Betsy Grimes stood outside her regular sized, assistant-less, seltzer-less, trailer looking at Harold’s trailer at midnight in Sherman Oaks. 

Or Van Nuys. Whatever the fuck.

She pulled on a Marlboro Light and the glow lit her classic, somewhat vintage-looking 50s visage that wasn’t super famous but had graced a billboard or two in her time. 

She looked some more. It’s wrong. That he has a double wide, she thought. It’s just wrong. My agent hates me. 

It made her want to burn it all down. 

“You’re on,” said the PA. 

—

“Rolling”

“Speed” 

“162 Fargo take one”

Clap.

“Action”

They didn’t tell her about the cat. 

Betsy hit her mark. The closet door burst open. And there was that hideous cat puppet, holding a knife and covered with fake blood. 

“Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!” Her high pitched, almost mechanical sounding, shriek, like the fierce rending of a steel plate. 

“Cut.” 

“What the FUCK, HAROLD????”

That’s not something you should do to a person. 

Memories of Fresno. The dog. Charlie. Charlie in the hen house. 

You have to put a dog down if they develop a taste for chicken.

Her father had blamed Betsy for that and made her put Charlie down and clean the hen house. 

It’s your fault Charlie got in the hen house.

All the blood of the hens. The commotion. A frenzy of death. 

Bam! Shooting Charlie in the head after. Unsuspecting Charlie. With a bloody maw. Who had developed a taste for chicken. Now he’s the JFK of dogs. She’s the Lee Harvey Oswald of 10 year old girls. 

All the bloody feathers of the hens who would lay no more. All her fault. 

It’s your fault Charlie got in the hen house.

“Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh! Harold, no surprises!”

A quiet moment as people realized she was serious. People slowly, inconspicuously began reaching for their phones. 

“I’m trying to get a real reaction.”

“I’m an actor. I always give a real reaction!”

“Sorry, Betsy.”

“Back to one,” said the AD. 

The memories flooded like a horrible slide show. Betsy’s hands went to her face. 

She remembered the song of that summer “Gangsta’s Paradise” — As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death/ I take a look at my life and realize there's nothin' left.

There was nothing left after the cleaning of the henhouse. The Apocalypse of the Hens. 

“Why am I on this movie?!?!? Why on God’s green Earth is there a movie about murderous fucking housecats to begin with and why am I in it? Why does my agent fucking hate me? (WhydoIhaveaonebedroominReseda?) Harold, why do you hate me???” 

“Betsy, Betsy. Embarrassing. OK. I’m sorry about the surprise. Relax.” 

“Makeup.” 

“Don’t tell me to relax!” 

Betsy turned and stared at Harold, unmoving. Harold became her father. Harold became her agent. Harold became all the bad men. 

He became Charlie, the dog in the hen house. 

And then her anguish and fear … became power. She felt the power of a thousand suns surge from within her heart. 

Charlie’s gaping maw dripping blood. 

The power surging from inside. Bottled up for so long. 

She pointed her finger at Harold. 

And, suddenly, — poof! — he became a dog. 

Harold Lomez was transformed into a small, white poodle, still wearing his CBGB t-shirt and his Dodgers cap. 

Poodle Harold walked in two tight circles for a minute, yipped once at Betsy, beseechingly, and stared at her, as the Dodgers cap slowly slid off his canine head. 

The room was silent. Everyone was filming now. 

Hahahahaha, laughed Betsy. “I have turned Harold into a small white poodle!”

“What the fuck?”

Betsy gathered the shaking, nervous, confused poodle Harold up into her arms. 

“You don’t need a double wide trailer now, do you boy?” 

She smiled at him. 

She smiled into the cameras. 

And that was the video that broke TikTok. 

—

In her trailer, Betsy thought about what had happened. 

What had happened? Was it a power? She felt … that it was. She felt that she now had an awesome power. 

There was a knock at her door. 

“Betsy?”

Betsy went to her door and opened it. 

Most of the crew was there, gathered, quiet, and confused. 

Pietra, the unit publicist, stepped up. 

“Betsy are you ok? Do you know what happened? Is this some kind of bit?” 

All eyes were on Betsy. 

As they should be. 

She pointed at Harold’s trailer. 

“That is my trailer now.”

“That is Harold’s trailer,” said the AD. 

“Harold is a small white poodle.” 

“That’s what we wanted to ask you about,” said Pietra. 

“He cannot be a dog. He is a … living human being. He is in the DGA!” said the AD. 

Betsy realized that she would have to demonstrate her power again. She was not getting enough respect. 

People slowly stepped back from the AD. 

Betsy pointed at the AD. 

Poof! 

Unlike Harold, the AD became a super cute cocker spaniel with extra big fluffy ears. 

“So cute!,” said Betsy. 

And that’s when Betsy Grimes, 38, of Fresno, went from being a D-List star playing the second lead in Death Cats 2 and living in a one bedroom in Reseda, to a fucking high octane nuclear powered A-lister, even to a goddess in the eyes of many. 

—

Betsy woke up late. She hadn’t gotten home until 2, and with all the excitement, she had had trouble getting to sleep. She had then decided to make a list. 

By 4, she had a long list — a nice long list of men she had to visit. 

Videos from the set had gone viral. Betsy had 389,000 new followers on Insta. She had 137 unread texts and emails — her agent, her lawyer, that guy she was occasionally seeing, and every journalist she had ever heard of and then some. 12 men actually wanted to be turned into dogs. 

Situationship: Betsy — what is this video? Is it some publicity trick?? 🤣🤣🤣

Lawyer: Hey. You ok? Call me — the studio really wants to chat with you about last night. 

On insta: Betsy, can you turn my ex into a Labradoodle? I live in Arizona but can come to you. 

And so on. 

The fruits of trauma, she thought. Finally, the fruits of trauma. In the fullness of time. 

Betsy went to her closet. She had a full day planned. 

—

At 1:15 PM, Betsy walked into The Grill. 

Betsy had been on keto for 90 days and looked her best.  She had a pillbox hat, slightly askew, a flattering white YSL dress, heels, and Celine sunglasses. Perfect lipstick. Stunning. Like a lead. 

The Grill was the center of Hollywood at lunch. A small restaurant on a small side street in Beverly Hills, it would be easy for a civilian to overlook. 

But there they were, as always. The managers, the executives, the agents and the lawyers, mostly men, who had collectively relegated her to Death Cats 2, to Reseda, to driving a Kia, to being cut even from the Women in Film Oscar party, who had collectively decided to pass on her pilot Fresno!, and who had probably all rubbed one out to her 2005 Maxim pictorial. They were all there sharing Cobb Salad and iced tea. 

This, she detected, was where the ley lines crossed in Hollywood. Since ancient times there had been power here. This was where their power was at its height. All the power to lift up, to enrich, to make stars and lives, suddenly came together every day at 1, in a tight critical mass. 

But it was also where her power was at its height. 

She strode right past the maitre d’ to the bar on her left and ordered a Dirty Martini. 

Her order acknowledged, she moved into the dining room proper. 

The room quieted down. Click clack click went her sole pair of Louboutins. 

Everyone now was looking at her. 

As it should be. 

But she kept her eyes on the middle distance. 

“Betsy Grimes...”

“Did you see that video?”

Phones came out. 

Burn it all down. 

There were women there too, of course. They would be unaffected. It would all be okay. She felt sorry about the waiters. 

Everyone was looking at her now, and silent. 

Instead of pointing, Betsy raised both arms to the sky. This she had rehearsed at home, inspired by a Cher music video on YouTube. She let the memories in again, not just of the dog Charlie, but of every slight and humiliation ever, let it flow into her, let it charge her battery, activate her weapon. And then, finally, let it flow out in a massive explosion, like lava from a long bottled volcano. Like Vesuvius. Like Pompei. 

“Gentlemen,” she said, “this … for every Betsy Grimes.” 

Poof. All the men became dogs. 

“Holy horror movie!”

The Grill, the center of power in Hollywood, had become a veritable kennel of yapping purse dogs. 

Kim Tornato, a (female) network head, had been having lunch with six powerful male agents and lawyers and suddenly she was surrounded by a litter of Lhasa Apsos. 

The man-dogs, slipping their former garments, were suddenly everywhere, running around in desperate confusion and bewilderment. 

They barked futilely at Betsy. 

They yapped futilely at each other. 

Soon, dog behaviors could not be resisted and more than a few took a good sniff of the others’ behinds. 

For her part, Betsy slowly walked back to the bar … to collect her martini. 

The women remaining in the dining room were awe struck at Betsy’s power but panicked by the proliferation of canines. Many xanaxes were popped. 

For at least sixty seconds, while Betsy took her first sip of her martini, everyone was too awe struck even to text their assistant. 

— 

At Marmont, they let Betsy smoke. Not in the tiny hidden away smoking exile area, but right at her table. 

After The Grill incident, and the videos that were posted online, Betsy had been offered millions of dollars and favors of all kinds by admirers, people who wanted to make amends, and people who wanted to stay on her good side. 

