Hollywood Babble On & On #822: What's With All The Hating?

Recently I saw some Hollywood People hating on Internet People, and I'm just wondering "What the hell?"

First Charlie Kaufman's latest script, called Frank Or Francis, leaked out and word is that it's loaded with vitriol against Hollywood, calling it a "cancerous lie-spewing machine," the Academy Awards, movie audiences, who are apparently all too stupid to live, and some a nice big ladle full of acid is kept for movie bloggers, embodied by the titular Francis, an overweight movie blogger who, according to reports, is mystified why his pretentious rantings aren't getting him any women.

I'll get back to that but there is another recent public conniption fit I'd like to get to before that...

Kurt Sutter, creator and executive producer of FX's crime drama The Sons of Anarchy, went on an expletive loaded rant against TV bloggers.  You can read a recap, and a rebuttal, and a rebuttal to the rebuttal here.

Now the thing I don't get is why?

Okay, I know that he's a passionate fellow, especially when it comes his show.  A while back he actually quit Twitter for awhile after dropping more F-Bombs than Curtis LeMay when the Emmy Award nominations overlooked those near and dear to him.

I can understand that, and I can even sympathize.  The whole showbiz awards process has become a boondoggle that's more about the petty prejudices and internal political maneuvering of the award giving bodies than the quality of the material being glorified.

But what I don't get is the hating on the TV bloggers.

When I see TV blogs reporting on Sutter and his show, they tend to be pretty supportive, with many people being active fans of the show.  Now I know that this is the internet, and there are jerks and dinguses all over it who love to do nothing more than shit all over the hard work of others.  I even had a troll visit here to slag me in the comments.  Me, of all people, the Sweetheart Of The Internet.*

From my own experience skimming the blogosphere, they're in the minority when it comes to Sutter and his show.  In fact, I can't really remember anyone saying anything about either that deserved the nastiness Sutter unleashed.

However, that's not to say that someone didn't say something to set him off.  Like I said before, trolls abound in these dark online woods, and I get the feeling that someone, somewhere did or said something for the express purpose of setting off a classic Kurt Sutter Twitter Hulk-Out.

Now while I find these rages entertaining, I would suggest that Sutter hopefully steps back, tries decaf, and refrains from feeding the trolls.  It only makes them more aggressive.

Now, back to Charlie Kaufman and his case of Hollywood nerd rage.

He started out as a sketch comedy and joke writer on TV, but exploded into the realm of indie credibility with the indie-cult hit Being John Malkovich.  He followed that up with other critically acclaimed films like Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, and Adaptation, all did well with critics and audiences, and he even won an Academy Award for Adaptation, which he shared with the fictional twin brother he created in the movie.

Now he's looking to make a film where he slags on everyone for not appreciating just how damn smart he is.

Where can we find the source of all this rage? I think I might know where....

Schenectady, New York.

Oops, my bad, the correct spelling is Synecdoche, New York.  

Of course Synecdoche, New York, is not a place, it's a film. Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut about a theater director who uses a MacArthur Genius Grant to build a simulacrum of a section of New York City, and populate it with actors to recreate moments from his life.  The film cost $20 million, was picked up by Sony for distribution with no money up front, and only earned about $4 million in its limited release.

Now an art film about artistic/directorial masturbation making $4 million isn't bad.  But it didn't enjoy the cult success that Kaufman's other scripts had, you don't see people referring to it as an indie classic like Sunshine, Malkovich or Adaptation.  

Because of that I suspect that he feels screwed.  

He feels screwed by the distributor who didn't give a wide release or enough publicity, he feels screwed by the Academy for not giving it any awards, he feels screwed by the audience who didn't attend, and he feels screwed by the internet commentators, most of whom worship at the altar of Charlie Kaufman for not singing its praises from every digital rooftop.

One thing from the report that tells me that resentment fuels this project is the part that says that Francis, the overweight movie blogger, doesn't understand why his rantings don't have women macking all over him.

It's not enough to make him pretentious, judgmental, and obnoxious he has to be delusional as well.

