I’m an Internet Filmmaking Millionaire and SO CAN YOU!

There have always been indie film snake oil salesmen. Back in the heyday of the 90s Indie Film Boom there were gazillions of books telling you how if you just sold your car, sold your blood, or sold out your family’s mortgage you too could sell a film at Sundance and be an overnight multi-millionaire. Some of those books had accurate production information, most did not, but they all shared one thing in common: a fairy tale ending that was either disingenuous (if you want to be nice about it) or a straightup lie (if you want to be me about it). In the last chapter (or paragraph) of these books, after the authors had just spent hundreds of pages detailing every aspect of development, pre-production, and post-production, they would wrap up by saying you take your movie to Sundance, start a bidding war, and cash the fuck out with millions of chump change in your back pocket. Welcome to being a fucking hotshot millionaire, babydoll! Of course, the process of selling or distributing a movie is no less complex than the process of producing one… and “disingenuous” may be the fairer judgment against these authors because they probably didn’t even know the process of selling or distributing a movie. Film Production is technical knowledge… it’s bare-knuckled, blue collar hard work. It can be taught in technical schools by guys and gals who’ve worked in the field for decades. The processes of making a film don’t really change… and when they do it makes things easier, not harder. Sales & Distribution on the other hand is a bit more nuanced and, to be perfectly frank, sordid… it’s the type of dark arts practiced on Wall Street and East New York streetcorners. It’s far more difficult to write a book about how to sell a credit default swap or a hit of crack than it is to write a book about how to fix a 1982 Buick… not because Wall Streeters are smarter than mechanics but because situations on the ground change moment-to-moment in a dynamic sales environment, whereas the insides of a 1982 Buick stay pretty consistent through the years. Most writers of how-to-be-an-indie-film-millionaire never sold or distributed a film, so they can claim ignorance when their readers lose their cars, blood, or homes. And the ones who did sell or distribute a film? Well, they tend to leave out some pertinent information.

Here’s the real deal on those books: they’re basically the same thing as a book that spends 300 pages teaching you how to buy a lottery ticket and then the last sentence says “now all you have to do is win.”

In the past ten years, the trend has moved away from filmmaking (people caught on to their games I guess) and morphed into get rich quick books about real estate (that worked well), day trading (even better), etc etc etc.

But guess what has happened over the past few years? THEY’RE BACK! The snake oil salesmen have returned to the world of filmmaking… but not that hackneyed old FILMmaking of the 90s… no, the problem with all those books from the 90s was that they came from back before Myspace and Facebook and spam and bots and torrents and all these glorious things that make it so much EASIER for you to make BAZILLIONS of dollars as a DiY FILMMAKER! Hooray! Because look how much good these technologies have done for bands! Sure, record sales are down 90%, record labels are zombies in search of brains, and the highest level of artistic success most musicians seek these days is a put in Grey’s Anatomy. BUT (!) there’s a band I heard about that sold 1 billion downloads just by having a clever YouTube video! You can do it too! Just read my blog about how to shoot a video for YouTube and you figure out the rest!

As you can imagine, I’m pretty cynical about this crap… not just because I’m an oldass veteran of the 90s but because I’ve been releasing movies in the trenches of massmarket retail, new media internet, and DiY face-to-face tabletops for the past few years and I can guarantee you the numbers these self-proclaimed pundits throw around is either completely fabricated or, at best, partially fabricated. The festivals and markets have become echo chambers where false prophets lie to wide-eyed aspiring filmmakers and say “I’m an Internet Filmmaking Millionaire and SO CAN YOU!” The funny thing is these snake oil salesmen, like the millions before them, make their money by selling you information on how to become a millionaire… not by selling their own films. The people who actually make money selling their films are (not so suspiciously) tight-lipped.

Well, I’ve got a big mouth and a bad attitude, so I feel like poisoning the well all these snake oil salesmen are drinking from. I’ll be your indie film Robin Hood, stealing from the stupid and giving to the ignorant. I’ve dealt with every level of this ridiculous business from Best Buy to anarchist bookshops, I’ve crashed major festivals with renegade screenings and also been a guest and award-winner (not simultaneously, of course), I’ve screened films in cinemas with packed audiences and in people’s apartments for a couple of devoted fans (not to mention empty cinemas and packed apartments). And now I’ll tell you how you too can be a Filmmaking MegaSuperstarGodlikeGiverAndReceiverOfPain! Yay!

