How Exactly Has Star Wars Made $37 Billion?

Lucasfilm

In 2012, George Lucas sold his company Lucasfilm to Disney for the staggering sum of $4 billion. Even more staggering is the $37 billion that Star Wars has raked in over the past 40 years. The Star Wars universe now comprises a vast array of products, from movies and TV shows to videogames and toys. But it all started with one movie, Star Wars (later Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope), whose modest $11 million budget was less than the average studio comedy at the time. The film’s brash, upstart quality is part of its appeal.

“It feels like an indie flick that just happens to have the most amazing, eye-popping stuff in it,” says Brian Stillman, who recently directed a feature-length documentary about Star Wars toys called Plastic Galaxy .

Those toys played a major role in the film’s success, and helped bankroll its sequel, The Empire Strikes Back . But as with Star Wars itself, no one expected the toys to be popular. The demand caught fledgling toymaker Kenner completely off guard, and they resorted to selling empty boxes stuffed with promissory notes in lieu of actual Christmas merchandise. Even Lucas himself had no inkling about the public demand for Star Wars.

“He didn’t even imagine action figures would be a big thing,” says Chris Taylor, author of the new book How Star Wars Conquered the Universe . “All he saw when he was first thinking about products that might emerge from Star Wars was an R2-D2 cookie jar.”

Taylor’s book explores many of the financial concerns that shaped Star Wars, as well as some of the strategies that helped it succeed. It wasn’t all smooth sailing. After the Emperor was vanquished in Return of the Jedi , toy sales fell dramatically. The story seemed over. As a boy Taylor resorted to imagining that the Emperor had been cloned, a plot twist that Lucas might have used to boost sales.

“He should have dropped a few more hints that the Clone Wars just basically cloned every character in the Kenner line,” Taylor jokes.

The eventual success of Timothy Zahn’s novel Heir to the Empire proved that there was still an audience for Star Wars, which helped motivate Lucas to release the special editions. Though controversial among fans, the special editions did help fund the prequel trilogy, which in turn grew the Star Wars brand into a multibillion-dollar franchise which seems set to continue indefinitely.

“He was a smart businessman, George Lucas,” says Stillman. “He really knew what he was doing.”

Listen to our complete interview with Chris Taylor and Brian Stillman in Episode 126 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast (above), and check out some highlights from the discussion below.

Brian Stillman on the Early Bird Certificate Package:

“The thing about movies, you didn’t license with them because they were there and gone pretty quickly. They didn’t last very long, and unlike a TV show, which gives you an advertisement for that toy every week, every time it airs, once the movie’s gone there’s nothing in theory to compel you to go buy the toys. So Kenner approached the whole thing with easy-to-produce, inexpensive-to-produce objects like games, paper products, things that were cheap. And when they saw how successful Star Wars was, pretty quickly they realized they had to have toys. Well, at the time it took about a year to get a toy onto the stands. They realized they’d never make it in time for Christmas. Star Wars came out in May, it’s only a few months away, so what they did was—it’s kind of the brilliance of a guy named Ed Schifman, who pitched this idea to Kenner and to the president Bernie Loomis—which was, what if we release a ‘redemption kit’? Essentially an empty box. It was called the Early Bird Certificate Package, and you got an empty cardboard envelope, and in it was a little certificate you could mail away, and then Kenner would send you the figures when they were ready, which turned out to be around February or March. So for Christmas you’d run downstairs, tear open the wrapping paper, and you’d get a piece of cardboard.”

Chris Taylor on funding The Empire Strikes Back:

“There were definitely a lot of points during Empire Strikes Back when Lucas was basically running out of money, because he’d put up the collateral himself. It was all his winnings from Star Wars, and he was just basically doubling down by doing Empire Strikes Back. And there was a loan with Bank of America, but that loan was suspended when Lucasfilm payroll hit a million dollars a week. That just triggered some automatic stop on some new manager’s bureaucratic system, and so there were a lot of times when they desperately needed an influx of new cash. I believe the Christmas of ’78 was the crucial season where they made way more money than they expected out of the [action] figures. … So it’s kind of poetic that all of these kids in Christmas of ’78 acting out the further adventures of Luke Skywalker actually almost literally funded the future adventures of Luke Skywalker.”

