people are gonna see that. "Cats?" "Cats run around singing about stupid shit" (never watched it, not an Andrew Lloyd Weber fan). You have to take it to bad movies - "house cleaner saves the universe" - and even there you can tell that Jupiter Ascending should have been awesome. "Man helps son on hike" - After Earth fails in the execution. Which, really, shows you a lot about twist movies in general and M. Night Shamalyan in particular: "Cult lives in a forest."

If the basic bones are there, you can't hide them.