Artists as Entrepreneurs
A few bloggers have noticed a post that Netscape founder Marc Andreessen posted last week. He proposes that, given the precarious state of Hollywood’s control over…just about everything, the WGA strike could serve as a tipping point at which the structure of Hollywood changes to one similar to Silicon Valley, where the artists become entrepreneurs and each film is its own independent start-up company. Yet another blockquote:
But here we are, living in a world in which the bottlenecks have suddenly become irrelevant.
I don’t think there’s any question that this is the logical model to pursue in the age of the Internet — the age of free distribution and marketing.
Suppose the writers’ strike continues for months to come — and even beyond that, suppose the actors or the directors also go on strike. In such a scenario, it is hard to see how many companies based on this new model won’t be created extremely quickly — after all, if you really can’t work for the Man, why not start your own company, if you can?
