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47-547: 34°05′10.37″N 118°15′34.80″W  /  34.0862139°N 118.2596667°W  / 34.0862139; -118.2596667 Keystone Studios was an early film studio founded in Edendale, California (which is now a part of Echo Park ) on July 4, 1912 as the Keystone Pictures Studio by Mack Sennett with backing from actor-writer Adam Kessel (1866–1946) and Charles O. Baumann (1874–1931), owners of

94-616: A Public storage facility . The studio is especially remembered for its silent film era under Mack Sennett , the Canadian-American film actor, director, and producer, who became known as the 'King of Comedy'. With financial backing from Adam Kessel and Charles O. Bauman of the New York Motion Picture Company , Sennett founded Keystone Studios in Edendale, California – now a part of Echo Park – in 1912. The original main building which

141-404: A security guard . The sound stage is the central component of a studio lot. Most studios have several; small studios may have as few as one, and large studios have as many as 20 to 30. Movie studios also provide office space for studio executives and production companies, and makeup rooms and rehearsal rooms for talent. If space allows, a studio may have an outside backlot . Finally, there

188-402: A book called Stories from Hollywood Hell. Rodriguez encouraged him to quit his post at Sony and pursue writing full-time so Huang could produce a script to direct himself. Huang's resultant script, "Reel Life", was picked up by Cineville executive Frank Evers , who brought in financing from independent investors, and significant production support from Sony Pictures Entertainment. The film

235-613: A faster recovery, contributing to the increasing dominance of Hollywood over New York City. The Big 5 By the mid-1920s, the evolution of a handful of American production companies into wealthy motion picture industry conglomerates that owned their own studios, distribution divisions , and theaters , and contracted with performers and other filmmaking personnel led to the sometimes confusing equation of studio with production company in industry slang. Five large companies: RKO Radio Pictures , 20th Century Fox , Paramount Pictures , Warner Bros. , and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer came to be known as

282-656: A growing proportion of Hollywood movie revenue, with approximately 70% of total movie revenue coming from international ticket sales; and the Chinese domestic box-office revenue is projected to outpace those of US in 2020. The growth of film studios and filmmaking outside of Hollywood and the US has produced popular international film studio locations such as Hollywood North ( Vancouver and Toronto in Canada ), Bollywood ( Mumbai , India ), and Nollywood ( Lagos , Nigeria ). As

329-597: A motion picture of their own because they are not entertainment companies or motion picture companies; they are companies who sell only studio space. In 1893, Thomas Edison built the first movie studio in the United States when he constructed the Black Maria , a tarpaper-covered structure near his laboratories in West Orange , New Jersey , and asked circus, vaudeville, and dramatic actors to perform for

376-482: A naïve young writer, as his assistant. Guy, who had just graduated from film school, believes that his new job is a golden opportunity. Despite warnings from Rex, the outgoing assistant who has become hardened under Buddy's reign, Guy remains optimistic. Buddy turns out to be the boss from hell; he treats Guy like a slave, subjects him to sadistic (and public) verbal abuse , and has him bending over backward to do meaningless errands that go beyond just his work life. Guy

423-448: A rendezvous at Buddy's house. Once in Guy's power, Buddy reveals for the first time a human, vulnerable side. He tells Guy that his wife had been shot, raped, and murdered on Christmas Eve 12 years prior, and reveals that he, too, was once a bullied assistant to powerful, tyrannical men and spent a decade putting up with such abuse to become successful himself. He also reveals that abusing Guy

470-478: A star performer and film director , participating in thirty-five films within the single year he worked there. Other actors who worked at Keystone toward the beginning of their film careers include Marie Dressler , Harold Lloyd , Mabel Normand , Roscoe Arbuckle , Gloria Swanson , Louise Fazenda , Raymond Griffith , Ford Sterling , Ben Turpin , Harry Langdon , Al St. John and Chester Conklin . In 1915, Keystone Studios became an autonomous production unit of

517-654: A tram tour of the backlot where films such as Psycho and Back to the Future were once shot. In fall 2019, movie mogul Tyler Perry opened Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta . The studio lot is claimed to be larger than any movie-studio lot in Hollywood. In the 1980s and 1990s, as the cost of professional 16mm film equipment decreased, along with the emergence of non-film innovations such as S-VHS and Mini-DV cameras, many young filmmakers began to make films outside

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564-407: Is a secure compound enclosed by a tall perimeter wall. This is necessary to protect filmmaking operations from unwanted interference from paparazzi and crazed fans of leading movie stars . Movement in and out of the studio lot is normally limited to specific gates (often capped with grand decorative arches), where visitors must stop at a boom barrier and explain the purpose of their visit to

