YOU RAN RIGHT INTO THAT ONE

Come on President Obama. I'm no political strategist, but with the November midterm election right around the corner, I would never have handed the Republicans a meaty bone the size of OK-ing a mosque being built near Ground Zero. Like the Roadrunner, Republicans painted a tunnel on the side of a rock. The Roadrunning Republicans ran right through the tunnel. And President Obama ended up like Wil E. Coyote - instead of zooming through the tunnel, you ran right into the rock wall. Who is running strategy at the White House? Politics 101 students at GWU?

How a Manhattan based zoning issue turned into a national referendum is beyond me, but this is the polarizing political climate we live in today. I'm not sure I understand why is this even a discussion? If a Christian or Jewish terrorist group had committed a terrorist act, would we stop building temples or churches in the United States? No. So why hurt an entire religious group of Americans and punish them for something they had no part of?

90% of the people upset around the country have never even been to New York City. Or seen Ground Zero recently and then walked 2 long blocks away where the Muslim Center is being built. The Muslim Center (that has a mosque inside) will completely rejuvenate that neighborhood. This is a private citizen issue, not a federal political issue. The government has no business or justification to do anything. And that's written into the U.S. Constitution. For those worried about national security, come on. You think the Department of Homeland Security isn't all over that center already? The CIA & FBI will pick up any terrorist who heads to New York City to see the "glory of the mosque."

Everyone please calm down. Building on the World Trade Center site is one thing. Building "near" it is a complete non-issue.

ZAC EFRON IS GOING TO BE A HUGE MOVIE STAR

But not if he keeps making movies like Charlie St. Cloud. What a terrible film. It was like a bad Lifetime movie on a 3rd rate cable channel. You expect me to believe that everyone in this small little town is stunningly beautiful (including the never explained annoying 20 year old Russell Brand clone) and they all work in a graveyard? Everything about the movie was bad. It was like a kid version of Ghost. The movie was just pointless, but damn, the camera does love Zac Efron.

Mr. Efron has it all, the expression, the look, he eats up the screen when he's on camera, and he definitely has the soulful eyes acting down. And that's really all you need to be a movie star. Soulful eyes.

Fortunately I have to give Mr. Efron's management team credit for signing and overall deal for Zac Efron with Warner Bros. Studios. He's trying to transition his career from teen star into serious adult actor. And while I get where he's going with this, a few more misstep like Charlie St. Cloud and this could be the has been who never was story.

In my opinion what Zac Efron really needs is a film where he has a gun in his hand. Look, the kid is in his prime. The scenes where he was fake water-sliding in CSC showed off his well known dancing physique. He's got his late 30's and 40's to be "Mr. Pretty But Serious Academy Award Contender" Until then, pick a superhero picture or something with you killing bad guys and getting hot girls. Bang out a few worldwide $200 million dollar pictures and then you can take your pick of directors and art house films.

While Leonardo DiCaprio is one of my favorite actors of all time, Zac Efron should be taking a page from Brad Pitt's book. Work the whole matinée idol in action pics, and then later do your Benjamin Buttons while your with whoever the next Angelina Jolie is. (And after Jonah Hex flopped and she got fired from Transformers 3, Meghan Fox is definitely not the next Angelina Jolie. Meghan Fox cooled down quick).

Warner Bros. will make you a huge movie star Mr. Efron. You heard it here first.

ANGIE JO ROCKED IN SALT!

Tom Cruise made a HUGE mistake not making SALT his next film. I don't know what he was thinking or who advised him when he passed on the movie to make one of Summer 2010's many movie bombs, Knight & Day. Tom Cruise's career had just been resurrected after he had a worldwide hit with Valkyrie. His career was back on track and he could have his pick of films with 5 different scripts from 3 different studios. Mr. Cruise chose most unwisely.

When Tom Cruise passed on SALT and Phillip Noyce (who directed Ms. Jolie in 1999's Bone Collector) was signed to direct, Ms. Jolie made a great selection for her next feature film. Sony made a very smart move retooling the script for her. The script is tight, the directing is fast paced, and once SALT starts up it never slows down. In effect, it's the perfect summer popcorn action thriller.

And Angelina Jolie is great in it. She's sexy, fierce and doing most of her own stunts. In effect, you're watching a movie star shine as bright as a supernova. And I have to give Angelina Jolie a ton of credit for being such a talented actress. People forget that behind her large family, famous husband is a young woman with an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and the only actress working in Hollywood today who can 1. Open a movie on her own and 2. go from showy, sexy action star roles to Academy Award nominated performances playing a frail, weak mother in 1920's Los Angeles (The Changling). Her talent, sexiness, looks, beauty, inner strengths and weaknesses are all on full display in SALT. Seriously, she's worth the $20 million Columbia paid her to make the movie.

And while I'm gushing about Angie Jo, Christmas comes early for me this year. Sony just announced that her next Tom Cruise passed on script, The Tourist will be released on December 10, 2010 with Johnny Depp. Awesome! It's just like 2008 when we were treated to Angie Jo in Wanted and in December, The Changling.

A BUSIER SUMMER?

Last summer I was moving from Miami Beach to Los Angeles. I had to pack up all my clothes, put my car on a flatbed for transportation across the country, shut down my Miami work and start up my LA work, find a broker to find a tenant to rent my condo (I found the broker, but not the tenant), pack for 2 weeks while my life was shipped across the country, coordinate my move out of Miami, coordinate my move to Los Angeles, shut down my utilities in Miami, make an appointment with the real estate agent in LA, say goodbye to my Miami friends, pack the bird and prep. for 2 weeks in New York City & Fire Island, fly up to NYC from Miami and then after my vacation from New York City to LA. Needless to say, it was a lot of coordinating, scheduling, planning and preparation.

