I sometimes feel bad for the “Iron Triangle” of youtubers I follow to monitor woke content. Disparu in particular seems to have a pain threshold unknown to mankind. I mean, the guy watched Velma. All of it. Including the special.
Anyway, this English masochist (but I repeat myself) put together a series of clips relating the downfall of Amazon Prime’s Jennifer Salke, and it is truly amazing. This woman has to be the most monumentally ignorant person ever put in charge of a major film studio.
Everything Begins with Me
One of the great curses of our age is that so many people in positions of power have no idea what life on earth was like before they were born. It is a void to them, or perhaps a shapeless mass of racism and bigotry. They quite literally have no idea that there were successful women before they entered the industry.
What is even more staggering, is how willful this ignorance is. It is one thing to perhaps be unclear on the finer points of military history, or the timeline of the suffragettes, but we’re talking about Salke’s own industry, which necessarily includes references to prior productions (because all Hollywood does is remakes). I’m not saying studio chiefs need to be Turner Classic Movie junkies, but you’d think they would understand that profit is what drives wages, not one’s (chosen?) gender.
Hollywood started out as a pure meritocracy. To be sure, it was always morally corrupt, leaned heavily into nepotism, but the rule was money talks and b.s. walks. If you were box office gold, you flourished. As soon as you failed to produce, however, your career hung by a thread. Blake Edwards’ S.O.B. is a hilarious (and vicious) look at this environment. For all it’s problems, the drive to make money resulted in timeless works of excellence.
See Also: Amazon MGM Chief Out: Salke’s Tenure of Big Budgets & Bigger Disappointments Ends
History So Ancient, Let’s Just Forget It Ever Happened
So, just for the record, let’s note that the “glass ceiling” of stardom was shattered by Mary Pickford, who became the first Hollywood millionaire in 1916. Yes, that’s 109 years ago. Oh, and she co-founded a film studio (United Artists) in 1919 and went on to be a founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, won the second Oscar ever awarded for Best Actress and lived a long and accomplished life.
She died in 1979, when Salke was 13. She got a special lifetime achievement award at the Oscars in 1976, so Salke might have watched it.
Salke almost certainly remembers Elizabeth Taylor, who had a huge presence in Hollywood and died in 2011. She was the first person (male or female) to get paid $1 million for a single movie.
That’s right, folks, women didn’t need “pay equity” because their movies were making massive amounts of money. They got top dollar because they were worth it.
Salke would also remember Penny Marshall, who died in 2018 and was a fixture in Hollywood from the 1970s onward, both starring, directing and producing films. She had family in the business, but she was also able to make hit films and was the first woman to direct a film grossing more than $100 million.
You get the picture. Salke’s gambit – and the gambit of all the women in Hollywood today – is to pretend that women never had success, never could earn top dollar, direct or produce, and so they need DEI preferences and have to give each other “a hand up” in order to succeed.
Talent Is A Thing
When Val Kilmer died, the internet was aflame with arguments over which of his performances, which is his characters, which of the clips represented his best work. Feel free to offer your favorite in the comments. I have to admit I haven’t seen all his stuff and will have to address that, but the upshot was that this guy was a Hollywood outsider who got into a prestigious school, worked hard, networked and had a heck of a career.
What about today’s stars? Most of the clips you see are of them making fools of themselves in interviews. They have zero stature, absolutely no poise. They come across as idiots and their need to vent on social media destroys all sense of mystery.
This is Salke’s doing, because she picks people and then sends them out to do awful interviews, ensuring no one wants to watch The Rings of Power or Wheel of Time. She pays a hack like Phoebe Waller-Bridge to essentially do nothing, and her primary goal seems to have been to destroy as much of Amazon’s very expensive intellectual property as humanly possible.
To put it simply, she was completely devoid of talent and therefore could not spot talent.
Related: Amazon’s Loss: How Phoebe Waller-Bridge Made Millions Without Making Anything
The Damage Is Permanent
And now Salke is gone, but Kathleen Kennedy retains her death grip on Lucasfilm. Both Amazon and Disney have managed the remarkable feat of taking world-renowned intellectual properties and rendering them absolutely worthless. The reaction of the various fandoms to a new project is now dread rather than anticipation, and the only time anyone hears much about them is when disgruntled cast members blame the audience for their wrecked careers.
In that sense, both women will be remembered, and in their own way are as consequential is Pickford, Taylor and Marshall. The difference is that they built nothing, and are the film management equivalent of the Palisades Wildfire, burning up value rather than increasing it. It may be possible that their intellectual properties may be rebuilt in some fashion, but it will take years and immense amounts of money to accomplish. For decades afterwards people will talk about sick they felt watching something they loved go up in smoke.
It’s not the legacy Salke and Kennedy wanted, but it is the legacy they deserve.
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English (US) · 