Why Writers Are Losing Out In Hollywood

PBS

Support for NPR and the following message come from PBS. PBS invites you on a trip to the future. A brief history of the Future is a groundbreaking series about people's futures and how they can be reimagined. A brief history of the future stream now on PBS and the PBS app. This is FRESH AIR.

Tanya Moseley

I'm Tanya Moseley. On the COVID of the May issue of Harper's magazine is a provocative image, a black and white clapper board, the kind we see in movies. During the filming of a scene where a director yells cut with the words the end of Hollywood as we know it, cover story writer Daniel Besner makes the argument that seven months after the strike that essentially shut down Hollywood, the industry is now facing an existential threat like never before. And television and film writers, Besner says, are the ones losing out. And there is no one reason why.

The merging of big studios, the continued disruption of streaming services and the lack of regulation have all created an environment that has displaced workers with top talent making more than ever before, and the nuts and bolts workers losing out dramatically, writes Besner, one of the biggest disruptors. The merging of big studios continues to impact the industry. Just this week we learned news that three separate entities are in talks to acquire Paramount, one of Hollywood's biggest studios, which experts say will cause even more disruption. Daniel Bessner joins us to talk about what this all means for workers and for us, the consumer. He's an associate professor at the University of Washington's Henry M.

Jackson School of International Studies. His work is focused on us foreign relations, the history and theory of liberalism, and most recently, the history and practice of the entertainment industry. He's the author of Democracy and Exile, Hans Speer and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual, and the co editor of several historical books on domestic histories and foreign relations. Daniel Besner, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you so much for having me.

Daniel Besner

It's a real pleasure and honor. Daniel, you teach foreign and us policy, and you most recently began writing about the entertainment industry. What is it about this moment that has caught your attention that you think speaks to a greater issue? So what got me interested in exploring this subject more broadly was effectively the decline of journalism and the decline of academia, which have different causes. Although journalism, I think a lot of what happened rhymes in terms of private equity, entering and hedge funds, entering and destroying newspapers and traditional media.

A lot of that rhymes with what's happening in Hollywood. But what fascinated me about Hollywood is that it's really the last place in the United States, perhaps the world, where you could at least until very recently, get paid to be a writer. That's not really possible in other spheres. You know, you read about people writing science fiction stories in the 1940s and 1950s and making a living off that, you know, Harlan Ellison, people like that. That's simply impossible.

And the only place that you can still be a writer is in Hollywood, partially because it's unionized, but partially because it's in an industry that made money. So I'm ultimately interested and was ultimately interested in exploring that idea of the writer in contemporary capitalism and how the writer's fortunes have changed in the last, roughly century. The article kind of begins in the twenties. Daniel. As we see all of these changes to the industry, the merging of companies, the struggling of creatives, and what they're experiencing, how much of the bad guy is streaming?

Tanya Moseley

Netflix, Hulu, and all of the others.

Daniel Besner

So it's interesting, Walter Lemon, I think it was. Walter Lemon once had a quote that, you know, a pump is a pump, and it's how you use it that matters. Streaming in and of itself, could be anything. It could actually have been a boon to the industry. But I think the problem is that there was a gold rush mentality when it came to the famous streaming wars, as they're called, because the goal of the companies, and particularly Netflix, and I just, you know, you have to hand it to Netflix, they really did succeed in disrupting a business, and they are profitable, and they are doing quite well, and they have entered the culture.

But the notion was that a particular streaming service would become the dominant force in Hollywood. Just like Uber and Lyft have disrupted, killed the taxis, and Amazon has effectively destroyed a lot of medium and small businesses. Yes, but, you know, there are many disruptions to the television and film industry. I thought it was interesting how one historian told you that with each major technological innovation, for instance, from cable to vhs tapes to DVD's, and now streaming, there's always been a disruption of some kind with advancements. So what I'm trying to understand is whether what we're seeing is an extension of something that happens every decade or so, or is something more alarming and irreversible happening?

Tanya Moseley

And is it happening in combination with everything else you're telling us about? It's a great point. And, you know, when the VHS was introduced, or when DVD's were introduced, or initially, when Internet streamed content was introduced, the studios always claim they have no idea what's going on, so they can't pay writers enough, et cetera. The difference is that the Internet isn't regulated, that the the cables that carry Netflix are not regulated in the same way that the cables that carried a traditional cable bundle were regulated. And that's really simply, it is that in this era of deregulation, which began in Reagan and was solidified under Bush and Obama and, of course, Trump, that it's just not regulated in the same way.

