With the Hollywood writers strike going on, there's been a certain amount of huffing and puffing over who is most important to making a good movie. Here's a method that could shed some quantitative light on the question: measure the nepotism factor for each job.
All fall, I've been reviewing movies starring close kin of big stars, such as Casey Affleck in "Gone Baby Gone" and "Jesse James," and now Josh Brolin (Barbra Streisand's stepson) in "No Country for Old Men." Neither is unqualified -- Affleck was okay and Brolin was terrific. Still ... you almost certainly find more kin among movie stars than among, say, top professional golfers. Presumably, due to regression toward the mean, the more relatives there are in a highly desirable job, the less meritocratic it is.
Are there as many directors and writers who are close relatives of powerful people? I don't know, but it could be measured.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Sophia Coppola would probably not be a director if not for her father.
ReplyDeleteWell, to a certain extent being related to a famous actor increases one's fame and therefore increases one's qualifactions for acting, as casting is at least partially a function of how famous one is. If we define merit to include any characteristic which increases the potential success of a film, then the nespotism is at least in part rationally related to the bottom line.
ReplyDeleteSophia Coppola would probably not be a director if not for her father.
ReplyDeleteWhich doesn't mean she's not a good director, or not qualified to be a director.
Little coincidence: Last night I watched a DVD of the 80's neo-noir "Trouble in Mind" by Alan Rudolph, who I learned is the son of television director Oscar Rudolph.
It's always bugged me that writers are so ignored. I'll take good writing over good acting any day.
ReplyDelete"Which doesn't mean she's not a good director, or not qualified to be a director."
ReplyDeleteLost in Translation, which she wrote and directed, was really terrible. Marie Antoinette was not very good, but at least it wasn't mind numbingly boring like Lost in Translation. Her best work to date would have to be The Virgin Suicides, but that might be credited to the intersting subject matter more than her adapted screenplay or directing prowess.
There's a lot of nepotism in "Fleet Street" journalism in Britain, and in the BBC. Do you see the same thing on your major newspapers and networks?
ReplyDeleteI believe there is an offshoot of the kind of nepotism mentioned here, regarding what Mike Ovitz referred to as the "Gay Mafia" that presides over certain areas of the industry, particularly sitcoms.
ReplyDeleteSome sitcoms, over the past 10 years, were presided over by gay showrunners, who hired predominantly gay writing staffs.
The silent rule carries that, although being straight won't keep you from getting a writing job, being gay, or a "Will & Grace" style of "faghag" helps... a LOT.
Most, of the cast of "Friends" had powerful parents in the industry.
ReplyDeleteDavid Schwimmer didn't even have to audition. They just gave him the part.
Nepotism is a major factor in the hiring of many young actors and to a considerable extent, television writers.
Say someone is a producer. A casting director will tend to give extra consideration to that producers offspring, because it could mean getting more work from that producer down the line as a casting director.
If a producer is looking to cast someone, he/she would give extra consideration to the offspring of a network executive or movie executive of significant standing, because that producer would hope to get bankroll help for projects down the line in return.
That's how it works in Hollywood.
It is a city of personal favors.
Well, why would actors and singers behave any differently than steamfitters, electricians and construction workers?
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid in New York, it was awfully tough to get into any of the skilled blue collar trades. If you wanted to get a job like that, you needed a Dad or an uncle to get you into the union.
So, if Henry Fonda opened a few doors for Jane, or Frank Sinatra pulled a few strings to get Nancy a recording contract, did they really do any more than an average hardhat does for his kids?
Steve -- Joss Whedon is the son of the writer for the Golden Girls, and the grandson of the writer for the Dick Van Dyke show.
ReplyDeleteThat's at least one nepotistic career in writing. More recently, Mike Judge and Sarah Silverman have complained about the Harvard Mafia, specifically the Lampoon guys who give each other jobs in Hollywood. Perusing stories about the Writer's strike I saw bit after bit about how fellow Harvard Classmates got writers their jobs on Family Guy, the Simpsons, SNL, etc.
While that's more crony-ism than nepotism the effect is the same, i.e. selection based on aspects other than merit.
One interesting fact: Hollywood revenues are split at around 50% or so domestic, and foreign. According the IHT, revenues world-wide are declining (IMHO due to inevitable piracy price pressure) and slightly in the US (Best Buy/Wal-Mart discounters and yes, piracy). Meanwhile guys like Tom Cruise have huge revenue participation deals the reportedly cost the studios around nearly 2 billion in revenue (aggreggate, over all films, all studios) last year. They guessed wrong and revenues declined radically.
