Within show business, especially Canadian show business, and most especially within the briefs submitted to regulators by established production companies and broadcasters, it's fashionable to bemoan the difficulties of making a profit.
Audiences and box office numbers are always fickle, the landscape is always changing, somehow befuddling the media conglomerates and the journalists who write for their newspapers and magazines as to how movie and television shows will ever survive let alone meet the outrageous demands of those who create the entertainment being marketed.
"Can't these people just be happy doing what they love? How many of us are that lucky?"
So, on a day when Tom Hanks and his producing partners launch a lawsuit against a distributor who is claiming "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" still hasn't made a profit...
Budget: $5 Million
Prints and Advertising: $19 Million
Worldwide Gross: $354 Million
Funds remitted to partners: $0
...please give a listen to voices within the industry you've probably never heard, clearly explaining how the corporate spin works. If they'll fuck Tom Hanks, what do you think they're doing to people without a publicist.
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4 comments:
This kind of information is especially irritating when you hear conservative/Christian Right/Fox News types talk about how box office receipts are down because America is rejecting liberal-Hollywood. It's like their level of wrongness exists in multiple dimensions.
To someone who makes his money in this business, are these "not yet profitable" claims so ballsy you have to respect the people that make them, or so galling that you hate them like poison?
As someone who hopes to someday make his money there, I'm torn.
An interesting question, Tom. I think there's an initial grudging respect for the Hutzpah or creativity involved in deceiving business partners. As you mature in the business, that is replaced by gall, then a blanket disrespect. Sometimes I think the "age-ism" many in Hollywood complain about is based on the realization that most artists over 35 simply can't be fooled anymore.
Jim, I still reel out your tale of ‘going out to the office of the registered accountants’ on that one job. Always gets the same mixture of combined laughter and horror from the listener.
Dear Mr. Henshaw:
I'm sorry I'm posting to the wrong topic, but please bear with me. I am writing regarding a previous post about Mr. Paul Bernardo. I hope what I have to say will be atypical of most comments you receive about him.
Being a rape survivor myself, I have every reason not to speak in Mr. Bernardo's "defense". But since injustice does not differ depending upon its receiver, I feel compelled to write. After reading everything I could find about this case, it seems Mr. Bernardo is incorrectly labeled as a "sexual sadist". I am not disputing he behaved sadistically; but that is hardly the only criterion for receiving that very rare diagnosis. Mr. Bernardo's actions, while deplorable, do not meet the criterion established either by the FBI profilers who labeled him as such, or the DSM-IV, which is used to measure such paraphilias.
That Mr. Bernardo is a psychopath is not in dispute; however, the same has been said of our Vice President (I'm from the States). Has it been so "profitable" to tag Mr. Bernardo with this extremely rare label that it is simply a back or bank-breaker to extract it? I've read every account of his assaults I can find, at more than a little personal discomfort. And nowhere do I see his motivation being any other than that of what is called the "anger-retaliatory rapist". The name is fairly self-explanatory: this type of offender commits his assaults out of a need to vent his rage and frustration upon the "person" he feels "assaulted" him, and this rage becomes extended to almost everyone of that gender. His primary gain is the venting of that anger and frustration; the suffering and humiliation of his victims, if he is aware of it, is a secondary gain.
The sexual sadist has a different aim; it is the look of terror in his victims' eyes knowing what is likely to befall them that stimulates this offender.
He solely inflicts pain and humiliation because those methods
are the most expedient way to achieve his goal: total dominance of his victim. This may be the goal of the anger-retaliatory rapist also, but that type of offender typically spends less time with his victims, and the infliction of pain is used to force his victims to comply with his wishes as quickly as possible.
This offender may have no problem inflicting pain; but the "terror in the eyes" sought after by the sexual sadist is not the prize the anger-retaliatory rapist seeks. Mr. Bernardo's assaults, while brutal, do not align themselves with the motives of a true sexual sadist.
As for Mr. Bernardo being "the killer", as opposed to Ms. Homolka, too much has been said. I will only add this: Murder has more prison cachet than rape does. I understand Mr. Bernardo's entirely isolated circumstances, but that may not always be so; it would seem as most everyone already believes him either guilty or at least capable of murder, any self-respecting psychopath would claim the greater, not the lesser, of the two evils. And lastly, it seems a man capable of the atrocities which are attributed to Mr. Bernardo would not be so daunted at dismemberment and
body-disposal that it prevented him from following simple package directions and mixing cement properly.
By now, my points may be moot, and my "cause" a lost one. But as we are all agreed Paul Bernardo is a psychopath, then aren't we rewarding him by giving him more credit than he is due? Isn't that more likely to gnaw at the already-budding sexual psychopath just behind Mr. Bernardo, and make him that much more determined to vie for his title? Haven't recent events in the Middle-East taught anyone the danger of overstating their case?
Truly,
Audree @ fkpb.blogspot.com or
perceptionintention@excite.com
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