Tag: Nepotism

HBO’s “Girls” Still Play with “Tiny Furniture” – Part I: The Predicament


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I frequently talk about the hopelessness of life prospects for most people in their twenties. In my post Futurenomics of Higher Education, I wrote about practical uselessness of college degrees for the majority of these kids. Anyone with half a brain can see that a staggering number of recent grads will never be able to buy houses in the same neighborhoods their parents did, enjoy nice vacations, pay for their children's education or elderly care.

And it's unfair, because on average the generation in question stands on much higher ethical grounds than, us – their parents: they are more open-minded, more accepting of diversity, more environmentally aware. At least the kids in their twenties that I personally know deserve a better future than we've set up for them. For years now, I've been like, "Hello! These young college grads have nowhere to go! Can we start talking about this issue?"

Be careful what you wish for! Better yet, try to define your wishes more accurately, because it does matter who talks and what they say. There are speakers with trite messages who have access to the channels unavailable to others. They confuse the eager audiences into seeing what they want to see and hear what they want to hear.  When Lena Dunham's movie "Tiny Furniture" was propelled into their view by an inadequately strong PR campaign, they mistook the depiction of someone's feeling momentarily insecure for an introspective statement relevant to the entire generation.

In truth, the movie is nothing more than a photograph (it's ironic that it was shot on an SLR camera) of a bad moment in a life of a privileged girl, whose existence has nothing to do with the reality experienced by the majority of people. As such, it does have some bits of stark vulnerability familiar to many unattractive people. However, as the cinema critic for New York Magazine David Edelstein pointed out "Lena Dunham is so much smaller than life."

In that, she essentially upholds a fine family tradition by following in her mother's (a renown photo-artist Laurie Simmons) footsteps: playing with toys, showing ersatz characters in artificial surroundings, miniaturizing settings and issues to the point of irrelevance. For me, the smallness of the subject matter combined with the repetitiveness of self-pitying incidents turned "Tiny Furniture" into a lack-luster drag. If Lena Dunham were a "regular" person this film would have never been made, won Best Feature at SXSW, and led to the HBO's new series "Girls" bankrolled by Judd Apatow and created by Ms. Dunham, who also stars as a central character.  She also wrote and directed most of the first season's episodes.

To Be Continued

The Bottomless Well of Nepotism and the Issue of Business Survival


My dear readers, I wish I could stop writing about it, but it never ends – there are always more examples to share. I already wrote The Curse of Private Business: Nepotism and then More on Nepotism, but I cannot resist the urge of giving a space to yet another example. And even though it concerns the entertainment industry, it is an important financial issue as well.

You see, in the deteriorating economic environment (and it will continue deteriorating), there is only a handful of industries that have a chance of surviving. Filmmaking is one of them. Not the whole of entertainment, but cinema in particular. People already pretty much stopped reading books, and who knows what's going on with the music industry. Only a small percentage of population can afford to go to the concerts, sporting events, or theater.

But no matter what happens, people will continue seeking an escape from their dreary lives in the darkness of movie theaters or in front of their TV screens. So, whether we like it or not, it is socially important that Hollywood spreads their financial resources wisely and survives. It would be even better if the production funds were also distributed with artistic responsibilities in mind, but that's a subject for another post (or, perhaps, even another blog).

From a strictly financial point of view, I cannot even complain about the stupid Michael Bay's movies – at least they make money. But I have a problem with irrelevant films that get pushed through studios and independent production companies with the help of connections and familial relationships. Some of them are not able to cover even 10% of their budgets. And not because they are complicated intellectual creations (I don't mind money being spent on actual masterpieces), but because they are simply crap. And it is not about the nepotism per se, as I previously wrote. It is about mediocrity and losses caused by nepotism. In any business, not just filmmaking, if nepotism results in success and profits, objectively it can be tolerated.

So, how is it done? The August 29th issue of New York Magazine had a little interview with Zoe Kazan – Zoe Kazan Needs Coffee, conducted by one of my favorite magazine writers, Jada Yuan. It is actually in the theater section, because on top of having her screenplay being made into a movie (He Loves Me), in which she also stars together with her boyfriend Paul Dano, this 28-year-old has a play, commissioned by Manhattan Theater Club, opening this fall in New York (!).