611-482: Is a smart, merciless Hollywood satire that's darkly hilarious and observant, thanks to Kevin Spacey's performance as ruthless studio mogul Buddy Ackerman." On Metacritic it has a score of a 66% based on reviews from 14 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Praise was given to Spacey’s performance in particular. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly wrote, "The producer as megalomaniacal cutthroat —

658-733: Is a studio "commissary", which is the traditional term in the movie industry for what other industries call a company cafeteria . In addition to these basic components, the largest film studios are full-service enterprises offering the entire range of production and post-production services necessary to create a motion picture, including costumes, props, cameras, sound recording, crafts, sets, lighting, special effects , cutting, editing, mixing, scoring, automated dialogue replacement (ADR), re-recording, and foley . Independent suppliers of all these services and more (e.g., photographic processing labs) are often found in clusters in close proximity to film studios. Nitrate film , manufactured until 1951,

705-451: Is humiliated and forced to bear the brunt of his insults. Guy's only solace is his new girlfriend Dawn, a producer at Buddy's firm. When Buddy apparently fires Guy in a phone call, Guy finally snaps and takes Buddy hostage in order to exact revenge. He ties Buddy up and subjects him to severe beatings, torture and mind games. It is later revealed that due to a botched call waiting function on Buddy's home phone, Guy hears Buddy and Dawn arranging

752-452: Is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists: Swimming with Sharks was first released on DVD by Lionsgate on August 12, 1998. For the film's tenth anniversary, Lionsgate released a Special Edition DVD on June 7, 2005. The DVD includes audio commentary from Huang, Whaley, and Spacey, as well as featurettes including "Back to the Tank: 10 Years Later", a retrospective piece about

799-580: Is revealed that Guy killed Dawn, who is blamed for kidnapping and torturing Buddy, and was subsequently promoted. Later, Guy coldly tells a former colleague to find out what he really wants and then do anything to get it, echoing the numerous times Buddy told Guy. A beaten up Buddy then passes by Guy's office, making eye contact with him and silently gesturing to call him into his office for a meeting. Guy excuses himself and goes into Buddy's office, ignoring his ringing telephone. Buddy shuts his office doors as other employees walk by. George Huang decided to write

846-703: Is the fictional studio in the Cineville film Swimming With Sharks (1994). In 2007, when the independent film studio Cineville merged with the DVD distributor Westlake Entertainment , the companies named their joint enterprise Keystone. The original Keystone Studios lot was an explorable location, as well as a major plot element, in the 2011 video game L.A. Noire , published by Rockstar Games . [REDACTED] Media related to Keystone Studios at Wikimedia Commons Film studio There are also independently owned studio facilities, who have never produced

893-469: Is the ultimate aphrodisiac, it is also the ultimate excuse for almost any conceivable behavior. Powerful executives, agents and stars behave the way they do - because they can. Huang finds great humor in that situation, and, unless I am mistaken, some quiet bitterness as well." The film gained new significance in 2017 when the Harvey Weinstein abuse and sexual misconduct cases became public and

940-505: The MeToo movement went viral, in addition to allegations of Spacey's own misconduct and Hollywood producer Scott Rudin's reported history of abuse of his staff. Writer and producer Angelina Burnett shared on Twitter : "When I started out in this business Swimming with Sharks was required viewing. Veteran assistants recommended it as a way to emotionally prepare for what was coming. It was near guaranteed you were gonna get screamed at, and it

987-662: The Triangle Film Corporation with D. W. Griffith and Thomas Ince . Sennett left in 1917 to produce his own independent films (eventually distributed through Paramount ), after which Keystone's business declined. Keystone Studios eventually closed after bankruptcy in 1935. Much of the lighting and studio equipment from Keystone was bought by Reymond King, who started the "Award Cinema Movie Equipment" company in Venice, CA in November, 1935. "Keystone Studios"

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1034-459: The patents relevant to movie production at the time. Early movie producers relocated to Southern California to escape patent enforcement, thanks to more lenient local courts and physical distance from company detectives and mob allies. (Edison's patents expired in 1913.) The first movie studio in the Hollywood area was Nestor Studios , opened in 1911 by Al Christie for David Horsley . In

1081-407: The vertically integrated structure of the movie industry constituted an illegal monopoly . This decision, reached after twelve years of litigation, hastened the end of the studio system and Hollywood's "Golden Age". By the 1950s, the physical components of a typical movie studio had become standardized. Since then, a movie studio has usually been housed on a "studio lot." Physically, a studio lot

