“It felt like, the kind of film it is, the best way to maximize eyeballs. It’s got a better shot at finding all the people who will like it. Otherwise, it’s a slow-rolling platform release, which are expensive and you’re bound by where the big art house theaters are. You can’t just go anywhere. I just felt I’d rather have it drop and have everybody be able to see it.”

Steven Soderbergh on why he sold “High Flying Bird” to Netflix

You should watch this movie. Soon, so you can be part of the discussion.

The old paradigm Soderbergh is referencing above gets you a spot in the conversation of insiders, none of whom pay, but if you want to be part of the cultural zeitgeist, you’ve got to go where the eyeballs are, Netflix.

This is what the movie and publishing businesses don’t understand, the second time around there’s a lot less interest, because there’s too much product, you only get one chance to make an impression, and you need to capitalize on it when you do. Paperback books? Who are those for? Who can remember the novel came out a year previously and they should read it now for a discount? That’d be like dropping the price of new product a year later on Spotify, but it don’t happen that way at all. You release and try to get the buzz going, to throw off not only cash, but cultural impact.

I’m a fan of Steven Soderbergh. Because he shoots high in a world where filmmakers continue to shoot low. Actors too. Liam Neeson and Nicolas Cage as action heroes? That’s like having Van Morrison sing nursery rhymes. In a world where everybody shoots to get paid, we glom on to those who focus on the game first.

That’s right, is the NBA a game or a business? Or a business on top of a business, as Bill Duke says in this movie.

The African-Americans know what they have, but are treated like “boys” by the owners, slaves. That’s right, there’s so much casual racism that goes unacknowledged, but it’s pointed out here.

And everybody but the owners is black. Not only the players, but the business people, including the attorney who reps the players. Only the head of the agency is white. These are savvy people trying to get ahead, as smart as the owners, but using their wiles to succeed.

That’s what this film is about, succeeding.

But you don’t know where it’s going until the very end.

The truth is life is a game, and the winners don’t want to tell you the rules, no way, because then you might figure out how to succeed, how to displace them, and they don’t want to be displaced.

They don’t want you to start a new league.

Or as Andre Holland/Ray says in the pic:

“You think these fools, these rich white dudes gon’ let the sexiest sport fall by the wayside? I mean football is fun, but it don’t sell sneakers. You can’t even see the players half the time. Baseball…is a whole lot of tradition, but in order to move merch and inspire rap lyrics, they need your services.”

BINGO!

The NBA runs on Twitter. There’s even a Twitter feud in this flick. The players are unfettered, they’re the stars. The owners may control the cash, but they and their commissioner give the players leeway, knowing that they are the draw, not them. This is what the NFL has wrong with Kaepernick. The league thinks they’re on the right side, but they seem to have missed out on the 2018 midterms and AOC. Of course, the example is right there for all to see, but the NFL owners think they can keep the players slaves.

Meanwhile, oldsters take the side of the owners and their children are all addicted to hip-hop and the NBA. The future, it’s all about the future.

Which also includes women. Ray’s assistant is thinking for herself.

And speaking of assistants…

“Okay, look, Sam…you were a really great assistant, okay? But please stop whining because I didn’t pay you special attention. Now I know, I know, there are people who buy their personal assistants gifts and whatnot, but it’s really because they hate their assistants. But they need ’em so they buy ’em things.”

It’s a jungle out there, and if you can’t do the job and have self-respect…

Yes, you can be in a dead end gig and live by the HR handbook, but those leading the charge need to depend upon you, know you have their back, can be satisfied with an occasional thank you, as you get the opportunity to follow them and make your own career. Like Zazie Beets as Sam in this movie.

That’s why we have art, to hear the truth. Business is duplicitous, self-help books tell you secrets that won’t get you anywhere, if you could be Ray Dalio by reading his tome there’d be more than one of him, but in art, you can see through the b.s. to what’s really going on.

And that’s what draws you to it.

You’re gonna watch “High Flying Bird” and think it’s a bit confusing and hard to get into and then it’s gonna suddenly end and you’re gonna say WOW, and start talking to everybody about it. And if they haven’t seen it already, they can pull it up right away on Netflix, they don’t have to go to a theatre, they don’t have to pay a stiff fee.

This is what music’s ascension was based on, truth. Now the goal is to be sponsored, be in an ad, when the reality is advertisers want nothing to do with the truth, their whole business model is based on puffery and sleight of hand to get you to buy.

