Hollywood Babble On & On #1242: The Sin of Wages

A reader asked me this question:

Recently I was reading articles about Jennifer Lawrence and Amanda Seyfried getting significantly less money than their male co-stars. 

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/movies/amanda-seyfried-says-she-was-paid-just-10-per-cent-of-her-male-co-stars-salary-for-film-role/story-e6frfmvr-1227442353893

The argument was that this was a result of sexism but surely isn’t this more the fault of their management/agents?

This is a tricky question, because we don't know the specifics, and the devil is hiding in those details.

The problem with Seyfried's case is that the reports are pretty vague on the details. We don't know the film, we don't know the co-star, the respective size of their roles, and, as my reader mentioned: the comparative competence, greediness and clout of their respective representatives.

If you don't know the details, you can't really, with any accuracy, determine if sexism was behind the difference in salary.

It's a lot like the oft-repeated trope that women make 77¢ for every $1 a man makes. If you look at the surface of the arguments that use that statistic you have no choice but to think that male bosses do nothing but complicate their accounting as well as leave themselves open to lawsuits and   maybe even criminal prosecution because their sexism outweighs their need for survival.

However, if you look at the details, you get a different picture. It's not, as many politicians and activists claim, cases of, let's say, a male sales clerk getting paid more than a female colleague despite having the same job and seniority because of the secret "penis bonus." The statistic comes from an overarching study of all occupations held by men and women irrespective of the nature of that occupation and how that affects salary.

If you totally believe the politicians, then sexism must be the only reason a 37 year old male oil rig roughneck, with 16 years experience, makes more money than an 18 year old female sales clerk working part time at an Orange Julius while she's going to university.

However, sexism isn't the only reason, in fact, it's likely that it might not be a reason at all. Those reasons include, the roughneck's seniority, the greater value put on delivering massive amounts of oil over small amounts of orange juice, and the greater probability that a roughneck is far more likely to have limb ripped off on the oil rig, than a counter worker is at the Orange Julius.

Artist's depiction of the Committee For Deciding Salaries

A close study of the details shows that on average women are more likely to accept lower paying jobs that can guarantee a certain quality of life over more lucrative jobs with high rates of death and dismemberment.

That's not to say that no women ever take those kinds of jobs. Many do, however, they are nowhere near enough numerically to make up the discrepancy in salaries when all are piled together to create the 77¢ statistic.

Which brings us back to actress salaries.

As I keep repeating myself, the devil in this issue lies in the details. Jennifer Lawrence was paid a lot less than her male co-stars on American Hustle, despite her box-office/Oscar status putting her on a more equal footing with them. We don't know the full details. 

Lawrence has a good working relationship with director David O. Russell and might have volunteered to take an up-front pay cut to help get the movie made. That's not uncommon in Hollywood, especially if the project can only help boost the prestige and star-power of the actor in question.

However, I'm not going to just let the people who run Hollywood off the sexism hook.

Why?

Because Hollywood is run by people, and all people carry petty little prejudices and idiocies. It's what bonds us all as a species.

In Hollywood though, such prejudices and idiocies can be exacerbated because many in Hollywood think their sins don't count. Many in Hollywood honestly believe that it's perfectly okay to have a carbon footprint bigger than a Third World country as long as they support the correct politicians and get seen at the correct fundraisers. It's not hard to believe that it's the same with how they treat women.

Also Hollywood's behind the scenes history is loaded with sexist behavior, and I'm not talking about the notorious casting couch. During the Silent Era there were many female directors, and film editing was an almost exclusively female. However the coming of sound was used as an excuse by the unions to squeeze most women out of the director's chair and the editing room.

Which means I should probably get around to the point I'm trying to make.

I don't doubt that some, possibly many, people in positions of power hold some sexist attitudes that they think they can buy off with politically correct indulgences. However, if we're going to stop sexism in business, we need to conclusively prove sexism in business, because just accusing makes people feel good, but it really gets us nowhere. We need to know the tedious little technical details, because that's where the line between sexist piggishness and misunderstandings hides.

