This image was lost some time after publication.

This week's NY Observer profiles the founders of Fortress Entertainment, the company behind the upcoming Terrence Howard film Pride, using the twentysomething showbiz aspirants to illustrate the industry's recent infestation by producers looking for projects upon which to lavish hedge-fund cash. Of course, not everyone in town is particularly excited by the prospect of this new kind of player gaining influence in Hollywood:

It's all too fast, said one veteran agent disdainfully. "It used to be that wannabe producers would start off as assistants and then become C.E.'s (creative executives), and read and read and read, and start sitting in development meetings, seeing how movies are put together, how notes are given to writers—learning the tools of the industry." He added that the latest generation "is all about the formula, the numbers. It's the conglomeratization of the business, and it's why movies are getting worse."

Yet "if you have money, the studios show you the red carpet," the agent acknowledged.

Indeed, this new Hollywood, in which profit-conscious conglomerates eschew quality and people with millions of dollars to burn in pursuit of their moviemaking ambitions are treated like royalty, is nearly unrecognizable from the one we all grew up with, and this anonymous agent is right to want to protect his old-school turf from the marauding "hedgies": If movies can be made by a new generation of former frat boys who haven't been hazed by the time-honored institution of agency mailrooms, the whole industry will be plunged into chaos, quickly devolving into a place where people who've never properly learned the correct way to deliver a project-saving note like, "Hmmm. Can you make this more action-y, with a sprinkle of more sexy?" are the ones making all the crucial decisions.