And the means of production are in the hands of the proletariat. Steven Soderbergh shot “High Flying Bird” on an iPhone.

But he’s got talent.

I’m always interested in seeing a master at work.

And so are you.

High Flying Bird | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix

 

Because they’re mass in a niche world.

The irony is they’re on CBS, the aged “Tiffany Network” that appeals to alta kachers. Supplying adolescent programming to adults is like asking them to ride hoverboards or get tattoos. At best, the Grammy telecast is a train-wreck drive-by for the almost retired to discuss around the water cooler the following day. As for youngsters…

They won’t watch. This is not opinion, this is fact. In a world of cord-cutters addicted to on demand streaming services.

Ironically, the Grammy Awards are as niche as possible, with their infinite categories. But those unheralded award winners have been banished from the telecast, so we can focus on the Big Five which no longer have meaning. The only people who are aware of the music of the nominees of all eight challengers is…nobody, certainly not the audience. You’d have to be a fan of the Grammys themselves, and no one is, not even the organization, which is a fan of the check from CBS.

As for CBS…you’ve got to give Les Moonves credit, he built a streaming app with original content long before Disney. He was thinking forward, like HBO, but isn’t that the problem with so many prescient leaders, like Anthony Weiner. Then again, I’d heard of Weiner because he appeared on Bill Maher’s show on the aforementioned HBO. If he was ever on network, I never saw it, because I don’t watch network.

So CBS has a model of declining ratings wherein they sell advertising to corporations willing to reach the largest possible audience, however small. But in an era of direct, targeted marketing, this is positively old school. You know where the best place to advertise it? Amazon! Because that’s where people go to buy!

The only thing going for the Grammy telecast is the weather. Hopefully in the middle of winter, viewers will be stuck at home with nothing else to do.

Of course this is a failed paradigm too, because the target audience, the youth advertisers want to reach, are living in a world of on demand entertainment at their fingertips. They’d rather post to and peruse Instagram than sit there like a couch potato being fed pabulum that they don’t care about.

Music was and still is the canary in a coal mine, where disruption happens first and we figure it out first. But instead of pushing the envelope, the old wankers at the Grammys just keep repeating the old formula expecting the old result.

But what made the modern Grammys matter was the “Grammy Bounce,” first evidenced by Bonnie Raitt nearly thirty years ago. You win and suddenly you’re a national superstar. Your record sales immediately take off, your road business improves, the media acknowledges your greatness and…

This doesn’t happen anymore, hasn’t in years. The only people unaware of the music of these acts are not only the last to know, but the last to care, and small in size. Active listeners are already aware. Sales are dead, streaming increases are de minimis, and the acts don’t need the telecast, they can reach their audience online without being told what to do by the Grammys. True artists resist pressure. And isn’t that what being a rock star is all about?

Certainly in the sixties and seventies.

We lived in a monoculture in the eighties and nineties, as a result of MTV. And Mike Greene elevated the telecast by being a rock star himself, no one could tell him what to do. But like Black Sabbath or the Wu Tang Clan, the labels and everybody surrounding the acts loved the eyeballs and cash that came with him.

“The Innovator’s Dilemma” says you disrupt yourself before someone else does. The Grammys should be on demand online. Or at least teasers. Categories should be broken, nominees should be lessened, there should be a fan vote, even the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame does, and the CMAs have “Entertainer of the Year”!

Instead we get medleys and mashups with laugh value at most. Furthermore, students don’t have the home theatres to get the most out of the sound anyway, they’re married to earbuds and computer speakers.

Meanwhile, unlike the Oscars, the Grammys have hip product that people are actually interested in. But they’re wrapping it up in an antique show, not knowing that great content gets buried in bad distribution.

That’s right, distribution is king. And a network telecast at an appointed time is a dying paradigm no different from “Must See TV.” That was the nineties, but the last I checked it was the twenty first century.

So the biggest acts won’t appear and the mainstream media keeps publishing puff pieces as if anybody cares.

As for winners… We learned long ago, with the MTV Movie Awards, that they no longer matter, especially to an audience grown up where everybody got a trophy.

It’s about the show.

And this is the same damn one as ever with lower wattage stars, believing if you throw disparate elements together people have got to watch.

