A requiem for medi­um-sized movies

Actor and direc­tor John Tur­tur­ro was asked recent­ly about his deci­sion to appear in the Trans­form­ers films. Pri­or to 2007, he was asso­ci­at­ed more with inde­pen­dent film, the occa­sion­al Adam San­dler com­e­dy rep­re­sent­ing his own tan­gi­ble link with main­stream cin­e­ma. Yet in 2017 Tur­tur­ro will make his fourth appear­ance as bum­bling gov­ern­ment agent Sey­mour Sim­mons, author of such clas­sic lines as ​“I am direct­ly below the enemy’s scrotum.”

He spoke fur­ther about his involve­ment in the Trans­form­ers fran­chise at the Mont­clair Film Fes­ti­val. ​“I nev­er used to do these big, giant films because there used to be medi­um-sized films,” he explained. ​“But now there are no medi­um-sized films. There are small films or giant films. Thank god for tele­vi­sion.” A quick scan of the cur­rent cin­e­mat­ic land­scape rat­i­fies those com­ments – super­hero jug­ger­nauts swal­low up the mul­ti­plex­es, while micro-bud­get­ed dra­mas remain the pre­serve of small­er, art house cin­e­mas. It may be hard to define, but an entire strand of film­mak­ing has all but dis­ap­peared over the last decade or so.

So, what exact­ly is a ​‘medi­um-sized’ film? Rough­ly speak­ing the term cov­ers films made on a bud­get of $2m and $80m. But pro­duc­tion and mar­ket­ing costs aren’t the only thing we need to take into account; it’s also about the type of films being made. Direc­tors like John Waters and David Lynch haven’t had a new film released in cin­e­mas for well over a decade, around the same time as Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la and Bri­an De Palma’s last wide­ly-released fea­tures. Mean­while many tal­ent­ed char­ac­ter actors are turn­ing to tele­vi­sion, with Tur­tur­ro him­self win­ning plau­dits for his lead turn in HBO’s The Night Of.

There was a time when the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom was that the prof­its from Hollywood’s biggest block­busters would trick­le down to small­er films. Through one mas­sive reces­sion and a seis­mic shift in the home video mar­ket, that mod­el changed. Now, if it isn’t cheap to make and there is no fran­chise poten­tial or awards prospects, chances are it won’t get made at all. The upshot is that many sto­ries deemed ​‘risky’, typ­i­cal­ly those with mature themes or less­er-known tal­ent attached, are dis­missed out of hand. These films require more than a micro-bud­get, but promise only a mod­est return.

This type of film was com­mon­place 20 years ago, when the likes of LA Con­fi­den­tial, Don­nie Bras­co, Boo­gie Nights, As Good as It Gets and The Big Lebows­ki could hold their own against the James Bonds and Juras­sic Parks of the film world. Could any of those films be made now, or at least be giv­en the same resources they were back then? And how many mod­ern clas­sics might we be denied in the future?

At one time it would have been incon­ceiv­able to think that a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Robert De Niro, Al Paci­no and Mar­tin Scors­ese could be found any­where but a cin­e­ma, and yet The Irish­man was sold by Para­mount to Net­flix, after Scorsese’s Silence failed to make a dent at the domes­tic box office. In the ever-chang­ing game of movie eco­nom­ics, it seems that even the most cel­e­brat­ed lumi­nar­ies are only as good as their last hit.

There are signs of hope, though. Work­ing with­in the already estab­lished con­fines of a huge­ly pop­u­lar block­buster uni­verse, James Mangold’s Logan broke a lot of rules, telling its own sto­ry with­out try­ing to appeal to every audi­ence demo­graph­ic. Sim­i­lar­ly, The Nice Guys, Gone Girl and oth­ers have qui­et­ly turned a prof­it in recent years. Get Out proved Jor­dan Peele’s poten­tial to fit com­plex themes into a crowd-pleas­ing for­mat, while high-pro­file direc­tors like Quentin Taran­ti­no and Paul Thomas Ander­son con­tin­ue to carve out their own dis­tinct nich­es, all while stay­ing true to their cel­lu­loid roots.

The major stu­dios may argue that audi­ences tend to go with what’s famil­iar, and this is backed up by the fact that only three of the top 20 high­est gross­ing films of 2016 year were based on orig­i­nal sto­ries. But while mega-bud­get movies sit – and maybe always will – at the top of the cin­e­mat­ic food chain, the vari­ety that ​‘medi­um-sized’ films offer could keep the moviego­ing expe­ri­ence from becom­ing stale. In an indus­try where big­ger usu­al­ly means bet­ter, the medi­um-sized movie may be the secret to cinema’s long-term future.