Every network and paper wanted to interview Betsy. 

The Pope offered to come to LA for a meeting, as did the Dalai Lama. 

But Betsy was having lunch with Ted Sarandos, the head of Netflix. 

He talked about the success of the network and how he puts trust in his largely female team. 

“Ted. Look at me. I’m the CEO now.” 

“Yes, Betsy. I agree. That is exactly right. Please don’t make me a small canine pet.” 

By the end of the week, Betsy was globally famous, had 500 million followers on Twitter and Insta, and had been offered $100 million per year in various payouts and indulgences, most of which she accepted. 

She quickly accepted gifts of a classic Palm Springs Neutra and a beautiful modern in the Bird Streets.  

She was a star. She was what she had always wanted to be. She got what she deserved. 

Finally. 

—

At CAA, she accepted the offer of representation. It had always been her dream. 

They felt very confident about Fresno! and her other project ideas. 

But there was one condition. 

A mid level TV talent agent who had previously dropped her as a client had to be “dogged.” 

The agency agreed wholeheartedly. 

Betsy was in the conference room. Isaac came in. 

“Isaac, Isaac, Isaac. You dropped me, babe.”

Isaac, nervous, not used to being nervous, but nervous today, responded “Betsy. You know it’s all about numbers. It’s not personal. The numbers just weren’t there. You, I liked. Loved!”

“Isaac. That’s not enough.”

Betsy pointed at Isaac. Poof. Isaac became a Labrador Retriever. 

“I’ll be keeping this one,” she said. 

— 

Betsy held court at her new house in Palm Springs with her attendants and many worshippers. 

Her houses were well appointed. She had the best Christofle flatware. Exquisite Bernardaud plates. That was the least of it. All the fashion, all of everything, came to her for free. It was like being an A-list celebrity, but times ten. 

She appointed her therapist as the head of her cult, though they discussed what else they should call it, since “cult” had a negative vibe. 

She frequently heard requests from women to dog various men and she accommodated many of these requests, traveling about most days to deliver the sentence on men who had at some point slighted someone. 

The Palm Springs house was beautiful indeed and Betsy looked beautiful in it. 

When the Betsy movie came out, starring Betsy, it received a 100%/100% on Rotten Tomatoes and every critic and person on Earth contributed their opinion. 

Never before had everyone on Earth been unanimous about anything! It was the beginning of the Betsy Cinematic Universe. 

—

Kenneth Gabriel was now a German Shepherd. As dog breeds go, this was a pretty good one, but he did not want to be a dog at all. He wanted to continue being a hilarious Hollywood, male, human, writer-director of comedic films. He hadn’t taken on as many dog qualities as some had. He still pooped in the toilet. He never sniffed anyone’s privates.

He did eat dog food. His wife looked upon him sadly when he did. Kenneth became suspicious that she was having an affair with his lawyer and her trainer. 

Kenneth had many friends who had been dogged and many were kept in Betsy’s Pound, a dog pound where the dogs’ cages were labelled with their previous names and where women — or anyone, in theory — could come buy them and own them from then on. Many executives and producers were purchased by women who had felt slighted or ignored by them and it became an amusing thing at dinner parties, a social triumph, perhaps even an essential gesture, to have such a moment at a dinner party. 

Kenneth himself had been in the pound until his wife’s friend agreed to go to Betsy’s pound and buy him, theoretically for herself, to torment him endlessly, but in fact to give him to Mrs. Gabriel. 

Kenneth wanted this all to stop. And he knew just whom to speak with to see if there was any chance of reversing what had occurred. At least, if there was any chance of reversing this supernatural revolution, this was the only chance. 

I should mention that Kenneth was also special amongst the dogs in that he had retained the ability to speak. He continued to give notes over zoom to his shows and continued to act as a consulting producer on two NBC comedies. 

Kenneth told his wife to tell his friend Josh to initiate a Secret Meeting. He assured her that Josh would know what he was taking about. 

She did. 

—

The Society of Secret Meetings (SSM) had met since the 1920s and had controlled Hollywood, behind the scenes, since that time. The members of the society had earned a permanent position in Hollywood by their accomplishments. They included the heads of all of the studios and agencies and various other significant contributors. They met regularly, settled industry disputes, decided how long strikes should last, and distributed jobs in the industry as a tight and secret cabal, as they always had. 

They also had a procedure for initiating special meetings beyond their regular meetings. 

Josh took the steps to call for a Special Meeting. 

A special menu item was subtly added to the Nate n Al’s menu the next day — Matzoh Brie with peanut butter. 

A special charge was added to the bill of various SSM members at Craig’s over the following week. “Rutabaga - $0.”

In this way, all members of the SSM were alerted to the call for a special meeting. 

—

SSM special meetings took place in a private back room at Musso & Frank restaurant, which was the oldest restaurant in Hollywood. It had always been this way. There were provisions for changing the location, but these had never been invoked. 

At 9 PM, as always, the SSM members gathered in the members’ room. 

Jonathon Fernandez, the head of Fox. 

Sacha Goldberg, the head of WME. 

And all the others. 

When they settled into the meeting room, a senior attorney questioned Kenneth’s right to be there. How did they know he was in fact Kenneth? 

“I know you take six months to make deals and are an idiot. Does that not resolve the issue?”

The SSM agreed to convene a quorum. 

And they agreed to one more thing. 

“We need a legendary advisor.” 

There were universal murmurs of assent. 

Sacha, the Chairman of the SSM, said “I will invoke, by the Hermetic powers invested in me, Samuel Goldwyn.” 

Suddenly, the ghost of Samuel Goldwyn appeared at the table. 

One man fainted. 

Another man said, “Sheesh, I was really hoping for Wasserman. Fuck me.”

Samuel thanked them for bringing him back. 

“I am al-vays happy to attend an SSM meeting!”

The men explained Hollywood’s — and the world’s — predicament. 

Samuel nodded. “Jesus, that’s fucking nuts.” 

There was discussion of various approaches of how to address the situation. 

Finally, Samuel leaned forward and said “I know the solution.” 

—

Samuel, behind his ghostly visage, explained the situation. 

The Star Machine had been developed in the 50s as a cooperative venture between Max Factor, Paramount Pictures, and General Electric. 

It is still in use. When people are hit by the Star Machine, their looks improve and they get tremendously enhanced charisma. Several Star Machines were produced. CAA has one. WME has one. Every major studio has one; however, it is used sparingly today due to its known side effects of making people narcissistic, the worst version of themselves, and, eventually, they go completely insane. 

But a byproduct of the Star Machine project was the Evil Eye, a laser gun that has the opposite effect of the Star Machine, and that was discovered in the Star Machine process. 

One hit from the Evil Eye gives one numerous unattractive traits. Targets become confrontational, develop a bad personality in general, lose all sense of good taste and decorum, pick bad movies, get halitosis, constantly overshare, and they experience immediate and dramatic weight gain — at least thirty pounds — and other distortions of their appearance. 

Most of all — it reveals who you truly are. 

“Bad taste and weight gain? It sounds like half of Hollywood has already been hit by this thing!” said Jake Wei, the head of Disney movies. 

Only one Evil Eye was ever created and it was not used in anger. It is carefully hidden, disguised as a space laser by the props department and kept amongst old props from “I Love Lucy.” 

Samuel then faded out, as “summoned” elders could only be present for so long. 

The men (and dogs) found and dusted off the old Evil Eye prototype — it was exactly where Samuel said it would be.

—

Mrs. Gabriel, Lauren to her friends, was stationed in front of Hinoki & the Bird in Century City. 

As Belinda Messinger, the head of the Gojo network, a former publicist, punctilious and well-mannered, and bien pensant in all ways, took her valet ticket and walked in, Lauren hit her with the Evil Eye pulse. 

Belinda suddenly felt ill and had to go to the bathroom. 

Belinda made it to the bathroom and vomited and wasn’t sure what was happening. 

She came to her table with her friends and accomplices, trying to focus on the topic of the day, a race-swapped and gender-swapped The Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court musical starring the (still human, thankfully) Lin Manuel Miranda, but proceeded to excoriate everyone for their thorough creative incompetence and their ethical defects, then burped through a version of Foghat’s I Just Want to Make Love to You before speeding home where she published an elaborate tell-all Tumblr post about the foibles and hypocrisy of every prominent person in Hollywood and, to top it off, added a section about her personal negative animus toward the Obamas. 

Similar embarrassing faux pas — socially crippling faux pas — in the next weeks were suffered by other leading female network and studio heads. 

Christi West, America’s sweetheart, suddenly gained 400 pounds. 

There was much — tremendous — weight gain and many regrettable denunciations of friends and entire races over lunch. Seemingly no amount of Ozempic and Lorazepam could solve this problem. 

The Evil Eye was working. 

—

Through an anonymous proton email address, SSM communicated to Elaine Kim, the new head of CAA Motion Picture Talent, that this phenomenon was not some sort of spontaneous decline in good taste and politesse. It had nothing to do with Jupiter being in the seventh house, as had been debated in Showbiz, the industry trade journal. It was a deliberate campaign that was in the control of the group sending the email, and it would continue unless and until Betsy Grimes met her end. 

