Gilded Hollywood

Twenty two years ago I left Hollywood and moved back to the town where I grew up. Cedar Falls, Iowa, had not changed that much in the 28 years since I’d left in 1975, but it offered something my career out west could not: financial stability. 

The business of “Show” was never about being a business with a corner office, benefits and healthcare, and with the exception of the long defunct “studio system” was never built around any promise that anyone could make it a career. I had a good run with many ups and downs but in the final analysis there were always tv shows, movies, commercials and voice overs in the pipeline. 

That was then, this is now. 

Today, Netflix, Disney+, HBOMax, AppleTV, Amazon, and many others have capitalized on the growing trend of “cord-cutting.” People abandoned traditional cable TV in favor of more flexible, on-demand streaming and the competition has led to a flood of new shows being produced to attract and retain subscribers on each platform.

Sounds good for actors and crews looking for work with the increased activity. Not quite. There is another factor at work. These streaming platforms are profit engines, not creative industries.

They call their product “content” creation and not “creative” content. It’s more than semantics, it’s a business model. The streaming network and the producers who supply the content have designed the system to maximize profits. Actors are paid less, writers are paid less, and crews are streamlined as production budgets are decreased. The money being made is to satisfy the network, the shareholders and the producers of “content.”

Crew members are experiencing high unemployment due to a combination of factors. The rise in streaming and also recent strikes by actors and writers that halted production. And there has been a shift in filming locations to areas outside of Los Angeles. A lot of people who are highly trained, who had built good careers out of their chosen profession, are now desperately unemployed or find work sporadically and far below the standard of living they had once forged.

Please do not place blame on the actors and writers who called strikes on the producers in order to bring their needs to the table. The entire industry of craftspeople, artists, and creative talents has been hit hard.

The actors and directors that we see regularly on award shows and, of course, headlining the movies and shows we enjoy, are doing fine but they are about 2% of the industry. 

Which brings me to this point-

The entertainment industry, even with its intellects, talents, efforts to broaden horizons, inform, champion, and entertain, has become part of a new Gilded Age. 

The Gilded Age in America in the late 19th century was an explosion of industry but also defined by the extreme divide between the haves and the have nots. Corporate corruption was rampant and labor formed unions to gain an equitable piece of what was being siphoned to the top. This is happening today as unions are marginalized by corporate entities being supported by government subsidies and inordinate tax breaks. And Hollywood, liberal as we may be below deck, has been corporatized by the old gilded ship.

I watched the Oscars the other night but was jaded after having read a post by the spouse of a Hollywood crew member who was suffering from unemployment. Their concern for their husband was a moving testimonial representing many many others. Suddenly the expensive gowns and tuxedoes and the lavish sets at the Oscars looked like the grand staircase leading to the Titanic’s first class lounge. 

The Oscars, as always, carried an uplifting message of unity and celebration of art, and the show was entertaining (which is its central purpose) but it was also a celebration of opulence for the small percentage who get to participate. Only two weeks earlier I was at the Saturday Night Live 50th Anniversary shows and although I had a great time, and I have shared a very positive experience, I was also a trifle disingenuous. I didn’t call attention to the extravagance except to say that I was within the circle. 

Events and parties were designed to be bigger and more opulent than the last one or any others for that matter. They were impossible not to enjoy, yet I couldn’t help but feel, even as only an invited guest and not one of the celebrants, that such excess might be the wrong display in view of creative peers suffering. 

No one thought about that, though. I made a mental note of the excess, but I posted pictures of myself gloating amidst the fun because I was part of the new Gilded Age for a couple of evenings and I rubbed shoulders with the new Vanderbilts and Guggenheims. But like the last Gilded Age, this, too, will come to an end.

Is there an answer beneath this rant? Yes. Consciousness. Nothing I write, or a hundred others write, will change the system of Hollywood that is currently the engine of Netflix, Amazon, Disney, etc. and fueling our tastes for more “content.” And neither the Oscars nor Lorne Michaels is going to cut back on the ice sculptures or caviar for their next celebration, but there is always an aquifer of consciousness running beneath the marble flooring of excess.

Just as it did in 1900, a current of organized labor, investigative journalism and progressive ideologies will surface. And over time, those marble floors will require a laborer to remove the stains.