How Have Film & Television Trends Changed Over Time? Film Historian Jim Hemphill Weighs In (Part 1)

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series:

The current film and television landscape has viewers spoiled for choice, often rendering us overwhelmed by the sheer number of offerings available. This is reinforced by the increasing number of devices, formats, and platforms to watch them on. Creative Screenwriting Magazine spoke with Indiewire reporter and film historian Jim Hemphill about the overall trends he has noticed on our screens over the years.

He conceded that the clearer trends seen in previous years are being eclipsed by, not only the sheer volume of material, but by the frequency and speed with which it is produced, as well as the narrowing viewing windows in theaters. Movie trends are difficult to assess given that most viewers are treading water simply trying to stay up to date with new releases, let alone establish patterns.

In terms of Hemphill’s formative viewing years, “I’ve been re-visiting, all these old episodes of Dynasty from the 80s, the nighttime TV soap opera,” he confessed. Tales of wealthy families, power, greed and corruption were all the rage in the heady days of easy money, and easier men and women. These types of TV shows are staging a comeback except that oil barons are being replaced by media tycoons.

Back in the 80s, “there was only ABC, NBC and CBS and everyone was watching the same TV shows and the same movies. It was much easier for one movie or one TV show to take over the culture because everything wasn’t so fragmented,” recalls Hemphill. The main alternative to this programming was HBO, founded in 1972, which heavily leaned into profanity, nudity, and on-screen drug use to its subscribers. It was crime family drama The Sopranos which really put HBO on the map. The Sopranos, which first aired in 1999, caused a massive shift in viewing appetites for six spell-binding seasons. Welcome to the age of “Prestige Television” that made no apologies. It was real life. “It’s not TV. It’s HBO,” was their tagline.

Morally Dubious Protagonists

“I think the Sopranos ushered in this age of the morally complex protagonist, as well as shows like The Big C, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and The Shield. It’s now become the norm,” adds Jim Hemphill.

“I feel like TV has filled a void that movies of the 70s or early 80s, where you’d have actors like Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro and Gene Hackman playing these morally ambiguous characters in movies like Night Moves, Taxi Driver, Mean Streets or Straight Time. That’s now mainly migrated over to cable/ streaming  television.”

“There is a shift toward the really unpalatable protagonist you’re invited to identify with, even as they do really, really nasty things. And for a while, it was just men, but now you’ve got TV shows like Yellow Jackets or Mare Of Easttown.”

Hemphill has noted that the number of theatrical releases for features has remained steady(ish) over the last few decades, “but there are a lot more streaming movies, D movies, and more independent movies available.”

Was Babylon The Defining Film Of 2022?

Despite his reticence, Hemphill believes the film Babylon captures the current zeitgeist. This is a curious statement since Babylon is set in Hollywood in the late 1920s. “I thought the interesting thing about Babylon was that it was about this seismic shift from silent film to sound film, and how that turned the industry upside down and nobody really knew what to do about it. Everything was in chaos.”

“Even though it is a period piece that was set in the late 20s, it is very much reflective of what’s going on now where everyone’s heads are spinning trying to figure out what the future is, what the role of movies is, and what role movie theaters will play now that streaming has taken over. I feel like we’re all completely adrift and Babylon really captured this moment in the film industry without actually being about this moment in the film industry.”

The most successful films are arguably those that capture the way people are feeling at the time of their releases. Jim Hemphill explains, “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that horror movies seem to be doing better than ever lately… movies like M3gan and Scream 6.” The upending of normalcy during the pandemic and seismic political swings have shaken us all. “People feel that everything is spiralling out of control. There’s a lot of free-floating anxiety out there that horror taps into.”

Every decade has its moment of great uncertainty and change. Our fears and anxieties are heightened. “I feel that’s why horror films seem to be consistently successful. It’s the one consistently successful genre outside of pre-established comic book movies and best-selling book adaptations.”

Movie and TV show trends come and go, but Hemphill doesn’t believe the film and television audiences have changed. “The interesting thing about movies, is that on a basic level, what people respond to, hasn’t changed that much since the 1930s.”

“Part of why Maverick was so big last year was that, for all of its technology, it had a familiar, comfortable, old fashioned quality to it. And I think that movie’s success proved that there is still an appetite for the classical Hollywood storytelling that was established in the 1930s, and, to a certain degree, in the early 1940s.”

“There’s always been this ping-ponging back and forth between smaller movies and bigger movies – the 60s version of today’s big Marvel movies would have been huge road show musicals back then.” Such movies include Dr. Doolittle and The Sound Of Music.

Then there are the moderately budgeted films like Everything Everywhere All At Once which don’t neatly fit into any category beyond Oscar winner. The ultra-low budgeted films have a tough time finding audiences beyond the film festival circuit and home viewing, and rarely recoup their production costs. These specialty films are very hit or miss.

Take A Risk

Cinemas have been playing it far too safe for far too long. “I’ll be curious to see if the theaters go back to taking a chance on more of those low and moderately budgeted films again, because it does seem to me, the trend in the last several years has been that for whatever reason, for the most part, audiences aren’t going to movie theaters except for the spectacles or things that are based on pre-existing IP.”

Jim Hemphill recalls his earlier cinema-going days in the 80s. “You’d have a lot of big studio spectacle movies like Star Trek, Tron, E.T., Poltergeist and John Carpenter’s The Thing. But also coexisting alongside those movies you had things like Paul Newman in The Verdict or Tootsie, or a more auteur genre movie like Walter Earl’s 48 Hours.”

Screenwriters have always wrangled creativity with commerciality. Jim Hemphill concludes, “This is always a very complicated question. Screenwriters have to be aware of the business and what people are looking for at the time they are writing.”

He does advise against micro-trends that come and go relatively quickly. By the time a screenwriter responds to a perceived trend wave, it will have passed by the time they write their screenplay. Many industry decision makers are begging to be surprised with a fresh spin on a story that will delight audiences.

“I think that the movies that really break out and start their own trends are the ones that aren’t like anything else. Everything Everywhere All At Once is perfect example. When James Cameron wrote Avatar and Titanic there wasn’t anything like them out there. Those movies became the biggest movies ever made.” You should be writing what interests you and what you’re passionate about. That’s what show’s up in your writing and attracts talent.

Writers shouldn’t be so worried about trends, but they should be thinking about the audience.
“I don’t know that you can be that calculated about trends because what makes movies work is something that’s mystical and undefined. Any great movie is always a little bit of a miracle. It’s always a little bit of alchemy of just the right things coming together at the right time. And sometimes, that that magic doesn’t happen if your heart’s not in it.”

On the flip side, Hemphill believes it’s just as dangerous to be be so caught up in your own mind than it is to chase trends.