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HOLLYWOOD'S HOUSING CRISIS NEUROSIS.
After not having gone to the movies in a couple of months, I binged this week. I started with Star Trek, wherein two of the major characters learn that they can never go home again in the most literal way. Next was Up, the animated tale of an elderly man forced to have adventures and rediscover his sense of wonder after greedy developers push him off of his property. I also caught Drag Me To Hell, Sam Raimi's horror flick about a woman stalked by a goat demon.
Predictably, the pursued in Drag Me To Hell is a saucer-eyed waif (Alison Lohman). Unpredictably, the reason she's hunted has nothing to do with having sex, doing drugs, or saying "I'll be right back." No, instead Christine, a California loan officer, denies a mortgage extension to an old gypsy woman, who is unable to make timely payments because of her ailing health. Seeking vengeance for the foreclosure, the gypsy damns Christine to hell. As anyone following the housing crisis could guess, this is immensely satisfying to watch.
And I'm sure it was immensely satisfying to film, too. Los Angeles is a crisis hotspot, with courthouses each performing about a hundred evictions a week according to the LA Times. In the first quarter of 2009, default filings in the county were up 38 percent compared to the previous year, and over 5 percent of California mortgages are somewhere in the foreclosure process. Shoot, even celebrities can't sell their mansions -- Nicolas Cage recently dropped his asking price from $35 million to $18 million. Imagine how someone with health problems and a fixed income, like the gypsy woman, is holding up.
The evaporation of money in the real estate sector has, of course, threatened Los Angeles' larger economy, and film companies are struggling to finance projects or even stay in business. For example, speculation that the debt-ridden Weinstein Company will soon fold has picked up, particularly now that -- wait for it -- one of its co-owners is attempting to sell his Manhattan duplex in what seems to be a desperate effort to raise money. As California continues to suffer the shock (and aftershocks) of the housing crisis, I wouldn't be surprised if resultant anxiety keeps on manifesting itself in film.
--Alexandra Gutierrez
(Photo courtesy Universal Pictures)
COMMENTS (2)
I was wondering why Nicholas Cage had to drop his price so steeply, so I followed the link from your post to the article about where I found out:
"'Since September, people have run into trouble with their finances because of the recession,' Mike Simonsen, the CEO of Altos Research, a company that provides real-estate statistics, told TheWrap."
Can the sequel to Drag me to Hell feature the gypsy woman going after market analysts?
Posted by: Swift | June 12, 2009 12:08 PM
In an interview with Sam Raimi, he said that the choice of a loan officer for the main character happened before the economic meltdown. They are just being topical by luck.
It's reasonable to expect that anxiety so close to home should influence the industry's choices about projects. However, the movie business has always stopped short of an all-out look at real social problems. At the end of the day, the industry cannot shake the belief that moviegoers want to escape their anxieties at the theatre, not rehash them.
Posted by: Michael A. Shea | June 12, 2009 12:12 PM