My friend Karen over at Scarlett Cinema has written an excellent response to this article in the New York Times, about laid-off i-bankers who, thanks to being forced to take six-figure severance packages as their companies collapse, are finally able to pursue their creative and artistic dreams.
Karen is eloquent as always, so I won't repeat her arguments. But I will say that, having worked at the same Times-Square-based financial company she mentions in her post, I also reacted to the New York Times article with a big dose of "reeeeaalllly?"
Does Hollywood, one of the most white-male-dominated industries in the US, really need an infusion of "talent" from the financial world...another one of the most white-male-dominated industries in the US?
Of course, all four former bankers interviewed for the article--all executives--are men. I cannot say whether they are all white, but, having worked in the financial industry, I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess yes. I found it interesting that the first guy interviewed has dreams of sketch comedy--probably the most white-male-dominated art scene in New York. His group has secured a spot in the Chicago Sketch Comedy Festival. Now that he'll no longer be distracted by his day job as an executive director at Morgan Stanley, I'm sure they'll have a TV show on FUSE and a movie in the works within a year.
If the New York Times article shows anything, it's simply the persistent unreality that a large swath of New York City (like these people right here) lives in, where the arts are a hobby to entertain the rich between various money-making adventures.
Interestingly, one of the auto-generated links on Scarlett Cinema as I was reading Karen's piece was to this Washington Post article, about the Oscar-nomination gender gap. Not only is it interesting, but it's FROM THE FUTURE!
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