Hollywood's biggest threat is that their creative class is as you say is the "superstar" and out of touch from ordinary people, particularly ordinary men. Who markedly have flocked to alternative entertainment, primarily video games.
My guess on the writer's strike is that the showrunners (Writer-producers like JJ Abrams) will go back to work, break the strike with foreign writers from the UK, NZ, Australia, and perhaps India (irony of ironies). They can pay them much less, they'll do at least as well in foreign markets, and work remotely via the internet. How hard is it after all to write something like Desperate Housewives, Lost, or CSI?
Michael Jordan's son will never play in NBA- all of Andretti's will race cars. Racing still a sport? Dan
ReplyDeleteAn alternative model is that your popularity as a movie star is helped by name recognition (Jim Belushi--hey, isn't that John's brother?) and by familiarity of appearance (say, he looks a lot like that SNL guy who OD'd, what's his name again?).
ReplyDeleteWhat about president? There's an...actor...running for...president, now. That's what I meant. Funny how nobody generally asks what America's doing running Bush II or H. Clinton to begin with, it's such an insult to our intelligence. But like the guy from Law & Order said, "[being president isn't that hard]."http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/63351/
ReplyDeleteSelection-processes ensure most of the Hollywood people are pretty first-rate, as are people around the president, I guess, unless you're in the first postmodern, ideologically-aware administration, which conveniently facilitates cronyism, like Dubya's.
I like Sofia Coppola's movies okay.
It's not like she's weak...or she's stupid. Sometimes even when it's life and death, a brand-figurehead can be the Don.
Ah, evil neocon, as retarded about the realities of Hollywood as you are about everything else. The showrunners are actually a pillar of the strike, and the thought of outsourcing a TV writing staff to Bangalore like it's an IT department is simply ludicrous.
ReplyDelete"...outsourcing a TV writing staff to Bangalore like it's an IT department is simply ludicrous..."
ReplyDeleteI think that's true. As a man without a TV for two years, I can tell you Youtube "geniuses" are all glaringly beneath the writers for Full House. "Liberal" opinion likes to slam the pap on television...man, oh man, they were wrong. Check out "Chad Vader" on Youtube, if you don't believe me.
So Harvard guys favor Harvard guys...isn't that semi-"rational" favoritism? Steep selection-criteria are at play to get into Harvard, partially wealth-based, I'm sure. My parents are very blue-collar rubes, so I'm constitutionally hostile to rich lineage/high IQ comparisons, but I bet there's a correlation...then there's the getting into Harvard/IQ thing...
For another one of those ugly-truth bits (but ain't truth beautiful?), what about a racially-based nepotism study with fill-in answers? I bet you find Ashkenazis favor Ashkenazis most confidently, since it most-rarely backfires and happily dovetails with innate tendencies to favoritism, across to Africans in positions of power, who I get the feeling sometimes internalize that "racial self-hate," by PC analysis, which might actually just be that problematic "experience" talking. Messed up, but like most of the messed-up things I've conceived that haunt me, probably at least semi-true.
So much for your Jewish conspiracy, moron.
"Joss Whedon is the son of the writer for the Golden Girls, and the grandson of the writer for the Dick Van Dyke show.
ReplyDeleteThat's at least one nepotistic career in writing."
I'm sure having a father in the business helped open doors, but Joss Whedon wouldn't be as successful as he is if he didn't have the chops. If no one watched the movies and TV shows he wrote, no one would care who his father was; the shows would be canceled and he'd be doing something else for a living. Also, it's not uncommon for writing talent to run in families. Consider, for example, the great British novelist Martin Amis, whose father was the great British writer Kingsley Amis.
Writing for television is highly collaborative.
ReplyDeleteA mediocre script, in the hands of a competent director, actor, editor and other collaborative writers in a storm of rewrites, can make a piece of hack garbage into a presentable teleplay, sometimes even one that's not boring.
Nepotism can work just fine in the television writing arena. If given the opportunity, and the creative support, a common hack can make a nice living in television.
This strike is not really about the obviously talented writers in this industry. They're taken care of very well. It's the ever-networking, blue-toothing technically proficient hacks in love with the idea of being "in the business" that want more.
Just review at any article interviewing the average writer on the picket line. They're mostly a bunch of goofs.
Producers aren't being greedy so much as resisting getting drilled by a necessary evil in the television business:
Hacks who are willing to put in 18 hour days under the pressure of production to turn out another sparkling episode of "House."
There's a ton of these types getting off the bus every single day, and producers know it. They're paid what they're worth under current hack writer market conditions.
Find them an Akiva Goldsman, however, and producers suddenly seem pretty generous.
That's why writers like Mr. Goldsman probably don't give much of a shit about this strike. He doesn't have to. He's a talented writer.