Why Are Studio Executives Like This?

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[roythousand]

I'm on the side of the studio executives on this one! The studios takes all the risks when they greenlight these projects. They have to pay up front for the cost of producing these movies, and tv shows. The studios deserves the lion's share of the profits made.

[afrophoenix]

I once worked for the US Navy doing structural engineering for submarines. We made sure that the work that needed to be done, got done, on time and under budget, so our sailors and submarines could deploy without a second thought, fully mission-ready, when they needed to.
Working on performance evaluation metrics one year, a middle manager asked me "how are you going to make me money?" I had half a mind to call up the fraud hotline right there, but thought better of it - I'm sure he thought he was giving good advice to help me.

"Growth at all costs" is the ultimate (il-)logical conclusion of all endeavors in late-stage capitalism. Saving lives, protecting loved ones, answering the tough questions, living a fulfilled life... All are subservient to the almighty dollar. Executives can only see profits and costs, assets and liabilities.

[BlackbodyEconomics]

You nailed it Steve. "They're so focused on doing business, they don't even know what business they're in."

[jackdubois]

It's extra sad because he had to explain to them like they were children but actual children have an intrinsic understanding that a story needs an end. Somewhere along the way that was forced out of these people and it's unsettling to think how hollow they must be without it..

[sovietbear]

Most hobby companies are like this: they start out being headed by nerds and fans, but once they hit critical mass, the MBAs move in and destroy everything that people loved about the brand. We were slow at work a couple weeks ago, so i went on the Internet Archive to read old magazines. The lack of "business speak" in old publications was astounding.

[TheLittleMako]

Apparently, as a Consumer of Media, I am supposed to simply sit down to observe pretty colours and listen to pleasant noises for approximately an hour at a time? It's hard to fathom how anyone could become so disconnected from the human experience that 'caring about the story' is an alien concept. Are we sure they're not actually aliens?

(BTW thanks for the 11 minutes of pretty colours and pleasant noises)

[johnreed]

That reminded me of a story I heard a few years ago in a documentary. In the 60s, a creative showrunner pitches an idea for a unique sitcom that the television execs don't think will work and isn't funny. This showrunner convinces the execs to let him create a pilot and show it to test audiences to prove his point. The execs say okay. The test audiences watch the pilot and are laughing their behinds off like you wouldn't believe. The execs are confused, scratching their heads, and wondering how this is even possible. They order a new test audience to watch the pilot and that audience laughs. They think this has to be another outlier because they are convinced that they know people and what does and does not sell to the people they know and they are adamant that the people will not like this show. They order another test screening and another and another and another ... it's the same result again and again - the audience laughs at the pilot. Finally, the execs had to admit that they were wrong and gave Sherwood Schwartz the green light to produce Gilligan's Island. Even though Gilligan's Island lasted 3 seasons it is still a beloved classic that people remember fondly.

So yeah, executives like Bob Iger are blind, deaf, and dumb.

[Mallory-Malkovich]

They're like this because they - so far - have faced no consequences for their greed. It doesn't help that America has a culture that amplifies and encourages greed, but it's a vice that corporate executives are particularly susceptible to.

[karahughes]

Yeah, Steve I remember hearing about the writer of The Fugitive having to explain to the studio execs that they HAD to finish the series, that it had to have a proper conclusion, and even 14 year old me thought, 'Well yeah. Richard Kimble's story has to end somehow, you can't just leave him as an eternal fugitive.' So how come a 14 year old girl got this and these studio heads didn't?

[clubtepes]

Someone pointed out that it actually makes more sense to replace the studio execs. with AI rather than the writers.

The studio exec job is to analyze data and make decisions based on that data. Thats it.
This is something AI can do in it's sleep.
And since studio execs don't understand the human connection to movies, there really isn't any difference.

Some creative (irony intended) person could make the argument to the studio shareholders that replacing the studio exec. with an AI, could save more money than what the writers and actors are asking for.

