Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales From the New Abnormal in the Movie Business (5 page)

The New Abnormal, with its fewer movies and pitch meetings, its tiny expense accounts, and its centralized buying in the executive and marketing suites, has transformed the jobs of execs, agents and producers, as well as the whole process of how movies are bought and developed. All the lively interaction that went on between execs and producers to generate alliances and commerce, all the dinners and power lunches, went kapoof! Where are they? What happened? How did the rocking glamour capital of the world end up with execs acting like nerds from Silicon Valley? What transformed the lifestyles of the rich and famous, or almost rich and striving to be famous? Every portal became a wall. Business went indoors, and the thrill of meeting new people, forging new alliances and making up movies with new friends every month was gone.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE NEW ABNORMAL: ONLINE

While pitches haven’t been selling in the New Abnormal, a YouTube video by an unknown director can suddenly blow up on the marketplace, and there will be three studios bidding for it. (Without having yet met the director!) That would never have happened in the Old Abnormal, because there was no YouTube. Maybe execs are busy watching YouTube instead of hearing pitches. Our work is virtual.

Picture this:

The exec is in his office, surfing the net, between studio
meetings. He can get everything online, even “content,” the New Abnormal word for material that eventuates on some device in the online universe. He gets his morning news on Deadline Hollywood, the compulsively read news blog that has replaced industry trades like
Variety
from the Old Abnormal. He checks into the Huffington Post for a sec. Then he goes to work, but not like we used to: He’s still online. He gets director and writer ideas for his projects from freely shared online lists compiled by a multitude of execs, while we used to make them up from scratch. They get other vital data online, like whose recently turned-in Disney script “tanked,” what director dropped out of what project, etc., via “tracking boards,” also online. None of this used to exist, since we had no computers to speak of. (Okay, maybe we had computers, but they linked to nothing.) We created our own directors and writers lists from analog books, which led to mistakes like pitching my bosses several writers who turned out to be dead.

The exec checks into the tracking boards—email groups on Yahoo! or Google or on coveted private email lists—written by assistants, junior execs, agents and their assistants, all of whom are privy to way more chitchat than I am. The tracking boards are like an industry “cloud” brain. The exec goes on the boards for gossip: Who is getting fired? Promoted? What sold yesterday? We used to speak on the phone to hear this stuff. Then the exec goes to IMDb, the definitive Web site for credits, and he goes to Google or Wikipedia for any development content–type info he needs for a meeting. He is online so much, he emails much more than he calls. A call starts to feel like an intrusion.

With fewer pitches to hear, he or she has more time to do ever more work online. Research! Look for books! New Young Adult (YA) vampire series! This is a treasure trove of great ideas. YA is where the
Hunger Games
and
Twilight
series came from. Why talk to people when there are graphic novel sites?! Who needs pitches?

One exception to this new model is Comic-Con, when the town
empties for two days to promote its -
Man
movies and meet its fan-boys. Comic-Con has evolved from what was once a nerdy comic-book gathering to a huge, multimedia, star-laden promotional juggernaut for the fans, studios and gaming industry, where the next year’s blockbusters are teased, promoted and fanned out to an ardent and important base of critical raving-mad word-of-mouth monsters who can make or break the industry’s products. Everyone except me is in San Diego for two days.

And then there’s the Soho House, a club perfectly located at Doheny and Sunset—which would be the center of town if there were one—where people show off their new clothes and prove they are still alive; but alas, to get in, you must be a member. Even at the Soho House, if guests are not (barely) eating or at the bar, they are on their computers or checking their iPhones.

While online, the exec can study multiplatform systems! And search for new chicks to cast on OkCupid or
Match.com
! Speaking of
Match.com
, so much of the business transpires over email, it’s like dating, or what’s left of it. You could stay in your bedroom in your sweats and go online and work—or pretend you’re dating.

RARE MOMENTS WHERE OLD ABNORMAL AND NEW ABNORMAL MERGE

There are rare moments these days when things are suddenly the same as they used to be in the Old Abnormal. Of course, getting a green light is the same, as is the first day of production. But those are personal. There are times when we are all one dysfunctional family. Our traditional holiday, when we dress up like it’s New Year’s Eve and kiss each other on both cheeks and everyone comes out of the woodwork for good or for bad, is Awards Season. Then, for about a month’s worth of parties, we see all our crazy uncles in the Academy whom we haven’t seen since last year, or fired execs
we forgot to call, or old frenemies, or the great face-lift a mogul’s wife is displaying for the first time in public. These parties are supposed to gain our votes for the intended honoree by feeding us hors d’oeuvres as the nominees or intended nominees spread their fairy dust on us. This has been going on, with various Academy rule changes regarding who foots the bill, since . . . well, forever.

At these moments we can feel much of the distinction between the Old Abnormal and the New Abnormal twinkle away in the presence of the stars; our sense of community and our optimism are reborn with each new season. It is indeed our New Year. We make resolutions. We drink. We kiss people we don’t like; we decide we like them after all. We make lunch dates.

“FRIENDING” IN THE NEW ABNORMAL

Over the last six months, my girlfriend Meredith (a talent agent at ICM, a blazing redhead with a toddler) and I have been trying to meet for lunch. So far, our efforts have been fruitless. Our assistants have exchanged 145 calls and 63 emails. Last week, we were on for 3 p.m., but I had to push to 4:30. She canceled. She rescheduled today. And I canceled: network notes call. This is the new relationship. The path to hell, my mother used to say, is paved with good intentions. Meredith and I are the New Abnormal. Is this why making movies isn’t as much fun anymore? I can’t even figure out how to have lunch with a girlfriend whom I actually want to see.