Speaking as the representative of the overweight pretentious, judgmental and obnoxious film bloggers of the world, I know for a fact that writing about movies does not get you women, nor do I think anyone outside of Hollywood would ever believe that anyone with at least one foot in the realm of reality would think that.

Personally, I would advise Mr. Kaufman to step back from the keyboard, and let this puppy sit in a drawer, quietly gathering dust. I can understand why he wrote it.  All scribblers, scriveners, and scribes have times when they felt that way.  So writing it all out can make a writer feel better about their lot in life.

Putting it on screen however, is another story entirely.

Now it's okay for him to shit on Hollywood, and critical bloggers, that gives him "indie street cred" as their kind of rebel.  What worries me are the script's reported attacks on the audience as stupid and cattle-like herding to stupid movies because they're stupid people.

Mr. Kaufman, you are standing on the Bay Line, and you are in serious danger of stepping over it.

If you're not a regular reader of this blog The Bay Line is the reason why the dumb films of Michael Bay succeed, and why so many so-called "smart films" fail.

It's the line that lies between insulting the audience's intelligence and insulting the audience's existence.

Michael Bay's movies insult your intelligence, but they're not going to insult you for being born in a certain place, living a certain way, practicing a certain religion, or voting for a certain political party.

The problem with too many films that Hollywood considers "smart" is that they try to earn those "smart" bona-fides by shitting on where large segments of the audience were born, how they live, how they pray, and how they vote.

Half the audience ends up insulted, the other half ends up bored, and both end up going to see some robots blow shit up.  Why?  Because while it may be dumber than a sack of hammers, it's not going to scold them for being born.

So take my advice Mr. Kaufman.  Sure the film might get made, and it might even win some awards, you do tend to be on the short list for that sort of thing, but if you pull the trigger and go through with it, the audience will get then subconsciously associate you with pissing on them and telling them that it's raining, and they'll ignore you into oblivion.

Of course all this is not the really shocking part.  The really shocking part is that people in Hollywood are actually reading what the blogs say about movies.

I find that simply unbelievable.

*There's no such title of "Sweetheart Of The Internet," and if there was, the author of this blog would not qualify for it on any level.  

-- Furious D Show Legal Dept.

Who Does What? #2: The Manager

The other day I debuted a new feature where I will explain the jobs behind the titles you keep hearing about in showbiz news reports and in the credits of movies and TV shows.  The first time I gave you The Agent, today we will look at the other side of the representation coin.... THE MANAGER.

What is a Manager? you might ask

Well, a manager is sort of, kind of, similar to an agent, but different.

Does that make any sense?

Anyway, let me give you long-winded and yet still very superficial answer.

Both agents and managers exist to represent their client's interests.  Except while agents are responsible for obtaining specific jobs and negotiating specific contracts for their clients, the manager's job is coordinate all aspects of their client's career.  This includes such things as:

• Finding their client an agent to represent them, or if an agent isn't working out, firing that agent, and getting a new one.

• Helping their client make contacts within the industry.

• Helping their clients pick their jobs, if they get past the "beggar" stage of their career. 

• Creating a plan for their client's career, including goals, and how to reach them.

• Managers can also get involved as producers of their clients' movie and TV projects, while agents are legally forbidden under California law to do so.

Once all these other things are done, managers can then charge a commission of 15% on everything their client makes, while agents in Hollywood can only legally charge a 10% commission.

My own manager Mr. Fluffles hard at work.

As you can see, managers deal with the "big picture" issues when it comes to their clients and their careers.  This means that managers are much more involved and invested in their client's careers than agents.  

While individual agents may have a lot of clients on their roster at any one time, individual managers tend to have a lot fewer clients on their roster.  On the flip side, clients may have many agents, representing the different aspects of their careers, and will more than likely change them over time, sometimes frequently.  Meanwhile most of these same clients tend to only have one manager, and stay with that one manager over a much longer period of time, sometimes entire careers.

Now there are some things managers are not allowed to do.  They cannot, under California law, negotiate contracts on their client's behalf.  For that they will need to get an agent and/or an entertainment lawyer to do it.

