Theater vs. Film

Some may have been wondering why I haven't been uploading to this blog in a while...

Well, I do that a lot. It's kind-of like a running gag here. I'm sorry, I upload when I can. However, for the minute few who did want to know, I am actually diverging into writing theater scripts. Whereas my film scripts were failures that I nitpicked endlessly and took forever to complete, for some reason, theater has been going well. Suspiciously well...

I had never really considered going into theater before I wrote my first script. I always thought I would try to work my way up into film, however that would work. I then somehow got into writing a book, which I thought could be a good career that could also be quite profitable and yield more creative control. From there, I had read August Wilson's Fences and I was enthralled. I realized I never considered writing plays and I tried my hand at it. Along the way I also indulged into a bit of Playbill and Broadway finance and other plays and as I learned more about theater and dived into their intricacies. I already knew about a few intricacies in film and contrasting them was quite interesting to me, to say the least.

#1: The Audience

The fact of the matter is that basically anyone can go see a movie. Anyone. A quick go on Cinemark and you can get a ticket for Renfield at $11.75 (not including tax), which is pretty cheap. So, people of all ethnicities, sexualities, genders, income, countries, disabilities and abilities can see a movie (even if you're blind)! Because anyone can see a film, anyone can use their wallets and influence what goes on the silver screen, including the general audience. Especially the general audience. That's why Marvel and Star Wars and the Fast and Furious and all these franchises are so popular. I hear so many complaints from fellow friends and cinephiles (myself included) about why these seem to be the only films out there; it's because of the general audience. A film franchise like the Fast and Furious makes billions of dollars, gets hundreds of millions of dollars poured into the budget, and attracts big stars because it can appeal to the general audience and I highly doubt the general audience is in for films like Stalker, a nearly three-hour, grave-paced Soviet art film about the nature of human desire. And that applies to general audiences everywhere, too. China, India, South Korea, Japan, UK, etc., etc. So, when studio executives are presented with these scenarios, of course they're just going to produce more blockbusters because that's what the market's after.

Not necessarily so with Broadway...

See, Broadway is in New York. It was always in New York, is always in New York and will always be in New York. So it's mostly New Yorkers going to see these shows and tourists, a few tourists. However, it's not just New Yorkers going to see Broadway shows, it's rich New Yorkers going to see Broadway shows (and rich tourists, too. Don't forget the tourists). This is because a ticket to a Broadway show is 10 times the price of a movie ticket. 

Look at these prices!

$147.66 for a ticket to the Lion King. $136.62 for a show of Wicked. The same for a taste of Hamilton. Luckily, it gets a little cheaper from there (Sweeney Todd at $66.50), but even the cheapest ticket is 6 times that of a movie ticket! That's not something everybody can afford or care to afford, but for a select niche of people, it's perfectly fine. According to Research Reports, the average annual household income of the Broadway theatregoer was $261,000. $261,000! No way does the average Joe make $261,000. Not even close! But because only a select number of people are able to see Broadway shows, only a select number of people can influence them so the general audience doesn't really have much of a say here. And I didn't even mention Off-Broadway or Off-Off Broadway, which is less expensive, but also less well-known and the plays being presented there, this time, have more much in common with Stalker than any Fast and Furious movie. Of course, because the people watching those plays are also looking to think, to enlighten their mind, to seek for complex themes and characters as opposed to just having fun watching cool VFX and stunts and action.

#2: The Financing/Profit

It costs less to produce a play than it does to produce a movie. According to New Musical Theater, "a typical production budget for a Broadway musical will fall anywhere from $8-12 million, while a play might cost $3-6 million and a fairly lavish off-Broadway musical might capitalize at $2 million." The most expensive play ever made was Spider Man: Turn Off The Dark with a reported budget of $75 million, which is complete insanity. If you're spending $75 million on a Broadway play, respectfully, you need to get your head checked (And, of course, it flopped. Big Time.).

By contrast, it's perfectly normal to see $100 million or $200 million blockbusters. Fast X, the tenth installment in the Fast and Furious franchise (not counting Hobbs & Shaw, of course) has a reported budget of $340 million. The crazy part is that's not the most expensive film ever made. No, that goes to Star Wars: The Force Awakens at a whopping $447 million! No wonder studio execs are so paranoid about making the best bang for their buck!

Also, the people investing in a Broadway play are very different than the financiers of a major Hollywood blockbuster. So, in Broadway, the way it usually works is you have your big producer. For sake of example, we'll call him Billy. Billy purchased the rights to a killer musical and budgeted it at about $10,000,000. Billy goes to his group of 20 investor friends and offers them a piece of the pie. Each investor invests $500,000 and gets a 5% share of the project. Of course, I left out a lot of details and embellished a few things, but that's the basic gist of it. It also helps Billy that the average play will either break even or flop by a small amount and that his investor friends know that and that they're investing in a play because they just like Broadway that much. You'd think I was making a joke here (no, Broadway investors really are just in it because they're passionate about it.) Let's compare that to 

Jimmy, a major Hollywood producer.

Now, Jimmy's friends are a little more different in that they're not necessarily private investors, but a whole slew of sources: studios, tax incentives, pre-sales, loans, film grants, negative pickup deals, self-financing, and even the odd private investor. Now, Jimmy goes to his friends with a gnarly buddy cop action movie script that he's sure will sell. Jimmy budgets the film at $75 million and he's got a real load from here. He's got to consider who's gonna star in the film. Ok, so he makes the proper negotiations and gets Jonathan Majors as the stoic lead, Margot Robbie as the bland love interest, Michael Pena as Majors' sidekick comic relief, Denzel Washington as the grizzled chief of police, and Matthew Broderick as the smug asshole villain. Ok, fine. We've got that covered. Now, who's gonna direct it? Well, Jimmy's lined up David F. Sandberg, but Warner Bros. isn't too hot on him since his new Shazam movie flopped. Maybe Michael Bay is a better go. Ok, Michael Bay it is. After all, we don't wanna be shut down by the studio. We need their money, their support.

