Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales From the New Abnormal in the Movie Business

by Lynda Obst

  “But look, Kev,” I shot back, “there were fifteen comments on the blogs this morning about sequel fatigue—these movies that are made for two hundred million dollars that are basically built for international. The movie stars won’t be in them. They realize they’re basically making product. Nobody comes to America to be a star in Russia and China. Who wants to be in that business? Penélope Cruz left Spain to be a star here, not in China. Eventually, these monstrosities of product will become burdensome for the actor to reboot, if not the studio. They will have to turn into Law & Order: a new cast each time, and a product where the title is bigger than the star.”

  Kevin smiled. “They don’t need stars in Russia and China. They don’t care about them.”

  I started to get it. So they can invent stars for tentpoles, pay them less up front and tie them in to infinite options for sequels, like with Chris Hemsworth in Thor. The franchise is the star and the movie already costs a fortune.

  Kevin answered slyly, “I think both of us know that the reason to cast Chris Hemsworth as Thor originally had nothing to do with his numbers internationally.”

  And it was clear as a bell. “But now he has huge international numbers that allow him to make the other movies he wants.”

  Bingo.

  This is what happens when the title is more important than the star, like with the James Bond franchise. And this is the reason for reboots: If they start over, they don’t have to keep upping the salary of the lead.

  Kevin said, “The studios are in the branded carnival business. Their job is to make amusement park rides.”

  “Really?” I asked. “We’re in the amusement park business?”

  He looked at me as if I were his very slow half sister visiting from Iowa. “Lynda. Never lose yourself. Don’t forget this: We’re in a business. If we can make six-hundred-forty-billion-dollar rides, why would we want to make two-hundred-forty-billion-dollar rides? It’s a business. Widgets.”

  I have always known we were in a business, but making “widgets” had never occurred to me. I love movies, and a few $240 million rides had served me fairly well so far. The current contempt for that kind of profit struck me as deeply problematic.

  This grand slam sensibility, along with the economic doom that caused it, has swiftly and fundamentally changed the culture we live in here in Tinseltown. I will show how in this section using some hyperbole, though not much.

  CULTURE CHANGES OF THE NEW ABNORMAL

  Casting in the Old Abnormal

  Here’s a bad version that gives a good idea of what changed.

  In the Old Abnormal, you could have a really substantial casting fight:

  GUY EXEC: I would never fuck her.

  HIS BOSS: How old is she? A hundred?

  CHICK PRODUCER: (a laugh covering her alarm) I think she’s brilliant. But if you guys hate her …

  FEMALE CASTING DIRECTOR: (changing the subject) What about Dude Z for the love interest? Marty just signed him for his next picture.

  CHICK PRODUCER: He’s hot!

  GUY EXEC: He’s so gay!

  CASTING DIRECTOR: Do you mean literally?!

  GUY EXEC: No, I just mean, like, he’s so gay, like I would never see a movie he’s in.

  CASTING DIRECTOR: Let me send you some tape.

  Casting in the New Abnormal

  STUDIO HEAD: Who have you got for the guy?

  DIRECTOR: I’ve been talking with Ray Liotta.

  (Everyone stares at him as if he were from Mars.)

  PRODUCER: He meant Robert Downey.

  INTERNATIONAL MARKETING: He’s worth thirty in Asia alone since Iron Man.

  (Studio Head smiles, relieved. Emotionally joins the meeting.)

  GUY EXEC: He’s booked for two years. How’s that possible?

  STUDIO HEAD: We’ll wait.

  (Director sinks in his chair, emotionally departs meeting.)

  INTERNATIONAL MARKETING: We break even before we open. Not counting Russia and China.

  STUDIO HEAD: Who does? He’s great in Europe and Japan too. Let’s wait. We don’t need the picture this year.

  (Producer emotionally departs meeting.)

  DOMESTIC MARKETING: Who’s the girl? Hugh Jackman’s daughter?

  PRODUCER: (to Studio Head) You want cheap, or you want to spend money?

  GUY EXEC: Why don’t we get some Victoria’s Secret model and save the money for the effects?

