You might find them at the Arclight during December and January, when their WGA memberships permit free admission for themselves and a “guest” (long-suffering spouse/partner? Homeless guy they promised a meal to?). Otherwise, they likely couldn’t afford the premium ticket prices there.  Poker dealing doesn’t pay what it used to.

Theirs is a lost generation, having witnessed their dreams of boarding the luxury cruise ship of the Hollywood Elite dashed — instead relegated to the ship of fools, a half-constructed government-funded behemoth inadvertently launched prior to completion, now residing limply on its side as seagulls crap on its hull.   Flailing madly in the bay, arms slapping the waves of excremental runoff from L.A.’s shores, the U-BLAHS emerge onto dry land, greeted by two herds eager to welcome them.  They recoil from the initial herd, despising it as they do, refusing to accept the herd’s membership card involuntarily thrust upon them: that of the Has-Been. Stumbling for escape, the U-BLAHS run into the arms of the only other herd awaiting new membership, the Never-Weres.

Suddenly, the awful truth descends upon the U-BLAHS.  The two herds are equivalent, their mated species the result of spectacularly misguided inbreeding.  They slowly gather around the U-BLAHS, who grimly submit to their fate amidst the guttural chants of, “One of us!  One of us!”

The U-BLAHS herd, now fully assimilated, congregates on the internet, in an echo chamber all their own, called www.WriterActionBBS.com. Don’t bother trying to access it.  You must belong to the WGA to gain entrance.  Once there, if you happen to be non-Liberal and participate in the political forums, you can begin counting the days before you are banned.

The U-BLAHS online personalities recall a colony of grotesque lifeforms akin to Jeff Goldblum’s transformation in The Fly.   I’ve heard that most are actually really nice people in real life and if I ever met them, I’d welcome them with a handshake and smile, for I know one’s online persona can be quite different from one’s real one.  I doubt they’d do the same for me because, well, you know the story about the scorpion riding the frog.

One of Them

My experience at WA, as it is known, had a few positive aspects.  Outside of the political forums, everyone congenially engaged in discussions about movies, craft, referrals to local plumbers and the like.  It was a good source of discussion during the WGA strike.  That’s the WA I enjoyed.  Normal people interacting normally.

Inside the political forums, however, the U-BLAHS Collective was administered the Rage Virus, and I thus return to The Fly analogy by way of Danny Boyle.

I shall explain.

Readers of my columns here at the Bigs know that I do not identify with any political party or ideology, but am often mistaken for Republican or Conservative simply because I often challenge the Left’s lack of common sense and reason.  But that doesn’t matter to the Left, because if you aren’t one of them, you are by default The Other and require extermination.   Now, the Right has many of its own problems, as well.  For me, I abide by the words of Dennis Prager: “I don’t have to give up my heart to embrace my mind nor must I give up my mind to embrace my heart.”  The Buddhists call this The Middle Way and I do my best to subscribe to it (often failing, as humans do).

Anyway, while arguing with the U-BLAHS, I discovered that not a single tactic ever worked.  Reason?  Forget it?  Facts?  Ha!  You’ll get nowhere with people who insist that only rich people benefited from the Bush Tax Cuts, despite being shown tax rate schedules from before and after the legislation.  Then I tried to walk them through their positions one step at a time.  Nope.  It was like nailing jello to a tree. I asked them to leave me alone.  They didn’t.  (Two of them still, to this day, are stalking me via the internet).  I tried The Middle Way, suggesting that Liberal tolerance should extend to all points of view, and that perhaps the way they viewed a given circumstance might not take all the facts into account, that it isn’t possible to see inside one’s heart, that…

You know the drill.  (So do I, because I was a Liberal once.)

These people would not only never change and never listen to reason, they weren’t even self-aware enough to realize that they were engaging in a classic Jungian pathology — projecting all the most hateful aspects of themselves onto me, the proverbial Shadow.  They were not the hateful, closed-minded, bigoted, intolerant suckerfish attached to a whale’s anus, I was.

God knows there was no other reason to waste any more time there.  Except to have fun.

I took a page out of their book, and combined it with Andy Kaufman’s.  I would make the wildest, most outrageous, unsupportable statements.  I would name-call.  I would make statements completely lacking in logic.  And if someone called me on something I said, I would go back and delete the comment and innocently ask, “What are you talking about”?  I did.  They raged.  Then I’d return to logic.  Then return to mindless rants.  Then I’d agree with them.  Then I wouldn’t.   My favorite tactic was to write a really hate-filled screed laced with profanities directed at one U-BLAHS, wait for him to read it, then quickly delete it, so as to avoid being caught by the Stasi, known in web-speak as “The Admins,” who await such nasty posts so as to administer reprimands.  If I could get my target to quote from my screed, so that everyone could hear him say, “Larry called me a [insert Mamet-influenced insult]!”, I gave myself bonus points.

