Offshoring the Audience

This country's getting to where it can't hear its own voice. —Woody Guthrie CEOs of the seven major movie studios routinely top lists of the hardest bosses to work for in corporate America. Fox's Rupert Murdoch and Paramount's Jonathan Dolgen didn't get where they are by fixing their own paper jams.

Imagine, for a moment, what it must be like to report to any of them. Okay, now imagine what it would be like to work for all of them. That will be the fundamental job description of the Motion Picture Association of America's new chair: somehow keeping these seven demanding people happy, or, absent that, minimizing their apoplexy. As this essay went to press, no one knew who would win this dubious prize, or why anybody in his right mind would want to. The retiring Congressman Billy Tauzin, of Louisiana, even considered flacking for the pharmaceutical industry rather than ...