https://amzn.to/3L0ZXSt

Now that’s a book. Expect to see it on the ten best lists at the end of the year.

“Birnam Wood” is no “Maame.” “Birnam Wood” is literary fiction. As in the concepts supersede the plot, big ideas are wrestled with and… I don’t think anybody can really come up with a clear definition of “literary fiction,” it’s more like pornography, to paraphrase that Supreme Court Justice, you know it when you see it. Then again, with pornography at your fingertips via Google (and Bing!) what exactly is pornography. What crosses the line? I’d say very little. Oh yeah, your kids are seeing pornography before they reach puberty. All the child locks known to man can’t keep them from it. And this is good, because sex will be decriminalized, it will no longer be seen as a bad thing. I mean why prevent kids from seeing pornography when they endure active shooter drills and must confront the distinct possibility of being mowed down in school?

So what you’ve got here is the do-gooders and the billionaire. And they’re chiaroscuro, as in they’re neither perfectly good nor perfectly bad. For someone who came of age in the sixties, the number one societal issue is income inequality. Not only can we not make the money of the billionaires, we pay fealty to them, we lionize them, as if by having money they’re better than we are.

But what kind of person can make this money? Elon Musk has been exposed as two-dimensional and evil. Furthermore, he thinks he’s above the law. What is this new class of people who exist in this rarefied air? Like Trump. If you consider him to be wrongly accused, just think of the Black people who endure this each and every day. Or the Central Park Five Trump declared to be guilty who were put behind bars, losing all that time when in truth they were completely innocent. But if you let your jeans hang low and wear a do-rag you’re guilty until proven innocent. Whereas if you wear a suit, it’s the other way around.

There’s a great passage about our adulation of the rich near the end of the book:

“And she had always known. That was the sad thing. Neither she nor Owen had ever been under any illusions that Lemoine was a good person, Lady Darvish thought, as she advanced. They’d known he was bad right from the start. And still they’d courted his business. Still they’d courted his approval, his respect. Still they’d courted him.”

The sycophants. Be privileged to hang with the rich and powerful and the hangers-on will have you rolling your eyes, if you’re not one of them yourself. You want some of that shine to rub off on you. You want to fly on the private jet, relax on Necker Island. This is the power of Epstein. Everybody looked the other way because he was rich. And even the justice system gave him a pass, with an unwarranted plea bargain in Florida. I mean after all, rich people can’t be guilty, can they?

Of course they can.

And I’m going to let you in on a little secret. These people who made these fortunes… They’re very smart, very business savvy, very people savvy. They veer on being sociopaths, and some are. They can make you feel good while ripping you off. They’re always moving forward. As for friends? They know their kind, there are no real friends at this level.

But can the do-gooders triumph? Can we conquer climate change?

And it’s always the youth who lead the charge. Because they’re still optimistic, they still believe in possibilities, whereas when you get older you’re resigned to the way the world works, at least how America works. Your only choice is to be an artist and speak truth to power. But the artists don’t want to do this, they want to hang with the billionaires too, nobody wants to be poor, and nobody wants to alienate a potential customer, whether it be a brand or a person.

Speaking of Elon… Have you been following the story of NPR and PBS? Elon basically labeled them, inaccurately, as tools of the government, and they’ve decided to no longer tweet. Maybe because they’re not typical corporations who have to deliver better numbers each and every quarter. But they’re taking a stand. When seemingly no one else can. Those on Twitter not only want to glean information, they want to play, post and burnish their image. All these oldsters complaining about TikTok addiction in the youth should look at themselves. And why is it that the media can’t stop covering Musk and Trump. They’re laughing all the way to the bank! Biden doesn’t get anywhere near the mindshare, and he’s the President!

So “Birnam Wood” is set in New Zealand. The author, Eleanor Catton, moved there from Canada with her family, she now lives in the U.K. But this story could take place anywhere. However, the New Zealand government is seen as more benevolent than typical western governments.

