Decisiveness

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Because four guys working for Quantum of Solace, the currently rolling James Bond film, suffered three accidents over a five-day period -- the Aston Martin accident last Saturday, another car accident on Monday, and a third one yesterday involving a near-fatality -- the producers have shut down production?

Why -- to wait for the curse to lift? To give the producers time to bring in a Catholic exorcist? Either the drivers were drinking, they don't know how to drive, or it's just bad luck. If guys are getting into car accidents and you want to "do" something about it, doesn't it make sense to go to the guy who hired them and cut him loose? Fire this person and at least you've "done" something ...even it it doesn't seem to make much sense. But you don't shut down the shoot.

This reminds me an incident during my tenure as manager of the Carnegie Hall Cinema in '78. My boss was the late Sid Geffen, known affectionately in New York exhibition circles as an eccentric fellow. One day the ticket-seller, a pretty woman in her 20s, was held up while sitting inside the street-level booth. Terrified, she passed whatever money she had to the thief, slipping it through the slot. Two days later the same thief came back and robbed her again. Sid's response was to fire the ticket-seller. He figured she was either a jinx or in on the deal. Either way Sid has "done" something about the problem. The person who replaced the girl, by the way, never got hit.

This reminds me of another Sid Geffen employee-relations story. Sid was a gifted b.s. artist who liked to use high-falutin' blah-blah to mask his basic agenda. One day he called an employee into his office and said, "I've come to realize that I'm holding you back...I'm standing in your way...I'm keeping you from the progress you need to make in your life." The guy listened for three or four minutes and said, "So Sid...you're firing me, right?" Geffen was adamant. "No," he said, "I'm graduating you!"