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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