Entertainment Industry

It can be dangerous to diss an entire town of divas. When it comes to his relationship with Hollywood, though, President Obama seems willing to run the risk. Industry support for the new president is broad and deep and the film and television communities not only raised money for his presidential campaign at crucial junctures but also provided celebrities who worked the ground campaign in some of the toughest state primaries.

Hollywood is littered with failed entertainment companies started by starry-eyed moguls with dreams of taking on the big studios and competing alongside them. In the case of one, success brought with it something of a nightmare. Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.

If Brian Quintana, an events planner who bills himself as "the billionaire's Hollywood go-to guy," is to be believed, the last decade and a half of his life has been marked by a series of startlingly abusive relationships with celebrities. If he is to be believed, actress Stefanie Powers sexually assaulted him, socialite Paris Hilton tried to wreck him professionally and movie producer Jon Peters solicited him to commit murder.

With the heads of Warner Bros. signing only two-year contract extensions, Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes will focus on succession and how the movie and television studio should be managed in the face of tectonic shifts in the entertainment industry and a harsh economic environment.

It's become a kind of cliche to refer to Hollywood as the ATM of American politics. There's an important difference, however, between your bank's cash dispenser and the Industry: One really is a machine and the other is an intricate network of very sensitive people with egos that require a special sort of care and feeding. These days, even the most politically committed of those people seem to be grappling with fundraising fatigue.

As the economy stumbles, artists are feeling the hurt as badly as workers in other industries, entertainment professionals told a House committee Thursday. And arts funding, often a target when budget cuts are made, should be protected, they said.

After weeks of back-channel talks, Hollywood's biggest actors union and the major studios appear to have broken their logjam and could be close to striking a deal on a contract, according to people close to the situation. The agreement would come as a breakthrough for the Screen Actors Guild, whose members have been working without a contract for nine months as various attempts at negotiations with the studios collapsed.

When Adam Hendricks wants an obscure film that isn't available on Netflix, he isn't exactly out of options. The 26-year-old West Hollywood resident turns to one of the dozens of "torrent tracking" websites that index and make searchable the hundreds of millions of files -- some legal, most not -- distributed on the Web via the BitTorrent file transfer technology. "It's really easy," he said, listing a number of popular sites. "I use isoHunt first and Pirate Bay sometimes.

For Hollywood actors, the third act was anticlimactic. After a year of warring with studios, another union and even among themselves, Hollywood's actors finally reached an accord Friday for a new labor contract, signaling an end to a costly drama that roiled the entertainment industry just as it tumbled into the worst economic downturn in decades.

When the late Jack Valenti held court, with his silver mane, White House contacts and celebrity friends, the Motion Picture Assn. of America boasted the Washington lobbying establishment's equivalent of the double feature: political clout playing alongside Hollywood glitz. Politicians and other power brokers snapped up invitations to private screenings of new movies in the MPAA's 70-seat theater just two blocks from the White House.