Love Life (23 page)

A
s a typical Midwestern
kid,
my view of the entertainment industry (and I would never have known that term) was that of most people outside of Hollywood. Which is to say that I was bereft of any sophistication about the peculiarities and sometimes-nonsensical foibles inherent in a business where artists are in constant conflict with bean counters and where bad behavior is often rewarded as long as it fills seats. I would never have guessed that Hollywood is the land where no good deed is not expected to be replicated again next time, exactly and for less money. (A perfect example being: Come in under budget and you are expected to make the next movie or episode for
that
new number, even if it has a much larger scope.) The war between art and commerce has always been fought, even in the days when I still thought
Battle of the Network Stars
had the same pedigree as the Super Bowl. Today, it’s worse, as viewers flee the big networks and movies struggle to compete with new forms of entertainment.
Then and now, it’s a miracle when anything really good gets made and even rarer that it isn’t eventually destroyed by cost cutting. If you’ve ever wondered why your favorite show worsened a few seasons down the road, this is probably why.

I have tremendous sympathy for both sides. I am a producer as well; I get it.
Someone’s
gotta mind the store. But it is inevitably a business that cannot be run through a spreadsheet. Making
Game of Thrones
or
The Walking Dead
or
American Hustle
is not like manufacturing widgets, no matter how much the boys upstairs would like it to be. It’s a business predicated on human inspiration and passion, something that cannot be explicitly quantified in the bottom line, or micromanaged, or even really told what to do.

But in spite of it all, magic does happen. When I was a boy and I saw it on my TV or movie screen, I was driven ever closer to my dream of being a part of this glorious and maddening business.

I remember sitting with my family, watching
All in the Family
and even as a boy being taken aback at the hilarious but quasi-racist Archie Bunker. Today, I know that show could never be put on a network schedule. The way the Bunkers dealt with race alone would be too hot to touch in our PC culture. But back then, my family’s week revolved around that magic half hour in front of our black and white Zenith. I vividly remember the first time I heard Edith talk in her real voice (like most showbiz civilians, unless an actor was known for multiple roles and a long career, I thought they
were
that first big role they became famous for). I remember seeing Edith—I’m sorry, Jean Stapleton—at what must have been the Emmys, looking beautifully sophisticated in her gown and speaking in a deep, resonant way that was as far from Edith as I was from Hollywood. There was not one shred of the dithering, shrill, slow-witted working-class housewife from Queens to be found in her real-life persona. Her character on the show was so original, so seamlessly believable and so boldly
drawn that I’m sure I wasn’t alone in thinking, “That’s just who she is.” But now I was forced to consider a new concept—that she was
acting.

All unknown actors struggle to overcome the “gift” of that first breakout role. Some of them will not have the opportunity or the range to do it. But the really good ones will.

I did a movie with Jonah Hill. He had just blown up from
Superbad
, a movie that is even better than you think it is. We were on location in Boston and people would yell, “Hey, it’s
Superbad
!” What’s up,
Superbad
?!” I was envious of Jonah for having gotten the part of a lifetime but not at all envious of his having to move beyond it. I needn’t have worried; within a few years Jonah had a number of signature roles and award nominations, and no one was calling him
Superbad
.

Every profession has its inherent pitfalls. Acting is no different. At the pro level, the farther you rise, the more you are going to be in conflict with the inherent disconnect between “show” and “business.” One of the few great things about being a struggling actor is that no one cares about the artistic choices you make, or anything else you do for that matter. But when Viacom or Comcast or Disney is writing your paychecks, oftentimes they are going to want to have their say. This is absolutely fair; it’s their money. Most of the time everyone coexists peaceably. But when it goes bad, it does so in a hurry, because unlike most businesses, the boss and the employee have two completely opposite worldviews. The owners of the studios and networks want to make a profit; their employees want to make “art.” In my experience, the two concepts meet about 25 percent of the time. Unfortunately, too many executives and too many artists each distrust the ethos of the other; if they could meet one another halfway in terms of the product they make, I believe the success level could be more like 40 percent.

Businessmen often distrust artists, and often for good reason. Another childhood favorite of mine was the show
Alias Smith and Jones
. With today’s perspective I would’ve known it was a blatant rip-off of the recent hit movie
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
, but as a little boy I loved it and found it totally original. And when my favorite actor, Pete Duel, who played Jones, blew his brains out, ending the show, I was devastated. I didn’t even know what suicide was. And a concept that I’m sure the suits at Universal weren’t looking to sell to ten-year-olds across America was nevertheless brought into my living room courtesy of a deeply troubled actor.

