# Occupy Hollywood



## Big Don (Oct 16, 2011)

Occupy Hollywood
by John Hayward Human Events
EXCERPT:
Posted 10/07/2011 ET


Liberals are strangely incurious about why their betters never instruct them to hate Hollywood during their class-warfare lectures.  I mean never.  Movie stars, singers, producers, directors, and star athletes are the millionaires youre never told to envy.  Their fair share, and the methods they use to avoid paying it, are not topics for discussion. 

Liberals are even willing to extend this consideration to a grotesque caricature like Michael Moore, the greedy millionaire who made a fortune by making his fans look stupid, and refused to employ union labor while doing it.  He walked right past union operatives to receive a warm welcome from the Wall Street protesters.  He moved out of a luxurious New York City penthouse to avoid paying his fair share of New York taxes on his immense movie profits, celebrated the release of a movie lambasting capitalism with a posh party at another swanky penthouse, and filled in a wetland to put the finishing touches on his million-dollar Michigan estate. 

There are some obvious tactical reasons why the leadership of the Left meticulously avoids pointing fingers of blame at Hollywood millionaires.  The Left gets a huge amount of funding and ideological support from entertainers, of course.  Those entertainers are very good at generating emotional reactions, and drawing attention to themselves while they support various charitable and humanitarian endeavors  which is great for the worthy causes they support, but also creates an armor of selfless morality for celebrities that is unavailable to largely unseen businessmen who donate big money to charity. 

Also, theres a sense among the liberal rank-and-file that entertainers earn their millions, in a way that businessmen do not.  Average liberals dont know what goes on in a corporate boardroom, but theyre pretty sure it doesnt involve the kind of work that goes into producing the glittering value splashed across movie and TV screens.  Of course someone who starred in a movie that made $200 million deserves to be rich!

<<SNIP>>

Nevertheless, the Occupy Wall Street crowd really should think about dispatching some angry protesters to Occupy Hollywood.  For one thing, Hollywood accounting is crooked on a scale that would make any Wall Street firm blush.  David Prowse, the very tall actor who wore the Darth Vader costume in the original Star Wars trilogy, recently remarked in an interview that according to the studio, Return of the Jedi has never made a nickel of profit, so Prowse has never been paid any residuals.  The film grossed over half a billion dollars worldwide, but the studio rigged the books to show zero net profit, almost thirty years later.  In the course of explaining why this sort of thing is commonplace, Atlantic magazine notes that even Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is currently on the books as a net loss.
<<SNIP>>

Are you mad as hell about the Durbin Tax your bank is getting ready to pass along through $5 monthly debit card surcharges, or the loss of your free checking account?  Well, how about those movie ticket prices?  The New York Times recently reported that theater executives predicted another average ticket price increase of 3% by the end of this year, which would make the 17th consecutive annual increase in a business whose prices have outpaced the effect of general inflation by more than half since 1999.  Is that taking more of a bite out of your wallet than debit card fees?  To say nothing of concession stand prices?

Studio greed has reached into the home video market, causing Netflix to make a very ill-fated restructuring of its rent-by-mail fees.  The licensing fees Netflix pays to movie studios will increase by eleven hundred percent over the next two years.

Perhaps your Occupy Hollywood rage is diminished by the thought that you can always choose not to do business with the robber barons of Tinseltown, although its a safe bet few of the crew occupying Wall Street missed any of last summers blockbusters.  Well, try meditating on how much money most of the other big companies you deal with are spending for TV advertising.  At Gaebler Resources for Entrepreneurs, the average cost of producing a 30-second national television commercial is pegged at $350,000.  The cost of getting on the air is vastly higher, as highly-watched programs can command rates in the millions of dollars, while even commercials during less-watched programs may still run in excess of $100,000 per 30 seconds. 

Like all business costs and taxes, these advertising expenses ultimately filter down to the customer through elevated retail prices.  Think youll hear any Democrat senators railing about the high cost of TV ads any time soon?

All of the money pouring into Hollywood winds up financing incredibly lavish lifestyles, which celebrities like to flaunt through reality shows offering the little people exciting videotaped tours of their stunning estates.  Popular animated series The Simpsons may be canceled after this year, because the voice actors wont consider a cut in their $440,000 per episode salaries.  Shotime's top series Dexter might end because star Michael C. Hall thinks the network's tightwad offer of $20 million for two more seasons is too low, and demands not a penny less than $24 million.


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## Omar B (Oct 16, 2011)

I got a new one.  Occupy A Job!


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## granfire (Oct 16, 2011)

Omar B said:


> I got a new one.  Occupy A Job!


There are a lot of folks out thee that would love to do that.

But in the mean time I think you should take over Hollywood. That way we'd get some decent movies that aren't remakes of remakes of sequels.


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## Big Don (Oct 16, 2011)

granfire said:


> There are a lot of folks out thee that would love to do that.
> 
> But in the mean time I think you should take over Hollywood. That way we'd get some decent movies that aren't remakes of remakes of sequels.


I'm waiting for Lucas to remake the first three Star Wars movies from scratch. Jar Jar Binks on the Deathstar?


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## Big Don (Oct 16, 2011)

From Instapundit:
It&#8217;s dominated by a bunch of white men.
Sexual harassment is commonplace for women getting jobs.
There are few opportunities for minorities, especially in the top jobs.
Physical appearance guides hiring.
They squeeze subsidies and tax breaks from local governments under the threat of moving jobs overseas.
Top talent rakes in tens of millions of dollars while plenty of work is done by unpaid interns.
They practice shady bookkeeping to prevent paying people.


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## Makalakumu (Oct 17, 2011)

This would make an awesome zombie movie.


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## Tez3 (Oct 17, 2011)

I can't imagine why the 'authorities' are so against occupying places... after all they set the precedent by occupying Iraq.