Chris Taylor on how financial concerns shaped Star Wars:

“[Lucas] very much treated The Empire Strikes Back as an ongoing business concern. You have to have insurance if Mark Hamill, god forbid, has another car crash, what are we going to do? Well, let’s drop in a mention of Luke’s sister—who was not Leia at this point—being across the galaxy, and that sort of became Yoda talking about the ‘other.’ That was what it referred to. Lando was the insurance against Han Solo. And you start to introduce the Emperor with the idea that he would become the main villain, and Vader would just be killed off in the next film, and you sort of start to focus on the big bad boss. Because Lucas still didn’t get that Vader was as big a deal as he was—this of course is before he came up with the ‘I am your father’ revelation. So yeah, it really is a case of a businessman buying insurance.”

Chris Taylor on fan-made R2-D2s:

“I thought that was a genius move on the part of Kathleen Kennedy and J.J. Abrams to use the R2 Builders Club, which if folks don’t know, it’s this club of about seven or eight thousand people around the planet, who are all endeavoring to create a screen-accurate, functional R2-D2. And I’ve seen a number of their R2-D2s, and they are just gorgeous, and everyone flocks to them. They go to Maker Faire events, and people just love it, but it does take a long time to do. Then again, 7,000 people, that’s a very powerful fanbase to have on your side. They’re better constructed than the ILM versions, and they don’t go racing off and crashing into walls and losing their domes, as they used to, but also simultaneously it’s a way to ingratiate yourself with fandom. So absolutely a genius business move, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more of that.”

While You Were Offline: Here’s All the Internet You Need to Catch Up On

Look, the Internet is a big place, and it’s not easy to keep up with everything that you should. We understand. But there’s no longer any need to worry: We’ve taken what you really need to have an opinion about in terms of Internet pop culture and pushed it all into one place for you. VH1’s Bye, Felicia? Bill Cosby’s problematic silence? Lenny Kravitz’s “Fly Away” turned into a piece of disturbing genius? It’s all here. Think of it as a short primer on what you might want to have an opinion on over the next couple of days.

Just Like A Dragonfly

What Happened: Guy makes a video fixing Lenny Kravitz’s “Fly Away,” wins Internet for a few days.

Where It Blew Up: YouTube

What Really Happened: Sick of those YouTube song uploads “with lyrics”? So is Neil Cicierega, which explains this terrifying moment of genius (uploaded to YouTube with the appropriate caption “this is my first video, hope you enjoy! :)”).

The Takeaway: Man. Anyone else really want a Milky Way now?

Television Execs, You Should Be Ashamed of Yourselves (Part 2,347)

What Happened: Outcry over a new VH1 show.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs

What Really Happened: Hey, remember when the world collectively realized that Queer Eye for a Straight Guy was, you know, kind of objectifying and offensive when you stopped to think about it? The collective hive mind of television executives apparently doesn’t, doubling down on the “Maybe [the non-straight/white demographic of choice] can help us be better” high concept with the announcement of a new show in which sassy black women help clueless white women sort out their lives. December’s Bye, Felicia will, according to VH1’s announcement, “empower … women who could use a dose of honesty in order to turn their lives around.” (The announcement earlier specifies that the two life coaches, Deborah Hawkes and Missy Young, will only be helping “white girls across the Los Angeles area,” just to make everything clear.)

(For those wondering where the title comes from, there was a sort-of explanation on On Air with Ryan Seacrest recently. As that clip quasi-suggests, it actually comes from from a scene in Friday . On a related note, “bae” is Dutch for poop.)

The Takeaway: What’s even more surprising about Bye Felicia is that it’s the second such show around right now. For the first, let’s turn to Lifestyle and the even-more-appallingly-titled Girlfriend Intervention , which launched back in August. All we need is one more show like this, and we have a trend. Oh, please please please can FOX announce something with “Basic Bitch” in the title? That’s exactly what we need right now.

