Blame the movie industry. If you stop making adult films adults fall out of the habit of attending them.

Yes, Hollywood is now for cartoon superheroes. Comedies are too risky, these conglomerates want a guaranteed return. They’re risk averse. Never in the history of the film business has it been less about art.

As for risk-taking, that’s all on the flat screen. Which has increased in quality to the point where it’s a better experience for most people. You’re alone, without the riff-raff talking on their phones, there is no garbage at your feet, the image is pristine on the screen AND THE MOVIE STARTS WHEN YOU WANT IT TO! Never mind being able to pause at will.

We live in an on demand economy. Everything is delivered when you want it. People are acquiring fewer possessions. Kids don’t have driver’s licenses and their parents are happy that their immature bodies are being ferried by Uber. The world changes, Hollywood has not.

Yes, in hindsight those studios that delivered their pix to streaming services day and date are the futurists here, the winners. Forget all the bitching from agencies and talent. First and foremost, scripted entertainment is an ever-decreasing percentage of major talent agencies’ revenue and profitability. They saw the handwriting on the wall, they diversified, but when it comes to movie distribution everything remains the same? Meanwhile, Netflix lays beaucoup bucks at the feet of talent, with little interference, that’s the future, and if you want an ongoing percentage negotiate with them, not the moribund movie studios. It’d be like the music business insisting everybody go back to CDs. The economics changed, because of technology and the public’s desires. The way out was to embrace the future, i.e. Spotify, with its ultimate benefit of endless payment for streamed tracks, the catalog is more valuable than ever before!

So Spielberg is an unknown quantity amongst Generation Z, and amongst a lot of Millennials too. “Jaws” was 46 years ago. “E.T.” 39. And “Jurassic Park” is now a franchise that is not associated with him. Those are Spielberg’s greatest hits, and they’re in the past, but to the aged titans in the film industry he’s a god. That’d be like saying young people love Bad Company and Boston. Sure, there’s an audience, OF AGED PEOPLE!

But Bad Company and Boston weren’t remakes. Imagine a cover album of their tunes today, dead in the water. We see this with tribute albums, they almost universally fail. Doesn’t matter how good they are, people want the original.

So… If you want to promote a film today you don’t do it via reviews. The positive reviews for “West Side Story” were an insider circle jerk. An hermetically sealed system that didn’t reach anybody under the age of forty, and didn’t reach many above that age either.

The promotion should have started on TikTok, forget the critics. The active audience is on TikTok, and TikTok is about dancing, just like “West Side Story”! Youngsters are active, oldsters are passive. To get an oldster off the couch is nearly impossible. An oldster will question the ticket price when a youngster doesn’t think twice, if they want it they do it. So to succeed, “West Side Story” needed to appeal to the younger generation, and on its surface it did not.

All we saw were stories about Rita Moreno. But the last time she’s been in the public eye was “Oz,” about twenty years ago. However talented she might be, kids don’t know her and don’t care. But they could have been sold.

And don’t tell me there’s no market for movie musicals. What about “High School Musical”? If you build it they probably won’t come, if you market it to them there’s a good chance they will.

If you’re marketing to adults you’ve got to make it easy. You’ve got to make it a value proposition. They move slowly and wait for word of mouth. And by time word of mouth gains traction for a movie, the film has left the theatre. The movie business no longer moves at the speed of adults, it’s much faster. Boomers remember when films played for six months. Started in theatres in New York and L.A. and then platformed out across the country over weeks. Today they open in thousands of theatres, make most of their money up front and then disappear, to the flat screen. And that’s so fast that unless you’re truly passionate, you can wait for the appearance on the flat screen. And you don’t want to pay an on demand fee, it must be baked into a service you’re already paying for.

You can rail against the rules, the law, the future, but no one has ever won proceeding on that basis. You can only win by embracing not only the present, but getting ahead of the public. Putting features on streaming services got people in the habit of seeing their films there. To build the service you needed more films. I signed up to see “Hamilton,” with my free account from Verizon for Disney+, but when that was over I was done, there was no further product appealing to me. Disney is a youth company. The era when Michael Eisner took over and they created Touchstone and made “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” is long gone.

