Anita and I didn't go to movies for about fifteen years. We occasionally watched some Mexican TV, principally the "Pasión y Poder" telenovela. Then Eli and Jesse got to be big enough to demand to be taken to "Dick Tracy" and "The Ninja Turtles" and we were hooked again.
Tepid mass market Hollywood movies dominate the Cancun theater scene, with an occasional provocative Spanish or Mexican film such "Hable con Ella" and "Sexo, Pudor y Lágrimas." We also watched movies that our boys mysteriously made appear on their PC. Anita and I were both especially fascinated by the way the small computer screen pulled us in.
A couple of years ago we bought a new 21" Sony TV with a DVD player. Someday I guess we will get around to subscribing to satellite TV. We now rent DVDs regularly from the Cancun Blockbuster, but the choices are only somewhat better than the theaters'. We have 512kb DSL. This is not the same as a 512kb DSL in the United States, however. When Cancun fills up the Web slows down. Right now, the peak of Easter week, connecting to many foreign sites becomes more and more erratic as the day progresses.
They'll fix this. It's a cyclical problem caused by Cancun's growth and prosperity. Meanwhile, I am intrigued by Netflix founder Reed Hasting's vision of the future of film distribution. The full interview is highly recommended for fellow media freaks.
[Excerpts]
Q & A On a Mission to Change the Economics of Hollywood
Netflix founder Reed Hastings believes his online DVD rental outfit can become the engine that propels lesser-known films to the right audience, enabling studios to take more chances.
By Jon Healey, Times Staff Writer, April 10, 2004
In the mid-1990s, as the rest of Silicon Valley was dreaming up futuristic visions for the Internet, Reed Hastings was starting a firm that let people use the World Wide Web to rent an unlimited number of movies for a monthly fee.
Hastings recently discussed the company's plans with The Times.
Q: Your biggest competitor for online movie rentals has been Wal-Mart Stores Inc. How serious has the challenge been?
A: Wal-Mart entered the market two years ago, and there was a big ballyhoo about how Netflix isn't going to survive. Back then we had 400,000 subscribers. Now we have almost 2 million. In Wal-Mart's case, great company; how've they done online? Not very well. So the fact that we're beating Wal-Mart is not really testament to how great we are. It's because Wal-Mart.com is completely clueless.
Q: What is Hollywood's stake in Netflix?
A: The way we're trying to transform the movie business is not actually digital delivery per se; it's really about creating demand. And what we're trying to do is figure out, for each person, what are the best movies for them.
For most people, 1 out of 3 movies that you watch you just rave about, you love, it's a goose-bump moment. And we look at ourselves and say we're in an adrenaline-emotion-delivery business, like Starbucks is in the caffeine-delivery business, or R.J. Reynolds in the nicotine-delivery business. We deliver emotional jolts better than a lot of people but still nowhere near what we want to do. If we can bump that to 2 out of 3, you'll just stop going to sports, you'll stop watching TV because every time you watch a movie, you love it.watch a movie, you love it.
Posted by jules_siegel at April 10, 2004 08:41 AM | TrackBack