Politics & Power Quote by Joe Eszterhas

Hollywood, in Eszterhas's telling, isn't a dream factory so much as a risk-management bureaucracy with better lighting. His comparison to politics lands because it refuses the industry its favorite alibi: that decisions are driven by taste, instinct, or some mystical sense of audience. Instead, he describes a room full of executives performing caution as a group sport, waiting not for insight but for permission.

The intent is bluntly demystifying and a little vengeful. Eszterhas came up in an era when the screenwriter could be both celebrity and scapegoat, and his scripts often carried real commercial heat. That vantage point sharpens the subtext: power in Hollywood is less about having vision than about avoiding blame. The executive who speaks first takes on exposure; the executive who echoes "consensus" purchases safety. It's not cowardice as a personality flaw but as an incentive structure.

The politics analogy is doing double duty. "Focus groups, opinion polls, or a cabinet" collapses entertainment and governance into the same feedback loop: decisions justified by imagined majorities. It's a critique of how institutions outsource judgment to the aura of data and collective agreement, then call the result "strategy". The room isn't silent because no one has opinions; it's silent because opinions are liabilities.

Context matters: Eszterhas's Hollywood was increasingly corporate, increasingly obsessed with opening weekends and market testing. His line catches that moment when creative risk became a PR problem, and consensus became the only story executives could sell about themselves.