1128-640: The Big Five, the majors, or the Studios in trade publications such as Variety , and their management structures and practices collectively came to be known as the studio system . The Little 3 Although they owned few or no theaters to guarantee sales of their films, Universal Pictures , Columbia Pictures , and United Artists also fell under these rubrics, making a total of eight generally recognized major studios. United Artists, although its controlling partners owned not one but two production studios during

1175-568: The Golden Age, had an often-tenuous hold on the title of major and operated mainly as a backer and distributor of independently produced films. Smaller studios operated simultaneously with the majors. These included operations such as Republic Pictures , active from 1935, which produced films that occasionally matched the scale and ambition of the larger studio, and Monogram Pictures , which specialized in series and genre releases. Together with smaller outfits such as PRC TKO and Grand National,

1222-569: The New York Motion Picture Company (founded 1909). The company, referred to at its office as The Keystone Film Company , filmed in and around Glendale and Silver Lake, Los Angeles for several years, and its films were distributed by the Mutual Film Corporation between 1912 and 1915. The Keystone film brand declined rapidly after Sennett went independent in 1917. The name Keystone was taken from

1269-629: The camera. He distributed these movies at vaudeville theaters, penny arcades, wax museums, and fairgrounds. The first film serial , What Happened to Mary , was released by the Edison company in 1912. The pioneering Thanhouser movie studio was founded in New Rochelle, New York in 1909 by American theatrical impresario Edwin Thanhouser . The company produced and released 1,086 movies between 1910 and 1917, successfully distributing them around

1316-441: The devil with a cellular phone — is, by now, a standard figure of Hollywood satire. But Kevin Spacey takes this archetypal jerk to new levels of tyrannical bravado in the exuberantly nasty Swimming With Sharks ." Gleiberman said the character of Guy needed more fleshing out and ultimately gave the film a grade of B. Many noted the film’s nods to The Player , a Hollywood satire that debuted two years prior. Variety wrote

1363-476: The ending to be implausible, he said "The best parts of 'Swimming With Sharks' are in the details -- in how Guy develops telephone and lying skills, or how Buddy manipulates the phones. Eventually, Guy learns the biggest lesson of all from Buddy, and in the dark humor of that logic, the film finds its conclusion." Ebert concluded the film’s "plot may be overwritten and the ending may be less than satisfying, but [Huang’s] eye and ear are right. In Hollywood, where power

1410-729: The film industry had once hoped—movie studios were increasingly being used to produce programming for the burgeoning medium. Some midsize film companies, such as Republic Pictures , eventually sold their studios to TV production concerns , which were eventually bought by larger studios, such as the American Broadcasting Company which was purchased by Disney in 1996. With the growing diversification of studios into such fields as video games , television stations , broadcast syndication , television , theme parks , home video and publishing , they have become multi-national corporations. International markets account for

1457-440: The film’s "escalating face-off is climaxed by an unexpected arrival, and [its] surprise ending truly does The Player one better in its evaluation of how self-centered, amoral and insular Hollywood can be." Janet Maslin of The New York Times commented, "Mr. Whaley slyly captures the yes-man who happily eases into his boss's arrogant habits as the story goes on." Roger Ebert gave it three out of four stars. Though he found

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1504-474: The making of the film. It received a Blu-ray release on July 19, 2021, from UK company Fabulous Films. A stage adaptation penned by Michael Lesslie had its world premiere at London 's Vaudeville Theatre in October 2007. The play starred Christian Slater as Buddy, Matt Smith as Guy, Arthur Darvill as Rex and Helen Baxendale as Dawn. Academy Award nominee Demián Bichir opened a Spanish version of

1551-475: The minor studios filled the demand for B movies and are sometimes collectively referred to as Poverty Row . The Big Five's ownership of movie theaters was eventually opposed by eight independent producers, including Samuel Goldwyn , David O. Selznick , Walt Disney , Hal Roach , and Walter Wanger . In 1948, the federal government won a case against Paramount in the Supreme Court , which ruled that

1598-555: The same year, another 15 independents settled in Hollywood. Other production companies eventually settled in the Los Angeles area in places such as Culver City , Burbank , and what would soon become known as Studio City in the San Fernando Valley . The stronger early public health response to the 1918 flu epidemic by Los Angeles compared to other American cities reduced the number of cases there and resulted in

1645-492: The script after having a conversation with Robert Rodriguez . Rodriguez was in Los Angeles after his film El Mariachi brought him to the attention of Sony Pictures , where he befriended Huang. Huang told Rodriguez of his frustrations with filmmaking and was thinking of compiling stories from friends working for high-powered Hollywood executives, as well as stories based on his own experiences of being an assistant, into

