The New Year

Need a few good laughs?

Welp ... here we are: 2025. Forgive me if I don't stand up and cheer the arrival of a new year.

Remember this? Although I didn't have a crystal ball a year ago, I wasn't remotely optimistic about 2024, and things turned out worse than I'd feared ... a lot worse. As we take our first tentative steps onto the thin ice of 2025, the situation in Hollywood remains bleak for many who depend on the film industry for their livelihood. A few shows are in production, but too many people are still waiting for their phones to ring, while some have given up and moved on. Our governor wants to provide a major boost to the California tax incentive program, but given the budget deficit, it's unclear that the legislature will cooperate in a year that promises -- for many reasons -- to be extremely challenging.

So what to do while the world burns at home and abroad ... chew the worry rag, doom-scroll on social media, take long depressing walks through the frozen winter where some texting-while-driving fool in a giant SUV is likely to run a stop sign and blast you into the Great Beyond?

I don't know about you, but I'm looking for reasons to laugh through the darkness, and found exactly that in Ed Driscoll's new book Cracking Up. I got to know Ed during my years on Melissa & Joey, where he worked on the writing staff while I toiled on the lighting crew. A veteran of the comedy wars who's done everything -- stand-up, sitcoms, and countless television specials -- Ed Driscoll is a good guy with a book full of stories to tell, and Cracking Up shares them with the rest of us who've long wondered what goes on behind the scenes of the laugh machine. It's a good, fun read, so do yourself a favor and buy a few laughs ... you'll be glad you did.

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Back when I was working my last show in Hollywood on Stage 18 at Paramount, our digitech man -- "Bob from Jersey" -- pointed me to the writing of his good friend Andy Romanoff. Bob was right -- I loved his stories. Somehow surviving a very interesting early life, Andy landed in the world of movies, and after settling into Hollywood, was responsible for importing the Louma Crane -- the grandaddy of every hot-head crane that's come on the scene ever since, including the Technocrane -- from France in the very early '80s, then operated the Louma on Steven Spielberg's WW 2 comedy 1941. He ended up working at Panavision, rising to an executive postion -- but despite the nice office, he never lost touch with his roots as a young motorcycle mechanic, DP, and member of Ken Kesey's wandering tribe back in the halcyon days of the '60s. Andy is a terrific writer, laying out his life journey with compelling prose in Stories I've Been Meaning to Tell You: the good, the bad, and the ugly. As they say down in Texas, Andy "don't paint his own fence," meaning that unlike many who tell their own stories in public, he doesn't try to make himself out to be the hero: instead he just tells the unvarnished truth -- and the truth well told is always a fascinating, entertaining story.

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As for 2025 ... the Hollywood Reporter weighed in with some prognostications on the effect a new administration -- led by our recycled president-elect, a human hammer who sees the rest of the world as a nail in his conviction that tariffs are the solution to every economic problem -- will have on the film and television industry. Maybe THR is right, maybe not -- we won't know 'til we know ... and then we'll know.

The LA Times has a few thoughts on what the new year might hold, which amount to cautious optimism for the short term tempered by a realization that the go-go days of the early streaming boom when everybody and his brother was working are unlikely to return anytime soon, if ever, thanks to the retrenchment and ongoing consolidation of the streamers, the ongoing evolution of AI, and the relentless flow of productions overseas.

In his recently rebranded Agent on the Loose over at Substack -- now Radio Free Hollywood -- Steve Jacobs offers a few predictions for the business of Hollywood in 2025. Although his take on the new year is not all gloom and doom, neither is it sweetness and light. Those polar opposites will walk hand in hand through the next twelve months, but which will prevail remains to be seen as the year unfolds. One thing we can count on is the greater presence and influence of AI, which is still in its infancy -- but like young Damien in The Omen, its capabilities grow by the day, for better or worse. this is already happening, and as AI evolves to become better and better, the digital sky really does seem to be the limit.

And speaking of reaching for the sky, check out this camera drone.

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In other news, the moving van is loaded and the engine warmed up, ready to haul Blood, Sweat, and Tedium over to Substack, where all the cool kids are playing these days. Blogger has become an increasingly glitchy platform, seemingly determined to make writing and posting a total pain in the ass. The stupid, time-wasting hoops I had to jump through to edit and publish this simple post were ridiculous -- seriously, I spent more time doing bubble-gum-and-bailing-wire fixes to varous formatting issues than writing the damned post.

I won't abandon this space ... yet ... but all subsequent BS&T posts will go up over there (or “here,” if you’re reading this on Substack) as well, along with other offerings. If you'd like future posts to drop into your in-box (a feature that stopped working a longtime ago here at Blogger), subscribe at Substack -- and don't let the word "subscribe" scare you off, because it won't cost a penny. Besides, there's a ton of good stuff over there, where lots of smart, thoughtful writers are doing good work, including the OG Queen of film industry bloggers herself, Peggy Archer, under her traditional Totally Unauthorized brand. Peg took a hiatus from her Wordpress blog for a couple of years, but is now back -- and that's a very good thing.

So here we go, head-first into the cold dark depths of winter,where once again I march into a new year bereft of optimism ... but I still have a few shreds of hope. After all, hope dies last, so remember the words of Bruce Cockburn in his song Lovers in a Dangerous Time:

"Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight, you gotta kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight"

There's a big, nasty cloud of darkness coming, so get ready to do some kickin'.