11.30.2007

Hellboy: Big Red

Hellboy:

Labels:

Child's Play Update

Looks like they are close to $450K. Things are going great. Head over and check out what you can do.

Labels:

In Bruges

From CHUD:



The Trailer:

Labels:

Understanding Media

The text.

Labels:

The Beat Article on Digital Downloads

Good piece there.

I keep thinking more and more on how film needs to adjust for the future. Even I love watching clips on YouTube of scenes from my favorite movie. I have watched a couple of season of Entourage on there.

And al of it gets me thinking. Do we need to change the style of filmmaking for the new screen which is no longer at the multplex but is instead a window for a media player or a digital device? Do we need the grand vistas of Lawrence of Arabia or The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly anymore? Will action always translate as well to the smaller screen? Will drama? Lots to think about.

Article on Studio Filmmaking

11.29.2007

Piece on Russian Westerns

Christmas Nerds

11.28.2007

Whitechapel: The New Warren Ellis Messageboard



A new place to live online. As much as I love the CHUD Messageboards, The Engine was a great place for some serious/deep discussions. Now there is a new place to live online: Whitechapel. Go forth and enjoy.

Labels:

Derive'

Something I am reading about today. Here is an article on it, maybe the original one?

I like the idea of looking at the city space differently and not necessarily going the way you have to. I know at night when I drive home I try and do something different most night rather than take the same route every night. I try and find as many variations as I can just to make things not the same. I do this 'cause of my own paranoia as well as just to make explore a new way, even if it sometimes takes longer to get home.

New Studio in Jefferson Parish

From today's Times-Picayune:

Studio building to rise in Elmwood

Jeff teaming up with Korean firm on new complex

Wednesday, November 28, 2007
By Mark Waller

In a bid to grow its piece of Louisiana's film industry, the Jefferson Parish Council has approved an agreement with a South Korean company to build a new sound stage facility in Elmwood.

The complex will include two 55-foot high stages built on land the parish bought in Elmwood Industrial Park with the goal of spurring development of film production enterprises.

"Aaron is determined that we're going to be the epicenter of production in the state," said Cherreen Gegenheimer, executive assistant to Parish President Aaron Broussard. And she said demand is strong for more production infrastructure in Jefferson Parish.

"We are turning projects away because all of our facilities are in use," she said. "The good news is we're maxed out. The bad news is because we're maxed out, we're losing major productions."

Jefferson Parish has been working on the Elmwood plan for more than two years. It bought a 2.2-acre rectangle of land from Mac Papers Inc., located directly behind the production grounds of the Robert E. Nims Center for Entertainment Arts and Multi-Media Technology.

Earlier this month, the Parish Council approved an agreement with a multifaceted South Korean company, M.K. International Inc., to build and possibly operate the studios.

Each of the two sound stages will spread over 18,000 to 24,000 square feet, Gegenheimer said, and will be designed to join into a single vast space for towering movie sets.

Although design details are yet to be drawn, Gegenheimer said construction could begin in the spring, with the building ready to open in early 2009.

The parish will charge M.K. International a penny to rent the land the first year and gradually increase the rent to fair market value over several years, Gegenheimer said.

The parish will not spend any money on construction or receive any revenues from the facility after it begins operating, but it will benefit from the economic reverberations of the productions that take place there, she said.

The studio building will be a welcome addition to the neighborhood, said Susan Krantz, dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of New Orleans, which sends film students to the Nims Center for field experience.

The Nims Center is owned and operated by the UNO Foundation. One way onto the Jefferson Parish property is through the center's parking lot off Distributors Row.

"We see this as a great opportunity to help concentrate that neighborhood into even a more secure industry-builder for film," said Krantz, who noted that Elmwood Industrial Park includes other warehouses used for production and offices of film-related businesses.

Demand for the new studios also appears robust from a statewide perspective, said Chris Stelly, director of film and television in the Louisiana Office of Entertainment Industry Development.

"Any addition to our infrastructure is a good thing," Stelly said. "Our industry is growing."