Daniel Besner

So you essentially had a frontier of technology that was able to be taken advantage of by the capitalists who run the entertainment industry and the american political economy as a whole. What are some of the ways that streaming has disrupted the traditional models? So, from writers and producers pitching an idea to working on it, to being paid for it, to seeing it out in the world, it's a great point. Because initially, people welcomed streaming, very much so, particularly Netflix, because what Netflix would do is that they would oftentimes, I think, actually always guarantee creators that if the show was purchased and greenlighted after, you know, several stages of development, they would make an entire season of the show. And you didn't have to worry about things like Nielsen ratings, for example.

I talked to a couple of producers, and they were like, yeah, we'd wake up and we'd look at the Nielsen ratings. And at first, when we were dealing with Netflix, it felt so freeing to not have to do that. So there were significant benefits to Netflix initially, not only in the fact that they didn't focus on ratings, but they greenlighted quite, quite adventurous a bit shows, and not only Netflix, but other streaming services. Netflix famously had BoJack Horseman, but other services had things like I love Dick or Dickinson, a show based on a 19th century poet, which probably would have been greenlighted in the 1980s or 1990s. So there were some benefits, however, over time, and as often happens in gold rushes.

And gold rushes aren't good for working conditions because a lot of people are trying to strike that gold vein and get rich quick. So it created, for a variety of reasons, downward pressure, first on writers wages and then on writers working conditions. And in particular, people have spoken about mini rooms, which are basically writers rooms that are convened before the production of a show. As the show is being developed. Usually they don't last very long, about eight to ten weeks.

I spoke with someone whose writer's room actually lasted only four weeks. And how are the mini rooms different from how it was done before? Right. So in a traditional pilot season, or when you're writing a show that has been greenlighted, you know, in the 1990s, or two thousands for 13 or 22 episodes, a writer's room would be convened for that show. Throughout production.

And it's really important that a room lasts throughout production, because that is effectively how the industry reproduced itself. When you're a young writer writing on a show that's being literally made, you would oftentimes go to set, you would learn how to talk to actors, you would learn how to stay within budget, you would learn what it was like to be on an actual set. But in a mini room that is often dispersed before a show is put into production, you don't get that experience. And you're also might be added. You're usually employed for a far less amount of time.

Traditionally, in a pilot season, writers would have been employed for like eight months. Let's say we're in a mini room, you're employed for two and a half months, and then it's very difficult to get another job. So you have to go back and work at the Apple store or drive Lyft, which means you're not working on your craft to the same degree, which means you're not getting the experience that you would have gotten in a traditional writer's room. So it's the industry kind of cannibalizing its future in the search for short term and medium term profits, which was partially the result of the entry of high finance, and thus financial incentives into film and television production. I mean, this is significant because I think that those who may not know how the industry works may hear writers in a creative industry and think, well, these people are privileged.

Tanya Moseley

I mean, these are not regular working people, but there are reports that there's food insecurity now within a huge contingent of writers in Hollywood who now have no work or limited work, or they're working in the way that you are describing here. What are some of the stories that you've heard? I think that's a great point, and it reflects a broader proletarianization of creative fields. You might have also heard that many professors are mostly, roughly three fourths of them, according to some studies, are adjuncts. And you see something happening similar in Hollywood.

Daniel Besner

So when I would talk to young writers in particular, and frankly, not that young, you know, people in their thirties who had broken into the industry about ten years ago, it's just very difficult to make a stable living. Moving from show to show is not especially easy. You're employed for less amount of time. There are fewer people employed at each job. So you're actually not living the high life of what one would have imagined a Hollywood writer lived in the 1990s and into the two thousands, which is, again, I want to emphasize this is just american capitalism doing what american capitalism does, except now it's coming for white collar workers.

If it happened for blue collar workers in the sixties and the seventies, it's now happening in the last 20 years for creatives again, journalists, academics, and Hollywood writers. So this is why I think you might get. There might be some anger from people whose fields had already been destroyed if you were, for example, cutting timber or working in mines or working in a factory. Maybe you don't want to hear about whiny Hollywood writers, but to me, we're all kind of in this together as laborers. But it is difficult work that takes a lot of skill to accomplish, and one should be properly remunerated, especially when the high level executives are making so much money.

So one thing that I hope to do for people who just view this as a bunch of Hollywood writers is to actually see that there's solidarity to be built across class lines. Because if capitalism isn't coming for you today, it's coming for you tomorrow. Daniel, I want to get to some of what you've written about how we got here. So to understand it, you take us in your article all the way back to the 1920s and thirties, when there were a handful of studios and screenwriters. They made careers out of this versus the model that we see today, which is a significant number of people are now freelance writers.

