Hollywood Reporter - 1001 and one uses

Every industry has it's leeches, scumbags, blood-suckers, hanger's on, creeps, misfits and malcontents. Take the film industry for instance. There are two sides to this multi billion dollar industry. There is the side that houses the talent. Be it writers, directors, actors or crafts people. These are the people who create. They give a little piece of themselves to every production they work on. Paid or unpaid, rich or poor. Creative people are the juice that makes the movie industry go.

Then you have the "other side". Agents, Managers, paparazzi, public relations people, ad people, magazines all who make a buck on the sweat of others. You would think they would be a little more appreciative of the pound of flesh they dine on every night. But of course they are not. That is because they are not human beings. They are parasites. Pilot fish hitching a free ride on the underbelly of artists. They are for lack of a better word, "Pods".

I just got off the phone with two such pods.

My current film project which is in pre-production right now is set to shoot in Aug. As I always do I like to put an announcement in Hollywood Distorter ( mean Reporter) for two reasons. Firstly, it often brings potential contacts of people who want to be involved with the production who we might not have heard from otherwise and secondly and certainly the more frivolous reason, you need HR for the IMDB to list your movie. The call it an official listing. While I am already on IMDB some of my crew is not and for folks in the industry having an imdb listing is like their coming out party. Sad but true. The IMDB has replaced all other sources for legitimizing ones career in the movie business.... However, I digress.

So, having done this before I know the drill full well. You must have your paperwork in by Thursday to be published the following Tuesday, which I did (I had it in Monday night just to make sure). When Tuesday rolled around, there was no listing of the movie. So I called up HR and asked them what happened. Well it seemed the rocket scientist who's job it is to input them couldn't print the jpeg files I sent her. So instead of using the contact number on the form and in the email to call me and ask me to send her the form in a pdf file, what did this cranially challenged person do?

2 guesses....

Wrong ....

Wrong....

She did nothing. If she worked for me I would have fired her on the spot. But clearly HR has a less stringent performance standard than me.

So I re-send the files as pdf files and this female version of Rainman assures me she will put it in right away and it will be updated.

If you have read this far then you will probably be able to figure out what happened next.

Nothing.

So I called today to find out what happened. I spoke to another "Pod" this one dimmer than the last one. When confronted with the facts, her well thought out answer to why my production listing wasn't posted was, as far as I am concerned, indicative of every flunky, non hacker dim witted foob on this god foresaken planet.

Ready?

"SHE DIDN'T GET TO IT".

Yup that was her answer. It's not like I asked her to clean my garage or pick up my dry cleaning. She has one job. Input production listings. Listings that are in by a certain day and time. Mine was. She didn't get to it. If she worked for me I would have fired her on the spot ... Again.

She didn't get to it. Then this nitwit makes it sound like it was my fault. Well needles to say I was less than thrilled. She validated her response by saying that the listings on Hollywood reporter are free and that they don't have to post them. I reminded her that she wouldn't have a job without the listings so unless she fancies inspecting underwear in some assembly line for 4.50 and hour, I would treat the people who keep her employed with a little more respect. Of course that fell on deaf ears as these people don't respect anyone. These people are dermatophytes (that's a fungus that lives underneath your toenails). They are the stuff that overtime collects underneath your BBQ grill that you need to scrape away with some kind of bizarre gardening trowel.

For hundreds of years non artistic people have been making a living off of the creativity of others. We have finally raised it to the level of art. Lets make it official:
HOLLYWOOD DERMATOPHYTE: A fungus that gets under the creative toe nail and feeds on the artistic cuticles of others.
I think I am going to send this to Wikipedia.

That's if a I get to it.