Distribution
Méliès had intended to release the film in the United States to profit from it. Thomas Edison's film technicians, however, secretly made copies of it and distributed it throughout the country. While the film was still hugely successful, Méliès eventually went bankrupt. This was due in part to the eventual view which was held towards his films that the special effects were overshadowing the plot.
In an interview of Martin Scorsese by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, Scorsese said, “He lost basically most of his financing when the bigger companies came in. What happened here. . . at that time there was a lot going on with copyright and not copyright and that sort of thing.” Stewart said, “There is a story that Edison had taken one of his films, brought it to America and showed it and it became enormously popular in America. But Edison decided not to pay I guess what we would call royalties.” Scorsese replied: “That's right. So what happened, the film was I think the famous one, 'A Trip to the Moon.' They were just taking the films and making dupes of them. So that was one of the reasons why he was finished financially, ultimately.”
Read more about this topic: A Trip To The Moon
Famous quotes containing the word distribution:
“There is the illusion of time, which is very deep; who has disposed of it? Mor come to the conviction that what seems the succession of thought is only the distribution of wholes into causal series.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)