Since Elaine was one of 12 women on Betsy’s Central Council and met with her every Sunday, it was up to her to end this reign of terror or continue to watch as Hollywood slid into the sea in a chaos of confessions and denunciations. 

— 

Elaine hastily assembled a breakfast meeting at John O’Groats. 

Things were not good and had to be improved. 

She proposed, at the meeting, that “even though we all love Betsy,” the deed had to be done.  

Everything was falling apart. “We can’t lose the men and then lose the women, too. Plus, that Betsy movie was not great.” 

But if we’re going to do this, we’ve all got to do it. 

“Julius Caesar style.” 

Christi West put down her bagel, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, farted, and said, “I’m in.” 

— 

Betsy received her Central Council every Sunday at Noon at her Blue Jay Way house, which she had named The Hen House. 

Betsy received her Council beside her pool in a vintage Pucci jumpsuit and oversized Gucci sunglasses. Her chair was perfectly positioned in the center of the pool’s width so that the entire shot could be composed elegantly “in thirds,” which she liked. It was a warm and sunny day and Betsy and the pool were framed with “jet liner” views of Los Angeles. 

In her lap she held Harold Lomez, still a white toy poodle, with a bow in his hair. 

The twelve Council members were also well attired — as Betsy appreciated that — except for Christi, who had now been “off her game” for a few weeks and was in Pittsburgh Steelers-themed sweats and a MAGA hat. 

Everyone but Betsy had a hand bag. 

Elaine started things off: “Betsy, this is the end. Do you have final words for the world?” 

Betsy was momentarily confused. 

All the women pulled out pistols. 

Betsy flung Harold aside, stood up and turned away from the women, but she could not escape across the pool. 

“You’ll miss me, bitches,” said Betsy. 

With a bang, 110 grams of lead (one missed) tore through the back of Betsy’s Pucci jumpsuit at 440 meters per second, communicating 6,413 foot pounds of energy into her body, which propelled her, flying through the air like a mockery of a super heroine, to the very center of the pool before she dropped into the water. 

Betsy Grimes was floating face down in her pool. She thought, briefly, that this was just like the shot in Sunset Boulevard.

If only there were cameras at the bottom of the pool.

Everyone was looking at Betsy. 

As it should be.

—

When Betsy passed, floating in her pool in a growing cloud of crimson, floating in a cloud of conspiracies, a now historical figure, all the dog men were released from her spell and became men again, generally waking up naked in their yards, or in the pound as the case was for some. 

This was received with mixed feelings by the women, though it was generally accepted. 

The possessions of Betsy Grimes were auctioned off for the benefit of charity and they were valued like relics from a saint. 

Hollywood gradually got back to something like normal, though many of the dispossessed men were not invited back to their former posts. 

Professors set about examining Betsy and her personal effects for any indication of the source of her power, to no avail. 

The Evil Eye remained a secret, however. 

Betsy Grimes and her reign came to a close, to be entered in the annals of Hollywood as one of the more remarkable episodes. 

Kenneth sat down at his laptop to write the novelization of Betsy’s rise and fall. He started with: The only thing permanent in LA is the real estate. And the illusions.

(c) Roy Price 2023

Betsy Grimes stood outside her regular sized, assistant-less, seltzer-less, trailer looking at Harold’s trailer at midnight in Sherman Oaks. 

Or Van Nuys. Whatever the fuck.

She pulled on a Marlboro Light and the glow lit her classic, somewhat vintage-looking 50s visage that wasn’t super famous but had graced a billboard or two in her time. 

She looked some more. It’s wrong. That he has a double wide, she thought. It’s just wrong. My agent hates me. 

It made her want to burn it all down. 

“You’re on,” said the PA. 

—

“Rolling”

“Speed” 

“162 Fargo take one”

Clap.

“Action”

They didn’t tell her about the cat. 

Betsy hit her mark. The closet door burst open. And there was that hideous cat puppet, holding a knife and covered with fake blood. 

“Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!” Her high pitched, almost mechanical sounding, shriek, like the fierce rending of a steel plate. 

“Cut.” 

“What the FUCK, HAROLD????”

That’s not something you should do to a person. 

Memories of Fresno. The dog. Charlie. Charlie in the hen house. 

You have to put a dog down if they develop a taste for chicken.

Her father had blamed Betsy for that and made her put Charlie down and clean the hen house. 

It’s your fault Charlie got in the hen house.

All the blood of the hens. The commotion. A frenzy of death. 

Bam! Shooting Charlie in the head after. Unsuspecting Charlie. With a bloody maw. Who had developed a taste for chicken. Now he’s the JFK of dogs. She’s the Lee Harvey Oswald of 10 year old girls. 

All the bloody feathers of the hens who would lay no more. All her fault. 

It’s your fault Charlie got in the hen house.

“Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh! Harold, no surprises!”

A quiet moment as people realized she was serious. People slowly, inconspicuously began reaching for their phones. 

“I’m trying to get a real reaction.”

“I’m an actor. I always give a real reaction!”

“Sorry, Betsy.”

“Back to one,” said the AD. 

The memories flooded like a horrible slide show. Betsy’s hands went to her face. 

She remembered the song of that summer “Gangsta’s Paradise” — As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death/ I take a look at my life and realize there's nothin' left.

There was nothing left after the cleaning of the henhouse. The Apocalypse of the Hens. 

“Why am I on this movie?!?!? Why on God’s green Earth is there a movie about murderous fucking housecats to begin with and why am I in it? Why does my agent fucking hate me? (WhydoIhaveaonebedroominReseda?) Harold, why do you hate me???” 

“Betsy, Betsy. Embarrassing. OK. I’m sorry about the surprise. Relax.” 

“Makeup.” 

“Don’t tell me to relax!” 

Betsy turned and stared at Harold, unmoving. Harold became her father. Harold became her agent. Harold became all the bad men. 

He became Charlie, the dog in the hen house. 

And then her anguish and fear … became power. She felt the power of a thousand suns surge from within her heart. 

Charlie’s gaping maw dripping blood. 

The power surging from inside. Bottled up for so long. 

She pointed her finger at Harold. 

And, suddenly, — poof! — he became a dog. 

Harold Lomez was transformed into a small, white poodle, still wearing his CBGB t-shirt and his Dodgers cap. 

Poodle Harold walked in two tight circles for a minute, yipped once at Betsy, beseechingly, and stared at her, as the Dodgers cap slowly slid off his canine head. 

The room was silent. Everyone was filming now. 

Hahahahaha, laughed Betsy. “I have turned Harold into a small white poodle!”

“What the fuck?”

Betsy gathered the shaking, nervous, confused poodle Harold up into her arms. 

“You don’t need a double wide trailer now, do you boy?” 

She smiled at him. 

She smiled into the cameras. 

And that was the video that broke TikTok. 

—

In her trailer, Betsy thought about what had happened. 

What had happened? Was it a power? She felt … that it was. She felt that she now had an awesome power. 

There was a knock at her door. 

“Betsy?”

Betsy went to her door and opened it. 

Most of the crew was there, gathered, quiet, and confused. 

Pietra, the unit publicist, stepped up. 

“Betsy are you ok? Do you know what happened? Is this some kind of bit?” 

All eyes were on Betsy. 

As they should be. 

She pointed at Harold’s trailer. 

“That is my trailer now.”

“That is Harold’s trailer,” said the AD. 

“Harold is a small white poodle.” 

“That’s what we wanted to ask you about,” said Pietra. 

“He cannot be a dog. He is a … living human being. He is in the DGA!” said the AD. 

Betsy realized that she would have to demonstrate her power again. She was not getting enough respect. 

People slowly stepped back from the AD. 

Betsy pointed at the AD. 

Poof! 

Unlike Harold, the AD became a super cute cocker spaniel with extra big fluffy ears. 

“So cute!,” said Betsy. 

And that’s when Betsy Grimes, 38, of Fresno, went from being a D-List star playing the second lead in Death Cats 2 and living in a one bedroom in Reseda, to a fucking high octane nuclear powered A-lister, even to a goddess in the eyes of many. 

—

Betsy woke up late. She hadn’t gotten home until 2, and with all the excitement, she had had trouble getting to sleep. She had then decided to make a list. 

By 4, she had a long list — a nice long list of men she had to visit. 

Videos from the set had gone viral. Betsy had 389,000 new followers on Insta. She had 137 unread texts and emails — her agent, her lawyer, that guy she was occasionally seeing, and every journalist she had ever heard of and then some. 12 men actually wanted to be turned into dogs. 

Situationship: Betsy — what is this video? Is it some publicity trick?? 🤣🤣🤣

Lawyer: Hey. You ok? Call me — the studio really wants to chat with you about last night. 

On insta: Betsy, can you turn my ex into a Labradoodle? I live in Arizona but can come to you. 

