I’ve called Hollywood out on their creative parasitism before. This is just a brief follow-up to the last one.

I’ve been working on a video project lately, and since I’m responsible for the soundtrack, I’m listening to a lot of classical music these days.

Shame on me, but I don’t pay much attention to what orchestra plays which symphony. It’s not like music composed post-Phonograph Age where you’ll get wildly different versions of the same song from different artists. If I like the symphony (or opera, or whatever), I’m confident I’ll like it no matter who the artists are.

But as I was listening yesterday, I noticed there are some subtle differences in how different orchestras play the same symphonies. Nothing major, because the notes are still the same ones written by some long dead guy with funny looking hair. But sometimes the pacing will vary, or certain instruments will be louder. I guess that’s the individual conductor doing what they can to put their own “stamp” on a fixed work of art.

While mulling this over, it dawned on me: the composers of Hollywood have mostly died off; only conductors remain.

I’m not talking about musical scores, here. I’m analyzing film as if movies were symphonies.

Once upon a time, Hollywood screenwriters/directors didn’t just artistically regurgitate; they created. In fact, their livelihood depended on it. Sure, there were remakes as early as the 1930s, but if you wanted to make a name for yourself, you couldn’t rely solely on the plundering of other men’s ideas.

The great film makers (called “auteurs” by the snobs) are often accused of making the same film over and over again.

Horsefeathers.

You’ll find the same themes running through most of their films; and many of them preferred to use the same cast and crew repeatedly…but that’s because those movies came from the same respective artist’s own arsenal of experience, world view and imagination. They didn’t come out of the DNC-approved cookie cutter.

Not for a few decades, anyway. Sure, there were socialist messages in plenty of the old movies. But they weren’t the only message allowed back then.

Directors and screenwriters of today are simply syphoning creative energy from the hard work of those who’ve gone before them; waving a stick at their assembled creative teams, tweaking a costume here and a set design there, while turning what were once original ideas into overused cliche`s.

To borrow a phrase from the publishing biz of yesteryear, they’re a bunch of hacks.