He said more than 50 movie and television productions have operated in the state this year, double the count of previous years. And he is hopeful the ongoing Hollywood writers strike will not have a lasting impact on activity in Louisiana.

"Jefferson Parish has been a strong ally," in growing the business, Stelly said. "They see the return."

. . . . . . .

Mark Waller can be reached at mwaller@timespicayune.com or (504) 883-7056.

Labels:

11.27.2007

New York Sun Article on Sci Fi Films

As stated above.

By the way,this one and the Coppola article were both found through 3QuarksDaily.

Labels:

Vanity Fair Article on Coppola

11.26.2007

Smithsonian: Lost ark of the Covenant

11.25.2007

Coffee: An Essay by Anne Fadiman

11.19.2007

John Rogers Lays Out the Future

This is one of those pieces which sets your brain on fire. I have thought about how so many people putting stuff online really want that nice big studio check and gig. But, instead, why not post up mini eps to YouTube and then if they get enough hits or popularity take that to some indie producers or financiers. Show them how it did well on the internet, and a movie could do better. Of course then you are left with still trying to find distribution.

More to think about on this.

Not what I needed on a Monday looking at a long wrap and wanting to do something substantial.

Labels:

11.18.2007

Child's Play Update

Already past $150,000 in donations well on their way to $300,000.

Why not join in the fun, and make some kids happy.

Labels:

Books in 2007, More McGee

Basket Case
Skinny Dip
The Quick Red Fox
Deadly Shade of Gold
Roving Mars
The Road
Carter Beats The Devil
The Trench
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Bright Orange for the Shroud
Meg: Primal Waters
Crooked Little Vein
Plum Lovin'
Lean Mean Thirteen
No Country for Old Men
Darker Than Amber

Labels:

Doctor Who Children In Need 2007

Maybe after you watch, go help some kids:

Labels:

11.16.2007

Earth Rising on the Moon

Again from the Japanese. I think we need to go back to the moon.

Labels:

Smokey and the Bandit Opening Credits

Labels: ,

Rumoured New Orleans Films

From Solomon Street Films:

"CIRQUE DU FREAK"-Weitz Bros. Universal Feature
prep December/January
Shoots February 2008

"SECOND SIGHT"-John Woo Exec. Producer

"NIGHTRAIN"-Nicholas Roeg Directing

"Al Salzer Lifetime Project"

"SEVENTEEN"
New Line Cinema
Shoots December 3

"Bob Wilson Project"

"Becky Trujillo Project"

If you have any info, e-mail the site please.

Labels:

11.15.2007

My Current List of Credits

Assistant Production Coordinator – “Welcome to Academia

Office Production Assistant - “Racing for Time

Local Fixer - “Psychic Investigators”

Accounting Assistant – New Orleans - “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Production Assistant - “Best Damn Sports Show”

Office Production Assistant - “Life is Not a Fairy Tale

Office Production Assistant - “The Riches

Production Coordinator - “Labou

Production Assistant - “Man of the House

Production Assistant – “Hi-Five”

Labels:

Eastbound and Down

East bound and down, loaded up and truckin',
we're gonna do what they say can't be done.
We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there.
I'm east bound, just watch ol' "Bandit" run.

Keep your foot hard on the pedal. Son, never mind them brakes.
Let it all hang out 'cause we got a run to make.
The boys are thirsty in Atlanta and there's beer in Texarcana.
And we'll bring it back no matter what it takes.

East bound and down, loaded up and truckin',
we're gonna do what they say can't be done.
We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there.
I'm east bound, just watch ol' "Bandit" run.

East bound and down, loaded up and truckin',
we're gonna do what they say can't be done.
We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there.
I'm east bound, just watch ol' "Bandit" run.

Ol' Smokey's got them ears on and he's hot on your trail.
He aint gonna rest 'til you're in jail.
So you got to dodge 'im and you got to duck 'im,
you got to keep that diesel truckin'.
Just put that hammer down and give it hell.