And that's the gist of what Manager's do, so let's call it...

Hollywood Babble On & On #821: Acknowledging Things

UNIVERSAL ACKNOWLEDGES THE EXISTENCE OF MOVIE THEATERS:

First Universal Pictures announced that they were going to release their upcoming action/comedy The Tower Heist on video on demand (VOD) for $59.99 just three weeks after its theatrical debut.

As if the price wasn't idiotic enough, Universal's "experiment" really pissed of the theater owners. One, by one, by one, they threatened to boycott the film unless Universal changed course.

Then someone at Universal told the people running the studio that theatrical releases actually needed theaters playing the movie, and Universal promptly changed course. They've given up on their VOD plan.

Now back in April I wrote a piece about a similar proposal put out by a coven of major studios, including Universal, to do premium VOD with shortened release windows.  I said that this plan wasn't worth it, and a few months later the whole thing started to fizzle out, because someone higher up the corporate food chain agreed that it wasn't worth.

Though I guess someone at Universal mistook fizzle for sizzle, or they wouldn't have tried this hare-brained idea.

First there's the price, which is promises all the expense of going to theater, without the social aspect or large screen, but the thing that sticks out to me like a sore thumb is the lack of acknowledgment.

Universal refused to acknowledge that the theaters are an essential partner when it comes to feature films until it was almost too late.  The arrogance of corporate bulk convinced them that since they are so big, they didn't need anyone else, only to realize that they do when it was almost too late to save one of their tent-pole films for the season.

Oy, will some people ever learn.

PITT WHIPS CLOONEY, BUT WHY?

Steven Zeitchik of the LA Times wrote an interesting piece about how Brad Pitt out-performs his friend George Clooney both critically and commercially.

While Mr. Zeitchik acknowledges that Clooney might be better served career-wise by imitating Pitt, he really doesn't plug into the real reason why Pitt outperforms Clooney.

It's not because of the constant tabloid coverage of his relationship with Angelina Jolie, or the constant media posturing of ex-wife Jennifer Aniston, because that sort of thing does more harm than good in these media saturated days.

Pitt does better than Clooney because of something that he might not consciously decide, but is really important when you're picking movie projects.

It's called acknowledging that there is an audience outside of Hollywood.

Clooney is Hollywood's star.  Most of Clooney's films are made by Hollywood for Hollywood, and centered around making Hollywood feel important for supporting him and keeping him on the A-List even when his box-office doesn't really deserve it. For the most part Pitt seems to choose roles that are not only interesting for himself to do, but what the audience might find interesting to watch him doing.

It's not a perfect plan, Pitt still has misses, but it's still better than Clooney's Hollywood only plan.

Who Does What? #1: The Agent

Today marks a tremendous event in the history of this blog, if not the world.  It's the day I premiere a brand new feature.  This new new feature is called "Who Does What?" and like it says, it's purpose is to offer an explanation of what different people do in Hollywood, and who they do it to.

Today we look at THE AGENT!

Now some of you are furrowing your brow in a feeble attempt to understand what I'm talking about, but don't worry, that's the point of this blog.

Short answer:  An agent is sort of like a pimp.

Okay I'm being a tad glib, it's highly unlikely you'll ever see an agent wearing a hat like this...

Photo Courtesy of the Dolemite Collection of Cambridge Massachusetts.

Mostly because it messes with their elegantly coiffed hair.

Legendary Agent & Eyewear Enthusiast Irving "Swifty" Lazar

A key difference is that where a traditional street pimp will just slap their "ho" and yell: "Get your junky ass out on that street and earn me some ducats woman!" it's the agent who has to hit the streets, the phones, and the e-mails to find work for their clients.

The key similarity between an agent and a pimp is that both take a percentage of what their clients earn.  

The pimp usually takes about 90+%, while the agent, as a legally licensed representative, capable of negotiating contracts on behalf of their clients can only take 10%, and not a penny more.

It's not unusual for someone in show business to have more than one agent.  This is because talent representation has become a highly specialized practice.  Some agents specialize in feature films, others handle all television related business, while some others handle music, commercial endorsements & modeling gigs, public speaking, literary & publishing business, and merchandising deals. 

