So? What's the point? Citizen Kane is not the best American movie
made by anybodies list. "Twelve Angry Men" is probably considered the
"best" American film, closely followed by the "Caine Mutiny",
"Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and "Casablanca".

Hey!!!!
The best movie ever made is Star Wars.


"Shortwave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 05 Mar 2006 09:43:33 -0500, Harry Krause
wrote:

Shortwave Sportfishing wrote:
On Sun, 05 Mar 2006 13:40:57 GMT, Gene Kearns
wrote:

On Sun, 05 Mar 2006 11:54:03 GMT in rec.boats, Shortwave Sportfishing
penned the following thoughts:

"As of last weekend, 36.4 million people had seen this year's five
best-picture nominees in theaters, compared to 173.8 million the year
of "Titanic.""

Then, just to prove a point, which I'm not exactly sure what point was
being made, there is this.

"Tom O'Neil of the awards Web site, theenvelope.com says this year's
Oscar show will probably be the lowest rated ever, but it shouldn't
matter.

"If we judge the success of the Oscars by the number of people who
watch them, then we're as guilty as Hollywood studios who judge the
success of movies by how many people see them," he said."

Um...excuse me, but I thought the whole idea of making a movie is to
entertain the maximum number of people possible in order to make the
maximum amount of money or, as we capitalists put is, ROI.

Honest to pete - these people can't be that stupid - or can they?
I don't think it is stupidity, it is a lack of herding instinct. The
Oscars are about excellence in cinema achievement not ROI.

Bayliner may sell more boats than Rybovitch, but it doesn't make it a
better product. Excellence in one's field does not always yield a
stellar ROI. A link to the herding instinct of Homo sapien usually
does, but is often connected to poor quality.

How do you measure the success of a TV show or movie?

1 - Money earned by showing it.

2 - Money made by showing it.

It's the very definition of success.


Only if $$$ is your criteria for merit. As an example, most of the prime
time productions on PBS are far superior in every way to everything
produced for prime time by the broadcast networks, yet the PBS stations
and producers don't earn the big bucks for their work. They do, however,
attract the audience with the best brains.

Oh please.

This is an absurd posit of yours, Tom. Most of the best artists of their
time in almost any given field were not financially successful, and
you're claiming the ones who earned more were better?

Yes. You don't do something for nothing.

Citizen Kane, considered the greatest American movie by many, was not a
box-office smash. Mozart died a pauper. Vincent van Gogh starved for
most of his life.

So? What's the point? Citizen Kane is not the best American movie
made by anybodies list. "Twelve Angry Men" is probably considered the
"best" American film, closely followed by the "Caine Mutiny",
"Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and "Casablanca".

I'm not claiming that financial success is a disqualifier for a great
movie. It isn't. But there's more to great cinema than how much money a
particular movie earns.

It's the only measure - otherwise why do it?