No wonder Vaudevillians made so much progress in such a short time; they believed in holding crisis meetings. When an act failed to get a "wow" response, the troupe held a crisis meeting the moment the curtain came down. The agenda: "What did we do wrong!?"
These were serious meetings. Everyone knew that some other act was backstage with the theater owner at that very moment saying, "Did you see how nobody laughed at that last act? They obviously don't know what they're doing, and it's costing YOU money. Now, if you had put US in there..." The troupe felt it's very survival was at stake. They tried to isolate what the problem was and fix it then and there. That's a formula for progress.
That's what modern animation needs...crisis meetings. We need a producer who is personally offended when another studio or another unit seems to be doing something better than his own.
I'm often amazed when companies don't take competition seriously. They're always ready with an excuse if the TV show or movie doesn't grab the public. Not enough people face the fact that shows fail because they're just not entertaining.
Bosses should get mad more often. The boss gave us all work in the belief that he would get a decent return on his investment. He's entitled to a righteous rant. Seriously, we should be ashamed if we don't deliver the goods.
