Don’t know whether I put this in a Post or not. Recently Alcatel and Lucent decided to marry to produce yet another Clumsy Giant in an effort to become more agile and responsive to revolutionary changes in their industry. I said that I wondered if either CEO had said, to him- or herself or their spouse, “How incredible this will be. My/our 16-year-old daughter Mary will have so many cool new tools she would not have had if we hadn’t made this deal.” I concluded—to my mind, beyond a shadow of doubt—that such a sentence had not even come close to escaping from either mouth—let alone the mouths of the two parties’ Investment Advisors.
No, I cannot prove what’s above, my “beyond a shadow of doubt” remark notwithstanding. But what’s below, while not surprising, is dispiriting.
Peter Bart is a movie exec turned Editor in Chief of Hollywood’s Bible, Variety. Assessing the troubled state of the movie industry and its apparent “competitive necessities,” he concluded that the heart of the problem might well be captured by the following revolting sentence: “Not long ago, I heard one studio chief utter the unthinkable: ‘What would happen if I made a movie I actually looked forward to seeing?'”
Ho hum.