Dreams Die Hard
As I wrote in a recent review of the book, The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale Of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called DreamWorks , dreams die hard.
The DreamWorks studio --- which went on to make not only live-action movies, but music, video games, websites and cartoons --- was a pipe dream for three of Hollywood's biggest industry giants: director Steven Spielberg; record company mogul and billionaire David Geffen; and Disney animation head Jeffrey Katzenberg. (It was Katzenberg who was the driving force behind the idea to make a new studio from scratch.)
DreamWorks began building on a lofty foundation. At the Oct. 12, 1994, press conference announcing the partnership, Spielberg said, “Together with Jeffrey and David, I want to create a place driven by ideas and the people who have them.’’ The studio was to champion works based on merit, not commercialism. Like the founding of United Artists in 1919 by Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D.W. Griffith, it was to be an artistic haven amid Tinseltown’s money-grubbing rabble. It was to be different.
The way in which the financial realities eventually poisoned the idealistic dream are instructive. In Nicole LaPorte's book, we watch as the studio’s inroads into video games and music hit dead ends and we wince as the money pit of building a physical studio — what was to be a “giant dose of Ritalin’’ to focus a distracted Spielberg — gets deeper. More than $1 billion in investor capital evaporates. The studio sheds its money losers, shape-shifts from artsy-fartsy to cash cow, gets bought by a studio, and starts making schlock. The initial reverie — “to become that buzz’’ as one DreamWorks executive wanted — takes a back seat to reality. Eventually, DreamWorks has to begin making the very commercial fodder that its founding had hoped to defeat --- or, if not defeat, then at least offer something in opposition, an alternative.
I think the lesson of DreamWorks is not to give up, or revel in failure, or become pessimistic. I think the lesson is that the pursuit of the dream is worthwhile. Yes, dreams get derailed. Reality impinges. Compromises must be made. But, I think as humans, we are a hopeful species. We want to see dreams succeed. So, we root for DreamWorks. We love our dreamers and hate to see hubris bring them down.
Movies have always been a metaphor for ambition. For the idea that we can better ourselves --- be a better person, better lover, make the right decision, be brave enough to fight for your beliefs, to rush into the wedding ceremony at the last possible moment and say, "No, this marriage can't happen, because I love the bride!" Movies are that vehicle for escape to a place where, because the real world has failed us, another possibility awaits. This might be Middle-earth or Gotham City; a galaxy far, far away or a place as familiar as small town Mississippi.
The location doesn't matter. It's the desire to do better next time, to transform ourselves, that Hollywood has always represented. And that applies whether you are a movie mogul, or just an average Joe or Jane, dreaming your dreams and hoping to someday not be a spectator, like in a movie theater, but to live them, inhabit them, be them.
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.’’ More info at www.fantasyfreaksbook.com