THEM VS US

Normally I do not focus on essentially local issues, but because the "Writers Guild Strike" is all over the net, allow me: Roger L Simon has a post on his blog that points out--among other things--that the threat (to all entertainment unions) is the YouTube type of internet site that can dump content by the ton without accountability; that this content is essentially stolen and they want to stop it and get a piece. He then points out that there is a "distance" between management types and labor types so there is conflict.

His points are all correct (in my opinion) but there are a few things he misses as he acknowledges the new rules, many of which are dictated by multi-national corporations. Corporate distance from human beings is a function of their board rooms, and this "boardroom" distance is in turn expressed by types of distances from everyone down the line. This vast expanse of nothingness can be easily seen by looking at one thing we can all know about.

I call attention to the old practice of product placement. This is a practice in which the production company is paid for slipping a jar of Jack's Spanish Fly into a shot so that it is seen. A secret commercial. This "placement" had been the purview of the Key Grip, who was an actual worker on the set. A practice that had been going on since nobody can remember. A Key Grip was (and is) a Worker, you know, one of the guys who actually sweats while he works. This dirty sweaty Key Grip took money for product placement service and would distribute the graft to the crew (other actual smelly workers) as he saw fit. This allowed the "working stiffs" to participate in more than a wage. Once the Harvard MBA crowd moved in they took every dime for themselves, froze out labor (while professing love for the working class), and turned a cottage industry into a giant whorehouse of secretive commercials and closet movie financing. These monies were siphoned off by the usual suspects as untraceable cash.

Most important about the foregoing MBA takeover of the Key Grip rake offs is the "distance" Simon speaks of. The suits simply took over what they viewed as an illegal money flow with no direction and there was nothing labor could do about it because the "product placement" was actually stealing (expressed as: "fuck those union cocksuckers"). These distances took place in every aspect of the business. For example, today "you better know someone" or your script goes to the bottom of a pile to be read (maybe) by some (usually) no talent woman with a degree in some sort of liberal arts specialty who knows nothing about story except for "the rules." This means all stories have "rules" dictated by some envious and untalented college professor who has never perspired while performing any work either,so it naturally follows that all scripts are predictable. Shit like "character development," carefully structured sub plots and alternative conflicts that are in "the rules" mean predictable, and predictable means boring. It also means that only stories from people who have been indoctrinated with a list of rules (and politics) get past the bureaucracy. The result is a distance, one in which nobody talks to anybody. I remember the days not all that long ago when you could actually pitch an idea to the producer while on the set and have the dam pitch accepted for production (which a pal of mine who had a story about man eating spiders actually "sold" it on the spot) Those were the days when movies could be brought in by us criminal young producers---who knew how to get around the unions and the suits--- for under a million dollars. Actually we brought them in for less than 50K.

Enter Big Money. Big money creates "classes," and in turn these groups become segregated by their class (defined by "how much did you make on your last picture?). The more affluent class has to let everyone know which class they represent so they always express themselves through the means of conspicuous Ferraris, flashy entourages, bling, and great looking women or men as glitteratti companions. These classes are totally separated from those with less money as well as from those with more money. This distance takes place on the job as well as in the expensive restaurant society at large. Buried in all this is a serious unspoken rule that a writer must be young because a young writer can represent the "time," and the time is always "today." This little "rule" translates into "No Jackie Kennedy Jokes" or LBJ references, and you better never mention things like Peleliu or Nixon cabinet members. A writer MUST be at one with his/her greater audience else they produce product for a sub-culture that has no money to spend on movies.

As an example of class in the movie business today you only have to take a look at the meals on sets. Never, as in never, did stars, casts, and crews eat at separated tables or areas (unless they chose to). Everyone was "in this together." I once ate lunch one person away from Elizabeth Taylor while we were all seated on the ground with the crews. Today? Are we kidding?

This segregation follows all the way through the process, so it is no surprise that the audience is distanced from the "talent" as well. This disconnect from customers and workers can best be viewed by you normal people if you look at the way hotels were operated when the Mob ran Vegas. When the gangsters ran the place all customers, regardless of class were called by their first names by all hotel employees; everybody seemed to get "a deal under the table;" and since the mob skimmed cash from the games nobody cared about recovering the cost of rooms or food. That happy circumstance meant that we slobs all got as good a deal as the big shots got. Millionaires and ditch diggers paid $3 for a steak dinner. Am I saying the mob was preferable to the "honest" corporations? Yeah, in a hell of a lot of ways they were because they were engaged directly with their customers (audiences). I think the old "moguls," the guys who came up from the streets, were exact reproductions of their customers in all tastes and all desires for a better life and existence. That meant that what got through to the screen was stuff a working Joe could understand.

My favorite story exemplifying this: Harry Cohn, the old head of Columbia Pictures, was one mean and tough son of a bitch. Everybody was actually so afraid of him that they just capitulated to his desires and opinions. Most were sure he had mob connections and that he had personally shot a snotty writer or director one time. So one day director Schmuck is screening for Cohn the movie he just put in the can. The opening shot is one of a huge flock of white doves suddenly leaving their place at a fountain and filling the screen with fleeing flying feathers. "What the fuck is that," snarled Cohn.

Director Schmuck: Those are the doves of peace fleeing Paris before the vicious barbarian Nazis enter.

Cohn stopped the screening and snarled, "I don't want a bunch of fucking pigeons in my movie. And if I did want them we got a thousand feet of stock footage we can use. And the fucking Nazis? I hate those cocksuckers. Fuck them. We got a million feet of stock footage we can use on them too. And what the fuck do them pigeons have to do with the story?"

Exactly. The birds were for the birds. This crude former street thug, Cohn, knew how to tell a story without frills and demanded all parts of the movie be on point. Right now. Every commie professor at "Haaavahd" would hate Harry Cohn and if you think any of those chickenshits would stand up to him, you must be snorting one of Lindsay Lohan's urine tests.

So we arrive at NOW. Ask yourselves how anyone can write anything truthful who has only written for a college professor to grade? Look back at the movie writers of the thirties and forties and you'll see every kind of work imaginable as a background to bring to writing (I know, I know, Cole Porter). Soldiers (of fortune as well as war), all kinds of laborers who worked for shit money, and most importantly, all were experiencing the worst depression in the history of the country. Hard times were everywhere, a shared experience, one that united the movie crowd with their audiences.

One other factor regarding writing was pointed out to me by somebody I cannot remember. The writing competition for jobs in the "olden days," was intense. Writers wrote for pulp mags, science fiction stuff, detective stuff, Saturday Evening Post stuff, Women's crap, and so on, there were literally hundreds of magazines publishing fiction of all types. These mags provided a rigorous training ground for writers who had to write FOR an audience. They had to learn story, actual human feelings and dreams, and how humans had to feel----or they didn't sell their work. Meaning they could not eat or feed their depression wracked families without writing stories containing people who actually felt the things going on around them. People who go thru Harvard on Daddy’s dime and conform to the political beliefs held by their teachers--or fail the course--won’t have the guts or ability to do anything else later on in life. No surprise that they can only pander to the latest "cause of the week."

Simon's new book, "The New Blacklist" looks interesting as hell and is excerpted on his blog. This "new blacklist" leads me to thinking of the past. Compare today's "blacklist" to the real “list” of the 50s. Compare with the old time segregation differences between North and South, one where you saw a similar hypocrisy at work. On one side was the outright segregation in the Old South, while on the other there was the unspoken racism everywhere else in the country, the hidden and unspoken segregation always expressed as "equality." Everybody “who counted” in the North believed in the “equality” story. Our media almost always expressed the "equality" story.

Paranoia springs from the unspoken.