Category: media

So, is Harvey to blame? “For decades, Weinstein bestrode the Oscars like a colossus, pulling off coup after coup (pushing Shakespeare in Love to a best-picture victory over Saving Private Ryan; winning two in a row with The King’s Speech and The Artist). He held sway over a stable of actors: ‘Working for Harvey is like working for the mafia,’ Gwyneth Paltrow once told me, laughing. ‘There are all these favours.’ Pop-culture fare such as Entourage referred to him by first name alone.”

Or at least that’s some of how it used to be. And Bollywood’s PR machinery, as in all of the film industry, worked overtime to support those stars. But things are changing. “Today, we are in the middle of a major transition. One of the great allures of stars, the reason for their success, is their mystery. One person among millions gets to make their dreams come true. … But today, anyone can be a star, truly. You can be an Instagram star, a Twitter star, a Youtube star, a Pinterest star, whatever! Put in enough work, be smart about it, and, in today’s world, you could easily be a star.”

Not easy. Not easy at all, says the 78-year-old president of documentary films at HBO, a woman who has won 31 Emmys in the process of overseeing more than 1,000 documentaries. And when an interviewer calls Sheila Nevins ‘an original,’ she says, “I think you pay an enormous price for being ‘an original.’ I think I’m empathetic. I catch rising stars. I catch falling stars.”

On the other hand, “some might wonder why we even need the books at this point, since the series will keep chugging along to its conclusion in 2018.”

The longtime New York Times and New York magazine columnist, executive producer of HBO’s political cringe-comedy, says, “We really believe in the integrity of this alternative-reality version of Washington that we’ve created. It has its own internal laws and its own original characters. Journalists – including me – have all had to update our premises and our assumptions as a result of Trump’s victory, but [at Veep] we have our own world.”

For Hollywood’s VFX workers, it’s easy to be nostalgic for a time when movies were made entirely in their own backyard. When I met with Squires in a Studio City coffee shop, he told me about making “Close Encounters” in two buildings, just one block apart, with Spielberg dropping in each week to check on the progress of different parts. Today’s business model is far more complex: The brain directing most of the action may be in one place (usually Los Angeles), but different arms are distributed around the globe, managing various shots, scenes and characters. Having all the world’s vendors to choose from allows movie studios to mix and match different VFX houses like “flavors of ice cream.”

“It wasn’t clear what was fueling the selling. Some tied the declines to the launch of Hulu’s live package, which could put pressure on ratings and traditional pay-TV subscription. Another negative was Time Warner reporting that its Turner unit’s ad sales fell 2%, possibly signaling a weak ad market and a slower than expected upfront. Last week, Comcast’s NBCUniversal said ad sales at its cable networks were also down in the first quarter.”

Critics have been very impressed by the Netflix series, as has the Twitterverse (11 million tweets so far). “But the premise of the show … goes against everything we know about suicide, its causes, and means of prevention.” Marissa Martinelli explains the problems and talks to counselors who’ve been dealing with the show’s fallout.