Cinema Hayseed: The Films of Fly-over Country

Part 1: The Two Americas

Some years back I was standing in line behind two men outside an arthouse theater. They were opining about the decline of American cinema. As I understood it, one man was a born-and-bred Southern Californian who worked in some capacity as a Hollywood cog. The other, based on his copping of Woody Allen's glasses, accent and love of Ingmar Bergman, was, I suppose, a New York cinephile. Eulogies of American cinema are typical in and around arthouses, but my ears involuntarily perked up when the men reached the conclusion to their inpromptu thesis. In their humble opinions, the bland cookie-cutter industry of Hollywood was the fault of Middle America. As they explained it, Hollywood panders to Middle America's simplistic and benign taste. "Wake up and smell Lake Michigan", the New Yorker demanded. It was high time Midwesterners realized they were ruining the art of American filmmaking.

As a Midwest transplant in Los Angeles, I'd heard this argument before. But while it may be true that every Hollywood studio wishes to pry open the wallets of fly-over land, how can the people who live there be blamed for a product they didn't create? Yes, middle Americans shell out a lot of money for what is essentially gilded crap, but what other choice do they have? Movies, the good ones, anyway, drive our spirits. They inspire introspection as well as entertainment. They take us on vicarious journeys and they pass our cultural wisdom from one generation to the next. So if a movie turns out to be a stinker, all one really loses is $9 in a potentially much more rewarding gamble. And because somebody pays to see a particular movie, it doesn't mean they got what they wanted. With so much to be gained by a good movie experience, it's easy to see why even a lot of bad movies become blockbusters. And yes, while these awful movies generate jaw-dropping ticket sales, a proportionate number of really good, small films die at the box office.