HOLLYWOOD OBIT?

The Golden Globes were given out last night.  Everyone who cares, please clap.

Louder please.

Oh.  Well, I didn't care either.

There's a grand old publicist in Hollywood named Julian Myers.  He's been working in the business since 1939, which means he probably saw "Gone With the Wind" on its first day out. That's the Hollywood equivalent of watching Moses come down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments, or, as studios call them, the underlying material.

Myers now fears we may be seeing the beginning of the end for Hollywood, considering the fact that the town is shut tight because of the writers' strike, with other possible strikes on the horizon. (Disclosure:  I am a Writers Guild of America member.)  "Does a dying Hollywood need a civil war today to hasten its erosion?" he asks.

The word "erosion" is the key word here.  If there wasn't erosion, a couple of strikes wouldn't make much of a dent.  Look, as I'll say over and over, there are good things being done in the business today.  But Hollywood is not dying because writers want a more legitimate piece of the action, or because actors are upset with their contract.  It's dying because the public is bored with the product, and would occasionally like to see a star who can fill a screen, and not a book of political philosophy. 

There is, about Hollywood, a kind of dumbness.  It dies repeatedly.  It died about 1950, when it coined the slogan, "Movies are better than ever," and the public bought 10-inch TVs.  It died in the late sixties, when ABC made a documentary called, "Whatever Happened to Hollywood?"  There were resurrections in both cases, although without the moral stories. Now it seems to be dying again, as Mr. Myers says.

What will bring it back?  Show business will bring it back, if the Armani suits only realize they're in it.  Risk will bring it back, because there's no excitement without it.  And excitement itself will bring it back, desperately needed in a business that, despite its glitz, has become drab.

There's a great story about modern Hollywood.  I can't guarantee it's true, but it's about the movie business, so truth is not a factor.  There was this hot young executive brought into a studio.  His job was to find the best new properties - books, plays, scripts, handwritten notes, whatever. They gave him an office and a $400,000 a year paycheck.  Find stuff, they said.

Two years passed.  The bosses realized they'd spent $800,000 on this genius, and he hadn't brought in a single thing.  Now, please note, there's a rule of thumb in the business that only five percent of movies make money, or enough money to justify the sweat.  So the bosses went to this guy, heads bowed, and presented him with his record.  He hadn't bought a property in the two years he'd been there.  "You're fired," they said.  He just stared back at them, a quizzical look on his face.  "How," he replied, "can you fire a man who's been right 95 percent of the time?"

That kid knew the business.  The trouble in Hollywood starts as soon as anyone actually does something.  It's become a government-style bureaucracy, where saying "yes" is the most dangerous thing you can do.  This kid lost his job, but for two years he made a mint and no one gave him trouble.  That's not a bad run.

It used to be a dream factory.  More dreams, please.

Posted on January 14, 2008.