"My last days at MGM were like the fall of the Roman Empire in fast motion"
About this Quote
A studio breakup rarely gets compared to Rome collapsing unless the storyteller is smuggling in something bigger than a bad week at work. Joseph Barbera frames his last days at MGM as an accelerated empire-fall because MGM wasn’t just an employer; it was a world-system. In that one image, he compresses bureaucracy, decadence, panic, and looting into a single, cinematic shudder. “Fast motion” does the extra work: Hollywood collapses aren’t slow tragedies, they’re edited like slapstick, with careers, budgets, and loyalties slipping on banana peels.
The intent is partly protective mythmaking. Barbera, a cartoonist whose medium thrives on exaggeration, uses hyperbole as a truth-telling tool. By reaching for Rome, he elevates an industry shake-up into a civilizational event, which conveniently dignifies his own exit: if the empire is burning, leaving isn’t failure, it’s survival. The subtext is about a shift in power. The old studio model - lavish, centralized, vertically integrated - was starting to crack under TV, changing audience habits, and corporate cost-cutting. When empires fall, the artisans get blamed, the accountants take over, and the creative energy scatters.
There’s also a sly wink embedded in the drama. Barbera helped pioneer a new kind of “post-imperial” animation economy at Hanna-Barbera: lean production built for television’s pace. The line quietly positions him not as a casualty of Rome, but as someone already sketching the next city while the marble columns toppled.
The intent is partly protective mythmaking. Barbera, a cartoonist whose medium thrives on exaggeration, uses hyperbole as a truth-telling tool. By reaching for Rome, he elevates an industry shake-up into a civilizational event, which conveniently dignifies his own exit: if the empire is burning, leaving isn’t failure, it’s survival. The subtext is about a shift in power. The old studio model - lavish, centralized, vertically integrated - was starting to crack under TV, changing audience habits, and corporate cost-cutting. When empires fall, the artisans get blamed, the accountants take over, and the creative energy scatters.
There’s also a sly wink embedded in the drama. Barbera helped pioneer a new kind of “post-imperial” animation economy at Hanna-Barbera: lean production built for television’s pace. The line quietly positions him not as a casualty of Rome, but as someone already sketching the next city while the marble columns toppled.
Quote Details
| Topic | Career |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Barbera, Joseph. (n.d.). My last days at MGM were like the fall of the Roman Empire in fast motion. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-last-days-at-mgm-were-like-the-fall-of-the-24251/
Chicago Style
Barbera, Joseph. "My last days at MGM were like the fall of the Roman Empire in fast motion." FixQuotes. Accessed February 3, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-last-days-at-mgm-were-like-the-fall-of-the-24251/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"My last days at MGM were like the fall of the Roman Empire in fast motion." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-last-days-at-mgm-were-like-the-fall-of-the-24251/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2026.
More Quotes by Joseph
Add to List