Tanya Moseley

This is not a full time gig, as you said, they have other jobs. What was the average salary back then for a writer compared to today? So maybe just to give some context, before I talk about salaries, is that there was something called the studio system, where writers were actually employed by specific studios, and they had stable work. And the studios were producing enormous number of movies each year over the twenties, thirties, forties, and into the 1950s. And when you were working for a studio in 1931, you were making more than $14,000 a year for a full time, if you were a full time salaried employee, on average, which is about $273,000 in today's money.

Daniel Besner

So it was really quite. Yeah, it was quite good. And more importantly, even than good paid work, it was stable work. You knew where you were going every day into work. And believe me, the writers complained.

I don't want to paint this as some golden age. There was a lot of complaining from the writers who were working in Hollywood at the time. They felt that their bosses didn't respect. Their bosses didn't respect their art. They expected them to do a lot of work.

They weren't necessarily in control of their artistic vision, but in exchange for that, they had good salaried work. Well, something happened in 1933. Both MGM and Paramount pictures cut screenwriters pay by 50%. Why? So basically, Hollywood actually did fairly well for the first years of the depression, which, of course, started in 1929.

People wanted to escape the full unemployment hadn't yet hit the entire economy. But by 1933, things were getting a bit hairy. So there's a very famous story of, I believe, Louis B. Mayer going in front of all the contract workers, the salaried employees of MGM, and basically, hat in hand, you know, kind of not literally crying, but, you know, saying, we need. We need to take a cut.

Otherwise you're all going to. The business will close. And so, you know, some actor got up and then writers got up and they all said they would agree to take the cut. But then some writers found out that the executives didn't necessarily take the cut. And more importantly, the below the line workers, who, I believe were in Proto AIaT at that point, also didn't take a cut.

So there been something called the Screenwriters Guild that had been percolating for some time in Hollywood. It was somewhere between a union and a social club. But after this stunt by MGM in Paramount in early 1933, a bunch of writers came together and decided that they needed to actually form a union, which was eventually certified later in the 1930s, and after quite a few years of negotiation, finally got its first contract in 1942. But to make a long story short. Right, that provided a baseline of pay, right?

Yes, a baseline of pay of $125 a week if you are a salaried employee, which is about $2,500 today. So quite good, particularly when you're guaranteed work as a salaried employee. So it's the old story, the capitalists went too far and the labor decided to fight back. Can you explain the Supreme Court ruling in 1948, which I'm bringing up? It's important to note, as we think about today, because this ruling found that these major motion picture companies had conspired to fix prices and monopolize the industry.

Tanya Moseley

What was happening that brought this all the way to the Supreme Court? Sure. So there was a studio. The studio system was dominated by five big companies and three smaller companies. But it was effectively the smaller studios who came together to accuse the larger companies of effectively making it a non competitive industry.

Daniel Besner

And they were right. The big eight or the big five and the smaller three effectively had monopoly power in Hollywood. And one of the major reasons that they were able to have that power was that they owned the distribution networks. But most importantly, and this is what the Paramount decrees, that's what they were called of 1948 was about. They owned the movie theater chains.

And so effectively, what the Supreme Court did is that, if I recall, they basically said you had to either get rid of distribution or exhibition. And the major companies got rid of the exhibition part because they ultimately decided that they were truly in the distribution business. So you get the movie theater companies, movie theater chains essentially being spun off as a result of this param, these paramount decrees in 1948, which was effectively the outcome of decades of capital p brand Dicey. And Louis Brandeis, the Supreme Court justice, thought about anti monopoly, antitrust legislation. And now Hollywood had been a monopoly for a long time.

But during the thirties, during the Depression, during World War two, it wasn't considered to be a major concern. So it was only really after the war that Hollywood was demonopolized. So for a time, you write screenwriters. For many decades, they were still able to make a living, though there were even interventions from the federal government to institute a minimum pay until the Reagan revolution of the 1980s. How did Reagan's governing impact Hollywood?

Sure, I think it's actually important just to pause very quickly on the fifties, because the fifties is an important decade, because it's a transitional period where the studio system just happened, the paramount decree. So there's still writers on salary, but there's more and more freelance work. So there's a 1960s strike with the WGA and the Screen Actors Guild. And it's as the result of these strikes that a stable gig work life is created. So even though you're a gig worker, like a writer, unlike other industries, you get health benefits.

The studios agree to contribute to a pensions, and there's increased minimums for work, and you got more and more residuals for materials that was rebroadcast. So what happens is at a moment when Tanya, as you probably know, journalism was quite a stable career. You know, you go and work for the Baltimore sun, and you could stay there for 40 years. That wasn't true in Hollywood by the middle of the 20th century. But nevertheless, if you worked, you were able to have some of the benefits that you would have had in a traditional salaried job.

