Hollywood trends are notoriously slippery, particularly the economic ones. It’s a much-touted truism that cinema is “recession-proof,” a fact most notably proved during the Great Depression when virtually every other industry came crashing down. Present circumstances are nowhere near that dire, but a paradigm shift is in process which should be cause for serious concern.

A little more than two years ago I was asked to write a feature for Boxoffice regarding the doldrums of the summer of ‘06, one of the most disappointing in recent memory. I interviewed executives from all major studios with the noteworthy exception of Universal who was still smarting from the tanking of Cinderella Man (though in the eyes of Lionsgate’s Tom Ortenberg, the film wasn’t so much a failure as it was too expensive for the audience targeted). Since that time, a pair of Pirates of the Caribbean films and last summer’s spate of threquels put all naysaying firmly into reverse. For the time being, that is. But the writing was already on the wall at the time — several of my interviewees couldn’t control their excitement about “digital 3-D,” which they saw as the next big thing.

I’m on the record as thinking that anything 3-D is a big gimmicky boondoggle, but I know where these guys are coming from — and it bodes very poorly for where they plan on taking us.

The big mistake, as I have pointed out time and time again, is the belief, fostered in the 1970s, that teenagers and young adults are now the holy grail of audiences. Being as I was part of that generation, the “lines around the block” generation that craved big movies in big theaters and would wait forever to get a seat in the front row just to be part of the opening night phenomenon, I can speak authoritatively and say that teens and young adults are not the holy grail. It was THAT GENERATION of teens and young adults who STILL ARE the holy grail. But we’re now in our 30s, 40s and 50s. And nobody is making movies for us. Even Sylvester Stallone recently remarked that it’s this generation that controls most of the disposable income, who far outnumber the younger generation, and yet for whom nothing is being produced.

But isn’t Hollywood all about money? If this generation is sitting there, waiting to have movies made for them, why aren’t they being made? Would Hollywood really pass up a profit opportunity?

Yes and no.

The sad fact is that the demands of corporate giants like those who own and control the studios have little to do with movies, per se. They have everything to do with cross-collateralizing their various revenue streams, i.e. if Transformers had actually lost every single penny spent on it, it would still be a successful loss-leader for having sold billions in toys and other merchandise.

My generation just wants good movies. We don’t want all the rest of the crap that goes with it. Younger viewers, however, crave crap. And since the corporate parents aren’t in the movie business as much as they’re in the crap business, we get the shaft.

If you think I’m just being a cranky critic, let me share a recent dinner I had with several well-placed friends. One, a longtime development executive, noted that 20th Century Fox now has an edict to make no movies longer than 90 minutes (Fox Searchlight excepted). This means that the studio responsible for the hugely successful Alien and Aliens would not make those movies today. This means that the Oscar-winning Patton would be passed off to another studio or perhaps to Fox Searchlight. Last of the Mohicans? Forget it. The classic All About Eve? Only if it’s all about 90 minutes. Edward Scissorhands? Only if those scissors slice out about 15 minutes. But what about Planet of the Apes? Independence Day? Not a chance in hell. Unless they can tell their stories in 90 minutes.

Another dinner attendee, a screenwriter friend, then related some of his experiences in recent meetings. Almost without exception, he was being presented comic books and graphic novels to adapt. Original material and non-pictorial literature weren’t even being considered.

I sincerely hope that the Fox rumor is untrue — or that the people responsible come to their senses and reverse course. But I fear we’re in for more of the same because the people now running studios are not creative people — they’re marketing people. And as my screenwriter friend confirmed, they’re not interested in making good movie as much as films they know how to sell. To which I would add, “films they know how to sell... and which hell them sell other stuff...”

You see, it’s all about the sell. And in a sense it always has been. Hollywood’s gift has never so much been the ability to make good movies as its ability to sell what it makes, good or bad. The best films have always been foreign films. And the best Hollywood filmmakers have, by and large, been foreign born. We forget that the likes of Wilder, Zinneman, Curtiz, Wyler, Lubitsch and Hitchcock all hailed from other birth nations. And a quick glance at today’s major Hollywood directors reveals no less a melting pot: Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Paul Verhoeven, Wolfgang Petersen, Roland Emmerich, John Woo, Ang Lee, Peter Jackson — émigrés all. But it could also be argued that all have done their best work in their native countries — it was certainly true previously for the likes of Jean Renoir and Fritz Lang.

Obviously, no one can — or should — tell corporations how to run their business. These are, after all, the decisions on which millions of 401ks are riding. But any good capitalist can tell that there is a giant, untapped market out there who just wants good movies — a whole generation of people with millions and millions of dollars they’re eager to drop on anything that so much as smacks of quality and artistry. And for exhibitors, who have nothing invested in the ancillary interests of corporations, that’s as good a market as any gang of pimply-faced, 3D-starved teenagers. Maybe even more since adults have fewer entertainment distractions. I know I don’t give two shakes about video games, blackberries, text messaging, social networking or anything else that preoccupies teenagers. I just want good movies.

So... who’s going to step up and give them to us?

Prove to me that you’re not the cowards I think you are.