The Other Other Cosby Show

What Happened: Bill Cosby tweets “Go ahead. Meme me!” It almost immediately backfires when people start tweeting images of the comedian referencing rape allegations against him. He eventually gets asked about it during a radio interview—and falls silent.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, NPR

What Really Happened: Look, Bill Cosby doesn’t want to talk about the allegations of sexual assault surrounding him again, even if it is following what may be the worst social media PR disaster in recent memory. Seriously, he literally will not talk about them at all, as NPR host Scott Simon found out last weekend. In fact, he doesn’t want to talk about them so much that his lawyer even issued a statement to that effect.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped everyone else talking about them, with yet another woman stepping up to accuse the comedian of rape this week. By now, much of the conversation surrounding the story has turned to the responsibility (or otherwise) of both NBC and Netflix to rethink their in-progress projects with Cosby, with CNN, Forbes and Deadline amongst the outlets suggesting that something should be done.

The Takeaway: Both Netflix and NBC have backed away from projects with the comedian, with the latter entirely dropping its plan for a new sitcom centered around Cosby (Netflix, meanwhile, has officially only postponed the release of Cosby 77, originally scheduled for Thanksgiving).

Regrets, Time Has A Few

What Happened: A writer for Time suggests banning the word “feminist.” Feminists, rightfully, don’t take too kindly to that suggestion.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, email chains

What Really Happened: Poor Katy Steinmetz. After spending almost a week dealing with the pushback from her (tone-deaf at the very least) suggestion that “feminist” was a word that we should consider banning— “let’s stick to the issues and quit throwing this label around like ticker tape at a Susan B. Anthony parade,” she argued—Steinmetz ended up being thrown under a bus when Time editor Nancy Gibbs apologized for the inclusion of the word in the poll last weekend. “The word ‘feminist’ should not have been included in a list of words to ban,” Gibbs wrote. “We regret that its inclusion has become a distraction from the important debate over equality and justice.” (In addition, the outlet also ran an op-ed from Robin Morgan defending the term.)

The Takeaway: This is what happens when your poll gets hijacked by online trolls, apparently. Although there are many other reasons to be concerned about the poll, even if you overlook the inclusion of “feminist.” Maybe Time should think about banning its banned word poll next year, just to be safe.

The Video That Even Marilyn Manson Disowned

What Happened: Previously unseen footage purporting to be a collaboration between Hostel director Eli Roth, Marilyn Manson and Lana del Rey leaked online, showing del Rey being sexually abused by Roth. Representatives for Manson quickly issued a statement distancing the singer from the footage.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs

What Really Happened: The video, which Roth said in a 2013 interview was “so sick, the footage has been locked in a vault for over a year,” appeared online mid-week as part of a reel for LA-based art collective Strumgruppe. In part of the footage, Roth pushes del Rey’s head into a pillow during a simulated sex scene, attempting to muffle her screams; elsewhere, another woman (covered in blood) has her head pushed underwater.

Following outcry over the release of the video, Marilyn Manson’s management issued a statement saying that the singer “did not direct this, shoot it, nor was it for a Marilyn Manson video or outtake footage made by him or to be used by him with his music.” Instead, it was suggested that the footage was “a fan video splicing up old Manson video footage with someone else’s Lana Del Rey footage.” The video was removed from YouTube, with the site citing a copyright claim by [Merlin] Essential Music as the reason why.

The Takeaway: With both Roth and del Rey silent on the online debut of the footage as of writing, it’s unclear what to make of this story. Both Manson’s denial of connection with the footage and Roth’s 2013 commentary suggest that they were aware of how transgressive it was, and that it arguably went too far in the name of shock value to be released. With the footage now removed from YouTube, it’s likely that this will become part of the urban myths surrounding all three participants and their willingness to “push boundaries,” even if—as in this case—they might have pushed too far.

Cheap Holidays in Other People’s Podcasted Misery

What Happened: Serial becomes an insanely popular podcast, inevitably faces backlash.

