Spike Lee’s “Chi-Raq” was produced by Amazon Studios, not by Hollywood, but its stars, technicians, facilities, distribution network, and movie theatres are Hollywood by-products. The machine is now more complex-the connection between Hollywood and the best movies is circuitous and intricate. At that time-a time that has only recently passed into history-the laundering of Hollywood money took place inside Hollywood, which is how Howard Hawks, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Douglas Sirk, Joseph Mankiewicz, Fritz Lang, Frank Tashlin, Jerry Lewis, Elaine May, Michael Cimino, and the other geniuses of the system were able to make their movies. There used to be more of an overlap, both before the age of television, when Hollywood was the only audiovisual game around, and in the age of television, when Hollywood was still the prime source of feature films. Sometimes there’s even an overlap between the two groups of movies, as when Ryan Coogler made “Creed,” or when Scorsese made the modernist horror instant-classic “Shutter Island,” or when Clint Eastwood makes just about anything. Comedies for children, superhero movies, sci-fi apocalypses, and other popular genres, the big studios channel some of those funds into movies by Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, James Gray, and other worthies. It takes in huge amounts of money from the sale of mass-market commodities and cleanses some of it with the production of cinematic masterworks. Hollywood is the world’s best money-laundering machine.
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