A Personal Note And Then It's Answer Time!!

Sorry for the long delays between posts. Had some family business to take care of in the form of taking my parents, both in the seventies for a trip. The plan was to visit my mother's sister in Ontario, then go visit my brother's family in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan.

The trip itself went well. Even saw the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, which I would recommend to anyone visiting the area, but the voyage back was another story.

We booked our return tickets to Canada on an airline based in the USA that shall remain nameless, because it looked like a good deal.

Looked like.

Our first two flights on last Tuesday were cancelled. One was due to bad weather, but I'm not sure why the second one was cancelled.

We had already checked out of our hotel by then, and had to book new rooms at an airport hotel to make our new 6:00 AM Wednesday flight to New Jersey to make our connection to Halifax. (This required being at the security checkpoint by 4:00AM)

Our 6:00 AM flight didn't take off until around 7:30 AM because they didn't have the right weather paperwork from the right government agency.

By the time we arrived in Newark our flight was half-way across New England.

We were put on a new flight, but that flight had been oversold by one ticket.

They decided that my mother, who needs a wheelchair to go long distances, was the passenger to get bumped, and wait 8 hours until the next flight.

My Dad and I couldn't abandon my Mother in New Jersey, nor could I trade my seat to her and leave them stranded in the Halifax airport until the wee hours of the night waiting for me, so we all had to stay.

The 8 hour wait turned into a 9 hour wait, but then we finally got on an airplane to Nova Scotia and checked into another hotel at 1:30 AM Thursday.

When we landed in Halifax, we discovered that the airline lost our luggage.

It literally took us 3 days to accomplish 3.5 hours of flying, and then we had to wait until Saturday to get our luggage.

That was then followed by a stream of hassles and problems both petty and major, that had to be dealt with before I can deliver the answers you crave like the salivating dogs that you are.

LET'S GET THE BALL ROLLING!!

Rainforest Giant asked... 

Howdy Furiousness,

With all the new superhero themed shows out this would seem to be a golden age. Especially, since most of the show runners have shown respect to the original material.  

Are we entering a true golden age like the Westerns did for nearly fifty years or is this a passing fad? Is fantasy on TV going to get bigger than GoT or will it fade on the vine? Is there a family friendly fantasy out there now that Merlin is gone?  

Finally, do you think TV sci fi is in an upward trend or just the superhero stuff?

I think sci-fi TV is in an upward trend both in regards to superheroes and with more traditional science fiction material. It's caught in that rising tide that's affecting all of television.

The TV market is hyper-competitive with every outlet not only competing for market share with each other, but with big screen movies, and the internet. That means you have to bring your "A-Game" or you might as well not play at all.

Also, the ability to make a show that looks like a big budget A-List movie has never been cheaper, which means TV is freer to do more both visually and narratively.

As for family friendly fantasy, something will come up. If there's a profitable niche someone will fill it.

How long will this last?

I don't know.

In the 1950s and 1960s the TV Western looked unassailable, now they're rarer then hen's teeth, but I think it will be a while barring some sort of dramatic crash and burn.

Next question...

Nate Winchester asked... 

Hmm... how best to put this... 

Ok, what, in your opinion, is the best way to handle product placement in a movie? 

I mean I don't entirely object to product placement. In fact I've always found it a bit hypocritical how on some sites you'll see people complaining about how characters are drinking BEER (a bottle with the super generic label) in one review of a movie, then complain about "Bud Lite" products in another movie (then some will end up complaining about knock-off products some movies/tv/etc will make too). One gets the feeling people are never happy. So in instances like Man of Steel the complaints make no sense to me. I don't mind it quite as much because I know that if Superman was having a fight in my hometown (which is about the size of Smallville) and was filmed, one would see hundreds of businesses being trashed. It strikes me as less product placement and more realism. But some folks complain about that in movies. 

