10. Equity's swinging door
Maybe former Actors' Equity Association executive director John P. Connolly, who resigned Nov. 30, and former Equity president Mark S. Zimmerman, who resigned Dec. 12, really did decide within two weeks of each other to leave their union posts to focus on their respective acting careers and personal lives. Maybe not. But for Equity, a bastion of maturity in comparison to the other major performers guilds, two top leaders walking out together raises too many questions to ignore. Is it possible that Connolly and Zimmerman had simultaneous midlife crises? And if there was no acrimony in either move, why wouldn't one stay with the union for at least a few months after the other's exit, to avoid even the appearance of trouble?
If nothing else, Equity has some soul-searching to do. In announcing Connolly's resignation, the union confirmed that Carol Waaser, who had planned to retire in February, will serve as acting director only until a permanent replacement is named. And Equity was careful to point out that 1st vice president Paige Price will take on the responsibilities of Zimmerman's position but will not assume the title of president. But in contrast to, say, the Screen Actors Guild, which wears its dysfunctions on its sleeve, Equity is still a tight ship when it comes to message. So it could be some time before the effects of the shakeup come into focus.
9. Diversity? What diversity?
In the 2009 fall TV season, only one scripted broadcast show, Fox's "Brothers," had a largely minority cast. The new series appeared after the CW canceled two holdovers from forebear network UPN, "The Game" and "Everybody Hates Chris," replacing them with more new shows geared toward an audience of white teenage girls: "The Vampire Diaries," "Melrose Place," and "The Beautiful Life." A December 2008 study by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People found that from the 2003-04 TV season to the 2006-07 season, the number of minority actors appearing in regular and recurring roles on scripted prime-time shows decreased at three of the four broadcast networks. Only ABC saw an increase.
"I think we're going backwards," Kathleen McGhee-Anderson, executive producer of the ABC Family series "Lincoln Heights," told Back Stage in July. "I think that programming should reflect more diversity as opposed to less diversity. Just demographics are showing now that even in Los Angeles, the minority population is almost half of this major city, and we are not showing a true reflection of our culture. I don't understand why that's such a difficult translation to the screen."
8. Tax breaks for all
In February, the California Legislature, no doubt tired of watching its lunch get eaten by New Mexico and Michigan, approved the state's first-ever tax-incentive program for film and TV production. The move was considered so important that it was added to a budget being cut to the bone in other areas, thanks to California's biblically proportioned fiscal crisis.
Tax incentives have become de rigueur for states hoping to attract production, but 2009 was a mixed bag for incentive advocates. New York's program, launched in 2004, has been in perpetual danger of running out of money and hasn't received the long-term commitment from the Legislature that industry insiders crave. But at least it works. A January study by the accounting firm Ernst & Young found that while tax credits cost the state and New York City $215 million, they generated $404 million in tax revenue and helped create or keep 19,500 jobs. That's better than in Massachusetts, where a July study by the state's Department of Revenue found that the state earned only 15 cents for every $1 it spent on tax credits, a loss of more than $95 million.
Incentive programs, now adopted in 40 states, also became magnets for corruption. In Louisiana, the state's former film commissioner was sentenced in July to two years in prison for accepting bribes in exchange for granting credits to productions. Three months later, the Iowa attorney general opened a criminal probe into his state's production-incentive program.
7. Rocco plays Peoria
Few sentences raised as much hell in the arts world in 2009 as this one, uttered in August by Rocco Landesman in an interview with The New York Times: "I don't know if there's a theater in Peoria, but I would bet that it's not as good as Steppenwolf or the Goodman." Landesman, a Broadway producer who at the time was waiting to take office as the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, was referring to two major Chicago theaters and making a point about how he intended to look carefully at where NEA money should go, requiring recipients to "answer some questions about artistic merit."
In most of flyover country, the sentiment was received as big-city snootiness. In Peoria, a local arts maven saw an opportunity. Kathy Chitwood, executive director of the city's Eastlight Theatre, sent Landesman an email inviting him to visit Peoria. To Chitwood's surprise, Landesman accepted. He arrived in November and—in between servings of crow—took in the city's renovated waterfront culture district, a slave memorial sculpture, an airbrushed portrait of him rendered by a local house painter, and the Eastlight's production of "Rent," where during intermission Landesman told a reporter, "I'm having a good time!"