Where It Blew Up: Media thinkpieces

What Really Happened: As Serial, the long form spin-off of This American Life, continues, we’ve reached the inevitable point where the backlash is underway. Sure, you might be enjoying Sarah Koenig’s reporting on the investigation of the 1999 murder of Have Min Lee, but have you considered her white privilege? Maybe that’s impacting Koenig’s understanding of the social world of both Adnan and Hae in the first place. Maybe you’re just enjoying the show too much, especially considering its translation of real world tragedy into weekly unfolding narrative. Hell, you might even be someone who is “trawling through a grieving family’s pain as a form of entertainment.

The Takeaway: Judging by the speed at which the backlash arrived—Serial is, after all, only eight weeks old—we can expect the backlash to the backlash any minute now. In addition to interest from Hollywood in terms of a future adaptation, it’s become the fastest podcast to reach five million streams and downloads through iTunes, so clearly someone is still enjoying it. Well, besides Mail Chimp, of course. Let’s wait and see how upset the Internet gets now that the show’s regular Thursday updates are about to be disrupted by Thanksgiving and we’ll find out how many people really care.

The Weather Outside Is Frightful

What Happened: A band got stuck in some snow. I mean, really stuck.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs

What Really Happened: In what sounds like a terrible movie waiting to happen, the band Interpol found themselves trapped aboard their tour bus for almost 50 hours this week, when a snowstorm stranded them on the road as they tried to leave Buffalo, New York. Thankfully, they had food, drink and social media to entertain them during this time:

As you might expect, the enforced stop led to some deep thoughts—actually, maybe I mean “stir craziness”:

The band finally got off their bus (and back into Buffalo, because the snow didn’t go away) on Thursday.

The Takeaway: No matter how comfortable and well-stocked that tour bus was, there’s no way that two full days of house arrest (bus arrest?) could have been fun. In fact, this could be the kind of thing that will either cement the band’s commitment to each other or tear them apart forever. Obviously, everyone is pulling for the former; if nothing else, imagine the concept album about the experience they could come up with.

Lemony Snicket’s Unfortunate, Ignorant and Disgraceful Event

What Happened: Daniel Handler tried to make a joke about author Jacqueline Woodson at the National Book Awards. Let’s just say that he failed.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media thinkpieces

What Really Happened: Handler (better known as Lemony Snicket, the writer behind the A Series of Unfortunate Events books) was the host of the 2014 National Book Awards this year, and during the ceremony, he presented Jacqueline Woodson with the Young People’s Literature Award for her book Brown Girl Dreaming. After she accepted the award, Handler told the audience, “I told Jackie she was going to win, and I said that if she won, I would tell all of you something I learned about her this summer, which is that Jackie Woodson is allergic to watermelon. Just let that sink in your mind.”

Yes, Daniel, we’re letting the fact that you just made a “this black woman is allergic to watermelon, isn’t that insane” joke in 2014 A.D. into our minds. But wait, you’re saying. Maybe he didn’t mean it in a racist way! Maybe there’s some other, entirely inexplicable reason he finds that anecdote worth sharing! Yes, that would explain why he followed it up by saying “I’m only writing a book about a black girl who’s allergic to watermelon if I get a blurb from you, Cornell West, Toni Morrison, and Barack Obama saying ‘This guy’s OK. This guy’s fine.’”

Understandably, condemnation of Handler’s comments was quick in arriving, over social media and in pieces from Gawker , The Huffington Post and The Washington Post amongst many others. The day after the ceremony, Handler took to Twitter to apologize, writing that his job was “to shine a light on tremendous writers, including Jacqueline Woodson, and not to overshadow their achievements with my own ill-conceived attempts at humor. I clearly failed, and I’m sorry.”

The Takeaway: Let’s ignore the obvious “Don’t be a racist ass” lesson we can all learn from this for a moment—I know, I know, it’s hard; I’m as stunned that he actually thought that joke was anything other than the worst idea at the time as you are—because that, surely, should be taken as read. What’ll be interesting to see what happens now that he’s apologized, and to see everyone’s reaction to that particular apology, which feels very much of the “I’m sorry you’re mad” school of thought as opposed to, you know, a genuine apology. But, yes: Don’t be a racist ass is the real takeaway here.

