Something strange is happening in Hollywood:  people are getting fired.

Well, let me clarify: people get the sack all the time around here.  Executives are tossed out with such routine indifference that any executive who hasn’t been fired at least three times in his career is probably not very good at his job.

A couple of bad television seasons, an outright flop at the box office, or maybe just a long-simmering blood feud with a new boss – all of these are respectable reasons to get tossed out on your ear.  In fact, there’s sort of a cushy career carousel operating in Hollywood: studio executive gets fired, gets a nice severance package which includes a production deal, he produces a few movies, get rehired at another studio, gets fired from that studio, gets a nice severance package which includes a production deal, he produces a few movies….you see where I’m going with this. 

The trick is to hang on; it’s all about staying on the carousel with the painted ponies and the pretty music and the atmosphere of fantasy and fable.
But for the past few years, with advertising spending going down and the web-based  audience going up, with production costs soaring and box office profits flat at best, the entire entertainment industry has been trapped in a tight margin squeeze. 

And that always means one thing, no matter whether your business is movies or mousetraps or hamburgers: you’ve got to cut overhead.  People are going to get fired.

 
And the timing couldn’t be worse.  The carousel, right now, is broken: the ponies aren’t going up and down very well, the paint is peeling, and the music is distinctly off-tune.  A lot of people are getting fired without getting plush packages and production deals.  A lot of people are getting tossed off the carousel entirely.

I have a friend who works in investment banking, and she says that when layoffs in her industry come -- usually in a wide, sweeping wave – they come as a surprise to almost everyone.  Of course, recent headlines would suggest that people in that business know – how could they not? – that the house is burning down. 

And yet some quirk of human nature encourages the delusional sense that disaster is going to strike…someone else.  That guy in the next office, the person in the cubicle next to mine – everybody’s getting fired except me.

Oh, of course there’re a few in the quiet offices upstairs who know the names – Know them? What am I saying?  Who crossed them out personally – but for the rest of the crowd it seems to come out of the blue, despite the bad news in the paper and the downward profit curve and the subtle signs all around them that things are changing, powering down, getting worse.

A few years ago, when I had a television show on a major American broadcast network, and I was completely convinced – despite the slow southern drift of the ratings chart, despite the total lack of buzz or interest from the media – that we weren’t just doing well, we were thriving.  I saw hope in every piece of bad news; I saw opportunity in every sad look from a network executive.  

I didn’t notice the small things: the snacks laid out for the production crew went from top-shelf cookies to off-brand chips.  The bottled water was no longer Fiji but something from Arkansas.

  The real clue, however, was the melon.  Each day, our on-set caterer would set out an assortment of sliced fruit.  When times are good, the fruit is replenished hourly.  The banana is sweet and ripe; the melon is firm and juicy, and the edges are freshly-cut, sharp and pointy. 

  But at a certain point, he just stopped replenishing the tray.  The melon sat there, getting soft and mushy.  

When we were cancelled – as we inevitably were – I was stunned.  I was like that investment banker who is given the sack and can’t believe it’s happening to him.  When bad news comes, I guess, it surprises all of us.

Well, not all of us. 

One guy is never caught off-guard: the indispensable system administrator.  The IT guy in the tan Dockers and the cell phone holster.  He knows.  He sees the list while it’s still warm from the Xerox machine.  Because, you see, it’s his job to wait until exactly 10:33 on the morning that the axe is going to swing -- that’s three minutes after each doomed employee has been summoned to a meeting with a cheery, upbeat IM  (“Got a sec?  Can U pop your head in2 my office?”) – and when the big hand points to three  minutes and the second hand sweeps to twelve, he runs a finger down the list of names, and one by one disables their computer passwords and shuts off their email.

We don’t have system administrators in show business. 

But we do have Unit Production Managers – UPMs, for short.  The UPM is the guy who manages the finances of the production unit: on a movie or TV show, he’s the one who pays the bills and issues the salary checks.  And he’s the guy who talks directly to the guys  in studio finance and business affairs.   And those guys talk to guys in network business affairs.  And they hear things in the hallways.  They hear the bad news first. 

And then the word comes down: no more expensive cookies.  Use yesterday’s melon.  Cut your costs.

So the real question to ask yourself, if you’re in show business or banking or any industry, really, is: how pointy is my melon?  Because if it’s not pointy, you’re in trouble.