Nobody knows anything

[Valin]

Pundicity

Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
January 2, 2022

In Adventures in the Screen Trade, his 1983 memoir about life in Hollywood, the late William Goldman summarized the movie industry in three words: "Nobody knows anything." A two-time winner of the Academy Award for best screenplay, Goldman wrote some of the big screen's biggest hits, including "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "All the President's Men." If anybody was an expert on successful movies, he was. But experts, he wrote, are as clueless as everyone else about the future.

"NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING," Goldman repeated, putting the words in all caps. Why, he asked, did every single studio in Hollywood except Paramount turn down the chance to make "Raiders of the Lost Ark"? Why did Universal decide it wasn't interested in "Star Wars"? Why did Columbia, after spending a small fortune to develop "E.T.", eventually drop the project?

Goldman's answer: "Because nobody, nobody — not now, not ever — knows the least goddam thing about what is or isn't going to work at the box office."

What is true of Hollywood is true of just about every field: When experts say something is going to happen, the odds are generally even that it won't. As the odometer turns to 2022 and self-assured savants and insiders begin another 12 months of confidently forecasting what the future will bring, remember: Nobody knows anything.

Each December, Politico assembles an assortment of political predictions from the year gone by that prove the truth of Goldman's axiom. Among the most glaring of those misfires in 2021 was former White House press secretary Dana Perino's prognostication that Republicans would win both US Senate seats in the Georgia runoff election; Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Tom Ricks's prophecy that "by Labor Day, Biden's approval ratings will average low 60s"; and commentator Hugh Hewitt's serene assurance on the morning of Jan. 6 that "everything's going to be fine" when it comes to the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.

Things turned out rather differently: Republicans lost both seats in Georgia. Biden's approval in September was down to the low 40s (where it remains). And Jan. 6, when rioters stormed the Capitol to stop Biden from being certified as president-elect, was anything but "fine."

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