Do you think they intentionally sunk this thing?

I watched the show and, just like everybody else, I hated pretty much everybody involved.

So I started thinking about it. Let me preface this with the fact that I did not watch "The leisure class" so all I really know about it is what I saw on PGL. But to me it seems that this was set up to fail from the start.

It seems to me that there was not a single moment after the first episode where I had any hope that they would actually manage to produce a good movie.

1. The director
Yeah, the topic has been done to death. I have heard it all and I agree with all the negative things said. They picked a drama queen who was more interested in the look of the movie then in the actual content. And that was obvious right from the start.

2. The script
I would really like to read the first script, the one that they passed on to make this. Jason complained that it was too much broad comedy for him. And every time he said it he meant "I don't do peasant humor". But from what I have seen from the movie during PGL their big jokes were about *beep* on Bentleys and drawing dicks on people's faces. And, of course, "It's almost like I can read your mind." - "Really? What am I thinking?" - "Oh, that's so nice of you, of course I will stay."...a joke that was already dated when I first heard it on a rerun of "Will & Grace" back in 1998. In other words, they filmed a script that would make the people behind "The hangover" say "Hey, how about we get some class in here?". So, what the hell was the first script like?

3. The producer
I think that, if I was a director, I could have worked with Effie. Really. I got her way of thinking and her approach. But at the same time it seems obvious that her personality was bound to crash with Jason's. On the one side you have a guy who is so obsessed with getting the perfect shot that he looses track on everything else and on the other side you have a person who will sacrifice the perfect in favor of the mundane in order to save 50 cents (Yes, I am aware that I reduced both of them to caricatures). Add to that her own issues about political correctness and you have a war just waiting to happen.

4. The a$$ kissing
So, pretty much all the critics agree that this movie sucks. Everybody who has seen it thinks it sucks. But the people involved in PGL kept saying to Jason that it was great right up to the moment in the last episode where they told him that it is garbage. I can't believe that nobody spotted that earlier and pulled the plug. As I said, it should have been obvious from the script or from the first couple of scenes. So why did they keep telling him it was great?

So here's my theory. The producers of PGL sacrificed the movie to the documentary. They knew they would make more money of the documentary so they but their focus on giving that documentary mass appeal. They picked a director and a producer who had to clash in order to create drama. Then they increased the tension by pushing forward a production that had to get more and more desperate as the cracks in the movie began to show. With increased tension the drama got bigger and bigger.

I think the people behind PGL accepted that they would make a bad movie to make an entertaining reality TV show.