Paramount’s Brad Grey is merely collateral damage in an industry that’s figuring out how to survive.
It’s one of the worst-kept secrets in journalism that most public figures play a role in creating their obituaries. They don’t decide the wording of the stories, or even the angles such final assessments take; but prominent people usually grant major newspapers interviews about their lives and careers, often multiple times over the years, and in doing so subtly shape how they’ll be perceived.
Such luminaries as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, not to mention local heroes like Steven Spielberg and Meryl Streep, probably have already had conversations with The New York Times and other publications about their work and experiences — exit interviews, as it were, long before their exits ever take place.
Now might be a good time for Paramount CEO Brad Grey to consider such a move. I don’t mean to suggest the 59-year-old’s career is over; but clearly an important part of it is winding down. It would be good to learn what he’s thinking as talks move forward for him to leave the studio, as well as his ideas on the underlying causes — the peculiar way in which an individual’s fortunes brush against those of an entire industry.
Because it is obvious that far more is at play here than one man’s successes and failures. The film business is going through a remarkable upheaval, leaving its workers at a strange intersection where broad trends and personal trajectories collide.
Look around town, and you’ll note that one major studio executive after another has been sent spinning, like so many skittles scattered by balls larger and faster than themselves. Amy Pascal, Jim Gianopulos, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Michael Lynton — they’re just a few of the towering figures who’ve left their jobs after years, or are about to do so. And there is no indication that their successors will last as long.
There was a time when you could measure studio eras by the people who ruled them: There was the age of MGM’s Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer; the age of Universal’s Lew Wasserman and Sidney Sheinberg; the age of Warners’ Bob Daly and Terry Semel. Not any more. Executives’ careers are briefer now, and they’re likely to become briefer still.
Forget three strikes and you’re out; these days, a studio chief is lucky to get to bat. As technology shifts at the speed of light, Hollywood will be forced to shift just as fast.
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SOURCE: Stephen Galloway
The Hollywood Reporter
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