Spielburg

Given Spielberg's track record, he is noted as one of the most successful directors/producers of all time. Over the course of his career, Spielberg has produced 140 films and directed 51 projcets. The average profit per film is an astounding $153 million...I'm a communication major, because I am really bad at math, but I know that is a lot of money. His versatility was what set him apart from other producers. He directed the classic "popcorn" movies such as E.T., Jurassic Park, all the Indiana Jones sequels, and more. The objective of the popcorn movie was to put butts in the seats to in hopes to make profit off of the concessions. In addition to his success with the popcorn movies, he also directed many classic "brussel sprout" (courtesy of Dr. Martin) movies such as Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, Munich, and many more. Brussel sprout movies were generally more serious and thought provoking. The majority of the money was generated by the popularity of the popcorn movies. Although Spielberg had many great films and is known as a legend in the industry, he did have a couple flops. Two of his biggest flops were 1941, which lost $4 million, and Munic, which lost $28 million. Considering what he normally makes on movies, I don't believe he was sweating too much about that. Spielberg was a great talent that might not be duplicated. He left his fingerprint on the industry, and it will never be the same.

The 5th Time is the Charm

In November of 1968, the rating system was introduced into the film industry. The first version of the ratings went something like this: G, M, and X. The G was for general audiences and the M was for "mature" audiences where parential guidance was suggested. A movie rated R was restricted to anyone under 16. Many peopel were getting confused by between the M and R ratings so they swited it to G, GP, R, and X. Replacing the mature rating with GP (general audience with suggested parental guidance) was sure to ease the confusion among the movie enthusiasts. Nope. The GP was obviously too confusing so, in 1972, they came up with a bright idea of flipping the two letters to make it PG, which stood for parental guidence. These ratings would hold firm until the fourth edition came out in 1984 when PG-13 was introduced. This suggested parental guidence up until the age of 13. The X rating was for adults only. The movies that would earn an X rating would have many mature circumstances such as drugs, violence, and the money maker; sex. The 5th edition of the the ratings eliminated the X rating in 1990, because it was adopted by the pornography business and gave the film makers a bad reputation. They decided to switch the rating to NC-17 which meant that no one under 17 years old would be admitted. I'm glad to see that after 5 attempts, we have found a system that has stood true over the last 13 years.