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The solution to Hollywood’s troubles: low-budget, high-quality movies about real people, like Debra Granik’s “Winter’s Bone” and “Leave No Trace”
By
Published: Jul 17, 2023
Category:
Drama
I’ve known Joan Juliet Buck for more years than many of you have been alive. I’m an admirer of her memoir, The Price of Illusion. The other day I read her oh-so-relevant Facebook post about the strikes in Hollywood. She saw very clearly that large numbers of people who once had jobs and creative roles and health care were now going to be gig workers, and this was not depressing to executives who made hundreds of millions of dollars on the creativity of others. As she wrote on Facebook:
The writers have always been jokes in Hollywood, viewed as greedy seasonal workers with outrageous delusions of entitlement and no power at all. There’s a sorry old joke about the starlet who was so clueless that she slept with the writer, instead of who she should’ve slept with —the producer, the director, the costar, a studio executive, or the studio head.
This nasty old joke demonstrates one sad truth: people with power fear and mock people with talent and brains, treat them like shit and use them up in exchange for sums of money that look big to the talented, but to the powerful look like coins they’d throw at street beggars … In Hollywood: everything is judged by money and success. Thus CEOs are bigger, better, brighter, definitely more immortal than mere writers and actors.. The vertiginous salary disparity between that CEO turkey earning $246 million a year and screenwriters earning about $12.50 an hour demands something a little meatier than strike action.
I commented on Joan’s post: This is too obvious a solution to be attempted: low-budget films about real people in real situations, played by stars for modest money and credible percentages.
Joan replied: Well, that’s how we first discovered Jennifer Lawrence, scrabbling through winter woods as a teenager. That was before she got franchised into “Hunger Games.”
And that was when I remembered the classic example: “Winter’s Bone.” From my review:
It was made for $2 million, it grossed only $13 million. If the film is remembered at all, it’s because it launched Jennifer Lawrence. It did much more than that. It premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, and went on to claim its Grand Jury Prize. It was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actress (Jennifer Lawrence), Best Supporting Actor (John Hawkes) and Best Adapted Screenplay. The screenplay nomination went to Debra Granik, the director, and her co-writer. [To watch the preview, click here. To stream the movie on Amazon Prime, click here.]
Her next movie, “Leave No Trace,” is just as good as “Winter’s Bone.” From the Times review:
In “Leave No Trace,” Ms. Granik follows a father and daughter into the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest, in a story overflowing with compassion though as harrowing as “Winter’s Bone.” Ben Foster plays a veteran with PTSD, living off the grid with his teenage daughter (the New Zealand actress Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie) in a state forest outside of Portland, Oregon, until a mistake brings them to the attention of social services and forces their reintroduction into civilization…. She has found another star in the making with Ms. McKenzie, whose naturalism and maturity gently bubble up as she navigates the delicate equilibrium between her love for her father — still fighting a war of his own — and her need for something greater than their fragile existence can provide. [Here’s the trailer. To stream the film from Amazon Prime, click here. ]
The Debra Granik Fan Club doesn’t meet. Members pay no dues. But when the conversation turns to Jennifer Lawrence or Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie or Debra Granik, we exchange knowing glances. Join us?