And so on. 

The fruits of trauma, she thought. Finally, the fruits of trauma. In the fullness of time. 

Betsy went to her closet. She had a full day planned. 

—

At 1:15 PM, Betsy walked into The Grill. 

Betsy had been on keto for 90 days and looked her best.  She had a pillbox hat, slightly askew, a flattering white YSL dress, heels, and Celine sunglasses. Perfect lipstick. Stunning. Like a lead. 

The Grill was the center of Hollywood at lunch. A small restaurant on a small side street in Beverly Hills, it would be easy for a civilian to overlook. 

But there they were, as always. The managers, the executives, the agents and the lawyers, mostly men, who had collectively relegated her to Death Cats 2, to Reseda, to driving a Kia, to being cut even from the Women in Film Oscar party, who had collectively decided to pass on her pilot Fresno!, and who had probably all rubbed one out to her 2005 Maxim pictorial. They were all there sharing Cobb Salad and iced tea. 

This, she detected, was where the ley lines crossed in Hollywood. Since ancient times there had been power here. This was where their power was at its height. All the power to lift up, to enrich, to make stars and lives, suddenly came together every day at 1, in a tight critical mass. 

But it was also where her power was at its height. 

She strode right past the maitre d’ to the bar on her left and ordered a Dirty Martini. 

Her order acknowledged, she moved into the dining room proper. 

The room quieted down. Click clack click went her sole pair of Louboutins. 

Everyone now was looking at her. 

As it should be. 

But she kept her eyes on the middle distance. 

“Betsy Grimes...”

“Did you see that video?”

Phones came out. 

Burn it all down. 

There were women there too, of course. They would be unaffected. It would all be okay. She felt sorry about the waiters. 

Everyone was looking at her now, and silent. 

Instead of pointing, Betsy raised both arms to the sky. This she had rehearsed at home, inspired by a Cher music video on YouTube. She let the memories in again, not just of the dog Charlie, but of every slight and humiliation ever, let it flow into her, let it charge her battery, activate her weapon. And then, finally, let it flow out in a massive explosion, like lava from a long bottled volcano. Like Vesuvius. Like Pompei. 

“Gentlemen,” she said, “this … for every Betsy Grimes.” 

Poof. All the men became dogs. 

“Holy horror movie!”

The Grill, the center of power in Hollywood, had become a veritable kennel of yapping purse dogs. 

Kim Tornato, a (female) network head, had been having lunch with six powerful male agents and lawyers and suddenly she was surrounded by a litter of Lhasa Apsos. 

The man-dogs, slipping their former garments, were suddenly everywhere, running around in desperate confusion and bewilderment. 

They barked futilely at Betsy. 

They yapped futilely at each other. 

Soon, dog behaviors could not be resisted and more than a few took a good sniff of the others’ behinds. 

For her part, Betsy slowly walked back to the bar … to collect her martini. 

The women remaining in the dining room were awe struck at Betsy’s power but panicked by the proliferation of canines. Many xanaxes were popped. 

For at least sixty seconds, while Betsy took her first sip of her martini, everyone was too awe struck even to text their assistant. 

— 

At Marmont, they let Betsy smoke. Not in the tiny hidden away smoking exile area, but right at her table. 

After The Grill incident, and the videos that were posted online, Betsy had been offered millions of dollars and favors of all kinds by admirers, people who wanted to make amends, and people who wanted to stay on her good side. 

Every network and paper wanted to interview Betsy. 

The Pope offered to come to LA for a meeting, as did the Dalai Lama. 

But Betsy was having lunch with Ted Sarandos, the head of Netflix. 

He talked about the success of the network and how he puts trust in his largely female team. 

“Ted. Look at me. I’m the CEO now.” 

“Yes, Betsy. I agree. That is exactly right. Please don’t make me a small canine pet.” 

By the end of the week, Betsy was globally famous, had 500 million followers on Twitter and Insta, and had been offered $100 million per year in various payouts and indulgences, most of which she accepted. 

She quickly accepted gifts of a classic Palm Springs Neutra and a beautiful modern in the Bird Streets.  

She was a star. She was what she had always wanted to be. She got what she deserved. 

Finally. 

—

At CAA, she accepted the offer of representation. It had always been her dream. 

They felt very confident about Fresno! and her other project ideas. 

But there was one condition. 

A mid level TV talent agent who had previously dropped her as a client had to be “dogged.” 

The agency agreed wholeheartedly. 

Betsy was in the conference room. Isaac came in. 

“Isaac, Isaac, Isaac. You dropped me, babe.”

Isaac, nervous, not used to being nervous, but nervous today, responded “Betsy. You know it’s all about numbers. It’s not personal. The numbers just weren’t there. You, I liked. Loved!”

“Isaac. That’s not enough.”

Betsy pointed at Isaac. Poof. Isaac became a Labrador Retriever. 

“I’ll be keeping this one,” she said. 

— 

Betsy held court at her new house in Palm Springs with her attendants and many worshippers. 

Her houses were well appointed. She had the best Christofle flatware. Exquisite Bernardaud plates. That was the least of it. All the fashion, all of everything, came to her for free. It was like being an A-list celebrity, but times ten. 

She appointed her therapist as the head of her cult, though they discussed what else they should call it, since “cult” had a negative vibe. 

She frequently heard requests from women to dog various men and she accommodated many of these requests, traveling about most days to deliver the sentence on men who had at some point slighted someone. 

The Palm Springs house was beautiful indeed and Betsy looked beautiful in it. 

When the Betsy movie came out, starring Betsy, it received a 100%/100% on Rotten Tomatoes and every critic and person on Earth contributed their opinion. 

Never before had everyone on Earth been unanimous about anything! It was the beginning of the Betsy Cinematic Universe. 

—

Kenneth Gabriel was now a German Shepherd. As dog breeds go, this was a pretty good one, but he did not want to be a dog at all. He wanted to continue being a hilarious Hollywood, male, human, writer-director of comedic films. He hadn’t taken on as many dog qualities as some had. He still pooped in the toilet. He never sniffed anyone’s privates.

He did eat dog food. His wife looked upon him sadly when he did. Kenneth became suspicious that she was having an affair with his lawyer and her trainer. 

Kenneth had many friends who had been dogged and many were kept in Betsy’s Pound, a dog pound where the dogs’ cages were labelled with their previous names and where women — or anyone, in theory — could come buy them and own them from then on. Many executives and producers were purchased by women who had felt slighted or ignored by them and it became an amusing thing at dinner parties, a social triumph, perhaps even an essential gesture, to have such a moment at a dinner party. 

Kenneth himself had been in the pound until his wife’s friend agreed to go to Betsy’s pound and buy him, theoretically for herself, to torment him endlessly, but in fact to give him to Mrs. Gabriel. 

Kenneth wanted this all to stop. And he knew just whom to speak with to see if there was any chance of reversing what had occurred. At least, if there was any chance of reversing this supernatural revolution, this was the only chance. 

I should mention that Kenneth was also special amongst the dogs in that he had retained the ability to speak. He continued to give notes over zoom to his shows and continued to act as a consulting producer on two NBC comedies. 

Kenneth told his wife to tell his friend Josh to initiate a Secret Meeting. He assured her that Josh would know what he was taking about. 

She did. 

—

The Society of Secret Meetings (SSM) had met since the 1920s and had controlled Hollywood, behind the scenes, since that time. The members of the society had earned a permanent position in Hollywood by their accomplishments. They included the heads of all of the studios and agencies and various other significant contributors. They met regularly, settled industry disputes, decided how long strikes should last, and distributed jobs in the industry as a tight and secret cabal, as they always had. 

They also had a procedure for initiating special meetings beyond their regular meetings. 

Josh took the steps to call for a Special Meeting. 

A special menu item was subtly added to the Nate n Al’s menu the next day — Matzoh Brie with peanut butter. 

A special charge was added to the bill of various SSM members at Craig’s over the following week. “Rutabaga - $0.”

In this way, all members of the SSM were alerted to the call for a special meeting. 

—

SSM special meetings took place in a private back room at Musso & Frank restaurant, which was the oldest restaurant in Hollywood. It had always been this way. There were provisions for changing the location, but these had never been invoked. 

At 9 PM, as always, the SSM members gathered in the members’ room. 

Jonathon Fernandez, the head of Fox. 

Sacha Goldberg, the head of WME. 

And all the others. 

When they settled into the meeting room, a senior attorney questioned Kenneth’s right to be there. How did they know he was in fact Kenneth? 

“I know you take six months to make deals and are an idiot. Does that not resolve the issue?”

The SSM agreed to convene a quorum. 

And they agreed to one more thing. 

“We need a legendary advisor.” 

There were universal murmurs of assent. 

Sacha, the Chairman of the SSM, said “I will invoke, by the Hermetic powers invested in me, Samuel Goldwyn.” 

Suddenly, the ghost of Samuel Goldwyn appeared at the table. 

One man fainted. 

Another man said, “Sheesh, I was really hoping for Wasserman. Fuck me.”