  DOMESTIC MARKETING: Cameron Diaz or Emma Stone. I want some humor on the marquee.

  PRODUCER: But it’s a thriller.

  DOMESTIC MARKETING: You make it, I’ll tell you how to sell it.

  As I’ve illustrated, there were urbane and constructive conversations (pardon my nostalgic interpretation) in the Old Abnormal, wherein everyone had a say and some sort of creativity was the order of the day. We all understood that these things were subjective, and we took chemistry and age into account, as you can see.

  In the New Abnormal version, the age range between Emma Stone (The Help and Superbad) and Cameron Diaz (Bad Teacher, There’s Something About Mary) is almost twenty years. Also note that there was no casting director in the room to point out that Cameron Diaz should play Hugh’s wife, not his daughter. Domestic and international marketing make these key decisions much of the time, unless Steven Spielberg, David Fincher, or some other directing god is at the helm.

  In the Old Abnormal there was always a ballsy, smart casting director in the room, originally from New York, with pictures and data on credits and ages. Usually a “she,” she knew every New York actor, every director the actor in question had worked with and critical biographical gossip about the actor, not to mention a cheaper but great alternative for every part. At the studios now, her main function is simply to make the actors’ deals after they have been chosen. (There are still some great casting directors working hard with the A-list directors right now, discovering actors and making subtle choices. Thank God.)

  In the Old Abnormal, when we were casting pictures based on casting criteria, she was a key part of the discussion. At least for one moment during our profane conversations, “chops”—actual acting talent—came up. Chops conversations are the art of casting, involving the nuances of various specific performances.

  With good studio heads, chops were always important. With good directors, even more so.

  Example:

  STUDIO HEAD: Does he have any chops?

  CASTING DIRECTOR: I never thought so, but I saw his screen test for Brokeback Mountain3 and he blew my mind. He was all over that part. He was depressed. He was subtle. He was big where he needed to be.

  EXEC: But he didn’t get the part, did he? I found him wooden in Toy Story.

  CASTING DIRECTOR: But he was playing a tin soldier. And it was animated.

  PITCHES: A PRACTICE

  Another Casualty of New Abnormal

  Another casualty of the New Abnormal that forever changed the culture of Hollywood is the now-almost-extinct pitch meeting. Pitch meetings were the way we met and creatively played with one another; it was our commercial and social interaction—plus, there could be a prize at the end called a sale! With the studios’ New Abnormal abstinence policies in regard to development spending and lack of interest in original ideas, this custom, which was a huge part of our work and social life, is now gone with the cold wind. The entire content of the workdays of execs, producers and writers has changed with it.

  When there was extra money in the system, we all spent much of our week collaborating on and then pitching new ideas for movies to the studios. Idea plus hot writer-producer equaled pitch equaled possible movie. But now, with their concentration on tentpoles for the international market, the studios know they are unlikely to find a “big title” in a pitch from a young writer with fresh ideas. Mattel and Marvel are better options.

  In the Old Abnormal, studios vied for the hot new idea or writer they were hearing about from agents, and bidding wars sometimes broke out for them. (More gallows laughter.) Fifty percen
t of a producer’s job and 75 percent of a writer’s livelihood was a practice that subsided slightly and then finally stopped (with rare exceptions) in the aftermath of the 2008 writers’ strike. But pitch meetings were once the superfood of the life of Hollywood. They made the town interactive, personal and social, and flushed ideas in and out of its system and into the market.

  I met most of the writers I know through pitches. Most of my Los Angeles social life comes from the past twenty years of pitches and scripts (and sometimes even movies!). Flashdance started as a pitch, and Dawn Steel, who helped get that movie made at Paramount, became my best friend and ally, and eventually made me a producer. I pitched over half of my movies to studios first as ideas with writers, including One Fine Day and The Siege. I remember making up One Fine Day: I was raising my young son at the time and thinking, The only way I am ever going to meet a guy is if I literally run into him on a field trip. So I pitched the idea of a single mother on a difficult day at work who misses her child’s field trip at the same time as a single dad does, and they chase the field trip around NYC together with their kids, falling in love—first to Michelle Pfeiffer, who became my partner, and then to Fox. We were all thrilled to cast George Clooney, who had to commute from the set of ER—which was only a problem the day he got a black eye at lunch playing basketball with the grips and I had to return him to L.A. with a shiner.