(and although it sometimes can bug me in TV shows, I'm willing to let it slide more because I know the show has to pay bills)

Product placement works best if it's done subtly.

However, among the Mad Men of Marketing, subtlety is seen as a vice, and they feel they have to beat the audience's head with their stitched on sales pitches.

Filmmakers and advertisers must find that happy medium where the film looks realistic, labels can be seen, but where things don't look like a badly made commercial.

By the way… I had heard a possible urban legend that the Alex Cox movie Repo Man became famous, incorrectly, as statement against product placement for its use of generic products. The twist is that the generic products were from a product placement deal with a grocery store to use their in-house  brand as free props in exchange for giving it a lot of screen time. 

ILDC said... 

Right now, Disney's film slate doesn't have much going for it besides Marvel, Pixar, live-action cartoon remakes, etc. Is having an increasingly narrow film focus something that's going to someday bite them in the ass? While I'm not saying they have to go back to making R-rated movies, there's something thoughtlessly cynical about saying you only produce tentpoles and "brand deposits".

It will bite them in the ass.

Maybe not today.

Maybe not tomorrow.

But someday.

That's because when a studio starts narrowing its focus to only certain kinds of movies, then they are putting themselves on a path that's only going to get narrower.

Because if they only make Marvel and Pixar movies, then, if some films don't all succeed 100% they're going to limit themselves to certain kinds of Marvel and Pixar movies.

Then they'll limit themselves even further to sequels and reboots of previously successful movies.

And then nothing.

Anonymous said... 

In your opinion, is the lack of original projects, as opposed to sequels, remakes et al , a function of the copyright laws? Just think, if the original 28 year copyright law was in effect, Star Wars, Mad Max and a host of other properties would be public domain and would not be profitable for media companies to continue to turn out unoriginal material. The whole idea of copyright was to boost and stimulate creativity. Now it's strangling it.

I don't think it's the fault of copyright law.

If the old 28 year law was still in effect the studios would be much more militant in renewing their copyrights like they were before the laws were expanded. 

The main cause of unoriginality is fear.

New material is an unknown quantity, and that's terrifying to someone whose job and expense account are dependent on how the company's next quarter is going to go.

Better to stick with things that are known, and those things are franchises and filmmakers with a track record.

ILDC said... 

Do you agree with Ennio Morricone saying film music has gotten less memorable? 

http://www.avclub.com/article/ennio-morricone-not-impressed-modern-movie-soundtr-220401

5/6/15 6:00 p.m. 

I love Ennio Morricone's music, and I do agree that he has a point. A lot of the movie music is forgettable.

But memorable movie music is a double edged sword.

A memorable movie soundtrack needs to be part of an extremely memorable movie, or it could overwhelm the movie and become the only thing people can remember.

Maestro Morricone has consistently done great and groundbreaking work for decades, but more than a few of the over 500 films he's provided music for have been truly worthy of his work.

If a lot of modern movie music comes across as bland, it's because in many cases it kind of has to be bland.

maurice asked... 

What's your view of the future of the integration of the most popular YouTube and other Internet stars (formerly known as "user-generated content") into the mainstream entertainment business? Disney just bought an aggregation of YouTube-stars (a new-media "studio"?) for $500m. This seems to be a chip on the table, maybe nothing more. Tastes for that kind of content change rapidly and barriers to entry are low, and so it doesn't seem to jibe with Disney/Iger's current hyper-monetization of big intellectual property brands and tentpoles. Jeff Zucker's jibe of a few years back, that it doesn't make sense to trade analog dollars for digital pennies, is relevant as well. So, perhaps, is the BuzzFeed model of clickbait garbage masquerading as journalism (although the best YouTube performers are definitely good entertainers). Will big data analytics and targeted advertising even out the differences and help the two worlds converge in a structural way? Or, despite some obvious opporunities for synergy, are the two worlds simply too different to merge?

I think it will all hinge on one thing: the star quality of the specific project or person.

