The consensus is clear: Hollywood feels it must pursue whatBob Igertactfully (or ominously) calls some fixes.
The fixespost-strikehopefully will move beyond cutbacks and delays weve already been absorbing their impact.
Disney alone has cut 8,000 jobs and $7.5 billion in costs.
The Hollywood SignDavid Livingston/Getty Images for The Hollywood Sign Trust
High-profile movies ranging from DisneysSnow Whiteto ParamountsMission: Impossible 8to SonysSpider-Versehave again been shoved back a year.
Its viewers worldwide will be fascinated to see how that plays out.
Compensation formulas would be re-invented, as would the machinery of decision-making.
From left:Jeffrey Katzenberg,Steven SpielbergandDavid Geffenat 1994 news conference announcing the formation ofDreamWorksSKG (Getty Images)
The product itself would break new paths.
Who would fund it?
What content would it create?
For that matter, what would it be called?
While the media scoffed at this vagueness, I found it admirable.
The seers of show business werent going to give away their secrets or lecture the community on its backwardness.
They were simply going to do it all right.
The problem: He never got around to building his new studio and never even found his ideal location.
He ended up back on the Universal lot, where hed started as a kid.
Of the three founders, only Spielberg still makes movies.
Geffens focus is art and Katzenbergs is politics.
Biskind quotes Michael Fuchs, the first HBO president, declaring, HBO died at fifty.
Theres no longer an HBO.
He also cites John Landgraf of FX propounding that, You dont make art by throwing money at it.
At some point that stopped seeming true.
Perhaps it never happened.
