There's this idea amongst people who have no idea how Hollywood works that everyone is a star and the salaries are all huge. How many people made Jurassic World? How many of them are Chris Pratt?

Realistically speaking, you need to land two movies, three TV shows or about 100 commercials a year in order to make a comfortable, middle-class living... if those projects are traditional union projects. More and more of them aren't. Lots of us are down here doing our middle-class thing while trying to get our projects off the ground - very few people came to Hollywood to be a 2nd AC but there are lots of 2nd ACs in Hollywood.

In 2006 there were 84 full studio features shot in Hollywood. In 2014 there were two. Television production has moved to places where the rates aren't good and the commercial world has contracted around itself. If you weren't shooting with those guys in 2004 you never will, and once they're retired that entire segment will be gone.

I'm leaving Hollywood because the comfortable middle-class lifestyle I choose to lead is becoming harder to find... and the show that pays for most of my year only lasts three months so I'd rather spend the other 9 somewhere more pleasant. Beyond that, it's substantially cheaper for me to make movies elsewhere, despite the fact that the trained crews are down here. Problem is, for what I can sell a feature for, I can't afford to pay my friends what they're worth, and I've been a part of a half-dozen sold features so it's not like I'm howling in the woods.

I will not mourn a market segment that cannot compete in the modern marketplace... but I will also not pretend that what replaces it will be as good.

I also wouldn't presume to project emotional motives on a discussion about economics. That's ad hominem rhetoric, and it convinces no one.

Just sayin'.