"The actors are in control, getting outrageous amounts of money. The reason they're getting this kind of money is because the studios don't know what else to do. They don't have a clue about what to do except to pay an actor a lot of money"
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Hollywood hates a vacuum, so it fills it with star power and seven-figure checks. Bogdanovich’s jab isn’t really at actors for “taking control” so much as at studios for quietly admitting, through their wallets, that they’ve mislaid the creative compass. The line works because it flips the usual moral panic about greedy talent into an institutional critique: when a system can’t reliably develop stories, directors, or original properties, it buys certainty wherever it can find it. A famous face becomes a hedge against executive fear.
The subtext is classic Bogdanovich: a filmmaker shaped by the era when directors, not brands, were the selling point (and when studio power could be challenged by a coherent artistic vision). In that light, “outrageous” isn’t just sticker shock; it’s a symptom of a deeper disorder. Studios “don’t have a clue” reads like deliberate repetition because the point isn’t ignorance in the abstract, it’s paralysis. Paying the star is the one decision that looks like a decision.
Context matters: from the blockbuster model onward, studios increasingly chased opening-weekend math, global marketability, and risk management. If you can’t explain why a movie should exist, you can at least explain why an A-lister should be on the poster. Bogdanovich is diagnosing a culture where money replaces taste, and where the actor’s paycheck becomes the industry’s confession: we don’t know what we’re doing, but we know what sells.
The subtext is classic Bogdanovich: a filmmaker shaped by the era when directors, not brands, were the selling point (and when studio power could be challenged by a coherent artistic vision). In that light, “outrageous” isn’t just sticker shock; it’s a symptom of a deeper disorder. Studios “don’t have a clue” reads like deliberate repetition because the point isn’t ignorance in the abstract, it’s paralysis. Paying the star is the one decision that looks like a decision.
Context matters: from the blockbuster model onward, studios increasingly chased opening-weekend math, global marketability, and risk management. If you can’t explain why a movie should exist, you can at least explain why an A-lister should be on the poster. Bogdanovich is diagnosing a culture where money replaces taste, and where the actor’s paycheck becomes the industry’s confession: we don’t know what we’re doing, but we know what sells.
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| Topic | Movie |
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