Tuesday, February 7, 2023

Criticizing Criticism Entertainment As Business Edition: Hollywood, It's Your Turn

 

Last week, I wrote a very long article in which I placed much of the blame for the state of television today on how critics have been responsible for spreading the illusion that Hollywood is a purveyor of art and not business and how those constant messages have trickled down in to the average fan believing it and the responsibility they have in it. However, when I did so, I purposely left out one of the more critical parts of this – Hollywood itself.

To be clear, when I say this I don’t blame all of the technicians who work in film and television – cinematographers, editors, casting directors, makeup artists and basically all of the people who do everything to make sure film and TV work as well as it does. You do far too much of the work and get far too little credit – major awards shows will either give you separate ceremonies for your awards or play you off the stage faster than they will the talent. Even those of you who accept the awards you get are, honestly, just part of a team and most of you never get the credit for that. You deserve all the credit and reward you get – honestly, more than much of the talent. (Though really, you should consider yourselves lucky that whenever the far right takes a swipe at Hollywood, it is exceedingly rare that a costume designer is considered ‘woke’. So there’s that at least.)

No the people who are at fault are some of the writers, some of the directors and basically all the actors. The producers and people who own and run the studios do bear a lot of the responsibility to be sure – they have been guilty of creating what amounts to a century of propaganda saying that their product is a work of art and not a measure of commerce -  but don’t pretend that almost all of you who have ever worked in this industry have not gone out of your way to participate and maintain this illusion at every opportunity. You go on these PR tours, you do all these interviews for the media, you pose for pictures at premieres. And while you might complain about never being asked the questions beyond your wardrobe or what your co-stars are like, let’s not deny that none of you want to say something along the lines of ‘I’m only doing the latest Star Wars movie for a paycheck’ or ‘I’m tired of doing comic books movies’ or ‘I’m so tired of working in television or film.” At best, you will save these stories for personal interviews or book deals or use this as a bargaining position to make other films. Then you will go on a different tour, saying that these are the films or TV shows ‘you really wanted to make’ while doing everything in your power to deny that your really doing this for a shiny award.

No Hollywood star is ever going to say that, at the end of the day, working the most recent MCU movie is the same thing as working with Spielberg or Scorsese. It is the same kind of product to the studio or service, but you basically argue one has greater value than the other to ‘the audience.’ You never acknowledge that one audience is different than the other because you don’t want to isolate one side or the other. You want to keep working. And this argument, I should make clear, goes across all racial, gender and sexual barriers. Always has, always will. It might be easier for some actors to get the roles they want now that it was sixty years ago, some might even be able to get better roles than they were twenty years ago, but end of the day, all of you are compromising because its what you do to make a living.

There shouldn’t be any shame in this, but in this world where compromise is considered a dirty word all across the ideological spectrum, no one wants to say that. This has always been true in the artistic world, and its especially true in Hollywood, particularly among filmmakers and TV writers. Have writers been frustrated that they couldn’t tell the stories they wanted to? Sure. But there will always be something working against them. It could be a production code, or  a rating system, and its always being done by the people who sign their paychecks. It’s the same for actors as well. I can’t imagine that Mickey Rooney was happy playing Andy Hardy for most of his childhood any more than Tyler Perry was at having to play Madea for as long as he did. But the films made money, so they demeaned themselves.

Because here’s the thing that all those artists who argue about ‘principles’ and ‘integrity.’ They’re no good to you if you’re starving. So you compromise. The problem is, so much of our society – and the critical world as well –  doesn’t care about context. I’ll give a couple of past examples before we get to the most obvious one.

There are millions of African-Americans who for more than nearly seventy years have deplored the work of Stephan Fetchit. He is the most prominent example of a type of actor that was basically the sole role that all African-American actors could get for at least the first half-century of Hollywood and well-beyond. He was basically the acting equivalent of the Uncle Tom, the ‘Negro’ who played the obvious villain after white woman, the one who shucked and jived, most famously in the notorious The Birth Of A Nation. Near the end of his life, he responded to this criticism saying: “I went through the back door so that Sidney Poitier could go through the front door. (And these days, Poitier doesn’t have the best reputation anymore.)

