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Week Of August 21, 2006 - Snake Handling Mon / Anniversary Wed / Fri
August 23, 2006
Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...
Yesterday was the 9th anniversary of The Hot Button.
Since it was a Tuesday, I decided to wait to "celebrate" until today. But then, Mr. Redstone & Mr. Cruise decided to change the conversation.
Still… I don't much care.
If Sumner Redstone was really dumping people from Viacom for lifestyle choices, he would have to fire a high percentage of people he's hired. The spin about it all being about $10 million in overhead is amusing after the studio has splurged on DreamWorks, carries extra layers of employee fat, has given John Lesher an annual budget no less than 10 times what the old Paramount Classics spent, and are now investing $6 million in building an outlet of The Grill on the lot. (Maybe they're planning on making that money back at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf they're building in the soon-to-be-former Company Store. Soon they'll be building a Crunch in the Marathon Building and making money helping staff lose their Ice Blended weight.)
Anyway… about me…
It's quite amazing how each year of doing this column has been so different in so many ways. When I started, there was no other daily entertainment column, except for Army Archerd in Variety. There were no blogs. Newspaper websites were extremely limited.
These days, not only are there thousands of fairly accessible movie blogs, but I have one, too. And as I found myself nine years ago feeling that there was a need for a daily column about movies and the business of movies, I found myself a few months ago feeling the need to limit the column to three a week, supplemented daily by the blog and, of course, Movie City News.
Even with the reduced output, I find the stats a little surprising. I've written just under 3000 columns, representing about 3.5 million words. Those columns have been read no fewer than 50 million times. (And if I had a dollar for every…)
In addition, today will mark the 1000th entry in The Hot Blog since it moved to the MCN server 17 months ago. In that time, the blog has gotten over 38,500 comments. Before that, housed on TypePad, there were 294 entries and over 5000 comments in its 6 months and 17 days. Really, it's shocking to me that in a couple of weeks, I will have been blogging for two full years.
The first entry was "Do I Need A Blog?" I'm still wondering.
The first Hot Button column was long enough ago that the Sundance Cinemas were launched, cancelled, GCC went under and was sold, and recently, relaunched, with the first Sundance Cinemas finally opening.
DreamWorks launched its first film in my first month… and now, it is part of Paramount. (If I have an 11th anniversary, that might change yet again.)
MGM, UA, Paramount, Artisan, USA Films, Polygram, DreamWorks, and Universal (3 times) have all been sold during this tenure. And technically, you can add Warner Bros, which was "acquired" in the AOL merger.
Gossip culture has risen… newspapers have slid. Television journalism is suffering mightily.
The position of the internet has changed a lot… and hasn't. Just last week, I was talking about "web vs print" with a studio exec who knows better. I haven't heard an angry word from a studio (aside from personality stuff) about Ain't It Cool News in 2 years. I haven't heard a nice word about some others on the web in those same two years.
DVD didn't exist when this column started. There were 1 million websites on earth when it launched. There are over 50 million now. Back then, there was no DSL, Wi-Fi or Blackberry and if you wanted to take your cell phone out of America, you had to rent another phone in the country you visited.
This summer, the industry put out more than a half dozen movies that required an investment, including P&A, of over $300 million. And then, we get a slew of stories about how conservative Hollywood is now getting. (Just can't do it for $250 million!)
The biggest change is how all of us on the web - and that now includes all of Traditional media - feed on one another. It used to be simple aggregation, but with everyone offering an opinion about everything, the echo chamber is often mind boggling. The speed of the news cycle continues to increase to absurd levels and the stickiness of what is considered important is at an all-time low.
Anyway…
I owe thanks. This year, it will first be to you, the readers. You are not only my source of income, but you are my daily source of inspiration and motivation. Knowing that you are out there, waiting… often putting up, in years past, with periods of erratic posting… reading as many as 20,000 words of copy in a single week. I am honored and even humbled, hard as that might be to imagine.
Next up, Laura Rooney, who is my partner on MCN, and who not only posts and designs for the column, but adds the great quotations on the front page each day.
The genesis of the column was at TNT's roughcut.com, where I started writing a weekly while I was still writing at EW, and soon thereafter pushed them into letting me do the daily. Andy "Anderson" Jones talked me into coming to roughcut.com in the first place (and has regretted it ever since). The masterful Scot Safon, then of TNT and now of CNN, oversaw the site and allowed me free reign to express my most wild opinions, no matter who got pissed off.
I want to thank the folks at studios who have gotten the joke. If you don't know, they tend to hate to see their names in print, so I will just leave it with, "You know who you are."
And I even thank those, at studios and in media, who hate my frickin' guts. That is a learning experience each and every time I am confronted with those issues. And hopefully, I will get better at dealing with them one of these days.
And so, as we kick of Year 10 of The Hot Button, a bit of a tradition for this column….
TOP TEN HOT BUTTON RULES OF THUMB
1. Great Media Outlets' Standards Are Less Stringent When The Subject Is Entertainment And That Sucks.
2. $150 Million Is No Longer A Blockbuster In Theatrical… But Right Now Represents The Start Of A Road To More Than $200 Million In Returns to The Studio In Most Cases Thanks To The New DVD Market And Expanded International Theatrical Market.
3. Successful Movie Advertising Sells One Idea At A Time… And There Actually Has To Be An Idea Worth Selling
4. The Story Of The Moment Is Almost Never The Real Story
5. There Are Very Few Journalists In Entertainment Journalism
6. Talent Is Your Friend Until It's Time For Talent Not To Be Your Friend
7. Reviewing Scripts Or Test Screenings Is Selfish And Immoral… You Do Not Know What Effect Sticking Your Nose Into Process Will Have And More Often Than Not It Is Negative
8. Opening Weekend Is Never About The Quality Of The Movie
9. There Are Things I Know And Things I Don't Know And Sometimes They Change
10.Love What You Do And Do What You Love Or Get The Fuck Out.
E Me.
Week Of April 3, 2006 - Life In the Bubble - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of April 10, 2006 - List Week - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of April 17, 2006 - Review Week - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of April 24, 2006 - Overlooked Week - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of May 1, 2006 - Mystery Week - Tue / Wed / Fri
Week Of May 8, 2006 - How We Watch Week - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of May 15, 2006 - Premature Week - Oscar Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of May 22, 2006 - B-13 Mon / Inconvenient Wed / Fri
Week Of May 29, 2006 - Wed / Fri
Week Of June 5, 2006 - 666 Tue / Iraq Doc Wed / Seattle Fri
Week Of June 12, 2006 - SIFF Mon / SIFF Wed / Fri
Week Of June 19, 2006 - Cinevegas Mon/Deliver Us Wed/Prada Fri
Week Of June 26, 2006 - Pirates Mon / Super Again Wed / Fri
Week Of July 5, 2006 - Wed
Week Of July 12, 2006 - M. Night Mon | You, Me & Wed | Monster House Fri
Week Of July 17, 2006 - 8 A Year Mon / Water Wed / Revamp Fri
Week Of July 24, 2006 - Comic-Con Mon / Gossip Wed / Fri
Week Of July 31, 2006 - Mel G Mon / Talladega Wed / Fri
Week Of August 7, 2006 - Mon / Wed
Week Of August 14, 2006 - No Column Mon / Wed / Snakes Fri