Steven Spielberg doing an updated, improved version of “West Side Story”… I ask you, WHO IS WAITING FOR THAT? Spielberg is about action, not gravitas. He’s got no history with music, he’s not Bob Fosse. And despite “Schindler’s List” he’s got little reputation for highbrow. He’s not in the wheelhouse of the aged cognoscenti who go to foreign films in theatres to feel better about themselves, to brag, wearing their attendance as a badge of honor. As a matter of fact, the revered makers of adult films are almost all gone. The hero directors of today…Michael Bay? Christopher Nolan?

“Licorice Pizza” would be culture shifting if it were on HBO, with its imprimatur and hype. Opening in a couple of theatres over the holiday, it’s a minor experience, only elite insiders care. Hell, Netflix did a much better job of hyping “Power of the Dog,” a much more difficult viewing experience, and more people will end up watching it than would have ever seen it on the big screen, and when awards season hits, and it starts just about now, “Power of the Dog” is just a click away, you can make an instant decision, get instant satisfaction, and if you don’t like it, you can immediately turn it off and not feel ripped off.

It’s not like boomers are not invested in higher brow, non-superhero entertainment. Look at “Succession”! This stuff used to be films. Albeit much shorter. “Succession” is better at an extended length.

As for all this hogwash about the theatre experience… It sucks. As for the big screen, it’s like the recording industry talking about the quality of CDs. And now you can stream at CD quality, EVEN BETTER! But people chose convenience over quality. Isn’t this Clayton Christensen 101? The newbie starts cheap and inferior but good enough, gains traction, gets better and kills the old institution.

As for budgets… Talk to record labels about recording budgets. They’re a fraction of what they what once were. Sure, it’s great to be able to spend half a million dollars in an A-level studio creating your opus, but the economics changed and that paradigm has evaporated. As for the youngsters dominating the charts, they have no experience with that era, AND THEY DON’T CARE! They make records in their bedrooms and they top the charts. Everybody’s happy except those who can’t get over the fact their cheese has been moved.

The failure of “West Side Story” should not come as a surprise to the film world. They created the atmosphere where it was doomed. You stop servicing an audience and you expect them to show up on demand, based on brand name? Brand name actors mean less at the box office than ever before. And when it comes to directors, the only one who gains adult notice is Quentin Tarantino, because he always twists the format, delivers something different, unique. As for Scorsese, another insider lauded by the oldsters, he’s a TV director now. And he’d better make better films if he wants youngsters to pay attention, “The Irishman” was a slog, assuming you could get through it.

Yes, today it’s less about image than story, which is what the flat screen has delivered. And isn’t the essence story? Story has taken a back seat too long in Hollywood, but on TV it’s up front and center, where it always must be to ensure a warm reception by the public.

Things changed. It was happening before the pandemic, Covid just accelerated it, put a stake in the heart of the old game. Accept it.

Spotify playlist: https://spoti.fi/3GHVIGi

“Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph

Preserve your memories, they’re all that’s left you

“Bookends Theme”

We all live in the past.

The past few days I’ve been reading this book “Powder Days,” by Heather Hansman. After graduating from Colby College she went west to Colorado and became a ski bum. But after a few years she let go, now, years later, she’s revisiting all her old haunts and old people, trying to find out if the ski bum life still exists, and how those who were caught up in it have survived.

It was different decades ago. You could make it on minimum wage. And almost nobody was going anywhere fast. You were trying to find yourself, do what felt right. It was hard for our parents to understand, having grown up in an age where you did what you had to, what you were told, to get ahead in the world. But the boomers were the first generation raised in the era of leisure time, when you could think about what you wanted to and do it, when who you were was more important than how much money you had.

It’s not that different in the music business. Sure, as the sixties closed it was obvious money was being made in the music business, ergo the consolidation of Warner, Elektra and Atlantic into the Warner Music Group. As a matter of fact, Ahmet Ertegun could never get over the sale, Atlantic was first, he wanted the financial security, but those who sold thereafter got a much better multiple, he believed he’d been ripped off. So when you told your parents you wanted to work in the music business, they were not encouraging. Furthermore, you couldn’t start at the top, you couldn’t even start in the middle. Your college degree meant nothing. And there was no financial security, no obvious career. To this day it’s hard to stay in the music business, then again a whole generation is not eager to get involved. Used to be if you worked at a record label you were a god, inside the machine, privy to Oz. Now, it’s just a job.