This summer I moved apartments in LA, flew to NYC and onto Tuscany (travelling to Florence, Pisa, Siena and Cinque Terre), back to LA for a week of work, then back to NYC to spend the 4th of July on Fire Island. I went back to NYC for work at the end of July, flew to San Francisco for a wedding and then Brandon moved into our new apartment at the beginning of August. PHEW!

So which summer was busier?

FACEBOOK IS OVER

That's right, I'm calling it right here, right now in the Summer of 2010. With 500 million users and growing, Facebook is likely to face the same fate as Friendster and MySpace before it, which is underground cool site, followed by mass adoption and then mass exodus as everyone moves onto the next "big" social networking site. Why? Because youth is always in search of the next big cultural computerized craze. Facebook's DNA will be the cause of its demise. Facebook started out as a college site that grew as a way to communicate with your college friends. But now it's everyone's social networking site....your Mom's, your Dad's, your Aunt's that distant cousin, your former high school sweetheart....

Today's teens are looking for a place where they can have their social network without worrying about what their Mom saw on their wall this morning. What will that next big social networking site be? I don't know, but if you know call me so we can get rich with it.

And it never ceases to amaze me given the history of these social networking sites, that the company doesn't go public, cash in and then cash out as the social network business matures. I don't know what made Facebook think that it could avoid the fate of its social networking progenitors, but they are wrong.

The choice now for consumers is the stickiness factor. Too much of your current life is embedded in FB. Porting it all over to the next site will be a massively time consuming process. What's likely to happen is an easier mobile based social networking platform will emerge and consumers will simply start over on this new site and devote less time to FB.

LOTS OF BUNKER BUSTERS IN HOLLYWOOD THIS SUMMER

With the high profile Ashton Kutcher/Katherine Heigl Killers already bombing at the box office, Hollywood may experience a record number of other high profile films that will also tank this summer. My early predictions are for Disney's Sorcerer's Apprentice, Warner Bros. Jonah Hex, and FOX's double bomb with the Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz vehicle Knight & Day and FOX's A Team, it is likely the Summer of 2010 will go down in Hollywood history as a summer to forget.

Also, 2 other high profile films, Shrek 4 and Sex and the City 2 also underperformed compared to their predecessors. This will inevitably lead to every national magazine that covers Hollywood to say, "The U.S. audience has grown tired of sequels." They will mention some sequels that grossed more money than their previous films and some that grossed less - all the in name of "objectivity," when it really just filling column inches. Look, it's very simple, the global audience does not care if there is a number after a film title, they just want to see a good movie.

The real problem with sequels was brought up to me by my friend Tom DeSanto. Tom is the second highest grossing producer in Hollywood with the X-Men & Transformers films under his belt. Tom had this built up fan bases for Transformers 2 that was totally squandered when the film was more loud that interesting. Tom tells me that it is his and Michael Bay's job to make Transformers 3 much better than 2 to get the fans from Transformers back into cinemas again. That's the only real risk with sequels, underdeliver for your audience and you have to make a better film to win them back. Better to make great sequels than uneven ones.

CEO POLITICIANS?

Last night's electoral primary battles in major states had 2 very important results: 1. It proved that my previous blog from September 30, 2009 was accurate in predicting that women will save the G.O.P. and 2. It set up the former CEO of Hewlett Packard, Carly Fiorina for a Senate seat run versus incumbent Barbara Boxer and the former CEO of EBay, Meg Whitman's to run the State of California as governor.

As the son of a Republican mother, I am proud to see 2 women running for major offices in a major state. While I disagree with most of their stances on issues, I disagree even more with CEO politicians.

Without a doubt, it takes incredible amount of intelligence and business acumen for both women to have obtained the CEO position of 2 of the world's leading technology companies. There accomplishments as business women are unparalleled. And both candidates are promising to bring a "business mentality" to the running California. But the skill sets required to successfully run a corporation and to govern a state are very different. Companies are run like dictatorships, while states are run by consensus.

As the CEO of a company, you hire a staff of trusted lieutenants who are experts in their respective divisions and as CEO you give them the task of making your "vision" for the company come to life. Yes, of course you have a Board of Directors that you report to, but as long as the Board is making money and the stock is going up, Boards don't directly mess with the specifics as to how a company is run. Look at BP CEO Tony Hayward. He's a huge liability for BP and should have been fired over a month ago. As of today BP has lost 50% of its value (a staggering $90 billion dollars), and the BP Board still hasn't woken up, fired Mr. Hayward and stopped the stock price from falling. Businesses, by necessity, are run like dictatorship. I'm the CEO and I say and you're the workers and you do.

However, a state is run by consensus. As Governor Schwarzenegger found out, once the movie star appeal wears off, you need to work WITH the California legislature to get laws passed in the state. As governor you simply cannot expound on your "vision" for the state and say to the Assembly, "Now go do it." The pushback can and is fierce by politicians who are under no pressure to comply with your vision while being told what to do. Oh, if only politics were that easy. As a politicians you have to execute the 3 "C's" of politics - Consensus, Compromise, and Convince.

What I am not hearing from either CEO candidate is that they look forward to working together with the California legislature to fix the states problems. Both Ms. Whitman and Ms. Fiorina are busy attacking their incumbent rivals, but not telling me as a voter how they would would work together with the legislature to run the state.

As someone who runs his own department, I know that if work was a democracy, then our work would suffer. If we had to "vote" on who gets what project and break ties and use procedural rules, I doubt very much would get done. Unlike my present work situation, where I ask for buy in, but ultimately, I'm the boss and here's what needs to get done.

I also don't understand why anyone with as much money as Ms. Fiorina and Ms. Whitman would ever want to do with the low paying, press cringing political game, but I welcome the debate they bring to the world's 8th largest economy.