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May. 31st, 2023 10:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Pre-ordered the audio book version of Burn it Down:Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood by Maureen Ryan. I did it based on her tweets about it on Twitter, and this excerpt published on Variety's website - Lost Illusions: The Untold Story of the Hit Show’s Poisonous Culture by Maureen Ryan.
ased on conversations with more than a dozen people who worked on Lost in various capacities, it’s clear that the landmark series played right into Hollywood’s most long-standing patterns, in which auteurs wield enormous power with very little oversight. Later, you will hear from Lindelof and Cuse at length regarding the allegations and issues their former colleagues raised with me. I talked to people across all six seasons, half of whom were people of color and more than half of whom were women. Every person I spoke with is justifiably proud of the work they did on the drama, but by all accounts, they worked very hard on a job that could be quite grueling. And scarring.
“All I wanted to do was write some really cool episodes of a cool show. That was an impossibility on that staff,” said Monica Owusu-Breen, who worked on Lost’s third season. “There was no way to navigate that situation. Part of it was they really didn’t like their characters of color. When you have to go home and cry for an hour before you can see your kids because you have to excise all the stress you’ve been holding in, you’re not going to write anything good after that.”
On set in Hawaii, much of the cast got along really well, at least at first. “A lot of us grew very close,” said an actor I’ll call Sloan. “The thing that kind of created a rift in the cast was money.” Perrineau and Sloan told me that the cast had discussions about holding firm and asking for equal pay when salary renegotiations with ABC Studios began. According to both, promises were made to present a united front. Almost a decade earlier, the cast of Friends had done just that and wound up with equal pay for all six leads. But at Lost, the united front quickly crumbled. Ultimately, the cast ended up in a series of compensation tiers, and Perrineau and Sloan said the highest tier was occupied solely by white actors.
“That affected relationships,” Sloan said. But the actor had no relationship with Cuse, who, Sloan believed, “didn’t seem to think much of me.” At least, during a work-related conversation, Cuse never berated Sloan to the point of tears for being “ungrateful,” which happened to another Lost actor Sloan knew.
As the 25-episode first season progressed, Perrineau noticed that a few of his castmates got the majority of the storytelling attention: “It became pretty clear that I was the Black guy. Daniel [Dae Kim] was the Asian guy. And then you had Jack and Kate and Sawyer,” all of whom got a good deal of screen time, as did Terry O’Quinn’s Locke. Indeed, a writer I spoke to who worked on Lost during the middle of its run said that the writing staff was told repeatedly who the “hero characters” were: Locke, Jack, Kate, and Sawyer, all of whom were white. “It’s not that they didn’t write stories for Sayid [an Iraqi character] or Sun and Jin [Korean characters],” the source added. Still, they recalled comments like “Nobody cares about these other characters. Just give them a few scenes on another beach.”
To ensure that his colleague would understand that this observation was not just actor jealousy rearing its head, Perrineau pointed out the storyline disparities to a Lost producer on set in a fairly mild way. He told me he said, “I don’t have to be the first, I don’t have to have the most episodes—but I’d like to be in the mix. But it seems like this is now a story about Jack and Kate and Sawyer.” Perrineau said he was told, “Well, this is just how audiences follow stories,” and those were the characters that were “relatable.”
The gist on Lost? The idiotic white male writers thought the audience wanted the Kate, Jack, Sawyer and Lock story, and found those to be the most relatable. Also, the writers kind of acted like Andrew, Jonathan and Warren Mears throughout the series. Who knew the Trioka in Buffy were based on asshole white male Hollywood writers?
Both showrunners tolerated or even encouraged the overall atmosphere, but its descent into a realm that many sources described in very negative terms appeared to arise from a couple of powerful factors: the “sense of humor” that Lindelof appeared to enjoy and the showrunners’ status as all-powerful entities no one could cross. When Cuse arrived, “that’s when everything changed, in my opinion,” a female source said. “It was Carlton coming in and acting like, ‘I want my people and I want control of those people.’ ” Regarding Cuse, she said, “I don’t think people really had respect for him among the writing staff,” but from “Damon’s or the studio’s perspective, it was like, ‘Oh, we have someone who’s going to put everyone in line.’ ” Over time, this meant that the culture of Lost “turned back to the old Hollywood way.”
But an extreme version. “I can only describe it as hazing. It was very much middle school and relentlessly cruel. And I’ve never heard that much racist commentary in one room in my career,” Owusu-Breen recalled. Here is a partial roster of statements sources heard while working at Lost. The first four were heard by Owusu-Breen, as well as another individual I spoke to:
When someone on staff was adopting an Asian child, one person said to another writer that “no grandparent wants a slanty-eyed grandchild.”
When actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s picture was on the writers room table, someone was told to remove their nearby wallet “before he steals it.”
When Owusu-Breen and others were riding in a van on a trip, in answer to a question about the luggage, one writer—using a Yiddish word—said, “Let the schvartze take it.”
The only Asian American writer was called Korean, as in, “Korean, take the board.”
When a woman entered the writers room carrying a binder, two sources said, a male writer asked her what it was. She said it was the HR manual for the studio, and he responded, “Why don’t you take off your top and tell us about it?”
And..here's another article on it Damon Lindelof ‘Shocked and Appalled’ Over ‘Lost’ Racism and Toxic Workplace Allegations: ‘I Failed’ to Provide Safety and Comfort .
Ryan states on Twitter - that this is actually one of the shorter chapters, she spends more time digging into SNL, Sleepy Hollow and various others. (Whedon wasn't exaggerating or kidding when he stated he was actually one of the nicer show runners in Hollywood. Although they will have to work hard to beat Howard Hughes on The Conqueror....where half the cast and crew died of cancer about 10-15 years later, because Hughes ignored the fact that they were testing the Atomic Bomb just 100 miles north of the film site. And didn't ensure the set was safe.)
By the time I finish Finding Me by Viola Davis - I'll be ready to listen to this one. I love reading about horrible Hollywood work places, it makes me feel more grateful about my own.
2. I want to take a trip somewhere - but I don't want to worry about things, be alone but not completely alone, have planned activities, and have all the logistics taken care of.
Chidi came back from Mexico City today, he'd gone on a four day excursion with his girlfriend. And couldn't stop talking about it. Best place that he'd ever been. His girlfriend does speak Spanish, even if he doesn't. And
it was apparently dirt cheap. Nice hotels were $85 a night (compared to $350 a night in Great Barrington, MA). The dollar is very strong in Mexico.
Now I want to go to Mexico. My co-workers are making me want to travel, dammit.
What I should do is research various trips, figure out the costs, and either take it this year or plot for next year.
Some say you only live once, but I've watched James Bond movies - it's actually twice. (That's a joke, I'm making fun of myself, again.)
Chidi apparently had created his own birthday card - which I mentioned to him, thinking he knew about it. He didn't. They'd waited to give it to him.
He was highly amused they were actually using it.
Coworkers: You're considering Mexico now, after Alaska?
ME: Yeah, Chidi...
Coworkers: That's kind of a 180 degree turn
Also possibly too hot for August. The only time I can go anywhere or take extensive time off is really August.
3. I now have 89 works saved to SquidgeWoorld...which is an odd name for a archive. I hope I don't live to regret this? It's named after the fan who built it - "squidgie" online.
Nothing is permanent on the internet. I know this.
I want to transfer about 350 works. Leaving maybe 200 on Ao3. They may leave me alone if I just have 200.
ased on conversations with more than a dozen people who worked on Lost in various capacities, it’s clear that the landmark series played right into Hollywood’s most long-standing patterns, in which auteurs wield enormous power with very little oversight. Later, you will hear from Lindelof and Cuse at length regarding the allegations and issues their former colleagues raised with me. I talked to people across all six seasons, half of whom were people of color and more than half of whom were women. Every person I spoke with is justifiably proud of the work they did on the drama, but by all accounts, they worked very hard on a job that could be quite grueling. And scarring.
“All I wanted to do was write some really cool episodes of a cool show. That was an impossibility on that staff,” said Monica Owusu-Breen, who worked on Lost’s third season. “There was no way to navigate that situation. Part of it was they really didn’t like their characters of color. When you have to go home and cry for an hour before you can see your kids because you have to excise all the stress you’ve been holding in, you’re not going to write anything good after that.”
On set in Hawaii, much of the cast got along really well, at least at first. “A lot of us grew very close,” said an actor I’ll call Sloan. “The thing that kind of created a rift in the cast was money.” Perrineau and Sloan told me that the cast had discussions about holding firm and asking for equal pay when salary renegotiations with ABC Studios began. According to both, promises were made to present a united front. Almost a decade earlier, the cast of Friends had done just that and wound up with equal pay for all six leads. But at Lost, the united front quickly crumbled. Ultimately, the cast ended up in a series of compensation tiers, and Perrineau and Sloan said the highest tier was occupied solely by white actors.
“That affected relationships,” Sloan said. But the actor had no relationship with Cuse, who, Sloan believed, “didn’t seem to think much of me.” At least, during a work-related conversation, Cuse never berated Sloan to the point of tears for being “ungrateful,” which happened to another Lost actor Sloan knew.