And it was all because of the music. There’s music today, but it doesn’t infect people the same way. It doesn’t mean the same thing. Back then it was everything, and we counted on our artists to push the envelope each and every time, and they tried to. And we basked in the results.

So on these cold winter nights, well, as cold as it gets in Southern California, it’s the quieter music that resonates, that keeps me warm. Not the bombastic in your face productions, but the ones that touch my soul, like Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bookends.”

Am I the only person who just doesn’t love “Bridge Over Troubled Water”? I mean it’s okay, but it’s just another ballad featuring Art Garfunkel’s high voice. Oh, it’s more than that, but I’d much rather listen to “The Boxer,” on the flip side of that album, which is held up as the duo’s paragon of excellence when the truth is that’s “Bookends,” which came before.

“Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme” was the one that showed us these two were different. That they weren’t just recording ditties, but reaching for something more. “Scarborough Fair” is far superior to “Bridge Over Troubled Water” in my book. There’s the upbeat “Cloudy” and the reflective “Homeward Bound,” but the best track on the album is “For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her,” the most beautiful song I know. Go deep beneath the surface and this is every man’s dream. The track hovers above the earth, it is not of this world, it’s free of the bringdowns, it’s life.

And of course there was “7 O’Clock News/Silent Night,” which captures the zeitgeist better than any of today’s bombastic tracks. Today you can do or say anything, but the end result is usually nothing is said. Whereas “7 O’Clock News/Silent Night” cut right to the heart of society, and everybody was aware of it, even though it was not a hit single and didn’t get radio play, this is what happens when you tell your truth holding no punches. Then again, there were many fewer records then.

And then came “Bookends.” It’s the album with “Mrs. Robinson,” but at this point that was seen as a movie song, for “The Graduate,” which had come out the year before. And both the song and film are great, but “Bookends” as a whole is even better.

At the time, it was the second side I cottoned to, that i played most. I loved the opening track, “Fakin’ It.” “Punky’s Dilemma”…I could never forget the reference to the Kellogg corn flake but the truth is I didn’t love it back in ’68, although it grew on me. And then there was the concluding trifecta, “Mrs. Robinson,” “A Hazy Shade of Winter” and “At the Zoo”…WHEW!

As for the first side, at first I only cherry-picked “America,” which is the best track on the album, which encapsulates a spirit and experience that no longer exists. The dream is no longer to go cross-country, to see America, and now you’re never disconnected, you can reach out and touch Mommy & Daddy with your cell phone. Back then once you walked out the front door you were in the ether, disconnected, alone, long distance phone calls were expensive, and you made them once a week, if that.

But I came to love “Save the Life of My Child,” with its aside “He’s all right,” the chaos and changes, you felt you were on the street before “America” took you on a journey.

But then… “Overs” was a downer after “America.”

But after that, you had “Voices of Old People,” which you only needed to hear a few times and then couldn’t tolerate. This was back in the experimental music era, John Cage and so much more. “Revolution 9.” That’s how the track was viewed.

And the album closed with “Old Friends” and a reprise of the theme song, albeit with lyrics this time.

“Old Friends”… It was slow, sandwiched between that which didn’t need to be heard. But there’s that one line that every boomer knows, which I’ve been saying a lot to friends recently, as that dreaded birthday arrives for them, “How terribly strange to be 70.”

64 is younger. And the Beatles song was a lark, from the perspective of youth. You really didn’t feel the advanced age. But in “Old Friends”…

These were the forgotten people, on park benches, we thought we’d never get there, but we are there now.

When you get to around 70, it’s about lifestyle. Good times. Friends. Possessions mean less, as does the culture. You pay attention to the movies, watch TV, but there’s nothing you really need to hear or see, and you can always fall back on the classics. And the shenanigans… You realize nothing ever changes, it seems people can’t get along, and there are always a few money and power hungry people who cock it all up for everybody else. But at least you’ll be gone soon. You think about the long term future, but when there’s gridlock you disconnect, I mean you’re literally not going to be here.

