Clooney

Nice move.  Clooney lays the smackdown on this hedge fund joker.

“[Loeb] calls himself an activist investor, and I would call him a carpet bagger, and one who is trying to spread a climate of fear that pushes studios to want to make only tent poles,” Clooney said. “Films like Michael Clayton, Out of Sight, Good Night, And Good Luck, The Descendants and O, Brother Where Art Though?, none of these are movies studios are inclined to make. What he’s doing is scaring studios and pushing them to make decisions from a place of fear. Why is he buying stock like crazy if he’s so down on things? He’s trying to manipulate the market. I am no apologist for the studios, but these people know what they are doing. If you look at the industry track record, this business has made a lot of money. 

 “It’s crazy he has weight in this conversation at all,” Clooney continued. “If guys like this are given any weight because they’ve bought stock and suddenly feel they can tell us how to do our business — one he knows nothing about — this does great damage than trickles down. The board of directors starts saying, ‘Wait a minute. What guarantee do you have that this movie makes money?’ Well, there are no guarantees, but if you average out the films Will Smith and Channing Tatum have made, you will take that bet every time, even if sometimes it just doesn’t work out.” Clooney also said he believes that down the line both films have a chance to be a wash.

Clooney was particularly sensitive on the subject of job creation. “Hedge fund guys do not create jobs, and we do,” he said. “On the movie we just made, we put 300 people to work every day. I’m talking about nice, regular people, and when we shot in a town, we’d put another 300 people to work. This is an industry that thrives; there are thousands of workers who make films. You want to see what happens if outside forces start to scare the industry and studios just make tent poles out of fear? You will see a lot of crap coming out.”

I gotta say, I agree with almost everything Clooney says -- and I don't usually.

There is something strange about the movie business where it attracts a lot of criticism from outsiders -- like how the studios are running things poorly, how the movies suck, how any old joe could write a better screenplay, etc, that most businesses don't.  Even the American auto industry, which is also a glamor product, I don't feel like a lot of regular folks feel like they could step in and run things better.  But for some reason with movies, everyone thinks they know a better way to do things.  You can gather as much just by reading internet comments.  My challenge to any of these people is to do one simple thing:  make a good, profitable movie.  Don't buy a studio.  Don't fire a bunch of executives.  Don't write criticism.  Don't write a book on how to write a screenplay.  Don't become an agent.  Just make one good movie.  You don't even need to do everything.  Be a producer, or a leading actor, or a director, or a screenwriter.  Any major, above-the-line job and make - and I'm serious here - one good movie.  Then you can join the club and the discussion.

This is why Clooney's best point is that "it's crazy the guy is in the conversation at all."

I wish the studios never sold out to the big corporations.  I've never understood why they did this.  If I were a big shot, I'd try to buy one of them back.

My favorite story about outsiders getting involved with the movie biz is this -- when the Japanese bought what the studio was called before Sony they came in and looked at the numbers and said -- the way to make profit is to only make hit movies.  Go for it.  Good luck.