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June 9, 2022
This week, the Philadelphia Museum of Art announced that Sasha Suda, 41, would be its new director, replacing Timothy Rub, 69, who had served for 13 years. I mention their ages because it’s pretty amazing to see an August institution like the Museum (145 years old) pick a young, up & coming leader – and one who is well-versed in justice & equity – to take over. She’s also Canadian – decidedly not part of the old-guard in the US museum world.
This is strikingly different than how Hollywood seems to work. In film land, we seem to only hire the old, white guard to lead our studios and most of our institutions. And as everyone said this past week, we shuffle the deck chairs, with the same folks moving from place to place with no new blood. Evan Shapiro, formerly of IFC, Participant and many other places and now a “media cartographer” put it, the: “lack of young voices among our deciders is helping increase Hollywood’s rate of irrelevancy. […] The main reason Media is continually surprised by the behavior of their consumers is because - whether by age, race, or class - they are never represented in the room where “it” happens. The solution is easy though. Change or… “ (see also, his newsletter on this subject).
The Academy also selected its new leader this week in Bill Kramer, who built and ran its museum. Now, as a soon to be 51-year-old, I wouldn’t call him old at 53. This isn’t about ageism really. Let’s just say, as I’ve said before, that choosing from within, and choosing a fundraiser (his background is mainly development) when you need a major shakeup isn’t often a sign of forward-thinking. Further, choosing someone from the museum world sends a message about the vibrancy of your field. Museums aren’t exactly known for pushing the field forward, Philadelphia’s experiment aside, and I thought we wanted to Academy to present visions for the future, but apparently, we just want to enshrine something that has long faded from relevancy?
Meanwhile, Sundance announced that Tabitha Jackson is stepping down as head of the film festival. She’s been the artistic leader for just two years now, and there are reports of it being less than an amicable parting. I don’t want to get involved in that debate, as I know most of the folks there and consider them friends (and I’m a fan of their new leader, Joana Vicente), and no outsider knows what really goes on in a nonprofit. But when you couple the recent changes – not only has Tabitha left, but Gina Duncan went off quickly to run BAM (yay!), Keri Putnam left after a stellar run leading the organization, there’s rumors of other departures soon, and let’s face it, Redford isn’t getting younger (nor is their board) – with the certain revenue troubles of another cancelled in-person fest, and add to all of that the persistent rumor that they’re considering a change of dates and maybe locations…one begins to wonder what other changes are in store at the US’s most important fest?
Straying not too far, into the rest of festival land, Eric Kohn was asking again why we don’t take better care of our festival programmers, especially when it comes to pay and job security. I mean, heck, they just make sure the fest world does something other than throw parties for sponsors and donors and, you know, show some quality films or something. Pundits everywhere keep talking about this being the golden age for curation, and how we need more of it, but I guess fests want to follow the lead of Netflix et al., and rely on algorithms since those seem to work so well.
But maybe fests will only be the places where we see premieres of things made by said streamers, and red carpets for the cameras and “earned media” they bring since indie producers can’t find a model that works for making something new. Or that’s what Ted Hope said in an extra-long post over at Twitter, where he decried the streamer’s (one of which he just ran) preference to only look at fully-packaged films now, and how equity development funding just takes another bite out of his potential fee(s). He wonders if we’ve built a system where “no one wins?” Well, yes, that’s been my understanding of it since I first met a producer and learned how this business works. Which is what Ted’s colleague Christine Vachon seems to feel about it all, as she told Screen this week: ““It is easy to go back 15 or even 25 years and find lots of essays written by people who are still in the business about the death knell of independent film. This business has re-invented itself many, many times.”
There’s a lot of truth to that. But the current reinvention seems to be around another old one, advertising. Exhibit Z, yesterday’s rumor that Netflix might buy Roku. Talk about wading into the advertising world. Everyone thinks of Roku as a stick, but the majority of its revenue comes from ads (seven times more revenue than their devices in the last quarter). All kinds of theories abound here, but if true, Netflix would certainly make a statement about its future… being tied to mass appeal and an old-fashioned, tried and true, business model of advertising. Also known as Suck.
But as Mike Shields pointed out in his newsletter, advertisers need Netflix more than it needs them, and even with a Roku acquisition the fact remains that overall, the amount of space allotted to ads is shrinking. According to his math, “for every linear viewing hour that shifts to CTV, 15-plus minutes are gone. You can’t shove a $70 billion of TV ad into a container that only holds a quarter of what the previous one did, no matter how much you raise prices.” And even with the rise of FAST and AVOD, most of that audience is lower income (rich folks pay not to see ads), and advertisers want audiences with cash to spend.
Classist echoes aside, his article made me wonder whether we’re just destined as a species to ruin every good thing in life by turning it into an advertisement? The argument in my corner of the world – brands funding films, with no product placement and generally around values more than product sales (but I’m not arguing that a lot of this world doesn’t suck, too…) – has been that making quality films/shows was better than interrupting them with ads no one wants to watch. Clearly that message hasn’t filtered to my colleague’s colleagues (the ones who make ads and spend dollars chasing consumers), nor has it filtered to the ones running the shows. And as I’ve said before, ads don’t usually support quality cinema – they seem to love reality tv a lot more.
Well, at least we have Apple. They’re changing the model in a big way – sticking with no ads, making less but better, and this week, announcing a huge deal to make a Formula One movie with Top Gun: Maverick filmmaker Joseph Kosinski as director and Brad Pitt as a star, and bring it to theaters first. As the Hollywood Reporter’s Borys Kit (who broke the story) noted, it also guarantees a theatrical with a 50/50 split to the creatives – “The unique deal, in essence, pays the creative team three ways: their upfront fees, their hefty buyout fees and the theatrical backend.” I doubt Apple will license it to an AVOD later, keeping it exclusive, so no ads in that one – except maybe ubiquitous Apple products in the movie and too many trailers before it begins in the cinemas?
Well, I still have lots of questions, but it’s a busy week in Sub-Genre client land, so I’ll close on a more hopeful answer to one, again from Christine Vachon in Screen, and it also points to the upside of all of this stuff. As she said:
“If the question is, ‘What is going to happen to theatrical filmmaking and theatrical film viewing?’ I don’t really know,” she admits. “All I can gauge is what I like to do and where I like to watch films and I know that we [at Killer] are making more movies than we have ever made.” Vachon sees this as a period of “great disruption… and out of great disruption comes great opportunity”.
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Vox Media has built a visual way to experience podcasts. It’s accessible to deaf audiences — and gorgeous: What if hearing impaired people could experience podcasts? Well, now they can. Vox Media created an “immersive transcript” that can be seen and felt by deaf/hard-of-hearing audiences. Sponsored by a prepaid phone provider brand called Straight Talk Wireless, the podcast was created by Vox Creatives alongside a team of engineers, graphic artists and UX designers. 6 episodes are currently available with more to come soon. It’s great to see brands thinking outside the box to create novel forms of storytelling. Hopefully more will follow suit!