I've been trying to understand Mark Cuban's reasoning for pulling my film from its Landmark Theater engagements, but I have to admit to being completely dumbfounded. Mark Cuban has been the apostle of Day and Date releases, and has argued that it is the wave of the future, and that we should all embrace it. Well, I agree with him! But when IFC attempts to do a modified and much more tentative version of Day and Date (namely with Video-on-Demand only, not on DVD as Cuban has done), Mark Cuban tries to squelch the competition. But isn't competition the whole point of market capitalism? Isn't that what Mark Cuban believes in and what he himself is doing?
I received the following communication from Mark Cuban this morning:
"It comes to this, we created a program, day n date between landmark and hdnet.
Comcast and ifc tried to copy the exact same day n date program expecting that landmark would just go along. Without hdnet being included.
We wouldn't.
I engaged in this entire discussion not to help us w comcast, but out of respect for the work you have put in
Nothing more.
This won't help or hurt me w comcast. The only thing that matters is that hdnet creates great films that comcat subs can't live without.
All the best"
The key words here are: "the only thing that matters..." The only thing that matters, according to Cuban, is that HDNet creates great films that Comcast subs can't live without. But is this really the only thing that matters?
It's hard for me to fathom that Mark Cuban fails to see the inherent contradictions in his position. And it reminds me of the old critique of free market capitalism - that it is by its nature unstable, and that it invariably devolves into monopoly capitalism. Mark Cuban is the new Robber Baron of independent cinema, and while one can admire his business acumen, it is clear that his over-riding goal (like theirs) is profit maximization and ego-gratification (rather than his frequently repeated love of independent film). Nothing wrong with that, except when you start polluting, for instance, (which passes the social cost onto the consumer and is therefore a form of cheating) or when you just ride roughshod over anyone who gets in the way of your personal ambitions (which, like the Bush Administration, is arguably immoral).
This is the problem with vertical integration, and this is the reason that anti-Trust laws were created in the first place. The Landmark theater chain is no longer part of a free market economy. Rather, it is a part of the Mark Cuban empire to be used to further his long-term financial interests. Some people call that monopoly capitalism.
What is happening here is reminiscent of what happened when multinational corporations took over the Hollywood studios. The quality of the films suffered, because the people pulling the strings were more interested in their bottom line than in the art of cinema.
This is not news. It has always been this way. But I am continually amazed that the purveyors of monopoly capitalism never seem to see their own true reflections in the mirror, and always see a heroic and morally unimplicated lookalike in the mirror instead. I don't think Mark Cuban sees the hypocrisy of his position. If he did, he might change it. And yet, how can he not see it?
posted by Caveh Zahedi at
12:24 PM