Of course, Ms. Yuan shines the light on the grounds of this first-time screenwriter's ability to penetrate Hollywood's entry barriers. She starts by defining the interviewee as Elia Kazan's granddaughter. Then she goes on to point out the connection between the directors spearheading He Loves Me – Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, and the boyfriend (they directed Paul Dano in Little Miss Sunshine). Finally, in her last question she names Zoe Kazan's parents – both screenwriters: Nicholas Kazan (who co-wrote Frances, adapted Alan Dershowitz's Reversal of Fortune, and penned excellent, but underrated Fallen) and Robin Swicord, who has a good knack for adapting highbrow sentimental literature (Little Women, Practical Magic, Memoirs of Geisha, The Jane Austin Book Club).

And again, the nepotism would be okay (after all, we know how lazy people are – nobody wants to work hard and look for new talents), if writing was Ms. Kazan's genuine calling and her ideas were original. But He Loves Me is just another rehashing of the Greek legend of Pygmalion. And here is how she answers Jada Yuan's question, why did she start writing:

"Because when I was first trying to get acting jobs, there would be these huge slots of time, where I wouldn't have work…"

Soooo, she started writing because she had free time? Are you joking me? True writers write because they cannot live any other way. Not, because they need to kill some time or as a form of "self-actualization." The saddest thing is that I happen to know incredibly talented young writers with original ideas, who try and try again, querying agents and production companies just for a chance to get their excellent scripts read. Robert McKee says that one of the main concerns of the screenwriting professors is preventing their best students from killing themselves.

But Ms. Kazan? Whatever she is going to write, will be read by someone with a finger on the green-light button. And then, money and resources will be invested on something that only a small group of people (most of them also connected) will be interested to see.

The Curse of Private Business: Nepotism


My friend, a fellow career CFO and frequent correspondent, MJZ urges me to write on nepotism. Her acute sensitivity to the subject is understandable: over the years, she's had more than a few encounters with this practice and I intend to use some of those shared with me as examples.

The dictionary gives a definition of nepotism as "the practice among those with power or influence of favoring relatives or friends, especially by giving them jobs." Nowadays, a lot of people confuse nepotism with networking. Let me correct them. Circulating a resume of someone you know because you can attest to their professional achievements is not nepotism, but a favor to those seeking good people to hire. If you do the same for someone who is a poor worker and a nitwit, it's not nepotism either, it's just your own stupidity. Merit is the key.

The people who mistake networking for nepotism also miss an important element of the definition – "those with power." In monarchical states and dictatorships (such as Kim dynasty's North Korea) the passage of power from parents to children is a given. And in my post on The Distortion of the Bill of Rights in closely-held businesses, I have pointed out that these companies are not democracies, but absolute monarchies. Yet many of us, who still crave the illusion of meritocracy, still cringe at the unfairness of the "family" business arrangements.

It's not always that nepotism has a poor impact on business. For example, it would be a great relief for the media world if strangely progressive Lachlan Murdoch, son of Rupert, got a chance to  overhaul his father's empire. His departure from News Corporation has only deepened the company's regress. However, that's a rare exception: 99.99% of nepotism cases are bad both for commerce and morale.

In her early career, MJZ held a Controller position in a manufacturing and distribution company. She was responsible for all accounting, trade finance, and credit functions. As the matter of fact, she was the one who transitioned them from manual into computerized accounting. She was revered by the business owner. But when his daughter with a marketing degree hit the ceiling in her career at now defunct telecom company, MJZ's job went to her. The company went out of business within a year.

At her more recent job, MJZ had to suffer an onslaught of owners' children (all recent college graduates) being appointed as Presidents of the company's subsidiaries. As the conglomerate's CFO, she was forced to educate them, tolerate their shortcomings and listen to her peers and middle managers complaining about the kids' laziness, time in the office they spent on personal matters, and unlimited PTO. These stupid people made a terribly destructive impact on the business.  Yet, MJZ was unable to voice her opinion, because, say it with me, there is no such a thing as Freedom of Speech in a place of one's employment.

Curiously enough, the industry where nepotism is the most prevalent is the one that suffers the most from the lack of fresh talent – the entertainment business. But that's a subject for other posts.