[Jez-Hunt]

Not just Hollywood. I'm a leatherworker in the UK, and for a few years I've had 6 - 9 months work every year from film and TV, this year I've had 6 weeks. Total support and solidarity with the workers though! Cheers for doing this video, and all the others!

[MaxUltimata]

I used to know someone I once did commission work for years ago who was much the same way. He wanted artists and writers to make content for him that inflated his own colossal ego (and even then just as an amalgam; he didn't care about any individual piece beyond its existence), and anything that got in that way he went out of his way to scream at, threaten and attempt to destroy. This included people who just stopped working for him for any reason, and this included other works that artists working for him made that were more popular than anything they made specifically for him. He once did insult me by asking me a question: "Why do you care about your work so much?"

It sounds fake and cartoonishly evil for someone to actually say this, but he did question why I was putting the effort into my work that I was. Eventually I got out from under him with my reputation mostly intact (he would go on to make extensive lies about me in private to others), but it wasn't until earlier this year that everything he did to come back and blow up in his face.

The Writers/Actors Guild strike going on now is, in my eyes, also an extension of that Discovery acquisition last year that saw a bunch of shows just given the axe for a huge tax break without having a Producers scenario pop up, having all the data shoveled away into a vault where even the creators couldn't use it in their resumes, and then the executives tried to cheat them out of their due pay on top of that. They don't care about the product; they care about the money that product brings in, even if it means they have to burn people's months or years of work before it gets a chance to see the light of day.

There's a reason why Seth Meyers a few years ago started calling certain people "business husks with a howling void where a soul should be." They don't have any interests or hobbies, they don't watch movies or listen to music or read or play video games. Their families are a very distant, empty facade and they likely might not even have a home; the office *is* their home. Their only interest is making as much profit as possible for themselves, axing everyone else who gets in the way of this (even their own staff, hence the aggressive move towards AI), and the punchline is... even that is something they don't fully understand.

It's a chic thing to blame everything bad on capitalism these days, but even beyond the age-old nature of human greed, this is a capitalism-born concept: a mindless acquisition of wealth as its own end as a morally just ideal with all others being inherently evil, and we're getting to that point where that concept (and the studios, and the business husks) is beginning to eat itself.

[hamletprimeiro]

It is very telling that studios and streamers simply ignored the writers' strike but rushed to mediation when SAG approved the strike. These two historic strikes and their aftermath will tell us a lot about the power of these greed corporations and the state of the Unions at the future

[zmanjace]

Maybe we shouldn't let sales people and accountants run the world. Just sayin.

[WilliamOwyong]

Having been a stand-in and extra on several movies and TV shows during, and after, COVID, I think you encapsulated the sentiment beautifully Steve.

I know an extra is literally at the bottom of the hierarchy, essentially a prop that moves, but I took pride in my work regardless of whether my scenes were edited out. When given the task to create movement in the background (as blurry blobs) my co-workers and I created improvised stories on the spot then repeated them take after take for as long as it took. I understood my role in the bigger machine. That machine wasn't about the money but rather capturing the vision of what the directors wanted as efficiently as possible.

And at the end of production, despite getting no mention in the credits, all an extra is supposed to be happy with is getting paid what their union has been able to secure for them. You don't mention the chairs in the credits after all - and I get that. And I also get [at least some of] why the strike is happening - it's about getting paid what's due, and that's true of any job.

[johncattley]

Studio bosses love pride in craft and passion for artistic expression. Every scrap of motivation that comes from the artist’s soul is a dollar they don’t have to pay in salary.

[SpoopySquid]

Never forget that you don't need the bosses, the bosses need you

[TheAwesomenessOfJay]

"We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make a statement. But to make money, it is often important to make history, to make art, or to make some significant statement." - Michael Eisner, former CEO of Disney, a man who was motivated by profit over art, as many billionaire media megalomaniacs are.

[phillipwiles]

I believe 99.99% of all CEOs could care less if someone in their company is literally shoveling shit, just as long as that division is meeting the expect return on investment.

[vanceamania]

"They're so focused on doing business, they have no idea what business they're in"
Truer words were never spoken