Why is TheFKATheFilmBiz BLIND to what is right in front of us?
Things got rotten because some wanted it so, and we all let them build it so it was the only option for most..
Want an understatement?
The FKATheFilmBiz has trouble taking a long-term view.
They chase stock performance and quarterly earnings, forgetting that cinema is a culture business. For them, cinema – and all culture -- became just the lure to lock customers into the walled garden. The Passion Industries were primed to be the bait from the start, as all creators just can’t wait to make their next big thing, all too willing to sacrifice their own future for another greenlight.
Artists are chum for the TechBroCos and all Capitalist Overlords as we believe today’s project is world-changing, and tomorrow’s will be even better, and as a result we wrongly believe we don’t really need to be strategic about our own longterm. Look no further than how we all speak of the next merger/consolidation as a given. Who cares who wins that round? Any “win” just drops us down another circle of this current hell.
When I think of the possibilities we’ve squandered, and all the good things we let just slip through our fingers, I, I, I…. I can’t admit to you how I feel, because if I do, someone somewhere would want me in jail or at least in a hospital.
And that is just the tip. The thing that really gets me is not just all that has been lost, or how this situation of our own doing is so ripe for exploitation, but instead how extensively it has been mined and encouraged without any significant opposition.
The GSPs and major agencies seemingly conspired to wash away the one thing that allowed this bad tendency of ours to never be addressed. Back when, artists and entrepreneurs in the culture industries were cut in to a fair share of the profits their own work generated; back then, we did not really have to think about tomorrow, because if we were any good at what we did, even despite their world renown thievery masquerading as “accounting”, we’d still see the pay out in profit statements, residuals, and future deals. Alas, in the here that is now, both the Global Streaming Platforms and the big talent representatives convinced us to abandon that golden goose and give up success-based bonuses in favor of a short-term fee escalation that positioned the agencies for higher valuations and allowed the TechBroCōs to change the game forever and in their favor.
Bad move, FKATheFilmBiz. Bad move. You are standing above your own corpse, looking down on the death rattle final moves. How does that feel?
