You bring up a really good point Inlander, the majority of Hollywood movies do not make any returns. in the modern model of Hollywood, Large studios rely mainly on a few big blockbuster movies every year to make back all of the money they lose on smaller and less lucrative projects. In a way, the movie industry is spending a huge amount of money just to sort of feed itself internally, giving out money to people who make a living on the big guys' payroll in the hopes that they might be able to produce a blockbuster if they get any good working on smaller movies, or even the sweeter taste of a surprise hit that cost a lot less to make.
Of course, I'm really not aiming to be a part of that system. This is why I'm sort of rejecting the idea that Hollywood or New York is the place to be if you want to make it big, and instead when I graduate I'm going to head back down to Texas to see if I can get a job doing something in Austin.
And I also feel like its necessary to point out that I didn't say that the film industry is "just a business". I said its a hybrid of business and art, art cannot reliably sustain itself without business and catering to mass audiences, and the industry gets stale without a constant influx of art.
