Why Is It So Hard to Make a Good Blockbuster?

Culture Study Podcast

Anne Helen Petersen

Fashion & Beauty, Society & Culture, Arts

4.6 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2024

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sometimes I forget just how many classes I took on the history of cinema — or that I used to teach a class on it! — but then I have a conversation like the one you’re about to listen to and remember: oh right, I am a huge film history dork. This episode, featuring the brilliant Hannah McGregor, travels all over the past, present, and future of the blockbuster, from the theory of the “whammy,” to Hannah’s book on Jurassic Park, from Barbie to Twisters, from why we started going to the movies to why we’ve (largely) stopped. It’s a ROMP and incredibly listenable — perfect for wherever you’re driving or to have on in the background while you chop one million brussels sprouts.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Anne.
0:02.6	Anne Melody.
0:03.7	So this week marks one year since we launched the Culture Study podcast, and it has been just so amazing, just truly amazing.
0:13.0	And it's only been possible because every week, more and more of you have pitched in to fund it.
0:18.0	And you've probably noticed that we say something like, we have enough money
0:21.6	to pay Melody through next month or whatever. And over the summer, one of our paid subscribers,
0:27.8	Mary asked this question in the comments. I love the pod. And I'm just curious if we're getting
0:33.2	close to a point where we have enough subscribers that Melody's firing isn't perpetually six
0:38.3	weeks away. I get so stressed for her and I'm already a paying subscriber. This is my favorite
0:44.6	comment of all time. So I thought I would use Mary's prompt to explain to the listeners why we
0:52.4	phrase it that way and just generally how our money works. So we get to
0:58.6	keep roughly 80% of all of your subscription dollars after fees and all of that. And then we split that
1:04.9	pot 50-50 and sends me my half every Monday, best part of my Monday. I put it into a spreadsheet.
1:12.3	I keep a running total of what is in that imaginary bank.
1:17.2	And then every time an episode comes out, I subtract my rate from that pot of money.
1:23.0	So then when we look at that pot of money, we divide it by my rate.
1:26.8	And that's about how many episodes
1:28.4	worth of money we have left. So for about the past year, the buffer has been about four to six
1:36.8	episodes ahead at any given time. So building out that buffer would help us be able to plan further. We're also coming up
1:46.7	on some of the annual renewals for things like our theme music and our recording platform. And I personally
1:53.0	am trying to figure out how much work to take on next year. And if I'm not stretched as thin with
1:57.8	other projects, we can do a lot more to make culture study even more fun
	...

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