I haven't run one of these in a while. One of those folks who doesn't want their name mentioned wrote me to ask a question that combines a couple of frequent topics on this blog…
I am seeing a number of posts on the web from actors who claim they are being blacklisted by Hollywood because of their politics. They say Hollywood is run by liberals and since they are conservative, they are not being hired and they compare this to the days when writers and actors were blacklisted as seen in movies like The Front. Do you think they are indeed being blacklisted?
Deep sigh. One of the first things I think you should learn if you seek an acting or writing career — and it applies to other job descriptions in the arts — is that careers are illogical and capricious. They sometimes start for no definable reason and end the same way. It is very, very common that this year, everyone wants to hire Harvey Shmidlap and next year, no one will…and it may not be for any reason that Harvey can discern.
Which might not stop him from trying to come up with one. Some folks just don't like to admit how random and arbitrary their chosen profession can be. And Harvey may well feel that if he can nail down a simple reason for that work stoppage, he can make it go away.
It's possible there's a reason. I know one actor who pretty well nuked his career by showing up for jobs drunk and/or not at all. I was one of those with hiring power who stopped using him and when it got around town, it made him a lot less desirable. I know another actor who became really impossible to deal with, arguing and yelling all the time. No one was surprised when his career hit the skids. I would guess that the number one reason that actors' careers nosedive is that the folks who know their work and used to hire them — I'm talking about producers, directors, casting agents, etc. — aren't producing, directing or casting anything at the moment.
But some outta-work creative types won't accept the uneven nature of their profession and some have a natural bent for paranoia, imagining up plots and conspiracies…so you have these strange "they're out to get me" scenarios. You know people like that. Nothing bad ever happens to them by chance and certainly never because they did something wrong. It always has to be a plot against them. They certainly would never accept that someone somewhere thought their work wasn't very good.
Is it possible that someone isn't getting hired solely because of their politics? If you're talking about not getting hired by one person for one job, sure. I don't think I've ever seen it happen but yeah, sure. It's possible. But "blacklist" kind of denotes a grand conspiracy among supposed competitors. It's not just that I decide I have someone who'd be better than you for a certain part; it's that I somehow get together with others who hire and we all agree, "Let's not hire this guy!" That doesn't happen.
It especially doesn't happen that they say, "Hey, we don't like this guy's politics! Let's punish him by not hiring him!" Show business is not organized that way. It really isn't organized at all.
In the days of real blacklisting, pressure groups published actual lists and scared sponsors into demanding that certain folks not work on the shows for which those sponsors paid. The sponsors had power and the pressure groups exploited it. If you want to draw an analogy between that era and some folks' current unemployment, you need to find a few more parallels. Tell us who's exerting pressure to not hire Harvey Shmidlap and don't say "the Hollywood Elite" because that's a group that you invented to be deliberately vague and undefined. It has no officers. It has no roster of members. It holds no meetings. And on whom are they exerting this pressure?
Simple fact: Rob Reiner only has the power to not cast you in the next Rob Reiner movie. He probably wouldn't hire you for the same reason he also wouldn't bother to try and blacklist you. He's never heard of you. Or if he has, he probably doesn't have a part for you. He never hires his father. Why do you think that is?
