Weekly Variety has yet another front page story on how the travails of the industry are finally hitting (gasp) the talent. Few writers except those at the very top benefited from the recent strikes that will result in a derth of movies next year. Apparently this lesson was learned by working class actors who recently resisted being bludgeoned into their own strike by people like George Clooney and Sean Penn, the sort of millionare stars who would have been among the few to actually come out ahead of such a thing.
The fact is, the industry is in real trouble. For a quite some time now they’re been wallowing like hogs in the pretty much literal flood of money provided when multinational corporations like Sony foolishly figured they could safely invest in the movie business. I hope these suits have enjoyed the ‘romance’ of owning a studio, because they’ve recieved little tangible returon on the gigantic piles of loot they;ve forked over, other than the sheer satisfaction of affording people like Jon Peters the opportunity to snort equally gigantic piles of cocaine on somebody else’s dime while indulging in the most egregious forms of sadism against pliant youngsters desparate to break into the business.
Well, the times they are a’changing, and big names mean less now than they ever did. The latest to feel the lash are producers, who since the ’80s have been living it up on cushy studio deals that gave them tons of dough in return for a first look at any projects they developed. On the whole, these deals have been disastrous for the studios who made them, but that was OK, because the corporation had put “movie people,” i.e., other producers, in charge of the studios, and why should they care? They represented, man! They stayed true to their homies! Besides, they are artists and corporations are evil so it’s just justice, ya’know?
Anyway, Variety is predictably aghast to see producers losing these deals, save only, coincidentally enough, for (gasp) those producers who might actually give the studios something back for the millions of dollars we’re talking here. This has given Variety a severe case of the vapors, as indicated by this sentence: “But, as is so often the case in corporate America, it’s those in the middle range who seem to have been hardest hit.”
Yes, that disgusting ‘corporate America,’ grossly concerned with getting some sort of return for their investments. The woe is us-ing continues: “As long as films are being made producers will get deals, but it’s increasingly rare for a studio to fork over money for an office, assistant and a seven-figure development fund.” Gadzooks! Oh, perfidious world!
Businesses change. When that happens, people get hurt. But then new business arises and people do better, often much better. But the fact is that there has been a real feeling constantly expressed during all these various strikes and upheavals that THIS IS THE WAY THINGS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE, and that something sneaky and illegitimate is going on now that people aren’t making as much money.
Smaller people are being hurt too, of course, but it doesn’t help on the sympathy front that most of the people the unions put up there to be their face are overpaid, highly condescending and generally self-righteous deca or centi-millionaires. Putting big names on camera definitely helps you get on the news. Still, if they think people busting their humps to feed their families are going to spare much time worrying that George Clooney or whoever might eventually find himself making a couple of million per picture instead of five or ten million, well, maybe they need to take the occasional expedition to the flyover country that pays for their self-owned private jets and Barbie beach houses.
This industry is a dinosaur struggling in a tar pit. I’m not sure what’s coming next, but much bigger changes are coming. And all the bitching and self-regard in the world isn’t going to change that.
