Searching for Someone to Deliver a Hollywood Ending (original) (raw)

Media|Searching for Someone to Deliver a Hollywood Ending

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/21/business/media/hollywood-strikes-power-brokers.html

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Thanks to a changing culture and differing business models, the entertainment industry lacks power brokers with the stature to bring on labor peace.

A black-and-white photograph of Lew Wasserman seated in a room. He is wearing large black eyeglasses and his hands are clasped on his lap.

Lew Wasserman reigned as Hollywood’s major power broker for decades, starting in the 1960s.Credit...Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

July 21, 2023

The 1954 Hollywood classic “On the Waterfront” ends with unionized longshoremen on a dock. They’re fed up and standing idle, staring at a bloodied Marlon Brando. All of a sudden, an authoritative man in a fancy suit and a natty hat arrives. “We gotta get this ship going,” he barks. “It’s costing us money!”

Over the last week, as TV and movie actors went on strike for the first time in 43 years, joining already striking screenwriters on picket lines, Hollywood started looking around for its version of that figure — someone, anyone, to find a solution to the standoff and get America’s motion picture factories running again.

But the more the entertainment industry looked, the more it became clear that such a person may no longer exist.

“Back in the day, it was Lew Wasserman who would enter the talks and move them along,” said Jason E. Squire, professor emeritus at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, referring to the superagent turned studio mogul. “Today, it is different. Traditional studios and the technology companies that have moved into Hollywood have different cultures and business models. There is no studio elder, respected by both sides, to help broker a deal.”

At the moment, no talks between union leaders and the involved companies are happening and none have been scheduled, with each side insisting the other has to make the first move.

Two federal mediators have been studying the issues that led to the breakdown in negotiations. Agents and lawyers are engaged in a flurry of back-channel phone conversations, encouraging union leaders and studio executives to soften their unmovable positions; Bryan Lourd, the Creative Artists Agency heavyweight, asked the Biden administration and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California to get involved, according to three people briefed on the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the labor situation. A spokesman for Mr. Lourd declined to comment.

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