Wages of Fear
Read meetings teach exex to pitch, survive
The weekend-read meeting looms.
It's hipper than ever for writers, producers and actors to heap scorn on execs as pampered pashas cut off from the world. It may even be true that group thinking breeds mediocre movies and makes it hard to take a risk.
But the detractors are just camping out in this universe; they have no idea what it's like to live inside the walls.
On Monday, assistants sound more protective of those they guard and snappishly tell callers "she's gonna have to return."
The execs themselves grip their Starbucks cups a little tighter as they finally emerge from their offices and bump into last-minute arrivals (overworked creative execs) or more leisurely cameos (their elders and betters).
To the uninitiated, this may not seem like a big deal.
A group of about 15 low-level to top execs munch banana bread and fresh fruit as they talk about what they read during the past weekend, what they liked, and what they didn't. A decision is made on each project based on merit before moving on. That's all, right?
Wrong.
Look closer, beyond the chummy banter, beneath the convivial team spirit and warm-up jokes, and you'll see people fighting for their lives.
I spent enough time in those rooms to know what it feels like to be there. This meeting is the dry run for the production lunch with the studio chairman later that week, where the execs present the fruits of the Monday meeting in the hope they will be smiled upon. It is also the public forum where projects are kept alive or put to sleep, depending on your ability to defend or attack them.
Finally, it is the place where presidents of production test the mettle of their creative samurai to see how well they hold up in a scrap.
When I was one of them (the overworked junior variety), I once had a strategy session with a senior exec right before the meeting. Among the pile of mediocre scripts, I had read one I thought was great and wanted him to support it. After I'd told him the premise, he urged me to "sell it to the Room."
But he never told me how he'd react if it backfired. I was still too green to know what to expect.
I went into the meeting buoyed only by my own enthusiasm. They call this "being totally unprotected" in the trade, and that's an understatement. It's gutsy. It's instinctual. It's also really stupid.
I sat down at the large, square wooden table that was wiped down with Lemon Pledge or something; everyone's hands always slipped on it. Execs shared the trades, which swooshed across the 8-foot-by-8-foot surface. Then the meeting began.
THE FIRST PEOPLE IN THE ROOM are always the junior executives, eager to show ... well ... eagerness. They often sit together, since they're often looked upon as one person with interchangeable faces.
The president of production went around the room one by one, and when he nodded at me to go ahead, I looked at the senior exec, my supposed partner in this enterprise, for support and saw a stare as blank as the tabletop.
So I lost my nerve and choked. I babbled on about how this might be a good idea and how the writer was still cheap, and maybe we could develop the central premise and ... As I was sinking deeper into this quagmire, I glanced over at the executive again, but found him examining his sliced melon as if it contained a hidden message intended just for him.
After the meeting (which ended in rejection), I went to his office and found him coolly dismissive: "What was that?" he asked rhetorically, disappointed I hadn't gone for it without any support. Then he went to another meeting.
What happens in the Room is often the result of careful lobbying, rather than a surprise to anyone but the lower-level rubes, like me. Make enough mistakes like I did and you learn not to support anything that's not a sure thing without a pre-determined consensus, and even then to bring a figurative backup gun in a hidden ankle holster.
About a year or so later, I had seen an obscure foreign movie and was juiced about it, but needed a "godfather" to support me in the Room. I was learning. I was rising through the ranks. But now I made another classic mistake:
I told the Room how confident I was we'd get this movie's remake rights, that I had a relationship with the director and producers. The same exec, to my surprise, showed excitement, emboldening me to really climb out on a limb. He, of course, would lead the project if I scored -- all without ever really declaring himself.
Then my "friends" made the deal with another studio.
THE EXEC WAS EMBARRASSED that he had voiced even tacit approval, and we never worked on a movie together. After that, he mostly looked at his fruit every time I spoke.
Within his own set of rules, the executive was right and I was wrong. Sensing that I had support, I didn't bother to disguise my enthusiasm to avoid being left hanging if I failed to rally the group. The other edge of that sword, of course, is the need to hedge any criticism in case a loser project suddenly becomes everyone's darling.
The weekend-read meeting is an art, a dance. In this kind of delicate minuet, the tempo changes every week, and you never learn it perfectly.
"You can never know," says someone who's been there. "You have to go for the temperature in the Room. If there's someone in there who starts off as a steamroller, then everyone else feels comfortable falling in behind that person."
When that doesn't happen, great projects often reach a stalemate because the exec in question doesn't have enough juice to get the group's support. In response, he or she may not support anyone else's idea. And in that kind of stalemate, great ideas can remain in limbo. Snagging a big star may extract it out of the muck, but that can take years.
The flip side, of course, is that bad movies also get made because nobody speaks up, sometimes resulting in a whole year of "programmers" whose only virtue is familiarity.
Fear teaches a set of survival skills you can't learn outside Hollywood.
Yes, fear.
Admit it: How many times can you remember a meeting when you voiced your unvarnished opinion? With the risk greater than ever of losing your job, contrasted with the diminishing rate of movies getting made, how can it possibly be otherwise?
No, the meeting is about much more.
As a young exec, the Room is your first and only spotlight, the pathway to other Rooms with smaller crowds, more power and better food. Even if you're great down the hall or in the safety of your office, the only place to strut your stuff, to show grace under pressure and watch it pay off, is here.
Each studio has its own peculiar rhythm, but the purpose, the process, is the same at each. And it can go sideways on you instantly.
"Sometimes, you can have an executive promise support outside the Room, but when he sees the president in there, he won't," says one veteran of those meetings.
That's why the way to the Room is often lined with execs huddling in corners near the Room, getting a final gauge of their cohorts' guts. Can I really count on you?
THE FEAR OF REJECTION will never be absent from those meetings.
The fear of going it alone, of burning your project on one bad miscalculation or unintended slight of a potential supporter, may even be a necessary evil for those not living in a fantasy world. It's the juice that makes political alliances grow like rings in the water.
Once the meeting is done, everyone returns to their offices to field the many calls from agents wondering how their clients' work fared in the meeting. If they crashed and burned, you stall for as long as you can.
Some execs are mavericks and decide to bypass the Room entirely.
"You think I really give a shit about what they say in the meeting?" says one feisty exec who claims that some of his favorite movies have gotten made because he always secured the talent and went ahead with the package, even if the Room was entirely against it.
Then, when this mass of talent and power became inevitable, he watched the dominos fall in the other direction, one by one, until the greenlight decision was made in front of the chairman. In that case, the collective fear of going against the Package now outweighed the initial fear of supporting it.
So what are the wages of fear?
For senior execs, they are the knowledge that no project is so great it can't be mortally wounded in the Room by anyone, high or low. Perks like fat Christmas bonuses and rides on the jet help, too, of course.
For junior execs smart enough to find a sponsor early in their careers, they are the first lessons in gunboat diplomacy; in other words, support my project or I'll sink yours.
And the other execs, the ones who don't have power or learn how to work those who do, what's in it for them?
They get to keep their jobs until the next weekend-read meeting.