How Exactly Has Star Wars Made $37 Billion?

Lucasfilm

In 2012, George Lucas sold his company Lucasfilm to Disney for the staggering sum of $4 billion. Even more staggering is the $37 billion that Star Wars has raked in over the past 40 years. The Star Wars universe now comprises a vast array of products, from movies and TV shows to videogames and toys. But it all started with one movie, Star Wars (later Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope), whose modest $11 million budget was less than the average studio comedy at the time. The film’s brash, upstart quality is part of its appeal.

“It feels like an indie flick that just happens to have the most amazing, eye-popping stuff in it,” says Brian Stillman, who recently directed a feature-length documentary about Star Wars toys called Plastic Galaxy .

Those toys played a major role in the film’s success, and helped bankroll its sequel, The Empire Strikes Back . But as with Star Wars itself, no one expected the toys to be popular. The demand caught fledgling toymaker Kenner completely off guard, and they resorted to selling empty boxes stuffed with promissory notes in lieu of actual Christmas merchandise. Even Lucas himself had no inkling about the public demand for Star Wars.

“He didn’t even imagine action figures would be a big thing,” says Chris Taylor, author of the new book How Star Wars Conquered the Universe . “All he saw when he was first thinking about products that might emerge from Star Wars was an R2-D2 cookie jar.”

Taylor’s book explores many of the financial concerns that shaped Star Wars, as well as some of the strategies that helped it succeed. It wasn’t all smooth sailing. After the Emperor was vanquished in Return of the Jedi , toy sales fell dramatically. The story seemed over. As a boy Taylor resorted to imagining that the Emperor had been cloned, a plot twist that Lucas might have used to boost sales.

“He should have dropped a few more hints that the Clone Wars just basically cloned every character in the Kenner line,” Taylor jokes.

The eventual success of Timothy Zahn’s novel Heir to the Empire proved that there was still an audience for Star Wars, which helped motivate Lucas to release the special editions. Though controversial among fans, the special editions did help fund the prequel trilogy, which in turn grew the Star Wars brand into a multibillion-dollar franchise which seems set to continue indefinitely.

“He was a smart businessman, George Lucas,” says Stillman. “He really knew what he was doing.”

Listen to our complete interview with Chris Taylor and Brian Stillman in Episode 126 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast (above), and check out some highlights from the discussion below.

Brian Stillman on the Early Bird Certificate Package:

“The thing about movies, you didn’t license with them because they were there and gone pretty quickly. They didn’t last very long, and unlike a TV show, which gives you an advertisement for that toy every week, every time it airs, once the movie’s gone there’s nothing in theory to compel you to go buy the toys. So Kenner approached the whole thing with easy-to-produce, inexpensive-to-produce objects like games, paper products, things that were cheap. And when they saw how successful Star Wars was, pretty quickly they realized they had to have toys. Well, at the time it took about a year to get a toy onto the stands. They realized they’d never make it in time for Christmas. Star Wars came out in May, it’s only a few months away, so what they did was—it’s kind of the brilliance of a guy named Ed Schifman, who pitched this idea to Kenner and to the president Bernie Loomis—which was, what if we release a ‘redemption kit’? Essentially an empty box. It was called the Early Bird Certificate Package, and you got an empty cardboard envelope, and in it was a little certificate you could mail away, and then Kenner would send you the figures when they were ready, which turned out to be around February or March. So for Christmas you’d run downstairs, tear open the wrapping paper, and you’d get a piece of cardboard.”

Chris Taylor on funding The Empire Strikes Back:

“There were definitely a lot of points during Empire Strikes Back when Lucas was basically running out of money, because he’d put up the collateral himself. It was all his winnings from Star Wars, and he was just basically doubling down by doing Empire Strikes Back. And there was a loan with Bank of America, but that loan was suspended when Lucasfilm payroll hit a million dollars a week. That just triggered some automatic stop on some new manager’s bureaucratic system, and so there were a lot of times when they desperately needed an influx of new cash. I believe the Christmas of ’78 was the crucial season where they made way more money than they expected out of the [action] figures. … So it’s kind of poetic that all of these kids in Christmas of ’78 acting out the further adventures of Luke Skywalker actually almost literally funded the future adventures of Luke Skywalker.”

