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HOLLYWOOD
Burn It Down: Power, Complicity and a Call for Change in Hollywood
Maureen Ryan
HarperCollins, $60
Maureen Ryan is as mad as hell about what’s been happening in Hollywood. And the Vanity Fair contributing editor has written Burn It Down to tell readers why. “What should be assessed is not just the creative product, its financial cost, and its efficiency (or lack thereof),” she writes, “It’s also how productive and nurturing an environment it is.” Something that she goes to great lengths to explain isn’t happening now and never has been.
Her book, which deals mainly but not exclusively with the world of television, was written before the recent strikes by the American Writers and Screen Actors Guilds and doesn’t deal directly with the specific issues that have provoked it. But it does point to a range of resentments that have been simmering away for years, to do with how workplaces that ought to service the needs of employees have frequently become hellholes.
Nicole Beharie and Tom Mison starred in Sleepy Hollow. According to Maureen Ryan, there were leadership failures and moral breakdowns behind the scenes. Credit:
To most readers, much of this won’t come as a surprise. Hollywood has long been infamous for what was once seen as routine behaviour but is now regarded as disreputable. The public testimonies of the courageous survivors of sexual assaults by men in powerful positions have exposed some of the darker activities hidden behind the surface gloss of the American film business.
Ryan mentions in passing that she herself suffered this fate at the hands of an unnamed TV executive, she wrote at some length about it in Variety in October 2017, and her smouldering anger about what happened permeates the book.
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Drawing on the experiences of a young actress, she even goes so far as to liken what goes on in Hollywood to the way cults conduct themselves. “How is a cult that keeps people running around for 14 to 18 hours a day all that different from a set (or a workplace) that keeps people running around for 14 to 18 hours a day?“
Her overall approach is messy, featuring long-winded attempts to explode myths about the Hollywood business, most of which were blasted to smithereens long ago. But she also provides compelling, detailed accounts of the failures and moral breakdowns that have occurred behind the scenes on the long-running series, Lost (2004–2010) and Sleepy Hollow (2013–2017), and that (contrary to the view that emerges, fictionalised, in Curtis Sittenfeld’s irresistible novel, Romantic Comedy) allegedly continue at NBC’s Saturday Night Live, the late-night sketch comedy show that has been around for almost half a century, and elsewhere.
Some of her sources allow her to use their names; others choose to remain anonymous whistleblowers, fearful of the consequences for their careers if they become known as troublemakers. She manages to get a few of those accused – “the sinister forces in the shadows” – to go on the record with their responses, but most ignored her requests for interview.
Stories abound of nightmare situations arising in writers’ rooms, on sets and in private offices, around racism, sexism, homophobia, inequitable returns for efforts, and the systemic abuse of those without power. Ryan’s crusader-like passion sometimes leads to overkill, the litany of sins that she uncovers providing more examples than required to make her points when a more selective approach would have been more effective.
But it does mean that many of those that the system has turned into victims do get an opportunity to have their voices heard, even if only as “Joyce” or “Hannah”, or any of the other names she attaches to those who wish to avoid reprisal.
Ryan is especially illuminating in her examination of some of the disturbing developments at Saturday Night Live. In this context, she cites journalist Seth Simons’ astute but unfashionable notion that stand-up comedians have long occupied a space for an ugly culture, one “where it has been OK to be a horrible person” (a point that becomes especially pertinent in the light of the coverage of Russell Brand’s transgressions).
In the final section of the book, acknowledging that there’s no magic fix for the problems she’s identified, Ryan proposes several ways in which it might be possible to repair “the damage created by allowing toxic people – and systems – to run amok”.
She quotes The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer about the best way to go about it: “The hope for a more equitable, democratic and prosperous society does not lie with enlightened corporations but with organised workers.” And, in line with this, she points to the need for writers, actors and others to work together to establish grassroots alliances and respectful workplaces in which to do their creative work.
She ends by explaining that she’s no revolutionary, that she doesn’t actually want to burn Hollywood down. What she really wants is a business equivalent of a “prescribed burn”, one that can help prevent a wildfire. “Fire can be rejuvenating,” she writes, creating a neat analogy courtesy of National Geographic. “It returns nutrients to the soil … and can help young trees and other plants start to grow.”
Burn It Down sometimes labours its points, but the urgency with which Ryan champions her cause is both affecting and effective.
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