BOULEVARD OF BROKEN SCHEMES

Your grandparents went to the
movies 46 times in 1929. You go twice
a year. Ergo, it's your fault.

Hollywood is dying, so the YouTube videos tell me. Prop supply businesses closing up. Writers becoming building contractor supervisors or -- gasp -- writers' assistants. Agents moving back to the East Coast, actors working fulltime at Home Depot, productions moving to Canada, Hungary, Bulgaria...

And why? Covid, strikes, A.I., unions, overpaid A-listers, overstaffed writers rooms, overpriced cinema tickets, streaming, the new Supergirl movie -- it's all very familiar to me. Only my roadblocks and detours started earlier.

Note: much of the following information will be familiar to some. I write about it here to, as they say, put things in perspective. And take up space.

My former writing partner and I churned out several scripts starting in the late 1980s. Our years of work amounted to one option and a near-miss that otherwise could have been our ticket to success. (It's still a good idea, but that's another story.) I continued on my own for a few more years, to no avail. Scripts dropped off with agents wound up dropped off in their trash cans.

They do a pretty good job keeping my books 
from falling over, too.

Then a lucky break. An old college friend, now working at NBC, hired me to write network promos, freelance, at $500 a day. My first job won three Promax awards, and more years of work, not just at NBC, but other networks and one movie studio. 

At last! A steady writing gig, with my name becoming familiar with a growing number of showbiz execs! Would this lead to a full-time job writing from the comfort from my Upper East Side bedroom? Or would I be moving to L.A. with my own office on a studio lot? Who cares, as long as those checks keep coming!

Thanks a lot, Osama.

All that came to a roaring stop on September 11, 2001. For reasons I didn't understand at the
time and no longer remember, the networks started belt-tightening almost overnight. NBC got rid of 25% of all its full-time employees, and 100% of the freelancers. Other networks, studios and production houses followed suit. Even my full-time job in New York used 9/11 as an excuse to start chopping the payroll. 

Time passed. Seeing that showbiz was no longer where it was happening, I took a course on selling freelance pieces to newspapers and the budding world of online news sites.

Boom -- suddenly, the New York Daily News started buying my stuff for its op-ed page. Double boom -- a contributor to The Weekly Standard hooked me up with his editor. Suddenly, I was a regular contributor to the online version of their magazine. I'd wake up early almost every morning, bang out a piece and submit. 

Bill Kristol isn't so sure about me.

The checks were coming day after day. A lot of my Weekly Standard pieces were reprinted on Bloomberg, Business Insider, Forbes, and, once, CBS News (pre-Bari Weiss). At last! A steady gig, with my name becoming familiar with a growing number of news outlets!

All that came to a roaring stop with the rise of "free" news sites replacing newspapers and magazines that cost money. Over the years, full-time writers and freelancers got tossed overboard like unnecessary weight off a leaky zeppelin. It didn't help that my editor at the Standard left and was replaced by two people who didn't like my style -- the style that their predecessor loved.

No way! I'm gettin' the benjamins, bro!

Time passed. I was laid off my full-time job. Seeing that news commentary was no longer where it was happening, I went
back the showbiz route by doing background work. This coincided with becoming an occasional contributor to Next Avenue, the PBS-owned site for the over-50 crowd. 

Once again, my creative side was being fulfilled, this time with two outlets. Covid derailed the background work for several months followed by my busiest, most satisfying year ever.  At last! Two steady gigs, with my name becoming familiar with a growing number of casting agents, and an editor who liked my pieces!

Too bad Mickey doesn't stand with either of you.

Then came the double-whammy of actors and writers strikes. Throw in the Trump administration cutting off funding for PBS -- meaning Next Avenue -- and it's a triple. 

Background work has been slashed for union and non-union alike. The few sites paying freelancers do so in cents per word, the fewer the better. 

 I'm not looking for sympathy or pity. Frankly, I'm lucky I did as well as I did, considering I was already in my 40s when the good times started, grew when in my late 50s, and peaked when I was at the age when most people retire. Finding whatever success I had in each field kept my spirits and finances afloat; I look back on those times with nothing but good memories. They were fun, and fun is something not to be taken lightly.'

God, that's clever.

9/11. The rise of the internet. Covid. Strikes. Streaming. Artificial Intelligence. I
experienced it all before it became a meme. Before images of the HOLLYWOOD sign crumbling down the mountain became as much of a cliche as anything you'd see in a Jennifer Lopez movie. 

Maybe it helped I never quite got the brass ring. No matter how promising things got with each job, I never had far to fall when it stopped. 

Otherwise, I could be that Academy Award-winning sound mixer I saw online, who worked just 10 days last year in his chosen field, and is now toiling away at a big box store. His Oscar is likely taunting him from his mantlepiece -- How's it feel to be one of the crowd, Mr. Hollywood? My Promax awards are content to be flashy bookends.

Good news, though. I worked one three-day background gig on an A-list movie in May -- the first in a year -- and am scheduled for another job on a popular TV series next month.  A comeback at age 70, or a bone tossed to an old dog? Let me scratch behind my ear and think about it.

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