Bad News, Good News
The future ain’t what it used to be.
A couple of years ago, the storied CBS Radford lot, where I spent a dozen years playing out the string on my career, was purchased by Hackman Capitol Partners, a real estate company. I was suspicious at the time, mostly because of the low opinion I hold of real estate developers, who seem single mindedly focused on making as much money as possible no matter who and what gets fucked over in the process.
Yeah, I know— it’s the “creative destruction” of capitalism — but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
Hollywood has long attracted go-getters whose success in other industries leads them to assume that it can’t be all that hard to make good movies and television, but after blowing through large chunks of their millions with very little to show for it, they learn what Hollywood veterans have long understood: yes, Virginia, it really is that hard.
Still, real estate developers are usually clear-eyed when it comes to investing — they rarely go for a deal that isn’t a sure thing — so why would Hackman leap into the financial burn-pit of the film and television industry?
It’s not exactly news that business in Hollywood has been very slow the last few years, beginning with the Covid shutdown, followed by the WGA and SAG strikes and subsequent contraction by streaming networks. This cascade of woe was exacerbated by the ongoing outflow of production to other states and countries offering fat subsidies and cheaper labor, all of which combined to leave many sound stages empty in Hollywood. I don’t know anybody at Universal, Warners, Fox, or Sony these days, but still have contacts at Radford, where “Big Brother” continues to slog on through the garbage swamp of Reality TV — but that’s just one sound stage. The sitcoms and episodics that kept the lot humming during the years I worked there are long gone, and very few have taken their place.
(Digressive note: I’m told by reliable sources that there’s still a bloody chunk of my scalp, complete with a few precious hairs, embedded in one of those small but deadly pizza-cutter sprinkler heads of the fire-safety system high in the Big Brother stage. While working with a crew stripping out tons of old cable so Big Brother could move in, I discovered — the hard way, of course — that there wasn’t much headroom up there.)
Given that Radford occupies several acres of prime real estate in Studio City, my instincts were that Hackman had the usual money-grubbing motives of real estate developers, and that their ultimate plan is to tear down all those sound stages and build “luxury” condos or some other high-value, big-money housing projects.
While surfing the waves of Instagram recently, I came across a guy called “Producer Patrick,” who answered the question: “Why are studios still building new sound stages when so many of the existing stages are empty?”
It seems I wasn’t far off the mark. Although he doesn’t mention Radford specifically, he didn’t have to — and if “PP” right, this is not good news for Hollywood or the vast majority of the people who work there in the film and television industry.
And yes, at risk of belaboring the obvious, you have to click on each image to view/hear the clip — and it’s possible the links won’t work if you lack an account with Instagram.
Then again, good news for our industry is in short supply these days, as the following clip — again from “Producer Patrick” — demonstrates.
Finally, ”P.P.” offers a brief primer on all that ails the domestic television business — and his thoughts line up with what I’ve heard from other sources. That said, I’m four hundred-plus miles away from Hollywood nowadays, so my finger isn’t exactly on the pulse of the industry.
I just hope he’s wrong.
If any of this resonates, there are more of “PP’s” insights on Instagram. None of what he says (that I’ve yet heard, anyway) will make you feel better, but so it goes these days. If I was fifty years old and still doing heavy lifting on set — particularly if I had a family and mortgage to support — I’d be scared to death. Whatever happens with AI, there’s going to be a lot of roadkill on the digital highway.
By now you’re probably wondering: “Gee, thanks for cheering me up, a-hole … so what’s the ‘good news’ you promised?” Although the future seems grim wherever you look these days, be it the arena of domestic politics, global geopolitics, or our shared and apparently doomed environment, there are a few bright spots — moments of grace, if you will — here and there.1 Unless you’re one of those impatient readers who never clicks the links in these posts, you’ve already checked out “Producer Patrick,” so do yourself a favor and hop on over to Scott Reeder's page. A veteran propmaster for God knows how long, Scott demonstrates — with a wry sense of humor — how he’s solved many a thorny problem on set over the years, whether it’s creating edible cockroaches, making sure a scene is good for sound by making quiet ping-pong balls and horseshoes for the actors to use, or fashioning an edible, highly realistic barbecued steak from a slice of watermelon for a vegetarian actor to eat during a dinner scene. Apparently he’s on YouTube and TikTok as well, so you can find him wherever you roam in the cyber-verse.
Hey, we may as well learn a little something and have a few laughs while the world goes down the toilet.
I had my fun working in set lighting for all those years, but must confess that watching Scott’s clips makes me wish I’d gone into props. That man seems to have nothing but fun, and he never had to wrangle hundred-pound rolls of cable.
Sigh…
No worries: in the future when the only cities that haven’t yet burned are flooded, marauding gangs of heavily armed survivors roam the countryside, and grocery stores have long since been stripped bare, we’ll just eat crypto!
The really scary thing about AI is that even its creators say they don't know where all this is going.
ooooh, dark, Michael, really dark.
Thank goodness for the Scott Reeder recipes!
Is it a little creepy knowing you've left an actual physical part of yourself behind at Radford?🙀
I am hoping audiences will quickly tire of AI-produced stuff and find their way towards whatever new human endeavour surfaces. Of course, I may be tilting at windmills.
Good read!