What changes in the 1980s is the rise, and this is really the work of Jennifer Holt, who wrote a wonderful book called empires of entertainment, who. Who really goes into the details of this, which is that there was a new ideology, what might be termed in today's parlance, a neoliberal ideology that began to permeate elite spheres as the so called New Deal order. Of the 1930s to the 1970s began to come apart. And so you see with the rise of Reagan, a very strong embrace of deregulation, most famously with the air traffic controllers union, which Reagan effectively broke. But also in Hollywood, there was a new ideology that began to permeate the american elite that was very pro deregulation.

And there's a lot of tensions and contradictions about how this affected writers. But that's a short story long. Well, I mean, what happened was the combining of cable and film in broadcast network interests in direct violation of antitrust law. Why was this allowed to happen? Tanya, what you're referring to, of course, is in 1983, the Department of Justice allowed HBO, which already existed, Columbia Pictures and CB's, to form a new company called TriStar Pictures, which, like you said, combined these cable film and broadcast interests in direct violation of antitrust law.

So what happened was that the Reagan administration, particularly the DOJ, is, of course, an executive institution, did an end run around Congress without Congress actually deregulating the economy, which would come later. The executive department said, we're no longer going to enforce elements of antitrust and anti monopoly law, which basically allowed the formation of enormous conglomerates in the 1980s. And in 1985, the DOJ said, we're not going to enforce the paramount decrees any longer. So that is a big shift in the history of Hollywood from being a very regulated industry to where we are now, a almost totally unregulated industry. Our guest today is writer and associate Professor Daniel Besner.

Tanya Moseley

We're talking with him about his latest article for Harper's about the existential crisis. Film and television writers are now facing post strike and what it means for the entertainment industry. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Moseley, and this is fresh air. This message comes from NPR sponsor Betterhelp.

PBS

It's easy to ignore your social battery and spread yourself too thin. Therapy can provide the tools and self awareness to help you learn how to recharge, define your boundaries and build a social life that doesnt drain your battery. Find your social sweet spot with betterhelp online therapy. Fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Visit betterhelp.com.

NPR today to get 10% off your first month. This message is brought to you by NPR sponsor Progressive Insurance. You call the shots on whats in your podcast queue. Now you can call them on your auto insurance, too, with the name your price tool from Progressive. Tell Progressive how much you want to pay for car insurance, and theyll show you coverage options within your budget.

Get your quote today@progressive.com. Comma Progressive Casualty insurance company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Taylor Swift has dropped a new album. She is the biggest pop star in the world, and everything she does makes news.

I gasped. I was like, oh, my God, I've been there. And you can identify with it. For a breakdown of Taylor Swift and her new album, the tortured Poets department, listen to the pop culture Happy hour podcast from NPR.

Tanya Moseley

Hi, this is Molly and I'm Seth. We're two of the producers at Fresh Air. If you like listening to FRESH Air, we think you'll also like reading our newsletter. You'll find the interviews and reviews from the show all in one place, plus staff recommendations you won't hear on the show behind the scenes Q and A's bonus audio. It's also the only place to find out what interviews are coming up.

We keep it fun, and it comes straight to your inbox once a week. Subscribe for yourself@wh.org. Freshair so learning this history certainly puts what we're seeing today into focus. You write about how the rollback of protections continued into the Clinton administration, and around this time, we're talking about the nineties cross ownership, as you write, flourished. Viacom merged with blockbuster video and took over Paramount.

Tanya Moseley

Disney merged with Capital City's ABC. Time Warner joined Turner Broadcasting. What did all of this merging then set in motion? Clinton did two things. He got rid of the financial interest and syndication rules, which were initiated by the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission in 19th century, and which, in effect, barred networks from holding ownership stakes in the primetime and syndicated programs that they air, which, in effect, all that not specifically prohibited film studios from owning tv networks and vice versa, because it didn't really make business sense.

Daniel Besner

And so you actually have increased competition. And it's this reason that someone like Norman learns and someone like Lucille Ball were able to become so wealthy because these independent producers were actually able to compete in a real way with major companies, which is something that's simply impossible. And then in 1996, Clinton signed the Telecommunications act, which removed the statutory restrictions on the cross ownership of broadcast networks and cable providers. So you basically get a regulatory environment where film studios, cable stations, broadcast stations could all be owned by the same gigantic conglomerate. And this is the era of great synergy where, you know, if you're a conglomerate and you own a magazine and you own HBO, you could put, let's say, Sex and the City.

