Posted on 01/13/2008 9:19:38 AM PST by abb
Longtime Hollywood publicist Julian Myers will turn 90 soon. And he worries the end may be near ... for Hollywood.
Myers frets that the WGA stalemate -- with all of its acrimony, vitriol and job losses -- is a harbinger of ill things for the industry.
"The strike impasse is speeding the end of Hollywood filmmaking and television production," says Myers, who has been working in the biz since 1939 and is still an IATSE member. "There are more union contracts coming up for renewal, and already unionists are crossing union lines. IATSE is urging its members to go right on through. Insults are being exchanged, faces will be bashed and fatalities are a possibility."
Myers, of course, remembers when such confrontations were more common. He recalls participating in a 1946 strike in which 900 unionists were arrested in front of Warner Bros. Studios and bussed off to a Burbank jail.
Now, with tensions again running high, Myers worries that the town might be consumed.
"Does a dying Hollywood need a civil war today to hasten its erosion?" he asks.
ping
“The strike impasse is speeding the end of Hollywood filmmaking and television production,”
Someone is still going to make films and in some way they will be distributed. Shoot, maybe it’s a good time to get in.
Not only that, but continue to put their anti-war drivel out there in movies which don't sell. It's their own fault. If they'd get over themselves and put out pro-American films and quit their immoral spouting, they might do better in the box office.
I’m a 24 fan, and read that Season 7 is delayed indefinitely because of the WGA strike. I want my Jack Bauer fix.
Oh, I sincerely hope so!! I’m sick of this leftist haven of self-centered, self-involved jerks!
The television and film industry is not going away anytime soon.
The industry is actually faced with an historic opportunity.
If they are brave enough to fire all the writers and go non-union with all their labor they can reduce their overhead dramatically.
By forging relationships with cable providers they can leverage on-demand services to sell their content almost directly to consumers on a grand scale.
The decreasing expense and improved quality of CGI and other software could also drive lower film and TV budgets.
Hollywood will be around as long as fools are willing to part with their money for the trash produced. They’ve hung in this long and will probably find some way to adjust to get still more money from those who wish to be victims.
There are plenty of good movies every year. It’s the fools who don’t seek them out.
CGI has single handedly killed action movies. It’s OK for TV shows but unless used with discretion. as in Zodiac, it screams ‘fake’.
You call this NEWs? LOL There is nothing on TV to watch and movies are so often just flops, too. Can count great movies on two hands: Casa Blanca, Gone With The Wind, Rebel Without a Cause, The Notebook, Patton, Rear Window, Notorious, etc.
We may finally get rid of these self-congratulating, anti-American, immoral, drug and alcohol addicted, uneducated, big mouth, Hollyflake socialists.
Just damn! My first ticket from the Posting Police.
LOL!!! That's the only regular TV show that we watch - and I miss it too.
Goodbye and good riddance. They can search for their lost jobs somewhere “over the rainbow.”
Nothing personal. That was a good thread.
Wow — you’ve been here since 2000 and only just got your first? You’re my hero! LOL!!!
Time for Follywood to stop feeding us their sewage and produce genuine good material. I won’t be going to the movie cinemas anytime soon....call it a personal boycott of the industry. I already pay a monthly fee for sewage services.
Hollyweird would’ve been bankrupt a decade ago if the copyrighted works of old that they continue to profit from had lapsed into the public domain AS WAS AGREED at the time of creation and sponsorship.
They have “classics” made by dead people that still bring in the dollars on cable, broadcast tv, home video, and limited theatrical rerlease, plus merchandising.
There aren’t as many “classics” from the past 40 years. The goal today is make your money back in the first week or bury it.
The last writer’s strike brought us ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos’ and ‘Cops’. I suspect the next crop of replacement drivel won’t be as ‘cultured’. Something for the people cheering for the disjointedness of American culture to keep in mind.
There was a period when ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ was in public domain and it proliferated in cheap nearly unwatchable prints. The studios do the best job of keeping those old films in good shape.
Foreign countries get American movies and unfortunately many people there relate American way of life from Hollyweird themes and productions. A lot of anti-Americanism (but not all)are a result of the exported trash from modern Hollywood movies produced often by the demented, twisted minds of liberalism.
As if there’s been much “culture” (assuming you mean GOOD culture) from Hollywierd of late anyway.
This last year was one of the best for American movies in a while.
When many of our kids deem it cool to act, talk, dress and imitate the trash-talking, obnoxious music of gangsta hip-hop thugs Hollyweird gets some of the blame in glorifying and pushing this crap on our kids to make a $$. Plenty of blame to go around concerning the deviants vying to corrupt our children but where are the liberal democrat voices on this matter?
This striker does nothing to slow down the writing and recording of Gangsta Rap.
Yes there are looney tunes in Hollywood and communists/ socialists a plenty hmmmmm kind of like our Congress and Senate or any other business across our country.
Just because of a handful of total left America hating liberals there is no way I want Hollywood to die out.
I love the History Channel, good movies and yes my favorite TV shows.
My cousin works in Hollywood, not an actor but he builds sets and he and others he knows that work with him are strong conservatives.
Something else interesting in comparison, he and his friends are more consrevative then the rino's here at FR wanting to vote for Rudy. LMAO I would hate to see a thread that said how happy a person would be to shut down FR just because of some stupid rino's on here wanting Rudy for President.
Just something to think about
Films and TV shows will still get made just without the added burden of Hollywood flavored socialism and anti-Americanism.
I wouldn't count on it being any more morally uplifting though, if the internet is any example. Choices will abound, though.
Where do you get off spreading common sense around.
It will still be the same people making films regardless of how they are distributed and financed.
Amen! New Media energy signals the dawn of an exciting era of creativity in America. Who really knows where it will go?
Name the good ones. I’m just curious whether or not I agree!!
Zodiac, Margot At the Wedding, There Will Be Blood and probably others I haven’t seen yet.
It’s funny - I had actually not heard of any of those movies. Granted, I usually only get to see kid-friendly movies. But honestly, all I’ve seen promoted here has turned me off so hard that I gave up looking.
Promoted here as in on FR? Most of the movies mentioned here aren’t being what I’d call ‘promoted’. :-) Anyway, Zodiac was about the infamous series of murders in the Bay area back in ‘69 or so. It’s one of the best crime films ever made.
I’ll have to check it out. Thanks! And no — I meant the ones promoted when I do actually get to see a movie. It seems like all the trailers I see are “icky” — to use a non-prefessional term. LOL
Profits are astronomical and the strike will end eventually with a more equitable distribution of payments than there is currently.
“3:10 to Yuma” is an excellent film, too. It takes the audience to another time and place, and returns them better for it.
lol. Either that and/or he's a flaming leftist who thought Stalin was a good role model.
Whatever it takes, old man. Whatever it takes.
You make a good point. Show biz is totally anachronistic and obsolete. It is crying out for some creative destruction.
The Spiderman movies have such aggressive use of CGI that they honestly seem like animated films for long stretches, but almost everyone I've spoken to marvels at how realistic they seem.
Perhaps my brain works differently.
Show biz is most appropriately understood as entertainment, not culture. A movie is no more significant than an athletic event or video game. At best they are lagging indicators of culture, not drivers. To believe otherwise is to buy into the entertainment world's inflated sense of self-importance and desperate need to be taken seriously, against a tsunami of argument to the contrary.
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