So now “Old Friends” resonates completely. How prescient Paul Simon was. But what resonates with me most is the “Bookends Theme,” which closes out the side.

“Time it was, and what a time it was, it was

A time of innocence, a time of confidences”

It most certainly was, and we didn’t realize how good we had it, that these were our formative years. I’m not talking about high school, but college and your twenties. You questioned, you bonded, you weighed the options, experimented and found your path, whether by choice or default. In your thirties you get serious, before that you still believe everything is up for grabs.

Of course it’s different now. People in their twenties have careers, own houses, are saving for retirement. We thought we’d die before we retired, we could not see that far out, absolutely not. But now we’re looking back.

I got out. The second year in Utah I realized if I didn’t leave then, I never would. And it was hard, but I escaped. You say you can ski on the weekends, take vacations, but that’s not the same thing. You’ve got to hit the hill every day, like a job, the experience counts, you fine tune your skills, after a month you’re at the top of your game, having peak experiences, which trump everything else in your life, but is it a life?

Most of the people still doing this in “Powder Days” have sacrificed everything to ski, relationships, children, ownership of houses… They’re all in, and it’s too late to turn around. But they continued to reach for the stars in this one vertical, whereas most people end up compromising, endlessly.

So what we end up with is our memories. It’s personal. We share a bunch with friends, others with family, it’s amazing you spent all those years growing up in that house with your siblings, it was so long ago.

And we forget the bad experiences. And believe me, there were plenty. You don’t truly become comfortable in your skin until your fifties or sixties. And it’s amazing you made it through, especially if you did it your way, so many of those ski bums end up committing suicide, to this day, happened when I was there.

But on one level I’m still there. In the mountains. With room to move. Alone with nature. Hitting peaks you can’t reach any other way. Feeling alive.

And you start to realize it could end in a minute. So many are dying, but you become old and frail, and even if you’re not cautious there are certain things you can no longer do, or not as well, and you eventually accept this, but not easily.

And throughout it all is these songs. Like I said, it’s different for baby boomers. We bought guitars, we sang in a circle. If you weren’t there you cannot understand how much the music meant. It was an exciting, transitional period. Kinda like the advent of the internet, but it was based on the arts, music. What you said was more important than what you did. And then you reach a point where no one is interested in what you have to say, you end up not even speaking, it’s not worth it, you just keep it all in your head.

And you wake up and you realize you’re approaching the bookend. You had birth, you had twenty years of growing up. Now it’s twenty years of slowing down. But instead of making friends, they fade away. Instead of your world getting bigger, it gets smaller. And no matter what you do, you cannot stem the tide, it’s inevitable.

So to a great degree we live in the past. There’s so much of it. Memories are triggered randomly, you could be taking a shower, reading a book or driving your car, a synapse fires and there you are, in that old situation, with those old people, who you never even talk to or see anymore, but once upon a time they were friends.

It’s a secret, we all know it but no one talks about it, for fear of being labeled over the hill, discarded, ignored. But the truth is we’re all in it together. It’s a dilemma. Maybe not Punky’s, and society may resemble a zoo more than ever, but Joe DiMaggio sold Mr. Coffee. And Paul Simon wore a turkey suit on Saturday late night TV. And Chevy Chase was once the biggest name in comedy, the irreverent voice of a generation.

On one hand it’s hazy, on the other it’s perfectly clear. Doesn’t matter if we faked it or not, now it’s completely real, this is us, we have to accept it, whether we like it or not. But thank god we’ve got the music to carry us through, it’s our theme.

“Going There”: https://amzn.to/3ysEppZ

I only read it because I want to get her on the podcast. She too is an iHeart podcaster and I figured that’d give me an in.

Not that I ever watched the “Today Show.” I’m almost never up at that hour and if I want news, I’ll go online, or read the newspaper. I don’t need the hokey-jokey banter, I know I’m not friends with these people no matter what they project, then again, too many people are home alone and feel the connection when they watch not only the “Today Show,” but QVC, it’s a sad commentary on the state of society, too many people are lonely. And yes, I know some watch the show while they get dressed, but I grew up in a home where turning on the television before six P.M. was a no-no, and I went to college where there was no television and lived in Los Angeles for years without one, which is all to say if you added up the entire time I’ve spent watching the “Today Show” it wouldn’t even be fifteen minutes, really.