So we got the director and the cast. What next? Well, since the movie is set in LA, we're gonna film in LA, right? Wrong. We're going to Vancouver, baby. It's cheaper to film in Vancouver because the CAD is weaker than the USD and also the tax incentives, which LA doesn't really have (and most people don't really mention the weather. Vancouver is always cloudy and rainy. You'd think that hurts the film, but it actually cuts down on lighting costs and stuff.) So, we're gonna film in Vancouver. Sick. However, the movie keeps going over budget and the studio/financiers are getting pissed. Well, that's gonna come out of the producer's pocket. The whole $1 million. Out of Jimmy's pocket. Jimmy is understandably pissed.

But, whatever. The film's now complete and it's screened for executives. It goes really well except for the end. See, in the end, Broderick is thrown out of his office on the 90th floor and falls to his death. Before that point, the sidekick comic relief dies and it's all sad and depressing and stuff. The executives are in disarray. They don't want to see a bullshit depressing ending, they want it to be happy, upbeat. Where's Griffin Mill when you need him? WB threatens to can the film if it doesn't have a happy ending so Jimmy agrees. However, there's a catch. Matthew Broderick doesn't like this new ending and just does not want any part in it. Oh, what ever will we do? So, Jimmy hires a double. Easy as pie. But wait, there's more! Jonathan Majors wants $100,000 for reshoots and we actually can't work around his likeness. The studio balks at the idea. They're surely not paying for it, but they want that ending so Jimmy pays Majors and they finally finish the god-forsaken movie.

After that, they shop it around at various film festivals to get distribution and though Warner Bros already has domestic rights, no one has international (especially China, whose money is very important). So, Jimmy shops around and, on the strength of the cast, Sony buys the international rights for $100 million, guaranteeing a profit. The film performs and makes $300 million worldwide. It's getting negative reviews, but who cares? However, Denzel Washington forewent his salary for a piece of the profits (specifically 2.5%). The studio does their usual Hollywood accounting practices and cheats Denzel out of the profits. Denzel sues Jimmy and the studio for his profits. They settle out of court, but Jimmy still made a good profit. $20 million! As opposed to Billy's measly $2 million. But they're both happy and that's what matters.

#3: The Story

There are a few limits on the stories you can tell in a play versus the ones you can tell in film. For one, there can't be too many characters in a play. It's just too much overhead to have, especially if you're playing over and over again. With a film, it's not as much of a problem because if you have a bit part, they're usually over in 2 days or so and that's it. That's the last you see of them. Same with extras and background characters. You can do that with a film, but with a play, it's just not feasible. That's why plays usually have a few select characters and mention other characters that would otherwise be bit parts in films.

Also, you have to take into account the stage versus the set. With a set, you have so much more space than you would a stage. Also, VFX. Lots of VFX. Because post-production is a thing in film, not so much in theater. So, maybe Spider-Man isn't best suited for the stage, but American Buffalo isn't really best suited for the screen, either. At least not as it is. You'd have to make significant changes to it like in Glengarry Glen Ross. There are numerous additions to the film version as opposed to the theatrical version (Alec Baldwin, that scene in the bathroom, I believe a couple added bits of dialogue in the Chinese restaurant).

#4: The Focus

This is more about the industry as a whole, but the focus is always on different things. One of the big differences between theater and film is that there's no computers. You can't really alter the face of someone or their body to make them look more attractive with theater. You can put makeup on their face, but it's never necessarily done to accommodate a beauty standard, it's done to serve the story. It's why you see all these celebrities in real life look different than their counterparts in film.

Also, I feel that with theater, there's just more focus on the writing and the acting than in film. There's more variables in film, cinematography, editing, VFX (VFX being the big one). They're both visual arts, but theater is more literary because that's what best serves the story and that's why you don't see so much media attention and mass marketing and tabloids concerning theater or theater actors, you usually see that with film stars like Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt.

#5: Writer/Directors

In theater, the writer has more control. That's a fact. With film, you can improvise, take scenes out in post-production, ask for rewrites, the studio can butt in and say this and that needs to be changed and all that, however... With theater, what the playwright says goes. There's no improv done on the stage and editing because once it's on the stage, it's there for the audience to view. There's no post-production stage. That's probably why the writer gets more credit than the director in a play. To take an example, when concerning Glengarry Glen Ross, you don't think of Gregory Mosher, though he is the director, you think of David Mamet.

That's another thing: directors. In the theatrical world, directing is different from what goes on in film. Firstly, in a film, when you direct something for however many months, that's it. You may come in for reshoots, but that's it. When you're directing a play, you're usually there as long as the actors are, which usually means for a few months or more, which may be off-putting for some.

In Conclusion

From this article, it may seem like I'm picking on film and putting theater on a pedestal, but I love film. I love talking about movies, watching movies and I like to read theater scripts and write theater scripts. There's pros and cons in both of them and as long as they're both good, I don't mind. Though, I just wanted to discuss my perceptions about the general culture of both. I'd like to hear your thoughts. What do you think? Do you prefer theater or the movies? What's your favorite play of all time? What about your favorite film? Favorite filmmaker? Favorite playwright?

Sources:

Broadway Household Income Stats

Broadway Budgets Stats