Regarding aforementioned Stasi, the worst thing one could do on WA was to “ad-hom” someone.  You know, hurt their feelings.  Of course, these rules were applied in typical Liberal fashion.  That is, Liberals could write anything they wanted.   Non-Liberals were held to a different standard.   You see, a U-BLAHS with a history of violence could write, “Hey, Conservative Joe, I’ve personally seen you suck Satan’s ***k,” and not be reprimanded.  But Joe can only say, “Hey, your argument is like sucking Satan’s ***k”. If Joe actually said the same exact thing the U-BLAHS did, he’d get a Yellow Card, kind of like in soccer. You know, bad tackle.

Now, let’s say some obese professorial blowhard Has-Been is quoting some “wisdom” from the early edition of his MSM newspaper and, after he gets away with a bad tackle, you ram your cleats up his rear?  You get the red card and a two-week ban.   If, after your return, you dare commit another felony, it’s six months in the gulag.   One more offense  — and believe me, they are watching every word you type — and it’s the permanent penalty box for you.

Of course, the point is to chill your speech.  And you don’t actually know what is considered an “ad-hom” and what isn’t, because the standard isn’t applied equally and fairly.  You know, “fairly,” like “Social Justice.”   But like any great Soviet-style Liberal paradise, you won’t actually be informed if you commit the crime of hurting a U-BLAHS feelings.  (Assuming that is a crime. It’s still an assumption since, well, just keep reading.)

See, while simultaneously posting how awful the proposed Gitmo tribunals of terrorists are in the political forum, the Stasi Star Chamber deliberates in total secrecy regarding the latest crossing of the goalpost-shifting ad-hom line, and then hand down their sentence.  Indeed, myself and others have endured Der Process — of being arrested, sentenced and summarily executed without even being informed that a crime had been committed.

At least, I think a crime had been committed.  I still don’t know why I was banned.  I think I made someone mad.  Or used improper sentence construction.  Or had a dangling participle.  Or more likely, spoke the truth.  I don’t know.  I still haven’t been told, despite asking multiple times.   My friend Josef K doesn’t know why he was banned, either.

Of course, let me make it clear that I speak of this particular group of U-BLAHS that I’m deservedly taking the piss out of.  I have met and worked with many, many warm and wonderful people in Hollywood, and still do.  Of the people I know, their politics rarely bleeds over into their scripts or into the conference room.  Most writers just want to tell good stories, get them produced without going over budget, and feel like they accomplished something in the face of daily obstacles that seem constructed specifically to frustrate them.  They write about what it means to be human, to show compassion for others, to find justice for the victims of crime, to self-transcend like my old math teacher always taught, to use one’s abilities to transform the world into a better place (in ways everyone can agree on), and to make us laugh.

These are the true and honest Hollywood writers and, yes, they exist in far greater numbers than you might believe (or want to believe).  The tragedy of the U-BLAHS are that writers are generally unhappy people to begin with and, as I believe Liberals are as well, the tendency to remain within the herd is far more powerful than having the courage to escape it.  That’s why so many writers just sit and complain when they aren’t getting work, instead of breaking with the flock and discovering all the other gifts they have.

It’s never too late.

—–

Klavan speaks at length about the importance of American ideas in great storytelling, the history of Western ideas and values in literature, the new blacklist, the brilliance of David Mamet as both a writer and thinker, the leftist marginalizing of Saul Bellow for political reasons, and the recent censoring of “Huckleberry Finn.”

Brilliant, fascinating, insightful  stuff — especially the segments on “Finn,”  how post-modern theory threatens intelligent storytelling, and how conservative voices are now being heard in the “great conversation” between Right and Left in the uniquely American search for truth.

FYI: In his email, Klavan told me he is now aware Angelina Jolie is not in the new “Atlas Shrugged” film, so no emails please. I assured him that after everyone hears his very last line about Oprah’s Book Club, all will be forgiven.

Klavan blogs here.

Agents have a difficult job, believe it or not. They represent a multitude of clients. Very often, they represent several clients that would each be right for a specific job that comes along. In addition, there are a finite number of producers and a very small number of employers. The ugly truth is that conflicts of interest abound. It’s inevitable. Certain horse-trading must occur in order to get deals done. There are too many crosscurrents for this not to happen. It’s really no different that state or federal politics. It won’t change, simply because there are too many people seeking employment, too few jobs, and billions of dollars at stake.

