An American Tragedy: How Hollywood Thinks

Well, this is how it used to think cca 1930, at any rate.

But the bottom line - both literal and  figurative - is still in place today.

A Memo from David O. Selznick about An American Tragedy

Read this memo from David O. Selznick, and then, if you like, read the entire script by Sergei Eisenstein. 
(The American Tragedy, to which it refers is, of course, the same novel that was later, in 1951, made into the famous film, A Place in The Sun, with Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor and Shelley Winters.)

Another memo from Selznick: keep your bourbon bottle at hand.

This ain't no popcorn stuff.

Memo from David O. Selznick
To: Mr. B. P. Schulberg (General Manager, Paramount)
October 8, 1930

I have just finished reading the Eisenstein adaptation
of [Theodore Dreiser's novel] An American Tragedy. It
was for me a memorable experience; the most moving script
I have ever read. It was so effective, it was positively
torturing. When I had finished reading it, I was so
depressed that I wanted to reach for the bourbon bottle.
As entertainment, I don't think it has one chance in a
hundred.

... Is it too late to persuade the enthusiasts of the
picture from making it? Even if the dialogue rights have
been purchased, even if Dreiser's services have been
arranged for, I think it an unexcusable gamble on the
part of this department to put into a subject as
depressing as this one, anything like the cost that an
Eisenstein production must necessarily entail.

If we want to make An American Tragedy as a glorious
experiment, and purely for the advancement of the art
(which I certainly do not think is the business of this
organization), then let's do it with a [John] Cromwell
directing, and chop three or four hundred thousand
dollars off the loss. If the cry of "Courage!" be raised
against this protest, I should like to suggest that we
have the courage not to make the picture, but to take
whatever rap is coming to us for not supporting
Eisenstein the artist (as he proves himself to be with
this script), with a million or more of the
stockholders' cash.

Let's try new things, by all means. But let's keep these
gambles within the bounds of those that would be indulged
by rational businessmen; and let's not put more money than
we have into any one picture for years into a subject that
will appeal to our vanity through the critical acclaim that must necessarily attach to its production, but that cannot possibly offer anything but a most miserable two hours to millions of happy-minded young Americans.

David O. Selznick