Now not all agents are created equal.  There are several different subspecies of the Hollywood Agent.  Here's an incomplete list....

PASSIVE:  This variety of agent is found in the top 2-3 mega-agencies and are really only useful to you if you're already a major movie star or a filmmaker who drops blockbuster hits on a consistent basis.  Because when you're at the top of the heap professionally, you need someone capable of sorting out the offers that come flooding in for you, and figuring out what works out best for you, your career, and your bank account.

However this method is not perfect.  Since they are not actively going out to seek new projects, preferring to only look at what's coming in, opportunities that might have been artistically and financially fulfilling are missed. They can also develop an air of snobbery over the size of the project/paychecks involved and can also miss opportunities.

And let's not forget what happens when you're not a big name movie star or hit dropping filmmaker and your a client of this kind of agent.  You can often wind up unemployed, or getting the sort of offers that their bigger clients rejected.

When you're a little lower on the Hollywood food chain you might prefer having an...

ACTIVE:  This kind of agent goes beyond just the offers coming and goes out looking for jobs for their clients.  They beat the bushes, looking for work, and trying to get the best money they can for their clients.

However, even this method isn't perfect.  Some agents aren't all that choosy when it comes to the jobs they pitch their clients, and their clients don't have the taste, experience, or financial resources to say "no."  So you run the risk of being everywhere, but at the top where you want.  

But this risk can be easily avoided as long as the client puts some thought in when it comes to their career and the lifestyle it supports.

PACKAGING:  Now this sub-species was mega-huge in the 90s, and while they're not as omnipresent as they once were, they still exist.  These agents look to sell not only their client, but a complete "package" of clients.  To explain this, imagine that you're a movie producer trying to get their film off their ground.  You want a certain big-name-movie-star to be the lead in your movie, but their agent has some demands that go beyond a simple payday.

If you want to hire "Big-Name-Movie-Star A" then you must hire the agent's other clients, like "Actor B" to play the villain, "Actor C" to be the love interest, "Director D" to direct the film, if possible, and/or "Screenwriters E and F" to at least do the rewrites if the studio doesn't already have their own preferred people on it.

Now the trap that ultimately sank packaging as the dominant practice in Hollywood is that it often does more harm than good.  Casting was based not on ability or interpersonal chemistry, but on the influence of the star's agent.  Writers and directors ended up working on projects they weren't right for, etc., etc... and the films, the box office, the careers of the clients, and with all that, the earnings of the agents suffered.  And while it's still done by some of the biggest players, it's not the "my way or no way at all" phenomenon it was back in the day.

And that's a very glib, surface only look, at what an agent is, and what they do.

Hollywood Babble On & On #820: Spending Foolishly

PROVEN RIGHT YET AGAIN....

Remember a while back when reports said that Roseanne Barr was pitching for a sitcomeback with a show called Downwardly Mobile, about an optimistic family living through hard times in a trailer park with a matriarch (played by Barr) spouting sarcastic wisdom between wholesale firings of the writing/production staff.

I wrote a post explaining why it's a bad idea, and Roseanne's only added more cons to the pile with demands that "rich" be beheaded if they refuse to give away everything they earn above an amount she declares proper, $100,000,000.  (An amount similar to what she was earning annually back in her career heyday, but has mostly since been pissed away on a lifestyle akin to an Ottoman potentate.)

But I also said that not only is it a really bad idea, and destined to fail miserably and expensively, the fact that she was familiar, pretty much guaranteed that it would get the precious green-light that could have been granted to a more deserving project.

Well, I have been proven right. Again.

NBC has made a commitment to the show, and if they don't meet that commitment, they have to shell out a cash penalty.

If that penalty is too big, Roseanne may be compelled to behead herself.

Personally, I don't see this show catching on.  Will the audience be ready to buy a poor working class trailer park momma who really, and obviously, looks like she's on her third or fourth face?

Plus any good vibes people may have felt about her, has been pretty much killed by her recent ramblings and rantings about government that shows that she's probably in need of some sort of medication.

