There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.Leonard Cohen

The Worth of a Movie

Vinny Bruzzeze is a new Hollywood discovery, not the heart throb kind, but the kind that can show producers and other bosses how to make money by suggesting plot or character changes based on movies which have historically succeeded at the box office. A former professor of statistics he has found a way to analyze scripts by comparing their various parts to those of successful movies in the past. He gets paid about $20,000 a script, and now has a track record, so much so he is thinking of applying his trade to Broadway and to TV. To many, to movie producers certainly, being able to ascertain the financial success of a picture is desirable, sought after, good for the companies involved and of course therefore seen as good for the society. But what does that say of the impact the movie may have, will create? Of the values it puts forth, of the general tenor it will contribute to, of the way it will participate in the overall fabric of the culture and help move it either towards the good or not? The worth of a movie is not in how much profit it makes, the worth of a movie is in whatever iota it can help us be a better world. Although by today’s standards, such statements make me naïve, it remains that if there’s truth in them,naïve or not that truth would still stand.