CBR Bingo Square: Politics
I read Maureen Ryan’s piece in Variety about the hellish writers room of Lost back in the spring, an excerpt lifted from this book as advance publicity, and it did the job of making me very curious about what else she had to say about power politics in Hollywood, particularly as it pertains to people who are not in front of the camera. Ryan does also have plenty to say about how actors are treated (see her discussion of Sleepy Hollow and all that went wrong there; she clearly got deep and extensive interviews with several actors, particularly Orlando Jones and Evan Rachel Wood), but her book starts with a chapter on the abuses that producer Scott Rudin heaped upon assistants and other underlings, and those less glamorous jobs remain firmly in the frame as she exhaustively picks apart the current culture of exploitation in Hollywood and offers possible pathways forward.
The book is extensively reported: Ryan has done her homework, with many sources who are anonymous, but also a number who, having secured their own careers, are willing to go on the record under their own names to articulate their experiences. She notes both the historical forces that shaped Hollywood into what it is now (it was always exploitative, of course, and there are several nods to Anne Helen Peterson’s work on classic Hollywood’s systems) as well as how streaming services have injected the exploitative working conditions of the tech industry into Hollywood, compounding problems that already exist.
She also surprises, at points: there is a chapter devoted to how existing IP/franchises also contribute to exploitation, which was one I didn’t see coming but made total sense as Ryan continued to unpack the issue. While at times the extremely casual tone and the inability to name names can make the book feel a bit light or loose, Ryan clearly does have a sense of the scope and the many interlocking parts that have gotten us to where we are now: namely, the dual WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes that have shut down all productions. If you want to understand the strikes better, this book is the perfect place to dive in and see how decades of horrible labor conditions have brought us to this place.
But it’s also not all doom and gloom. While Ryan has a certain degree of weary pessimism that is earned from her role as a reporter (and, as she notes late in the book, as someone who was herself assaulted by a TV executive), she makes a point as well of highlighting people who have chosen to do things differently: running sets that consistently end their workdays at a civilized hour, showrunners who delegate thoughtfully and well both to keep productions running smoothly and to train up-and-comers, tireless union members who are working to create better reporting mechanisms to protect members and bargain for better pay and working conditions. Ryan is also quite clear and frank about her support for labor organizing, and that Hollywood’s issues are also symptomatic of larger issues of exploitation in American culture. I appreciate that her solutions are a blend of the individual (people deciding to do things differently once they have the power to do so–though Ryan is clear that we all have to be looking out for each other, not just ourselves) and systemic (LABOR! ORGANIZING!). In this regard, what happens in Hollywood isn’t just frivolous entertainment: it reflects larger political issues we have right now around pay, exploitation, and fairness/safety in the workplace, and plenty can be extrapolated out from this, in addition to all the gossip.
(And oh, there is a lot of gossip.)