This will be an on-going series on how you can make up your film school education just by watching DVD’s. I’m going to randomly declare 1967 as the cut-off point between the “classic” age of the studio system and the beginning of the “modern” age of film-making. Of course, the studio system was already pretty much dead by the early 1960′s but it didn’t officially end until about 1972. The studio system was of course an era where up & coming actors & directors were signed to long term contracts and the studios simply slotted you into films depending on your talent, looks and ultimately – their whim. They could loan you out to other studios or place you in some state of exile if they thought you were not being obedient enough. The upside is actors got a steady paycheck and if you had talent, your roles would get bigger and bigger like any other 9 to 5 job … and of course, you could always blame the powers to be of not recognizing your talents. The downside is you were really an indentured servant and if they thought you didn’t look like a star, you had very few opportunities to prove it.

As the system started to close down, of course, actors were free to do anything but as with total freedom, that meant no steady paycheck and you had to go out and sell yourself at every audition. Same with directors and cinematography and nearly all the craft’s people like makeup, costume, art direction, etc … (other than studios with a working studio lot and sound-stages that also had TV projects).

So, why start with the worst? It’s as good of a place to start as any.

LESSON #1

THE WORST OF THE WORST

Of course, there are literally 50-100 bad films a year but that’s not saying enough.

It’s easy to say POLICE ACADEMY 6 without having to see much of the film but sheer laziness does not make it the 10 worst of the worst. After all, the actors in “6″ seem to be trying to make the best of a horrible, horrible script and recognizing the general ennui attitude of the studio and their expectations.

Inane remakes by itself are usually bad ideas to begin with such as THE HONEYMOONERS but again, most of the actors are trying their best to overcome insurmountable odds.

Keep in mind many films are just intended as “product.” Or based on stunt casting just to get on the DVD shelf so you can hardly compare that to a “real” film like the bad FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY or CAN’T STOP THE MUSIC.

Or saddled from the start with low, low budgets that general ineptitude is expected like TREMORS 2 – idiotic and poorly directed but after paying Kevin Bacon, clearly they had $82 to spend on the film so what do you expect?

Or genre pipeline fillers such as “horror snuff” films like SAW or that one where they lock people in a room, or the one where they lock people in a basement or the ones where they lock people in an insane asylum, or the ones where they lock them in a house … did I miss any of them? I’m not sure why people find it compelling to see the modern day equivalent of throwing a cat at the screen to get your attention (only now the ante has been upped to rotting body parts). Big whoop. It’s crying, grungy actors, smeared in red Karo syrup, missing limbs via digital effects and thousand-edit cuts because otherwise we could see that it’s just actors locked in a tiny sound stage … do these count? Not really – Because they’re cheap to make and if people want to pay $10 bucks to see the same movie 75 times – hey whatever – they know it’s not art, it’s just commerce – their intention is just to sell you a Jumbo Coke & Junior Mints and to have a gig on their r