I think this is the famous example everyone uses on the COVID of your magazine, saying, this is the greatest show of all time, pushing people to watch the show on HBO. So this is the type of stuff that is allowed in this deregulated environment which simply would not have been allowed earlier on in american history. I want to talk for a moment about how asset management firms became basically the largest stakeholders in media and entertainment. So in 2008, in an effort to stimulate the economy, the Federal Reserve began cutting interest rates. How did that open the door for asset management companies and private equity firms to step into the industry and gain such a hold?

In brief, two things happened. Companies were looking for places to invest, particularly after the.com crash of the late 1990s and early two thousands, and the liquid capital that was plunged into the system. And the lowering of interest rates provided them with money and access to what is effectively cheap credit. And so people in finance understand that there's more going on there, but that's the long and the short of it. And so it's at this moment, in the late two thousands, early 2010s, that high finance private equity firms, asset management companies, but also hedge funds, really begin to invest seriously in Hollywood because they're looking for, in effect, places to invest.

And the argument that scholars like Robert Brenner and others make is that since roughly the 1970s and the era of deindustrialization, that there's been fewer and fewer places to actually profitably invest in the american economy. Because media, as you probably know, isn't necessarily the greatest business. It depends on hits. Oftentimes, returns are not especially high. But one of the reasons that these companies invested in traditional media that they tried to disrupt and did to a significant degree with Netflix, which is very successful, was that there really aren't other places to invest.

Tanya Moseley

One insider told you that these old, large legacy institutions used to be able to have a longer term view of the industry. They would absorb losses and take risks. Now everything is driven by quarterly results. So essentially, they're not making decisions for the future. They're just making decisions for what is directly in front of them.

Daniel Besner

That's precisely right. And I think for consumers, it's important to view this, or it's almost natural to view this from a place of the art and the content that is actually produced the greatest shows of the so called prestige tv era. Think about the sopranos or the wire or breaking bad or whatever. What have you were primarily made by people who came up in the television industry of the seventies, eighties and nineties, like David Chase, David Simon, Vince Gilligan and others. And the only reason that they were able to make such great art was, I think it's Blake.

Masters had a great quote, is because they understood everything about television, as masters said, and hated all of it. He was referring to David Chase. But they knew how to make television. They had done things like been in rooms. They had gone to set.

They had talked to actors. They had, over years and years and years, developed the skills necessary to write a book, amazing show like the Sopranos, and also to run it. But when you focus on short term incentives, when you establish a system of mini rooms, you're in effect stealing from the industry's future because you're not letting the next generation of writers learn the skills necessary to create a brilliant piece of work like the Sopranos, the wire, or breaking Bad. And this really begins to take off after the 2008 week recession. 2007 2008 recession as finance, as we talked about for a variety of reasons, began to seriously enter Hollywood.

Tanya Moseley

Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest today is writer and associate professor Daniel Besner. We're talking with him about his latest article for Harper's titled the Life and Death of Hollywood, about the existential threat film and television writers face even after the writers strike last year. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is fresh air.

The indicator from Planet Money is a daily podcast that helps you make sense of what's happening in the economy. And video games are a growing slice of that economy with billions of people around the world identifying as gamers. That's why we're dedicating a week long series to the growing business of video games. Listen to the indicator for Planet Money podcast on NPR. Every time you drive your car, have a package delivered, or get on a plane, you're polluting the climate.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Nature is powerful. Why don't we use it to our advantage? Meet the people working on cleaner ways to get around on here and now. Anytime from NPR and WBUR transportation climate solutions on here and now.

Anytime, wherever you listen to podcasts, there. Are a lot of issues on voters minds right now. Six big ones could help decide the guns, reproductive rights, immigration, the economy, healthcare and the wars overseas. On the consider this podcast from NPR. We will unpack the debates on these issues and what's at stake.

You can listen to NPR's consider this wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things you write about that I think was really interesting, we talk about it all the time, is that we see a pattern now of repackaged stories like all of the superhero stories and remakes. When did executives begin to make these bigger bets on pre existing intellectual property, which you've been talking about versus original content? It's a really important question, and I hope to expand this into a book and get into this more in detail, but to give a potted history in the mid to late 1970s, you get the rise of the blockbuster, first with jaws, but really with Star wars. So you get the rise of tentpole movies.

Daniel Besner

In 1989, you get Batman. Batman is released. And Batman is not only a gigantic tentpole, but it is also based on previous intellectual property. And perhaps even more important, it's able to be. It's in the conglomerate era or the early conglomerate era of Hollywood.

