Monday 10 December 2007

Hollywood Babble On & On... #11: 7 Kinds of Stupid

This is the real AMPTP web site that offers their side of the Writer's Strike.

This is a spoof of the AMPTP web site, probably organized by some writers with too much time on your hands. (h/t Nikki Finke)

Now what do these two sites tell you?

And I'm not talking about how producer's site somehow makes dishwater look exciting.

I'm talking about how the AMPTP, and via them, all of Hollywood management thinks.

Still don't get it?

Okay, I'll explain it, slowly, so even a Hollywood executive can figure it out.

The mere existence of a spoof site, using the .com address shows that the AMPTP's membership and management possess a mix of contempt, arrogance, and stupidity.

I've discussed contempt before. So I'm going to stick to arrogance and stupidity tonight.

Now .com is the most common address on the internet. It is just about everywhere. In fact many people type .com simply out of reflex, even though they intend to go to .org, .net or whatever...

So it's natural for any organization to buy the .com address for their site, even if they intend it to be something else. It's basic common sense to prevent fraud-artists, pornographers, and parodists from using an address similar to your and getting to visiting them instead of you.

However, common sense seems to be lacking in Hollywood.

The brainiacs of the AMPTP who secured the .org address without securing the .com address probably didn't think that they would be parodied. They lacked the foresight, or even the basic imagination to realize that they're up against people who use their imagination for a living, and that a large number of those people write comedy.

They are arrogant enough to think that they're dealing with people as uncreative and narrow minded as they are. Underestimating their enemy is one of many mistakes.

Of course they probably are also blind to the fact that the people who use their imaginations to make a living, are also key to the AMPTP members making a living too.

The AMPTP has had it too good for too long. Hollywood's been the dominant supplier of entertainment for almost a century, and that dominance has made it smug and stupid.

Smug in the fact that it assumes that it will always be the world's #1 source for entertainment, and that those who actually create that entertainment will have to do their bidding and call it ice cream, because they think they will forever be the only game in town.

Stupid in the fact that while technology should make production cheaper and more efficient, costs are going up beyond the rate of inflation. Yet other countries are using this new technology to produce entertainment that catching up with Hollywood in production values without the expense.

Of course I'm talking about companies that dole out massive bonuses to executives whether the company profits or not.

Which goes beyond stupid and arrogant into the realm of either corruption or insanity.

To save itself the AMPTP has to trim the fat, starting with the clotting wads that lie between their ears. They must shake off old inefficient methods, streamline the executive suite, and realize that their main business is the telling and selling of stories, everything else is just icing on the cake.

That's why I'm campaigning to replace Robert Shaye as head of New Line. Sure, I don't know what I'm doing, but neither does anyone else in Hollywood.

But at least I know that I don't know what I'm doing.

That makes me overqualified.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks to advances in technology we now have a rising form of entertainment called Video Games which are about to be poised to slice a gash into Hollywood bloated neck.

    While HW fails and loses money i hate-america anti-war drivel, the VG companies are raking millions in with Pro-US Military themed games such as Call of Duty, Medal of Honor and Brothers in Arms.

    These companies are turning a profit, the film studios are not.

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