Anyway, like Discovery Communications/OWN's investment in another Rosie, let's just sit back and watch the carnage.

BBC= BIG BAD CUTBACKS

The venerable British Broadcasting Corporation is looking at over $1,000,000,000 a year in budget cuts.  

You are not hallucinating extra zeroes, I said ONE BILLION DOLLARS a year, every year, including 2,000 plus job cuts until they somehow find a new source of revenue.

This is a case of the proverbial chickens coming home to the proverbial roost.  The BBC has had it good for a very long time.  At first it was a total monopoly on all radio and TV broadcasting in the BBC, and if you wanted to own a TV and a radio you had to pay a "license fee" that went toward funding the BBC, alongside other revenues from the British government.

As time went by the BBC's broadcasting monopoly was broken, mostly because its insular corporate culture made it next to impossible for anyone outside the BBC system from accomplishing anything.  However, the funding coming directly from the British taxpayer, under the force of the law kept coming.


Free from the constraints of profits and losses, the BBC kept on growing, and growing, and growing.  The privately funded competition didn't really care for this, because the BBC could pretty much outbid them with taxpayer's money over everything.  The BBC set up more and more channels, always getting the premium spots on the dial, had all sorts of outlets for free promotion, and if someone was considered a "star" the BBC could simply outbid their rivals regardless of market forces, and didn't have to worry about paying the bills.


That is, until now.


This is because the BBC is essentially a civil service type operation, and I need to paraphrase Yes, Minister, the world's greatest political sitcom, to explain how civil service operates.


Civil servants do not measure success by achieving goals and solving problems. They measure success by how big they can grow their departments and their budgets.


Now you're probably wondering why they think they can get away with it.  Well, economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman explains it best:

There are four ways in which you can spend money. 

1.  You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. 

2. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. 

3. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! 

4. Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government.

The problem is that there is no such thing as a free lunch, even when you're spending other people's money on yourself and other people. Money eventually runs out, and you end up with a really massive operation facing really massive cuts.

This mindset can also affect some private corporations that grow huge and are sheltered from the consequences of their decisions by their even bigger parent companies.  It can manifest itself in an already struggling TV network committing millions of dollars to a washed up has-been who has been better known for mental instability and egomania than for an ability to deliver audience winning comedy.

And that's what you call a "call back."

Hello....

Greetings all. Canadian Thanksgiving weekend is beginning and I'm wasting spending time with the family. So my posting may be a tad erratic for the next few days, as opposed to my usual neurotic posting. So why not troll through my archives and be wowed by the sheer immensity of my ego and know-it-all smugness.

Hollywood Babble On & On #819: Discovery Discovers A Problem

Discovery Networks the parent company of the Oprah Winfrey Network is going big when it comes to the debuts of Oprah Winfrey's flagship show and Rosie O'Donnell's new talk show.  Here's a relevant snippet of the press release...

(Los Angeles, CA) – OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network announced today that the premiere episodes of the new OWN series “The Rosie Show” and “Oprah’s Lifeclass” will air concurrently across five Discovery Communications networks when the series debut on Monday, October 10. Joining OWN in airing the premieres will be TLC, Investigation Discovery, Discovery Fit & Health and Planet Green.“The Rosie Show” will air at 7:00 p.m. ET and “Oprah’s Lifeclass” at 8:00 p.m. ET across the five networks.

Let me cut through the press/publicity baffle-gab to tell you what they are really saying.

Translation:  (Los Angeles, CA)  We at Discovery Networks have come to realize that the ratings for the Oprah Winfrey Network are really abysmal, and that we spent way too much money putting the damn whole thing together.  So we're going to cram the whole dismal mess down your throat in the vain hope that you're going to actually fall for it.  Xenu save us all, we really dug a damn deep hole for ourselves and Oprah seems intent on digging it deeper by spending even more of our money on producing Rosie O'Donnell's show which is guaranteed to be a ratings black hole.

So you have to wonder why Discovery Networks, which has so far been pretty successful in the world of cable specialty channels are betting millions of dollars on hyper-promoting a talk show hosted by a woman best known for thinking that her belief that "fire doesn't melt steel" proves that US government was behind the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks.

