http://gizmodo.com/5747656/francis-ford-coppola-maybe-the-downloaders-are-right
By no means do I subscribe to this notion. This presupposes that art has no value and clearly I believe it has great value. I also can’t ignore that Coppola is a man of great means and therefore what he says must be weighed against that. And all of that doesn’t mean this isn’t the way the world is going. Read on.
Fletcher
In a new interview, acclaimed director Francis Ford Coppola takes a radical stance on issues of downloading, copyright, and art: Maybe the students downloading movies and music are right, he says. Maybe we artists shouldn’t get paid.
Coppola, director of Apocalypse Now, the Godfather trilogy, and many more critically and commercially successful films, now largely makes his money from his wine business, granting him a financial independence that many directors seek but few ever find. He’s also Nic Cage‘s uncle. And an unexpected ally of digital downloaders. Here’s what he said to The 99 Percent:
We have to be very clever about those things. You have to remember that it’s only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had another job. I have another job. I make films. No one tells me what to do. But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script.
This idea of Metallica or some rock n’ roll singer being rich, that’s not necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I’m going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?
In the old days, 200 years ago, if you were a composer, the only way you could make money was to travel with the orchestra and be the conductor, because then you’d be paid as a musician. There was no recording. There were no record royalties. So I would say, “Try to disconnect the idea of cinema with the idea of making a living and money.” Because there are ways around it.
It might be easy for Coppola, who has already found great success in and out of the Hollywood system, to take such a radical stance, but it’s refreshing to see such a respected artist ask the hard questions nonetheless. Hopefully he gets seated next to that blowhard from Metallica at a dinner party sometime soon.
I’m not so sure that Coopl is saying that art has no value so much as we may need to rethink how art makes money.
For example, many cartoonists I know run their comics for free or at the very least as loss leaders and make all of their money selling snarky t-shirts or other commodities that their skills accommodate. Bands have been doing it forever. No one makes any recordings other than the label. Bands make their money on ticket sales and especially on merch sales where they receive a higher cut of the gross than on ticket sales.
Just to get you thinking, let’s say you put on a play for free. It’s free so you’d pack the house. Now what and how can you sell to that large crowd?
Just stuff to think about. Obviously, something I think a LOT about.
I understand your arguement, and finding other ways to make money is always valuable, but you also can’t put on a play for free. You can put on a play for great loss, sure, but just because you as a producing entity decide that the patrons should get this free show doesn’t mean you can do it at no expense; actors aren’t free, rites to the play aren’t free, technicians aren’t free, advertising isn’t free, rental of the space isn’t free, insurance isn’t free. So now I’ve got this packed house and I have to find a way to pay all of those expenses just to break even. In the best of all worlds you have sponsorship to take care of all of that so you’re at least starting out by not losing money, but if you don’t have that you’re back to begging your patrons for money and hawking goods to get to that point.
I do appreciate the comment and I also think about those things a lot. I’m afraid I come up short on how to make it work.
Hm. Got me. It’s easy for me to forget that I can crank out a 100 page comic for like $50 in supplies and there’s no one’s time to account for but mine. (There’s a lot about theater I admittedly don’t know.)
Regardless the way people consume the arts is changing and I think it’s always a good idea to try and think ahead of it.