Film industry reporters (and their editors) love writing about how this or that middle-aged corporate white guy has come into power, and what they’ll do when they start using it. (Or how they lost their grip on it.) Disney’s Bob Iger, the guy taking Michael Eisner’s place, is the current topic. Last week it was Howard Stringer becoming the first non-Japanese Sony CEO. The Weinstein brothers had the heat in February for concluding contractual talks about relinquishing Miramax to Disney, and announcing their plans to start a new operation. Paramount’s Brad Grey was the guy in January…and believe me, nobody outside of a small New York-Los Angeles clique cares. Because corporate white guys don’t affect the movies — filmmakers and their producers do. Brad Grey and his boss, Tom Freston, are, in some ways, going to make Paramount Pictures more of a go-getter operation than Sherry Lansing’s Paramount was…fine. And there’s a certain fascination in the drama of corporate samurais acquiring and losing power. But they’re all the same white guy to me…different faces, same suits, slightly different haircuts…each serving the same sociopathic corporate goals. CWG’s come and go, and the only people who perk up and say, “Look…a new CWG has replaced the previous CWG!” are these reporters, their editors and publishers, and a small elite readership (i.e., regular readers of Variety, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, etc.) “Maybe [Iger] really has a vision for the future that Michael Eisner hasn’t seen,” David Poland wrote the other day. “Of course, even if he does, he has another problem: no one is anticipating real change under Iger.” Uhh…David? No one anywhere anticipates real change from any CWG, ever. They couldn’t be more interchangable.

“In a couple of days throngs of movie theater owners and managers will descend on Las Vegas for four days of schmoozing, a smattering of screenings, a Mobius strip of meals and receptions, seminars and sundry other activities. It’s called ShoWest”… and most of these exhibition guys will be secretly miserable, because Vegas is the worst money-grubbing place in the world and the vibes are seriously awful. Unless you’re someone like Len Klady, it’s a tolerable environment for roughly four to six hours and then it’s agony…all you want is to leave and never come back.