Brad Grey is a TV guy. (You know him, if for no other reason, because he is one of the men behind The Sopranos.) TV guys are not supposed to know anything about movies.
And yet, Brad Grey is running one of the oldest and most respected movie studios in America -- Paramount Pictures, an outfit which, according to one of Grey's collegues, is "on our way to making money", quite an accomplishment in today's Hollywood -- and this weekend will see the release of Cloverfield, a huge gamble that Grey greenlighted at significant personal risk (and which is the product of J.J. Abrams, another TV guy).
In an interesting interview with the New York Times, Grey discusses his trial by fire as the head of Paramount, the management shuffles that accompanied his rise to the top, and his conception of Abrams as the Spielberg to his Lew Wasserman. It's fascinating not only because of what Grey has to say -- a typical producer's mix of cautiousness and braggadocio, but without the guarded defensiveness that usually comes with habitiual ass-covering -- but because of the insight it has into the business of running a studio at a time when business is shakier than ever and very little gets produced at the top end without a guarantee of making money. It's in light of situations like this that whether or not Cloverfield succeeds will mean a lot more than the failure of a single movie.
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