Ellen

The News

By Ray Pride

August 5, 2020

“Not sure “well, she was nice to us famous people” is the best response to a major production being put under investigation for mistreating, harassing & intimidating workers, as well as accusations of racism. It’s Ellen’s name on the show so stop pretending the buck doesn’t stop with her for the workplace environment she helps to foster. It’s super infantilizing at best to position this as “but the poor rich lady must not have known about the meanies.”

“The implosion of DeGeneres’s previously bulletproof Be Nice image has been a long time coming. News of her horrible treatment of staff, fans, and even random people in restaurants has been one of Hollywood’s most well-discussed open secrets. As Dan Sheehan famously tweeted in 2019, ‘When you move to LA the first two things that happen are you get a parking ticket and someone who once worked for Ellen will tell you a story about how she’s a monster.’ DeGeneres living a different reality from the persona she projects on-screen would be one thing… A lot of that pushback ignores two key facts: One, DeGeneres has so successfully commodified the vague platitude of niceness that it’s made her near-untouchable in Hollywood despite years of conversations about her cruelty, and two, there’s a vast world of difference between having a persona and being the head of a workplace so notoriously difficult to be a part of that people in the business actively discourage one another for applying to work there. Even if the current circumstances didn’t concern her own personal behavior in the slightest — and that’s difficult given that Ellen the person and Ellen the brand are so tightly bound together — the issue of terrorized staff members, racism, and emotional abuse still stand.”

No Responses to “Ellen”

Comments are closed.

MCN Commentary & Analysis See All

THB #93: The Batman (no spoilers)

David Poland | March 6, 2022

THB #76: 9 Weeks To Oscar

David Poland | January 26, 2022

THB #73: Netflix Is Chilled

David Poland | January 24, 2022

The News Curated by Ray Pride See All

-30-

May 1, 2022

"Netflix, the great disrupter whose algorithms and direct-to-consumer platform have forced powerful media incumbents to rethink their economic models, now seems to need a big strategy change itself. It got me thinking about the simple idea that my film and TV production company Blumhouse is built on: If you give artists a lot of creative freedom and a little money upfront but a big stake in the movie’s or TV show’s commercial success, more often than not the result will be both commercial (the filmmakers are incentivized to make films that will resonate with audiences) and artistically interesting (creative freedom!). This approach has yielded movies as varied as Get Out (made for $4.5 million, with worldwide box office receipts of more than $250 million), Whiplash (made for $3.3 million, winner of three Academy Awards), The Invisible Man (made for $7 million, earned more than $140 million) and Paranormal Activity (made for $15,000, grossed more than $190 million).From the beginning, the most important strategy I used to persuade artists to work with me was to make radically transparent deals: We usually paid the artists (“participants” in Hollywood lingo) the absolute minimum allowable by union contracts upfront, with the promise of healthy bonuses based on actual box office results—instead of the opaque 'percentage points' that artists are usually offered. Anyone can see box office results immediately, so creators don’t quarrel with the payouts. In fact, when it comes time for an artist to collect a bonus based on box office receipts, I email a video clip of myself dropping the check off at FedEx to the recipient."
Jason Blum Sees Room For "Scrappier" Netflix

The New York Times | April 30, 2022

"As a critic Gavin was entertaining, wry, questioning, sensitive, perceptive"
Critic-Filmmaker Gavin Millar Was 84; Films Include Cream In My Coffee, Dreamchild

April 29, 2022

Disney Executive Geoff Morrell Out After Less Than Four Months

The New York Times | April 29, 2022