Category Archives: The Biz of Show

10.06.11
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Horse Manure

As unemployment soars to new records, the middle class slowly evaporates and young people are so frustrated and angry at the rigged financial system that they’ve taken to (WALL) streets across the country– I am going to talk to you about 20th Century Fox PROUDLY announcing this week its plan to make a big new movie.  That movie is – wait for it – a big screen film version of the 1960s TV show “Mr. Ed.”

For those of you who don’t remember, “Mr. Ed” ran for five years from 1961-1966 (in glorious black and white) and starred a talking horse who alternately helped, hindered and generally wreaked havoc on the life of its poor perpetually befuddled owner.

Full disclosure:  I watched the show as a (very) wee lad and have fond memories of it. But I also have fond memories of “My Mother the Car” — another not as popular sixties TV series about a guy whose mother was reincarnated as his vintage automobile and never stopped talking to him or butting into his life —  so my memories are not necessarily a barometer of anything more than, well, what I would be well-advised to eventually forget.

But back to “Mr. Ed: The Movie.”

I love animals as much as the next guy but —  do we really need a movie version of “Mr. Ed?”  Oh absolutely.  ESPECIALLY if you are an executive at a major film studio OR a major film producer trying to get a movie made in 2011, 12, 13 (or the foreseeable future) at ANY of our major (or even mini-major) movie studios.

And here are some of the reasons.  Check that – Here is the PRIMARY REASON – and in the words of “Mr. Ed”’s very proud veteran movie producer David Friendly:

‘It’s always the perfect time for a FOUR-QUADRANT FAMILY MOVIE.  Those are the movies that have the strongest pull  As a producer I try to envision the poster and this one looks pretty good….”

Really?  Yeah.

We all feel like Biff.

For those not up on the latest movie biz marketing lingo or don’t have “The Google” to look it up, let me translate.

A “four quadrant” movie crosses across all genders and all ages we can measure.  The quadrants are men or women (that makes two quadrants) who are under age 25 or over age 25 (that makes four quadrants total).  From a business perspective, the more quadrants you can potentially attract, the more money you will make.

In other words, if you have a broad enough appeal to your film (or as these biz folks call it, your ASSET), you are designing a blockbuster.  Which is, of course, the ultimate goal.  Because, as you may or may not know, creating a real 2011 blockbuster by today’s movie standards doesn’t mean you’ve created solely a movie. No – you’re actually the BIRTHER of an ASSET that can be associated with toys, games, restaurant tie-ins, theme park rides and many other more avenues of replication (including numerous sequels) that should set up you and your employer/partner quite nicely for many moons to come.

Notice:  Nowhere in that analysis does the idea of storytelling, creativity, emotionality or passion come into the equation.  This in, in fact, NOT a criticism of studios or the people who love or work for them.  This is merely a retelling/relating of 2011 FACT.

Now, before any and all creative people go ringing their hands or ripping down the door of the closest marketing executive or even hedge fund manager (something tells me the latter are all quickly relocating to numerous secret worldwide underground bunkers even as we speak), I am also happy to report that the very day  “Mr. Ed: The Movie” was announced it was proudly proclaimed that rock star PINK (using her real name of  Alecia Moore) would star in a very different type of other film with the likes of Mark Ruffalo, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tim Robbins and many others.  This new film is written and will be directed by Stuart Blumberg, the Oscar-nominated co-writer of “The Kids Are All Right.”  And this film is called “Thanks for Sharing” and is about – wait for it – a group of recovering sex addicts.  Yes, it’s true.  And that is about as far from “Mr. Ed” as you can get (unless you consider the plotline of Edward Albee’s brilliant 2002 play, “The Goat,” but I digress).

FYI, “Thanks for Sharing,” is being produced by William Migliore and David Koplan, two well-known NY indie producers  for Class 5 Films, a company where Mr. Blumberg’s Oscar nominated self (you get a lovely certificate and A LOT of cache even when you’re nominated) is also PARTNERED.