With so many people out of the office these days, timing is an increasingly difficult factor. I can’t tell if people are sick, having manicures, working out of Starbucks, watching their kids at soccer games, hiding in home offices or just so rich they are on satellite on a boat somewhere, but I have never seen more people out of the office. This is because lunches are no longer necessary. They have
become a vestigial courtesy. The young and networking, many of whom are off expense accounts, will work key lunches in when necessary. But many lunch hours are now spent checking calls while having a yogurt with gummy bears at Pinkberry. I only meet with writers, financiers, directors, actors (and friends). And yet, I really want to see my pal and her baby for lunch.

Phone calls have been replaced by emails, conversation has been replaced by chitchat and getting to know someone has been replaced by checking out their clothes and shoes. What about work? When you used to submit a script, you’d receive a thoughtful response. There was a possibility of persuading the executive with your charm or your relationship or even your well-articulated argument about how you would address the notes given in the response. There was a process.

Today, with some significant exceptions, one only gets an email pass that says, “This doesn’t fit into our slate,” or, “We have no slot for this.” Case closed. It is rarely worth fighting back. Besides, if the exec gave notes, he might get a rewrite, and then he’d have to read it again, and chances are good that his studio’s mandate will have stayed the same.

Why cultivate a relationship if it doesn’t amount to anything, if you can’t persuade somebody? If being funny and charming makes no difference, you might as well just send emails. So there are strikingly fewer meetings and strikingly less charm.

I once said to my manager son that his clients were all incredibly good-looking. Oly said, “Mom, we don’t have time for charm. You have to just make a great first impression. People would rather see attractive people.”

Truthfully, I don’t know whether he actually said that or I just accused him of it and he laughed. The fact is, first impressions are increasingly important when people stop taking the time to get to know people. We used to spend fifteen minutes in every pitch meeting talking about families, sports, music or politics over fancy
water. People don’t have time to do that anymore unless it works into the pitch. This is mostly in TV, where during pitch season there is no time for more than three minutes of fast and funny chitchat.

Finally, few execs have the power to say yes anymore. They only have the power to move a movie up the chain in tiny, tiny increments. What fun is it for the exec to have a long meeting, after which they have to say no—an outcome they knew before the meeting even started? Better to email.

In the Old Abnormal, when there were more slots to fight for with more money available, the exec could team up with you and really make a case for a borderline movie, a “maybe,” a script that everyone loved but wasn’t a bull’s-eye. Now the producer with an original movie who is fighting for one of these rare studio “slots” has to package it with a star or a director and that person’s manager (in exchange for a producer’s credit) to get any traction at the studio. They better make sure the star or director has a track record of big international numbers. The best way may be to skip the studios altogether. Or go to your parents, or take a run on some credit cards.

How did this happen? How did it become easier for someone who knows no one to make a movie for $150,000 than for someone who knows everyone to make one for $20 million? Or for a guy who last made a movie for $100,000 to make his next movie a superhero tentpole for $100 million? Nothing makes any sense. Battleships are falling from Mars. Tentpoles are launching and falling. No one knows what to make. What went wrong?

1.
Vanilla Sky, Texas Rangers, Domestic Disturbance, Zoolander, Hardball, Rat Race, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Along Came a Spider, Down to Earth.

2.
Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope
(1977),
Star Wars: Episode V—The Empire Strikes Back
(1980),
Star Wars: Episode VI—Return of the Jedi
(1983),
Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace
(1999),
Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones
(2002),
Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith
(2005).

3.
Starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal; the story of a forbidden and secretive relationship between two cowboys over the years.

I was driving west in a classically horrible L.A. morning commute on my way to Peter Chernin’s new office in Santa Monica, thinking about our regular lunches back when he ran the studio and I worked as a producer there in the nineties. Peter, who is now building his own media empire at Fox and had been president of News Corp. for over a decade, was clearly the perfect person to ask what had turned the Old Abnormal into the New Abnormal. First of all, he was incredibly smart about the business. But more important, I now realized that during those lunches, he was the first to warn me that the proverbial “light ahead” was an oncoming train. It was way before things turned obviously grim. Since I was reliably churning out pictures then, I didn’t take his gloomy talk about piracy seriously. I just went around saying, “The landlord has the blues,” and blithely fell into the future.

Peter wasn’t exactly having a hard time making the transition. Once he decided in 2009 to leave the number-two job overseeing the News Corp. media empire, he became the biggest producer at Fox (one of the biggest anywhere), with guaranteed pictures and huge potential profit participation. His first picture was the tentpole smash
Rise of the Planet of the Apes,
and he already had three television shows on the air. More recently, he released the smash
Identity Thief,
with Melissa McCarthy and Jason Bateman.

The long drive got me thinking about the contrast between the
struggling Old Abnormal producers (and writers) and the soaring New ones like Peter. It was discussed at a fancy-pants dinner party I went to a week before.

“They’re completely broke,” said a studio head, when asked by me (of course) about how different things were these days. He spoke about famous players who regularly came to him begging for favors—a picture, a handout, anything.

“Why?” his very East Coast guest asked incredulously.

I recalled his exact words as I sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic. “They have extremely high overheads,” he said to his guest with me listening in. “They have multiple houses, wives, and families to support. They’ve made movies for years, they were on top of the world and had no reason to think it would end. And then suddenly it did. They’ve gone through whatever savings they had. They can’t sell their real estate. Their overhead is as astronomical as their fees used to be. They’ve taken out loans, so they’re highly leveraged. It’s a tragedy.”