Hard-Times Hollywood.(Brief Article)

I had lunch last week with a guy who has spent a Hollywood lifetime (roughly 15 years) in the TV business. He's been fired about three times in the past four years, which in Hollywood isn't all that bad. But in his unfortunate case, this meant being fired twice from the same job at the same studio. They hired him, then fired him, then he went to a different studio, then that studio fired him, then he went back to the first studio and, a few months later, they fired him again. So when he called me for lunch, I knew who was buying.

Of course, no one has had a really easy time lately. With advertising down and with cost-cutting, we're all facing what financial types euphemize as "downward pressure." Meaning less money and "Hey, you, you're fired!"

Big media are corporate bulimics. Five years of gobbling up cable properties, swallowing foreign production companies and feasting on high-fat Internet portals. (I guess there was a hole inside them that needed to be filled. Or maybe it was low self-esteem.) Bloated, full and feeling fat, they're now all trying to do the same thing at the same time, in a desperate attempt to run with the popular crowd. It's the Great Purge.

My friend is one of the purged. As we pulled up in our cars at the restaurant, he smiled weakly. "What do you think?" he asked, jerking his thumb at his.

"Nice," I said. It was a Chevrolet station wagon. The guy has kids. What was I supposed to say?

"Yeah, well," he mumbled, "I had to cut back. Dump the Lexus." Then he turned and peered into the restaurant. "Do you think they saw me drive up? If they did, sorry, man. We'll get a rotten table."

"C'mon," I said. "People don't care about stuff like that. It's just an L.A. myth." He looked at me and shook his head sourly. Then he brightened. "But they saw you drive up, too. And your car is nice."