But it’s not only the big societal issues that “Birnam Wood” addresses, but the personal. Who is the leader and why. Who is stifled and why. Who will sell out and who won’t. These are questions we deal with every day. All of us. If you take the money they own you, you’re compromised. But today everybody is looking to sell out, just look at the “influencers” hawking products they don’t believe in just for some of that corporate dough. They think they’re winning but in truth it’s the companies that are winning, the influencers are just pawns in their game. Working 24/7 with no portfolio to make money. And when they’re burned out and it’s over, what have they got? Nothing. Why is it suddenly a badge of honor to drop out of school. Education itself has a bad rap. They’re afraid you might learn to think so they make sure you’re not exposed to stuff. As for college, it’s now a glorified trade school. When I went it was about becoming a well-rounded person. Not a single person I went to college with thought about a well-paying job before graduation. That’s not what they were in it for, they wanted to expand their minds before their pocketbooks.

And the jet set lifestyle of the billionaires. They actually own their own jets, which was not the case back in the sixties when the term was coined. And they have security, both cameras and people. And their goal is to keep themselves separate from the rest of us, the great unwashed. And they sell the fiction that if we just work hard enough, we too can become rich. What a crock…

So some of the reviews, even Stephen King, consider “Birnam Wood” to be a thriller. And I guess it is, but that’s not how it felt to me, I wasn’t reading for the great surprise at the end.

And did I tell you that Catton won the Booker Prize?

This is usually a badge of unreadability. And I won’t say that “Birnam Wood” is an easy read, but it’s not that hard. It does not cut like butter, but you’ll get involved in the world, you’ll think and you’ll care.

So would I tell you to put “Birnam Wood” at the top of your reading list?

No. “Birnam Wood” isn’t for everybody. If you never read books, don’t start here. If books put you to sleep, don’t even bother starting. But if in your high school English class you were searching for the zeitgeist… If you took liberal arts courses in college instead of science and engineering… “Birnam Wood” is right up your alley.

You see it isn’t only about money…critical thinking, the power to analyze, the ability to wrestle with the big issues… These are critical to our society. Remember, all those TV series and movies and records were not made by techies. That’s a different vertical. Needed, but we live for the soft issues. That which is not black and white, that which is not easily defined, like life. We’re all wandering, looking for insight, but that is not primary, it all comes down to the bucks. Oh, and looking good too. So the Kardashians are billionaires. Would you treat your body that way, with so much plastic surgery? And I’ve yet to hear one of them utter truths gleaned from an analysis of experience. No, they went there and did that and they’re empty vessels but they’re billionaires, so we have to read about them and the young and impressionable try to be like them and…

Our society is truly screwed up. I won’t even bother to delve into politics. Then an issue in “Birnam Wood” is whether you can trust the government. I mean if everything is a conspiracy…

And Eleanor Catton is only 37 years old. I’m not saying she’s a prodigy, but she’s not an oldster stuck in her ways like so many of the vaunted writers of literary fiction. I mean wipe out the boomers and Gen-X’ers who come down from the mountaintop with tablets, holier-than-thou. The only hope for our society is the youth. I wish they’d read “Birnam Wood” rather than go to business school, then again…

I’m not rich.

Holly Knight started out as the pianist in the band Spider (alongside drummer Anton Fig), which was managed by Bill Aucoin. Holly even played on KISS’s “Unmasked” (uncredited, of course). After Spider made an album for Dreamland Records, Mike Chapman convinced Holly to move to Los Angeles to be a songwriter. The two of them ended up writing Pat Benatar’s “Love Is a Battlefield” and Tina Turner’s signature song “The Best.” Holly also co-wrote Tina’s “Better Be Good to Me” as well as Patty Smyth’s “The Warrior,” Animotion’s “Obsession” and even Aerosmith’s “Rag Doll.” Holly has a new book “I Am the Warrior: My Crazy Life Writing the Hits and Rocking the MTV Eighties” and we discuss it as well as so much more!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/holly-knight/id1316200737?i=1000608772170

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/bafe9912-f9b9-4427-bb84-cc8e8e5a8805/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-holly-knight

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/holly-knight-301968342

I don’t understand ditching a long-established brand.  Especially in 2023.  I remember the introduction of “New Coke” back in the 80s.  Bill Cosby assured us all that it was better than the old Coke.  Maybe Bill is available to help with this re-brand too?

