This writer sounds like someone who used to post here years ago; does anyone else remember the person I'm thinking of? He was writing a movie about imaginary friends that began with a long dream sequence that ended in a fairly creepy homage to An Officer and a Gentleman.
I hope he doesn't bankrupt himself with this litigation--though I agree with him that the Hollywood system is pretty biased in favor of white people and male people and people who know someone or are related to someone, the part where any given individual non-white and/or non-male and/or non-connected person can prove an actual tort is the tricky part. Non-white and female and non-connected people can also write crappy scripts and fail to take advantage of whatever opportunities come their way, after all.
Look, this business is no different than any other -- if you're born in it and raised in it, you're certainly going to have a leg up over someone who comes from outside.
It's just silly to pretend that Breck *Eisner* or Tori *Spelling* or Jaden *Smith* or Jenny *Lumet* enter the playing field of director or actor or writer on an equal footing with people who have no connection with anybody in the business, irrespective of how good they may be or how good their scripts may be.
The fact of the matter is, I don't think Tori Spelling would ever have gotten a role on a major television series but for her father (in fact, I remember when I was working on Monsters way back when, and we were a division of Spelling, that we got the word to cast her in an episode of Monsters).
Likewise, whatever you may think of "Rachel Getting Married" -- I don't think that that script, written by somebody with no connections and no contacts, would have had a chance in the world of getting somebody like Jonathan Demme attached to direct or Anne Hathaway to star in it, but for the fact that her father had the ability to pick up the phone and call Demme and say, "Hey, give this script written by my daughter a read."
And once he's involved, he's in a position to call Anne Hathaway and get her involved.
But Jane Doe in Kokomo with the identical script? Can she call Demme's production company? Can she get that script to him? Or to Anne Hathaway?
That script needed that kind of director and actor attached in order to happen -- and to get those kinds of attachments you needed somebody like Sidney Lumet to make that initial call. Without that call -- that script doesn't get read and the movie just doesn't happen.
That certainly doesn't mean that people outside the business can't break and don't break in but we have to be honest about things. There truly are no level playing fields. Certain people are always going to have an advantage by virtue of wealth or luck or birth.
On the other hand other people are going to have an advantage by virtue of talent and drive and a willingness to work and an unwillingness to quit no matter what obstacles chance and adversity place in their way.
Either sort of advantage can take you success.
NMS