I don't see YouTube or another form of social media completely taking over entertainment. It's too anarchic, too splintered, and outside of periodic fads like Gangnam Style, incapable of getting a project to stand above all the static and reach the sort of wide audience that the major professional media outlets can.

However, if the big media companies are smart, they'll look beyond the flash-in-the-pan YouTube "stars" to look for real talent, they way they used to hunt for talent on theatrical and nightclub stages and radio.

But that takes effort, and I don't see the big studios doing that unless they're really desperate.

Gary Burnaska said… 

What is your take on hollywood pairing up 20 year old femaies with leading men in their 40s. We've seen this many times with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. Is this some sort of Hollywood mid-life crisis.  

I do have to admit they also work well together.

I did recently write about this phenomenon, so click here, and thanks for giving me an excuse to post a picture of Jennifer Lawrence with whom I am somewhat smitten.

I hope I answered your questions in this edition that managed to be both rushed and late at the same time.

Feel free to ask me anything in the comments.

ASK ME ANYTHING!!

Family business is going to keep me a tad busy for the next couple of weeks. Which means the odds of me putting up a new post are pretty slim.

However, all is not lost.

GIMME YOUR QUESTIONS!!

That's right, ask me anything related to pop culture and the business behind it, and I will pretend to have an answer.

When my family business is done, I'll post my answers, so get asking, the more the merrier.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1232: We Gotta Question!

Reader Nate Winchester sent me an e-mail asking me this question about the Weinstein Company's most notorious business practice:

Forget how they get other people to go along, why do they keep doing this???  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr-OKG851jo 

HOW does a company survive a repeated business plan of "I'll cut off my nose to spite my face." 

Satan just has to be involved.

Now the link is for this video from Good Bad Flicks investigating the cult film All The Boys Love Mandy Lane.

Here is the video, but be warned, he gets into spoilers after he talks about the film's troubled history.

If you're too lazy to watch the video, or want to avoid spoilers, I will give you the gist of what happened to the film, and then we'll try to figure out why it happened.

All The Boys Love Mandy Lane was made in Austin Texas by some aspiring filmmakers for around $750,000. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival where it became the darling of the 2006 Midnight Madness slate, which is normally seen as a great sign for it future success.

A bidding war ensued. Every indie distributor wanted to get their hands on it, but it was the Weinstein Company that won, paying out $3.5 million for the privilege.

TWC then held a test screening, and declared that the results were so awful, the film did not deserve to be released.

The film gathered dust on a shelf for a few years. But online pressure inspired TWC to sell it to another distributor, who promptly went bankrupt. Then more time passed, just about everyone involved in the film went on to bigger and better things, and after seven years in limbo it got a token theatrical release, and then was dumped on home video, with pretty much all momentum lost.

Which brings us to Nate's question:

HOW does a company survive a repeated business plan of "I'll cut off my nose to spite my face." 

Satan just has to be involved.

Satan is probably not involved, as far as I know, but there are some theories as to how this keeps happening.

First the Weinstein's are masters at convincing people to go along with them. They can point to their Oscars, their hits, as well as their personal wealth, and say "Look at what we did for them, and we can do it for you."

The problem is for every Oscar winner or box office hit they probably have about a dozen films that either sink completely, or are just not released at all.

So why buy a film and not release it?

There are two reasons for the Weinsteins to do that. One is financial, the other is psychological.

The financial reason has to do with accounting rules. According to those rules a film that they bought for $3.5 million goes on their books as an asset worth $3.5 million.

If they release that movie, they must then deduct the cost of its release from that value, and then add any profits that comes in.

If the film bombs then it's considered a loss.

So it's better to just have it sit there gathering dust.

As I said, the second reason is psychological. From everything I've ever read or seen about how the Weinstein Brothers do business is that they must win EVERYTHING, even contests they're not truly interested in. Also, not only must they win, everyone else must LOSE.

