The Big Picture: Or, How the entertainment industry really works.

One of the challenging things about being an independent film producer working outside of Hollywood is that if you want to know anything, you have to figure it out for yourself. There’s nothing like law or medical or business school that lays the groundwork of the basic things you need to know about the profession. Since you’re outside of Hollywood, there are few other professionals who are in your line of work to talk to. In fact, I find that independent production often resembles a foggy labyrinth, where the only way you really get anywhere is to keep walking forward, keep running into walls and keep taking new turns. There are a number of books on the subject, and a few actually shed some light on things. Then every now and again, you stumble across a book that actually is illuminating. Edward Jay Epstein’s The Big Picture was one of those books for me.

This is first and foremost a book about Hollywood economics and power. (You can read his subtitle in the picture.) But it’s not a dry read at all. Instead, he begins to unpeel the layers of the onion that explains how the studios actually make their money (not in theatrical release since most films don’t even break even there), who controls what is seen by most people (six multinational companies he refers to as the “Sexopoly”: Viacom, Fox, NBC Universal, Time Warner, Sony and Disney – they control 96% of US film distribution rentals, 98% of ad revenues in prime time television, etc., etc.), how the films are really made (there’s a reason why many actors make such large salaries up front: they don’t trust studios to pay them a dime afterward), and where the revenue streams actually come from (Disney figured it out in the 30’s and everyone else has followed). All said, there’s a lot of detail in the book and I thought it went a long way to explaining why the entertainment industry is the way it is today. He even gives brief histories of the handful of smart, powerful men who built the present system: Walt Disney, Lew Wasserman, Steve Ross, Akio Morita, Rupert Murdoch, Sumner Redstone, and David Sarnoff.

All this to say, it’s not a terribly encouraging situation for the independent film producer; and if he’s a Christian, it’s even less encouraging. Nevertheless, it’s a fact of life that must be understood and accounted for, whether someone is wanting to work inside the system, at the fringes, or as far away as possible (and I’m not sure the last option is really an option).

There’s a lot that should be concerning about the book – but Epstein’s not a doomsdayer. He just reports the facts. He even goes into the agendas and thinking behind a lot of the people making movies: it’s a complex morass of ego, money, power, fun, and politics. Although there are a lot of things I could quote from the book, I’ll quote one of his quotes from a Ben Stein novel (I really like Ben Stein): “The people here in the White House think they have power. That’s wrong. The people who make [these] pictures have power…. They can get inside your head. They can completely take control of everything you see and do, change the way you feel, everything that happens to you, and that’s power.”  Considering that a small group of companies controls over 70% of the world’s entertainment (including the financing and distribution of some of the most popular Christian films, such as the recent hit Fireproof), it makes me very thoughtful as to what the real options are for an independent film producer has who may want to work at the fringes of the current system, not to mention one who happens also to be a Christian.

How does he finance his films? How does he distribute them? How does he figure out a way to do it again and again? These are all good topics for discussion, and in the New Year, I think I’ll pick up a number of them to dig into.