East bound and down, loaded up and truckin',
we're gonna do what they say can't be done.
We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there.
I'm east bound, just watch ol' "Bandit" run.

--------------------------------------------------------------------


The song on Odeo.


--------------------------------------------------------------------

Labels: ,

11.14.2007

Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together

Plum Tree - Scott Pilgrim MP3

11.12.2007

Child's Play

The charity by gamers for kids is in swing. Get out there and buy some sick kids some entertainment.

Labels:

11.11.2007

Books in 2007

Basket Case
Skinny Dip
The Quick Red Fox
Deadly Shade of Gold
Roving Mars
The Road
Carter Beats The Devil
The Trench
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Bright Orange for the Shroud
Meg: Primal Waters
Crooked Little Vein
Plum Lovin'
Lean Mean Thirteen
No Country for Old Men

Labels:

11.10.2007

HD Images of the Moon

Sean Patrick recently said one day he will walk on the moon.

Japan's space agency has released the first hi-def images of the moon.

Labels:

Movie Music from Moby

Norman Mailer has died

Biographer: Norman Mailer dead at age 84

By RICHARD PYLE, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK - Norman Mailer, the macho prince of American letters who for decades reigned as the country's literary conscience and provocateur with such books as "The Naked and the Dead" and "The Executioner's Song" died Saturday, his literary executor said. He was 84.

Mailer died of acute renal failure at Mount Sinai Hospital, said J. Michael Lennon, who is also the author's biographer.

From his classic debut novel to such masterworks of literary journalism as "The Armies of the Night," the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner always got credit for insight, passion and originality.

Some of his works were highly praised, some panned, but none was pronounced the Great American Novel that seemed to be his life quest from the time he soared to the top as a brash 25-year-old "enfant terrible."

Mailer built and nurtured an image over the years as pugnacious, streetwise and high-living. He drank, fought, smoked pot, married six times and stabbed his second wife, almost fatally, during a drunken party.

He had nine children, made a quixotic bid to become mayor of New York, produced five forgettable films, dabbled in journalism, flew gliders, challenged professional boxers, was banned from a Manhattan YWHA for reciting obscene poetry, feuded publicly with writer Gore Vidal and crusaded against women's lib.

But as Newsweek reviewer Raymond Sokolov said in 1968, "in the end it is the writing that will count."

Mailer, he wrote, possessed "a superb natural style that does not crack under the pressures he puts upon it, a talent for narrative and characters with real blood streams and nervous systems, a great openness and eagerness for experience, a sense of urgency about the need to test thought and character in the crucible of a difficult era."

Norman Mailer was born Jan. 31, 1923 in Long Branch, N.J. His father, Isaac, a South Africa-born accountant, and mother, Fanny, who ran a housekeeping and nursing agency, soon moved to Brooklyn — later described by Mailer as "the most secure Jewish environment in America."

Mailer completed public schools, earned an engineering science degree in 1943 from Harvard, where he decided to become a writer, and was soon drafted into the Army. Sent to the Philippines as an infantryman, he saw enough of Army life and combat to provide a basis for his first book, "The Naked and the Dead," published in 1948 while he was a post-graduate student in Paris on the G.I. Bill.

The book — noteworthy for Mailer's invention of the word "fug" as a substitute for the then-unacceptable four-letter original — was a best-seller, and Mailer returned home to find himself anointed the new Hemingway, Dos Passos and Melville.

Buoyed by instant literary celebrity, Mailer embraced the early 1950s counterculture — defining "hip" in his essay "The White Negro," allying himself with Beat Generation gurus Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, and writing social and political commentary for the leftist Village Voice, which he helped found. He also churned out two more novels, "Barbary Shore" (1951) and "Deer Park" (1955), neither embraced kindly by readers or critics.

Mailer turned reporter to cover the 1960 Democratic Party convention for Esquire and later claimed, with typical hubris, that his piece, "Superman Comes to the Supermarket," had made the difference in John F. Kennedy's razor-thin margin of victory over Republican Richard M. Nixon.