Samuel thanked them for bringing him back. 

“I am al-vays happy to attend an SSM meeting!”

The men explained Hollywood’s — and the world’s — predicament. 

Samuel nodded. “Jesus, that’s fucking nuts.” 

There was discussion of various approaches of how to address the situation. 

Finally, Samuel leaned forward and said “I know the solution.” 

—

Samuel, behind his ghostly visage, explained the situation. 

The Star Machine had been developed in the 50s as a cooperative venture between Max Factor, Paramount Pictures, and General Electric. 

It is still in use. When people are hit by the Star Machine, their looks improve and they get tremendously enhanced charisma. Several Star Machines were produced. CAA has one. WME has one. Every major studio has one; however, it is used sparingly today due to its known side effects of making people narcissistic, the worst version of themselves, and, eventually, they go completely insane. 

But a byproduct of the Star Machine project was the Evil Eye, a laser gun that has the opposite effect of the Star Machine, and that was discovered in the Star Machine process. 

One hit from the Evil Eye gives one numerous unattractive traits. Targets become confrontational, develop a bad personality in general, lose all sense of good taste and decorum, pick bad movies, get halitosis, constantly overshare, and they experience immediate and dramatic weight gain — at least thirty pounds — and other distortions of their appearance. 

Most of all — it reveals who you truly are. 

“Bad taste and weight gain? It sounds like half of Hollywood has already been hit by this thing!” said Jake Wei, the head of Disney movies. 

Only one Evil Eye was ever created and it was not used in anger. It is carefully hidden, disguised as a space laser by the props department and kept amongst old props from “I Love Lucy.” 

Samuel then faded out, as “summoned” elders could only be present for so long. 

The men (and dogs) found and dusted off the old Evil Eye prototype — it was exactly where Samuel said it would be.

—

Mrs. Gabriel, Lauren to her friends, was stationed in front of Hinoki & the Bird in Century City. 

As Belinda Messinger, the head of the Gojo network, a former publicist, punctilious and well-mannered, and bien pensant in all ways, took her valet ticket and walked in, Lauren hit her with the Evil Eye pulse. 

Belinda suddenly felt ill and had to go to the bathroom. 

Belinda made it to the bathroom and vomited and wasn’t sure what was happening. 

She came to her table with her friends and accomplices, trying to focus on the topic of the day, a race-swapped and gender-swapped The Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court musical starring the (still human, thankfully) Lin Manuel Miranda, but proceeded to excoriate everyone for their thorough creative incompetence and their ethical defects, then burped through a version of Foghat’s I Just Want to Make Love to You before speeding home where she published an elaborate tell-all Tumblr post about the foibles and hypocrisy of every prominent person in Hollywood and, to top it off, added a section about her personal negative animus toward the Obamas. 

Similar embarrassing faux pas — socially crippling faux pas — in the next weeks were suffered by other leading female network and studio heads. 

Christi West, America’s sweetheart, suddenly gained 400 pounds. 

There was much — tremendous — weight gain and many regrettable denunciations of friends and entire races over lunch. Seemingly no amount of Ozempic and Lorazepam could solve this problem. 

The Evil Eye was working. 

—

Through an anonymous proton email address, SSM communicated to Elaine Kim, the new head of CAA Motion Picture Talent, that this phenomenon was not some sort of spontaneous decline in good taste and politesse. It had nothing to do with Jupiter being in the seventh house, as had been debated in Showbiz, the industry trade journal. It was a deliberate campaign that was in the control of the group sending the email, and it would continue unless and until Betsy Grimes met her end. 

Since Elaine was one of 12 women on Betsy’s Central Council and met with her every Sunday, it was up to her to end this reign of terror or continue to watch as Hollywood slid into the sea in a chaos of confessions and denunciations. 

— 

Elaine hastily assembled a breakfast meeting at John O’Groats. 

Things were not good and had to be improved. 

She proposed, at the meeting, that “even though we all love Betsy,” the deed had to be done.  

Everything was falling apart. “We can’t lose the men and then lose the women, too. Plus, that Betsy movie was not great.” 

But if we’re going to do this, we’ve all got to do it. 

“Julius Caesar style.” 

Christi West put down her bagel, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, farted, and said, “I’m in.” 

— 

Betsy received her Central Council every Sunday at Noon at her Blue Jay Way house, which she had named The Hen House. 

Betsy received her Council beside her pool in a vintage Pucci jumpsuit and oversized Gucci sunglasses. Her chair was perfectly positioned in the center of the pool’s width so that the entire shot could be composed elegantly “in thirds,” which she liked. It was a warm and sunny day and Betsy and the pool were framed with “jet liner” views of Los Angeles. 

In her lap she held Harold Lomez, still a white toy poodle, with a bow in his hair. 

The twelve Council members were also well attired — as Betsy appreciated that — except for Christi, who had now been “off her game” for a few weeks and was in Pittsburgh Steelers-themed sweats and a MAGA hat. 

Everyone but Betsy had a hand bag. 

Elaine started things off: “Betsy, this is the end. Do you have final words for the world?” 

Betsy was momentarily confused. 

All the women pulled out pistols. 

Betsy flung Harold aside, stood up and turned away from the women, but she could not escape across the pool. 

“You’ll miss me, bitches,” said Betsy. 

With a bang, 110 grams of lead (one missed) tore through the back of Betsy’s Pucci jumpsuit at 440 meters per second, communicating 6,413 foot pounds of energy into her body, which propelled her, flying through the air like a mockery of a super heroine, to the very center of the pool before she dropped into the water. 

Betsy Grimes was floating face down in her pool. She thought, briefly, that this was just like the shot in Sunset Boulevard.

If only there were cameras at the bottom of the pool.

Everyone was looking at Betsy. 

As it should be.

—

When Betsy passed, floating in her pool in a growing cloud of crimson, floating in a cloud of conspiracies, a now historical figure, all the dog men were released from her spell and became men again, generally waking up naked in their yards, or in the pound as the case was for some. 

This was received with mixed feelings by the women, though it was generally accepted. 

The possessions of Betsy Grimes were auctioned off for the benefit of charity and they were valued like relics from a saint. 

Hollywood gradually got back to something like normal, though many of the dispossessed men were not invited back to their former posts. 

Professors set about examining Betsy and her personal effects for any indication of the source of her power, to no avail. 

The Evil Eye remained a secret, however. 

Betsy Grimes and her reign came to a close, to be entered in the annals of Hollywood as one of the more remarkable episodes. 

Kenneth sat down at his laptop to write the novelization of Betsy’s rise and fall. He started with: The only thing permanent in LA is the real estate. And the illusions.

(c) Roy Price 2023

OBJECTIVE RESULTS

To its credit, many people sampled the show and it generated more discussion than the average show. No surprise that people would check out a big LOTR show.

But did they like it? Is it attracting new subs and inspiring retention?

Rotten Tomatoes: 39%

IMDb: 6.9

Ratings appear to have been removed from Amazon.com, but it appears to be around a 3.3.

These are fairly consistent with each other.

I’d classify that as Needs Improvement.

For context, most of Amazon’s shows have been >>6.9 on IMDb.

Maisel 8.7

Fleabag 8.7

Boys 8.7

Bosch 8.5

Transparent 7.8

Jack Ryan 8.0

Terminal List 8.0

I’d estimate that the 95% range of IMDb scores are 6-8.9. A 6.9 is like a ~2 from 1-4.

The weak spots on IMDb are men and ex-US viewers. With a fantasy/action property you’d normally expect to land the male audience. On the bright side, that should be taken as the low hanging fruit opportunity moving forward.

The aud that likes it the most is women 45+ (7.7). Still not love. W <18 v negative (6.0).

On Reddit, the House of the Dragon community is 613K vs ROP’s 45K. 13.6X enthusiasm gap. That is an indirect measure of “people who really love it.” Makes sense.

So ROP attracted attention, which comes w the territory, but, it seems, did not deliver results.

MY SUBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT

One challenge with high end TV today is that the bar is high. There really isn’t a film world and a TV world. There is just one world. It’s as if we used to have the NFL and college football, but now there is just one league. If you’re not tier A, you can’t hide. Day one in the NFL is going to be a very, very long day. And that’s basically where I think we are here.

To begin with, there were too many small issues to get into. On the show with a budget like this you should be able to insist on the highest standards and paint both sides of the fence. Small issues distract. The accents are often inconsistent. The armor is arguably too clean and polished. It just doesn’t feel “gritty” or real. The fight choreography and physics aren’t awesome. High pitched emotions are often not earned. There are constant, long pauses with many solo violins. There are sincere expressions galore. Everything is always momentous without necessarily earning that momentousness. Too few scenes have complex and interesting evolutions with turns. Well written scenes go from a to b to c where each step offers revelation about the characters. The pauses in the archaic dialogue are so theatrical and frequent that sometimes I was expecting the actor just to say “line?” Those are writing and directing issues.

A lot of the key warriors seem honestly too young and frail to be credible Medieval warriors. They look more like St Laurent models than Medieval knights.