As the 25-episode first season progressed, Perrineau noticed that a few of his castmates got the majority of the storytelling attention: “It became pretty clear that I was the Black guy. Daniel [Dae Kim] was the Asian guy. And then you had Jack and Kate and Sawyer,” all of whom got a good deal of screen time, as did Terry O’Quinn’s Locke. Indeed, a writer I spoke to who worked on Lost during the middle of its run said that the writing staff was told repeatedly who the “hero characters” were: Locke, Jack, Kate, and Sawyer, all of whom were white. “It’s not that they didn’t write stories for Sayid [an Iraqi character] or Sun and Jin [Korean characters],” the source added. Still, they recalled comments like “Nobody cares about these other characters. Just give them a few scenes on another beach.”
To ensure that his colleague would understand that this observation was not just actor jealousy rearing its head, Perrineau pointed out the storyline disparities to a Lost producer on set in a fairly mild way. He told me he said, “I don’t have to be the first, I don’t have to have the most episodes—but I’d like to be in the mix. But it seems like this is now a story about Jack and Kate and Sawyer.” Perrineau said he was told, “Well, this is just how audiences follow stories,” and those were the characters that were “relatable.”
The gist on Lost? The idiotic white male writers thought the audience wanted the Kate, Jack, Sawyer and Lock story, and found those to be the most relatable. Also, the writers kind of acted like Andrew, Jonathan and Warren Mears throughout the series. Who knew the Trioka in Buffy were based on asshole white male Hollywood writers?
Both showrunners tolerated or even encouraged the overall atmosphere, but its descent into a realm that many sources described in very negative terms appeared to arise from a couple of powerful factors: the “sense of humor” that Lindelof appeared to enjoy and the showrunners’ status as all-powerful entities no one could cross. When Cuse arrived, “that’s when everything changed, in my opinion,” a female source said. “It was Carlton coming in and acting like, ‘I want my people and I want control of those people.’ ” Regarding Cuse, she said, “I don’t think people really had respect for him among the writing staff,” but from “Damon’s or the studio’s perspective, it was like, ‘Oh, we have someone who’s going to put everyone in line.’ ” Over time, this meant that the culture of Lost “turned back to the old Hollywood way.”
But an extreme version. “I can only describe it as hazing. It was very much middle school and relentlessly cruel. And I’ve never heard that much racist commentary in one room in my career,” Owusu-Breen recalled. Here is a partial roster of statements sources heard while working at Lost. The first four were heard by Owusu-Breen, as well as another individual I spoke to:
When someone on staff was adopting an Asian child, one person said to another writer that “no grandparent wants a slanty-eyed grandchild.”
When actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s picture was on the writers room table, someone was told to remove their nearby wallet “before he steals it.”
When Owusu-Breen and others were riding in a van on a trip, in answer to a question about the luggage, one writer—using a Yiddish word—said, “Let the schvartze take it.”
The only Asian American writer was called Korean, as in, “Korean, take the board.”
When a woman entered the writers room carrying a binder, two sources said, a male writer asked her what it was. She said it was the HR manual for the studio, and he responded, “Why don’t you take off your top and tell us about it?”
And..here's another article on it Damon Lindelof ‘Shocked and Appalled’ Over ‘Lost’ Racism and Toxic Workplace Allegations: ‘I Failed’ to Provide Safety and Comfort .
Ryan states on Twitter - that this is actually one of the shorter chapters, she spends more time digging into SNL, Sleepy Hollow and various others. (Whedon wasn't exaggerating or kidding when he stated he was actually one of the nicer show runners in Hollywood. Although they will have to work hard to beat Howard Hughes on The Conqueror....where half the cast and crew died of cancer about 10-15 years later, because Hughes ignored the fact that they were testing the Atomic Bomb just 100 miles north of the film site. And didn't ensure the set was safe.)
By the time I finish Finding Me by Viola Davis - I'll be ready to listen to this one. I love reading about horrible Hollywood work places, it makes me feel more grateful about my own.
2. I want to take a trip somewhere - but I don't want to worry about things, be alone but not completely alone, have planned activities, and have all the logistics taken care of.
Chidi came back from Mexico City today, he'd gone on a four day excursion with his girlfriend. And couldn't stop talking about it. Best place that he'd ever been. His girlfriend does speak Spanish, even if he doesn't. And
it was apparently dirt cheap. Nice hotels were $85 a night (compared to $350 a night in Great Barrington, MA). The dollar is very strong in Mexico.
Now I want to go to Mexico. My co-workers are making me want to travel, dammit.
What I should do is research various trips, figure out the costs, and either take it this year or plot for next year.
