Monday we collectively crossed the rubicon. My emails, zooms, conversations took a darker turn. The USA has changed its name to DumpsterFire. Trump trademarked the name, but it’s been a crowdsourced effort. As the US started locking down again, and even Hong Kong started to re-close theaters, the film world seems to have collectively woken up to the reality that this shit is real and nothing is getting better anytime soon. So what do we do to survive?
 
Small businesses are giving up. Cases are climbing. Schools are in turmoil. Cities, Counties, States and entire Countries that were doing better are not looking good for the future (but I’m mainly writing about the US here). Behind the scenes, I’ve had conversations I can’t detail with experts I can’t name (but anyone who knows me personally can gather that I have some good sources) that public health experts are a) not feeling we’re ready to open as much as we’ve done, and b) are headed towards surges that no one is publicly discussing. And what little we’ve done to prepare, is publicly known to not be enough.
 
Promising developments are starting to fail. I’ve argued about flaws in some of the models, but it has been great to see festivals, distributors, individual filmmakers, and in other arts, things like theater and dance, and even art auctions switching to online offerings, drive-ins and distanced screening ideas. But even here, reports remain the same as elsewhere – because of no centralized leadership, and a forced reliance on ad hoc, entrepreneurial decisions (partly a good thing) – we have a cacophony of shouts for solutions, but no coordination and thus declining attendance, impressions, sales and a lessening in any metric you might measure. The emails between potential collaborators have moved from positive outcomes to private confessions that we’ve been building solutions for a quicker recovery than will ever be possible and far too few of us can weather another 6-12 months or longer in this Sisyphean slog.