In general, I felt like this owed less to Tolkein than to modern broadcast TV. Maybe Lost. Or Marvel.

All of these together make it easy to go to the kitchen and make tea or catch up on Twitter. Minor distractions add up.

But none of that is as important as the central issue — there is no lead character. That is, there is no lead character here who is relatable and who you might pull for. It plays like a lost Pirandello play — “6 secondary characters in search of a lead.”

Totally Charmless Galadriel is by turns petulant, bitter, entitled, self-important, narcissistic, grouchy and psycho. 5,000 years old, she nevertheless comes off as someone who is still bitter about that loss 4,982 years ago in the race for class treasurer and she is going to show everyone.

What she never is: intimidating. Or wise.

She has all the appeal of Grand Moff Tarkin.

Meanwhile Elrond is stiff and dull. He comes off as an Elven attorney. It’s mainly the role. It just never became a charismatic thing that you wanted more of.

The thing I have learned about 5,000 year old magical elves is this: a little goes a long way. When you have a larger than life character like Yoda or Obi Wan or Ahab or Gatsby or ET, it doesn’t work to have a long lunch with them or watch them floss. You don’t make such grand characters the lead. They’re the Magical Other character. Instead, you create another character who is the audience entry point who is more relatable.

Magical Other —> Lead character

Ahab —> Ishmael

Jay Gatsby —> Nick Carraway

Guin —> Rinda

Aslan the Lion —> Lucy

Mufasa —> Simba

Obi Wan & Yoda —> Luke Skywalker

Gandalf —> Bilbo

Your lead needs vulnerability. Aspirations. A sense of humor. Love. 5,000 year old magical elves can give you everything you need from them if they have 5 lines per ep, not 30. But they can’t give you the relatability that a Bilbo can give you.

Especially if they have horrible personalities.

Think about Harry Potter. We meet him as an orphan being taken to a new school, vulnerable and afraid. We spend a lot of time on fun sequences like the Sorting Hat Ceremony. We engage him from early on as a vulnerable and relatable human.

This takes us from the lead character issue to the closely related issue of tone.

The tone overall is one dimensional — it’s a war and revenge and seething resentment and hate sandwich. But The Hobbit and LOTR — the things people actually love — are about fantasy, friendship and epic challenge. Yes there are war scenes but they’re moving because we love the characters.

What happens in the beginning of the Hobbit? The dwarves come and have second breakfast with Bilbo.

What about LOTR? Bilbo has a birthday party. And later the Hobbits try to escape through the Old Forest and go on a singing march with Tom Bombadil.

Hey! Come derry dol! Hop along, my hearties!

Hobbits! Ponies all! We are fond of parties.

Now let the fun begin! Let us sing together!

Remember, the first book of the Lord of the Rings is called The “Fellowship” of the Ring. Not the War of the Rings. That friendship matters. Make people love the world and its friendships. Not everything should be about the giant battle. Tolkien brought charm and warmth to his stories and characters that were fundamental. That fellowship of the ring is missing here and must be restored.

LOOKING FORWARD

#1. New blood. Sorry. The issues here are major. And the many small details such as the accents are problematic from a showrunner pov.

#2. Tone. Fantasy, Friendship, Epic challenge and Adventure. Reorient.

#3. Elves to the back. Humans and Harfoots to the front. Relatable underdog leads.

#4. Get a star. They say TV makes its own stars. Not always I guess.

#5. Sell (do not assume) the fantasy elements— song, mithril, elves and trees that are alive. Lure the audience into this amazing magical world. Don’t assume they already know all that. Here it was not all explained.

I still believe that there can be a great LOTR series. But changes would have to be made.

In the 60s you couldn’t teach The Catcher in the Rye in classrooms. In the 50s, Lenny Bruce was arrested many times for impoliteness on stage. Various censorship regimes persist to this day. People like to control people.

Which is one reason blockchain matters.

One point of crypto is to give you, as an individual, more autonomy and to increase your sphere of personal choice. People who assert that crypto has no use case do so presumably because some of the benefits are invisible to them. They are comfortable with the current structures of control; as they drive home they might muse that it is fine that Paypal gets to decide who can transact, it is great that banks can debank people, and it is ok that Twitter can cancel dissenters. These threats aren’t threats to them (until they are of course).

But the condition of our lives is that someone in some office determines what art we can create and consume, what we can communicate without being punished, and whether we are good enough people to be allowed to engage in transactions. The ultimate goal of such a system is that someone will be able to determine or set guardrails for what you can think, that the “Overton window” will have drapes that are controlled by a specific set of approved people. And even if those people are fond of you now, they might not be fond of you tomorrow.

As our digital lives become more and more important, as banking goes digital, as communications increasingly rely on social media, and generally with the presumed approach of the “metaverse,” this becomes increasingly problematic.

As Balaji Srinivasan has pointed out, there are three key poles of influence emerging around free communication and thought in the world — the CCP, the NYT and Bitcoin. (“NYT” includes a range of players including the World Economic Forum using the NYT as a (I think suitable) synecdoche. I would replace Bitcoin with just “Crypto.”

The opportunity and goal of Crypto — uniquely in Srinivasan’s triumvirate — is to give you as an individual privacy and protection from control — which is what you deserve — and to make you more autonomous, sovereign, and free.

Freedom is the use case.

Does “freedom is the use case” sound boring to you or political? It should sound like jazz in Paris in the 30s. Like the fun frisson of the phrase “banned books.” Remember all the kisses that had been censored and were revealed in the fabulous ending of Cinema Paradiso? Think of it like that. Like everything people have ever tried to prevent you from seeing. There are things that people will want censored that you will want to see.

Decentralizing media will reduce centralized control over media which will open the funnel up more broadly to ideas and talent that aren’t being seen today. Media will become less orderly, more open and more free. The purpose of this document is to suggest how the web3 transformation will occur in the media space, where it is most interesting, and why it might matter to you. This document will not focus on social media such as Twitter or TikTok, which is a topic for another day, or music, but is focused primarily on television shows and movies.

II. Why Decentralize Media?

When the last bullet casings clink clink clink to a stop in the gutter of the capitol, the first thing newly minted dictators have traditionally done upon taking over is to usurp the newspaper and the TV stations. They know their business. In time, they usually start a movie studio. Many a dictator, including Goebbels, Stalin and Kim Jong-Il, has become very frustrated trying to develop a really smashing hit film.

When there isn’t an explicit, kinetic revolution, there is nevertheless always a struggle for influence, or power. Media and the arts are generally fruitful gardens of creativity trying to avoid becoming oppressive vectors of propaganda. And sometimes the propaganda forces win. Since assessments of quality in the arts are subjective, hiring and content choices are always vulnerable to manipulation. There have been various periods in Hollywood where political groups have tried to monopolize hiring and content choices. People who don’t care about movies or television or comedy or stories but do care about power often come to Hollywood to get things done.

This is one reason to be interested in blockchain. Blockchain and decentralization make this more difficult because they re-route communication of information or information in the form of money away from centralized nodes of control to a peer to peer network. There are industries where decentralization or tokenization won’t make much difference. The cake probably tastes the same at a decentralized bakery. But introducing censorship resistance into finance and culture is a change of historic significance. Putting finance and content on crypto rails affords people personal protections and makes the media cake taste better as we will discuss below.

In this sense, “Censorship resistance” is the essential deliverable of blockchain. The meaning of “censorship resistance” is not strictly intuitive because you could think that it just refers to whether you can post on Facebook about whether we are in a recession. It’s broader than that. Censorship resistance should be understood to include resistance to all systems that inhibit communication or that limit the freedom to transact (discussed here by @punk6529). Censorship as I mean to discuss it can be implemented traditionally. But it can also take in Hollywood withholding financing from certain popular genres, Twitter or Paypal denying certain kinds of creators access to their platforms, or systematic defamation and ostracism of outgroup creators epitomized by the Stasi’s Zersetzung tactic in East Germany. Censorship includes all artificial controls of expression and all limits on freedom to transact.

The Crypto point of view is that it would be best to have a global system that is censorship resistant and we believe that such a system will serve customers better and create a more free art world.

III. But Where is there Censorship Today?

Many countries today have explicit censorship regimes. In the United States, we have a censorship regime that is managed through a soft social consensus network enforced through office politics and hiring in journalism and in Hollywood. Where is our Battle of Algiers about Hong Kong? Where is the doc about the rise of democracy in Taiwan? Where are our big movies that aren’t sequels? Why are we living off the creative fumes of the past so much? In television, everyone in Hollywood understands that if you came to pitch Tropic Thunder, The Hangover, Family Guy, Mad Men, Modern Family, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Succession, Veep, Modern Family, Yellowstone, or South Park today they would have no more chance than a Uyghur buddy comedy at the Shanghai Film Festival. There are things that could be bold; challenging; or great, moving our culture forward to the next thing; or that the people simply enjoy, that Hollywood has decided it doesn’t want anymore (unless they are grandfathered in, in which case cancelling them would be too embarrassing). That’s an arbitrary and value destroying decision.

