Shocking Truth Revealed: The Film Industry Exposed as a Toxic Nightmare, Uprooting the ‘Hollywood Dream’!

The surface was all Hollywood glitz and glamor: Two very different films – Warner Bros. Barbieabout the feminist contradictions of an iconic doll and that of Universal Oppenheimerabout the desperate maker of the atomic bomb – both were released on July 21 and together earned $1.2 billion worldwide ticket sales generated on their first two weekends headlines about “the film event of the year”.

But behind the celebratory scenes, many of the Hollywood workers who actually created these business hits are on strike. These workers include the stars of the films, as vividly illustrated by Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon and Florence Pugh go out one Oppenheimer Premiered last month when the actors’ union joined striking writers.

The double strikes of the authors guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) – the first such joint action since 1960 – have virtually paralyzed the entertainment industry. And the workers aren’t expected to return any time soon. At stake are basic protective measures in the workplace and payment models used by film studios and streaming companies, and use by those employers artificial intelligence and other technology.

However these labor disputes are resolved, the resulting revelations have already undermined much of Hollywood’s carefully constructed reputation as a land of beauty, art and wealth. Instead, it’s becoming increasingly clear that this is just another boring old workplace, where workers face many of the same problems — exploitation, abuse, discrimination — that they face elsewhere in American business.

Behind the top salaries of A-list celebrities, most movie actors don’t have access to all the fabled wealth. More than 85% of those represented by SAG-AFTRA do not earn the $26,000 per year required to be eligible for health care benefits. after to union president Fran Drescher. actor in Orange is the new black— one of the first breakout hits of the streaming era to be expressed Netflix on the map – recently told him New Yorker that they were paid so badly that some had to take second jobs to pay their rent. One of the authors for The bearHulu’s current lively favorite, has said He couldn’t afford a new suit when the series won a comedy writing award.

“There’s this big cultural myth that Hollywood has a higher purpose — and a better reputation because people have artistic or creative pursuits,” says Maureen Ryan, author of Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in HollywoodA devastating new book to the pervasive workplace issues of the entertainment industry.

“Overall,” she adds, “the industry has used this misperception to cover up a multitude of sins.”

These stories of the economic plight of ordinary people have sparked an outrage that is widespread throughout the American economy, where the average CEO makes his living several hundred times what they pay a typical worker. Warner Bros. discovery CEO David Zaslav, for example, has become an industry lightning rod after the presidency of leadership riots at CNN, widely criticized layoffs at Turner Classic Movies and the cold financial decisions of making movies and TV shows disappear out of HBO (or Never release her primarily) for tax depreciation. In 2022, when he orchestrated the merger of Warner and Discovery and received a $247 million compensation package, wealth called Zaslav is the second most “overpaid” CEO on the Fortune 500. (Warner Bros. Discovery declined to comment on the ranking at the time.)

But if financial inequalities between managers and employees matter, borrow that from Ryan Burn it down Metaphor: Hollywood has been hoarding fuel for years. After Harvey Weinstein, #MeToo, #OscarsSoWhiteand waves of other accounts In the face of widespread inequality, discrimination and harassment in the entertainment industry, the cumulative impact of the stories of the striking workers has exposed the fundamental problems in the workplace that Ryan’s book poignantly reports have always existed.

“One of the reasons I wrote the book was to say, ‘Look, I know it’s us a few years later by #MeToo. But… guys, we didn’t fix it,” she says. “Nothing is fixed.”

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Ryan was reporting on various tensions in Hollywood well before this year’s strikes began. A veteran reporter and television critic currently working as an editor at Vanity Fairshe’s spent much of her career doing it cover Hollywood’s problems with diversity and inclusion, and investigating sexual harassment and other examples in the workplace wrongdoing across the entertainment industry.

But as she began writing her book in 2021, rumors of wider labor unrest were hard to ignore. As the entertainment industry began to emerge from the existential crisis caused by the pandemic, it became increasingly clear that the “golden age of streaming” was a financial disaster for most writers, actors and other workers. “Late last year it seemed so difficult for people to be able to pay their bills and keep their homes that … everyone I spoke to was at the boiling point of frustration,” Ryan says. “I realized I needed to give the book a little more focus, not just on the issues of harassment, abuse and misconduct, but also on the existential crises the industry is facing.”

Broadening their focus also helped address a frustrating dilemma of the post-#MeToo era: Nearly six years after Harvey Weinstein’s ouster, many are anxious to embrace the idea that Hollywood — and, for that matter, society as a whole — is the systemic “Fixed” problems that made his abuses possible.

“I felt like people were fed up with the stories of misconduct, mistreatment, abuse and exploitation in the industry,” says Ryan. “I understand because I get tired of it.”

Her solution was to combine her broader thesis about these ongoing, systemic problems with a high-minded version of Hollywood gossip: juicy, headline-grabbing, in-depth reporting of the horrible things that were going on Really what goes on behind the scenes of your favorite TV show. Some of her book’s best chapters deal with nuanced and harrowing examples of how “toxic workplace behavior” is condoned and rewarded across Hollywood. Case studies include: Lostis “relentlessly cruel” and “racist” Room for writers; “Saturday Night Live”S decades of “grave misconduct, racism, sexism, abusive dynamics, various forms of assault, substance abuse and mental health problems, aggravated by the punitive working conditions”; and the long track record of the highly acclaimed producer Scott Rudin physically abusive his assistants and “one of the most obnoxious bosses in the industry.” (Lost Co-creator Damon Lindelof admitted to Ryan that he “failed” at it SNL Executive Producer Lorne Michaels declined comment on her book. In 2021, Rudin announced that he “resign‘ from his projects.)

Sure enough after that Vanity Fair ran a Burn it down abstract around LostRyan’s reporting went viral — and launched her book New York Times bestseller list.

“That was part of the way I thought I was going to get people’s attention,” Ryan admits, “but it was also just to point out when people think moments are racist.” [and] “Sexist biases” and general abusive behavior “are gone, they’re dead wrong.”

Ryan cleverly presents Hollywood and the entertainment industry not only as the source of your favorite movies and TV shows, but as Workplace– with all the workplace problems known throughout American business. Outside of Tinseltown, too, disputes are growing between employers intent on squeezing every possible profit and shareholder value out of their workforce and the workers who actually make the product — including for clerical or “knowledge” jobs , which were once widely considered to be better paid, more prestigious and more protected. Today, employers at law firms, consulting giants, tech companies, and universities are all trying to recruit employees essentially gig workers without a long tenure of employment or the security of a steady paycheck, let alone ownership of their job performance. CEOs are publicly discussing the introduction of AI – and bragging about using it substitute those annoying people.

The “dream job”, if it ever existed, is in jeopardy everywhere these days. Nowhere is this more evident than in Hollywood, where the grim reality behind the glamorous myth of a creative utopia has become increasingly difficult to ignore.

For Ryan himself, this Hollywood dream was shattered a long time ago. “My son is a musician and producer and I fully support his creative work,” she told me. “But I’d rather have him work as a teller in a bank than work on a Hollywood set.”