The Depletion of Hollywood

Hello, I hope the Fall is good on your end.

I grew up in the 80s as a big aficionado of American culture and movies. I remember seeing “Return of the Jedi” with my father in theatres, and the first “Karate Kid” is emblazoned in my mind right down to the soundtrack. Also “The Warriors,” Eddie Murphy’s comedy specials, Bruce Lee movies, “The Terminator,” you get the idea. Part of this was that I was the child of immigrants glomming onto what it meant to be American. Part of it was that there was still a monoculture when, for example, Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ came out. And part of it was that I was a geeky kid who read lots of comic books and loved movies. I even went to Comic Con last week.

I have tried to pass on my enthusiasm for Star Wars and movies to my kids, with mixed results. Young people today are glued to YouTube and TikTok. Most all of the content they see is produced by individual creators.

Meanwhile, change has come for Hollywood. A story came out in the Wall St. Journal last week called “L.A.’s Entertainment Economy is Looking Like a Disaster Movie” about how the creative middle class of Los Angeles has been decimated over the past several years. Caterers, production assistants, writers, a cartoonist who worked on Mulan, camera people and thousands of others are out of work. One makeup artist became a phlebotomist at a 66% pay cut. The number of workers in the industry shrank from 142,000 to 100,000 in just two years, and many have left LA altogether.

Some of these stories are very sad, including the cookie store proprietor who declared personal bankruptcy after her two stores closed because there weren’t enough TV or movie sets that needed catering anymore. TV shoot days collapsed 58% over the last 3 years. I have friends in LA who told me “Survive until ‘25” was their mantra. But ’25 hasn’t brought a rebound; indeed, it’s gotten even worse.

This isn’t an AI story – yet – though that’s clearly around the corner and was part of the strikes. Shooting productions in LA has become expensive relative to other locales, in part because the labor in LA is generally higher-paid. L.A. is now the sixth-most popular site for making movies, a steep drop. The writers and actors’ strikes derailed productions and the industry never fully bounced back. Streaming services have found that dollars haven’t followed so fewer projects are being greenlit. The Palisades fires drove some out of town. And movie box office receipts are still way lower than they were pre-COVID as Americans are less in the habit of going to see movies in the theater, as it’s a lot tougher on the wallet than home viewing.

It reminds me a little bit of New York in the 90s, when friends of mine worked for magazines like Complex, Lucky, Maxim and Time. Now most of those publications have disappeared or migrated online and those friends left the field. They were some of the folks who made living in the city awesome in my twenties.

The storytelling capital of the U.S. is emptying out. The place where people went to try to catch on or learn a craft is disappearing.

Look, I know that there are now different types of creators, and there are a lot of groups of workers suffering out there; some won’t find the story of Los Angeles particularly sympathetic, even knowing that a lot of these folks are blue-collar crew members. But a way of life being decimated is sad. Thousands of people made lives and careers and homes doing something of value, and now it’s evaporating. I didn’t like it when it happened to the factory workers or the local journalists or recent college graduates either.

Plus, what’s happening to Hollywood is going to happen to a lot of us upcoming. AI will soon supplant a lot of content creation; it could even replace the current wave of influencers. Mr. Beast, the most popular YouTuber in the world, posted last week: “When AI videos are just as good as normal videos, I wonder . . . how it will impact the millions of creators currently making content for a living . . . scary times.”

If you don’t feel something for the former workers of Hollywood, I’m sure it will hit closer to home eventually. The big question is what, if anything, will we do?

For a political movement to fuel change, check out Forward. This week I interview Jonathan Ng Sposato, the founder and CEO of Joysauce, a new TV network spotlighting Asian Americans on the podcast. Offlineparty.com is coming to Philly next week and then to Brooklyn, Chicago, SF and LA! Noble Mobile is growing quickly – ping matt@noblemobile.com if you could use a hook up with some free wireless or want to find out how to get rewarded for looking up and touching grass.