Transcript: Here’s What New Paramount Should Really Do

Rob Long’s advice for David Ellison and co.? Watch this Brad Pitt Oscar nominee – and it’s not ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’

This is Rob Long with Martini Shot for The Ankler.

When I started my career at Paramount, it was officially called something like Paramount, a Gulf + Western Company. That’s what it said in loopy italics under the Paramount mountain, and that’s what it said on everything with the Paramount logo.

Gulf and Western was a classic conglomerate, run by a guy in New York who really didn’t have much to do with the movie business except head out to L.A. every now and then and swan around like a big shot.

And then the name was changed — shortened, really — to just Paramount, no Gulf, no Western. I think the name was officially Paramount Communications, ticker symbol PCI, and that’s probably when the handwriting began to appear on the wall. Movie businesses are about a lot of things, but communication isn’t one of them. And building a giant business, or trying to, on the basis of a flimsy, erratic, volatile industry run and staffed by emotionally unstable people is, let’s say, unwise.