First came Reagan, the actor. Then Havel, the playwright. In 1992, as Glasnost swept America, Swifty, the agent, became the 42nd President of the United States. How well I remember his inaugural address:
Friends, citizens, members of the motion picture academy, I did not seek to stand before you, but the people called upon me and after many weeks of evasion I returned their call.Read More......
Four months ago I was confined to an office, denied the simple dignity of a car phone or fax machine. My name was unknown beyond a small group of celebrities and entertainment lawyers. Society slumbered beneath a system that vested all power in the hands of the rich and famous, while those who supplied them with ratings and audience share toiled in obscurity.
How quickly things have changed. The viewers have awakened. They demand better treatment. They seek the leadership of ideas. And we, who know a good treatment when we see one, whose commerce is the free market of ideas, have been summoned to lead. Democracy is hot!
I come to you as living proof that ideas matter. Ideas are our most treasured properties. Properly developed they yield multi-media packages -- blockbusters, tie-ins, sequels, prequels, spin-offs, and ancillary merchandise. Ideas provide us with options. Ideas tell us what to think.
Not long ago the world was divided between two camps -- those who made history and those who watched it. But in our age of global media, governments derive their just consensus from the polling of the governed. Leaders can rule only insofar as the people will buy it. And what the people will buy is what we promote.
It is uncivilized to live in a society where some people do not have development deals simply because they do not know anyone in the business. My fellow Americans, of the left coast and right, every time I take a cabinet meeting you have a friend in the business. The pitch stops here! Let me make this perfectly clear: You’re beautiful. Don’t change
In the Sixties it was said, "the whole world is watching." And what the whole world is watching is up to us. We, the producers. We, the publicists. Editors. Executives, be we cable or broadcast. We can never abandon our public responsibility, and what the public gets is ultimately our responsibility.
We hold these concepts to be happening; that all properties are created commercial; that they are endowed by their salability with certain contractual rights - among them development, production, and the pursuit of points. Come let us do lunch together, so that programming of the people, for the people, by the media shall not vanish from the surface of our tubes.