  The Siege was based on a series of articles about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in the New York Times by reporter Tim Weiner. I wondered what would happen to the civil rights of New Yorkers if a bigger threat stopped the city. I brought it to Ed Zwick, and we pitched it to Fox and Denzel Washington, as they had just made Glory together, for which Denzel had won his first Oscar. This is how we worked: Pitches were a vital life force of creativity that coursed through the bloodstream of the industry, pushing us to create new ideas with new minds. They stimulated the market, rendering the industry and each studio less of a bubble.

  We got to know our generation and a younger generation. We got to know funny people and brilliant people. This was the fuel of development. A writer made a good living out of pitches that he sold that were never made. (But could have been, and might still be.) The studio now calls that fat. Writers called it a mortgage.

  The absence of the pitch has radically changed the lives of all Hollywood execs, producers and writers. I imagine fewer dates, romances, marriages and partnerships, because that’s how all of us met! (Of course, there was no Match.com, so you had to actually meet.) Everyone has fewer projects stewing, and there are precious few opportunities to make up new ideas and collaborate with your new or best friends.

  To take you back to the Old Abnormal, or to rare moments within the New:

  A pitch meeting consists of a team composed of a producer and a writer (or multiple writers) and another team of studio executives led by an alpha, in whose office it takes place. The producer-writer team practices for weeks before the event—a transactional-theater-meets-ritualized-mini-cocktail-party, sans alcohol. The drink is always bottled water, and the writers wear baseball caps, while the producer (unless part of a comedy writers’ consortium) dresses up a bit more, in a nod of respect to the execs, and also to prove we can still afford couture.

  The pitch has four stages:

  THE PREP: The producer warms the room. There is much talk of family, dating, boyfriends, playoffs if the season justifies it, vacations and industry gossip (the harmless kind).

  THE WIND-UP: The beginning of the segue into the idea. The wind-up is always led by the producer (or director if he or she is there) and prepares the execs for the tone of the pitch. It should contain a real or allegedly real event that is either autobiographical or ripped from the headlines that sets up the idea. Then the producer completes the brilliant segue, passing the baton to the writers.

  THE CONCEPT: This is when the writers take over. They perform the theater bit of the pitch, which they’ve often memorized.

  This is done in sketch format and is pretimed in rehearsal. The sometimes smiling, sometimes phlegmatic execs have short attention spans, and the moguls they in turn pitch to have even shorter ones.

  THE WRAP-UP: This is the opportunity for the producer to lay out the way the movie fits into the marketplace, peppering it with examples of hot casting ideas and specific similar hits sampled for each studio. “It’s Tootsie-meets–Ocean’s Eleven!” Then you leave. Fast.

  In the New Abnormal, whatever pitches are going in to the studios are accompanied by an array of materials: a reel of effects, a short film, a poster, a business prospective, or even a newly commissioned graphic novel. This is a virtual campaign the team must mount—out of pocket—to prove to the executive the commercial potential of the idea and its possible promotion strategies. Little is left to the imagination.

  What the writer says is secondary to the campaign’s ability to hook the execs with its potential big bull’s-eye—its marketability. That is, if the team can get through the door in the first place.

