Wednesday 20 April 2011

Hollywood Babble On & On #714: Break The Seal, Break The Cycle

It's that time again...

Yep, it's time for me to gripe about something really blatantly obvious.

Today it's about new developments in the ongoing sinking saga of indie film impresario David Bergstein. Recently arguments were being made in bankruptcy court about unsealing the business records of Bergstein's ThinkFilm/Capitol Film indie film production and distribution debacle. They had been unsealed for about 15 minutes before Bergstein and his lawyers got them re-sealed, claiming that he needed to keep them secret.

Well, I say a hearty pshaw and fie on that, these financial records should be unsealed, and made public.

Here's why:
David Bergstein appears to be in the litigation crosshairs of just about everyone he's ever done business with. Unions, banks, investors, vendors, and probably his local paperboy are all suing him.
Businesses where things are done right do not attract that Michael Jackson level of litigation. We, and by "we" I mean all people remotely interested in the business and economics of pop culture need to sort through the stories, the counter-stories, the rumors, and the speculation. We need to know who got paid, who didn't get paid, I'm talking about the complete whos, whats, wheres, and whys of this whole debacle.

Why?

So hopefully we, and by "we" I mean all people interested in the film business, especially potential future investors/creditors/filmmakers, can hopefully avoid having history repeat itself with another independent film company crashing and burning, taking people's money and careers with them.

We need to break that seal, see where things went wrong for all involved, and hopefully break the unnatural cycle of boom followed by self-inflicted bust, that have claimed so many independent film companies in the past.

Isn't that obvious?

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