HOLLYWOOD TRADE PAPERS = JOBS

by Bob Dowling on April 7th, 2009

The change in editorial management at Variety once again has activated opinions from many. Peter Bart was an icon at the trade paper for 20 years. He had his fans and he had his detractors but everyone who writes anything faces the same fate. What intrigues me more is how the coverage of his leaving his post dove tails into why he did not skewer the business like others are doing on line. Maybe that is the coverage lots of people want, and for the most part, it is out there. In some ways the coverage is about how unsavory the business is and how many people in the business are simply reflections of it.

Here is my issue. Forget about celebrity. Think only about work. At the conclusion of a film the credits role for what seems an eternity listing the names of people, companies, services and facility providers. Those are the real readers of the trades. For every name listed there is a story. A story of a professional hired in the business to perform the task they are qualified to do. The work they perform puts food on their table, puts their kids through college and pays for the house and the car. Trouble is when their work is finished, and it always is, they have to go out and find another job. The last job no longer exists, it is gone forever. The next job is no easier to find than the last one and since they have been employed for the last several months, they are totally out of contact with what is currently going on.Who is hiring, what films are being made and what work is available for their services are questions that demand answers. The business is unpredictable, without seasons and without any clear cut route to new production, nor who will be hired to work. Unless these professionals know what is going on they have no chance of getting more work. The trades tell them day in and day out who just got a green light to begin production, who lost their jobs, who got funding, who just got cast in a role, when a project will begin filming, who got distribution. Every fact can be turned into work if you know how to do it. The information about projects in the trade papers is endless and vital to anyone looking to work in the business. If you don’t work in the business you have no understanding of the sheer volume of project churn. What gets made is never certain but the competition to get the one time only jobs is more than intense and can open and close almost instantanously. If you don’t know about it you will not work there. Those working in the business need the trade papers to keep them current. They read the papers and make phone calls to anyone they know that has any connection to what they just read. Their question is always “can you hire me?” The folks who don’t understand the emptiness of that feeling everyday should live in a world where they are never sure where their next paycheck will come from. Then those who are quick to criticize the business, its practices and its people will have a true understanding of how hard it is to stay employed and how important a life line the two trade papers are to that livlihood.

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