But it didn’t work for the Olympics, those ratings tanked. As they have for every awards show. Hell, they’re having trouble getting hosts for future Winter Olympics. And in case you aren’t paying attention, even action sports have faded, they were creatures of the nineties, just like snowboarding, whose numbers are dwindling.

The new keeps on coming as the old circles the drain. And in entertainment, the two don’t meet. Except maybe on television.

It’s no different from having to endure Thanksgiving or Christmas with the extended family watching what Grandpa wants with no clicker.

But who’d want that?

P.S. It doesn’t matter what tonight’s telecast does, sinking ratings are the trend. And those who survive notice the trends and adjust, as opposed to terrestrial radio, which keeps telling us how powerful it is in the era of streaming. But terrestrial radio has no choice, the Grammys don’t have to drive over the cliff, but they’re choosing to do so.

P.P.S. The Grammy telecast is like SNL, only oldsters watch. Old media trumpets skits like they matter, and youngsters know if anything happens they can catch it online the following day, but the show is too long in the tooth and not edgy enough for them in an era where you can tune into narrowcasted entertainment that appeals directly to you.

Don’t put anything in writing. Because then you have plausible deniability.

One thing about Trump, he’s proven to be surrounded by third-rate attorneys who are really henchmen, lawyers that would be disbarred if their activities ever came to light.

And now we have Dylan Howard and Jon Fine of American Media extorting Jeff Bezos in print, as if they’ve got no idea how the world works, never mind the law.

This is what happens when you’re drunk with power, when you serve those with agendas in the world of gotcha, believing if they’re the biggest bully they will always win.

That’s not only David Pecker, but Donald Trump.

Oh, don’t get your knickers in a twist. Trump doesn’t believe in sunlight, no tax returns, no information on the most powerful man in America, just the way he likes it. And when he’s squeezed, he squeals. And isn’t it interesting the only person who can really get his goat is Nancy Pelosi, a woman.

Now if you’ve been paying attention for the past few years, you know that Nancy Pelosi is an over-the-hill, ineffective hack out of touch with America. That’s how the Republicans and right wing press have depicted her. It’s a veritable war of words, with the Democrats historically playing defense. To the point where when Elizabeth Warren and AOC play offense traditional Democrats decry them, playing into the Republicans’ hands.

But then Pelosi maneuvers herself into the Speaker gig and it turns out that unlike the President, she knows how to play the game, she even runs circles around Chuck Schumer. Because she’s willing to dress up nice but still throw a punch, without looking like she’s even losing control. Sure, Republicans still hate her, but Democrats who bought into the right wing’s depiction of her no longer do.

It’s a veritable club I tell you, the politicians and the news media. Same faces, owed favors. And we never know what’s really going on.

Which is why it’s so great that Jeff Bezos published his story on Medium.

He OWNS the “Washington Post.” He could act like a dictator and insist they include his words. But he could see the negative effect of that, he doesn’t want to tarnish the “Post,” so he publishes on the web.

And goes from zero to hero overnight.

We saw this with David Letterman, extorted over an affair, he exposed the situation on television, and the story no longer was about his moral failings, his duplicity, his stepping out on his wife, but his honesty!

Jeff Bezos acts like an adolescent, then gains his cool and plays like Jordan in the NBA Finals. Or should I say LeBron?

Bezos lays it all out, at length, and it reads like it was written by him.

Now what?

This is bad for the “Enquirer,” this is bad for Trump.

But it’s good for our country.

You see this is how the world has been run for eons. Backroom dealings. You’ve got to know the players to know what’s really going on, in all businesses.

Which is why Pelosi succeeds and Trump fails. Being a politician is a profession. The aforementioned Michael Jordan proved that being the best basketball player of all time didn’t make him a world class baseball player.

But those are both sports.

It’s like saying Mark Spitz would be a great Senator.

Or Howard Schultz would be a great President.

Conversely, I doubt Nancy Pelosi could run Starbucks.

Then again, you or me gets caught up in a scandal and we’ve got no options. Peter Thiel sues Gawker out of existence and Bezos spends bucks to find out what happened at the “Enquirer.”

Meanwhile, like Manafort before him, David Pecker believes the law doesn’t apply to him.

But to quote Bob Dylan:

For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes must get lonely

We’re all human, we’re all the same, with similar desires and similar lives.

But in the era of billionaires, there’s a whole coterie of wealthy people who think they’re better than us.

Then again, those without cash believe money rules.