Some say you only live once, but I've watched James Bond movies - it's actually twice. (That's a joke, I'm making fun of myself, again.)
Chidi apparently had created his own birthday card - which I mentioned to him, thinking he knew about it. He didn't. They'd waited to give it to him.
He was highly amused they were actually using it.
Coworkers: You're considering Mexico now, after Alaska?
ME: Yeah, Chidi...
Coworkers: That's kind of a 180 degree turn
Also possibly too hot for August. The only time I can go anywhere or take extensive time off is really August.
3. I now have 89 works saved to SquidgeWoorld...which is an odd name for a archive. I hope I don't live to regret this? It's named after the fan who built it - "squidgie" online.
Nothing is permanent on the internet. I know this.
I want to transfer about 350 works. Leaving maybe 200 on Ao3. They may leave me alone if I just have 200.
no subject
Date: 2023-06-01 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-06-01 03:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-06-01 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-06-01 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-06-01 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-06-01 10:52 pm (UTC)It does explain why Lost kind of went off the rails, and became uber-focused on the least interesting characters.
no subject
Date: 2023-06-01 07:23 pm (UTC)I went to Playa del Carmen in June? July? and it was SO HOT AND HUMID. Not even all that hot, really, but the humidity made it unpleasant. And I grew up in Oklahoma, so in theory I'm used to hot and humid, but this was a whole different level.
FYI, Playa del Carmen is south of Cancun, on the Caribbean side of the Yucatan peninsula. The water temperature was WONDERFUL, though. I swam for hours.
Besides water temperature, another plus of visiting somewhere in the Yucatan peninsula is the close-ish access to Mayan ruins. Ek Balam, Chichen Itza, lots of others.
Los Cabos, at the southern tip of Baja California, was lovely, but the water is colder on the Pacific side.
I haven't heard much about the making of Lost, but none of that surprises me. Sleepy Hollow I knew was a nightmare, because the actors were more willing to speak out about it at the time. Not to mention how the writing went from focusing on Nicole Beharie's character to sidelining her in favor of the white British actor whose name I forget... (and he didn't even seem to want the show to be about his character! but he was stuck in a contract, so he had to deal with the mess the writers / producers made.)
no subject
Date: 2023-06-01 10:50 pm (UTC)Mexico might be better in the Spring. This is Hurricane season, also it's hot this time of year. It's the tropics, so humid. And I want to be able to visit the Mayan and Azetec ruins.
Also, I'm not sure I want to go by myself.
**
I'd heard Sleepy Hollow was horrible - set wise (but didn't read the specifics). I'd kind of figured that out for myself, because the writing went horribly downhill in the second season, and I gave up. The first season was good, the second was awful - because they switched the focus to Icabod Crane and his witchy wife, son and father, and away from the female detective and her sister, who were the most interesting characters. I remember being annoyed.
no subject
Date: 2023-06-03 10:48 pm (UTC)Have you read The Moonlighting Oral history? https://www.amazon.com/Moonlighting-An-Oral-History/dp/B096W43SCY/
it is the one I read, because I was curious why it all ended in such a mess. And well, at first they were all overworked and proud of the end result, and then they were just overworked and pissed at each other
no subject
Date: 2023-06-03 11:09 pm (UTC)I hadn't read the Moonlighting one. Although I knew some of it - via word of mouth and various articles over the years. Moonlighting's problem was well...Cybil Shepard and Bruce Willis. Both have huge egos. Shepard is apparently hell on wheels to work with. Her second attempt at a come back - Cybil, fell apart because people hated working with her. Baranski and Shepard did not get along at all. Willis's movie career was taking off and he didn't give a shit. And at a certain point? They refused to work with each other.
That was the rumors floating around. Television is hard to work in. It's long hours, little recognition, and not everyone makes the same amount. Also, it's ruthlessly unpredictable - you don't know how long it will last - it's worse now.
Toxic business. I love reading these things - because it reminds me that I'm better off working as a civil servant in a huge transportation agency than as a television writer or worse, actor/producer of a television show.
no subject
Date: 2023-06-05 02:02 am (UTC)Glenn Gordon Caron, the showrunner, was pretty new at the showrunning thing, and full of ideas, obviously good ones, but not only. And a perfectionist, and had to have perfect scripts. WHich wouldn't be bad, if they weren't late all the time. the whole production stood and waited for him to finish scripts, and then scramble to film and edit and send off in time to air. Which just wasn't sustainable long-term. Even with cocaine (especially with cocaine? not sure). It felt like a good Greek Tragedy overall, with tv series being doomed exactly by what made them so good. I really need to write that post...