Proving “It is never just One Bad Man,” and offering actual solutions
Published in June 2023, the book brought to light even more examples of hostile workplace environments against gender, race, and overall power structure for some of the biggest names in show business for decades.
The back of the book explains,
“Abuse and exploitation of workers is baked into the very foundations of the entertainment industry. To break the cycle and make change that sticks, it’s important to stop looking at headline-making stories as individual events. Instead, one must look closely at the bigger picture, to see how abusers are created, fed, rewarded, allowed to persist, and, with the right tools, how they can be excised.
In Burn It Down, veteran reporter Maureen Ryan does just that. She draws on decades of experience to connect the dots and illuminate the deeper forces sustaining Hollywood’s corrosive culture. Fresh reporting sheds light on problematic situations at companies like Lucasfilm and shows like Lost, Saturday Night Live, The Goldbergs, Sleepy Hollow, Curb Your Enthusiasm and more.
Interviews with actors and famous creatives like Evan Rachel Wood, Harold Perrineau, Damon Lindelof, and Orlando Jones abound. Ryan dismantles, one by one, the myths that the entertainment industry promotes about itself, which have allowed abusers to thrive and the industry to avoid accountability—myths about Hollywood as a meritocracy, what it takes to be creative, the value of human dignity, and more.
Weaving together insights from industry insiders, historical context, and pop-culture analysis, Burn It Down paints a groundbreaking and urgently necessary portrait of what’s gone wrong in the entertainment world—and how we can fix it.”
I had heard about this when Vanity Fair shared a preview of Ryan’s chapter on Lost. I watched since the pilot, was a fan, looking forward to knowing what happens next and more importantly, learning about these strangers that were stranded on a mysterious island. As a viewer, I think it failed by season 3, and in the last half of the series, it just went horribly wrong. It was trying to answer for all the great ideas it started with and was a letdown. Now I learned why some of the best characters/actors were let go, how frustrated the diverse cast was, the way the writers were treated, and how a young showrunner screwed up in making anyone feel heard.
One of the showrunners, Carlton Cuse, a veteran in show business answers Ryan’s emails in the usual cold, standard way through his lawyer. The other showrunner, Damon Lindelof was more willing to have a discussion and acknowledged his wrongdoing. It was his first time as a showrunner. His writers and actors of color did not feel supported, demeaning jokes were made and many were glad to be fired. In one exchange, Lindelof says, “‘But I will say this – I would trade every person who told you that I was talented – I would rather they said I was untalented but decent, rather than a talented monster.’
That is a false binary: people can be talented and decent. Lindelof’s framing is one I encounter a lot, and it belies, or at least hints at, the fundamental belief that if you’re a genius, you’re more or less required to be a monster,” (Ryan, 2023, page 182.)
This section echos a chapter from another well-deserved read for Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma (which you can read me review here). The idea of if you are a genius, you must also be a monster because a tortured artist is only worth paying attention to. Therefore, you are not an artist if you are a decent human being. Or is that true? I discussed with the What Went Wrong Podcast about this. We spoke briefly about one of the greatest books on filmmaking by Sidney Lumet. He was such an unproblematic director, noone said anything bad about him. No reports of assault, no reports of harassment. His films were made on time and within budget. He also made many films that made money and were award winners. So this proves that Lindelof’s framing is a false binary. You can be a decent and talented person. If you want to learn more about the making of Lost, I recommend checking out the What Went Wrong Podcast’s two episodes on it.
For the first 400 pages, Ryan shares many examples of wrongdoing. She has interviews with people who were victimized and witnessed brutality. There was a lack of any justice or change. It was getting redundant. We heard it for decades, we heard even more after the #MeToo Movement.
Then Part Two was roughly 200 pages of actual solutions which I greatly appreciated. Finally, we get some answers, and they aren’t complicated! It can be done in any work situation really. She spoke with experts that included a “shrink,” Richard “Bo” Travis, a screenwriter, Kyra Jones, and Danya Ruttenberg, a rabbi. Ruttenberg wrote, On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World. In it, she outlined a five-stage process for a more effective form of apology that would make an actual change in behavior. “The first step is for transgressors to fully and completely own what they did…
The second step may sound easy, but it’s the hardest one, and it can take the most time, if it’s performed in a meaningful way: the perpetrator must actually change…
Step three features many potential pitfalls: the person who did the damage should ask those whom they harmed what they need – and if the survivor(s) are responsive to a dialogue on the topic, the harm-doer should then make every effort to supply those things. Even if the person or people harmed aren’t open to that conversation, valuable work can still be done…
Next we arrive at step four: the apology. That garbled set of words that a celebrity taps out on the notes app, or has their team write for them, before gearing up for an awards campaign or a red carpet, or heading out on a comeback tour. All exhausted joking aside, when someone messes up, there is a big difference between saying some version of ‘I don’t want to feel bad about this anymore,’ and sincerely understanding the damage done and stating ‘I’m profoundly sorry I harmed.’ As I said to Ruttenberg, those are very different statements.
‘Exactly,’ Ruttenberg answered. One of the great things about the rabbi’s plan is that it is full of concepts a child could understand. She said, ‘I’ve trained my kids- when they screw up, which is daily – that the first words out of their mouths should not be, ‘I’m sorry,’ but rather, ‘Are you okay?’ and then it’s ‘I’m sorry.’’
The fifth step is also not especially difficult to understand: ‘Drumroll, please: not doing the thing again,’ Ruttenberg said,” (Ryan, 2023, page 402-410.)
Jones shared what she learned about restorative justice. “It’s not really about, ‘How do we redeem the person who caused harm in the eyes of the community?’ That doesn’t matter. And it’s not the focused on punishment, because punishment…that’s just the simplest term. Like, ‘You did a bad thing to someone, so a bad this also has to happen to you.’ That doesn’t actually help anybody. But there are consequences related to the harm done – a concept similar to what Ruttenberg laid out.
“For example, ‘This person caused harm to a child and they are a teacher. This person should not be a teacher anymore,” Jones said. “Even if they finish the restorative justice process, they should not be put in the environment where they get access to the type of people that they harm. So when people in the industry are like, “Why does this person have to lose their deal? Why are they losing their TV show?’ Because they caused harm to the people on the TV show. So they don’t get a TV show anymore. It’s not a punishment – it’s safety measure,” (Ryan, 2023, page 422).
The book finishes off with some extra tips for any company and business to consider to make a safe environment for all their employees. Here are just a few:
-Meaningfully vet the people you hire for positions of authority.
-Train and supervise the people you put in positions of authority.
– Understand that changing industry cultures take time and if you don’t commit to the long haul, it’ll fail.
-Ban alcohol and drugs from the workplace as they increased incidents of harassment and disrespectful behavior.
-Have a succession plan prepared for a change of leadership to protect projects and employees.
– Have agencies donate commissions from abusive or toxic clients to organizations that provide training and jobs for people from historically excluded groups.
“That’s why ‘if you stepped on somebody’s toe, you’d better pay their medical bill,’ Ruttenberg said.”
(Ryan, 2023, page 404)
-Require in-person or live, bystander intervention training that addresses sexual harassment, discrimination, bullying and racism for all employees.
I would recommend this book, especially for Part 2. The three experts do give great examples, research and reasoning for their suggested and proven solutions to changing a hostile work place. Part 1, honestly, after a while, I sped read because we heard it all before. There were so many examples. I appreciated the second part and wish we got to it faster. Overall, I am glad this book exists. We not only hear from people who lived it, but from people who are working to make a change and seeing it happen.