And lets not forget her last attempt at a TV comeback, a variety show on NBC was cancelled before they got to the half-time commercial break.

Well, it's because of the planet Oprah Winfrey lives on.

It's not the same planet that people like you an me live on even though it exists in the same physical plane.  This planet is much more ephemeral, ethereal, and exists free of the same laws of logic and rationality that we peasantry have to follow.

I call this planet Rich-World.

When you're citizen of Rich-World, especially a member of its elite within the elite, like Oprah, when you want something, you get it.  You also get it right away, and anyone who dares attempt to deny or question what you want does so at the peril of their livelihood.  Because they can make the social lives of the others in Rich-World, including your employer, difficult.

But, you ask, furrowing your brow in a feeble attempt to understand, you answered why Discovery would give into Oprah's demand, but that doesn't answer why Oprah would want to do unleash an inevitable wreck like The Rosie Show?

Well, Oprah is a smart woman, and she should know that most American viewers are turned off O'Donnell's antics, conspiracy theorizing, and foaming at the mouth at anyone and everyone who disagrees with her on any issue, but she doesn't.

That news doesn't make its way to Rich-World because it gets translated.  You see where I translated the press release baffle-gab into real world English, news of Rosie O'Donnell's career missteps get translated into baffle-gab. 

Because her conspiracy theories about the US government mass murdering New Yorkers and verbal outbursts involved a political party no one in Oprah's circle voted for, it was translated into "speaking truth to power."  The failure of her post-truther-conspiracy projects was attributed to either the stupidity of network programmers, but more likely the stupidity of the audience for not appreciating her greatness.

Differing opinions don't pierce the veil of money and sycophancy that encloses Rich-World, so you end up with an intelligent person like Oprah Winfrey honestly thinking that Rosie's awesome charisma is just what her struggling channel needs.

Of course when decisions like this are made in Rich-World they will eventually meet the Real World, where the rest of us live in.  When it happens, it's a violent clash, and a lot of money gets lost.

Not that it matters to the inhabitants of Rich-World, they usually have big parent companies like Discovery Communications to take the hit for them.  They never face the consequences of their actions.  Only the people laid off from the parent company and its shareholders do that.

So let's just sit back and watch the financial carnage.

It's bound to be more entertaining than the shows.

Hollywood Babble On & On #818: Television Tidbits

Oy, it's a rotten day here on the ranch.  We're currently getting pounded by a Nor'easter, which is Atlantic slang for really, really, crappy weather with a lot of rain and wind.  Anyway, it's time for some more of the fresh blogging that you crave like the salivating dogs that you are.
 

PLUG PULLED ON PLAYBOY

NBC's Playboy Club has already been cancelled, completely ruining my bet that it would at least hang on until mid-season.

Anyway, Hugh Hefner crawled out of his cryogenic storage chamber long enough to declare that the show was a victim of bad scheduling.

He's right.

The show would have done a lot better if it had been scheduled for 1976, when people actually gave a flying shit about Playboy.

FOX PLAYS HARDBALL & THEY GOT THE AMMO

The Fox Network is in negotiations with the cast of the long running animated comedy The Simpsons. The cast are willing to take a 30% pay cut, in exchange for a bigger piece of the back end.  The network's counter offer is a 45% pay cut, and no extra piece of the back end.

The cast might have to take this deal, because a new report says that Fox can make a shitload more money if they cancel the show, and by shitload I mean around $750 million.

You see, Fox's syndication deal for The Simpsons, made back in the early 90s, reruns keeps it locked into selling to local stations at a set price schedule.  If the show gets cancelled, they get a chance to make a new deal where they can charge more, and include sales to the cable channels that are currently denied them.


So everyone is expecting a deal to be made soon.


Or they could just cancel the show.  Wait 6 months, and start again as the "New Adventures of the Simpsons" and have the best of both worlds.


TUNE IN FOR THE COENS

The Coen Brothers are getting into TV.  That's right, they've inked a deal with Imagine Entertainment and the Fox Network to develop a 1 hour comedy called HarveKarbo. 