Ken Misch

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HBO contributes just about everything worthwhile in programming to what can be found within HBO Max/Max.

Absolutely brain dead move.

That’s the equivalent of renaming Disneyland “Tune Town”.

Jaime Feldman

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Talk of Zas dropping the HBO in HBO was around for months and optimistically I chose to believe no one could possibly be this out of touch.

OK he’s got all these ‘reasons,’ but none of them have anything to do with the basics of brands, pop culture, consumer awareness and behaviors.

Don’t know if this will go *all the way down in flames, but it’s a lock for the next megalomania textbook. Like Musk not understanding even the basics of social media.

Deb Wilker

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Zaslov will go down as one of the most short-sighted, anti-creative, destructive bean counters in history.

Just google what he’s done to the animation industry, to an entire generation of creatives. Cancelling shows, shuttering studios, wiping out the careers of thousands. Because… Discovery Channel??

This week there is news of Warner Brothers literally throwing out press kits and posters dating back to the 1950s as another cost-cutting move.
A cost cutting move caused by the pointless financial shenanigans of Zaslav, who apparently makes more than 40 million a year.

As you point out, it’s truly pathetic.

In the age of streaming this blinkered greedy moron is burying and cancelling content.
Max will fail. He will fail. But the damage is being done to real people and real culture.
ugh

Xeth

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I was heavily involved in the development of HBO advertising in the mid 90s at BBDO advertising. The agency’s job was to develop tune-in advertising for select HBO programming, just when the network was pivoting from theatrical movie releases to original programming. The decision to heavily invest in original programming was a strong and bold move by HBO management, somewhat similar to Reed Hastings jettisoning DVD’s for streaming w/ Netflix.  HBO’s unique, original and high-quality programming immediately created a point-of-difference vs. programming offered by other networks; which led to the “It’s Not TV, It’s HBO” tagline. Back then, the network was run by programmers (not bean counters), who also understood the importance of both branding and marketing. Now admittedly, the television landscape has shifted dramatically in the past 10+ years with much more competition.  There now are many, many players. That said, I knew the brand was in deep trouble the minute AT&T took ownership of HBO in 2019. Very few brands have the equity and iconic imagery of HBO that was built and nurtured over several decades. Bob, this branding debacle isn’t as bad as New Coke, it’s far, far worse. It’s inexplicably Harvard case study worse.

Stuart K. Marvin

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Talk about living in the past. Crazy that “HBOMax” goes with “Max”, a brand whose legacy nods to Cinemax (Skinemax) and HBO’s common corporate parentage. I have had for years the highest regard for the quality of HBO programming like Succession, Sopranos, True Detective, Game of thrones, The Wire, Perry Mason, John Oliver, Real Time, etc. “Max” is a silly, puzzling and backward move at a Min(imum). And how is it they have ceded the comedy market HBO once owned to Netflix. Comedy specials (Pryor, Robin Williams, etc) and movies established their elite brand early on. Color me baffled.

Jim McKeon

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Typical idiocy anyone could see coming a mile away that will result in a devalued brand and golden parachutes for the architects of the stupidity.

Dave Conklin

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The name and logo remind me of the old skinemax (Cinemax)

Maury Wilks

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I thought the exact same thing when I saw this. I mean who’s brilliant idea was it to go from HBOMax and leave just “max” when Cinemax already failed and HBO was the only thing going for this “venture”?! The optics are horrible. Talk about complete self own.

