Oh, man, this looks like a fun series by Christopher Orr.

From Cinephilia and Beyond.

And this in today’s Times:

Ethan We’ve always actually been remarkably commercially successful. Not in terms of making huge amounts of money, which we rarely do, but in terms of not losing money and making modest amounts of money. We’re actually strangely consistent in that respect. We’ve been able to keep making movies because of that and also because, strangely, we’ve had studio patrons, starting from Barry Diller. Sometimes they’re establishment people who know they’re not going to make huge amounts of money, but they like your movies. They’re moviegoers, too.

Joel And mostly they’re making blockbusters, but when you get in a room with them, they go, “Go off and make your movie, and I’ll do it as long as I can’t get hurt too bad.” You know? They’re completely open to that still. They don’t want to get burned.

Ethan They don’t want to look stupid.

Joel Nobody wants to look stupid or lose lots of money. On the other hand, they’re not afraid of doing other stuff if they can trust you to keep it reasonable. So, yeah, they kind of let us wander off without any adult supervision and do what we want.