Disruption is also on the menu in Hollywood

Hollywood writer Rob Long discovers he has more in common than he thought with a political fundraising friend based in Washington DC.

“This must seem like old hat to you,” a friend of mine said to me recently. “But to me, coming all the way from Washington, this is pretty glamorous.”

My friend is in the political consulting game. He’s one of those sharp-eyed guys with three or four mobile phones always buzzing in his pocket and a brief case filled with media plans who can always be seen in the background of news photographs featuring the smiling, affable politician.

He’s the serious-looking one just out of focus, or the vaguely sinister guy whispering purposefully into the candidate’s ear.

My friend was in Los Angeles for – what else? – a political fund-raising dinner. Because we’re old friends, we met for breakfast at a coffee shop near the airport. He was on his way out of town, suitcase brimming with political contributions gathered the night before at a swanky Bel Air mansion.

“Pretty much everyone was there,” he said, eyes wide. “I mean, there I was, just a guy from DC, rubbing elbows with movie stars. People with Oscars. It was amazing. But I guess you’re used to that, living here.”

I am not used to it, of course, because I rarely get invited anywhere truly glittering. I’m a writer, which on the Hollywood status ladder is somewhere among the lower rungs. Put it this way: to get ahead in Hollywood, nobody wastes time sleeping with a writer.

“Yeah,” I said, “I’m pretty used to it,” because I didn’t want my friend to be disappointed. “That’s my life in a nutshell.”

My friend’s plane was departing in the next hour, so the conversation got urgent. Did I think, my friend wanted to know, that there might be some kind of career opportunity for him in the entertainment business? He was seriously considering leaving politics, and he wanted to know what I thought his chances would be in Hollywood.

“As an actor?” I asked. “Because, honestly, you’re too old and too fat.”

No, he said, as a producer or executive of some kind. He had extensive experience in the political world, and since that mostly consisted of raising vast sums of money in somewhat legal ways and being able to spin out elaborate lies at a moment’s notice, he figured he’d fit right in. He has, to use the current cliché, the right “skill set”.

This was undoubtedly true, and I told him so. But why, I asked, did he want to leave politics in the first place? Political consultants at his level command enormous salaries in addition to a certain percentage of the overall campaign budget.

Each side in an important statewide campaign can spend tens of millions of dollars on advertising and travel to get their messages out, and the consultants get a little slice of those expenditures to keep for themselves.

Politics is the only business I know where even if you lose you get paid. But, my friend told me, times are changing. The political game, which for years had been run essentially the same way, was ripe for what business school graduates call “disruption”.

“I’ve got clients who don’t buy any ads at all,” my friend lamented.

“They Tweet or use Facebook or have some college kid post videos on YouTube. They talk directly to voters with emails and websites. There are giant political movements in this country run entirely by amateurs and hobbyists. In a few years, I predict, they won’t even need political parties. And worse, they won’t even need political consultants.”

So that’s why my friend was taking me out to breakfast. He wanted me to help him find his next job in Hollywood.

Which was bad news, as I explained to him. Times in Hollywood, I told him, were changing. The entertainment industry, which for years had been run essentially the same way, was undergoing what business school graduates call “disruption”.

“There are hundreds of channels of television,” I told him, “each vying frantically for attention.

“Add into that the competition from the web and mobile – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc – and the fact that every week or so someone invents a new and cool way for people to communicate with each other and, well, who knows if there will even be a rational economic reason to have a studio or network in the first place?”

We sat and stared at each other for a moment. Each one of us, I guess, had up until that moment, imagined that only he was watching his industry implode from the disruptive forces of technology and mass communication.

Each one of us had assumed that the other guy’s business was essentially safe and thriving.

“We’re kind of in the same boat,” my friend said ruefully.

“That’s because we’re kind of in the same business,” I said, as I waited for my friend to pick up the bill. Which he did, eventually. After all, he’s a political fund-raiser in Hollywood. His job is easy. People in Hollywood love to give money to politicians. They don’t, however, love to give it to writers.

Rob Long is a writer and producer in Hollywood

Twitter: @rcbl