Agents have it tough. There, I said it. I don’t know of any agent that doesn’t want to see all of their clients working — not just because they want to book commissions, but because they don’t want to feel that they’ve let their clients down. And while jokes abound about the utter inhumanity of agents (and I’m sure there are plenty that are, in fact, not human), many of them have families, just like their clients. They know their clients need to support their families. They know they need employment. Agents must deal with absurd amounts of client insecurity, while also handling deals that are worth millions. Competition is intense within many agencies. There’s a lot of work involved. Think Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross times ten and you start to understand.

Both state law and various Guild agreements effectively prevent agents from owning productions or production entities. The concept is that this protects the artists by preventing conflicts of interest.  If an agency only procures employment for clients in the productions the agency owns, it can limit fees paid to the client in order to maximize the production’s profit.

I think this is ridiculous, for two primary reasons. 1) conflicts of interest already exist, and 2) artists would actually benefit by a lifting of this restriction. I’ll tell you why in a moment, but first I’ll admit that this part of my model is much dicier. There are more variables at play here. Distribution and exhibition can be complex and it is not a zero-sum game. This analysis is not exhaustive or predictive as my other efforts were. It’s more train-of-thought.

The key is to permit agencies to become producers.  It will foster competition.

Presently, Hollywood studios are an oligarchy. Besides being able to use their own capital to finance films, they control the vast majority of the distribution pipeline. A few smaller distributors do exist, but for the most part, it’s the big studios that own the game. On top of this, the most recent trend had been for studios to partner with hedge funds (read: suckers) to co-finance some of these films. Some $5 billion has been committed by hedgies to the studios.

Imagine if the agencies had been permitted to raise some of that capital (or could actually find capital now, in this awful economy). Suddenly, the number of entities capable of producing films on decent budgets would double. With a bit more diligence, both distribution and marketing infrastructures could be added to these agency-studios.  And suddenly we have far more entities financing, producing, and distributing films.  Exhibitors have a wider selection to choose from. 

This is called competition, and one thing we know from basic economics about competition: it creates higher quality product.  Now, studios would have to be far more careful about what movies they choose to make!  I suspect we’d see some of them specialize in various niches. I believe that some would discover that significant ROI’s could be generated from lower-budgeted or specific fare. I think we’d see a wider variety of films made. I think that what we call “independent” films would find wider acceptance.

Would we see more films get made, or would exhibitors continue to grab the big blockbusters and crowd out everything else? One thing is certain: the number of theatre admissions over the past decade has been flat to down, with 2009 improving only because people increase movie-going during bad economic times.

(Domestic Theatre Admissions in Billions; Source: MPAA)

1999 1.439

2000 1.385

2001 1.437

2002 1.597

2003 1.520

2004 1.484

2005 1.378

2006 1.395

2007 1.400

2008 1.364
2009 1.420

One possible interpretation of this trend is that people are not impressed by the content they are being provided. Perhaps, if diversification of content were increased, that might change. It means blockbusters still get made, but perhaps fewer of them get made, or they either play on fewer screens and/or for shorter periods of time to make room for other types of films. Or, perhaps, overall demand will increase, and more screens will come on-line.

I believe this would increase employment across all sectors. More films made means more employment.

As for conflicts of interest, though, I believe that would decrease. To be sure, agencies that own productions will be more inclined to convince their clients to work for less in order to maximize profit. Therefore, artists will be enticed to work for other agency or studio productions if offered higher quotes. In this event, the other studios are not penalized for not representing the artists. If they want the artists badly enough, they’ll pay for them, just as they do now. If the artists don’t want to be low-balled by their own agency, they don’t have to take the work since there are other players.

It also encourages the studios to hire as many writers as they can per my suggestion.  The more writers they have, the more leverage they have in terms of controlling the best material. Therefore, agencies will respond in kind and employ as many of their own clients within their own production entities as possible.

Will this plan work?  At the very least, removing this restriction makes sense not just because conflicts of interest already exist but also because a little entity known as Media Rights Capital is effectively a studio controlled by agency powerhouse WME Entertainment.

Next time: Wrapping it all up.

Be sure to read Parts 1 – 6 of this series.

The American Theatre world was rocked last year by playwright David Mamet’s confession in the “Village Voice” headlined:  “Why I am no longer a ‘brain-dead liberal”.

Some of us saw it coming.

You need only recall Mamet’s 1992 masterpiece “Oleanna” to see that he was already feeling deeply affected by the left’s intolerant and stifling political correctness and the witch-hunt mentality of sexual harassment manifested by the insidious “hostile environment” charge.  You remember 1992…  the “Year of the Woman”?  The fall-out of the Clarence Thomas hearings?  At the time, NY Times critic Frank Rich (yes, before he was telling us how to run our country, he was merely telling us what plays to see) said at the time:

Oleanna … is an impassioned response to the Thomas hearings. As if ripped right from the typewriter, it could not be more direct in its technique or more incendiary in its ambitions. In Act I, Mr. Mamet locks one man and one woman in an office where, depending on one’s point of view, an act of sexual harassment does or does not occur. In Act II, the antagonists, a middle-aged university professor and an undergraduate student, return to the scene of the alleged crime to try to settle their case without benefit of counsel, surrogates or, at times, common sense.