Years ago, I thought this was the worst kind of self-justification. Now, I’m considering context. If you were an African-American actor in Hollywood (or really, any minority actor) and the best job you could get was a native in the latest Tarzan film or playing a slave in a Civil War picture, what were you supposed to do? Back then, even the biggest movie stars in Hollywood had little choice in the kinds of roles they played and the studios were fine getting white actors to play any kind of stereotype they saw fit rather than cast a more talented minority. (The Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto franchises are just two examples of this.) It’s not like most of the white talent will stand up for you; they have no more leverage than you do, and they don’t want to get a reputation as ‘difficult’. Hollywood is a business.

Here's an even more difficult example: the red scare and the Blacklist. I’m not going to make a defense of what Congress was doing, but rather those who decided to name names. Certainly I have immense respect for what the Dalton Trumbo’s and the Ring Lardner’s and so many writers and actors did during the 1950s. But what about all of the actors and writers who did end up cooperating with HUAC to save their careers? I’m not saying that it was the right decision by any means: the fact the government was putting them in this position remains one of the greatest stains on America. What I am saying is that it couldn’t have been any easier a decision than all of the writers and actors who ended up standing firm and losing their careers. We all know the price that so many of these actors and writers paid for standing on their principles; can you truly blame so many others for not wanting to share the same fate?

When Elia Kazan was given a lifetime Achievement Award in 1999, this debate was reignited among those who lived through his time and the current Hollywood talent. One side framed it as purely a political decision. The other as an artistic one. No one defined as one of a man who was making an economic one – indeed, those who did claimed that because Kazan worked in theater at the time,  his livelihood shouldn’t have played a part in a decision. I don’t know why Kazan made his decision even now, but maybe at the end of the day it was as simple as: he wanted to keep working in Hollywood and he knew doing otherwise was a bad business decision.

Now let’s get the elephant: Harvey Weinstein. At this point, it has become clear in hindsight that the entire town knew what a monster he was well before the fact that he was a multiple sexual harasser came to light. It appears to have been Hollywood’s worst kept secret until 2017.

First of all, let’s not pretend that Weinstein’s actions, horrible as they are, are unique to Hollywood. Back in the days of the studio system, men such as Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner and Harry Cohn would openly sexual harass  - and almost certain assault – young female stars at the time. Nor was this limited solely to the studio heads. In recent years it came to light that Alfred Hitchcock  sexually harassed Tippi Hedren during the filming of both The Birds and Marnie. I find it hard to believe this was the sole example of that.

Why do I know this story? Because HBO made a TV movie about it ten years ago. It doesn’t seem to have done a thing to Hitchcock’s reputation among critics or filmmakers. Why should this come as a shock? Hollywood has always been willing to make exceptions for the most talented among them no matter how horrific or even illegal their behavior is. Roman Polanski committed statutory rape in 1978, and ever since then, everyone seems determined to say what a raw deal he got from the legal system. After Woody Allen began having an affair with his adopted daughter, Mia Farrow’s career was the one that was never the same. When Allen received a lifetime achievement award from the Golden Globes (which he was not there to accept, for the record) Ronan Farrow tweeted online the fact that Allen had sexually molested one of his adopted daughters on multiple occasions. Hollywood went out of its way to launch a PR campaign to defend Allen. It’s only recently that so many prominent actors have promised that they will believe the victim and will never work on any of his films. I honestly think the only reason they made this announcement was because Allen’s career was now on the down side and there was no longer any ‘profit’ to working on his films.

I’m quite sure that there were a lot of women in Hollywood who not only knew what Weinstein did but were willing to defend him. Yes, everybody was afraid to cross Harvey Weinstein – but it cuts both ways. Even if they didn’t know how criminal he was, they knew what a monster he was to everybody he dealt with. But they were willing to look the other way because they wanted to keep working. Because Hollywood is a business.