So a conglomerates, all of its systems could work together to push Batman. You could have Batman happy meals, Batman video games, Batman toys, numerous sequels, et cetera, et cetera. So I think Batman is really this crucial turning point because it lets executives realize that there could be significant value in intellectual property and pre existing intellectual property, that you don't need to take a gamble on someone like George Lucas, who may have a Star wars in them. You could take a gamble on stories and characters that audiences are familiar with and that this is like, one executive I spoke to said, it's a dry run for a story, and you at least have a sense of, theoretically, about how audiences will respond to it. And you have a sense, you know, audiences like Batman, so they'll see Batman.

But another thing that why this gets supercharged as high finance enters Hollywood in the late two thousands, particularly, of course, the Marvel Cinematic universe. Iron man is, I believe, released in 2008. So it's happening at the same time, is that you have the money to basically plan out dozens of movies, and you also have IP, intellectual property as something that is legible to financial investors. It is, in theory, in a business where very little is quantifiable, because it's based on taste. And as William Goldman says, no one knows anything.

You don't really know what's going to be a hit. IP is something that could be legible to the quantitative guys. You could say this has been a comic that's been in existence for 50 years. Everyone really loves Iron man, which wasn't necessarily, but you could say everyone really loves Iron man. He's such a popular character.

And we're going to create this whole universe of films, and we already know it's going to be a success because these are some of the most indelible characters in american history. It's just crazy. You write about how some of the writers have told you that working for a show with existing Ip, like a Marvel Cinematic universe, that sometimes they don't even know the full arc of the project when they're brought on as writers. So they're writing something that they don't even see a bigger picture for, because. There'S a larger vision in terms of a cinematic.

The executive is really the creator of the cinematic universe, even if writers and directors are the creative of individual movies. So if you're hired to write Thor two, or whatever it is, Thor two, fits into a larger tapestry of films that the executive class is more aware of than you are as a writer, and you're effectively in hock to whatever they want, because, one, you're being paid a lot of money, and two, you don't necessarily know the full tapestry. And that tapestry is, of course, ever changing. So this, again, makes the writer less important. With Marvel in particular, and with many Marvel movies, the first thing that's made is not even the script, but literally the art scenes of fights, because that is what ultimately sells the movie.

Tanya Moseley

That's the accent, the action. And also what you have going on here is you get the relative stagnation of the domestic box office in the two thousands. Movies are becoming less and less important to culture. Everyone knows this. That's a story that we are well aware of.

Daniel Besner

And do you have a shift to international markets, particularly China? Because China is really only developing its film industry in the two thousands. So there's enormous growth opportunities and something that travels well, unlike, let's say, courtroom dramas or specific american comedies, are gigantic action films that, you know, punching is the international language, and so you get a focus on these sorts of films, partially also for the international market. The Marvel Cinematic universe is hugely popular. You write about how it then has become a template, but I'm just wondering if it's still working, because didn't Disney's the Marvel come in more than $60 million?

Tanya Moseley

Short of breaking even? What does that say, if anything? Is that seen as a fluke, or is it seen as something to be concerned about? I think it's pretty clear that there's something called superhero fatigue in audiences, that audiences aren't necessarily lining up to see another 25 films about superheroes. The question is, how does that affect intellectual property?

Daniel Besner

Because in Hollywood, everyone's talking rightly. Barbie did incredibly well. And is that not the ultimate intellectual property? It's literally an inanimate toy. But it also is just one.

Tanya Moseley

It's one like it's one project that's up against what we're seeing as a trend. Yeah, there's one project, and there's a lot of uniqueness about it. Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach were given a lot of freedom. Greta, I think, created, like an enormously, incredibly, visually stunning tapestry for the movie. Is Jerry Seinfeld's pop Tarts movie gonna do as well?

Daniel Besner

I don't know. If there's a slinky movie, which I believe coming, is that gonna do as well? I don't know, particularly because the pendulum has swung so far. But in the late 1980s, eighties, I think roughly 40% of the money that was produced by the top 100 films domestically was produced by original work, original screenplays, and by the late two thousand ten s, I forget the year, but that number had dropped to something like 6%. So it's such an incredible swing in the other direction that it's naturally going to return to some form of normal.

People do want original screenplays. What the new normal is, though, I think it remains to be seen. But if I had to guess, I think audiences are a little sick of superheroes, and they might be also sick of intellectual property more broadly, and they might be craving something new. Remains to be seen. Okay, Daniel, we've been talking this entire time about the problems.

Tanya Moseley

You give your assessment at the end of your piece on what you think should happen, and then what is feasible? What are some solutions or interventions? It's kind of funny, I tweeted about this today. I'm like, ugh. Why do millennials have to deal with antitrust law?