  Every so often in the New Abnormal, a studio decides they’re open to a pitch. (In June of 2012, studios bought two, one in multiple bidding! A cause célèbre worth reporting.) In 2009, the studios were taken with Liam Neeson’s Taken. (“They took his daughter. He has ninety-six hours to get her back.”) It grossed $145 million domestically and $82 million internationally, and it cost $25 million to make. This looked like a “model,” not a fluke. The studios put out the word that they were hungry for like-minded movies. It worked internationally, it worked domestically, it could be cloned, and Liam Neeson was cheap (then). The whole model could be done five hundred different ways and could be made for a reasonable price. After every conceivable family member was set up in an Insta-pitch (“They stole his mother. He has ninety-six hours to get her back.” “They stole her husband,” et al., ad infinitum). The first semi-iteration was released in 2011: Abduction, with Taylor Lautner (of Twilight fame, huge numbers internationally). It flopped, because it forgot to be about kidnapping his daughter or sister and was instead about something else too complicated to relay. While Taken 2, actually with Liam Neeson, was in production, it didn’t deter three thousand producers and financiers from trying to clone it every other way imaginable. The sequel was finally released by Fox and producer Luc Besson, who assumes ownership of the movie four years after its original release in October 2012. The original Taken budget was $25 million, and Liam Neeson was paid $5 million to make the film—whereas Taken 2 has an estimated budget of $80 million, and Neeson’s fee is “not reported,” which loosely translates to “so high the agent will not use it as a future ‘quote’ ”—i.e., precedent—for other pictures: a considerable multiple of $5 million. On the weekend of October 7, 2012, Taken 2 took in a huge $50 million domestic at the box office, the biggest weekend since The Dark Knight Rises. The former one-off thriller is certainly now a franchise for Fox, and every member of CIA agent Neeson’s (Bryan Mills’s) extended family will be kidnapped in Taken 3, 4, and 5.

  The New Abnormal, with its fewer movies and pitch meetings, its tiny expense accounts, and its centralized buying in the executive and marketing suites, has transformed the jobs of execs, agents and producers, as well as the whole process of how movies are bought and developed. All the lively interaction that went on between execs and producers to generate alliances and commerce, all the dinners and power lunches, went kapoof! Where are they? What happened? How did the rocking glamour capital of the world end up with execs acting like nerds from Silicon Valley? What transformed the lifestyles of the rich and famous, or almost rich and striving to be famous? Every portal became a wall. Business went indoors, and the thrill of meeting new people, forging new alliances and making up movies with new friends every month was gone.

  A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE NEW ABNORMAL: ONLINE

  While pitches haven’t been selling in the New Abnormal, a YouTube video by an unknown director can suddenly blow up on the marketplace, and there will be three studios bidding for it.
(Without having yet met the director!) That would never have happened in the Old Abnormal, because there was no YouTube. Maybe execs are busy watching YouTube instead of hearing pitches. Our work is virtual.

  Picture this:

  The exec is in his office, surfing the net, between studio meetings. He can get everything online, even “content,” the New Abnormal word for material that eventuates on some device in the online universe. He gets his morning news on Deadline Hollywood, the compulsively read news blog that has replaced industry trades like Variety from the Old Abnormal. He checks into the Huffington Post for a sec. Then he goes to work, but not like we used to: He’s still online. He gets director and writer ideas for his projects from freely shared online lists compiled by a multitude of execs, while we used to make them up from scratch. They get other vital data online, like whose recently turned-in Disney script “tanked,” what director dropped out of what project, etc., via “tracking boards,” also online. None of this used to exist, since we had no computers to speak of. (Okay, maybe we had computers, but they linked to nothing.) We created our own directors and writers lists from analog books, which led to mistakes like pitching my bosses several writers who turned out to be dead.

  The exec checks into the tracking boards—email groups on Yahoo! or Google or on coveted private email lists—written by assistants, junior execs, agents and their assistants, all of whom are privy to way more chitchat than I am. The tracking boards are like an industry “cloud” brain. The exec goes on the boards for gossip: Who is getting fired? Promoted? What sold yesterday? We used to speak on the phone to hear this stuff. Then the exec goes to IMDb, the definitive Web site for credits, and he goes to Google or Wikipedia for any development content–type info he needs for a meeting. He is online so much, he emails much more than he calls. A call starts to feel like an intrusion.

  With fewer pitches to hear, he or she has more time to do ever more work online. Research! Look for books! New Young Adult (YA) vampire series! This is a treasure trove of great ideas. YA is where the Hunger Games and Twilight series came from. Why talk to people when there are graphic novel sites?! Who needs pitches?