Each story gets its own title, self-contained cast, and distinct visual style, allowing Joel & Ethan to stretch out into all corners of their wide artistic range. The longest film that the Coens have made to date, THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS compiles six original stories that, in the aggregate, paint a fairly comprehensive portrait of the Old West and its mythical place in pop culture, as well as the brothers’ own existing filmography. A jump to Netflix, then, was only a logical extension of the same approach- only this time it was a finished product an innovative display of the distinct quality of auteur storytelling that the streaming model is capable of when it’s not trying to emulate studio programming. Despite their initial misgivings, they reasoned that they owed their very careers to home video (2), having carried around their proof of concept trailer for 1984’s BLOOD SIMPLE to show to prospective investors in their own homes. They had developed the stories in private over a span of twenty years (actor Tim Blake Nelson had a draft of the titular story in hand as early as 2002 (1)), so the Coens were understandably hesitant about producing them under such unconventional circumstances. Their latest project seemed like an ideal fit, being an unconventional anthology of short Western stories titled THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS. They could see the writing on the wall, and streamers like Netflix or Amazon Prime - where conventional success metrics like box office receipts no longer applied - offered to transform a future of compromise into one of opportunity. As Marvel and other four-quadrant franchises have come to dominate the megaplex, the studios have become increasingly uninterested in making the smaller, adult-oriented films that the Coens specialize in. The middling performance of their last film, 2016’s HAIL, CAESAR!, reinforced the flagging viability of theatrical for filmmakers uninterested in big budget franchises. The directing duo of brothers Joel and Ethan Coen have proven themselves to be a major force in American cinema, responsible for several unimpeachable classics, but even they are not immune to the will of the marketplace. Filmmakers of every stripe have had to adapt, the question of their futures rooted in an inherent compromise: do they sacrifice creative control for a large canvas, or do they choose artistic liberty at the expense of a wide theatrical release? Though cinemas are still making out okay (or barely scraping by, depending on who you ask), the economics of the industry - the inscrutable alchemy of ego, inspiration and financial calculus behind every “greenlight” - have profoundly, and perhaps permanently, shifted. While experts and armchair analysts alike feared that the advent of home video in the 1970’s and 80’s would result in the collapse of movie theaters, they should have saved their concern for the streaming age ushered in by the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime. Like the recording industry before it, the film industry has sustained a seismic shift over the past decade and change- both in small movements made gradually and in giant, abrupt leaps.
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