Chris Taylor on how financial concerns shaped Star Wars:

“[Lucas] very much treated The Empire Strikes Back as an ongoing business concern. You have to have insurance if Mark Hamill, god forbid, has another car crash, what are we going to do? Well, let’s drop in a mention of Luke’s sister—who was not Leia at this point—being across the galaxy, and that sort of became Yoda talking about the ‘other.’ That was what it referred to. Lando was the insurance against Han Solo. And you start to introduce the Emperor with the idea that he would become the main villain, and Vader would just be killed off in the next film, and you sort of start to focus on the big bad boss. Because Lucas still didn’t get that Vader was as big a deal as he was—this of course is before he came up with the ‘I am your father’ revelation. So yeah, it really is a case of a businessman buying insurance.”

Chris Taylor on fan-made R2-D2s:

“I thought that was a genius move on the part of Kathleen Kennedy and J.J. Abrams to use the R2 Builders Club, which if folks don’t know, it’s this club of about seven or eight thousand people around the planet, who are all endeavoring to create a screen-accurate, functional R2-D2. And I’ve seen a number of their R2-D2s, and they are just gorgeous, and everyone flocks to them. They go to Maker Faire events, and people just love it, but it does take a long time to do. Then again, 7,000 people, that’s a very powerful fanbase to have on your side. They’re better constructed than the ILM versions, and they don’t go racing off and crashing into walls and losing their domes, as they used to, but also simultaneously it’s a way to ingratiate yourself with fandom. So absolutely a genius business move, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more of that.”

While You Were Offline: Here’s All the Internet You Need to Catch Up On

Look, the Internet is a big place, and it’s not easy to keep up with everything that you should. We understand. But there’s no longer any need to worry: We’ve taken what you really need to have an opinion about in terms of Internet pop culture and pushed it all into one place for you. VH1’s Bye, Felicia? Bill Cosby’s problematic silence? Lenny Kravitz’s “Fly Away” turned into a piece of disturbing genius? It’s all here. Think of it as a short primer on what you might want to have an opinion on over the next couple of days.

Just Like A Dragonfly

What Happened: Guy makes a video fixing Lenny Kravitz’s “Fly Away,” wins Internet for a few days.

Where It Blew Up: YouTube

What Really Happened: Sick of those YouTube song uploads “with lyrics”? So is Neil Cicierega, which explains this terrifying moment of genius (uploaded to YouTube with the appropriate caption “this is my first video, hope you enjoy! :)”).

The Takeaway: Man. Anyone else really want a Milky Way now?

Television Execs, You Should Be Ashamed of Yourselves (Part 2,347)

What Happened: Outcry over a new VH1 show.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs

What Really Happened: Hey, remember when the world collectively realized that Queer Eye for a Straight Guy was, you know, kind of objectifying and offensive when you stopped to think about it? The collective hive mind of television executives apparently doesn’t, doubling down on the “Maybe [the non-straight/white demographic of choice] can help us be better” high concept with the announcement of a new show in which sassy black women help clueless white women sort out their lives. December’s Bye, Felicia will, according to VH1’s announcement, “empower … women who could use a dose of honesty in order to turn their lives around.” (The announcement earlier specifies that the two life coaches, Deborah Hawkes and Missy Young, will only be helping “white girls across the Los Angeles area,” just to make everything clear.)

(For those wondering where the title comes from, there was a sort-of explanation on On Air with Ryan Seacrest recently. As that clip quasi-suggests, it actually comes from from a scene in Friday . On a related note, “bae” is Dutch for poop.)

The Takeaway: What’s even more surprising about Bye Felicia is that it’s the second such show around right now. For the first, let’s turn to Lifestyle and the even-more-appallingly-titled Girlfriend Intervention , which launched back in August. All we need is one more show like this, and we have a trend. Oh, please please please can FOX announce something with “Basic Bitch” in the title? That’s exactly what we need right now.