The show will be about an ill tempered private eye, named Harve Karbo dealing with the many messes caused by his Hollywood clients.


Now I'm actually a little bit excited by this news.  The Coens have the ability to make indie films that the general audience can enjoy.  Even when their films don't do as well theatrically as their recent hit True Grit, they can enjoy long and bountiful afterlives on TV and home video.  They also tailor their films around their potential box office.  If something is a little off the traditional commercial beaten path, they don't follow the usual over spend on a passion project plan that most filmmakers do, they keep it cheap.


Now let's take a moment to think of what they need to do to make this show a success.


1.  Good character/casting.  If their titular private eye doesn't connect with the audience, it ain't gonna work.  Character-wise the guy doesn't have to be likable, but he does have to be relatable.  If the audience can relate to him, they can enjoy his misanthropy, especially when it relates to the pampered poodle people of Hollywood. 


2.  Never forget Flyover Country.  One of the biggest problems with shows that involve Hollywood is that they tend to present Hollywood as if it's the standard of normal for the world.  It isn't.  It's a strange place unlike any other on the planet.  There's too much money, too much ego, and too much pretense for ordinary people of the rest of the planet to relate to and maintain an ongoing narrative series. That's why 90% of show-biz related shows fail, and fail fast.


Now if their lead character is an island of normalcy in the mad world of Hollywood. If the show, via it's lead character, acknowledges the madness at the heart of modern celebrity and media then the rest of the world can relate, and tune in.


That's what I think.  Feel free to tell me what you think in the comments.

Hollywood Babble On & On #817: Natural & Unnatural States of Being

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The road to bad blogging is paved with opening with old cliches.

But I do have a point.

A while back a British pub operator, or "publican" if you're feeling Shakespearean, didn't want to shell out the money to the BSkyB pay TV service to get the soccer games her customers like to fight over.  So she got a descrambler type thingie so she could get the games cheaper from a Greek TV station.

Sky TV, who shelled out over a billion spondooliks for the rights to broadcast these games in the United Kingdom, so they were naturally cheesed, and filed suit.

Well, a European court has decided that Sky's case, which is based on treating Europe as a bunch of markets instead of one big market, violated the spirit of the European Union.  They then declared region by region media rights sales was a restraint of trade, and must end forthwith.

Now that the road is paved, let's see where it's going.

First up, if you're looking to finance your movie or TV production, FORGET IT!

One of the biggest ways to raise money to make an independent movie or TV show is the sell the theatrical distribution and TV broadcast rights to Europe's two dozen + individual markets.  You won't get much money from any single market, especially the smaller ones like Greece, and the Balkan states, but it all adds up.

Well, not if the court gets their way.

If the court gets their way you have to sell Pan-European rights to one distributor/broadcaster.

The amount that one Pan-European distributor and/or broadcaster offers you is not going to be as big as they used to be, because there will now be less competition, and it is not going to eventually add up.

But let's not forget the other side of this coin, the regional/national distributors and broadcasters.

Do you honestly think that regional distributors and/or broadcasters in the smaller markets like Greece, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe are going to be able to release/air movies and TV shows if they have to buy the rights to all of Europe?

Not bloody likely.

They will probably be stuck with 2 options:

1. Rent the rights from the big multinational media conglomerates like Britain's BSkyB, France's Canal+, or Germany's ProSiebenSat.1 Media.  Probably having to pay more than if they haggled directly with the producers of the film/show in question.

2. Have their businesses taken over by big multinational media conglomerates like Britain's BSkyB, France's Canal+, or Germany's ProSiebenSat.1 Media.  

You see, I'm normally an open market kind of guy, because open markets are natural markets.  The multilingual, multifaceted, and multi-consumer markets of Europe were natural markets.  They existed for organic reasons, forged by several millennia of culture and conflict.

The European Union, on the other hand, is an unnatural market, forged by several decades of politicians, bureaucrats, and now judges.  That brings in the whole question of motives.