The data indicates that the audience is not enjoying the new regime as much as the old regime. From 2014-2017, 65 US shows launched that were rated 8.0 or above on IMDb. (IMDb users rate shows and movies 1-10 and an 8.0 rating is important because these are the shows that do most to drive subscriber growth.) In the following four years, 2018-2021, there were only 31 such shows launched (a 52% decline). This cannot have been due to COVID -- COVID began in early 2020 which would have impacted numbers only in late 2020 and in 2021. What happened to the shows that might have been? Here is the chart for all recurring US television shows:

Whatever illness caused this seems to have been particularly widespread at Netflix (maybe their vaunted “algorithm” broke?):

Either the writers of America suddenly lost their talent or the social clique of Hollywood made some disastrous decisions.

TV news is similar: after years of increasing partisanship, now only 11% of Americans have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in television news, according to a 2021 Pew survey.

Now Netflix has shrunk in the US for two consecutive quarters, Peacock, tiny to begin with, has stopped growing, as cited above the people are steadily losing faith in the news, and Emmy Awards viewership has declined 35% just from 2017 to 2021, which seems like a lot.

Astronomers can detect objects in the universe such as black holes by detecting their gravitational pulls. They can be seen in the absence of light. These charts allow us to detect dozens of quality scripts cast aside artificially and to perceive the black hole in television’s recent history.

It is hard not to think that this timing, in terms of the zeitgeist, has a relationship with Jim Rutenberg’s declaration in the NYT in 2016 that journalists had to “throw out the textbook American journalists had been using for the better part of the past half-century” and embrace tactics that were “by normal standards, untenable.” Don’t be customer obsessed. Don’t adhere to the standards of your profession. Focus on your own whims.

So even in an era of “peak TV,” the market is underserved because all of the TV providers, like so many subprime mortgage bonds bundled into an asset-backed security, are tightly correlated into one corner of the market.

It’s as if every restaurant in town suddenly decided to go vegan -- which is an opportunity.

You could say, that’s not censorship, that’s just changing tastes! But whose tastes? Apparently not the audience’s tastes. So what if next year networks only ran cooking shows. Would that be “changing tastes,” too? It’s only “changing tastes” if the people actually like what you did.

The answer is not to replace flawed executives with a different group of flawed executives. Instead, replace them all with a global computer. A global culture system led by a decentralized and disunited group of people will yield a better result and to the extent it is large and decentralized it will act more like an AI in perfect harmony with the audience. As they say, “can’t be evil is better than don’t be evil.” Decentralization makes media resistant to capture by groups that have goals other than entertaining the audience and creating great art. It creates censorship resistance in media.

IV. Which Parts of the Media Value Chain Will be Decentralized and How?

Decentralizing Financing

This is the process of choosing what projects happen -- the crux of the issue.

The decentralization of finance requires a global marketplace where filmmakers, TV producers, game producers, YouTubers, or musicians can create a page on a global platform and solicit support for their project by selling NFTs, securities (in the US, presumably 506(c) exempt securities), or NFTs bundled with securities in ERC1155’s. We believe securities will be helpful in raising beyond a certain ceiling.

We believe it is essential that this be on crypto rails because investors will want these transactions to be quick, immutable, and on chain. And in any case the ERC721 transactions have to be on an EVM chain.

The demand for this is clear -- several teams have done or are doing this; however, it is currently very expensive, laborious and bespoke to set up. See a well documented example here from DPop Studios.

The anticipated marketplace will handle the legal issues, push them to the background and make the experience as easy as eBay or OpenSea while auto-generating the necessary agreements between all relevant parties.

There are three key benefits here for creators.

• Ownership. Ownership of IP is a pain point today behind the scenes for Hollywood creators. If you bring your project to a top streamer today, and it becomes Star Wars, you do not become George Lucas rich. You get a bonus. George Lucas had ownership. There is nothing immutable or written in the stars that determines that the market equilibrium deal for creators involves not owning any part of your project. With decentralized financing, we believe that creators will regain access to the upside of their creations.

• Control. Creators will be beholden to investors and fans. In practice, we expect that means they will have creative control. This is also very desirable for creators.

• Funding. For some creators or projects who may be disfavored by the present system, this may make the difference between not being and funded and being funded so it will certainly be welcome to them.

This will be great for investors – they get to back the shows they love, make money from it and flex their NFTs.

It will be great for fans and viewers because it will deliver content that is newly unbridled and that is more closely aligned with the tastes of the whole market than is currently being achieved by a centralized culture bureaucracy.

Because this decentralized process improves ownership and control outcomes for top creators, we believe that it is inevitable that top creators will embrace decentralized financing. Therefore it is inevitable that decentralized financing will take over global financing of art projects and will shift power from centralized culture bureaucracies to artists and their fans. This is a win win outcome. (Except for incumbents.) It is not a niche or fringe proposition.

This marketplace would likely have a transactional token.

Today, films and TV shows typically get greenlit in a conference room in Hollywood. Tomorrow they will be greenlit by a wallet ping silently recorded on some validator node running ubuntu 18 after a light speed drift over the trans pacific cable flipping some bits before packaging them into the next block.

Decentralizing the Streaming Service

It is important to have a source of revenue independent of the existing centralized establishment. Otherwise, none of this matters.

A decentralized streaming service would be one where rightsholders would be able to permissionlessly upload their content to the streaming service and receive a portion of revenues through the service’s smart contract. There would be an open-source service, like Bit Torrent, on top of which one could build a proprietary client (multiple such clients could run in parallel). Most important aspects of the underlying service would be managed by a DAO, which would for example have to screen uploads to avoid certain legal issues but would also determine what percent of revenue goes to content owners and clients.

It is important that there is an underlying open source service to which content owners upload their content and then there are proprietary clients because it is critical that there shouldn’t be anyone who can favor any type of content over another. This has to be a neutral system.

Once people finance projects on the marketplace, they will produce the projects and they will need a place to put the projects to recover their investments. They would be free to do whatever they want with their projects but the decentralized service would be amongst their options.

Studios around the world have libraries that they want to expose to customers in a value creating way, which would be a source of content. Moreover, certainly in Asia at least, local broadcasters would benefit if they could unite their local content into one UX and share revenue. An SVOD service driven by a smart contract equitably dividing revenue would allow them to enjoy the benefits of such cooperation without having to incur the transaction costs of a merger or joint venture. So we believe that the potential supply of content for the service is large and global; however, we expect that the primary driver of user growth will be original content.

This opportunity and the financing marketplace make each other stronger and they will likely be integrated as one experience since it will be desirable to for example invest in the second season of a show you like or buy a talented person’s creator coin or get an NFT for watching a show’s first season – all of this should be integrated in one UX.

It is likely that a subscription would be the core business model. Customers like the simplicity of subscription instead of pay as you go or transactional video on demand (TVOD), though TVOD and parallel mini-subscriptions that share the platform should also be expected.

One can imagine a universe where there are many subscription-driven decentralized services where the subscriptions are managed through NFTs; however, the dynamics of the industry most likely lead to market concentration in the medium term. Customers do not prefer to subscribe to a profusion of services, and as a service gains viewers, it has more revenue to share, as there is more money flowing through the system, it attracts more content and better creators. As it gets better content, it gets more customers, and more money. In addition, a token likely introduces some loyalty to that particular ecosystem. The flywheel dynamic will tend toward there being only one system even if there is an open-source platform with the opportunity to create multiple competitive proprietary clients.

One can anticipate that such a service would extend its offerings beyond video to also include, for example, digital books and comic books.

Rule Breakers, Game Changers, and Decentralizing the Creative Part

This is a more complicated but potentially important category of activity. I am mainly going to focus on development -- development includes everything from having an idea in the shower to getting the final commitment from the key actor to finishing the package and making the movie ready for funding. Money and teamwork can help these processes along and that is my main focus.

The primary opportunity of a Hollywood development process involving a decentralized group of people, in my view, is that great ideas will be discovered sooner and embraced more readily. Whereas Hollywood has become conservative, web3 is unlikely to be.

Key aspects of development are in a way already decentralized. Individuals sit at their computers at Starbucks or in their homes and they bang away at stories, creating IP in a completely decentralized and uncoordinated way. But getting from there to being ready for funding is a process that can take money.

DAOs have energized people around the idea of coming together quickly to get things done. The benefit of a DAO is that it is more open and less subject to capture because decision making is theoretically distributed.

A traditional development entity is a dozen or so people meeting together every day in Los Angeles. There is a sense of social cohesion and shared beliefs. Professionals develop a habit of pattern matching so they can filter good projects from bad. The trouble is that game changing art is often rule breaking art. Game of Thrones and Squid Game both had long and troubled journeys to your television set. Many other rule breakers have surely died in development. Many of our most successful award-winning shows at Amazon, including Transparent, had been passed on by all the other networks for being too unconventional or too controversial. Culture bureaucracies tend not to be contrarian, ahead of the curve curators who live on the cultural edge and take risks. But the game changing shows that take risks are the ones that have the most impact and that customers value most.