While Life magazine called his next book, "An American Dream" (1965), "the big comeback of Norman Mailer," the author-journalist was chronicling major events of the day: an anti-war march on Washington, the 1968 political conventions, the Ali-Patterson fight, an Apollo moon shot.

His 1968 account of the peace march on the Pentagon, "The Armies of the Night," won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He was described as the only person over 40 trusted by the flower generation.

Covering the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago for Harper's magazine, Mailer was torn between keeping to a tight deadline or joining the anti-war protests that led to a violent police crackdown. "I was in a moral quandary. I didn't know if I was being scared or being professional," he later testified in the trial of the so-called Chicago Seven.

In 1999, "The Armies of the Night" was listed at No. 19 on a New York University survey of 100 examples of the best journalism of the century.

Mailer's personal life was as turbulent as the times. In 1960, at a party at his Brooklyn Heights home, Mailer stabbed his second wife, Adele Morales, with a knife. She declined to press charges, and it was not until 1997 that she revealed, in her own book, how close she had come to dying.

In 1969, Mailer ran for mayor on a "left conservative" platform. He said New York City should become the 51st state, and urged a referendum for "black ghetto dwellers" on whether they should set up their own government.

Mailer had numerous minor run-ins with the law, usually for being drunk or disorderly, but was also jailed briefly during the Pentagon protests. While directing the film "Maidstone" in 1968, the self-described "old club fighter" punched actor Lane Smith, breaking his jaw, and bit actor Rip Torn's ear in another scuffle.

Years later, he championed the work of a convict-writer named Jack Abbott — and was subjected to ridicule and criticism when Abbott, released to a halfway house, promptly stabbed a man to death.

Mailer had views on almost everything.

The '70s: "the decade in which image became preeminent because nothing deeper was going on."

Poetry: A "natural activity ... a poem comes to one," whereas prose required making "an appointment with one's mind to write a few thousand words."

Journalism: irresponsible. "You can't be too certain about what happened."

Technology: "insidious, debilitating and depressing," and nobody in politics had an answer to "its impact on our spiritual well-being."

"He had such a compendious vision of what it meant to be alive. He had serious opinions on everything there was to have an opinion on, and everything he had was so original," said friend William Kennedy, author of "Ironweed."

Mailer's suspicion of technology was so deep that while most writers used typewriters or computers, he wrote with a pen, some 1,500 words a day, in what Newsweek's Sokolov called "an illegible and curving hand." When a stranger asked him on a Brooklyn street if he wrote on a computer, he replied, "No, I never learned that," then added, in a mischievous aside, "but my girl does."

In a 1971 magazine piece about the new women's liberation movement, Mailer equated the dehumanizing effect of technology with what he said was feminists' need to abolish the mystery, romance and "blind, goat-kicking lust" from sex.

Time magazine said the broadside should "earn him a permanent niche in their pantheon of male chauvinist pigs." Mailer later told an interviewer that his being called sexist was "the greatest injustice in American life."

Two years later, he wrote "Marilyn" and was accused of plagiarism by other Marilyn Monroe biographers. One, Maurice Zolotow, called it "one of the literary heists of the century." Mailer shot back, "nobody calls me a plagiarist and gets away with it," adding that if he was going to steal, it would be from Shakespeare or Melville.

"He could do anything he wanted to do — the movie business, writing, theater, politics," author Gay Talese said Saturday. "He never thought the boundaries were restricted. He'd go anywhere and try anything. He was a courageous person, a great person, fully confident, with a great sense of optimism."

In "Advertisements for Myself" (1959), Mailer promised to write the greatest novel yet, but later conceded he had not.

Among other notable works: "Cannibals and Christians" (1966); "Why Are We in Vietnam?" (1967); and "Miami and the Siege of Chicago" (1968), an account of the two political conventions that year.

"The Executioner's Song" (1979), an epic account of the life and death of petty criminal Gary Gilmore, whom Mailer never met, won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. "Ancient Evenings" (1983), a novel of ancient Egypt that took 11 years to complete, was critically panned.

