Work is evaporating, businesses are closing, longtime residents are leaving, and the city’s creative middle class is hanging on by a thread.
By Ben Fritz at the Wall Street Journal:
Los Angeles is full of transplants who moved here to pursue dreams of working in movies and TV. Few earned millions as stars or A-list directors. They build the sets, operate the cameras, manage the schedules and make sure everything looks and sounds perfect. The work isn’t steady, because film shoots end and TV shows get canceled. But established professionals had rarely gone more than a few months between gigs—until now.
The entertainment industry is in a downward spiral that began when the dual strikes by actors and writers ended in 2023. Work is evaporating, businesses are closing, longtime residents are leaving, and the heart of L.A.’s creative middle class is hanging on by a thread.
“This is the first year since 1989 that I haven’t had a show to work on,” said Pixie Wespiser, a 62-year-old production manager and producer who has worked on 36 TV series, including the original “Night Court” and its recent revival. “I look around and I see so many people who are seriously suffering.”
At the end of 2024, some 100,000 people were employed in the motion picture industry in Los Angeles County, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Two years earlier, there were 142,000.
The primary reason is that Hollywood is making less stuff.
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Thomas Curley won an Oscar recording the sound on 2014’s “Whiplash” and had more job offers than he knew what to do with as recently as 2022. The 49-year-old hasn’t worked since April of last year, save for one week on a movie that was made in Europe but needed to shoot exteriors in San Francisco.
The hardest part isn’t watching his savings wither while he does home improvement projects and hunts for jobs, Curley said. It’s missing the creative camaraderie he has enjoyed for most of his adult life on movie and TV sets.
“Feeling like you’re part of a team that’s making something that can provide joy for millions of people around the world is what drew me here in the first place,” said the native of upstate New York. “That level of purpose is a really hard thing to let go of.”