Why am I going to tell you all this shit? Well… basically, it’s in my self-interest to do so. My company not only produces films, shows, webisodes, lifestyle videos, etc but we also acquire and distribute independently produced films when we see something we dig or when we meet artists we want to champion. Well here’s a tidbit for you… we almost always lose money on our acquisitions and have to make up the difference on our productions. Why? Because filmmakers aren’t generally the shrewdest people in the world and they’re getting a lot of bad information. No one is telling them how to effectively make films THAT CAN BE SOLD. There are so many good films that are just totally unsellable. How is that possible? How can something be good and unsellable? Well, that’s what I intend to tell you.

I originally planned to write a book specifically for the filmmakers we work with so they’ll stop fucking up their movies and making them unmarketable, but I’ve been convinced that it’s probably better to put the information out their for anybody who wants it. So I’m gonna give it a try writing the book on this here blog.

Oh and I’m gonna charge membership for the content. Not because I want your money (although I’ll gladly take it, thank you very much) but for two reasons:
a- if you’re serious about Media Sales & Marketing you oughta know that free information on the internet IS NOT FREE… it is free because it serves someone’s ulterior motive to give it to you for free and their motive may not sync up with your motives so you could wind up with some very bad information;
b- I piss a lot of people off… already in this blog post I’ve probably alienated half the readers and a lot of people I work with. Well, if there’s gonna be any accuracy to my information it’s going to piss off a lot more people, so for my own self-preservation I have to restrict access to the information. The biggest problem with the web is information without context, and I’m gonna say some shit I don’t want just anybody to stumble across in an unrelated google search.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. In the next few days, the site will be revamped with free content and premium members-only content and I shall commence dropping the knowledge and shilling my own unique brand of snake oil. Not only will it make you a millionaire, it’ll also cure that nasty rash you picked up at Cinetic’s Sundance party last year. Non Serviam- Pizzolo

Illustrated Films vs Motion Comics

Back in 2007, it occurred to me that you could scan the images from a comic book, record radio-play style audio of the dialogue and sound effects, and turn it into a pretty badass underground DVD. I brought some of my favorite underground comix to Brian and asked him what he thought… and he said “if that’d work, somebody would’ve done it by now.” We couldn’t think of anybody who’d done it effectively, so we figured there was a reason it didn’t work and moved on to the next thing.

But I’m a comic book geek, so I didn’t give up on Halo-8 doing some sort of comic book type release and a few months later I started writing a few comic books and set up a publishing arm of Halo-8 to make comics and graphic novels. I went online looking for artists and found the incredible Anna Muckcracker (who took on the task of illustrating ‘Godkiller’) and the wonderful Andrea Blanco & Ale Alvarez (who brought ‘How I Lost My Virginity -by Alexandra Jones’ to life).

I immediately noticed that Anna’s illustrations for ‘Godkiller’ were incredibly cinematic… broad, sweeping landscapes; an epic yet subdued pace; and most of the panels were widescreen to begin with. Plus, the surreal flavor she brought to ‘Godkiller’ made me think it was far more broadly appealing than the viciously visceral aesthetic I’d imagined while first writing it. Anna was an odd choice for ‘Godkiller,’ everyone was confused when I said she was my pick… and truth be told I had to do quite a bit of rewriting to slow down the pace of my storytelling to match her visual style. But the whole was definitely greater than the sum of its parts… at least, greater than the parts I contributed–I’m pretty sure anything Anna does is ridiculously awesome all on its own.

So when Anna started delivering illustrations, Brian and I started tinkering with a new filmmaking format we called “illustrated films,” mixing comic book art with voice performances, elaborate sound design, music, and strategically placed motion graphics. Unbeknownst to us, across town the folks at Warner Premiere were developing what they called “motion comics”–and they started with Watchmen.

We had a few extra obstacles than they did… like for example, Anna still had to illustrate the damn thing and I was rewriting it as she went. It took a really long time before we even had enough existing artwork to do our first feasibility tests… and it was pretty slow-going from there. So we were a bit disheartened when we were knee-deep in the Godkiller illustrated film and people started buzzing about the Watchmen motion comic. The nice thing, though, is that Warner Brothers can take a property like Watchmen and use it to convince people that motion comics are a real media format worth watching… we were really nervous that we’d finish our first illustrated film and everybody would say “we’re not watching that thing… that’s… well, that’s not a thing at all!” So we humbly thank Warner Premiere for doing the heavy lifting of convincing people that these are things and should be treated as such.