Daniel Besner

We figured out this stuff 100 years ago, but the government needs to regulate monopolies. At base, if you drive, how realistic is that? The possibility that that would happen? Almost impossible. And they would also have to regulate high finance.

Now, the question is, and this ties into broader themes, is that we do live presently in a gerontocracy, that a lot of the people who are making the decisions in these institutions, particularly the politicians, not all of them, of course, but many of them were politicized and came of age in a different era, particularly in the. In the Reagan era, where deregulation was meant to unleash the forces of the political economy. When the gerontocracy fades away to a variety of natural processes, that is dying, when younger people come in and actually assume positions of authority, are they going to do things like re regulate the economy, enforce antitrust law, reregulate high finance? That might very well happen. But given the state of american politics right now, it seems very unlikely.

And, of course, we had to take out these numbers because there, there wasn't space to do it. But when you take the amount of money that all the conglomerates spend on lobbying versus what, let's say, the WGA spends on lobbying, you'll be surprised to learn that it absolutely dwarfs it. So there's all these larger problems in american politics, from money in politics to the gerontocracy, that, in my opinion, at least, make it very unlikely that the most obvious things that need to be done for Hollywood to become a healthy business from getting accomplished so effectively, that leaves it up to labor. And so one of the major solutions that I think will need to be accomplished, particularly because I believe that government action on monopolies and finance is unlikely to be forthcoming, is that all the Hollywood unions, the Writers Guild, the WGA, the Actors Guild, SAG AFTRA, the Directors Guild, the WGA, and also the International alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which is popularly known as Aiatzi, I a t s e, they represent the, quote, unquote, proverbial sound guy, cameramen, or women, for that matter, stagehands, gaffers, the people who really make the industry go round would be for all of these unions to come together and do an industry wide first, ideally a negotiation. But then if the amp TP doesn't agree to various demands, participate in a strike that would have as its goal the actual restructuring of the industry.

This is, of course, very difficult to accomplish for a variety of reasons. A strike like this would have an enormously negative effect, to be frank, in the short term, on many of these workers, from Ayat on down. And so if I were, you know, the God of labor and I was waving around my wand, I would say all the Hollywood unions, every single one, the DGA, SAG AFTRA, the WGA, but really, really importantly, Ayati as well, which might very well go on strike in a few months. They need to do a broad, industry wide strike. Daniel Besner, thank you so much for this conversation.

Thank you so much for having me. It was a genuine pleasure. Daniel Besner is a writer and associate professor of american foreign policy at the University of Washington. His latest article for Harper's is titled the Life and Death of Hollywood. Coming up, book critic Maureen Corrigan shares an appreciation of the letters of Emily Dickinson.

Tanya Moseley

This is fresh air. On it's been a minute. We're keeping you in the know. When it comes to culture, I break down the latest trends and the forces behind them and introduce you to the creatives who think deeply about how we. Live today come for some good old.

Cultural analysis and, and have a few laughs with me. Listen to the it's been a minute podcast from NPr.

The indicator from Planet money is all in on video games, not just because they're a fun hobby. Video games are one of the fastest growing businesses worldwide, worth more than the film and music industries combined. We're seeing some games that are really taking, I mean, half a billion dollars to make. We're taking a week long look at the video game industry. Listen to the indicator from Planet Money podcast on NPR on NPR's through line.

We cannot function for 24 hours without cobalt because it's in our smartphone, our tablet, our laptop, and as a consequence, the lives of the people living in that part of the Congo descended into just a catastrophe. Find NPR's throughline wherever you get your podcasts. April is poetry month, and our book critic Maureen Corrigan has spent a good part of it reading a hefty new collection of letters by one of America's greatest poets. Here's Maureen Corrigan's appreciation of the letters of Emily Dickinson. Among the great moments in literary history I wish I could have witnessed is that day sometime after May 15, 1886, when Lavinia Dickinson entered the bedroom of her newly deceased older sister and began opening drawers, out sprang poems, some 1800 of them.

Maureen Corrigan

Given that Emily Dickinson had only published ten poems during her lifetime, this discovery was a shock. Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, begins one of those now famous poems. Whatever Dickinson hoped for her poems, she could never have envisioned how they'd resonate with readers, nor how curious those readers would be about her life, much of it spent within her father's house in Amherst and in later years, within that bedroom. Every so often, the reading public's image of Emily Dickinson shifts. For much of the 20th century, she was a Fae Stevie Nicks type figure.