For the outspoken arts czar, it was a public-relations triumph snatched from the jaws of disaster. But despite Landesman's efforts to smooth things over, his initial comment brought to the surface anxieties over how arts institutions of all sizes are struggling to shore up their budgets in the lousy economy. And the NEA chief indicated that while he may have been happy to visit the hinterlands, his heart was still with the country's cultural centers. Asked by The Washington Post if he regretted his initial remark, Landesman said, "Absolutely not. Everyone has regarded this as a big 'whoops' moment, but I meant what I said. I was up-front about my ignorance."
6. Collapsing star system
What do Shia LaBeouf, Daniel Radcliffe, Edward Asner, Bradley Cooper, and Robert Pattinson have in common? They are the five biggest movie stars of 2009. A look at the year's highest-grossing movies at the box office reveals little in the way of true star vehicles. As it has been for the past few years, the box office was dominated by franchises ("Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," "The Twilight Saga: New Moon"), dude-centric comedies ("The Hangover"), and animated films ("Up"). But 2009 was especially tough on movie stars, with films fronted by bold-faced names such as Johnny Depp, Will Ferrell, Tom Hanks, and Julia Roberts underperforming.
Hollywood took notice. In July, Sony scuttled the baseball movie "Moneyball," set to star Brad Pitt, over concerns about its marketability. That same month, according to Variety, the Tony Scott–directed film "Unstoppable" avoided a similar fate when its star, Denzel Washington, agreed to give up millions of dollars in up-front payments.
5. The return of the B-movie
If you spent the year searching for good news at the box office, "Paranormal Activity" was one of the few nuggets of hope you were likely to find. The indie horror film, made for $15,000, earned $107 million in the U.S., thanks to an aggressive guerrilla-style marketing campaign by distributor Paramount. It also turned its unknown principals, Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, into, if not movie stars, at least actors with much brighter futures than before the movie was released. Featherston was waiting tables and Sloat was working as a computer programmer when they shot the movie in 2005. As Sloat told Back Stage in October, "Basically, the doors have been opened like floodgates. We've had amazing meetings and auditions just in the last couple weeks alone. But everything has happened because of this one film. It only takes one."
Most important, "Paranormal Activity" was not an isolated incident but the launching pad for what could wind up being a new trend in moviemaking. On Dec. 11, Paramount, inspired by all the money its low-cost darling made, announced that it would create a new, as-yet-unnamed division devoted to developing as many as 20 so-called "micro-budget" films a year, beginning in 2010. The films will each cost less than $100,000 to make, meaning plenty of opportunities will go to actors still working their survival jobs.
4. Broadway goes Hollywood
So if multimillion-dollar stars are no longer relevant in Hollywood, where are they going? Broadway. In 2009, Katie Holmes, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jude Law, Sienna Miller, Daniel Craig, Hugh Jackman, and Jeff Daniels headlined Broadway shows. Shakespeare in the Park even got a heaping helping of star power, with Anne Hathaway appearing in "Twelfth Night." The trend will likely continue in 2010, with Scarlett Johansson making her Broadway debut in "A View From the Bridge" and Evan Rachel Wood scheduled to star in the Julie Taymor–directed "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark," which could wind up being the "Avatar" of big-budget stage musicals. Also on deck: Al Pacino following in Hathaway's footsteps in "The Merchant of Venice."
In a short time it has become accepted wisdom that for a show to succeed on Broadway, it must have stars. In October, after deaf actors protested the choice of a well-known hearing actor, Abigail Breslin, to play young Helen Keller in a revival of "The Miracle Worker" at Circle in the Square Theatre, one of the play's producers, David Richenthal, explained his dilemma bluntly to The New York Times: Deaf or hearing, a star was needed for his show to succeed. "It's simply naive to think that in this day and age, you'll be able to sell tickets to a play revival solely on the potential of the production to be a great show or on the potential for an unknown actress to give a breakthrough performance," Richenthal said. "I would consider it financially irresponsible to approach a major revival without making a serious effort to get a star."