The result? During the pause for breath that separates the two scenes of Mr. Mamet’s no-holds-barred second act, the audience seemed to be squirming and hyperventilating en masse, so nervous was the laughter and the low rumble of chatter that wafted through the house. The ensuing denouement, which raised the drama’s stakes still higher, does nothing to alter the impression that “Oleanna” is likely to provoke more arguments than any play this year.

Remember that this is Frank Rich describing the reaction of a liberal, New York audience.  In the same way that main-stream conservative voices are described in the media as “controversial”, Mr. Rich takes the opportunity to assure the reader that Oleanna would “provoke more arguments than any play this year” as a way of communicating that this play does not take the standard, liberal POV on this issue.  If it did, than where is the argument?  Conventional wisdom at the time suggested that Oleanna was written in a deliberately even-handed way so as to elicit reactions from the audience member that reflected the original perspective they brought into the theatre that night.  In so doing, Mamet was revealing the essence of the sexual harassment debate at that time:  You can never understand what it’s like to be in the other gender’s place in these situations, therefore, it’s best to just play it straight at work and avoid any potential problems.

Of course, the “hidden” theme the playwright conveys is as obvious as the title.  What is “Oleanna” anyway?  It refers to a Norwegian folk song mocking the idea of a Utopian America.  Who, in our society, invokes the desire for a Utopian world where any sexual tension between men and women is removed from the workplace lest it create a “hostile work environment”?  Why liberals, of course… with Frank Rich leading the charge!  In the play’s title, Mamet is ridiculing the desire for a sexual-free work zone and projects the results of the sexual harassment witch-hunt mentality of 1992 in his masterpiece of social commentary.

For me, I started to sense Mr. Mamet had at least sympathy for a more traditional world view when I saw his much-unappreciated 1989 film, “We’re No Angels”.  The story about two escaped convicts (Robert De Niro and Sean Penn) posing as priests in a Canadian-border church and their ongoing attempts to cross the border into freedom  showed a sympathy and reverence for traditional religious and, yes even FAMILY values that one did not expect from the hard-edged Chicago playwright.

But, when Mr. Mamet’s now infamous op-ed was published in The Voice this past March, the band-width on many mid-town Manhattan offices were taxed with all of the forwarded and linked e-mails tagged with the standard “Traitor”, “Idiot”, “Facist” and “Neo-Con” epithets.  At the time of his “coming out” two grand revivals of Mamet’s most celebrated plays were already cast, financed and preparing for their Broadway runs:  The already shuttered “American Buffalo” and the as-of-now still running “Speed-the-Plow”.  Both plays  had already been heralded as landmark literary works and both had already received star-studded revivals in the past, so it would have been shocking for either to receive less than enthusiastic reviews, at least for Mamet’s contributions.  And although “Buffalo” did get killed by the critics over the casting choices and the slow-paced direction, Mamet was left unscathed.

So, does this mean the elite of the theatre critic fraternity have turned a blind eye to Mamet’s apostasy? Not likely.

The real test will be when Mamet offers a new work for public consumption.

Will it be viewed through a new spectrum?  Will critics recognize Mamet’s un-deniable brilliance?  Or, will a hidden meaning be searched for in every scene and in every rapid-fire dialogue sequence?

I have an even more relevant question:  Will the leftist producers and financiers of Broadway plays even option or attempt to raise money for Mamet’s plays now that he has famously referred to these same producers and money-men as “brain-dead”?  Understand this:  Investing in and producing a straight play on Broadway is the same as donating money to a charity.  You don’t plan on seeing the money again and you get a nice tax write-off while you get to feel good about yourself and brag to your friends about how you spent your money.  The odds are so great that you will never see your “investment” again, that the State of New York REQUIRES investors to sign a legal document certifying that they understand they will probably never see their money again.  It’s more paperwork than buying a time-share in Orlando… and it’s not as good a deal.

It will be interesting to see.  At least I know this for sure:  If Mamet’s future plays are not met with backing or received well critically and he perceives that the reason is his article in The Voice, his public response to that situation will be the most entertaining action on Broadway in a long, long time.  I only hope he doesn’t censor himself and he uses all seven of George Carlin’s forbidden words.  (There’s a reason why theatre folk refer to Mamet’s most famous play as “GlenF’INGgarry, Glen F’ING Ross”)

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