Later that evening...
The story/rant would end there, but later that evening, I got a chance to address Mr. Ovitz about this stance. It was in a dream, admittedly (and don't ask me why this has become such a dreamblog lately). We were at one of those fancy-schmancy Hollywood parties, you know how it is, and I see Mike (I like to call him Mike), and I say to him, "You said that content was going to drive wireless adoption and use of devices like the Treo. But haven't people demonstrated what they really want to do is communicate? I mean, especially with phones?" And he said something like, "This is how it's going to be..."—all, let's not try to have an intelligent discussion here, let's me tell you, whoever you are, you peon, how it's going to be, because I'm Mike Ovitz, and I am a king of Hollywood (although, admittedly, a much humbler king now, and one who sees the errors of my former insensitive ways, as demonstrated on Charlie Rose). So then I went and got another glass of champagne and tried to find Gwyneth.
Mike Ovitz, "the controversial former Disney executive and founder of Creative Artists Agency" (as this page calls him), was on Charlie Rose last night. He was talking, among other things, about his new ventures and "wireless." He still seems to be under the delusional impressions that: a) The telcos are going to drive the wireless revolution via 3G, even though he underestimated how long it would take to deliver it by 2-3 years (It's still two years out.) and bottom-up 802.11 is going to make it irrelevant by the time it gets here. (I don't know, that's what Morten said, anyway. I think.) And also: b) That "content" is what is going to drive wireless adoption. He talked about the Handspring Treo, for example, and how you could get full-motion video on it (or some similar device). For what? Not video conferencing, but to watch stuff that his "creative people" would be creating. That's just what "consumers" want, right? To watch a movie on their 3" phone screen with its bitchin' sound system. To be fair, he did say that the type of content that would be delivered wouldn't be traditional television or movies, but more, what I call, "blog-type" content. As in, short blurbs, without a schedule. (I have a theory about the blogization of television—spawned more by TiVo than any of this—but that's a whole 'nother thread.) Anyway, people believe what they want to believe, and Mike Ovitz is in the Disney, distorted reality field, content business, so perhaps it makes sense that he still believes what people really want is Hollywood fair instead of what they've demonstrated they really care about when it comes to digital technology: Communication. But geez.