To be clear, its different from other businesses in one respect. They are more than willing to, years after the fact, tell the stories of the traumas that so many in their field have to suffer and those who had their careers destroyed for the mass consumption of the public. They’re not doing it, you know, out of the goodness of their heart, but because they think they can make money on it and win awards. Why else do you think She Said got made? It wasn’t out of guilty consciences.

That’s the thing: Hollywood is a business. And part of the reason it is struggling so much anymore is because for a century, it has gone out of its way to sell itself as not being a business. As I’ve mentioned, critics like myself have been more than willing to maintain this illusion for a century. The problem is, both the people who consume it and the people who work in it seem to believe the lie.

I made it clear the viewer’s role in all this in the previous article, but I have a certain amount of sympathy for them. They’ve essentially been lied to for over a century and while I do think it is entitled and selfish of them for thinking this way, I understand them for their point of view. The actors, writers and directors have no such excuses and yet somehow many of them continue to propagate it and worse, blame the people making the business decisions as not understanding their craft and being concerned ‘only with the bottom line’.

To be clear, I fundamentally consider all of you whiners for whom I can not muster any sympathy for. You might not have known what you were getting into when you first came to Hollywood, but all of you are fully aware of it now. All of you are making millions of dollars for your jobs – most of you make more money for an episode of television or an action film that the people who see your film will make it in a lifetime. I do sympathize with why so many people can not work up empathy or compassion for your travails. And yes, they do bear some responsibility for the projects you can and can not make. But that cuts both ways.

Now I understand why you’ve made the decisions you have – Hollywood is a business and you have to compromise to keep working in it. In that sense, it is like any job. But unlike the average working person, no one told you to spend years feeding the PR machine about what a joy is to work on Revenge of the Sith or that Melrose Place was a great acting experience or that you were thrilled to work with Joss Whedon again. You knew what your job was, and you spent years lying to the public about it. It was an economic decision, not a creative one.

And hey, I get that for many of you, your careers haven’t gone the way they should have when you first came there. But you saw what happened to many of you who were more talented and didn’t make it. You compromised and you chose your career path.

And don’t complain ‘the industry is changing.’ The industry’s the same as it ever was. Yes, some of you have more opportunities to work then you did twenty or thirty years ago. But the motives have not changed. The studios that provided the funding for Shondaland think there’s money to be made in it that there wasn’t ten years ago. You’re as dependent on their largesse as you ever were.

Hell, you don’t get to bitch now about how consolidation is ruining the industry either. You’ve worked in the business closer than the average fan, so don’t claim you couldn’t read the writing on the wall, cause it’s been pretty big. A cable network or a studio can only make a profit as long as there are people willing to watch it; when they can, they must find other ways to make revenue. For years, cable channels have been cutting off original programming and merging. Studio systems are consolidating. You may not be business majors but you know how the business works. To only complain about it now makes you look both naïve and ungrateful.

Now I am sorry that many of you will not be able to make the movies or TV shows you want because of how it affects the films and TV shows I watch. But unlike you, I’ve never been naïve about the field I wade in. I know that most of the movies and TV shows that you and your colleagues make are crap. I might not have made the connection with it being hand-in-hand with art and commerce being the same thing until recently, but I understood it in the sense that there were always going to be things I liked that other people didn’t. This has always been true of art and it always will be.

But as to you -acting, writing, directing, all of it – they’re jobs, plain and simple. You’ve spent your careers contributing to the illusion that they were more glamorous ones than the rest of us, but I’ve always assumed that at some level, most of you knew better. If at this point in your careers, you have only come to this realization now or only after its too late are you expressing your doubts about it – well, I guess I assumed the whole reason you belonged to unions was because you knew better. Maybe the only reason you joined those guilds in the first place was because you wanted the accolades of your peers, a trophy for your mantle, and a chance to give a speech about how lucky you feel to be in this job on live TV. And if that was the reason, well, you can’t really blame how much of the country feels about your industry.

 

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