NOW — aspiring screenwriters, producers and directors (and veterans who still aspire to get our current projects made one day)  listen up:

There is NO major studio attached to Mr. Blumberg’s cutting edge subject matter film nor will there ever be until a distribution deal gets made after at least a rough cut is favorably screened. Film studios (for the overwhelming most part), are NOT in the “Thanks for Sharing” business any longer nor have they been for some time.  Nor can they be expected to be… ever again.  That’s like waiting for your bankers to thank you personally for bailing them out or expecting Barack Obama to suddenly morph into Franklin, or even Eleanor, Roosevelt.  Economics, logic and reality tells us this is not going to happen no matter how much we keep hoping that it just might.

However – and it’s a big however but I absolutely know it to be true right down to the core of my bloodied, bruised self and the selves of all my close friends –  there is more than one way to fight a fight; win a game; or get the “spoils.”  And for aspiring writers, producers and directors we’ve lucked out because that is where our secret weapon – our CREATIVITY – comes in.

I am writing this as much for me and my frustrated other contemporaries as I am for you.  Do NOT expect the film studio(s) who are making “Mr. Ed” to be interested in your passion projects, or even most of your perceived mainstream projects.  And don’t spend another millisecond even being slightly or marginally upset about it.  Be powered by the knowledge that you have the ultimate solution – your creative self – to figure out a way to make it work (No, this is not a new age rant – merely truth).

Maybe “Mr. Ed” is your thing . Then – good for you!  (FYI, they’re using a real horse but CGI’ing his mouth).  But if you’d rather see a movie about a group of recovering sex addicts, or a movie about anything that wasn’t the subject of a TV show in the sixties or in some other way doesn’t aspire to or fit into the “four quadrant” paradigm, then:

  1. Do you work and make it the best that you can.  And –
  2. Take all of the original thinking it took to bring your work to this point and use it to enlist people you like, admire or respect or even whom others respect who will help you get your project (effort) realized.

No one does it alone.  But letting the movie studios dictate what you are going to do or what kind of professional life you are going to have, is like giving Bank of America the power to charge you a $5 monthly fee for the use of your debit card when there are plenty of other ways to purchase goods and pay your bills.  You, and only you, are the CEO of your own company.  Which means that you and only you are in charge of the company (or companies) that you choose to keep.

More simply put, what would Steve Jobs do?

09.30.11
by

CRA-ZEE

I was once interviewed to work on a movie that is very, very famous by a very, very famous producer who was so crazed on cocaine that this person not only screamed at two assistants in the office during our interview but barely sat down behind his/her (I am not revealing gender) desk or in his/her chair during the entire interview.

Right around this time an Oscar nominated writer friend of mine was in a meeting with a top studio executive who, each time he/she tried to punctuate a point, heaved a basketball he/she was playing with behind his/her desk at my writer friend  — who was female, by the way, not that it really matters cause she could probably catch a basketball better than me.  Which she did from said producer.  In fact, I asked her – what did you do when you caught it?  Her Answer:  I threw it back, of course.

I didn’t get the job on said movie (thank goodness, the producer and director were apparently a nightmare) and my friend’s meeting never brought her a deal to write the movie she was pitching.  This is not surprising.  Contrary to popular belief – really CRAZY people seldom provide prospective employment or breaks to those of us seeking them.  And in the rare times they do – you often wish that they hadn’t.

I bring this up right now because every year some of my students find themselves working in offices with especially “crazy” people.  I don’t mean difficult and demanding.  I mean CRA-ZEE.  How do you define cra-zee?  See above two paragraphs.

Click me for NO MORE WIRE HANGERS!

Difficult and demanding are okay.  A little crazy is okay too.  What is not okay is CRA-ZEE.  Ever.

