One of the dirty little secrets of Hollywood is that it is full of self-loathing. We tend to think that the denizens of the film industry luxuriate in the popcorn movies they deliver to us, that they love the bombast that is now the primary reason people go to the movies. Indeed, the stereotype of the movie mogul is still a man or woman who cares more about money than prestige, and who boasts, as a writer once remarked of Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn when Cohn said a movie wasn't any good because he kept wiggling in his seat, that the whole world is "wired to his ass." They are us — only richer.
But even though it is true that the people who run Hollywood love the grosses that a superhero movie or a high-tech thriller or a teenage sex comedy bring into the studio coffers, the industry has had a sense of reserve and higher purpose that goes back to the movies' early days. The very first movie moguls, Louis B. Mayer, William Fox and the Warner brothers, to name a few, didn't gain traction in the business by talking down to their audience but by talking up to it. They eschewed cheesy movies for more elegant fare — pictures like the religious epic "Ben Hur" for MGM, the Dickens' adaptation "Oliver Twist" for Fox and Oscar Wilde's "Lady Windemere's Fan" for Warners. They raised the movies' status and their own in the process.
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