Dear Hollywood: Read the Room

Hollywood used to give us the chance to sit under one roof and enjoy a universal story. The magic of the movies was always something we could share. We all remembered lines from famous movies like “I’ll be back,” “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse,” “Here’s looking at you, kid,” “We’re gonna need a bigger boat,” and “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”We got along better as a country when we could share movies. We didn’t just share the experience inside a movie theater, where we could leave our politics and our disagreements at the door. We also shared stories that became part of our shared history. We all remember the Summer of the Shark and the year Titanic won Best Picture.But now, 24 years into the new millennium it’s all gone. Or most of it anyway. Whatever is left of Hollywood is meant only for a small portion of America. They are running out of stories to tell because their sample size is no bigger than the island of Manhattan.But Hollywood doesn’t seem to have noticed just how disconnected they’ve become from ordinary life in America. It isn’t just that Americans have moved on because Hollywood took a side after 2016 and alienated them. They also seem to be living in a different time, back when the box office wasn’t a ghost town, and Julia Roberts and George Clooney could still open a movie.They seem unable to let go of the past, specifically 2008, when Barack Obama won the presidency. Hollywood has never felt so useful, so full of purpose, and so GOOD as it did when it formed a powerful alliance with the Obama coalition. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sashastone.substack.com/subscribe