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## JohnEdward (Oct 17, 2011)

Big Don said:


> Occupy Hollywood
> by John Hayward Human Events
> EXCERPT:
> Posted 10/07/2011 ET
> ...



Gee, no different than big corporation CEOs and the life styles they live, the difference is they didn't buy Hollywood to broadcast it. That would be suicide for them. It would break the code. Oh, and Hollywood wealth usually don't go to jail for illegal money making schemes, cooking books, fraud, not paying taxes, influencing and buy the government and policies, the financial crimes that ruin (cough Enron) other peoples lives, lots of other people's lives. Per Hollywood it is just a few who go to jail for public drunkenness, and for what ever Lohan went to jail for. Hell Charlie Sheen if he wasn't a celeb and did all what he did would have all together got him life terms in jail.

It is a problem, and an historic one the law favors privileged regardless if they are liberal or conservative.


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## Makalakumu (Oct 17, 2011)

Tez3 said:


> I can't imagine why the 'authorities' are so against occupying places... after all they set the precedent by occupying Iraq.


 
Lol! That's all we talk about in America nowadays. It's our Imperial pastime! When 700+ military bases around the world isn't enough, we have to occupy places that already were occupied.

Sent from my Eris using Tapatalk


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## HammockRider (Oct 17, 2011)

Big Don said:


> From Instapundit:
> It&#8217;s dominated by a bunch of white men.
> Sexual harassment is commonplace for women getting jobs.
> There are few opportunities for minorities, especially in the top jobs.
> ...



  Sounds like some of the major investment firms.


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## Empty Hands (Oct 17, 2011)

I always love "defenses" that concede the point of the critics and then try to shift their attention elsewhere.

"Sure I'm a rapist, but look at that guy over there, he is too!  And that other guy over there is a murderer!"

Someone didn't think their cunning plan all the way through.


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## Big Don (Oct 17, 2011)

Empty Hands said:


> I always love "defenses" that concede the point of the critics and then try to shift their attention elsewhere.
> 
> "Sure I'm a rapist, but look at that guy over there, he is too!  And that other guy over there is a murderer!"
> 
> Someone didn't think their cunning plan all the way through.


What point was conceded?


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## Flying Crane (Oct 17, 2011)

Big Don said:


> Occupy Hollywood
> by John Hayward Human Events
> EXCERPT:
> Posted 10/07/2011 ET
> ...



wow.  It takes a stunted and primitive intellect to write something like that.

:rofl:


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## Tez3 (Oct 17, 2011)

Flying Crane said:


> wow. It takes a stunted and primitive intellect to write something like that.
> 
> :rofl:



_'Their betters'_, I hate that phrase with a passion. It's patronising and insulting.


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## Sukerkin (Oct 17, 2011)

True, FC, the valueless Anti-Liberal tirade has become so tiresome now that I don't even bother acknowledging it's presence, unless it's particularly stupid or outrageously unfair ... which is the problem when a topic is dragged out every day. 

But Hollywood, along with so many other corporate refuges filled with twisters of law and common-decency, *is* pretty reprehensible.


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## Big Don (Oct 17, 2011)

Flying Crane said:


> wow.  It takes a stunted and primitive intellect to write something like that.
> 
> :rofl:


Are you not better than unwashed people crapping in a park for the past month? I would hope that you are.


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## Empty Hands (Oct 17, 2011)

Sukerkin said:


> But Hollywood, along with so many other corporate refuges filled with twisters of law and common-decency, *is* pretty reprehensible.



Indeed it is, and no surprise.  However, Hollywood does have this going for it - it didn't bring the worldwide financial system to its knees through outrageously foolish and destructive ways of doing business.  Or get bailed out completely through taxpayer money, so they suffered no repercussions and have absolutely no reason not to do it again.  Nor do they now outrageously complain about how hard their lives are and how some people say mean things about them.  Hollywood did none of that.

Hollywood's harm is contained to itself.  The financial system's harm spreads to the entire world.  *That *is why there is no Occupy Hollywood movement.

Not that anyone wants there to be one.  This is yet another in a long line of red herrings thrown out in a desperate attempt to shift attention elsewhere.  I didn't think this protest movement would amount to anything.  Watching the nation's collective right-wingers panic and **** their pants over it has me re-thinking that judgment.


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## Flying Crane (Oct 17, 2011)

Sukerkin said:


> But Hollywood, along with so many other corporate refuges filled with twisters of law and common-decency, *is* pretty reprehensible.



Oh, I don't deny THAT bit.  But that phrase, used to deliberately divide people, is just blisteringly stupid.  I stand by that comment all the way.  Primitive and stunted would be a generous description.


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## Flying Crane (Oct 17, 2011)

Big Don said:


> Are you not better than unwashed people crapping in a park for the past month? I would hope that you are.



:rofl:

that's an incredibly simplistic way of viewing it.


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## Tez3 (Oct 17, 2011)

Try Bollywood instead, absolutely brilliant films, hugely entertaining.


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## Josh Oakley (Oct 18, 2011)

Ok, now keeping in mind that Hollywood is a part of Los Angeles, I am suprised that nobody brought up the simple idea that JUST MAYBE there is no Occupy Hollywood because there is already an Occupy LA. SERIOUSLY? It really can be that freaking simple.


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## Buka (Oct 18, 2011)

I spent a lot of time in Hollywood over the years. I trained in L.A (Martial Arts) and occasionally worked in Hollywood as a writer, stuntman and trainer.

It is one REALLY strange place. Especially for a city boy. Hollywood makes you love where you originally came from. 
Maybe if I had made a zillion dollars there, I'd feel different, but I don't think so. At times it's fun, but man, it is just so F****** up out there.


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