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Which reminds me... apropos of nothing, but it's a show-biz story that fits the thread.

The Warner Brothers Burbank lot has gone through massive changes in the last two decades, much of it involving the construction of additional executive offices. In fact, one of the things often cited as an example of what's happening to the business is that they keep building offices for executives, but no new stages.

At any rate, despite all the new offices, the cool place to be located is on the north west corner of the lot where there's an old two-story office wing built around a central courtyard. That's where Jack Warner used to have his offices. There's a classic Warner story involving that location.

From his office, Jack could see the writers coming to work every morning. The actual writers building was right in the vicinity too, and he'd occasionally take a walk through it. What he noticed is that writers are incredibly undisciplined when it comes to the clock.

After several months of growing increasingly irritated at this behavior, he finally wrote a memo that read something to the effect of.... "To the writers: The executives of this studio get to work on time, Doctors get to work on time, even a *%# Banker gets to work on time, my writers can d**n well get to work on time".

Late that afternoon he received a re-write on a script that was roughly half the length of a normal 120 page screenplay. With it was a note from the writers that read, "Dear Jack, here's the first act, have the *%# Bankers do the rest."

If I recall correctly, though I'd heard it before, that story along with a multitude of others and a lot of great insights into the business appears in Bill Goldman's "Adventures in the Screen Trade", which I highly recommend to anybody who's a dyed in the wool movie fan.

LOL!

Is that office of Warner's the one they used for the producer in Roger Rabbit? Sounds similar.

IMHO, the quality of Hollywood's product has been inversely proportional to the number of "suits" working on it.

Speaking of moguls, I just watched The Wings Of Eagles again, the story of Spig Wead. I'd forgotten John Ford had Ward Bond do a spoof of himself - it was pretty funny.