Maureen Ryan

My workplace has plenty of problems, but reading Burn It Down reminded me that hey, at least you've never witnessed your boss try to strangle a co-worker! Hollywood is fucked up, argues Maureen Ryan, and despite improvements on a few fronts in recent years, those who hold the reins of power clearly feel little need to implement the major systemic changes that would be needed to stop employing abusers, underpaying key workers, and being many different flavours of -ist. Ryan's voice here is both engagingly conversational and passionate about her topic; the first half of the book, when she's looking at what went on behind the scenes on TV shows from Lost to Sleepy Hollow to The Muppets benefits greatly from that. (And Nicole Beharie deserves combat pay for what she went through.) The second part of the book, about sweeping personal/systemic changes that could make a real difference, still clearly comes from a place of personal passion but is more unfocused and the audience for me is less clear.… (lisätietoja)

From an entertainment writer for Vanity Fair and Variety comes an expose of bad behavior on and off the sets of TV shows and movies, and, more importantly, a suggested set of remedies for those who seek redemption and to be returned to their prior lofty status. Tales are told of gender-based salary discrepancies on Lost, X Files, and Black-Ish; blatant sexism and racism on the sets of Mad Men, Sleepy Hollow, Saturday Night Live, and even The Muppets (!); and specific allegations against actors such as Jeff Garlin, Bill Murray, and Marilyn Manson. But after the stories are told, the author suggests the following five steps to those who persist in being bad actors: 1) own what you did 2) commit to changing your actions going forward 3) ask the people you harmed what you should do to make amends 4) make a sincere apology 5) don't transgress again. Sounds simple, doesn't it? This is a process we can all use to improve our relationships, even if we don't live in the spotlight.… (lisätietoja)

Lots of horrible stories of abusive cultures and detailed explanations of why they are particularly abusive for people who aren’t straight white men. White men essentially band together to increase their collective power, while encouraging members of other groups to see demographically similar people as the competition. Hollywood both accepts and promotes the myth that genius allows and sometimes requires abusiveness to others, while not looking at whose untapped genius gets destroyed by that. The fact that not all the white men who want to succeed can do so preserves the system: “Even if you were born on third base, in order to get to home plate, you still have to run, right? There was still an effort required to get there,’ said Hannah, a writer/producer. “Once you’re on home plate, you want to believe that the run was the only part that was important ….’”

But everyone suffers except the people collecting the big payouts at the top. Why is that particularly bad for entertainment? “If abusers, clinical narcissists, and other awful or monstrous people control the stories that are told, that comes out in the work,” as when the show 24 glorified torture and NBC celebrated Donald Trump as a successful rulebreaker. Suggests that the working conditions, combined with the hope of creating something good, make people vulnerable to other abuses, including cults, which also promise benefits from suffering. Hollywood trains working people to accept abuse, so they can be creative geniuses and also deeply unable to recognize exploitation. Also tells a story about the rise of shorter seasons and piecework and how that has made working conditions even worse, except for executives who get paid year-round.

The chapter on Sleepy Hollow exemplifies everything else, including the double standard applied to the two leads, both of whom suffered from Fox’s schedule (or lack of planning for same). It was also depressing to read about the practice of hiring someone who wasn’t a white guy as second-in-command to try to deal with a problematic white guy, meaning he still got the credit and she got the blame. Many decisionmakers think they’re limiting risk/betting on success when they continue to promote awful white guys, but that also limits their actual experimentation with new perspectives.

She ends with notes of hope, though better workplaces are sometimes tied up with the rise of “IP,” which is to say, franchises where there is no individual author and so the studio owns everything and can keep rebooting it, which has its own costs in creative freedom and artistic risk-taking. But there are successes, she argues, that recognize that abusive behavior travels in packs, so investigating sexual harassment can also deter, for example, other forms of abuse and financial mismanagement. She also argues that the ability to manage people needs to be supported and not subordinated to the perception of creative genius: putting unqualified people into managerial roles is a pathway to all kinds of bad behavior, creating employees who believe they’re supposed to abuse underlings if they get power. This is also about the perception of white guy competence: how hard could it be for this smart guy to run a show, they think?… (lisätietoja)

Abusers, Assaulters, Creeps, Harassers, Homophobes and Racists
Review of the HarperAudio audiobook narrated by Samara Naeymi, released simultaneously with the Mariner Books hardcover (June 6, 2023).

I have a quirk about TV Show Finales or Final Seasons. Regardless of how much I may have loved the show to begin with, if I hate the endings, I will never watch them again, even if now available to binge on streaming. So it has been for several TV so-called 'major events', such as "Game of Thrones", "Lost", "Seinfeld" and "The Sopranos." Those shows are dead to me now. I especially hated the final season of "Lost," and wondered where it had all gone wrong for that show, which was a regular item of talk & speculation with friends when it first began.

Well, I happened across an excerpt (see link below) from Burn It Down in this month's Vanity Fair which explained quite a lot. Behind the scenes the showrunners and the atmosphere they instilled in the writers' room led to the plotlines of all of the diversity characters being sidelined and or killed off. This was after a beginning that seemed to promise a very global range of plotlines. Instead it became the Jack, Kate, Locke and Sawyer show.

That example was more the case of a toxic work environment, rather than those of the more higher profile cases of physical assault or harassment which have been coming to light ever more frequently in the #MeToo era. Several of those cases are discussed as well in this book, e.g. producer Scott Rudin, actor Jeff Garlin, comedian Louis C.K., musician Marilyn Manson, etc. What is telling however is the number of anonymous creeps which are described and the fact that many of the witnesses & victims here choose to remain anonymous under invented single-first names. They still fear for their jobs and future careers in the industry, regardless of the current gradual improvements.

It is not all dark however, journalist Maureen Ryan does provide a Part 2 section (the last 1/4th of the book in the audio) which discusses positive change in the industry, gives examples of current shows and showrunners who came up through the trenches and consciously work as leaders opposed to the bad examples which they themselves endured. She says in dramatic theatrical/movie terms we are only at the end of Act One. But we are at least headed in the right direction.

The narration reading by Samara Naeymi in the audiobook edition was excellent.

Book Excerpts
An excerpt from Burn It Down can be read at Lost Illusions: The Untold Story of the Hit Show’s Poisonous Culture by Maureen Ryan, Vanity Fair, June, 2023.

Another excerpt from Burn It Down can be read at ‘Burn It Down’ Explores ‘SNL’ and Its “Culture of Impunity” by Lesley Goldberg, Hollywood Reporter, June 5, 2023.

Other Reviews
With Hollywood Change Stagnating, a Call to "Burn It Down" by Alexandra Jacobs, New York Times, June 11, 2023.… (lisätietoja)