Something strange seems to have happened in this business in the last couple of years. Have you noticed? Everybody's scared. Everybody. Everywhere. You can feel it in the hallways of the major studios, a soft echo drifting back at you from the framed posters of the films they're proud they made. You can hear it in the voices even of rising studio executives, the ones with Porches and stock options. It's right there, lurking just behind the casual confidence they're projecting. Fear. Something has everybody operating in a
constant state of anxiety. It's not panic. It's not loud. It's quiet. But it's there. Tune your radar, you'll pick it up. It's getting nervous behind those gates.

It's not that I think the film business has ever been particularly courageous. It probably can't be when the costs are high, the competition fierce and primary goal is to entertain large numbers of people. But the creation of a good film is always best achieved when the studios are functioning at their bravest. And lately, they're not.

Which seems strange to me. Because the business as a whole, is doing pretty well. Every summer a new box office record gets broken. Every year Tom Hanks gets nominated for Best Actor. Everything is pretty normal. Sure, a few films designed to be hits sink like a rock. A few dark horses come out of nowhere and surprise everyone. Studio executives hate that, of course. But it happens all the time. Always has. Always will. Nothing new. But something has got these guys worried and it can't all be blamed on "The Blair Witch Project."

Now I'm a very lucky fellow. I get to work for those guys. I'm not like a lot of writers I read about who not so secretly despise the big studios and hate the films they make. I like those films. I like to write them and I like to watch them. I like it when the hero says something witty then saves the world. I like being reassured. I enjoy having my tummy rubbed. What concerns me is that this fear is beginning to make it more difficult to actually give them the best films we can.

It manifests itself in the way projects are starting to be developed these days. Just a few years ago when you turned in a first draft and everyone at the studio spent their weekend reading it, praying it made sense, and grinning with relief if it did, they would return to their offices on Monday, exchange congratulations with each other, call you in on Friday, and discuss the things they really took issue with. They were happy that they
had something that was of value. Something that would keep the ball moving forward. A one hundred and twenty page document that would allow them to take the all important next step. Hiring a director. Because when a studio has a screenplay and a director they can start to make a movie.

The director becomes the dad. Whatever the studio guys thought about your script on Friday was less important once dad got involved Monday morning. What Dad thought prevailed. I always imagined that there was some kind of ceremony where the Studio Executive hands the car keys to the Director and says, "you drive." That's what it felt like. The single voice is important to making a good film. It doesn't have to be mine. It usually is at the beginning. Then later it's the director's. The source of the voice can
shift. But a single voice is important. It brings clarity. And that leads to good
story telling, which is the primary reason you like the films you like.

Now it's beginning to change. It's becoming far more common that when you turn in a draft and they take it and read it, you get ten pages of single spaced typed notes. And that's if they LOVED it. That's if they're giddy. And after the meeting you take to discuss those notes, they generate more notes. Yes, the notes have notes. And everyone in the circle of readership must contribute something to this process. Of course they don't always agree, so often the notes and even the notes' notes conflict with each other. Instead of a single voice to contend with, you get the tower of babble.

Now I'm not complaining because writers get notes. Like I said I'm a lucky fellow. We're supposed to get notes. And I'll rewrite my scripts until the cows come home. I always do. Everyone does. Often you're fiddling with things right up to the moment when the actors step in front of the camera. That's part of the process. What I'm getting at is that the effect of so much studio hand wringing right at the beginning can adversely effect the final product. Like anxious carpenters worrying the cabinet to death. Sanding all the edges off. Rounding the corners away. Measuring it against all the other cabinets that were released last week and did huge business. They can worry it until everything unique about it threatens to disappear. I believe that's why so many films coming out of the major studios these days are beginning to all feel alike. Big bland productions that should have been better.

I'll tell you what this reminds me of. The Detroit auto business in the 1970's. It was a fat business then. And the people running it started turning out bigger and blander cars that fewer people wanted to drive. I don't want to see that happen to my business. I love this business. I love big films. I'll take a big studio picture every time over an independent film about some guy in a room exuding ennui for two hours. But they must be bold and brave studio pictures or they will begin to erroneously conclude that audiences don't want them anymore.

The business side of the entertainment business is changing. It always changes. The recent mergers and acquisitions of mega media empires by other mega media empires are creating enormous entities. And they're changing the markets. Maybe that has everyone nervous. I don't know. But I do know this. Whatever the parent company is doing, the job of a movie studio is to make a movie. Everything follows from that.

I was at a party a few years ago with a friend of mine and we were trying to figure out just exactly what a studio executive does. They don't really produce films, they hire people for that. They don't write them. They don't direct them. They don't act in them. They don't photograph or edit them. What precisely do they do? They manage their fear, my friend said. And by doing so, they let the film get made. And to be fair it's a scary job. They must put their reputation and their livelihood at risk in a highly
competitive environment where they have little control over the execution of the
project. That would scare me. They must spend a lot of time praying. A brave studio executive is worth his or her weight in platinum. I've been lucky enough to work with some courageous ones. And I fervently hope they don't go out of fashion.

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