Here’s what CRA-ZEE people, particularly in the entertainment business, like to do.  They like to tell young people that if they can’t deal with the impossibly impossible toxic environments said CRA-ZEE person creates, that they don’t belong in the entertainment business.  They like to tell young people that their dreams are impossible to achieve if they can’t suck it up and take constant or even sporadic abuse or harassment or “just joking that you’re taking the wrong way.”  They like to promise nice and wonderful things in a moment of weakness and then pull the rug out from under a young (or even older) person for a myriad of personal reasons that have nothing to do with the person whose balance they have just messed with.  They might not do this on purpose (or they might, depending on the level of cra-zee).  But that doesn’t matter.  What does matter is that they can do this at any given moment at what appears to be the least provocation.

Advising everyone to STAY AWAY from these people at any costs might seem obvious given what we know about contemporary mental health.  Or even ill-advised given what we fear about the current job market and chances for advancement in the business we call show.  But after spending all my life in the biz, this much I can tell you – No good will ever come from associating yourself with the CRA-ZEE.  To you or your psyche.

Now let’s be clear – this is not the same thing as paying your dues with difficult people or doing a series of jobs you might feel unworthy of your vast “talents.”  I bring this up because of a NY Times article this week on a lawsuit filed by two former college interns against Fox Searchlight.  Essentially one of these interns, a student from Wesleyan who interned in the production office on “Black Swan” (wow – I’d like to have done that) was complaining about not getting any dollar salary this time.  Of course, part of the internship agreement is that the “pay” is college credit for your labors (as you would receive if you were in a classroom doing intellectual labor) and all of the experience you can garner by having an inside seat into the production process of a film that, as it turned out, was one of the biggest financial and critical success of the year, if not the decade.

But on closer inspection, I couldn’t help but feel that “pay” was only part of the complaint (that’s the cra-zee part, as opposed to the crazy).  Said student seemed particularly angry that during the internship his duties consisted of “getting coffee, setting coffeemaker, cleaning and preparing the production office” etc. etc. Well, as an advisor to hundreds of students in internships over the years to that I say – did you get to observe other aspects of the production?  Was EVERYTHING done behind closed doors?  Did you have no opportunity to talk to or observe anyone having to do with the film at all?  Did you not get to read and review any documents associated with the production?  Did you never get to speak to ANYONE at all on the film?  And mostly – were you in a position that was difficult and demanding (not so much for what your job was but for what your job wasn’t on the surface) OR were you put into an environment that was CRA-ZEE that was run by CRA-ZEE people who treated you CRA-ZEE-LY?

If it wasn’t any of the above CRA-ZEE and just merely crazy, I say to said Wesleyan student– welcome to the dues paying biz, bud.  It sucks but we’ve all been there and live in the real world.  And consider the fact that – if you don’t cotton to the idea of putting in time learning to do what you want to do without getting paid – then this business might just not be for you.  Because any writer, producer or director will tell you that they create and do lots of work on their own for which they might never get paid for.  It sucks.  It’s not fair – but as Roxie Hart says in Chicago – “That’s showbiz, kids.”

Get to work, interns!

In no way, shape or form take this to mean that I don’t want every one of my students to get paid for the internship work they do.  But I also want world peace, single-payer health care and the head full of hair I had when I was 21.  None likely will happen even though technology has made it possible for me to get that head of hair if I want to look like Nicholas Travolta Elton John Cage, which I don’t.

Bottom line is – we live in a capitalist society in recession and you take the work experience where you can get it.  College is one of the times in life where your number one goal needs to solely be gaining knowledge – not making money. (Hopefully, all of life is about this – and to some extent it should always be number one – but I’m making allowance for those who think differently).

Yes, if you were my student and you were ONLY in a room making coffee and doing the dishes, I’d tell you to leave, because that would qualify as CRA-ZEE.  But don’t mistake the CRA-ZEE for the insanely difficult and demanding.  Because part of what you’re learning by being put in these kinds of situations is how to navigate the shark-infested difficult and demanding waters and not wind up being CRA-ZEE or inflicting the CRA-ZEE on yourself (or others).  That might seem CRA-ZEE, but actually – it’s merely life.  Which is crazy enough on its own.