Hollywood: Let's party like it was 1999

It's always high-comedy time when Variety delivers one of its patented "state of the industry" thumbsuckers. The trade paper did not disappoint today, offering up an unintentionally hilarious piece claiming that Hollywood was undergoing an industrywide cutback of its premieres and holiday bashes. As always, Variety's team of reporters wrote an entire story without managing to quote a single industry executive by name, since apparently no one in Hollywood would be willing to acknowledge that--the horror!--they are cutting back on party expenses, for fear of ticking off the talent involved with the movie whose premiere was the one to suffer.

Still, what made the story especially strange was that most of the people quoted--anonymously, of course--didn't even support its premise. All Variety could deliver in the way of evidence of cutbacks was the vague news that "Disney and Viacom won't be getting festive this year" while Universal was letting "individual divisions decide how merry to get" during the holidays. The only actual quote in the whole piece supporting the industry-cutback premise was from an unnamed caterer who said one way to save money was to put the "shrimp in hors d'oeuvres instead of a buffet," adding "you cut back on things that take an inordinate amount of labor."

Yikes! The next thing you know they'll be buying the champagne from Costco. That's not exactly stop-the-presses material. In fact, the farther you read into the piece, the more questionable the whole assumption becomes, since according to Variety's own reporting, there are still plenty of big parties on tap and still plenty of films getting fancy premieres ("We still need to make a splash," as one studio event planner put it). Another unnamed executive was quoted as saying the parties would continue, since "we still have a business to run."

I called two big-shot PR executives to ask if it was true that studios were cutting back on premieres and parties and lavish Oscar spending. "Are you kidding?" was the answer. The sad truth is that if studios really want to save money, they'd much prefer to fire a bunch of low-level employees. The premieres, parties, limo rentals, Oscar ads and private jets are the last to go, since they are expenditures that can be written off against the film, buried far from view. The rest of America may be suffering, but the recession hasn't gotten bad enough for anyone in Hollywood to crack down on anything that involves coddling the talent. It's show business, where the party must always go on.   

Photo by Alastair Miller / Bloomberg News