KNOW THY BUYER

Every studio has a flavor. A personality. A mood. Clearly it derives from the flavor, mood, and personality of the boss, so it changes with personnel and the season. A mood would be, for example, Sated - as in, we ate too much recently; or Hungry - rapacious needs in the distribution schedule to fill. The producer’s favorite is Needy, when the studio or its head has been the recipient of bad publicity or bad box office (our version of bad body odor) and has to make a big splash. A common mood, one I see all the time, I call Opaque. As in, “You guess `em.” The mood at a studio can shift from month to month, boss to boss, season to season.