"Tough Guys Don't Dance" (1984) became a 1987 film. Some critics found "Harlot's Ghost" (1991), a novel about the CIA, surprisingly sympathetic to the cold warriors, considering Mailer's left-leaning past. In 1997, he came out with "The Gospel According to the Son," a novel told from Jesus Christ's point of view. The following year, he marked his 75th birthday with the epic-length anthology "The Time of Our Time."

Mailer's wives, besides Morales, were Beatrice Silverman; Lady Jeanne Campbell; Beverly Bentley; actress Carol Stevens and painter Norris Church. He had five daughters, three sons and a stepson.

Mailer lived for decades in the Brooklyn Heights townhouse with a view of New York harbor and lower Manhattan from the rooftop "crow's nest," and kept a beachside home in Provincetown, Mass., where he spent increasing time in his later years.

Despite heart surgery, hearing loss and arthritic knees that forced him to walk with canes, Mailer retained his enthusiasm for writing and in early 2007 released "The Castle in the Forest," a novel about Hitler's early years, narrated by an underling of Satan. A book of conversations about the cosmos, "On God: An Uncommon Conversation," came out in the fall.

In 2005, Mailer received a gold medal for lifetime achievement at the National Book Awards, where he deplored what he called the "withering" of general interest in the "serious novel."

Authors like himself, he said more than once, had become anachronisms as people focused on television and young writers aspired to screenwriting or journalism.

When he was young, Mailer said, "fiction was everything. The novel, the big novel, the driving force. We all wanted to be Hemingway ... I don't think the same thing can be said anymore. I don't think my work has inspired any writer, not the way Hemingway inspired me."

"Obviously, he was a great American voice," said a tearful Joan Didion, struggling for words upon learning of Mailer's death.

Lennon said arrangements for a private service and burial for family members and close friends would be announced next week, and a memorial service would be held in New York in the coming months.

___

Associated Press writer Hillel Italie in New York contributed to this report.

Labels:

11.09.2007

Way of the Gun - Opening Narration

PARKER

There is a natural order. The way things are meant to be. An order that says that the good guys always win. That you die when it's your time, or you have it coming. That the ending is always happy, if only for someone else. Now at some point it became clear to us that our path had been chosen and we had nothing to offer the world. Our options narrowing down to petty crime or minimum wage. So, we stepped off the path, and went looking for the fortune that we knew was looking for us. Once off the path you do what you can to eat and to keep moving. You don't blow your ghost of a chance with nickel and dime. No possessions, no comforts. Need is the ultimate monkey. A pint of your blood can fetch you fifty bucks. A shot of cum, three grand. You keep your life simple and you can literally self sustain.

Labels:

Way of the Gun - My Favorite Line

LONGBAUH

You know what I'm gonna tell God when I see him? I'm gonna tell him I was framed.

Labels:

Way of the Gun - Ending Narration

PARKER

We don't want your forgiveness. We won't make excuses. We're not gonna blame you, even if you are an accessory... But we will not except your natural order. We didn't come for absolution, we didn't ask to be redeemed. But isn't that how it is, every goddamn time... Your prayers are always answered, in the order they're received...

Labels:

Usual Suspects - Who is Keyser Soze?

Labels:

Buy n Large Store

11.08.2007

Today's Look

I walked out of the house this morning and realized I look like the fat, ugly, blond version of Tom Welling on Smallville.

Labels:

The 4am:6

11.07.2007

Marshal Herskovitz on the Current State of TV Production

Are the corporate suits ruining TV?

Network control and media consolidation are wringing the creativity out of entertainment.

By Marshall Herskovitz
November 7, 2007

After 20 years and five series, including "thirtysomething" and "My So-Called Life," my partner, Ed Zwick, and I have -- for the time being at least -- stopped producing television programs.

