The “made for TV” moniker has long been used as derogatory towards the movies it describes. The productions tend to be quick, inexpensive, and low budget. In the last decade especially, new lows are established with a string of plots centered on a “disease of the week,” domestic violence, tabloid headlines, monsters, weather patterns, sexual overtones, or a combination of the above.
These movies survive by using small casts of mostly unknown actors and limiting their setups or shooting outdoors a lot. Second rate scripts are fluffed up with montages, slow motion, flashbacks, and repetition of footage. They are horrible and yet kind of awesome. So cheap and so easy, they feed a network’s need for original content and earn them a decent return in the process. We’re not talking Titanic dollars, but enough to keep basic cable programmers drooling.
My favorite is the Syfy network! They stared down the straight to video B movie market and said, “oh yeah!” ”Look what we can do with with second tier talent and cut rate prices in the forests of Vancouver!” In recent years, Syfy has brought us such classics as S.S. Doomtrooper, Aztec Rex, Flu Bird Horror, and my personal favorite, Malibu Shark Attack.
Their runaway production meat grinder turns out horrific movie of the week after horrific movie of the week with the frequency and dedication of Old Faithful. Disaster films seem to be on equal footing with weird giant monster flicks over at Syfy, but unfortunately there are only so many natural disasters available to hack screenwriters these days. How to solve this dilemma? I know, combine two of them into one super scary storm front!
Super scary storm front was basically the pitch meeting for the recent premier of Ice Twisters. A movie based on the idea that, with the help of modern scientific research gone awry, spontaneous tornadoes comprised of super cooled air can spring up all over the greater Portland metro area. These spinning icicle factories will wreak untold havoc unless a “crack” team of scientists and a natural disaster loving novelist can find some Wi-Fi and put a stop to the whole thing using ray gun satellites or something. There’s also a lot talk about generators.
Sound absurd? You’ve never watched one of these Syfy Originals have you? Sadly, Ice Twisters is one of the more coherent story lines they’ve churned out. Alien Express features Lou Diamond Phillips battling an alien creature that crashes into a super train and starts eating all the passengers. Or how about Heatstroke, where D.B. Sweeney (a commando) and Danica McKeller (a model) struggle to stop aliens from wiping out humanity by accelerating global warming.
Looking at a list of the best made for TV flicks of the ’00’s, they’re all basically from HBO. A couple networks, but no basic cable channels at all. Money or prestige, that seems to be the question. But what is the motivator since, especially for HBO, prestige also equals money? Why won’t Syfy do six to 12 movies a year instead of 40 plus and make a quality product?
Well, the financing is one problem. HBO generates revenue from both their subscription fees and in more traditional filmmaking avenues like investors. The major networks can charge a great deal for advertising because of their history of market share. Even the biggest basic cable guys can only charge so much, meaning their revenue streams top out. It is the law of diminishing returns. Syfy knows where their profit ceiling is, it doesn’t really change, so why spend more money? ABC can cast a couple big names and drive their ad prices through the roof. Put the same names on USA, and they can still only convince companies to spend so much. Maybe that will change some day, but for now these networks can only draw so many viewers.
Lifetime is another big “made for TV” factory and the antithesis of the action-packed exploitation of Syfy. They turn out movie after movie about a mother with a serious decision to make. While it is more difficult morally to make fun of someone with a disease, these shows are equally as cheap and silly as the “beast of the week” variety. Take a look at these names:
- Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life
- A Face To Die For
- A Face To Kill For (not a sequel)
- My Stepson, My Lover
- Secret Lives of Second Wives
- Crimes of Passion: She Woke Up Pregnant
- The Trophy Wife’s Secret
They invoke the spirit of Harlequin romance, mix in a little newspaper headline, and shake it up in a chilled wine glass etched with “based on a true story” in some swirly romantic font on the side. Their biggest sets tend to be a suburban house rented out in the Santa Clarita Valley and a pool. They cry, they scream, they learn something about themselves and/or escape a violent crime. Where Syfy deals in CG action, Lifetime serves up pure pulp, cashing in on prominent headlines of the day. Because of this, the scripts tend to be thin with pre-production taking weeks instead of months. The results are usually broad depictions of emotional response rather than character development. However, the demographic eats them up and Lifetime can pay its electric bill on time.
How much money can these tabloid movies make? Apparently enough to warrant three versions of the same story, or the Amy Fisher trifecta as I call it.. The Amy Fisher Story (ABC), Amy Fisher: My Story (NBC), and Casualties of Love: the Long Island Lolita Story (CBS) all made a quick jump to broadcast and all made money for their respective overlords even though they aired in close proximity to one another.
A market is clearly there for these movies, whether out of interest or comic relief is debatable. Yet, they are getting churned out in record numbers as tech gets cheaper and easier to use, filling the bank accounts of networks and assuring that “made for TV” will be with us for as long as television exists.
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