It’s not often that Hollywood gets to fly under the radar, but this was not our week in the sun as number crunchers and data nerds replaced screen icons and starlets in the collective imagination. At last we can exhale, and wait for President Biden to take up his official residency in backyard fundraisers on Amalfi Drive, occasionally venturing on state visits to Brentwood or Holmby Hills for afternoon events.
But while we’ve been glued to breathtaking images of maps and columns of addition, Hollywood – dowdy, unloved Hollywood – has churned forward doing its business; which at this moment means stumbling through some perilous times. I’ll have more thoughts down the line on what the new era means for Hollywood and what the moment past said about Hollywood. But while the head regathters itself, here’s a bit of what going on here in the homeland while we were staring at maps.
Layoffs hit bone
Anyway you look at it, you shut down your core business for a year plus, and that’s going to have an impact. We can talk about how unevenly the pain is spread, or how the whole thing might’ve been handled better, but there’s no version of turning the lights off for a year that doesn’t lead to a lot of pain.
Particularly when studios are not exactly models of efficiency to start with. To say there is bloat in a Hollywood studio is like saying the Pacific Ocean seems wet today. Since Hollywood passed the century mark, the bloat has long since become the point, more or less.
But we’ve all known for a long time now that that is not going to do in this fast-moving, demolition derby digital age; Hollywood, cosseted by those layers of blubber, just thought it could put off that reckoning, if not forever, then at least for a very long time. It thought it could put off a lot of other reckonings that have shown up on the doorstep in the past few years.
But the day is here, and it’s ugly and painful as such things are, inevitable though it may be. Seeing people you worked among dispatched by the thousands into this cold media tundra is harrowing.
Given that, it’s good to see a titan able to descend from Olympus and walk his employees through this heartache in a compassionate and humane manner. I’ve seen in the past couple years too many of these “A Sad Day” letters shot off from dockside in the Bahamas, with a snide air of, “Ah well, sorry it didn’t work out! Thoughts and prayers!”
Given that, Lionsgate’s Joe Drake’s note to his employees stood out to me as unusually both compassionate and detailed for both those being cut and those who remain. The note at the end, letting all those affected know that he’s available to speak to them all strikes me as something that should be boilerplate in these letters, but I’ve never actually seen from a studio head:
To those colleagues who are leaving, we are enormously grateful to each and every one of you. You provided this company with your voice, your ideas and a commitment to excellence that made a difference every day. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me directly if I can help answer any questions or if I can be of service as you decide where to direct your talents next.
And here’s hoping that the exit passages are on a par with the services rendered by all these folks over the years.
Any parting employees across the industry who care to share any details about their packages and how the cut was handled, for better or worse, I’d love to hear from you. Confidentially guaranteed upon pain of death. richard@theankler.com
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