However, Godkiller is not a motion comic… at least, not as defined by Warner Premiere. We’re filmmakers and we developed our style with a cinematic aesthetic. Watchmen is different. And I find it actually quite fascinating how Halo-8 & Warner Premiere made significantly different creative choices while developing a very similar format simultaneously but in isolation.

Visually, it feels like Warner Premiere went out of their way to make Watchmen *not* cinematic. I don’t know anybody at Warner Premiere so I can’t say authoritatively why this is, but it seems to me that the inspiration was to create a cartoon utilizing existing art–whereas we started with the inspiration to make a film utilizing existing art. I think that’s why our paths stray from one another so immediately.

Watchmen’s visual design takes the original art from the comic, but ignores the visual language of the comic book and treats it like a cartoon. Most of the negative reviews I’ve read of Watchmen seem to focus on the fact that, although the original artwork is used, the liberties taken with animating it aren’t leading to a net-positive in terms of storytelling.

We faced a similar problem of how best to animate elements from existing artwork without compromising the integrity of the visual storytelling. Our assumption was: this is not a cartoon, so it shouldn’t try to be a cartoon. We should use motion sparingly when it serves the story. Other than that, we should let the format rely on the visual storytelling elements already there and only try to augment them rather than replace them. One of my favorite moments in the whole thing is a choice Brian made to have Dr. West’s brow furrow with no other motion in the frame… so subtle, but so effective.

The other thing I found so strange about the Watchmen motion comic is how fiercely it refuses to be a comic book as well. It really doesn’t utilize, even in a self-aware style, the language of comic books in telling the story. Sure it uses word bubbles, but I mean the architecture of the visual storytelling–most notably, the panels. We tried to incorporate the comic book language in our format, often showing the panels on screen and occasionally using multiple-panel reveals onscreen to borrow effective devices from the book. Brian also created some magnificent moments mixing film editing tropes with multiple panel reveals.

But the most confusing part to me about the Watchmen motion comic is Warner Premiere’s decision to use an audio-book style for the dialogue. Having one narrator read all the voiceover, narration, and dialogue is really unsettling. The only reason I can imagine for their decision to do this was to avoid conflict with the casting of the feature… I guess it could be weird to simultaneously cast one actor to play Dr. Manhattan in the movie and another actor to play his voice in the motion comic. But… I dont know, maybe that doesn’t make sense. I mean, Lionsgate put out an Iron Man animated film right before the live-action movie.

Now, let me clarify myself because I think I sound like a dick: I think the Watchmen motion comic is awesome. I was really impressed by what I saw. But they made some creative decisions that I just don’t get. At all. And I think it’s interesting that we made very different creative decisions when developing our “illustrated film” format.

I suppose I can’t really draw a fair comparison until after “Godkiller” is released and all the critics and reviewers and commenters point out all of our misguided choices… then I’ll go back to Watchmen and see how they did all those things right while we totally fucked them up.

This project is exciting in a different way than most, because it’s an entirely new format of storytelling… and each creative decision is a mix of personal inspiration, synthesizing existing methods, and determining the most effective way to serve the story. So two creative teams with different sensibilities, different backgrounds, and different source materials will create wholly different methodologies.

In the meantime, I’m glad Watchmen came out first so we can compare and contrast as we go.

The Television Will Not Be Revolutionized

Back in October when I predicted the tumbling of film companies, I didn’t expect it to start with our very own distributor. D’oh!
R.I.P. Ryko… you’ve been awesome to us and amazing to all fans of outsider cinema.

It’s been awhile since my last blog, mostly because Brian tells me that my blog postings are too antagonistic and bad for business. The funny thing is right after that last post, US retail went into cardiac arrest… so maybe Brian’s right. Ah well, let’s see how much damage I can do this time around.

Like everybody else, we’ve been reeling for about 8 months. Truth be told, it’s all been pretty rocky since Tower went under… but then in August of 2008 things went from being rocky to being Rocky II (…we’re just trying to hold on longer enough to get pummeled by Clubber Lang). A lot of our fellow labels have gone under or at least circled the wagons, and we’ve had to slim down ourselves… but luckily our overhead is already ridiculously low.

