Mga app ng Google
Pangunahing menu

Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

"Hollywood as a union town"

9 Comments -

1 – 9 of 9
Anonymous dearieme said...

Yeah, it was the Afrikaner trade unions that did so much to advance Apartheid - just a racial closed shop, really. I take it that much of the Hollywood union labour consists of sons and sons-in-law?

11/13/07, 2:25 AM

Anonymous Bill said...

I have a vague idea that this writers' strike is significant, but I don't know enough yet to say for sure.

Is it getting so difficult and expensive to maintain a middle-class lifestyle in California that cultural institutions such as Hollywood are beginning to crumble under the strain? If so, where next?

Although I don't know how profitable Hollywood has been recently, I would imagine that it is not on very firm ground. For better or for worse, Hollywood has defined America for decades, so any decline, even a slow one, has profound cultural significance.

I've been wondering when Hollywood would finally start to go under like much of the rest of California. Could this be the beginning of the end?

I guess we'll see. Maybe the producers can offshore some of the writing to Mumbai. Sounds ridiculous, but I'd bet good money they've thought about it.

11/13/07, 4:04 AM

Anonymous bjdouble said...

Of all the front lawns in California, why would they choose the Sailer's? That's gotta be a good story.

11/13/07, 6:49 AM

Blogger New Sisyphus said...

Steve - I knew as soon as I started reading your stuff, and before it was confirmed, that you were a fellow Los Angeles County-raised guy. As I don't need to explain to you, you and I realize that what happened to our hometown in so many different ways is nothing less that the United States' collective future played out as warning and farce.

So I'm not surprised that you get the small town union nature of Hollywood as well. Imagine what set carpenters would look like if the industry was de-unionized! All those last holdout middle class guys who live in places like Burbank would quickly be hunted to extinction.

It's a strange world, but, for once, I am thankful for it. It's one of the quirks that keeps, for some, a middle-class white life possible in the belly of the beast.

11/13/07, 10:39 AM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

"Of all the front lawns in California, why would they choose the Sailer's?"

The beer commercial folks chose mine, I suspect, because it really looks like the lawn of a guy who spends more time drinking beer than weeding.

11/13/07, 2:08 PM

Anonymous Evil Neocon said...

Bill -- there is an IHT article about Hollywood's losses last year estimated at about 1.9 billion. The result of a revenue participation bet with big players (Cruise, Clooney, Pitt, Depp etc) that did not pan out when foreign ticket and DVD revenues did not grow and US revenues did not grow.

Hollywood depends on foreign revenue to an astonishing amount, about half it's revenue. That is under threat from piracy (American Gangster was pirated and for sale online and from street vendors in LA before it opened).

So there is tremendous revenue pressure, Hollywood may end up a few really rich actors, some working-middle class ones, directors, A List writers and showrunners, and most writing outsourced to foreigners who are cheap and non-picketable. And who will do as well if not better for foreign audiences and no worse than Americans for things that have elitism built in like say, Grace is Gone, or Michael Clayton.

11/13/07, 8:50 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

dearieme,
What's Apartheid got to do with this topic? Apartheid is like Nazism that when people become mentally lazy they just use these terms as clubs to score some points. I guess with a shotgun you will hit something by just pointing into the general direction, whereas with a rifle it takes some skill to score. Same with Apartheid. When you are clueless, just shout Apartheid and by default you may be right.

11/14/07, 3:02 AM

Anonymous dearieme said...

anon, Apartheid was the means by which the Boer industrial workers tried to avoid cheaper black labour taking 'their' jobs. Compare with Steve's "The movie and TV unions are pretty much all that's keeping what's left of L.A.'s American-born blue collar workers from being driven out of California by illegal aliens willing to undercut their wages." Is the analogy really beyond you?

11/14/07, 7:00 AM

Anonymous SFG said...

Libertarians who hate to pay for their entertainment? Pardon me, Steve, who was it who was asking his commenters how to download a movie for review off BitTorrent again? ;)

11/14/07, 7:44 PM

Comments are moderated, at whim.
You can use some HTML tags, such as <b>, <i>, <a>

Comment moderation has been enabled. All comments must be approved by the blog author.

You will be asked to sign in after submitting your comment.
OpenID LiveJournal WordPress TypePad AOL