The history of Miramax and the Weinstein Company shows a repeated strategy of buying films they have no interest in for the sole reason of making sure that no one else can do anything with them. 

Now this business model isn't as successful as the Weinstein Brothers would like you to think. First they almost bankrupted Miramax, but was saved by selling out to Disney, only to have Disney force them out of Miramax when they repeated those antics. Just a few years ago TWC had to hand over the rights to almost its entire film library up to that point to its creditors to avoid getting crushed by the debt they piled up to acquire those films.

Basically, their entire business model is based on hustling. Hustling Wall Street for capital, hustling filmmakers for movies, hustling academy voters for prizes, and only occasionally hustling audiences for ticket sales.

TWC does not have a model for a self-sustaining film company. Either they will run out of steam, filmmaker goodwill, and other people's money, or an ill-timed heart attack will bring the whole house of cards down. Then TWC will be nothing more than a footnote in film history.

You Asked For It: An Apocalyptic Question

I didn't watch the Golden Globes last night. So instead of judging a show I didn't watch, I'm going to answer a reader's questions.

Nate Winchester asked: 

I heard someone say before, I'll tweak their point now: 

D, do you think zombies and all the other apocalypse films/tv/etc are filling the airwaves right now because Hollywood senses that their end is coming? 

In light of that, what do you think the post-apocalyptic scene will look like? When Hollywood collapses because it's chopped off its own legs, what do you think might happen next? (doesn't have to be accurate, just tell us a story)

One thing you have to know about Hollywood is that they don't really sense anything. Deep feelings of foreboding over their own future requires something Hollywood doesn't have, which is depth. Also they're lacking in long term thinking, being only able to see the next quarterly report and their next bonus and/or stock option.

What they do have is a sense of sight, and when they see a dystopic or post-apocalyptic project sell big, like The Hunger Games, or The Walking Dead, they hop on the bandwagon.

Apocalyptic projects sell because of a sense among the general population of just how fragile their comfortable first world lives are because they're technology dependent.

I lose my internet connection for an hour and I'm ready to go full Mad Max on everyone by minute thirty-five.

As for what happens to Hollywood after the end of their unique civilization…

The major studios are faltering, but they have enormous bulk and infrastructure on their own, and almost all of them are part of even bigger media conglomerates. Conglomerates that span the world, and keep on growing.

Steve from Mergers & Acquisitions.

That means that any alternative can easily be subsumed, and ultimately consumed by the already existing media mega-conglomerates. Possibly via homicidal android merger & acquisition specialists, but I won't make any promises.

But seriously...

What we might see is a replay of what happened back in the turn of the century and the teens. Back then the fledgling movie biz was dominated by the Edison Trust. A clique of companies who sought a monopoly on the movie business.

They did everything they could to maintain that monopoly, from lawsuits to goons doling out threats and vandalism, and seemed unassailable.

They're all out of business now.

What happened?

The studios we know today were independent upstarts who rebelled against the Edison Trust. They beat the Edison Trust not in court, but with the audience.

You see the Trust's companies had two policies which doomed them. They suppressed the development of "stars" to keep salaries artificially down, by keeping their names out of the public eye, the most famous being the star known only as the "Biograph Girl". Also the Trust decided that the audience would want stories that the Trust told them to want.

The upstarts rebelled by creating the "star" system, by giving popular performers credit and using them to promote their films. The upstarts also looked at what the audience was looking for in the way of stories and they delivered.

Over the next 20 years the Edison trust companies crumbled and either faded into oblivion or were taken over by the upstarts who are the major studios we know today.

How do I see history repeating itself?

First, it won't repeat itself exactly as it happened before.

The means of making and delivering content have exploded. It's now possible to create Hollywood grade entertainment in your own basement if you have the time, money, and talent.

However, making something, and getting it out for sale is one thing, another is selling it to an audience. It's hard to compete against a major studio's ad-buy that's bigger than the annual budget of a third world government budget. 

But it's not impossible.

