Hollywood terror

Certainly I did not predict the extent of the Sony hack, nor was I alone in suggesting that it might be a festive dose of creative hype to life a mediocre film. As it turns out, the ongoing escalation will text the strength of the top tier leadership and the ability to survive ruthless hacks and attacks.

Statistically ninety percent of motor vehicle crashes are caused at least in part by human error. The mechanics of the recent Hollywood pile up is even more compelling. Consider the media feeding frenzy, surrounding the latest batch of bitchy emails, hacked from the uber entertainment gods of power. Private film mogul correspondence, leaked onto the web proved more interesting than any bleeding truck wreck. The content of the cache of emails revealing Sony execs trashing various A listers is proving to be one of those stories that just keeps on giving. The movie industry’s value is at least as much an economic as a cultural concept. So any proper definition of Hollywood values ought to begin with a new realisation that the vast majority of the stuff of reality, is fuel for social media, opinion and down page comments. But the truth is something that can be dealt with.

The overriding principal focuses now on leadership, strength of character and an ability to create an authentic survival narrative.

Do the incriminated execs possess the skills to deal with a crisis of this magnitude? I guess time will tell. If they are not, they are unlikely survive the next leak. The new tools of news aggregation has elevated gossip, hearsay and conjecture to the level of valid, mainstream communication. It demands a different set of professional values to cope.

Squidgygate, Wikileaks. Snowden, Playstaton hack, Google breach Lulzsec Hack, Target Hacks, Celebrity Hacks – hindsight is always twenty-twenty with more to come.

This underlines the currency of the age. Those recruited to lead in the future will only succeed if they are built for the new purpose of the age. Transparency and authenticity is all. Perhaps consider the
idea once posited many years ago about Hollywood peers. It was said that to succeed an exec required “the memory of a convict, the balls of afireman, and the eyesight of a housebreaker.”

So nothing much changes.

Don Black’s lyrics captured the essence of Hollywood’s industrial complex.

“Dreams are not enough to win a war.
Out here they’re always keeping score,
Beneath the tan the battle rages
Smile a rented smile; fill someone’s glass,
Kiss someone’s wife; kiss someone’s ass.
We do whatever pays the wages”