Todd Harrington

Welcome to a new semi-regular subsection that we like to call the "Bullet-Points Memo." The idea behind BPM is to highlight multiple contemporaneous entertainment business stories that seem interesting to us (and, hopefully, you). We will be pulling stories, ideas...

Socrates said, "Know thyself." A more contemporary philosopher from Oklahoma offered, "If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging." Reading many business stories about Hollywood lately, it quickly becomes apparent that few have embraced either the Athenian master or...

So the holiday season is thick upon us and I have to be honest with you all -- it is my favorite time of the year, especially now that I live in New England. When I lived in Los Angeles,...

So the Twitter-verse erupted the other day with the news that Lena Dunham -- she of the healthy self-image and three-million dollar book advance -- had dared to offer a bunch of volunteer artisans the opportunity to "open" for her...

During my travels, I often get asked by people (both in and outside the Industry): what do I think are some of the keys to a "Hollywood-level" career? There are various things that I offer as examples (being born to...

For the last few days, my various in-boxes have been overflowing with friends, associates and strangers alike wanting to know what I think about the latest apparent revelation courtesy of the interwebs. "Did you know Nic Pizzolatto was a plagiarist??"...

As it's been a while both since I both (a) subjected you all to my Tinsel  Town insights; and (b) talked about some of the building-blocks of Hollywood business practices, I figured now was a good time to kill two...

I don't know if any of you have noticed recently, but the world has gone mad. (Fine, madder.) And I wish it was only things like the imminent melting of Antarctica, the rise of global Holocaust denial and my sudden...

I just returned home from a film festival where I was asked one of the most amazing questions, I think, ever. After sitting on a panel discussing the growing nexus between short-films and Hollywood, this young man -- early to...

The SWAT snipers are climbing down from the Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum roof, traffic is resuming its normal sluggish flow at Hollywood and Highland (the 25-foot anti-blast wall now deconstructed) and soft sobbing and the repeated mantra...

Well, boys and girls, get ready for another writers' strike. The WGA and the AMPTP (The Alliance of Mot... uh, the studios and the networks, basically) just wrapped up two weeks of negotiations on the replacement of their existing agreement,...

For this, our second installment in this exercise of my disabusing you all of the notions of cinematic high art in favor of the realities of the movie business of it all, I thought I would answer one of the...

Hello! My name is Todd and I will be your humble(ish) guide through the sausage factory that is Hollywood.  Or, to be more precise, I will be endeavoring to provide a window into aspects of the business of filmmaking that...