Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/747534
6 P E R S P E C T I V E | N OV E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 6 editorial MASOCHISM AND MEMORY by Michael Baugh, Editor I think more often now about what the movie and television business is today, and what it used to be fifty years ago when I first horrified my parents by electing a career in show business instead of some real job. Hollywood is very different now, and yet in many ways, it's quite the same. Writing in this issue about Warren Beatty's latest film, Rules Don't Apply, Jeannine Oppewall summed up the way the industry has changed: "The business today, as we all know, is a great place to be if you are a youthful masochist. And a hard place to be if you have historical and institutional memory of what it used to be." I remember clearly, as a young designer in my early twenties, listening to old-timers—both in the Art Departments and on the stages—reminisce about how different (and better) moviemaking was in the "good ol' days." Youthful masochist that I was, I thought things were pretty good right then. I was working with great stars: Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Bob Hope and Bette Davis. I was assisting extraordinary designers: Jim Trittipo, Boris Levin, Romain Johnston, Eugène Lourié, all of whom are now in the Guild's Hall of Fame. I had access to stages and backlots, walked through the ruins of the Atlanta train station from Gone With the Wind, chased pigeons from one of the last glass-roofed stages in Hollywood (built before they needed to be "sound" stages), thumbed through drawers full of gloriously shaded soft-pencil drawings of Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory, Captain Bligh's mutinous Bounty and Rick's Café Américain. I was part of Hollywood, an exciting and glamourous business with a history that went back a scant fifty years. The work was hard, the hours were long, employment was uncertain, but I was—after all—a masochist. Old-timers, though, with their institutional memories of Hollywood's golden age, thought it was a hard place to be. Talented young designers today, like those profiled in this issue's article on the Guild's Production Apprentice Initiative, are coming into a Hollywood—still exciting and glamourous—that is now over one hundred years old. The work is, if anything, even harder; the hours are longer, and employment is just as uncertain. Technology is changing weekly, as three networks have ballooned to three hundred, and exhibition has shrunk from movie palaces to pocket-sized screens. These artists are going to have to be masochists to survive. But survive they will, I'm confident. They will use complex digital technologies to build sets much bigger and more inspiring than today's tighter budgets and schedules allow. (See what Barry Robison did for Hacksaw Ridge, and Jess Gonchor for Hail, Caesar!) They will shoot all over the world, even on films that portray locations close to home. (Maria Djurkovic tells us in her article on Gold, that she has now filmed in twenty-three countries.) Some will even replicate 17th century art techniques with 21st century tools (Kendal Cronkhite designed the Trolls environment to look like it was made of felt). Fifty years down the line, when the industry has morphed into something completely unrecognizable, designers who are entering the business now (probably horrifying their parents, too) will find the business a hard place to be, because they will remember how wonderful it used to be...today.