We just got this news from our friends at LACMA: “LACMA announced today that it has received gifts totaling $150,000 from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and Time Warner Cable, in partnership with Ovation TV, to extend continuous film programming through next summer. In addition, Time Warner Cable and Ovation TV have made an in-kind contribution of over $1.5 million to market the film program across their multiple media platforms, both locally and nationally.” So it seems corporate philanthropy lives, even in these tough economic times.
For those of you have absolutely no idea what we talking about, late last month LACMA announced that they were going to cancel their weekend film program because it was losing the museum money, and focus more on artist-created films. A lot of people were extremely upset, among them, Martin Scorsese who wrote an open letter to the museum in the LA Times.
“Without places like LACMA and other museums, archives, and festivals where people can still see a wide variety of films projected on screen with an audience, what do we lose? We lose what makes the movies so powerful and such a pervasive cultural influence. If this is not valued in Hollywood, what does that say about the future of the art form?”
While we’re happy to hear that they’re going to relaunch the film program, we really wish that a Hollywood heavyweight like Scorsese (whose recent films The Departed and The Aviator brought in $132.1 million and $102.6 million, respectively) had stepped in to help out. We’re sure Harrison Ford could spare a small chunk of the $65 million he took in last year.
Isn’t that what would happen in a movie?