Anyway, during my radio silence we’ve embarked on a few experimental ‘Hollywood-2.0′ strategies, so I’m gonna start laying those out and analyzing the results. For some reason I’m magnetized to attract spam, so we have to approve comments until we figure out how to avoid pages and pages of comments about adding inches… but feel free to comment and tell me just how wrong I am about everything and Brian will make sure we approve those hateful rants to teach me a lesson.

What’s good for Wall Street is not good for Street Cred

In the early days of Hollywood, you had passionate filmlovers running studios and making films by gut and instinct and sheer ballsiness. Not so anymore. The infiltration by MBAs and suits into creative positions is systemic to the point of being cliche, of course, but that’s not the point. It’s the Wall Street mentality I’m getting at… the Enronian psyche of inflating worthless properties and cashing out at the right time. The Business has always been a business, but it hasn’t always been a Pump n’ Dump economy where marketing is more often than not just a ploy to trick consumers into buying shoddy product.

If it sounds like I’m aggravated, that’s because I am. I got a 5-page legal threat in the mail from After Dark Films, the pseudo-independent company behind those tacky billboards of the zombie groping the naked (yet inexplicably aroused) wench. See, they do that film series called “8 Films To Die For – After Dark Horrorfest.”

Anyway, we were booking our Halloween series of screenings and parties at The Engine Theater in LA and figured it’d be handy to have a clever name tying the series together so we jokingly called it “8 Films To Kill For: Halo-ween Fest.” I suppose it wasn’t the cleverest name in the world, but no less clever than Slamdance… or Tromeo & Juliet for that matter.

Well, it didn’t take long for After Dark to throw a shitfit and sic their lawyers on us for trademark infringement. Trademark infringement? We weren’t ripping them off, we were mocking them. I don’t think trademark law is intended to prevent people from making fun of you. I tend to assume our audience is pretty smart, so it never occurred to me they might think we were actually part of that festival with the tacky billboards. I mean, we don’t even have billboards… let alone inexplicably aroused naked wenches. I suppose I should thank them for busting our chops with their crack squad straight out of LA Law… I wouldn’t want to cause confusion and accidentally tarnish our reputation with their lack of street cred. We’re not that self-destructive.

Anyhow, this whole stupid episode is silly and pointless. Calling the film series “8 Films To Kill For” was a dumb gag and if they want to whine about it we’ll change the name… it’s not an actual brand we’re using to sell anything, it was just a joke (and since Lionsgate, with whom After Dark has their production-distribution deal, has a DVD out called “6 Films To Keep You Awake” I figured nobody would care… would it have been ok if we’d only been showing 7 films?).

But After Dark seems to have a reputation for not only being tacky but also being a bully. There was that silly beef between After Dark’s Courtney Solomon and Eli Roth a few years back… kind of like 50 Cent vs Ja Rule except they both looked like Ja Rule at the end of the day. And that contrived controversy over the Captivity posters… at least Elisha Cuthbert didn’t look inexplicably aroused in the billboards where she was being graphically eviscerated. I know Courtney Solomon’s Canadian… is it possible they just have a different billboard-culture up there? Has our neighbor to north had generations of billboards with naked women luxuriating whilst being raped by zombies or smearing their mascara as they gaze wide-eyed from their cages? Maybe I just don’t get it.

Ok, so what does this dork have to do with Enron and Wall Street? According to Hollywood Reporter on 8/17/07, Solomon set up a sister company to After Dark Films called Autonomous Films with $55 million dollars from JP Morgan and another $35 million dollars from a private equity fund (mostly from Hong Kong based real estate financier Zeman). Ok… so if you read the newspaper or own a house, you may see a couple of red flags with JP Morgan and real estate financiers pumping $90 million dollars into a high-risk operation. According to the same article, the company intends to produce and acquire 3-4 mainstream films a year, most in the $5 million-$20 million range. Ok fine, I’m not begrudging this guy his cash money… but lets crack this thing open. According to IMDbPro, Autonomous Films’ top-ranked release is “Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006),” which was released theatrically in October 2007, on dvd March 2008, and incidentally had its own tacky billboard controversy. Also according to IMDbPro, the budget was estimated at a reasonably low $1m. IMDb doesn’t know how much anybody spends on marketing, so let’s assume they spent ZERO money on marketing. Why not? Maybe all those tacky billboards were free. Well, IMDb says the box office gross was $104k. Notice “k” not “m” after the dollar amount. Ok, but we all know that box office is a loss leader (Autonomous certainly didn’t get anywhere near $104k back from the theaters), and the real money is in DVD. So… let’s see what Nielsen Videoscan says about “Wristcutter” dvd sales: 11,574. If we’re ridiculously optimistic, we can estimate that Autonomous gets $10 per dvd (and that’s without the per-unit cost of manufacture, but who knows… maybe he pulled a favor and got them manufactured for free). So… without deducting a penny of marketing costs or even DVD manufacturing costs, and even erring on the side of irrational exuberance with what the actual revenue would be… STILL JP Morgan and the private equity financiers are taking a bath on this movie.

