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Hands of Hollywood
even though you sit thousands of miles away. You, all of you, are the huge human motor behind this gigantic activity. You are even the real "casting directors," for you pass on the stars. When you tire of them their contracts are ended; when you increase your approval, their pay checks are increased. Many formerly high' priced directors, stars, and scenario writers are walking the streets of Hollywood in the parade of the k 'has-beens/ ' because their pictures, their performances, their stories, failed with you.
Of course, there is much experimentation with new ideas and new "finds," and many costly mistakes are made; but all this is due to the desire on the part of the producer to give you something new, something different. He is afraid of boring you. Yet, if his venture fails, he, not you, will suffer the loss.
If you are at all sportsmanlike, you must realize that the pro' ducer is not to be blamed when he makes a "bad guess" — he is trying to please you and, for the most part, he does, else your fifty cents or dollar long ago would have ceased to drop into the till at the boxoffice.
"Majority rules," is a typically American principle, so the producer continues to make the kind of pictures which past success indicates is the choice of the majority. If you feel like criticizing the studios for turning out pictures which may not appeal to you, individually, just remember that "majority rules."
The American public, in the last analysis, runs Hollywood. If the public taste is cheap, banal, the producer must cater to it, or go out of business. Yet, would-be highbrows, half-baked intellectuals, supercilious posers, issue tirades against the producer for not always making artistic pictures. But there is not one of these blatant critics who would invest three dollars and ninety-eight cents, much less a half million, in order to give the public something artistic.
Let us suppose, for instance, that these critics were asked to advance five hundred thousand dollars for the production of a picture; that, then, they were told to choose one of two stories. Suppose that a committee of experts told them that Story No. 1
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