I was there as Hippies, Anarchists and Dissidents came into our neighborhoods to preach their false gospel. Reject the Church/God, replace Him with Eastern mysticism, and trust me, plenty of books about that began to appear. “Don’t trust anyone over 30!” So, forget about mom and dad. You had freedom! What freedom? Live with and have sex with your girlfriend? Smoke dope on a regular basis? That was slavery and being misled by total strangers, but it didn’t happen overnight. First a few, then others and others fell to their newer, better world misrepresentations. Our trust was abused. My Hippie friend told me fornication was “Performing natural acts.”
I know people in Hollywood through the company I work for.
A) Some are amoral. What is right or wrong does not matter as long as making a lot of money is the primary goal. And fairness doesn’t matter. No verbal promises either. If it’s not in the contract, you don’t get more money.
B) There has been a trend to add more sexual situations, vulgar/“adult” language and dysfunctional families to the movie/TV mix. At first, slowly and gradually, but as the years passed, add more and more until partial or full nudity gets added, profanity and very graphic violence. That’s immoral.
C) Nihilism is a big thing. No one else matters except number one. You are your own world. Life is primarily about pleasure and power, but if you are not very good at the game, you may not last that long and will be left with whatever you have. The truly smart and wicked tend to rise through the ranks. But most simply assign that to good fortune and themselves. This life is all there is and I played the game well.
Recently, Hollywood has jumped on the “issue advocacy” bandwagon. We will be for anything or anyone as long as we can make a buck off of it and promote a cause, within certain parameters. Movies, TV, the news. Money and power, for many, plus change for some. That’s it.
But Hollywood is not 100% monolithic. It knows that it has audiences that don’t want a lot of what it’s generally selling, so it will make the occasional “cute” film for those other people.
Modern is an overused word. It really doesn’t mean anything. People in the 1950s thought they were “modern.” Getting a long-distance phone call used to be a big deal.
I’ve seen and done screen treatments. There are only handful of story archetypes that get told and retold with new props, hair, clothes and locations. I read in Weekly Variety, how a Hollywood veteran realized that ‘after pouring millions of dollars into a movie plus more into advertising,’ we still can’t know what will hit and what won’t.’ That’s only partly true. A few movies have gone through different directors, reshoots and reedits to tell a good story. Pre-screenings to preselected audiences tells them if they like what they see and why. Or if they don’t like it and why. Minimizing risk before release happens. Sometimes, other things happen to minimize risk too, but that’s getting further off topic.
And yes, it is now possible to go around Hollywood a bit, do good/moral work and get some screens.
