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August 03, 2009
Looking Back, Looking Forward
As noted last week, Anne Thompson has moved on to indieWIRE, changing little but some new Gawker-esque design and the signature on the check. Here is the page. My only concern for her is the odd choice to make her header recall the tag-line a certain long-running animated doofus. T'oh!!!
David Carr pays homage to Tina Brown's last big failure and the hype and glory around it. I am noth struck with nostalgia and reminded what a bunch of self-important asses NY media types can be/sometimes still are.
For me, it was that boat and others - that I was on and that I wasn't - that assured that I would never want that for myself. That never precluded ambition... or occasional frustrations that so much is made of so little intellectual effort. But that way lies madness. And as both Ms Brown and Bonnie Fuller and the marginal hacks like... I will restrain myself... head to the web to try to infect it with the same disease they so proudly carry - this time cloaked in downtown cool and cheaper parties (while they still make their reservation for their $200 lunches), less has changed than we would like to think.
To paraphrase, what God wants to kill, he first makes the elite think worthy of investment. The women and men who are still out there fighting to make great, small indie film may not want to see it this way, but the destruction of the indie business can be directly correlated, I believe, to the studios coveting it, overspending, then losing interest in their little toy. (Meanwhile, the media brayed on like the jackasses we can be, selling the lie that the studios were pining for Oscar and making business decisions on that basis... ha.)
Bonnie Fuller's hire by Jay Penske is the single most significant online media story in a few years. And the wire services and major papers shutting down unfair use by vampire sites like Huffington Post, effectively cutting their traffic by as much as 2/3, will be the next mega-story.
There was another powerful story in the NYT this weekend... about the financial blow-up of Annie Lebowitz. Very sad. Not so surprising, really. But for me, Lebowitz is a link between what was and what will be. She was the kind of content that drives the web mind long before the web existed. She is the artist that people wanted to touch... brilliant and a bit mysterious (at least until she started the now understandable scramble of books being sold on insight into her and her work). Her work has an elegance that is a biot lost on the current generation of celebrity.
Posted by dpoland at August 3, 2009 12:10 PM
Comments
This quote couldn't be funnier if it had been delivered by a character on Absolutely Fabulous:
“I was aware it was a historic night,” Ms. Brown said. “We were on a boat and I was with Natasha Richardson. We were talking and laughing, looking at the lights of the twin towers. And then a big wave came over the side of the boat and soaked us both. Now Natasha is gone, the towers are gone. It’s very, very sad, but I am very excited by this new world we are heading into.”
Posted by: Rob ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/nav-commenters.gif)
at August 3, 2009 12:50 PM
That sucks, but stupidity doesn't give you a pass from anything. The world's most famous photographer doesn't have a money manager? She needs 3 houses? 24 MILLION LOAN?? Come on. Love her work to death, but I don't feel much sympathy frankly.
Posted by: Aris P at August 3, 2009 01:24 PM
I don't post here on the hot blog, like at all.
But I couldn't help but chime in and say that this has been a LONG time coming for Annie Lebowitz. She's not a decent person when it comes to business. Just ask around the LA photo industry. She owes people a lot of money.
Posted by: Geoff at August 3, 2009 03:31 PM
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