In the summer, all the big media moguls gather in Sun Valley for a conference put on by investment banker Herb Allen. It’s a gathering of the most important and powerful media personalities around the globe.
I couldn’t make it this year for a lot of reasons, chief among them that I wasn’t invited.
But I did see pictures of them — the heads of various entertainment conglomerates, hedge fund billionaires, famous investors — all marching around in their awkward leisurewear, chatting with each other and discussing the future of the media business.
When I saw a photo of two senior executives huddled together, no doubt planning some huge merger, I suddenly remembered a story a film producer friend of mine told me a few years ago.
He was working on a huge big-budget movie. I mean, it started as a big-budget movie, but as production dragged on, it became a megabudget movie. Certain things that were supposed to explode didn’t explode when they were supposed to and so had to be built again and exploded again. Certain actors who were supposed to be what we in Hollywood euphemistically refer to as “healthy” showed up to work still “unhealthy” from the previous night’s activities.
You know, the usual things. The budget got bloated. The whole thing was starting to spin out of control. The movie was starting to sink.
When a movie shoot seems like it’s getting out of control, it’s time for a studio executive to visit the set and see what’s happening with all the money.
I can’t remember which executive went, but it was surely someone who reports directly to one of those guys wandering around Sun Valley last week, pretending to be outdoorsy.
The movie was on location in Malibu. The studio was about 20 miles away, which in Los Angeles can take two hours in traffic. So the studio executive made a classic studio executive decision: Get me a chopper, he told his assistant.
So he helicoptered to the set from his office 20 miles away because the movie was over budget.
The people on location knew he was coming. But the morning had been productive and efficient — the truth is, the production was back on track and on budget — and they had zoomed through the pages they thought might take them all morning, which meant they had time to move to the next location early and actually get ahead of schedule.
But of course, they couldn’t. After all, the executive was coming to see them do something on the location, not simply pack everything up. So they waited for him to arrive and tried to come up with something, anything, they could film in front of him so he could see how efficient and under control the production was.
The studio exec coptered in, blowing away the snack table and scattering Doritos on the Malibu hillside.
He greeted the director and the producer and the baffled actors, who had just been given a new two-page scene of pointless dialogue to memorize. Smiles all around. The executive was taken to his seat, and the production swung into action.
“Can we get you anything?”
“Oh yes, a Fiji Water, please.”
“Can we get him a Fiji Water, please?”
The actors were in their places. “Picture’s up! Sound speed! Slate!”
And before the director could call “action!” the executive held up his hand timidly. “It’s tepid. The water, it’s tepid.”
“Can we get him some cold water?”
“Not too cold.”
“Cool water? Some cool water!”
They get some cool Fiji Water. They shoot the scene, which, again, was a pointless page or two of dialogue slammed together at the last minute just for this occasion.
But the executive looks pleased. This really is an efficient set, he thought to himself. The budget overruns, the time delays — these things happen. He thundered away in a cloud of dirt and sand, his cool Fiji Water unopened.
He choppers back to his office, reports the good news, and then, later that day, maybe, as he drives home, he thinks about the helicopter trip and the expense of it all — the wasted morning on the location where instead of gaining a day on the schedule, they lost a day on the schedule waiting for him. And he thinks about this, maybe, as he’s pulling into his garage. Because, of course, he lives in Malibu.
My question to the powerful, rich, whip-smart moguls who gather at the Allen & Company retreat every year: While you’re having fun in Sun Valley, do you know what your studio executives are doing? Are you sure that this is what you want to do with your money?
Rob Long is a television writer and producer and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