Is it unfair that I’m using Autonomous’ arthouse (?) film as an example in this blog since I clearly have a stick up my ass about After Dark and am just using Autonomous as a foil in my meanspirited and reactionary assault? Maybe… so let’s instead look at After Dark.

According to IMDbPro, “Captivity” is After Dark’s top-ranked release. You know that one, the billboards were so unbelievably tacky that they all had to be taken down and replaced with new ones saying “Captivity was here.” Wow, that’s almost as clever as “8 Films To Kill For”–but I digress. (BTW- The difference between those two clever bits of marketing is that the Captivity one cost an unconscionable amount of money since it’s not just expensive to rent the billboards, but the posters themselves are expensive–whether they show graphic images of torture and evisceration or just faux-graffiti text.)

According to IMDbPro, the “Captivity” budget was $17 million. Box office? $2.63 million. Nielsen Videoscan numbers? 50,764 ‘unrated’ dvds and 5,685 ‘rated’ dvds (who the fuck bought the rated version??). So here we are again. Maybe all those billboards were free. Maybe they didn’t spend a nickel on marketing and they manufactured the dvds in a sweatshop where 9 year olds are paid NOTHING to manufacture “Captivity” dvds. STILL this would be coming in at a deficit of about $14million. That’s a loss of $14 on an investment of $17. That’s not good math. Sure there are other revenue streams, but (a) those other revenue streams ain’t making back $14 million, and (b) those billboards weren’t free.

In fairness, “Captivity” was an acquisition and I don’t know how much After Dark paid for it. Maybe he got it for free and turned a sweet profit. If that’s the case: nice job, dude… maybe you made a small fortune by starting out with a large one.

I’m not somebody to go kicking people in the balls for losing money on their investments or for trying to make films that don’t make it into the black at the end of the day. I think it’s cool that Courtney Solomon can get a bunch of funny money and turn it into movies… I hope he directs Dungeons & Dragons 2 & 3 & 4. But, dude, when your movies are losing this much money, maybe you oughta focus more on your films and less on siccing lawyers on my Halloween parties. Jeez.

Business Affairs departments are out of control in Hollywood. More people are paid to prevent movies from being made and events from being produced than are out there actually creating content. And funny money from Wall Street is propping up a few companies who are deficit-spending their way into oblivion… and also using that money to crush competition from companies like ours who actually struggle to turn a meager profit and re-invest that profit in more movies. How quaint and Industrial Age of us.

So next time you hear about our tax dollars buying bad mortgages and guaranteeing JP Morgan financial buyouts, think about the fact that somehow a few of those dollars are trickling down to pay After Dark’s lawyer to threaten my Halloween party.

The last page of After Dark’s legal threat demands I immediately disclose the following information:

Q 1. State the locations of all planned and scheduled events and provide samples or any and all advertising and promotional materials utilizing the “8 Films To Kill For” mark;

A 1. Well, we’re having parties and screenings at The Engine Theater in Hollywood from Oct 23-29, but it’s not called “8 Films To Kill For.” Now it’s called “Halo-8: Films That Kill.” There are no advertising or promotional materials utilizing the name “8 Films To Kill For.” We were gonna buy a billboard, but then decided it would be a bad investment.

Q 2. Describe precisely what steps you plan to take to advise the public that there is no association of your film festival with my client and the actions you are taking for the removal of all uses of the “8 Films To Kill For” mark;

A 2. You’re lookin’ at it.

Q 3. Identify fully the individuals responsible for the conception of the “8 Films To Kill For” mark;

A 3. I thought you guys thought of it… oh wait, that was the other one? The “to die for” one? Sorry, I get confused cuz they’re so similar.

Q 4. Pay my client’s damages and attorney fees in an amount yet to be determined.

A 4. Only if your client pays me back the 2 hours of my life I wasted watching “Captivity.”

