Lessons from the Backrooms
We have a couple of really big success stories and, as always, I wonder if some people are learning the wrong lessons...
In the rush to celebrate Obsession and Backrooms, which both deserve it, I see several narratives being grabbed hold of that, to me, aren't really the best takes. And I guess this is to be expected. I feel like there is a history of just learning the wrong lessons but, if that lesson works against us, I think we have a problem. The main elements I'm seeing discussed are the role of YouTube and creators building their own audience and, while that last part is great and a big factor in what happened here (and with Iron Lung before it), I'm also seeing the usual “Hollywood is cooked” stuff and the toxicity that is actively wishing for the failure of bigger budget movies.
This does nobody any good.
But we're taking the power from the gatekeepers! Okay, well ignoring the huge successes of “gatekeeper” movies like Project Hail Mary or the Dune movies or whatever else (including Scary Movie right now), let's just reframe this gatekeeper thing. Nobody was stopping anyone making stuff. Ever. Sam Raimi did it. The digital age (which is not new, people) then opened up tools for anyone to make a movie. This was never about someone stopping you telling a story. Quite the opposite. What these gatekeepers actually did was fund development, take chances on people, help them work up stories with considerable resources and, if they survived, would push them into the market and try to make a success of them. Far from stopping people, they were spending real money and real resources to make the dream happen. They may not have always chosen you, but they actively contributed in advance with no guarantee of success for themselves. Something, it should be said, that YouTube does not do. YouTube waits for you to come to it with a finished product and it might throw you some change afterwards.
The difficulty with the gatekeepers was that they became more and more risk-averse. How has that worked out for them?
So now what's the lesson here with these recent successes? People can go find their own audiences? Yep, they can. And some will. And those former gatekeepers, people who once might take a chance on you, now can expect you to do the work yourself on your own time and money until your audience is large enough that the success is as close to guaranteed as possible when they sweep in with a purchase and a distribution deal. It is even less risk for them than ever before and, for them, the potential payoff can be huge.
I don't think this makes the landscape better for a lot of people though. Ask the art director on Obsession for one, but also those people who won’t get that green light or even development until they can spend 10 years building their ‘personal brand’.
For me, the real lesson is not about creators on YouTube. Because when you put these two movies (also Digital Circus) together with other success stories over the last few years, going from something like Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2022 all the way to now, I think it paints a slightly different picture. I think it shows audiences are now looking for fresh, new movies regardless of their origin (books, toys, creepypasta, anywhere). New experiences. New stories. Something they can talk about and feel like they discovered. And sequels or big IP won't go away (you may wish failure on them but a considerable number of big hitters are still sequels and IP movies) but I think movies actually need more risk and a wider spectrum of budgets.
When it comes to stories, risk-averse, as it happens, often only compounds the risk.
Some won't land. And that's okay. That's how it has always worked. I feel like we need to remember that this is how it is supposed to work. When those gatekeepers were at their best, they knew this. They backed some long shots. We need to celebrate movies and stories that take big swings, whether that is a tiny indie movie from a YouTube filmmaker or whether it's from a giant studio with a truckload of money. Celebrate it all. Because there is a danger now of learning the wrong lessons and we'll be faced with just movies from influencers and endless Backrooms sequels.
