Tracking performance and stats is for baseball and Drag Race, not the cinema. And Martin Scorsese has just about had it with these money-grubby, number-crunching dorks and nerds obsessing over box-office numbers from their Hollywood C-suites. He believes cinema is “devalued, demeaned, and belittled†by a prioritization on the bottom line to the detriment of movies themselves. “Since the ’80s, there’s been a focus on numbers. It’s kind of repulsive,†Scorsese said onstage at the New York Film Festival while introducing the film Personality Crisis: One Night Only on Wednesday, October 12.
“The cost of a movie is one thing. Understand that a film costs a certain amount, they expect to at least get the amount back, plus. I get it. But the emphasis is now on numbers, cost, the opening weekend, how much it made in the USA, how much it made in England, how much it made in Asia, how much it made in the entire world, how many views it got. As a filmmaker, and as a person who can’t imagine life without cinema, I always find it really insulting.†In the past, Scorsese has referred to Marvel movies, which often dominate box offices, as “theme parks.â€
Nobody tell him about the #BrosMovie discourse.