Hollywood abides by corporate rules

Rude mood has town pining for good old days

A newsman will take tips wherever he can get them. One of my best trendwatchers, for example, is my neighborhood pharmacist, whose customers include many showbusiness professionals. "The mood of the town is dark," he confided to me last week. "I can't keep enough antidepressants on my shelves."

My pharmacist's report was essentially reinforced by stories in Daily Variety last week depicting a sort of "darkness at noon" mentality. There's a foreboding that the era of limitless opportunity and fat paydays is over.

If optimism is passe, so is civility. One agent put it to me this way: "This business used to be clubby, now it's corporate. I'm only in my 40s, but I'm already missing the old days."

Hollywood's "new rules" are reflected in the allocation of deals, a network president told me. "Sure, you try to lock up the best material and the best talent," he said. "But the way the system used to work, you next took care of your relationships -- your friend at CAA or the guy who had a hit three seasons back but has gone cold or maybe even the guy who formerly held your job."

There's no room for the relationship game today, he noted ruefully. It's not in the corporate rule book.

Talk to talent agents about the dealmaking process and you hear a litany of war stories. "Unbending" is the word ascribed to the business-affairs mavens both in film and TV. "I really get the vibe that they still want to punish the writers for going on strike," one top agent told me.

A studio chief denies this. "It isn't about punishing anyone," he explained. "It's just that we've been making ridiculous deals. We won't do it anymore."

Indeed, if anyone's getting punished, it's the agents. In talking to the corporate players in town, I detect a pervasive subtext: By their standards, the town's agents are still trying to operate on an obsolete business model. Their demands are too great and their personal "take" too grandiose.

To some, CAA's glistening new offices in Century City represent a sort of monument to agenting -- an assertion of raw power. To CAA, its edifice reflects the growing importance of talent in the ever more consolidated universe of content. To the corporate apparatchiks, however, it's about "take," not talent.

What no one can dispute, however, is that the present marketplace is a troubled one. Many fat writing deals that were canceled during the strike have not been renewed. Fewer pilots are being shot. Major movie deals are falling apart because studios are reluctant to greenlight projects with a potential actors strike looming.

The upshot: More visits to the friendly neighborhood pharmacy. And a pervasive sense that previous generations had things a lot better.