The Other Other Cosby Show

What Happened: Bill Cosby tweets “Go ahead. Meme me!” It almost immediately backfires when people start tweeting images of the comedian referencing rape allegations against him. He eventually gets asked about it during a radio interview—and falls silent.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, NPR

What Really Happened: Look, Bill Cosby doesn’t want to talk about the allegations of sexual assault surrounding him again, even if it is following what may be the worst social media PR disaster in recent memory. Seriously, he literally will not talk about them at all, as NPR host Scott Simon found out last weekend. In fact, he doesn’t want to talk about them so much that his lawyer even issued a statement to that effect.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped everyone else talking about them, with yet another woman stepping up to accuse the comedian of rape this week. By now, much of the conversation surrounding the story has turned to the responsibility (or otherwise) of both NBC and Netflix to rethink their in-progress projects with Cosby, with CNN, Forbes and Deadline amongst the outlets suggesting that something should be done.

The Takeaway: Both Netflix and NBC have backed away from projects with the comedian, with the latter entirely dropping its plan for a new sitcom centered around Cosby (Netflix, meanwhile, has officially only postponed the release of Cosby 77, originally scheduled for Thanksgiving).

Regrets, Time Has A Few

What Happened: A writer for Time suggests banning the word “feminist.” Feminists, rightfully, don’t take too kindly to that suggestion.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, email chains

What Really Happened: Poor Katy Steinmetz. After spending almost a week dealing with the pushback from her (tone-deaf at the very least) suggestion that “feminist” was a word that we should consider banning— “let’s stick to the issues and quit throwing this label around like ticker tape at a Susan B. Anthony parade,” she argued—Steinmetz ended up being thrown under a bus when Time editor Nancy Gibbs apologized for the inclusion of the word in the poll last weekend. “The word ‘feminist’ should not have been included in a list of words to ban,” Gibbs wrote. “We regret that its inclusion has become a distraction from the important debate over equality and justice.” (In addition, the outlet also ran an op-ed from Robin Morgan defending the term.)

The Takeaway: This is what happens when your poll gets hijacked by online trolls, apparently. Although there are many other reasons to be concerned about the poll, even if you overlook the inclusion of “feminist.” Maybe Time should think about banning its banned word poll next year, just to be safe.

The Video That Even Marilyn Manson Disowned

What Happened: Previously unseen footage purporting to be a collaboration between Hostel director Eli Roth, Marilyn Manson and Lana del Rey leaked online, showing del Rey being sexually abused by Roth. Representatives for Manson quickly issued a statement distancing the singer from the footage.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs

What Really Happened: The video, which Roth said in a 2013 interview was “so sick, the footage has been locked in a vault for over a year,” appeared online mid-week as part of a reel for LA-based art collective Strumgruppe. In part of the footage, Roth pushes del Rey’s head into a pillow during a simulated sex scene, attempting to muffle her screams; elsewhere, another woman (covered in blood) has her head pushed underwater.

Following outcry over the release of the video, Marilyn Manson’s management issued a statement saying that the singer “did not direct this, shoot it, nor was it for a Marilyn Manson video or outtake footage made by him or to be used by him with his music.” Instead, it was suggested that the footage was “a fan video splicing up old Manson video footage with someone else’s Lana Del Rey footage.” The video was removed from YouTube, with the site citing a copyright claim by [Merlin] Essential Music as the reason why.

The Takeaway: With both Roth and del Rey silent on the online debut of the footage as of writing, it’s unclear what to make of this story. Both Manson’s denial of connection with the footage and Roth’s 2013 commentary suggest that they were aware of how transgressive it was, and that it arguably went too far in the name of shock value to be released. With the footage now removed from YouTube, it’s likely that this will become part of the urban myths surrounding all three participants and their willingness to “push boundaries,” even if—as in this case—they might have pushed too far.

Cheap Holidays in Other People’s Podcasted Misery

What Happened: Serial becomes an insanely popular podcast, inevitably faces backlash.

