The Ten Commandments: religious rhetoric, or just a good idea?

I mean really, isn’t “Thou shall not kill” a nice thing to reinforce?

I can see how this blogging stuff gets addictive!

But seriously, where is brendanloy.com on this list??

Now this is what I call a hard-core politician.

I’m good at taking hints.

Not the very latest, but late-ish. Despite the storm, I still feel like traffic in L.A. beats outgoing traffic in Florida.

Think of it this way: when the rest of the economy is on the low, most of us still go to the movies. (Becky’s many reviews just a case in point).

Ever ask yourself why?

The sum of the great US of A’s national debt is only a few million more than the sum of the profits raked in by the entertainment industry every year. Essentially, we could cut our losses and pay off the debt with the amount of cash we spend to sit around and watch the big screen (and the little screen, for that matter). Where’s our sense of civic duty?

Of course this isn’t my point at all. But it’s fun to think about. My true point is merely to bring to our attention the effects of our valued entertainment. When you sit down to watch a movie, do you ever wonder about the average 32,000 actors in that same age range who didn’t get the role? That’s 32,000 people out of a job. How about who the movie was made by, and what conglom they’re owned by, and why you saw more ads for the flick on CBS than any other station? No coincidence of course; at the rate the industry is going, Mickey Mouse is going to be embedded into the plastic of our cable boxes before you can say “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Hooray for Hollywood, a town curiously tormented by high profits and high production costs, yet nevertheless famed and adored. So what’s the problem? Fame and adoration only go so far. High production costs have sent most television productions north of the border (Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal house nearly half of cabler prod houses, leaving just their corporate offices behind), resulting in less jobs for happy Americans. Still other productions find it quicker, cheaper, and ever easier to hoist their cameras overseas. For instance, the island of Fiji is quickly capitalizing on our losses by creating production houses in an archipelago whose entire area comprises less land than the state of New Jersey. Films like “The Blue Lagoon,” “Cast Away,” and upcoming “Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid” have already taken advantage of the 35%-off-budget tax incentives and 15% tax rebates offered by Fiji’s Audio Visual Commission. USC grads, esp. those of the Annenberg or Cinema-Television persuasion, can’t be too happy about that.

Financial problems trickle down to actors, as well. Studios’ penny-pinching to keep production in the Homeland results in A-list actors working for D-list salaries (New Line’s action comedy “Grilled” signed Ray Romano, Burt Reynolds, Juliette Lewis and Kim Coates, among others, for scale. It’s comparable to a veteran corporate attorney with three advanced degrees working for minimum wage). What’s worse, is that leaves thousands of actors who live off of scale-paying roles with nothing. And forget paying off old debts. The Screen Actor’s Guild recently auctioned five independent ($10M budget, but with celeb talent) films in a foreclosure proceeding to collect on delinquent residuals. (The practice of putting up your film as collateral is common; the act of actually losing it, however, is less common, mostly just because of the difficulty of enforcement). Elsewhere, mergers (like Vivendi-Universal’s recent merger with Lagardee to extend its behemoth to publishing and cellular telephone services) and acquisitions (cue Paradigm’s acquisition of age-old Tinseltown relic W&A Group a mere month after its purchase of the Genesis boutique, boosting it to near Top-6 status) have cut jobs in the States and have forced over 300 tenpercentaries to close their doors nationwide. The unfortunate result is a streamlining of programming. Less competition in this case is leading to lower quality filmmaking, and worse, cinematic repetition. {How many more films can be based on books, or other films? Honestly?? They’re remaking Nick Hornby’s 1997 “Fever Pitch” for heaven’s sake. It was 7 years ago! What is the true price for a creative, or at least original, idea?}

Television is an equally pained industry, though I’m far too lazy to go into details now. Again, profits minimized, jobs lost, small production co’s and rep/management co’s closing their doors, this time due to crappy reality programming like “Surivivor 3,670,986″ and “Date Your Mom.” (Sarcasm detected.) In all seriousness, I’ll sum up the reality situation by saying that it is a sad, sad day when an Amish reality show rakes in virtually ALL of the ratings for its time slot. You may actually have to pay actors, but at least that tends to ensure some semblance of quality.

The good news is that a few major shingles are fighting back. Rather than sell their shares, Paramount picked up a deal with Merryl-Lynch on Wall Street (to the tune of over $350M) to keep domestic financing and foreign distribution rights within its studios. AMC, the second-largest media house on the globe, made a similar deal with JP Morgan. (Smart moves by both ML and JP, as Hollywood profits tend to remain relatively high in times of war.) And of course, we still get most of the non-reality TV programming for the Networks 3 on lots in Los Angeles and New York. At least some people are keeping the Hollywood hoodlums off the streets of Fiji.