With one sad and tragic act, a franchise was lost, scores were out of jobs and millions of the studio’s dollars were gone. Creative people are often their own worst enemy when it comes to commerce. I’ve seen a number of charismatic, talented, funny and great-looking leading men break apart on the shoals of insisting on playing only destitute, drug-addled, eighteenth-century quadriplegic Irish poets. It’s true that every once in a while you need to shock people, but Cary Grant had no issue with always wearing the same dark suit and haircut and he did just fine. The fact that he never won an Oscar has nothing to do with his talent and everything to do with how easy he made it look, how good he looked doing it and how easily enraptured Oscar voters are with fake noses, phony accents and histrionic acting. Also, it didn’t help that Cary was funny. They don’t give Oscars to funny people. Today, more than ever, when comedies are one of the few reliably profitable genres and the Oscars are even more about pushing product, you’d think at some point someone funny would end up at the podium. Don’t hold your breath. It’s one of the clearest examples of the great and growing disconnect between what the public is interested in and what the Hollywood establishment wants to recognize as “good.”

The story that perhaps best illustrates the conflict between artists and their benefactors is the famous David Geffen–Neil Young lawsuit. Geffen had been Young’s comanager for years and signed him to record two albums for his new label, obviously hoping to continue a brilliant catalog containing everything from “Old Man” and “Cinnamon Girl” to “Heart of Gold” and “Like a Hurricane.” Instead, Neil recorded one album where he sang through a mechanical voice box like a robot or Woodstock-era Daft Punk member and another where he appeared like Roy Rogers on the cover while doing swing band/western mash-ups. The lawsuit accused Neil Young of “making albums that were not characteristic of Neil Young.” Which is obviously both true and not true. An artist has every right to create whatever they want (especially a genius like Neil), but you can imagine Geffen’s frustration at underwriting Young’s debut as R2–D2.

I’ve never really understood why anyone would be drawn to the entertainment business who wasn’t an entertainer in some form. Without the emotional payback of creating, I would flee show biz quickly indeed. I wouldn’t willingly choose an endeavor that trades so heavily on fear, lemming-think and doublespeak. I’m always amazed and a little sad when I meet a parent who tells me that their son or daughter “wants to get into the business.” The statement itself is faulty on its face; what goes on daily in Hollywood bears absolutely no resemblance to any business whatsoever. I cannot think of another enterprise where you can’t get principals on the phone when a multimillion-dollar decision hangs in the balance or that shuts down completely from a week before Thanksgiving to a week after New Year’s (this seven-week period is called “the holidays”). It is also increasingly a business that has no memory of why it can be great—you can routinely bring up fairly obvious classic film references and be met with silence. Unfortunately, on the other side of the desk, more
and more, the goal isn’t to make
Network
or
Bringing Up Baby
, it’s to make your quarter numbers and get promoted to run the jet engine division of your parent company.

Counterintuitively, in a business that should be based on the written material it makes (or chooses not to), few actually do any reading. And I’m not talking about
Atlas Shrugged
or the lesser works of Jerzy Kosinski; I’m talking about the scripts they are actually considering making into movies or television shows. Instead, many rely on the industry’s version of CliffsNotes.

There exists, in Hollywood, a thing called “coverage.” This is an extremely condensed version of the script: plot points, characters, tone, genre and truncated synopsis of the story. Coverage is put together by readers employed by whoever does not want to read the actual script. Usually people who are on the front lines of trying to discern which ones are viable, agents and studio executives. These “readers” are often unpaid interns just out of USC film school, or perhaps a newly hired agent’s assistant. Sometimes coverage is farmed out on a script-by-script basis to people who do nothing but create coverage. As opposed to creating actual movies or TV shows. And the last element in the process is the opinion of the coverage creator. They do a full-on Pauline Kael–meets–Irving Thalberg recommendation on whether the script should be made. Most of the time if a script’s coverage is anything less than glowing, oftentimes based on the opinion of someone who is writing from a Starbucks with spotty Wi-Fi and has never stepped foot on a movie set, it is DOA.

Can you imagine the number of great things that would’ve never been made in other businesses if they got bad coverage? If the “deciders” (as G. W. Bush would say) went on the opinions of interns working for free in, for example, architecture and construction? I can imagine coverage on the plans to build the Lincoln Memorial. It might read something like this . . .

PROPOSED PROJECT

TITLE:
The Lincoln Memorial

Terrible title, completely unimaginative. Maybe Lincoln’s Lair? Or possibly Dome of the Great Emancipator? (Although the plans submitted are not that of a dome.)