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The text message from Ashok

stood out in bold block letters on the

small screen of Josh Lewis$$s iPhone.

Am I ever, Josh thought, stuffing

the device back into his pocket and

emphatically rolling his chair away

from his PC and the backlit spreadsheets

and formulas that had made

his eyes bloodshot and his mood sour.

He stood up$,$ stretched, and took a

minute to consider his plight: For the

past three days, he$$d been crunching

U$.$S$.$ and international fi lm sales, attendance,

and merchandising fi gures

nonstop for his boss, Sarah Bennett,

the marketing chief of the movie division

of Rising Entertainment. Bennett and her team were in

the midst of prepping the promotions, advertising, and branding

plan for the next Fire Force Five fi lm; her presentation to

the company$$s CEO, its head of distribution, and other unit

leaders was planned for Friday.

Two more days $$ many more hours, many more stats to go

over before I sleep, the $23-$year$-$old marketing associate estimated.

He plunked himself back down in his chair.

A recent graduate of the University of Southern California,

Josh had had visions of making fi lms that off ered strong

social commentary $$ like Al Gore$$s An

Inconvenient Truth or Morgan Spurlock$$s

Super Size Me $$ and distributing

them on open platforms so that

his message could reach the greatest

number of people. With some

championing from his uncle $$ a wellregarded

TV producer who knew

people who knew people $$ Josh

joined Rising Entertainment, one of

the top three multimedia production

and distribution houses in the

world. The company boasted large

fi lm$,$ television, home video, music,

and licensed merchandise units, with

a catalog of thousands of properties.

Josh expected that the studio, with

its location in the heart of Los Angeles and satellite offi ces in

six countries, would off er plenty of excitement and opportunity

$$ ever$-$present TV and fi lm shoots on the lots, hobnobbing

with industry power brokers, the inevitable off ers from competing

studios, and, of course, the terrifi c LA nightlife. But now,

with $10$ months on the job, and most of that time relegated to

mundane, ancillary projects that informed the bigger initiatives

his boss was spearheading, Josh was feeling numb. Who

would have thought that life in a big movie studio could be

$1$ Are