L.A. Gonzalez

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I’ll bet people will think MAX is a new version of Cinemax. If it ain’t broke……

Russ Turk

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Agree on all points – And also, hasn’t MAX always been shorthand for Cinemax?

Ball of confusion.

Brian Howell

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Max / CineMax was HBO’s 2nd tier product. Seems so silly to rebrand to something related to your 2nd tier product.

Rusty Hodge

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Totally agree first thing I thought when announced. MAX has a soft porn rep to us gen xers but HBO had the cache’…oh well.

Luke Joerger

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Truth. I didn’t subscribe to Max. I subscribed to HBO.

Steve Schalchlin

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I think it’s safe to say that every single person who subscribes to Discovery+ does so in order to watch reality tv. Don’t underestimate the power of Bravo’s various franchises.

I’m only slightly ashamed to admit that I subscribe to Paramount+ for no other reason than to watch Survivor and The Challenge.

Zac Lasher

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Max is a plane with an unfavourable legacy.  HBO is the service that brought us the Sopranos. What are they thinking?

Andrew Forsyth

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Bob: Took your recommendation to check out Love Life on HBO Max.  Show has been pulled, effective last February.  Bob Paris

“William Jackson Harper Says He Was ‘Big Mad’ After ‘Love Life’ Was Pulled From HBO Max. The anthology series, which starred Harper in its second season, was recently canceled and removed from the streaming service as part of cost-cutting measures.”

https://bit.ly/3GEfTap

No Love Life on HBO MAX, gone to pay on Amazon and others.

Paul Zullo

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it’s worse than calling ’NEW COKE’ just NEW.
why are people so dumb sometimes???

Rob Preuss

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Bob, nailed it.

Mike Vial

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Hear hear.  Insanity.

Nick Davis

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Agree Bob. Completely.

The most important thing Zaslav could do is find some outsiders and listen to them. Unfortunately, ego and isolation are the enemy of success during periods of the kind change that is disrupting his world.

John Parikhal

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I don’t care what they call it. Just give the app some much needed tech support. Not being able to play downloaded content on a device in airplane mode is pointless.

Keith Farszmil

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As a very fine actor said in a great film:  “stupid is as stupid does. “   This is marketing 101. Amazing.

Martin Tudor

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I’m changing my name to Murray.

Steven Ross

“HBO Max to Be Renamed ‘Max’ With Addition of Discovery+ Content, Launch Date and Pricing Revealed”: https://bit.ly/3zPpWWB

Only a newbie with no history would jettison the brand value of HBO. It would be like the Rolling Stones replacing two members and calling themselves the Drivers. Actually, the Stones have replaced two members and they still call themselves the Stones!

It’s well-known in the music business that if you go solo you’re not exactly starting from zero, but close. You’d think everybody would know you’re the lead singer, but they don’t. You’d think everybody would know that HBO is Max, but they won’t. Just like they have never activated the free digital HBO Max app that comes with their cable TV subscription. Hell, if Warner Bros. Discovery were a tech company, it would sunset HBO on cable. Otherwise you risk an aged audience which dissipates and is too unworldly to migrate to the app. Steve Jobs specialized in ripping the band-aid off. Sure, people complained, but today Apple is the world’s most valuable company. You push people into the future. Imagine if the last season of “Succession” was only on the app, people would find it.

But Warner Bros. Discovery’s research said otherwise. That the poor Discovery+ reality TV watchers were turned off by the elite HBO. Not only is that ridiculous, streaming television is not politics, this is the same kind of research that had Coke reformulating its flagship brand as New Coke. Talk about a disaster. Furthermore, Diet Coke is the flagship brand these days, evolution happens, pay attention.