Where It Blew Up: Media thinkpieces

What Really Happened: As Serial, the long form spin-off of This American Life, continues, we’ve reached the inevitable point where the backlash is underway. Sure, you might be enjoying Sarah Koenig’s reporting on the investigation of the 1999 murder of Have Min Lee, but have you considered her white privilege? Maybe that’s impacting Koenig’s understanding of the social world of both Adnan and Hae in the first place. Maybe you’re just enjoying the show too much, especially considering its translation of real world tragedy into weekly unfolding narrative. Hell, you might even be someone who is “trawling through a grieving family’s pain as a form of entertainment.

The Takeaway: Judging by the speed at which the backlash arrived—Serial is, after all, only eight weeks old—we can expect the backlash to the backlash any minute now. In addition to interest from Hollywood in terms of a future adaptation, it’s become the fastest podcast to reach five million streams and downloads through iTunes, so clearly someone is still enjoying it. Well, besides Mail Chimp, of course. Let’s wait and see how upset the Internet gets now that the show’s regular Thursday updates are about to be disrupted by Thanksgiving and we’ll find out how many people really care.

The Weather Outside Is Frightful

What Happened: A band got stuck in some snow. I mean, really stuck.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs

What Really Happened: In what sounds like a terrible movie waiting to happen, the band Interpol found themselves trapped aboard their tour bus for almost 50 hours this week, when a snowstorm stranded them on the road as they tried to leave Buffalo, New York. Thankfully, they had food, drink and social media to entertain them during this time:

As you might expect, the enforced stop led to some deep thoughts—actually, maybe I mean “stir craziness”:

The band finally got off their bus (and back into Buffalo, because the snow didn’t go away) on Thursday.

The Takeaway: No matter how comfortable and well-stocked that tour bus was, there’s no way that two full days of house arrest (bus arrest?) could have been fun. In fact, this could be the kind of thing that will either cement the band’s commitment to each other or tear them apart forever. Obviously, everyone is pulling for the former; if nothing else, imagine the concept album about the experience they could come up with.

Lemony Snicket’s Unfortunate, Ignorant and Disgraceful Event

What Happened: Daniel Handler tried to make a joke about author Jacqueline Woodson at the National Book Awards. Let’s just say that he failed.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media thinkpieces

What Really Happened: Handler (better known as Lemony Snicket, the writer behind the A Series of Unfortunate Events books) was the host of the 2014 National Book Awards this year, and during the ceremony, he presented Jacqueline Woodson with the Young People’s Literature Award for her book Brown Girl Dreaming. After she accepted the award, Handler told the audience, “I told Jackie she was going to win, and I said that if she won, I would tell all of you something I learned about her this summer, which is that Jackie Woodson is allergic to watermelon. Just let that sink in your mind.”

Yes, Daniel, we’re letting the fact that you just made a “this black woman is allergic to watermelon, isn’t that insane” joke in 2014 A.D. into our minds. But wait, you’re saying. Maybe he didn’t mean it in a racist way! Maybe there’s some other, entirely inexplicable reason he finds that anecdote worth sharing! Yes, that would explain why he followed it up by saying “I’m only writing a book about a black girl who’s allergic to watermelon if I get a blurb from you, Cornell West, Toni Morrison, and Barack Obama saying ‘This guy’s OK. This guy’s fine.’”

Understandably, condemnation of Handler’s comments was quick in arriving, over social media and in pieces from Gawker , The Huffington Post and The Washington Post amongst many others. The day after the ceremony, Handler took to Twitter to apologize, writing that his job was “to shine a light on tremendous writers, including Jacqueline Woodson, and not to overshadow their achievements with my own ill-conceived attempts at humor. I clearly failed, and I’m sorry.”

The Takeaway: Let’s ignore the obvious “Don’t be a racist ass” lesson we can all learn from this for a moment—I know, I know, it’s hard; I’m as stunned that he actually thought that joke was anything other than the worst idea at the time as you are—because that, surely, should be taken as read. What’ll be interesting to see what happens now that he’s apologized, and to see everyone’s reaction to that particular apology, which feels very much of the “I’m sorry you’re mad” school of thought as opposed to, you know, a genuine apology. But, yes: Don’t be a racist ass is the real takeaway here.