"Hollywood as industry"

Reading "Hollywood as industry" by Douglas Gomery has given me a new insight on the structure and the history of Hollywood. To be honest, I had never even learned about the history of the motion picture industry, besides knowing about the slow progression from silent movies to more fluid ones with vocals and soundtracks, to the eventual color films of the last forty to fifty years. The most surprising thing, I would have to say, was the early formation of the enormous, fully integrated production studios that, in the early days, went as far as controlling and/or owning theatres.

Furthermore, watching the video in class about how the seven main movie studios own about 90 or 95% of the entire motion picture industry was astounding–it’s not that I didn’t realize that few of these companies existed, but that every time I go see a movie, it’ll really hit my head, that just a few monster corporations produce almost, if not every movie you can see at the theatre.