The Business

Ang Lee turned a gay cowboy movie into Oscar gold and box-office green, but can his new film overcome a rating of NC-17? Plus, the high-risk gamble of self-distributing a low-budget film.

After a high-profile legal battle to take his name off American History X and replace it with a wacky pseudonym, Tony Kaye became persona non grata in Hollywood. Nearly a decade later, he's back with a new documentary in theaters and two features on the way.

Mad Men is a series on the cable network AMC, set in the New York ad world of the 1960's.  While the show showcases a variety of real world products, not all of them pay for the privilege.

The William Morris mailroom is the high-stress, low-pay, sanctum sanctorum of show biz. It can lead you straight to the top or leave you in strait jacket. Plus, what does it mean when a writer takes his name off a film?

A conversation about the vital, essential, but ultimately disposable Hollywood writer with Oscar-winner Akiva Goldsman .  Plus, an agency assistant says 'goodbye, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu' in an e-mail that got Hollywood's tongues awaggin.'

Samuel Goldwyn said, "The harder I work, the luckier I get." We catch up with writer/director Richard Shepard who got "lucky" at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005.  Plus, residuals, revisited.

The $37 billion business that mainstream journalists and Hollywood can no longer afford to ignore--it's a look at the burgeoning video game industry.  Plus, we revisit our chat with agent to the (underage) stars, Bonnie Liedtke .

Who gets paid what and why in Hollywood? We talk back-end, quotes and residuals with agent and manager-turned-producer Gavin Polone.  Plus, halting the slippery slope for out-of-control celebrities who might be on their way to prison.

It's a case of life imitating art imitating life! We talk with a filmmaker who had to convince U2 to OK his movie about a man trying to convince U2 to play a concert. Plus, are we seeing the last residuals of residuals?"

We talk to former studio chief and super fundraiser Tom Sherak about getting the big shots to share their kibble in a dog-eat-dog industry.  Plus, on the occasion of Lindsay Lohan's re-arrest, we re-visit celebrity spin-doctor Mike Sitrick .

While Jack Sparrow and his crew were raking in buckets of dubloons at the box office, pirates of a different kind were plundering Hollywood's treasure chest.

What does it mean for your TV show to be on the bubble? We speak with the producers of Scrubs and Jericho about coming back from the brink of extinction.

He wrote, directed, produced and starred in the 2004 indie comedy The Almost Guys , but given the rest of his experience in Hollywood, "the almost guy" is a label he's fighting to avoid.

Dove beauty products inked an inventive deal to help finance the long-languishing remake of the 1939 classic The Women . Plus, what's a first assistant director?

Hollywood's spin-doctor on the recent epidemic of celebrity scandal. Plus, Hollywood fundraising for a Republican presidential candidate.

We look at the wonderful world of the great white way through the lens of a new documentary called Show Business: The Road to Broadway .

After NBC fired its president, we ask another former programming chief about the upside of getting canned.   Plus, would-be presidents come to Hollywood in search of dead presidents.

This week on The Business, will changes to the way movies are rated change what you see on the big screen? We'll talk to the head of the MPAA's rating board about what's new and why. And, what can different ratings mean for a movie's box office potential? Plus, a report from the Cannes Film Festival.

Horror films are once again scaring up terrifying box office numbers! We check in with the director of the wildly successful Hostel movies, then cut to the producer of the Saw movies.

An unusually candid conversation about race and writing for movies and television.  Then, the new Writers Guild report on how white the writer's room remains.

Is Spider-Man 3 the most expensive movie ever made?  And why should we care?   Plus, life's a pitch, and then you write...

Is that laughter coming from your television fresh or canned?  We talk to Chuck Lorre , creator of some of the most popular sitcoms in TV history.  Plus, USC students practice the art of the pitch--and we ain't talking about baseball.

We use the funny new feature film, The TV Set , to show how real television pilots fight their way to the little screen. Plus, a conversation with the agent-turned-author of Hollywood Girls Club , the deliciously salacious and sometimes true novel about women and power in Hollywood.

For the past 30 years, Stan Winston 's Studio has built some of the scariest and most memorable film effects by hand.  But are digital effects rendering Winston's old-fashioned movie magic obsolete--or indispensable?

HBO's hit show Entourage goes deep inside the business of show business. This week, we go deep inside Entourage with the show's creator, Doug Ellin .