But they would be wrong, money is trumped by power.

That’s what David Pecker had and has.

Fox News is not worth as much as Netflix, but it’s much more powerful.

This is what insiders know.

And when you play the power game, you’ve got a number of cards.

Pecker believed that Bezos’s ego would not allow him to have his sexual peccadilloes exposed. All the money in the world could not make Pecker and the “Enquirer” go away.

But the honesty card put a knife in the “Enquirer”‘s heart.

And the truth is, if you lay it out for all to see, they’ll look.

You should now:

“No thank you, Mr. Pecker”

The Grammys have not only lost touch with the audience, they’ve lost touch with the artists.

What if you gave a party and nobody came?

This is kinda like the election of Trump. Globalization left behind the underclass which decided to overturn the table. After years of appeasing CBS instead of the artistic community, Drake, Kendrick Lamar and Childish Gambino have refused to perform on the Grammy stage.

Good work my friends!

This is like Kaepernick, only today’s musical artists don’t depend upon the NFL, i.e. the Grammys, to work. That’s why change has come from entertainment first. The barrier to entry is low, and there are fewer constraints upon artists. As for labels…their leverage is their catalogues and their relationships with terrestrial radio and network television, could they be suffering a moment of truth soon?

Kinda like the Backstreet Boys being number one. Only in bizarro world, where the “Billboard” chart means anything. You can’t find a single Backstreet Boys tune in the Spotify Top 50. Meanwhile, “7 Rings,” the song Ariana Grande wanted to perform at the Grammys, is number one on Spotify, not only in the U.S., but the entire WORLD!

This is a fake news crisis. How is anybody supposed to believe a Grammy is important, has any gravitas, when there are eight nominees and an act can win with less than 15% of the old farts’ votes. This is when you lose hearts and minds.

Kinda like that inane article in the “New York Times” today about the loudness wars, what is this 2007? It turns out mainstream media is preaching to a tiny fraction of the public, mostly to those who are out of it. If you’re a fan of something, you go much deeper than the big media outlets ever go, so you laugh when you read an article like this.

But back to the Grammys…

Fans resent athletes making all that money, not realizing they bring in the fans and the owners are so much wealthier.

But when it comes to musical artists, perception is the acts earned their big bucks, and are allowed to spend them however they want to. They’re unfettered. So who gains cred here, Drake, Kendrick or Gambino or the Grammys?

Not the organization.

Neil Portnow has been asleep at the wheel for years. A caretaker who slept while the world changed.

And Ken Ehrlich has been out of control ever since he got Aretha Franklin to thank him during the Grammy telecast.

The Grammys are supposed to serve the industry, not defy it.

As for the big CBS contract… Ain’t that America, where you’re beholden to the bucks.

As for these three acts, they’ve got little to gain from appearing on the telecast. Their audience is already aware of them. They don’t depend upon TV to reach potential fans, the internet does it so much better, and there is no Grammy bounce.

This is what the internet and streaming have wrought. You don’t hear Drake complaining about streaming. He’s making plenty of bucks. It’s only the old people who triumphed under the old system who complain. They want their Oldsmobiles in a world of Teslas.

The Oscars lost touch because no one saw the nominated movies.

The Grammys lost touch because the deserved never won.

So Jay Z refuses to play the Super Bowl, says the NFL needs him more than he needs them.

That’s true.

And same deal with Drake, Lamar and Gambino.

This is important stuff, this is a turning point. After thirty years, the artists are taking back control of the industry, because the industry was asleep and driving towards the cliff.

This is like the sixties, when acts refused to record in label studios and use union engineers. When the contract said a label had to release the record, it could not shelve it.

You don’t need a label to put out a record today, and you certainly don’t need a Grammy to enhance your career.

As for the statuette, the legends who won always put them in the bathroom anyway.

And awards in art are a joke, how do you quantify? And with hindsight, so many of the winners are losers.

So I’m encouraging more acts to boycott the Grammys. To put an end to the charade. When you band together, you get change.

But one record and one act can change the world.

And obfuscation and lying are passe. Ehrlich makes up mumbo-jumbo about why Ariana Grande will not sing, and the woman herself takes to Twitter and calls him out, saying he’s wrong, and she needs no prep time.

The same oldsters who complain about social media and the “incomprehensible” Twitter are being bitten on the ass by it.
It ain’t your Daddy’s music business anymore.

THANK GOD!