Like nearly every filmmaker I submitted material to "On the Lot," the Burnett/Spielberg reality show, but I wondered all along whether that show would bear any connection to what I'm after as an artist.
It emphatically does not.
Everyone involved is clearly talented and accomplished, but I'm unnerved by the show's distorted priorities (which may reflect Hollywood's distorted priorities). Not only is the antithesis of a creative process, it revolves completely around an old model of currying favor with gatekeepers who hold the keys to limited distribution opportunites. "Content is king," I heard an expert say lately, "but distribution is King Kong!"
The first episode was particularly striking in how it began with a contest in "pitching" randomly selected ideas in which none of the filmmakers had any interest. They were instructed to return the next day ready to make a pitch that demonstrated their "passion" for the story they'd been handed at random. "Passion?" While the most successful supplicants displayed plenty of enthusiasm, it's tough to call such a manufactued attitude "passion," especially when the ideas they were required to sell were so transparently contrived and hackneyed. If you've ever wondered how big-budget Hollywood films get so bad, that could be a reason.
The era of industrialized entertainment is nearing an end. In the YouTube era, there's very little need to suck up to gatekeepers to get access to an audience. In the emerging world of De-industrialized Entertainment, artists and audiences can find each other and cut out the Armani-suited middlemen who only serve to impose bureaucratic mediocrity. It's clear from On The Lot that disintermediation will be a good thing for film
As for the coveted million-dollar "development deal," what's the point of winning a contract offering a million dollars worth of interference? Got an idea? Make a movie! Then get another idea and make another!
