The Great Hollywood Debate

by Laura Macdonald

"Does Hollywood have a Social Conscience?" This topic was passionately supported on April 23rd, at Boston University's Great Debate, by a team lead by producer Peter Guber-"Batman", "Rain Man" (exec), "Batman Returns" (exec), and opposed by a team led by Academy Award winning British producer Sir David Puttnam ("Chariots of Fire"). The affirmative deftly argued that the ballot box for film is the ticket office, by which society dictates what it wants to see and Hollywood then responds, while Puttnam lead the negative by arguing that Hollywood has immense global power and shirks the responsibilities that accompany that power. Following the presentation of the Pros and Cons, the audience of 500 students, faculty, media and the general public, overwhelmingly voted that Hollywood indeed has no social conscience.

Guber argued that in a Hollywood film "the values of the filmmaker and the public mesh to make a unique engine" and discussed the huge average cost of a Hollywood film (estimated by him to be $45 million), asking "How many of you say 'Let's go down to the Cheri theatre, I heard a film came in on budget!?," He created the vision of a collaborative art form for the audience that consisted of fiercely independent filmmakers on one end, and then the other being the public, also fiercely independent. The second largest export from the United States is film, he said, and he asked everyone not to judge the whole industry by it's bad components, but to be positive and look at the best.

Speaking next, Puttnam struck a considerable chord with the audience by stating his belief that film "is not just a business" but that stories and images are how society has communicated social values throughout time, and yet Hollywood continually denies this responsibility. The only point he said he agreed with Guber on was that "we both want to work for an industry of which we can be unequivocally proud".

Puttnam asked the audience what they thought the most powerful country in the world was, politically and culturally. Having established the United States as the answer, he then went on to describe the era that we all now live in to be pregnant with the potential for disaster or success. Responsibility, therefore, is the key requirement, he said, as film and other images "have colossal power... affecting us emotionally and intellectually at every stage of our lives". To treat them just as community industries, when they have such a profound global reach is dangerous. He finished by saying that films carry universal dreams, treasured ambitions and the power to speak great truths, debunk myths, as well as generate them, and that Hollywood must recognize and respond to this.

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The remaining speakers for the affirmative were William Roth and Brett Newkirk. Roth is a BU graduate whose film, "Floating", was shown at the recent Berlin Film Festival, and Newkirk is a senior at BU majoring in law. Roth claimed that no one movie has changed his life and said that Hollywood is not a social service institution, going on to say that "Hollywood just wants to make money, nothing constrains Hollywood except what we want to see." While Newkirk asked: "Do you really think films have big an effect on our lives?" He had said that he had no aspirations to be involved with the film industry in the future, and claimed to represent the perspective of the American public. He felt that it would be "darn frightening if people went to the movies to be educated!" Finally, he stated that it was an elitist view that the filmmaker has his own vision and society be damned. Puttnam's team wrapped up with Tom Danon, a BU alum whose debut film "Bleached" showed at the recently completed Los Angeles International Film Festival, and David Waldman, a film student finishing his degree at BU this semester. Danon called Hollywood a "frustrated smoggy bird," and claimed that "if you can't trust the stars to turn a profit, and you can't trust the morphing twisters, you scrape at the bottom of the barrel and what have you got left....the script and the vision". He also warned against the powerful propaganda tool cinema can be. Waldman remarked that films where the audience says "ooh it's big and shiny and it blows up, finish where they start - nowhere". He compared King Hollywood to King Elvis, who was exploited, lost his ability to create and, on his death, had become a parody of what he once was. He asked Hollywood: "What is the legacy that you want to leave behind?" In summing up, Puttnam quoted civil rights pioneer Eldridge Cleaver, "If you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem". While Guber made a final appeal saying "Hollywood isn't some demonic industry on the coast of California trying to make crap". Laura Macdonald is a screenwriting student at Boston University. posted on May 5, 1997 |Share