In my post The Curse of Private Business: Nepotism, I have touched on the damage this phenomenon affects on commercial enterprises and its unfairness to people who still believe in the power of merit-based rewards. It is a complicated topic, though, because when it comes to our own kids we are dedicated to their support. Assuming, of course, they deserve it, right? It's the undeserving support that's problematic.
At the end, to underscore the pervasiveness of this issue I pointed the readers to familiar territory:
"... the industry where nepotism is the most prevalent is the one that suffers the most from lack of fresh talent - the entertainment business."
Last week, I was told that an IMDb community's member (Feodor8, I believe) contributed to this very topic. I only had time for a quick look and now the disucssion has been removed. Even without the original material at hand, I would like to comment on few aspects of the "article."
I hope that the piece was deleted due to the author's aggressive attitude, which irked me as well, and not because the topic was deemed too sensitive. The poster didn't need to resort to offensive tirades and bickering with his commenters.
Considering how intensely he feels about this issue, I found this movie fan's list of Hollywood players with family connections under-researched. Let me visualize it... Talia Shire was there, but strangely her son, the adorable and talented Jason Schwartzman was not. Futher into the Coppola clan, Sophia was present, but her brother, director Roman was not. Was Nick Cage (born Coppola) there? None of the three younger Balwin brothers, who followed Alec into the acting trade, were mentioned. Alexis Arquette got on the list, but her immensly talented sisters Rosanna and Patricia did not (I don't remember whether David was there). I could go on and on.
Why do it at all, if you do it half-assed? This is so typical - people complain about quality, but cannot live up to their own demands. The same goes for the general public's opinion-forming process: the prevailing tendency is just to scrape the surface without looking into the root of a problem. The "article's" author blamed the plunging quality of the entire American cinema on people with family ties, even the talented and hard-working. That's just superficial.
Remember, this is a CFO's blog. Filmmaking is commercial enterprising and like any business it abides by basic economic law of supply and demand. The power is with the movie-going audience. If they did not pay their hard-earned money to see the movies feodor8 rightfully condemned, the studios wouldn't finance them.
In the past 5 years Angelina Jolie (Midnight Cowboy Jon Voight' daughter) starred in 7 feature movies. How many of them did I see? None. Yet, in the US alone they earned $440 million in the box office; all commercial successes!!! That's the demand, and the supply follows. The quality of filmmaking is in your hands. As long as the audience paying for crap, it will be made.