How-To H'wood: Winning Feuds & Settling Scores
The deftness required to eliminate an enemy, in today's advice no one tells you

Welcome to my latest Field Guides to Modern Hollywood, how-to advice no one tells you. Earlier, I explained how to climb the greasy pole to success and the art of firing and being fired. Today: How to feud.
If you’re going to work in Hollywood, there’s one bag of tricks you should have at your disposal but hope you never have to use. This is a “break glass in case of emergency” set of skills, but unfortunately in our world here, it’s become elevated to something of a core competency. Yes, we’re talking about how to conduct — and for your sake, ultimately win — a feud.
As you travel down the road of the entertainment profession, you’re sure to come across some, shall we say, personalities. Tragic as it is, more than a few of those will prove to be difficult ones.
The best advice I can offer is that you should try to have nothing to do with such people. Live a happy life and productive career far away from them. But every now and then, all of us find the road we must travel blocked by one of these characters.
Sometimes dealing with these people requires only a simple workaround, or a show of force that sends them scurrying away. But in other instances, these confrontations settle into something more intractable, and the standoff blossoms into a feud.
Feuds are a big part of life in Hollywood and have fueled this business since the very beginning. I’m not just talking about the healthy rivalry between competitors, but lasting enmity and the entrenched desires of two people to do each other harm that outweighs any possible business rationale. In part one of this week’s series, about climbing the greasy pole to success, I encouraged you to read Hollywood history. Well, there’s a version of this business’ story that can be told solely through its feuds (and I’ll use some epic ones to illuminate the finer points here).
In just the past few years alone, Iger vs. Chapek, Moguls vs. WGA and most recently Baldoni vs. Lively have given us cautionary tales of how bad blood can poison the well and everyone in the neighborhood.
Hollywood being Hollywood, we also have our own special rules for conducting a feud. Feuding within the bounds, or letting people know you are willing to if called upon, is part of sending a “Don’t Tread on Me” message to the community of people who would screw you over if given half a chance. But feud beyond the accepted rules, and this society will turn its back on you in a heartbeat.
Here then — to be used only if needed! — my guide on How to Feud, Hollywood Style.
I. The Only Successful Feuds Are the Ones You Don’t Hear About
There is one thing about Hollywood feuds that makes them very different from feuds in DC, Wall Street, sports or any other part of the world: We like our feuds kept quiet. A feud you hear about is an example of someone failing, somewhere in the system.
More than any of those other power centers, Hollywood is kept alive by a system of relationships and half-truths and a giant ring of people helping out each other. If that sounds like the ultimate mob cartel, that’s more or less what it is.
The business of Hollywood is very much about keeping the truth of what happens here off the front pages. That can be about what really happened between those stars on that set, and it certainly applies to the most guarded secret in all the realm . . .