Move over, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese. Take a backseat, Kathleen Kennedy and Tom Rothman. Kirsten Dunst knows what’s wrong with the movie business, and she’s not afraid to tell all of us how, where and why things have gone horribly wrong.
Dunst was speaking with The Guardian recently on behalf of the upcoming television work on Fargo, and used the time to discuss what’s wrong with the film industry. Analyzing the business from a big-picture point of view, Dunst explains to the outlet:
There are just too many movies being made, I think. So many of them get lost. Too many cooks in the kitchen – the studio’s editing it, the producers are editing it, the director’s editing, too. But everyone has their hand in it, so whose movie is it at the end of the day?
This helps explain why Kirsten Dunst has followed so many before her on the leap over to television, where, as she puts it, "creatives blossom." She’s not entirely wrong on anything that she has said, either. A quick glance at the Web site BoxOfficeMojo lists the following titles opening in limited release in addition to Pan -- the week’s only wide release: Big Stone Gap; The Final Girls; In My Father’s House; Ladrones; Victoria; and Xenia. I’m paid to follow movies, and I only recognize three of those titles. There are a staggering number of films being released on a yearly basis. How can small films cut through the glut?
Kirsten Dunst goes on to say that, in her experience, filmmakers aren’t making the most of the resources to which they are being given access. She elaborates:
People don’t need all the money they’re using. That’s the other thing: when you have too much time, too much money, the creative starts to slip away. It just does.
This could also speak to Dunst’s recent television experience, where episodes demand that "creatives" (a word she seems fond of) have to work quicker to meet tighter deadlines and deliver under smaller budgets. Then again, this might just be a Spider-Man 3 flashback swinging in to haunt Dunst in her darkest hour.
Here’s why her words carry weight, though. Kirsten Dunst has been at the movie "game" all of her life, appearing on screen in 1990 in Brian De Palma’s The Bonfire of the Vanities before turning heads in Interview with the Vampire (1994), Little Women (1994) and Jumanji (1995). Over the years, she has worked with Barry Levinson, Sofia Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Michel Gondry, Sam Raimi and Cameron Crowe, to name just a few. Her comments make sense, and come from a lifetime of experience. Do you agree with her?