1692-586: The side of one of the cars of a passing Pennsylvania Railroad train (Keystone State being the nickname of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania ) during the initial meeting of Sennett, Kessel and Baumann in New York. The original main building, the first totally enclosed film stage and studio in history, is still standing. It is located at 1712 Glendale Blvd in Echo Park, Los Angeles and is now being used as

1739-578: The studio system. Filmmakers and producers such as Mike Judge , Adam Sandler , Jim Jarmusch , Robert Rodriguez , Steven Soderbergh , Quentin Tarantino , Kevin Smith and Richard Linklater made films that pushed boundaries in ways the studios were then reluctant to do. In response to these films, many distributed by mini-studios like Miramax , the majors created their own in-house mini-studios meant to focus on edgier, independent content. Focus Features

1786-542: The studios increased in size they began to rely on production companies like J. J. Abrams ' Bad Robot to handle many of the creative and physical production details of their feature films. Instead, the studios transformed into financing and distribution entities for their films (generally made by their affiliated production companies). With the decreasing cost of CGI and visual effects , many studios sold large chunks of their once-massive studio spaces or backlots to private real-estate developers. Century City in Los Angeles

1833-584: The world. In the early 1900s, companies started moving to Los Angeles, California . Although electric lights were by then widely available, none were yet powerful enough to adequately expose film; the best source of illumination for motion picture production was natural sunlight. Some movies were shot on the roofs of buildings in Downtown Los Angeles . Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company , based in New York City, controlled almost all

1880-475: Was a badge of honor to be able to take it..." Said Huang in a 2018 interview, "It does sort of frighten me that people see the film as a primer. It isn’t proscriptive. I was merely holding a mirror up to the way it works. It was supposed to be a cautionary tale, not a how-to — but I still had agents and managers and producers calling me and saying, 'Hey, can I get a copy of the film? We want to show it to our trainees.' They were using it for instruction." The film

1927-415: Was created by Universal Pictures and Fox Searchlight was created by 20th Century Fox for this purpose. Swimming With Sharks Swimming with Sharks (also known as The Boss and Buddy Factor ) is a 1994 American satire film written and directed by George Huang and starring Kevin Spacey , Frank Whaley and Michelle Forbes . Buddy Ackerman, an influential movie mogul, hires Guy,

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1974-435: Was highly flammable, and sets and backlots were and still are very flammable, which is why film studios built in the early-to-mid 20th century have water towers to facilitate firefighting . Water towers "somewhat inexplicably" evolved into "a most potent symbol ... of movie studios in general." Halfway through the 1950s, with television proving to be a lucrative enterprise not destined to disappear any time soon—as many in

2021-429: Was his way of teaching Guy that he must earn his success. Dawn arrives at the scene to find Guy aiming a gun at Buddy's face and insists that she had only agreed to see Buddy as a way of helping Guy's career. Dawn pleads with Guy to put down the gun, whereupon Buddy tells Guy that he has to pull the trigger in order to get ahead in the business. After a moment's indecision, Buddy screams at Guy to shoot, which Guy does. It

2068-495: Was inspired by real life movie mogul Scott Rudin , while others suggest he is based on producer Joel Silver with Guy being based on Alan Schechter , Silver's assistant in the early 1990s. The director Buddy hires in the film, Foster Kane, is named after Orson Welles ' character in the 1941 film Citizen Kane , Charles Foster Kane . On Rotten Tomatoes , the film has an approval rating of 76% based on reviews from 38 critics. The site's consensus states: " Swimming With Sharks

2115-399: Was once part of the 20th Century Fox backlot, which was among the largest and most famous of the studio lots. In most cases, portions of the backlots were retained and are available for rental by various film and television productions. Some studios offer tours of their backlots , while Universal Pictures allows visitors to its adjacent Universal Studios Hollywood theme park to take

2162-482: Was subsequently sold to Trimark Pictures (later assumed by Lionsgate in 2000). Cineville produced the film with Carl Colpaert , chairman of Cineville and Steve Alexander overseeing production. Although writer George Huang himself worked as an assistant for Barry Josephson , who was the Senior Vice President of Development at Sony Pictures at the time, some have suggested that Buddy's character

2209-710: Was the first totally enclosed film stage and studio ever constructed, is still there today. Known as Sennett's Fun Factory , it was here that he created the slapstick antics of the Keystone Cops (from 1912) and the Sennett Bathing Beauties (beginning in 1915). Keystone comedies were noted for their hair-raising car chases and custard pie warfare, especially in the Keystone Cops series. Charlie Chaplin got his start in films at Keystone when Sennett hired him in 1914, fresh from his vaudeville career, to make silent films , in which he rapidly became

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