It's not personal. I count as friends many of the executives who work at the networks. We had a deal at one network, ABC, for all of those 20 years, and, in spite of many regime changes, we were always treated with great respect. This is not about how we were treated but rather something much larger: How a confluence of government policy and corporate strategy is literally poisoning the TV business.

It started in 1995 when the Federal Communications Commission abolished its long-standing "finsyn" rules (that's financial interest and syndication, for those unfamiliar with the term), allowing networks for the first time to own the programs they broadcast. Before that, under classic antitrust definitions, the networks had been confined to the role of broadcaster, paying a license fee to production companies for the right to broadcast programs just two times. The production companies owned all subsequent rights. In the mid-1990s there were 40 independent production companies making television shows. If a particular network didn't like a show -- as famously happened with "The Cosby Show" many years ago -- the production company could take it to another network.

But not after 1995. The abolition of the old rules set in motion an ineluctable process, one that has negatively affected every creative person I know in television. Today there are zero independent production companies making scripted television. They were all forced out of business by the networks' insistence -- following the FCC's fin-syn ruling -- on owning part or all of every program they broadcast.

The most profound change resulting from that ruling is the way networks go about the business of creating programming. Networks today exert a level of creative control unprecedented in the history of the medium. The stories my friends tell me would make me laugh if the situation weren't so self-defeating. Network executives routinely tell producers to change the color of the walls on sets; routinely decide on the proper wardrobe for actors; routinely have "tone" meetings with directors on upcoming pilots; routinely give notes on every page of a script. (When we did "thirtysomething" in the late '80s, we never received network notes.) And by the way, they have every right to do these things. As owners, they have a responsibility to satisfy themselves that their product is competitive and successful.

The problem, of course, is that these executives often have little background or qualification for making creative decisions. They are guided by market research and -- they want to believe -- a learned intuition about what the public wants. This season's new shows have been a good indicator of how successful that strategy is: Even before the current writer's strike, virtually every new show was struggling.

But the changes have gone further. Over the last few years -- during a time when network profits have been increasing -- salaries and profit participation for the writer-producers who create the shows have been slashed. Fees were cut by one-third to one-half, and profit participation in many cases was effectively eliminated. It's a curious (and peculiarly American) fact that many of the great artistic talents in the history of film and TV also have been entrepreneurs: Chaplin, Capra, Serling, Pakula, Lucas, Spielberg -- the list goes on. For reasons that are probably more psychological than anything else, creative and financial independence seem to go hand in hand.

Yet what we have now is a complete absence of either in the world of television. Your TV may receive 200 channels, but virtually every one of them is owned by one of six big companies -- NBC Universal, Disney, Time Warner, Viacom/Paramount, Sony and News Corp. And each channel has a brand identity dictated by those companies to which each program must adhere. Producers are now employees, not creators. If you were foolish enough to independently produce a TV pilot today, when you took it to the network, you would give up at least half of your ownership and all of your control, even though the network wouldn't pay any more than it used to pay as that old license fee.

Is there significance to this, outside the narrow concerns of Hollywood and the lost earning power of producers? I think so. Besides any esoteric discussion of the value of storytelling in a culture -- which I believe is immense -- this trend is part of a larger problem caused by the FCC in all areas of media. The relaxation of the Fairness Doctrine (which required the networks to present the news in a balanced way), the lapse of any oversight of networks' civic responsibility, the commoditization of network news -- these are all parts of a troubling move toward the aggregation of control of information in an ever-shrinking number of entities.

Our founding fathers could not have foreseen that freedom of the press might eventually be threatened just as much by media consolidation as by government. And if you doubt that's happening, just watch Bill Moyers' recent expose on the networks' passive collusion with government in selling the Iraq war.

Because the business of television has become an exclusive club, closed to new members, some producers are turning to the Internet to have a voice. And, of course, the Big Six are doing everything they can to own and control that as well. Already, it's impossible to make an "overall deal" -- the time-honored arrangement in which producers are kept on retainer to develop shows for a particular network -- without agreeing to be exclusive to the network on the Internet as well as television. The logic of this defies all laws of economics; producers pledge fealty to networks because they (the producers) don't have the millions it takes to shoot, distribute and broadcast their own programs on television. Producing for the Internet, on the other hand, costs as little as $30,000 an hour, and "broadcasting" costs much less. Virtually anyone can do it.