But I know who Katie Couric is. Actually, I know a lot about the “Today Show,” because of the talent shenanigans, they were news…Jane Pauley, Deborah Norville, Willard Scott, Bryant Gumbel, Matt Lauer…but the only person who seemed to fly above it all, who lasted, who left on her own terms, was Katie Couric.

She’s cute. Let’s not talk about the “P-word,” i.e. perkiness. It’s not only looks, but personality. You see Katie is game. For all those men, usually misogynists or rich or both, who believe a woman should be arm candy, there to be seen but not heard, there are many who are looking for an activity partner, someone who will both lead and follow, who will push and pull, who will give back, who will laugh, who is adventurous.

That’s Katie Couric.

I didn’t even know she had big boobs until I read the book. At one of her first jobs a male colleague mentions them. And Katie ultimately talks about her reduction. Which speaks to the honesty of this book. However there is myopia. Everyone is a victim of their own experience, as much as you see you don’t see everything, not even close.

So Katie grows up in a middle class family, she doesn’t have the grades to go to Smith like her older sisters, so she goes to UVA. In other words, academics were not her priority. She was not staying at home studying, she was a cheerleader, she partied, she was well-rounded, which is why so many of the grinds at elite colleges don’t end up being world-beaters. You can plug them into an existing system, but they’re not about pushing the envelope, breaking the rules, unlike Katie Couric.

She’s aggressive. It’s just that simple. She knows what she wants and she goes after it. She’s not a force of nature, she’s not Padma Lakshmi, with a bad reputation for needing the spotlight, needing attention, but when she’s desirous, Katie goes for the target. Like her very first job at a TV station in Washington, D.C.

She didn’t have the best resumé. Sure, she did some internships in the communications field in college, but she was not a star there and she was not on the fast track, as a matter of fact she took the summer off after graduation, to live the beach life. But then…

She lied to get a job. Not majorly, but…

She sent her resumé and heard nothing. So she went to the station unannounced and asked to see an executive who had two kids who went to high school with her older siblings. The guard wouldn’t let her through, but he let her use the phone and she talked her way in to see this man who had no idea who she was, and ultimately a job.

Not that she was on the fast track, but… She became the darling of the horny men. Yes, if you’re a cute girl with spunk, men notice and they give you opportunities, which Katie took advantage of. She didn’t sleep with these dirty old men, but she climbed the ladder, went to CNN and Florida and ultimately ended up back in D.C. at the Pentagon, courtesy of Tim Russert. Like that old Buzzy Linhart song that Bette Midler made famous on her first album, you’ve got to have friends. Mentors are important, as long as you’re not an artist. Great artists have no mentors, people can tell you where they’ve gone, but not where you should be going.

So it appears that Katie got the gig at the “Today Show” just like that. There’s luck involved, but also that indefinable extra, and TV skews young, you reach a certain age and they’re not interested, so if you want to be in front of the camera don’t plan a long term attack, but a short one.

So Katie goes to NBC and she lobbies for her rights, as a woman. She wants to be an equal, and essentially is one, not that she does not encounter static in the process. But the bottom line is Katie Couric is a star, and everybody realizes it. And it’s not mannered, she’s just being herself. Although she is a people-pleaser, she does want everybody to like her, and is stunned when she finds out this can’t happen.

And then Katie jumps to CBS as their evening anchor and it’s downhill from there. But she has a very long ride.

The one with insight here is Warren Beatty, who tells her not to take the gig, because no one watches TV news at night, they all watch in the morning, and he was right but Katie thought she was making history as a woman in the evening role, she just didn’t realize that no one other than the detached Les Moonves wanted her to succeed. They felt she was a lightweight who hadn’t paid her dues. Never underestimate entrenched prejudice.

So, the spin on this book is its honesty, that the aforementioned Moonves is a close talker with bad breath. But “Going There” does not read as an exposé, rather it’s just Katie telling her story, which is what makes it such a good read even if you’re detached from her career, like me, because underneath she is just a person, like you or me. And unlike Ray Dalio and the rest of the rich male blowhards, she doesn’t lord her success over you. She knows she’s good, but she’s not telling you she has all the answers.