So what I think is that we'll see outfits like Netflix, Amazon, and their upcoming competition begin to drift away from working solely with the major studios, because they can't produce the quantity and quality these outlets need. They'll look more to indie companies, who, if they play their cards right will grow, then be bought by the major studios.

The majors will then eventually sanitize what made them successful out of these upstart companies, go right back into the rut that made the upstart possible, and go and buy the next upstart.

The studios will then shift not from being content producers into consumers of actual content producers on a corporate level.

At least that's what I see in my crystal ball.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1202: YOU ASKED FOR IT!

I asked for questions, and you hath delivered.  So let's can the palaver and get right down to business!

Anonymous, AKA Dirty Dingus MacGee asked:

Indulge my comic book nerdery by answering the following pressing questions:

1) Of the announced comic book movies, which one (not involving the word Avengers) seems like the biggest hit? The biggest flop?

I won't say if any specific movie will flop, but I do have some concerns, specifically with how DC/Warner Bros. is handling their movie franchises.

DC is having some success on television. The Flash and Arrow are doing great business on the CW, Gotham has taken off at Fox, and even the weakest player Constantine is a cult hit that's growing in popularity in a manner reminiscent of The X-Files back in the 1990s. There's also some good buzz about the upcoming Supergirl and Krypton shows.

So you have to ask: Why are they treating television as if it doesn't count?

They have a successful Flash TV series with a star the audience has taken a shine to, but then DC/WB went out of their way to try to steal that show's thunder by announcing that the movies will feature a different Flash, a different storyline, and much bigger budgets.

That sounds like a recipe for trouble. Franchise fans are loyal, but usually to the franchise that brung them. They don't want the hassle of conflicting visions, casts, and story lines cluttering up an already cluttered and confusing milieu.

Which might hurt some of the DC movies at the box since many fans might just want to stick with the guy they know best.

2) Speaking of flops: 

A) precisely how bad is the Fantastic Four reboot gonna suck? 

B) What possessed Fox to maul this property so utterly?

A) The reboot is probably going to suck bad, going by the fact that the two previous Fantastic Four movies left fans extremely dissatisfied in the story and character department with their constant attempts to make them somehow relevant.

B) Spite. Marvel wants them back and is hoping to force Fox's hand by cancelling the comic, and Fox is probably trying to do a version of the same thing back to Marvel, by giving them a movie franchise that repels audiences.

3) Of the significant comic book properties NOT in the pipeline (there may be one or two), which one should be getting much more attention from Hollywood?

That's hard to say, since so many are getting attention, including ones that probably shouldn't. (I'm looking at you Lobo)

4) DC is rolling out its Cinematic Universe pretty much all at once in Batman v. Superman. You feeling that approach, or is it a recipe for disaster?

DC's mismanagement has put it in a situation where they have to play catch up with Marvel. That reeks of desperation, and desperation can turn off audiences. However, I won't attempt to predict any specific outcomes.

 ILDC asked...

1. Have any thoughts on this? http://gawker.com/sony-hack-reveals-25-page-list-of-reasons-it-sucks-to-w-1666264634

If any of you readers are too lazy to click the link I'll give you a sum up.

Someone, possibly the North Koreans, hacked the computer systems of Sony Entertainment, reportedly in revenge for the upcoming comedy The Interview, that has offended leader Kim Jong Un.

Among the death threats and leaked celebrity SSNs are a bunch of internal Sony communications expressing a lot of dissatisfaction with how the company is being run. Chiefly how they're missing out on developing new and lucrative properties like Lionsgate's The Hunger Games, to keep peddling stars and properties the corporation thinks are safe, but are a world of diminishing, if not crumbling returns, like the Adam Sandler movies.

What these grumbles reveal is that Sony/Columbia is a lot like the other studios, only more so. They're too scared to take a comparatively small risk on a best-selling YA series, but will confidently dump hundreds of millions of dollars on franchises and stars who are well past their "Best Before" date because past track records declare them "safe."

