The Business

We put Hollywood on the couch with writer-turned-therapist Dennis Palumbo.

Pixar's Brad Bird just received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Writers' Guild. So this week we revisit our conversation with the creator of The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Plus, the entertainment industry home team.

The uneasy alliance between the two actors' unions has turned into outright hostility. Plus, the unions want money from the digital future. When will that future arrive? Finally, who gets credit before the credits roll?

There's been a mad game of musical chairs in the agency business in the last few of weeks. The agency business is changing, but the relationship between agents and clients seems to be as quirky as ever.

Using Tax Day as a very weak hook, we talk to the man who helped clear Wesley Snipes of tax fraud conspiracy charges. The question: what are the special challenges of representing a celebrity in court?

Hollywood's actors' unions file for an untimely divorce. Then, what happens when a novice TV writer gets her own show?

In a town where actors are more likely to wait tables than wait in the wings, how do you define a working actor?  That's the central question in our lively conversation with two actors. How SAG answers that question may determine if there's a strike. Plus, this year's ShoWest movie exhibitors' conference.

Jim Keyes was the former CEO of 7-11 stores.  Now he's applying the lessons of the Big Gulp to the small screen at the troubled video-rental giant Blockbuster. Plus, Variety game reviewer Ben Fritz asks, "Why are hardcore video gamers so sensitive?"  And good agentry with writer and producer Rob Long.

Video games are an $18 billion business in the US, and they just keep growing. Will Hollywood studios get in on some of that interactive action? Plus, will TV's increasingly pilotless way of making shows crash and burn?

What happens when a studio executive comes out from behind his desk to direct a major motion picture? We talk to Kent Alterman, formerly New Line Cinema's EVP of Production and now the Director of Semi-Pro. Plus, we say goodbye to HD-DVD.