Hollywood Gadfly

2K posts

Hollywood Gadfly banner
Hollywood Gadfly

Hollywood Gadfly

@Filmgadfly

Skeptical, data-driven Hollywood investigations.

Los Angeles, CA انضم Ekim 2023
362 يتبع1.2K المتابعون
تغريدة مثبتة
Hollywood Gadfly
Hollywood Gadfly@Filmgadfly·
In 2025, nine women directed a top-100 box office film. Six were Asian. Zero were Black. Zero were Hispanic. Every "woman of color" in the group was Asian — from the highest-earning group in the country. New piece on how "BIPOC" quietly hides class 🧵👇 hollywoodgadfly.substack.com/p/survival-of-…
Hollywood Gadfly tweet media
English
3
1
12
740
Hollywood Gadfly
Hollywood Gadfly@Filmgadfly·
@HwoodScrptReadr Last point: systems like Europe and Canada are often even more aristocratic than Hollywood, because there is essentially no free market component, so the nobles can cluster around the funding boards. We have our own version witb elite private schools now (USC, NYU, Columbia).
English
1
2
3
182
Hollywood Script Reader
Hollywood Script Reader@HwoodScrptReadr·
It's always been true that artists come from wealth. Some of them try to hide that fact, but it's hardly a secret. No day job means more time on your hands. The question is: is the disparity getting worse? I'd say it is, for a whole host of reasons having to do with "the economy." I'd also argue that it's bad. Not just because it's unfair. For sure it is, but such is life. It's bad for the art form. Let's say we're talking about indie movies. They're not all about rich people – though a lot of them are. Many of then come from a very narrow perspective: the lives of the wealthy. Sometimes they're "do-gooder" films that can feel preachy or disingenuous. Yes, we all love a movie about a poor little rich girl or boy. Isn't that why people love REAL HOUSEWIVES and the like? It's because they're all so fucking miserable. It reassures us that money isn't everything, which is something that people with money say. I don't know what the solution is. Maybe we need something like Telefilm Canada and Screen Australia that funds projects directly or indirectly, which would be based on need. The truth is it's hard to muster the time and energy it takes to be a working screenwriter with a day job – and the "hustle culture" only exacerbates the problem. The days of the 9-5 job where you could pack up and leave when the clock strikes five without getting side eyed are over. You could choose to work fewer hours but you still have too many people with one or more part-time job that doesn't add up to a living wage. This also favors the young, but that's a whole other can o' worms. The question is: is a career as a screenwriter even financially viable in 2026 and beyond? Sound off in the comments.
English
20
5
66
3.2K
Hollywood Gadfly
Hollywood Gadfly@Filmgadfly·
@HwoodScrptReadr It’s much more challenging if you want kids. I’m writing a very long piece on the idea of the MFA that goes into this quite a bit. It’s more sustainable than directing, mostly due to far lower costs.
English
0
0
0
139
Hollywood Gadfly
Hollywood Gadfly@Filmgadfly·
I can say that even successful screenwriter friends with big agents and Blacklist scripts and XYZ have struggled financially of late. Even with a decent amount of private wealth the numbers often don’t add up. TV seems a bit better, but I’ve been noticing a lot of tv writers I know, even with big credits, trying to become influencers, which makes me think it’s not going as well as they pretend.
English
0
0
6
164
Hollywood Gadfly
Hollywood Gadfly@Filmgadfly·
It’s unpleasant, but nepotism has fueled much of business culture for millennia. The transfer of skills from one generation to another doesn’t only happen in Hollywood, it happens in fields as diverse as farming and medicine. We have to stop pretending this is some huge revelation. 20th century experiments in destroying the family to create an artificial equality were among the most horrible in history. As long as there are families, skills and resources will transfer among generations. No families, no people.
Luke Barnett@LukeBarnett

This has gotta be the only industry where people get upset about nepotism. Like, I WISH my dad was JJ Abrams. If I had wanted to drive a bread truck you better believe my dad would have picked up the phone for me. If you grow up around the best director and actors and producers and agents in the world, you're going to start on third base. Good for you.

English
1
1
11
1.1K
Hollywood Gadfly أُعيد تغريده
Zack Stentz
Zack Stentz@MuseZack·
If you’re a working screenwriter, a fun game is to scroll through Facebook’s People You May Know feature to see how names it takes to get to an executive who fired you. I think my average is five or six.
English
4
2
83
3.6K
TheSpecialJuan
TheSpecialJuan@FirefoxCatcher·
@Filmgadfly @SonnyBunch There’s a reason the “Basketball wives” TV series has printed money for 15 years while the WNBA has made massive losses
English
1
0
1
111
Hollywood Gadfly أُعيد تغريده
Sonny Bunch
Sonny Bunch@SonnyBunch·
One of the things worth noting about SUPERGIRL is that the opening weekend audience was *59 percent* male. It’s not just that no one was interested in this, it’s that women specifically were not interested in this.
Sonny Bunch tweet media
English
95
181
2.4K
369.8K
Hollywood Gadfly أُعيد تغريده
Janus Films
Janus Films@janusfilms·
It's that time of year
Janus Films tweet media
English
153
1.4K
15.9K
1.1M
AyeAye 📝 🐒
AyeAye 📝 🐒@AyeAyeAsk·
It’ll be hard to critique Hollywood if you don’t know the culture. Golden calves of Hollywood are: - you cannot have a group of blacks be unredeemable villains - you can only denigrate Christianity - business owners are villains - whites are evil and have no inheritance - you can’t do anything that would upset Chinese - you can’t do anything that would upset Muslims Now it’s added: - you can’t do anything that would upset Indians - you can’t show white men as valorous - any character that gets read as Conservative or Ring Wing needs to be destroyed
Yuri Bezmenov's Ghost@Ne_pas_couvrir

The goal of leftist theory and activism makes sense once you see it put together. Leftist theory, as an ensemble, is a dialectical framing trick to paint Western civilization as domination, raise consciousness against it, negate it, and replace it with a “higher” social order.

English
1
0
0
38
Hollywood Gadfly
Hollywood Gadfly@Filmgadfly·
In 2025, nine women directed a top-100 box office film. Six were Asian. Zero were Black. Zero were Hispanic. Every "woman of color" in the group was Asian — from the highest-earning group in the country. New piece on how "BIPOC" quietly hides class 🧵👇 hollywoodgadfly.substack.com/p/survival-of-…
Hollywood Gadfly tweet media
English
3
1
12
740
Hollywood Gadfly أُعيد تغريده
Derek Thompson
Derek Thompson@DKThomp·
There are some center-to-right wing accounts I follow that are more offended by the possibility that some public health sources are over-estimating the death count from Musk carelessly destroying US global health programs than by the core fact that Musk really did carelessly destroy US global health (and bragged about it relentlessly) in a way that clearly killed people. These people know who they are, and they're wrong.
Jerusalem@JerusalemDemsas

Elon Musk bragged about feeding USAID into the "wood chipper" but now he pretends that whatever happens as a result isn't his fault. If DOGE had saved the federal government billions of dollars, you can be sure he would be taking credit for that. But somehow he's not responsible for the consequences of eliminating these programs? Today at @TheArgumentMag we published a thorough explanation for why we should hold @elonmusk responsible for the deaths of *at best* 700,000 people. theargumentmag.com/p/elon-musks-z…

English
344
420
3.6K
379.7K
Hollywood Gadfly أُعيد تغريده
Sonny Bunch
Sonny Bunch@SonnyBunch·
That's ... almost exactly half? 47%?
Sonny Bunch tweet media
English
51
113
7K
204K