There's a really great piece in last week's New Yorker about the predictability of movie box offices by Malcolm Gladwell. The question at the center of this debate is one I find fascinating: Are there a quantifiable set of factors that make a movie a success for the vast majority of audiences?
Or is it as Scottish philosopher David Hume would have us believe...
"Beauty is no quality in things themselves, It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.”
According to Gladwell's profile the motley trio of Epagogix is on the side of Kames--not only can we quanitfy these things, but we should, and make box office numbers the literal bottom line of filmmaking.
While I'm equal parts fascinated and horrified by this approach (the fascination really stems from my lack of quant skills) what I'm really curious about is how much the little factors play into the success of a film. The example in the piece cites The Interpreter, Sydney Pollack's relatively unsuccessful film set in the U.N. According to Epagogix the choice to set it in a pseudo African country, the inability to capitalize on the romance of the U.N. as a location(what the frak? since when did bureaucrats equal romance?), and too much ambiguity made this film a failure.
So, is it really this logical? A good film is quantifiable? The article noted this approach is already used with relative success in music, but I wonder if this could or would ever extend to other artistic modes? I suppose music and film are the most overtly commercial, and thus lend themselves to this approach pretty easily but I still can't accept this notion. Ultimately I think it suggests that there is no ambiguity in art and that, as anyone who has ever been overwhelmed, perplexed, annoyed, shocked, etc. by a movie or a piece of music will tell you is just not true.
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