Consequences Have Consequences

Truth or Dare?

We all know about “The Butterfly Effect,” the theory that when a Butterfly flaps its wings somewhere in Asia, the air displacement compounds it over time into Hurricane Katrina that smashes into the Southeast Coast of the US, destroying New Orleans. Of course if this were actually true, we’d be inundated with Hurricane after Hurricane on a daily basis until we could root out every last Butterfly, Moth and Dragonfly and hand feed them into bug zappers.

Using this logic, I wonder if the Fireflies I ran around chasing at dusk during summer evenings in my youth are somehow responsible for Wildfires in the Amazon? I mean, I caught a few and put them in Ball Jars with foil on the top poked with holes, but most of them blinked away into the bushes where I couldn’t reach them. Did the little flame butts of the escapees make their way across the world to the jungle? Since the Mayan Calendar ran out and the coinciding end of the world did not happen when it was supposed to, I’m thinking most likely I got away with it.

Blaming Butterflies, Fireflies or the sins of Democrats for destroying New Orleans with Katrina is equally silly. Despite their railings, the far right Evangelical preachers were promptly dismayed to find out that the only part of town that wasn’t destroyed was Bourbon Street, where arguably most of the really interesting sins take place. I guess God hates Gays, but loves a Go-Cup and Mardi-Gras beads more? God is complicated.

These are not the consequences begetting consequences I’m talking about. I’m talking more like Elon Musk sees some Tweets he doesn't like, buys Twitter, tries to un-buy Twitter, is forced to buy Twitter again, changes the name to X and then watches at it catches fire like the Hindenburg, and in slow motion its Ad revenues crash to the ground in flames. Now those are consequences that have consequences.

In Hollywood, consequences have consequences also, so I have distilled down my advice for those who ask to two items:

1. Be nice.

2. Stay out of trouble.

Some people have whittled it down to one item which is: “Don’t be an asshole.” But, I find that as an overriding concept to be vague, simplistic and lacking nuance. Also, very few people who are assholes actually realize they are assholes, despite everyone around them yelling, “you are such an asshole.” The confirmed asshole merely thinks the accuser does not understand that their brilliance comes with being entitled to behave however they would like to.

I have found that Human Beings in Hollywood generally don’t have trouble with the concepts of “be nice” and “stay out of trouble,” but the theory of Consequences Have Consequences to either “Be Nice” or “Stay Out of Trouble” work both positively and negatively, so let me break it down:

Be Nice

Kind of obvious but, be nice to receptionists, assistants, parking valets, waiters and baristas for the primary reason that their jobs suck and they’d rather be doing what you’re doing. Being nice should also be your default setting and not something you have to think about. A feature, not a bug if you will. Also, be nice because someday, the aforementioned will be studio executives who will be green lighting your projects. There is one possible exception, and that would be waiters who keep coming to your table and asking ”how is everything tasting?” You can treat them any way you like because they are so annoying they will amount to nothing. I will cover this in depth in a different essay.

Better yet, just be nice to everyone?

The consequences of being nice are many fold. You get hired a lot, your career is much longer and you have lots of friends. The consequence of not being nice is that once you hit a talent ceiling where they have to hire you, you never get hired because, well, if presented with working an 18 hour shoot day with someone who is nice vs. not nice, nice will always prevail.

Stay Out of Trouble

You would think that the luckiest and most gifted among us would get enough endorphin release by nature of what is available to them, and avoid being caught at the intersection of Las Palmas and Sunset having sex with a herd of goats one by one as the TMZ tour bus glides by. Which begs the question, how hard could it be to not do that?

Of course much more trouble happens indoors with the drapes closed. Consent seems to allude many people out there, especially celebrities with privilege. They always seem genuinely surprised when the cops show up a few years later.

But again, staying out of trouble has a lot of faces. Tiger Woods crashing his Mercedes then beating it with a golf club.. Mel Gibson’s anti-semitic tirade at the cops, and Charlie Sheen’s entire 2011 come to mind. Not to be too guy-centric, no Lindsey Lohan traffic stop has ever ended with anything but a mug shot.

You can easily get into trouble on the set by not being nice and for instance, yelling at someone in front of everyone. It used to be if you had enough power (Director) you could get away with it, but not so much anymore. These days, you do have to be a lot more conscious of your words at work. People are indeed more sensitive, but in most cases, shouldn’t we have been adhering to a higher standard of conduct all along?

OK, Social media. Or, as I like to call it, the new frontier for going to movie jail. Use your heads people! We don’t need to know what you think of anything, never-mind Geo-political conflict. Stick to your latest abs workout or genital scented candle. Getting into trouble on social media starts with assuming anyone cares what you think. They don’t, until they do, and when they do, they really do, so check your 1st Amendment rights at the X (Formerly known as Twitter) log in. Realize, you work in a town where the National Pastime is watching self-immolation, and the inhabitants are more than happy to help you douse yourself with gasoline and then offer you a light.

However….

I am not saying don’t get involved when something seems very wrong to you. What I am saying is, READ THE ROOM and make sure you know the prevailing winds before you take your activist boat out. There will most likely be consequences and those may have further consequences you may have not considered. At very least by not going off half tequila cocked on a Wednesday night at 11:00pm you can protect yourself.

Let’s take two well known examples, Jane Fonda and Colin Kaepernick. Jane Fonda came out against the Vietnam War long before the rest of Hollywood did. She knew the consequences would be very bad press, but she didn’t realize she then wouldn’t be able to get viable parts for the next 10 years. However, her taking a stand chipped away at the issue and the winds eventually changed and she was crucial to that.

Colin Kaepernick knew there would be consequences when he started his kneel down protest during the National Anthem, and there were. He got pilloried everywhere,, accused of being un-American and worse, as if sitting out a song would mean more than how he intended it. He did it just to get people to ask him, why? His consequences that had consequences led to him being essentially fired and never playing quarterback again in the NFL. Was it worth it? I think if you asked him, he’d say yes, as it was an essential building block in what later became the “Black Lives Matter” movement.

So when I say stay out of trouble I don’t mean keep your mouth shut. Keep your pants zipped for sure, but you don’t have to stay quiet. That said, if you engage in hate speech, you really do have what’s coming to you. What I’m saying for the less egregious, casual social media poster is this, know what you’re talking about and what you’re risking. Ask, am I an activist, or do I just have an opinion that I heard loudly somewhere else?

Me? I have many opinions, but the only opinion I’m willing to share publicly on wars, conflict and abuse is this, I hate to watch suffering of any kind. I don’t pretend to have answers or be able to assign blame correctly. I’m not a political scientist, or a prosecutor. I’m a Hollywood Executive who barely graduated high school, but luckily, I’m gifted with critical thinking skills when it comes to business. I just hate suffering, anywhere, in all its forms.

However, that doesn’t prevent me from yelling about Trump telling people to inject themselves with bleach to avoid Covid. That I watched first hand on TV as he said it, and all I thought was, this moron can fire nukes? Even an almost High School dropout can parse that one. For that comment on his part, yes, I went wild on social media, but I knew the room and the winds, and a Hollywood hot button it wasn’t.

Feel free, start a movement if you can stomach the consequences, and know those consequences will have consequences. Realize your limitations. Am I famous enough to recover from an unpopular opinion? Do I have the resources to not work for a while, or will I have to go sell aluminum siding for the rest of my days?

Being nice and staying out of trouble only requires one thing; think it through. Except for waiters asking “how are things tasting?” To them I say, post whatever comes to mind, the less informed the better, and yell at people on set regularly. Just don’t forget to write when you get back to Scranton. Yeah, that shit really, really bugs me.