https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9Bu0pppEY
Billy Wilder directed some of the dandy films of midcentury , include Double Indemnity , Some Like it Hot , and my personal favorite Wilder motion picture , The Apartment . But Wilder was pretty skeptical of emerging technical school , as we can see from this 1986acceptance speechat the American Film Institute .
The opening move of his speech actually sounds like he ’s about to arrive out in reinforcement of new technological advances in Hollywood :
I ’ve been here for over 50 years — that ’s more than half a one C — and all through those age I ’ve follow Tinseltown vacillate between desperation and fear . First it ’s going to be the sound that will kill us , then it was going to be television , then cable , then porn , then cassette , and now that terrifying unexampled discussion : microprocessor chip .
But somehow , Wilder makes a strange good turn , translate predictions about the future tense of the movie business concern as somehow neglecting the citizenry who make the motion-picture show . Which , in equity , is still very much a headache for media Lord today .
They severalize me that these guys working in the Silicon Valley , they really believe that pretty soon we will not need theaters anymore , nor studio for that matter . We will have ( or they will have ) invented diminutive little covert which you may attach to your steerage bicycle , or big 20 - foot screen on the roof of your bedroom . And then someday somebody is lead to urge a button and send this signal to a orbiter which in turn will light up 5 million screen all the way from Albania to Zanzibar . Fantastic , is n’t it ? All the ironware is there , beautifully programmed , bravo . Except for one short detail … what about the software program ? What are they going to do on all those projection screen ? Who is going to write it ? Who is going to direct it ? Who is going to act it ?
For all I know , these wise guy cable are trying right now to supercede the human factor . Microchips that will put back the human wit , and the human heart . mechanically skillful gadgets that can simulate emotions — dreams , laughter , tears — well , so far they have not succeeded . Not yet anyway . So relax , fellow picture makers , we are not expendable . The fact is , the bigger they get , the more unreplaceable we become . For theirs may be the land , but ours is the magnate of the aura .
In the end , Wilder seems to come down on the side of believing that many aspect of the quondam studio apartment organisation will survive . And Wilder was right in a wad of ways . The rise of YouTube and amateur - made video has n’t completely upend the movie industry .
Hollywood ’s secret that ’s blot out in apparent sight ? Mainstream moving-picture show are still an immensely profitable business . Despite last twelvemonth being muchweaker than averagefor ticket sale , the last decade has watch pretty consistent profit for the major studios .
Wilder ’s outlook for Hollywood is n’t all that different fromRoger Ebert ’s in 1987 . The big difference seems to be that Ebert was more welcoming of what technology might do for the picture business .
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