So Hollywood is going to go on strike. It’s been circling around CNN now for a few months, and it looks all but imminent.
There are several very valid reasons why Hollywood is going to strike, but let’s set those aside for a moment and determine whether or not the industry as a whole really deserves to go on strike.
Think about it. How many good movies has Hollywood turned out this year? Two? Three? As an absurd comparison, let’s pretend that Hollywood is a plumber and that Hollywood plumbs maybe 250 houses during the space of a year. Of these 250 houses that Hollywood plumbs, let’s also pretend Hollywood really, genuinely only plumbs about five of them, whereas the remaining 245 bask in the stench and squalor of their own rank and vile sewage.
An all-encompassing plumber, Hollywood is the personification of the plumbing industry. Hollywood gets paid exorbitant amounts for its work, but that work is shoddy and incomplete and such mainstays as plungers and wrenches feel they don’t get the credit they’re due. Now, the plungers and wrenches may be doing their jobs well, but the fact remains that Hollywood is a bum plumber. Does Hollywood, as in the plumber, deserve to go on strike because the plungers are pissed off? Well, yes and no.
Two plungers in particular, let’s call them Writer and Non-multi-million-dollar-salaried Actor, do most of the dirty work, but the check is always written to “Hollywood.” Now, Writer and Actor don’t necessarily care if Hollywood uses them for good or ill, just so long as they see their names in lights and get some of the proceeds. But Hollywood is a big, smelly man whose butt crack bounces out when he bends down to pretend he’s plumbing, and he won’t credit the plungers for the life of him. So, Writer and Actor try to stick it to the man and say, `Fine, if you won’t give us money and fame, you can just try and plunge the toilet without us.’
Yes, it would be a sorry state of affairs to watch Hollywood try to unclog the toilet with its bare hands. But it isn’t it really doing this already? When films like Save the Last Dance, The Wedding Planner, or even Scary Movie end up at the top of the crop, we can see the ugly, raw, disfigured, and ultimately necessary business side of the motion picture industry. Of course, no one expects intellectual or artful films to succeed on a grand scale, although it’s always kind of nice when they do, but at least Hollywood can try to provide us some decent examples of escapism.
Is it any wonder that the Kansas City-based chain of theaters AMC, who own and operate such nearby mainstays as the Esquire and Galleria cinemas, announced it has overextended itself and will close some 200 theaters over the next year? Or that the St. Louis-based Wherenberg chain, purveyors of some out of the way but sometimes less crowded spots, including the DesPeres and Kenrick cinemas, has filed for bankruptcy?
The plumber analogy is only appropriate in relation to the filth that Hollywood has churned up over the last few years. Product and the marketability of that product are of greater concern, and without writers and actors, there will be no product, not even bad product (unless, of course, they hire scabs, which could make for some interesting films!).
In any case, if the strike happens, it’ll be interesting to see whether writers and lesser known actors edge up any in a director’s medium. Or maybe studios will stop relying on market analysts, and we’ll get something sort of off the wall. Maybe all Hollywood needs is some Drain-O, to get rid of those nasty clogs.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 9th, 2001 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Cadenza. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.