Neil Calloway argues that we enjoy it when a film fails at the box office…
This week brought the news – unsurprising to most – that this year had been less than stellar at the box office, with several films disappointing in terms of their grosses The BFG, Alice Through The Looking Glass and Ben-Hur have joined Ghostbusters in not pulling in the crowds.
Much of this has been blamed on sequel and franchise fatigue, though two of the biggest films of the year have been Captain America: Civil War and Finding Dory, so it certainly doesn’t explain everything, but of course we all love a good flop.
Part of it is that we like to see big studios come a cropper when they remake beloved classics; schadenfreude at seeing Hollywood studios ailing and part of it is just that disasters have more interesting stories behind them. Recent documentaries have been made about the 1994 Fantastic Four movie and 1996’s The Island of Doctor Moreau. Puff pieces for the home video release aside, people rarely make documentaries about successful films.
This week saw people offered the opportunity to re-enact scenes from The Room alongside Greg Sestero, the author of The Disaster Artist, a film of which is of course due out soon. Nobody is paying to take part in script readings of Avatar (they dialogue of which is only marginally better than that which appears in The Room), are they?. Flops are more fun than successes, and often more beneficial too; David Thewlis secured a book deal on the basis of a short story he wrote about his time shooting The Island of Doctor Moreau with Marlon Brando.
Obituaries of the recently deceased Michael Cimino concentrated not on his triumph with The Deer Hunter but on his failure with Heaven’s Gate (a film ripe for re-evaluation), the movie which not only derailed his career but all but destroyed United Artists, such a failure that it became a byword for an overblown folly of a film, with Waterworld being dubbed “Kevin’s Gate” prior to its release. Forget Dances With Wolves, it’s that and The Postman that will feature most prominently in Kevin Costner’s obituaries. Graeme Robertson’s Flickering Myth series on directors who damaged their careers is worth reading because of the screw ups, egos and downfalls; nobody wants to read a series of articles about directors who go from success to success.
Tim Burton didn’t make a film about Ed Wood because of his successes, but because of his failures. There is tragedy and comedy in flops which isn’t present in hits; we’ll continue to read books about them, watch documentaries about them and get excited when they happen because it’s a good story; “if it bleeds, it leads,” is the mantra of TV news – violent stories get top billing, and it’s the same with flops – there is the same morbid fascination that comes from wanting bad news on our TV and in our papers. We pretend to hate unsuccessful films, but really we love them.
Neil Calloway is a pub quiz extraordinaire and Top Gun obsessive. Check back here every Sunday for future instalments.
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https://youtu.be/b7Ozs5mj5ao?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
Originally published September 11, 2016. Updated November 30, 2022.
