Does Hollywood Have A 'Swamp Thing'?

The Swamp Is Mostly Attached To Politics, Yet Lately, Hollywood Seems To Mirror Washington DC In Its Swampy Soaked Shenanigans

Despite its less than stellar popularity, universal or even broad appeal, Swamp Thing remains one of my all time favorite DC superhero movies. Guilty pleasure? Odd comic book movie out? Maybe. We all have em, but I’d stack the sheer high quality of this film against many of the digital drowned titles of today’s caped crusaders.

Way before mega success of The Avengers and Aquaman or the sad disasters of The Flash and The Marvels, this Wes Craven directed comic book blast, starring Adrienne Barbeau and Louis Jordan gave comic book fans a fun and juicy cinematic romp. Starring actors Ray Wise and Dick Durock as the title character - sharing performing duties like David Prowse (body) and James Earl Jones (voice) with Darth Vader - this 1982 release may not be an outright classic, but as a dedicated swampy fan for years, it joyously delivered for me.

Thing In The Swamp

As screenwriters and actors recover from long, thunderous WGA and SAG strikes, I reflected on how much Hollywood - far more as an industry or concept than town/place - seems to mimic the deadly wilds of Swamp Thing alter ago Dr. Holland’s beloved untamed terrain, an overpopulated home to flies, frogs, snakes and gators.

DVD Cover

It’s not merely that the creative backbone of the movie and TV industry had to fight for a more well deserved seat at the money sorting table, but how willing and easy Hollywood studios were so quick to deny just pay/royalties to hard working scribes and performers. Not to mention eager to employ the bewitching tricks of AI to replicate the soul baring output of both acting and writing creatives.

Can good, clear meaningful writing truly be automated and churned out by a language modeling robot?

This last point can’t be underscored enough. The scripts used to blueprint out your movie and TV stories are developed and honed by living human beings with real life history and backstory as dynamic, uplifting and even as heartbreaking as the tales we tell you as writers in filmed entertainment. To think studios execs sought to bypass this process, to speed it up and to save money is kind of shocking. Pretty revolting. Definitely swampy.

Any industry seeks to be more economical. But the often indefinable artistic equations necessary in much of what is termed filmed entertainment or pop culture have always balanced precariously. Watch out! Here comes the AI Scribe! It will out plot a team of writers in a fraction of the time and price.

Perhaps sci-fi writers such as myself have a unique, even intimate connection and experience with dealing with the promises, danger and complexities of computer generated content. Writing for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine enabled me to deal with the many What If questions a futuristic high tech society hundreds of years hence would be grappling over.

Captain Picard’s Enterprise and Starfleet’s AI sentient android, Data, are still centuries removed. But here we are now employing tech which looks pretty darned close to what those space explorers use. ChatGPT isn’t the Holodeck - yet - but it’s humming along and constantly evolving.

And now we ask: What price to pay?

Of course, you usually get what you pay for, and if you’ve read some of the AI test scripts I have consumed, you wouldn’t even offer up a few bucks for them. The cheap shoddiness of these cyber knock-offs of human crafted scripts will undoubtedly get better. This existential challenge to artists will continue, and there’s no easy answer. Since, for example, reality shows or game shows don’t need such deeply emotionally interconnected banter or dialogue, AI tweaking won’t go away. The philosophical debate will go forward, but there are other pressing, grounding issues far more easily resolved. Namely: Money.

Payment On Delivery

Everyone needs to get paid.

Streaming Royalty

Streaming used to be something of a a cool novelty. If you did it a few years ago, you were the new kid with the new tech toy on the block. It’s now pretty standard and employed in most households. And like just about everything else important in life, it’s all about the money.

We sign up to streamers more and more and even the cheapest of them start to add up. Like a tasty chip, it’s hard to stop at one. How about suffering from FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out? I never did keep up with Game of Thrones, House of Dragons or Stranger Things. I really don’t mind, but there are many of us who just can’t admit to family, friends or colleagues they aren’t binging all that new, trendy content.

Consider the new immense profit stream for studios from streaming. WGA and SAG strike points also rested on how much of a percentage creatives should get from streaming distribution. Cut up that profit pie.

No matter if studios argue their streaming platforms aren’t reaping such lucrative returns yet, writers and actors need to earn a decent living. Before the strike, the royalty process for artists within your favorite streamers such as Netflix, Peacock, Disney + or Hulu was effectively cloaked in accounting sleight of hand. Reportedly, the new deals are far better, with both unions boasting strike deals are an unprecedented beneficial deal for their members.

It’s always something new to bedevil the clarity and fairness of the system. I recall even when DVDs were launched, and that was over a generation ago, artists would struggle to understand why IP holders weren’t paying them a perceived fair cut of the entertainment pie. There were restrictions or the rules just weren’t in place so royalties were either limited or nil. Where’s that pizza profit pie cutter?

Did SAG leader Fran Drescher, the once love to be irritated by sitcom Nanny morph into the noble, intrepid Dr. Holland aka Swamp Thing to clean up Hollywood’s swampy mess? Apparently, and for now, Hollywood smells a wee bit less of a slimy quagmire, until, I suppose the next big way to cut corners comes down the tech infused pike. Swamp Thing, please, don’t go anywhere, we will need you again!