Check out, for instance, the 1976 film of Julie Harris's lauded one woman show. The Belle of Amherst, a feminist Emily Dickinson emerged during the second women's movement, when poems like I'm wife were celebrated for their avant garde anger and jumping to the present. A new monumental volume of Dickinson's letters, the first in over 60 years, gives us an engaged Emily Dickinson, a woman in conversation with the world through gossip as well as remarks about books, politics, and the signal events of her age, particularly the Civil War. This new collection of the Letters of Emily Dickinson is published by Harvard's Belknap Press and edited by two Dickinson scholars, Kristan Miller and Donnell Mitchell. To accurately date some of Dickinson's letters, they've studied weather reports and seasonal blooming and harvest Michaels in 19th century Amherst.

Theyve also added some 300 previously uncollected letters to this volume, for a grand total of 13 four letters. The result is that the letters of Emily Dickinson reads like the closest thing well, probably ever have to an intimate autobiography of the poet. The first letter here is written by an eleven year old Dickinson to her brother Austin, away at school. It's a breathless kid sister marvel of run on sentences about yellow hens and skunks and poor cousin Zabina, who had a fit the other day and bit his tongue. The final letter by an ailing 55 year old Dickinson, most likely the last she wrote before falling unconscious on May 13, 1886, was to her cousins Louisa and Frances Norcross.

It reads, little cousins called back Emily. In between is a life filled with visitors, chores and recipes for donuts and coconut cakes. There's mention of the racist minstrel stereotyped Jim Crow, as well as of public figures like Florence Nightingale and Walt Whitman. There are also allusions to the death toll of the ongoing Civil War. Dickinson's loyal dog Carlo walks with her, and frogs and even flies keep her company.

Indeed, in an 1859 letter about one such winged companion, Bella Vamherst's charm alternates with cold blooded callousness. Dickinson writes to her cousin Louisa, I enjoy much with a fly during sister's absence, not one of your blue monsters, but a timid creature that hops from pane to pane so very cheerfully and hums and thrums a sort of speck piano. I'll kill him the day Lavinia comes home, for I shan't need him any more. Dickinson's singular voice comes into its own in the letters of the 1860s, which often blur into poems, cryptic, comic, and charged with awe. A simple thank you note to her soulmate and beloved sister in law, Susan Gilbert, Dickinson reads, dear sue.

The supper was delicate and strange. I ate it with compunction, as I would eat a vision. 13 letters, and still they're not enough. Scholars estimate that we only have about one 10th of the letters Dickinson ever wrote, and on that momentous day in 1886, Lavinia entered her sister's bedroom to find and successfully burn all the letters Dickinson herself had received from others during her lifetime. Such was the custom of the day, which makes this new volume of Dickinson's letters feel like both an intrusion and an outwitting of the silence of death, something I want to believe Dickinson would.

Tanya Moseley

Have relished Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed the letters of Emily Dickinson. If you'd like to catch up on interviews you've missed, like our conversation with journalist Ari Berman on how minority rule is threatening american democracy, or with the musician St. Vincent on her new album and working with David Byrne, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of fresh air interviews and to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers recommendations for what to watch, read and listen to subscribe to our free newsletter at w h y.org freshair.

Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salad, Phyllis Myers, Roberta Schorach, Anne Marie Baldonado, Sam Brigar, Lorne Krenzel, Susan Yakundi, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly CV. Nessbur Thea Challoner directed today's show with Terry Gross.

I'm Tanya Moseley.

Over the past couple decades, the US has lost about a third of its newspapers, taking thousands of local journalists off their beats. A functioning democracy and functioning local journalism go hand in hand. We're trying to do our part, and that's why we need you to do your part. Make sure that the NPR network stays strong by supporting us at donate dot npr.org dot. And thank you.

If you've never donated to the NPR network before, that's okay. Public radio is available to everyone for free, but we do rely on listener support from those who are able to give. So join the community of supporters for public media giving days coming up on May 1 and second. Please give at donate dot npr.org and thank you.

Across America, history is often recorded on small markers. You've probably seen them on the sides of roads, in front of buildings in the middle of nowhere. NPR's Laura Sullivan spent a year investigating thousands of markers and found a distorted version of America's history, but also curiosities, humor and joy. Listen to the new episode of the Sunday Story on the up first podcast from NPR.

Why Writers Are Losing Out In Hollywood

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1. Introduction: The Plight of Hollywood Writers

2. Historical Context: The Evolution of the Industry

3. The Role of Streaming: A Double-Edged Sword

4. Economic Impacts: Financialization of Hollywood

Actionable Advice

About This Episode

People

Guest Name(s):

Content Warnings:

Transcript