With Hollywood movie attendance tanking for about 20 straight weeks, people are searching for the reasons why. Let's not overlook the brewing scandal with Dreamworks who is under investigation for insider trading and is warning of 2nd quarter losses... Despite the latest Star Wars movie and other expected summer blockbusters, Hollywood is in a bad way. There are a lot of excuses being made for this. Everything from people staying home watching videos to microwave popcorn. First of all, is everybody staying home? Have you been to the mall lately or out to eat? As a rule people aren't going to the movies quite as much. Plain and simple. The question is why?

The obvious reason is that movie quality over the past few years has been terrible. People are tired of shelling out money for overhyped movies and going home disappointed. There are only a handfull of movies each year that even spark my interest. Have you noticed that it is now a rare occurence for a movie to be #1 for more than a few weeks? Didn't used to be that way. Possibly the biggest reason is that people are getting tired of the same old recycled hollywood people that they keep shoving in our faces. Many of whom have dissed America time and time again. All this was quite predictable really. See my article from December 2002 titled Hollywood Anti-Americans. They spend millions propping these people up and no matter how many duds they put out there, they keep bringing them back. Simply from the standpoint of larger population and the enormous amount of money spent on promoting these movies, there is no positive spin that can be accepted for the decline in Hollywood.....

But then failure seems to be rewarded in hollywood. you are rewarded more for being a liberal than by putting out profitable movies. Academy awards are not based on performance. Well, maybe a token 10% is just to pass themselves off as credible. It's about pushing an anti-Christian agenda. Really you can boil it down to that can't you? I don't remember a time when it wasn't. You are told who you are supposed to like. There are healthy alternatives out there. But on the flipside, you can make money in Hollywood and be an outcast if you don't tow the company line.

Hollywood is the only industry where you can be considered a top performer no matter how many times in a row you cost your company money. After all, in most businesses it's about profit. Right? In hollywood it is about gross earnings. The gross gives you hype and hype gives you power. That's what Hollywood really is about isn't it? Profitabilty numbers are real hard to come by when it comes to the entertainment industry. Saying box office gross is the standard is like saying that an athlete should be MVP regardless of performance because he has the highest salary. Doesn't matter if they flop and their team falters. They are "stars". In Hollywood you are not supposed to know about promotion and production costs.

**notes:

**The Dukes of Hazzard may wind up being the movie of the summer. Look forward to that one. I believe that is out in August and could propel Jessica Simpson to megastar status. Her legs look good so how bad can it be? Just bring earplugs to be on the safe side... If you are not a guy or if you are married, this paragraph should not apply to you.

**The Passion of the Christ is still the highest grossing R Rated and winter movie of all time. Yet look at all the free publicity the political hack michael moore got from his "movie" based on deception, farenheit 911. A movie that could have been made by a drunk high school kid with a cheap camcorder.

**A good way to compare older classic movies to the new ones is from the site boxofficemojo.com which takes inflation into consideration. I don't think population and promotion dollars are factored in. Really the bottom line isn't how much the movie takes in but how much profit was there, right? You seldom hear that figure. But with the site above you can at least get a barometer of what the most popular movies of all time are. If I get something that actually takes profit into consideration I will pass that on. Perhaps I can do some homework and put one together sometime myself.