Some of your friends are already this fucked…

Back in 1994, I read issue 133 of Maximum Rock n Roll and it seriously affected the decisions I would make over the course of the next 14 years. The issue was called “Major Labels: Some Of Your Friends Are Already This Fucked.” I even hung the cover on my wall to never forget the lesson (and to freak out people visiting my roommates). The only reason the essays & articles are not really relevant anymore is because the music industry is totally and completely fucked right now. That said, I know plenty of contemporary musicians who have signed deals in the past year that they’ll soon regret (if they don’t already). But I don’t give a fuck about them right now, because I’m not here to write about the music industry. I’m here to write about the film industry. Which is fucked. And if you have friends in the film industry, then your friends are fucked. The difference between the music industry in 2008 and the film industry in 2008 is that the music industry KNOWS it’s fucked. The film industry is racing toward the edge of a cliff and doesn’t have the sense to hit the brakes. That’s a good thing, in my humble opinion, because I believe it’s too late to hit the brakes. I suggest we slam on the gas and hope there’s land across the chasm.

This blog is an exploration of what I call Hollywood-2.0, the reform and reconstruction the film business must undergo in order to survive. Part of it will be a critique of what is going wrong right now and why. Part of it will be thoughts on what might help. And part of it will be guess-and-check as I put the theories into practice at my own business and see what works and what doesn’t.

Why me? Well, I think I have a fairly unique point of view. In 1996, I dropped out of the screenwriting department at NYU’s Tisch and made an old-school, bare-knuckled, 16mm guerrilla film on borrowed equipment and film stock left over from TV shoots. I didn’t win the lottery at Sundance and I didn’t sign a 3-picture deal with Lew Wasserman, but I did get to travel to other countries, meet fascinating people, and eventually parlay the film into founding a film company with major level distribution… and to this day that fucked up little movie still outperforms most of the contemporary projects I champion. Hell, just last week some festival in Finland sent me 400 bucks to screen it… that’s like 3 months worth of double soy lattes right there. Anyway, my entree to the business was writing, producing, directing a film and then hustling it across a few continents and trying to get it distributed without just selling it outright (since I’d met a few filmmakers in my travels who shared plenty of horror stories). Well, it took a bit longer than most, but I wound up using the film to start a film company modeled after indie record labels with distribution through Sony-BMG. See, DVDs ship to retail through the same infrastructure as CDs… so instead of selling the movie to a film company, I set up a label with a distribution deal through a music distributor. In the first year we distributed 6 titles (3 DVDs and 3 soundtrack CDs). That’s where I learned the hard knocks of distributing to retail. As a youngster, I’d worked at Tower Records, Tower Video, Kim’s Video, Two Boots Video, See Hear Zines, St. Mark’s Comics, and Village Comics, so I was no stranger to retail… but those trenches are a far cry from the film & TV production offices I’d worked in over the years. Year 2 of running the label was a disaster as we suffered from the Year 1 learning curve as well as the demise of the music retail business (Tower shutting down was almost the end for us). In Year 3, we moved to a new distributor more evenly focused on film & music (Ryko Filmworks, who’d recently been purchased by Warner-Elektra-Atlantic), stopped making soundtrack CDs, and put out 15 DVDs and 2 comic books.

My observation that forms the thesis of this blog is that there is a major disconnect between the Hollywood movers & shakers and the soldiers in the trenches. My friends who collect studio paychecks and hit the streets for the Writer’s Guild strikes and sell movies at Sundance are oblivious to the realities of the distribution sales rep shilling shiny plastic discs to retail buyers, who in turn hawk those shiny plastic discs to end consumers. Because I’m too much of a jackass to do anything in a way that already exists, I’ve carved out a very strange career where I deal with *all* of these folks each day… and so I am uniquely suited to tell you that this business is totally fucked. Don’t believe me? You don’t have to… did you believe the people warning you that Tower would go under? Wherehouse? Suncoast? Media Play? How about Bear Stearns? Merrill Lynch? Lehman Brothers? Washington Mutual? Wachovia? Well… I’m telling you the same thing could happen to Hollywood–correction, the same thing IS happening to Hollywood. Would it surprise you if tomorrow you woke up to learn Paramount is no more? Warner Brothers? Disney?

The current system in Hollywood is no longer tenable. If you doubt that, walk into any record label and notice the clean squares of carpet where desks used to be. But enough belly-aching… let’s see what can be done.