A decentralized, disparate group of culture mavens who are not betting their health insurance on maintaining their position in some social hierarchy will allocate development capital differently and more adventurously. They are inherently more diversified and therefore risk tolerant. They just want to find things that are fun, new, great and likely to make money. They want to be unique and to stand out. And they are all over the place. 1,000 culturally aware DAO members in Harajuku, Bandra, Gangnam, Paris, New York, New Orleans and London will find Pokemon, Pop Smoke, Game of Thrones, Normal People, and Taiki Waititi before the development executives in Los Angeles in a centralized bureaucracy adhering to a social consensus. Finding, curating and supporting content will be a strength in this category.

What I think is more challenging is when a large group of people are asked actually to create the content or give very detailed guidance on a story if that’s not the thing they do in their normal lives. The record of success here is not great and it has been tried before (including by myself at scale at Amazon) with essentially all the same mechanisms and recently. There is nothing inherently “web3” about it except that it involves a community. Deep granular story guidance and story creation is beyond the capability of most contributors because writing is an art, but it’s also a craft, like sculpture. It’s something people get better at with experience. Are your 10,000 writers in a Discord better than Larry David with a legal pad? This has not been figured out yet. Some projects in this zone run into the “your scale is not scale” problem where their solution might work if they had 100,000 people writing vampire stories set in Los Angeles, but in fact they have 50 and no one is really reviewing anyone else’s work; it’s just not the same.

Two key design ideas in this segment.

First, this should include an onramp for talented newcomers of course but it should make a lot of sense for Hollywood professionals, too. Web3 film is not a new medium (as film was when it arrived). Most great filmic storytellers are already involved with the film/television business and the audience already is aware of them and wants to see their work. This should be designed in such a way that it will work for them and incorporate them. Otherwise, you will be competing directly with them and you will lose. It will be as if you created a hockey team with all the best people you could find who do not play in the NHL and then you have to face off against the Colorado Avalanche. My friends, never play to play. Always play to win.

Second, a hazard lies in mass voting. When it comes to early stage ideas, if outlier, contrarian, game changing ideas are to be found, small passionate groups who may disagree with the larger group, must be empowered. It cannot be a requirement that a mass of 10,000 people all agree that an idea in its nascent form is good before it can move forward. Default to yes. Great contrarian ideas often come disguised, especially to a large mass of people, as bad ideas. There are costs to scale in this segment that I think can be organized away if you default to yes.

Many experiments are already ongoing in this area. Comments on a few concrete but theoretical examples are in the appendix.

Decentralizing the Content Delivery Network

People are already working on this including Livepeer and RoninX. It is likely that there will be a decentralized, widely distributed, globally effective and low latency media content delivery network. This is essential for the censorship resistance of the streaming service. The only question is how much value this segment of the value chain will capture.

Decentralizing Physical Production

This is a physical activity governed by guilds. I don’t see the opportunity here. However, possibly some opportunity integrating blockchain into camera establishing provenance of footage. So the entire system would look something like this where fans pay the streamer, the streamer pays the DAOs/producers, and the DAOs/producers pay the investors through the financing platform.

I know what you’re thinking -- but is this good for agents? Actually, it’s fine for agents. People still get hired. Projects still get packaged. People still need to meet people. So that role remains important. It is likely that agencies would create a role for someone to facilitate creating offers on the financing platform.

The primary change in the industry is that networks would have less power. Fewer people would work there. We would have fewer centralized networks than we have today (which may occur anyway). More people would work at production companies associated with talent, e.g. a director.

So as a whole the system might look like this:

A Note on News

The level of gaslighting and misinformation in our information environment is high and sadly the news is now widely distrusted. We believe that one issue here is that there appear to be no negative repercussions for participating in “fake news,” and we believe that a web3 DAO could introduce a feedback loop and an interface that would create disincentives. I have written about this here.

It is not clear that news would be a part of the decentralized streaming service, though that is up to the uploaders and the proprietary clients in the end. Query whether an ad-supported service can ever truly be censorship resistant unless you have truly massive scale. A question for another day.

V. Conclusion

To conclude, there are no geographies or audience groups for which this is not relevant. It is great for artists and fans. And in time, because a decentralized system ultimately provides better outcomes for creators, we expect that top creators will migrate to such a system.

And wherever the best creators go is where the audience goes.

It is very likely that in the future there will be one global, decentralized, censorship-resistant media platform that no one controls. And what it means is that we will have more honest art, more avant garde art, more popular art, more comedy, and more truth.

Discord Group

If you’re essentially aligned with this view, perhaps you can help. We are starting a DAO called Future of Media Secret Think Tank #0. We intend for this first group to bring some insight into the many facets of this multi-faceted venture, to focus initially on refining existing plans, and then to launch other important DAOs and initiatives. With that in mind, we expect to keep it fairly small. But stop by. Here is the form to fill out: form.

FAQ

Is the marketplace truly decentralized and censorship resistant?

The key is that whoever is power over the marketplace should not be so concentrated as to be able to disfavor specific projects or types of projects. Because then we could just repeat the errors of the current regime. However, there are speed to market, UX and other benefits to having an entity that owns and is continually improving that experience and that is not a DAO. We think to get to market as quickly as possible, this effort will begin as a normal C Corp and will progressively decentralize.

Over time, the marketplace can be divided into two parts. The underlying open source foundation and a proprietary client that sits on top of that, much like one could build a bittorrent client. The underlying foundation contains the code and the catalogue of projects. So if we decided at the marketplace only to surface and support animation and not live action projects, someone else could create a client that supports all projects. In this way, the system is sufficiently decentralized.

How is ownership of projects divided?

This is up to the participants in each project but to be clear about our expectation, we expect that the primary promoter of a project would bring a project to market having allocated ownership share amongst the primary creator group and we expect that the primary creator group will be able to retain copyright and a very substantial share of cash flows. And this is the key advantage of creating an open market for content projects.

Appendix

Some comments on a few theoretical web3 approaches to content development.

The Society of Thespians

There are a lot of people who have rights in IP now in the form of NFTs. There are also talented people (writers, animators, actors) who could bring them to life and turn that IP into something fun, famous and valuable. But they don’t know each other and they do not know what to do or exactly how to do it and they do not have funding.

Solution: A DAO could be created to bring these people together and help them by providing things like agreements and even funding or, if they are in the US, guidance on working with the Screen Actors Guild or the Writers Guild. As it scales, it would be great to be able to search for NFTs and talent who are open to projects. You may think that the guilds are not important by the way but as soon as you try to make something bigger than a TikTok video, you will want to work with one of the 100,000+ people in SAG. And to be honest, they don’t make it very difficult.

Goal would be to create and publish original videos, comics, etc. based mainly on NFTs and possibly launch NFTs as well. These don’t have to be movies. Step one is to just evolve these characters from jpegs to brands, so videos on TikTok, YouTube and Twitter are fine at first and we can work our way up to TV shows. Maybe: have a Shark Tank type show for funding larger projects.

There will likely be more than one like this and success will depend on attracting the best IP and talent. It will help to have at least some people with a high level of sophistication about the business so that the agreements and guidance are correct. This could ultimately be extended beyond NFT rights to any IP.

We have already created a proto-Society of Thespians as a Twitter Community.

The Pop Punk DAO

A group of fans of a particular genre of music could cultivate musical acts within a genre in a more deliberate fashion more akin to the Korean process of developing acts. Hire multiple producers and bring on 70 talented song writers and musicians. Over time, a few strong bands emerge. There are irl concert events and DAO members vote on which songs and bands they like most. The whole thing plays out in public across YouTube and TikTok. with the goal of developing multiple successful acts and having a great time. It doesn’t have to be pop punk of course -- pick whatever genre of music.

The Bewitched DAO

People who love a particular TV show idea and the producer and writers of a reboot of the beloved series Bewitched, write and produce the show while getting continual feedback from the community. The community is going to write and make granular, story recommendations which in aggregate will produce better stories.

This sort of thing hasn’t worked well in the past. I am not sure what has changed. My concern here is that the community is being asked to do too much and the best stories simply are not a choose your own adventure type of process. Do you really think you’re going to outdo Larry David by getting 10,000 comments on your script from Reddit? If you think that, you know nothing about television or writing.

Producer DAO

This creates essentially a support infrastructure for producers and creators. It is like a distributed global studio.

DAO members find IP and bring it into the DAO. The DAO makes deals with producers and creators who develop TV shows and movies. The DAO decides which producers to back and, each year, whether to, for example, add more producers, extend into new media, or extend into a new geography. The Producers decide which projects to pursue and how to develop them. The DAO provides budget and a professional team -- legal, business affairs, accounting, etc. Producers work with DAO members to develop any projects DAO members bring in. The DAO gets a piece of the producer’s films and television shows, but the producer’s participation is better than at a regular studio and he or she has more autonomy.