Everybody knows that when it comes to streaming television subscriptions it’s all about hit product. Word of mouth that garners viewers. Without “Ted Lasso,” Apple TV+ is dead on arrival. I wish Zaslav talked about new programming as opposed to this business nonsense. This is the man who eliminated shows and a brand name movie based on some cockamamie financial engineering. When it comes to streaming TV, brand is everything. Subscribing to a streaming service is not a financial decision, it’s an emotional decision. Which is why all these paid ad services miss the point. If someone wants the programming, they’ll pay. Otherwise you’re just cannibalizing your profits. Mercedes-Benz stopped importing its A-class to America, the company decided to stop making cheap models and focus on the expensive ones, where the profit is. But Zaslav? He’s bottom-feeding, appealing to the watchers of reality TV. Have you ever heard someone say they subscribed to a pay service to watch a reality show? I never have. Reality TV is mostly a time-killer, a guilty pleasure, very rarely is it appointment TV. You can live without the latest Bobby Flay competition show, but not the latest “Succession,” or “Stranger Things.”

Where is the vision?

That’s what made Netflix a powerhouse. The paradigm was established and other companies eventually replicated it but Netflix is still the big kahuna, the one with the most subscribers. And Netflix is viewer-centric. Dropping all episodes at once. Didn’t we learn this at the advent of this century, with music? Give the public what it wants or be ready for it to abandon you. Turns out people only wanted the hits, i.e. Napster and then the iTunes Store. But artists kept saying they wanted to make an album-long statement and labels said the economics didn’t work and along came streaming where you can do what you want and the public was satiated and the business rebounded.

There are good shows on HBO Max that no one knows about. Especially “Love Life.” An adult “Friends.” Zaslav could have focused on how to get the word out, but instead he’s glad-handing, worried about the Street and missing the point. Who cares if “Love Life” is a couple of years old, so was “Breaking Bad” when it was blown up on Netflix.

This is what is wrong with television and this is what is wrong with music. Those in control never had skin in the game, they’re managers, not entrepreneurs. They’re anti-risk. Reed Hastings was all about risk, and he had vision, to switch from DVDs by mail to streaming. Do you remember when he announced that? The public screamed! The same public that today doesn’t even own a DVD player. You get ahead of the public, that’s how Spotify won, that’s how you will win, by providing something that people can’t even conceive of as opposed to trying to drag them back to the past.

In order to win in the streaming game you need fresh new product. This is something that has never been Zaslav’s focus. You’ve got to spend to win in entertainment. Sometimes you even have to bet the farm, as Hastings did. The only way Max works is if there’s fantastic new product. However, HBO puts out a very limited amount of product. It tries to focus on great, but sometimes it misses, and you never know what will appeal to some people. Streaming is not about mass, but satiating the niches. The goal is to get people to continue to subscribe. There might be one hot show on a streaming service, but when it’s done, you disconnect. What has HBO got? As for Apple dribbling out product week by week, it’s because it’s got so little of it, and not all succeeds. The goal isn’t to satiate the press or the oldsters still watching week by week on cable, but the youngsters coming up, who hate commercials and want it all and they want it now. Why frustrate your customers? Give it to them all at once and then give them something new. And despite conventional wisdom, when you drop all the episodes at once you foment word of mouth, the early adopters spread the word. Forget about the water cooler. Not only do people not show up at the workplace, these people who find out about it late are like those who used to buy the CD two years after it came out. They didn’t go to the show, or at least not the next one, they didn’t automatically buy the next CD, they were casual customers, Luddites. Streaming TV is all about the active consumer. 

Forget about legs. How long do movies play in theatres these days? They open on thousands of theatres to satiate demand. But streaming TV wants to frustrate this? And when you binge…you remember what happened from episode to episode, it’s a more rewarding experience.

But you can’t convince the suits. With history in the entertainment business. Who were disrupted by Silicon Valley to begin with. You need outside vision. And as Clayton Christensen detailed, you have to disrupt yourself. Where is the disruption in Max? it doesn’t even roll off the tongue. Worst case scenario, they could have called it HBOD. Like SiriusXM. People could use all the letters or just the first three, but why get rid of the essence of the brand?

Insane.