Three Amigos: A Netflix Bros. Photo Caption Contest!
Plus: As the Oscars go to YouTube, whither go the movies?
Welcome to the Jamboree, my weekly takes on the industry’s passing parade.
What a touching sight on the Warners lot. Three men in blazers (and forever in blue jeans) out for a stroll, just looking the place over. Chatting the way the lords of entertainment will when they’ve passed one of Hollywood’s great studios from one hand to the next.
But what do you think they are saying? (“Hey, you know, you could squeeze a whole data center into the space of a couple of those soundstages.”) I want to hear your captions for this historic moment of Ted and Greg touring their new lot with a page named David.
We’ll feature the best next week.
Prizes for the top three choices (as selected by this jury of one): A free annual Ankler subscription to gift for the holidays or for yourself.
If you choose to be named anonymously as a winner, since no doubt you’re fearful your next show won’t sell to NetflixHBOMaxLooneyTunes, I’ll honor your wishes.
Send yours to richard@theankler.com.
Meanwhile, Let’s Talk About the Oscars
A few things that didn’t happen this month:
We didn’t move all the studios to Tacoma
Elon Musk didn’t shut down Peacock for “efficiencies”
Hollywood hasn’t started sinking boats in an undeclared war on an underdeveloped country
The CEOs of all the studios didn’t reveal that they are actually ChatGPT bots
No streaming network became self-aware and autonomous, then rose to lay waste to humanity before humanity could figure out how to cancel their subscriptions
The moon didn’t turn to blood
Other than that, with the news that the Academy Awards are moving to YouTube, pretty much everything has happened. And before we get to the weekend, you’ll probably be able to cross a couple of the above off the list.
Since being convinced that the Oscar announcement was not a prank — which took some time, I admit — I’ve struggled to wrap my head around how I feel about it.
My main feeling — the feeling of most of the people I talked to — is that this is the end of something. Or more precisely, it’s not the beginning of the end; it’s the end of the end. We have arrived in the after-times, and there will be no going back. A pickle can’t turn back into a cucumber.
As the Nobel laureate Bob Dylan puts it:
Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay
You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long
We’ve all stayed in Mississippi a day too long.
So was this inevitable? Is it, as some would have it, a good thing Oscar is taking a flying leap into the new world instead of being dragged in bits and pieces?
Time will reveal all of those.
The one thing we know for sure is that the day when awards shows on broadcast networks were — apart from the Super Bowl — the major live events that dominated the world’s cultural attention and conversation is over.