REALITY CHECK

As a film industry working stiff who has survived 19 years and three studios’ worth of management regime changes, good and bad business decisions and back-stabbing office politics, I lost my appetite for Sunday breakfast after reading this latest exercise in public relations disguised as serious journalism (“The Studio Shuffle,” Dec. 18).

Are we supposed to empathize with these moguls because they hate their jobs, or feel overstressed or because they have no time to spend with their families?

I know many people in this industry who, lo-and-behold, hate their jobs, feel overstressed and have little time to spend with their families. But unlike these highly compensated luminaries, lower-level studio employees do not receive seven-figure contract buyouts or the promise of a high-paying job at another company when things go sour.

When one of these moguls greenlights a succession of cinematic bombs, studios inevitably resort to “corporate downsizing” (i.e., layoffs of lower-level staffers). Out-of-work, veteran employees hoping to find work in “the industry” often discover that the only positions available are lower-paying, non-union gigs with long working hours and lousy fringe benefits.

And they find themselves competing with fresh-faced 22-year-olds who have bought into the self-perpetuating, whitewashed mythology of Hollywood, a mythology that gets an endorsement from the fluff pieces that regularly appear in Calendar.

ELLIOT A. BRONSTEIN

Los Angeles