Even when they do sell a lot of tickets, the budgets are so huge, and the "dollar 1" deals so draining, many of the films still lose a fortune that not even home video and TV sales can cover the losses.

That ain't healthy.

But there is a solution. Just put someone in charge of Sony/Columbia with enough power to reform everything from the top down. 

2. What did you think of the new Star Wars trailer? Does the movie look like it could be yet another major disappointment?

The trailer looks slick, is loaded with lots of fan-service, and that's the problem I have with it.

New style stormtrooper helmets, the Millennium Falcon, the Swiss Army Lightsaber, etc…etc… but no hints about the story going into any new and creative direction.

So far we've had a lot of rumours about the story, and since it's a JJ Abrams production, the ones they deny will be true, and they don't bode well with me. The biggest being that Palpatine the Big Bad of the last two trilogies will return. Hence making the entire saga of Anakin/Vader's rise, fall, and redemption completely meaningless emotionally.

It's like bringing back Khan in Star Trek: Into Darkness. At first fans pissed themselves with glee at how cool that would be, especially with him being played by geek-hunk Benedict Cumberbatch.

Then they saw the movie and had a moment to think about it, and realized how all the movie did was pull their strings with what sounded like cool premises, but those premises had the life sucked out of them by the nature of the new franchise. In the original Kirk and Khan had such an intense relationship that it made Wrath of Khan dramatic, even though they had no scenes together. Into Darkness gave them lots of scenes together, but none of the intensity in the relationship.

That left everyone deeply unsatisfied, and while the box office was strong, the production/marketing budgets were huge, and the profits thin, if not non-existent. Which is probably why they're flailing around just trying to find someone to direct the 3rd film.

I just fear that Abrams will do the same thing to Star Wars.

3. Why does Bill Cosby right now seem more unredeemable than Roman Polanski and Woody Allen? I would say it's due to the shock factor alone, but the allegations aren't exactly anything new; they just became common knowledge.

Shock factor, hypocrisy on Cosby's part since he's been lecturing many in the black community on education and sexual responsibility. Things Polanski and Allen never did.

4. Have you been aware of the wage-fixing scandal seemingly every major feature animation and visual effects studio is involved with? Does it sound like something they will keep getting away with?

Hollywood history is littered with the corpses of schemes designed to keep money out of the hands of the people who earned it. It's why Hollywood has unions, and deals where anyone with the slightest amount of clout tries to screw as much money as they can up front because they know they're going to get screwed later.

The problem is that while the costs of the technological means of production have more or less collapsed, the cost of actually making a Hollywood movie have an inflation rate not seen outside of Weimar Germany. 

So in the short run they will get away with it, but in the long run, they're only making their own financial problems get worse and worse.

5. Creatively speaking, is Pixar still a Hollywood savior?

No one company can or will save an industry and Pixar's insistence on making sequels and spinoffs to Cars shows years before even thinking of one for The Incredibles that even they are not perfect.

6. What are the chances of DreamWorks Animation getting sold at this time, and under Katzenberg's demands?

Slim. 

DWA has had hits, and misses, but even their hits, by trying to be hip, become very dated very quickly. That means their library, their biggest asset, is probably not worth as much as Katzenberg thinks, especially in this economy.

7. Can you give a detailed history of why Canadian companies like DHX Media are able to make acquisitions at such a fast pace?

For those of you who don't know Decode Halifax Media or DHX Media is a big and growing company that's coming to dominate animated television. In fact the odds are pretty good that if the cartoon you're watching isn't made by Disney or Warner Bros. it was made by one of DHX's subsidiaries.

DHX's founders Michael Donovan and Charles Bishop were the biggest names in TV production in Nova Scotia in the 1980s and 1990s. Donovan and his brother Paul founded Salter Street Films and while they struggled in feature films, they enjoyed great success in TV. The sci-fi series The Lexx became a huge cult hit in Europe and Asia and the political comedy series This Hour Has 22 Minutes became a Canadian TV institution. 

