You Have To Know What's Wrong Before You Can Fix Something, And That May Be Just Hopeless

To be honest, I was kind of dreading it, but I knew I had to get to it sooner or later. I was asked to sign a release form for a couple of scenes I was in in a soon-to-be-released film about the band Ministry, Fix. I had asked to see a screener, and it had arrived and was sitting next to my computer unopened for nearly a week.

The director called and asked what I thought. So a few nights ago I stuck it on and... wow! I was shocked! It had taken over a decade to make, and... well, it was well worth the effort. It's the real thing-- the kind of no-holds-barred tell-all story that a band like the Rolling Stones can only wish they had the courage to have made. I expect to write more about the film as we get closer to release date (next year, I think). I'm only bringing it up now because I was reminded of one of my little scenes by a news story the following day about the IMF's economic forecasts, a steep drop in global output and a rebound "later this year."

Before I was a blogger, I was a president. I ran Reprise Records, a division of AOL-TimeWarner. One of my jobs was to do the kinds of projections that millions of businesses do that go into national and international forecasts like the dire IMF one linked above. I spoke about the forecasting in Fix.

A useless political hack from corporate headquarters-- a former hatchetman for New York Governor Hugh Carey who had been recruited by our corporation to do the dirty work involved in axing the failing Atari division of TimeWarner had done so well that he was rewarded with a sinecure, a make-believe job as the head of a nonentity, the Warner Music Group. Technically, he was my boss's boss. But before he was fired, he called me and started screaming because the projected new album by Ministry hadn't been delivered and he needed the 500,000 units.

Keep in mind that I had to project what the album would sell, not just before it was recorded, but before the songs were even written. The music business isn't like a show factory. But the new head of the Warner Music Group didn't know that and couldn't quite understand why it isn't. I tried explaining; he kept screaming. Finally I fessed up: The lead singer had been shooting smack for months and had to get into rehab before he could complete the album. Shock was followed by accusations. Why, he demanded, was I working with drug users? I was wondering why I was wasting my time on the phone with a clueless politician. I told him that all artists are drug users, that it helps their creativity, and that he would have to understand that if he planned a career in the music industry. He hung up on me, and fortunately was fired before he got around to firing me.

I suspect, though I have no way of knowing, that the projecting and forecasting that goes into putting together the numbers that the IMF--and, more important, Wall Street-- gets from shoe factories and car companies and investment firms are more conducive to reliable predictability than the multibillion-dollar entertainment industries'. It allows them to put out statements like this:

The global economy will contract sharply this year and recover only sluggishly in 2010, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday as it called on governments to sustain or even increase fiscal stimulus next year.

A lot goes into those forecasts: wishful thinking, cluelessness, all sorts of pressures, hopes for those mouthwatering bonuses you've been reading about lately, budgets, dreams. Science? Not so much, I suspect.