3. Goodnight, daytime
At the beginning of 2009, four daytime dramas were shot in New York City. By the end of 2010, there will be one—and that's if you believe that "One Life to Live" still has life in it, which few do. Soap opera ratings have been in decline for years, but this year was especially hard on the genre. CBS aired the last episode of "Guiding Light," then the oldest scripted program in broadcasting, in September and replaced it with a game show. Then the Eye Network announced Dec. 8 that "As the World Turns" will leave the airwaves in September 2010. Elsewhere on the dial, ABC announced in August that it would move production of another New York–based soap opera, "All My Children," to Los Angeles in 2010. The move was widely received as a cost-driven effort to avoid canceling the show.
Holter Graham, president of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists' New York division, summed up the situation facing daytime scripted television when he spoke to Back Stage in early December regarding "As the World Turns." "The writing was on the wall about daytime and that it was a changing market a long time ago," Graham said. "The economic crisis given to us by the Bush administration sped up that process and made that writing on the wall bright yellow highlighter."
Only six dramas will remain on daytime network television after September 2010.
2. The "fucking civil war"
In 2009, SAG's leaders continued to behave like less-polite iterations of David Mamet characters, while the members they serve continued to do their best to ignore them. The August election that swept Ken Howard into the president's chair and solidified the moderates' control of the national board of directors had all the makings of great narrative. But it helps to remember that only 27 percent of dues-paying members even voted in the election. That's a higher percentage than voted in 2005, but SAG's officers would probably do well to remind themselves during those boardroom moments of high dudgeon that three-quarters of their members either don't know or don't care who they are or what they do.
That said, SAG's DNA has altered. The change began when an attempt by union moderates to fire executive director Doug Allen was scuttled by hard-line MembershipFirst partisans' 28-hour filibuster, during which then-president Alan Rosenberg reportedly proclaimed, "You want a fucking civil war in this union? You do this, you will get a fucking civil war. I'll lead it." Despite parliamentary tricks, threats, and even a lawsuit filed against the guild by its own president, Allen was eventually fired and replaced by interim director David White, who was given the director's chair in earnest in October after Howard replaced Rosenberg. White's first mission was to make up for lost time on SAG's lapsed contracts. Since April he has led the guild to six deals, including new TV-and-film and commercials pacts.
But the moderates' control of SAG has not proved to be as smooth as some had hoped. Members killed a proposed contract with video-game producers in November. The deal had been negotiated side by side with AFTRA, the union with which SAG's new leaders have openly advocated merger. AFTRA managed to ratify its deal, making it the only performers guild now under contract with video-game makers. Once again, it appears that internal wrangling has caused SAG to cede territory to its sister union.
1. Zucker
Like health-care reform and permanent recession, the saga that was NBC in 2009 is more than just an actor story. It's an everybody story. But 2009, the year a cable company bought America's oldest broadcast network, the year that network gave up five hours of prime time to a prosaic comedian incapable of drawing substantial ratings, may wind up being remembered as the beginning of the end for broadcast television. Given how important broadcast TV is to the working actor, it's a story that can't be ignored.
At the center of that story is Jeff Zucker, who at age 26 became executive producer of "Today" and is now president and CEO of NBC Universal. Zucker has been accused of dismantling and decimating NBC's broadcast heritage. But he is also credited with the great success of the company's cable channels, such as USA, SyFy, and Bravo. In March, Zucker reportedly told the audience at the McGraw-Hill Media Summit, "We are, first and foremost, a cable company." No kidding.
NBC has remained mired in fourth place in the ratings in no small part thanks to Zucker's decision to install talk-show host Jay Leno five nights a week at 10 p.m. The time slot was long the domain of scripted dramas such as "Law & Order" and "ER," for years staples of the working actor's résumé. But while Leno's ratings have been poor, NBC Universal's cable division continues to thrive, meaning Zucker's job is secure. His new bosses at Comcast, which announced Dec. 3 that it had reached an agreement to purchase a controlling stake in NBC Universal, want him to stay. They may be the only ones.