This led to them getting the license for IFC Canada, which attracted the attention of Canuck media-giant Alliance-Atlantis who bought out Salter Street for big money.

Alliance-Atlantis then promptly gutted the Salter Street operation, because all they wanted was the IFC Canada license. (Ironically this all happened the day after I was offered a job at IFC Canada doing video-commentaries about the film business, an offer that was rescinded since the guy who made it was fired)

Alliance-Atlantis then went on to gut themselves, but Michael Donovan and produce Charles Bishop went on to found Halifax Film that took over producing 22 Minutes, and they merged with kids-show producer Decode Entertainment to become DHX.

DHX's biggest early win was Cinar. Cinar had a string of wildly lucrative kid's shows like Caillou, but had self-destructed when the management sank themselves in a financial scandal. That meant that very valuable properties were available cheap to whoever was willing and able to sort out the mess.

They pulled it off and became a powerhouse in global animation. After that they started absorbing other small companies, adding their properties to their own, and I believe they even own a chunk of the Teletubbies now, as well as buying several family oriented TV channels from the then struggling Astral Media.

So I guess their secret is to look for good properties with weak or overwhelmed management and use their growing bulk to bring them into the fold. Plus they are producing content, which all those channels and other outlets are literally starving for.

8. Do you think Ridley Scott could have actually had a non-whitewashed cast in Exodus: Gods and Kings?

Hollywood loves to preach diversity, but when it comes to practicing diversity they are still deeply mired in tokenism. That means that the gesture or the appearance of diversity is more important than actually telling really diverse stories with diverse characters.

As for the controversy over the racial make-up of Exodus, it reminds me of a debate in the late 1980s and early 1990s about whether or not Cleopatra was black because Egypt is in Africa.

Turns out Cleopatra wasn't even Egyptian, the Ptolemaic family being Macedonian Greeks who adopted the Egyptian royal practise of extreme inbreeding.

But people have their attitudes, prejudices, and agendas over what the ancient world looked like, and will not truck any difference. Rupert Murdoch got a lot of shit for offering an opinion and he is old enough to have been there.

9. Are sequels indeed inevitable in today's Hollywood, both cash grabs and passion projects?

They always have been, always will be.

10. Are you sick of Frozen?

Not really, but then again, I don't live in a house with any pre-teen girls, so I'm not bombarded with Idina Menzel's Adele Dazzeem's rendition of Let it go. Though I can understand how one can get sick of a kid's franchise. I was once forced to endure an hour of Caillou while babysitting and by the end of it I was ready to commit murder, so I can sympathize.

11. Any movies you're personally looking forward to?

Not really.

Nothing's giving me that precious chill down the back of my neck that I used to get when I was kid that pretty much told me that a beloved blockbuster was coming.

 Nate Winchester asked...

Ok, my question is: Why does Hollywood seem to HATE its audience? 

I don't mean just the general loathing that maybe some usual artists feel, I mean outright hatred. 

The most common example I can think of and see is where fans really want something (DVD release of a show/movie for example, or maybe rights to make something like new episodes), and the holder of whatever property could make money, but they will not let the fans have it, even while the the person/studio/whatever is getting NO money off just sitting on whatever the fans want. 

Is there any better example that you can think of how little Hollywood cares about money?

I see what you're getting at.

That's because in many cases in Hollywood they value control over profit. It doesn't matter if some newcomer could turn a moribund property and turn it into a cash-cow, the owner is more likely to say no simply because they don't want to relinquish control because someone else might take credit for a success.

Then there's the dog's breakfast of rights holders which pop up in independently financed productions, and even some studio productions. That means that everyone who has a stake in a property has to give the thumbs up unanimously. If there's the slightest unpleasantness between stakeholders, you can forget about it. People have turned out big payoffs if it meant that someone they hated lost money too.

Spite is mighty.

I hope I answered everyone's questions, and if you have more, ask away.