Mark Harris Profile picture
Jul 21 3 tweets 1 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
Extraordinary: We are about to have a rare weekend of genuine significance in recent movie history--two non-sequels arriving simultaneously and turning into a bigger-than-both-of-them cultural event. And instead of considering what appetite that reflects and what it might mean...
...the people who run the industry are floating trial balloons about pulling future product from the schedule. The industry was never led by artists, but this generation of execs is several degrees more removed from creating things than their Hollywood ancestors were. it shows. >
Just as they have no understanding of the economic fragility of those they employ, they apparently have no understanding that public enthusiasm for the businesses they run needs constant nurturing. They understand Wall Street and their own wallets. That's all, and not enough. x

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More from @MarkHarrisNYC

Jul 2
Brief midyear movie-biz thread: It is hard to overstate the degree to which Hollywood is now looking to three movies--Mission: Impossible 7, Barbie, and Oppenheimer--not only to succeed, but to solve industry problems that no three films can solve. 1/
Mission: Impossible 7 is for the "Movies are back, baby!" crowd--the execs who have been waiting since Top Gun: Maverick for the next victory lap and who are holding fast to the belief that franchises and stars, no matter how old or aging, are still a viable path forward. 2/
Barbie is for the people who believe that mining existing IP is a creative path as long as the talent is younger and the existing IP hasn't been overly exploited by movies already. Those execs are essentially modern pragmatists. 3/
Read 8 tweets
Jun 28
Saw a fascinating indie about a trans woman who seeks to reconnect with an old college roommate. He's never unkind to her but he is aloof--he doesn't want to hear about her journey. Then he realizes he's being selfish, and after looking into his heart... >
...he quickly comes to understand that he was punishing her for his own discomfort. He immediately apologizes and tells her he feels lucky to be able to get to know who she is now and to get to know her better, and they resume their friendship. It was called... >
..."The Love Boat, season 5, episode 15" (1982), in case you have any doubt about how hard the political right has worked to make its core constituency stupider and meaner than they were 40 years ago. (BTW, the man, Gopher, was played by Fred Grandy, later a GOP congressman.)
Read 5 tweets
Jun 21
Some further news about the unwarranted firings at TCM. This is about what happens when someone takes over a company and does not understand that historical stewardship is not just a moral responsiblity but a bottom-line issue. > indiewire.com/features/comme…
You cannot run a media company and make your Year One signature moves the deplatforming of completed work, the dilution of two long-respected brands (first HBO, now TCM), and the dismissal of execs with decades of expertise, talent, and grasp of what they're custodians of. >
Or rather, you CAN--you can tell yourself that you're a businessman who doesn't give into sentiment about "art"--but it's going to cost you the respect, the allegiance, and ultimately the services of the top-tier directors and producers you want to attract and hold onto. >
Read 4 tweets
Jun 5
This is an important story by @Helen_E_Shaw, a journalist of unquestioned integrity. I talked to her about its subject while she was working on it, and as you will see, I am in one unhappy sentence. Thread below, for anyone who is interested. 1/
newyorker.com/magazine/2023/…
I want to be transparent about this, for anyone who has read Mike Nichols: A Life. The book contains a small handful of quotes from an interview that the subject of Helen's story purports to have conducted with Mike Nichols. 2/
The quotes largely concern Nichols's state of mind circa 1973 as he worked on a troubled production of Uncle Vanya. I was impressed by his candor when I read them. As it turned out, the quotes largely comport with what he said elsewhere about that time. They're just more vivid.3/
Read 6 tweets
May 11
Update: The proper thing for Chris Licht to do now is resign.
A failure this immense happens when you forget that journalism's only allegiance is to the truth, and decide instead that your highest priorities are to have no opinion about anything and to platform lies by calling them "newsworthy" or saying, "But a lot of people believe him."
There were so many mistakes here. 1) Agreeing to an entirely partisan audience as a condition of the interview. 2) Deciding that someone could serve as moderator, host, interviewer and corrector of the record simultaneously. 3) Ignoring Trump's history of lying in your planning.>
Read 8 tweets
May 2
The AMPTP is already foregrounding the WGA's insistence on mandatory writing staffs for TV shows because it thinks it can drum up public anti-union sentiment by suggesting that writers are demanding no-show jobs. Don't fall for it. Writers are willing, eager, desperate to work. >
What's happening is that as streamers replace the 22 (or 13) episodes per year model with 8 episodes every 15-18 months, they're trying to maximize profits by minimizing the role of writers--hiring as few as possible for as few days as possible on as few episodes as possible. >
The WGA is absolutely right to say that's unacceptable. Writers are an essential part of all scripted entertainment--does that even need to be said? No attempt to downgrade them to gig workers to line the coffers of networks and streamers can be justified as good faith. >
Read 4 tweets

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