When the nations of Europe were forged they were done by people whose motive was self-interest, but that self-interest was directly linked to the interests of their nation. A king who deliberately and knowingly weakens their nation, doesn't stay king for long, and it's a job you hold for life, if you catch my drift.

The way the European Union is constructed the interests of the nations and the people are a distant second to the interests of the ruling politicians and bureaucrats.  It is in the interest of the people running the EU to keep the member nations weak and disoriented, because it means more power for them and the money that comes with it.

Which brings me to the motives, or intentions, behind the court's decision and how it can lead to things they wouldn't like.

 

BSkyB, the pay-TV company at the heart of the case, is mostly owned by News Corp, which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch.

Now I suspect that there was an element of "Get Rupert," behind the decision, but it's bound to have consequences beyond the court's intentions.

Because this decision will inevitably lead to media consolidation on a massive scale, and who can pull off that sort of consolidation, and emerge more powerful than he was before?

That's right.  Good old Rupert.

I wonder if the court's going to consider that when the decision's appealed.

Hollywood Babble On & On #816: Arrest Arrested Development

Well, it's happening again.

Like a flare-up of herpes there's another report of an Arrested Development comeback. This time it's going beyond mere hints and rumors. The show's creator Mitch Hurwitz and the cast formally announced that they are going to do a ten episode mini-series, either on cable and/or Netflix, then a movie to tell everyone what the Bluth clan has been up to since the original show was cancelled in 2006.

So let's look at the 

PROS & CONS OF AN
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT 
REUNION SERIES/MOVIE!

PROS:

DEDICATED FAN-BASE:  The show has its fans, and they are a dedicated, nay, fanatical group that have been pushing for an Arrested Development reunion series/movie ever since the show was cancelled in 2006.  They are guaranteed to watch any new show and buy tickets to any new movie.

CONS:

DEDICATED FAN-BASE: This aforementioned fan base is dedicated.  But it's also very small.  The show, while a critical darling, was never popular.  It also lost a lot of fans, like me, during the second season when it seemed to be going in narrative circles, and just kept hemorrhaging viewers until Fox pulled the plug. 

And it's not like the show, like Star Trek, has gone on to a bountiful afterlife. There are no Arrested Development conventions, elements of the show haven't entered into the popular zeitgeist, and quotes haven't become part of our everyday slang.  Its afterlife seems based upon the show's total unpopularity, feeding a sense of smug hipster superiority of a small group of people defined by their like of a show that leaves most other people cold.


Then there are the people like me, who like the show when it first started, but soon tired of its antic disposition, and tuned out.  We see the quality the show had in its meta-humor, and ability with tackling taboo subjects, but don't have the Manson-Family like dedication of its hipster fans.  That smug pretentious dedication of those fans, and the constant comeback rumors have made us so fucking sick and tired of Arrested Development, we'd be quite happy to never see or hear about anything associated with it ever again.  These people, myself included, won't really be spending any of their time or money to see the comeback in any form.

BUDGET & SCHEDULING:  The cast has been scattered to the four winds.  Jason Bateman and Micheal Cera make movies, not that they really count as "star" leading men, just because they're on Hollywood's casting list, which means they might as well be.  The rest of the cast are all working on other film and television projects, some even have moved onto other series.


The networks those cast-members are currently signed to, will probably not be too keen to let their people go play for what is essentially the competition.  A movie they won't mind, it's done relatively quickly and doesn't directly compete with them.  However, a TV series and a movie is a different kettle of fish.


Working around these schedules is going to eat up a lot of time, and in film-making TIME=MONEY.  This sort of a project, with such a tight niche market, can easily fly well beyond any sort of profitability.

But this is not all about numbers, we can't forget:


LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE:  It's extremely hard to catch it twice, exponentially hard when you're talking about comedy that was so entrenched in the time and place it was made, the way Arrested Development was.  They might think it's going to be easy, it might feel like it's going to be easy, but if one ingredient is just a little bit off, the whole mix can sour.

Well, the cons seem to outweigh the pros, here.... Oh wait, here's one last PRO: The people who have been chanting for an Arrested Development comeback might finally shut the hell up.