Her first husband dies of cancer because he never went to the doctor. That’s the number one lesson here, have a doctor and go for a checkup each and every year! If he had, he’d probably still be here. But he also was a Civil War reenactor. Katie revisits this decades later, but even at the time…what were you thinking? You wanted to be involved with a guy like this? She was ready to get married, she said how great the guy was, but that Civil War reenactment is a giant flashing red light, that her younger daughter ultimately can’t understand.

She’s got to manage her gig and her kids and she’s not perfect at it. While her husband is still alive she hires a nearly criminal nanny who believes she’s a member of the family, with equal power to the parents. And then she’s a single parent. And unsupervised the older kid starts testing the limits. Meanwhile, Katie’s dating.

Now there’s a ton of coverage of the gossip rags, most notably “Page Six,” but it’s amazing how much never got out, that Katie talks about here. Going to a club to dance and drinking so much she’s falling down drunk and has to go to the hospital.

And she dates Tom Werner. Who ends up being a rich Ivy Leaguer with commitment phobia. The richer they are, the more they don’t want to sacrifice, the more wary they are of encumbrances.

And then she dates a boy toy, much younger than she is, even moves him into her house. Everybody else pooh-poohs the relationship, but she wants the companionship and the sex.

Yes, Katie is a regular person, with troubles just like you, albeit with a lot more dough and much richer and connected friends.

Yes, you’re reading the book and you can relate, but then when she talks about dinners in the Hamptons you realize she’s playing in a completely different league. She’s famous, with the perks, and she takes advantage of it. Then again, when Katie sees an opportunity… She hit on both of her husbands. She’s not worried about how things look, but whether she gets what she wants.

So she’s hosts a failed daytime talk show after CBS, with Jeff Zucker, who says he’s committed but really isn’t. And it’s a bad fit, anybody could see that, they don’t want news in the afternoon, they want scandal, celebrity, a clubhouse before or during your first drink, hard news is taboo.

And then she goes to work for Yahoo, which is actually a brilliant move, but Marissa Mayer can’t return a phone call and is more interested in clothing than business. Katie makes a serious connection for Marissa and Marissa just never calls back, forget being late. Mayer has a reputation for all of the foregoing, so we’re just getting confirmation here. But it is Katie’s career.

So her daughters go to Spence, where students’ parents have weekend homes in Gstaad… This is the life of the rich and not famous that the hoi polloi are unaware of. There’s a track, and you’re not on it. It starts with nursery school and ends up in this case at Yale and Stanford. You need the money and the fame and…there’s no way those august institutions are turning down Katie Couric’s kids, because it will burnish their image and will get them MONEY! It’s a game. If you’re rich and/or went to an elite college, you know this, but most people don’t. And bottom line…there’s always somebody richer than you. Katie is talking about money when she’s making eight figures a year, but she’s playing in a league most of America isn’t even aware of.

And then… She goes to a restaurant and the hostess has no idea who she is, asks her her name and Katie has to spell it. Couric has a sense of humor about this, but this is life, this is America. You peak and then it’s downhill, it’s nearly impossible to be king or queen forever, not that people don’t try, if for no other reason than time keeps passing, they’re making new people and your triumphs are in the past. Gen-Z thinks it rules the world. The best thing I heard all weekend was a TikTok star who said they didn’t even have a Facebook account. Ask boomers and Facebook rules, asks youngsters and it’s a graveyard they’ve never visited, it’s creepy.

So one day before Covid, when we were all still going to the office, I opened the studio door and right on the other side were Katie and a guest. You know the situation, where you’re nearly right on top of each other. And while I was still adjusting for the closeness, and realizing it was Katie Couric, she looked me directly in the eye, said hi and smiled. She was wearing jeans. She was not made up. She was just like you or me, but different. She’s a winner, and she can never give up the game, it’s in her blood. Read for the dates with Neil Simon and Larry King, for truths heretofore unspoken, but what ultimately makes “Going There” a good read is it’s the adventure, the journey of an individual who succeeded as a woman in a man’s world and not only lived to tell the tale, but is telling it. It’s a good read.

Who will be remembered fifty years from now?

Tune in tomorrow, December 14th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

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