So what value do the networks provide that makes it worthwhile for producers to agree to that exclusivity? You tell me, because I can't figure it out. Less polite folks might call it extortion.

Zwick and I have joined that migration to the Internet. We've created a project called "quarterlife" -- a series and a social network -- that we own and control, and we had to give up our TV deal in order to do it. The series will premiere Sunday on MySpace and then on our site, quarterlife.com, the next night. We've worked very hard, and spent a great deal of our own money, to make it as good as anything we've ever done on television. And we've gotten calls from every guild and virtually every producer we know, all of whom are curious to see if this little experiment can succeed. Because if it does, it will prove that there's a way to independently produce, finance and distribute ambitious content on the Internet. And if we can do it, others can do it. To be sure, there's every possibility this series will end up on television after it's established on the Internet, but only if we still own it and control it creatively, which would make it unique in today's landscape.

The problems of network ownership and creative control are not directly at issue in the current strike by the Writers Guild of America. What's at stake is how writers will be compensated, given the control everyone assumes the big companies will exert over new methods of delivery.

But make no mistake -- deep resentment in the entire creative community over the absolute power now wielded by these companies is the fuel that feeds the strike. The public is also fed up, turning out in droves and sending millions of e-mails whenever the FCC holds hearings on the subject. And yet the large corporations move forward, seemingly unaware that they are strangling the creative engine that might save them.

Within five years there won't be a significant distinction between TV and broadband. As of now, the Internet is just too big for any company to get its hands around, and that's good for all of us. If the large companies -- and the FCC -- cannot come to comprehend the paradox that too much control is destructive to their own ends, they may bring about their own downfall, losing their audience and their workers at the same time. Like carriage makers at the dawn of the auto age.

Marshall Herskovitz is a TV and movie producer whose credits include "Blood Diamond," "thirtysomething" and the upcoming "quarterlife." He is president of the Producers Guild of America (which is not affiliated with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers, currently being struck by the Writers Guild of America).

Labels:

The Office Staff on the WGA Strike

Labels:

Brian Dennehy on Character Actors

From an interview on Newsarama with Patton Oswalt:

NRAMA: Do you know Brian Dennehy is here?

PO: He is! No s***! You know the only time I met him is when we did a wrap party for Batman Begins and he showed up. At that time I was really a nobody but I ran up to him and acting like such a fan. I mean right in front of Christian Bale and all these hot people. I really was making a fool of myself. Then while I’m eating a hamburger, Dennehy comes up behind me, smacks me on the back and says “Character actors! Who gives a s*** if we’re fat!” Then he just wanders away. So Brian, I love you! I love telling that story because it’s one of the most helpful things I’d ever been told by a fellow actor. So keep eating those fries kids!

Labels:

WGA Video

Labels:

11.06.2007

New Motto

"I would like a drink, and it is not yet noon."

Labels:

5th of November

My Dreams - I need a Jungian

So last night, I had a dream that I took Burger King out to a picket line. Val Kilmer was there. It was night for some reason. We were out in front of a UA theater with night vision goggles looking to see who is going in and out, studio execs and scabs.

Next thing I know they tell me the need me to go in and to check what is going out inside.

When I get in there, the inside of the place is like the inside of the Tardis from Dr. Who. John Simm from Life on Mars is there as The Master from Dr. Who; but, I am unsure if he was the character or if he was nuts and thought he was the character. Somehow we got into a a struggle to get out of the place and we wound up locked in this foyer as this giant plastic bright yellow round crusher thing was descending on us.

That's about where the dream ends, the two of us fighting onthe floor as this thing which looks like a child's toy descends to crush as as we try and reach the door which we both no is locked anyway.

I need help. I think.

Labels:

WGA Strike

Some things on the strike:

- If SAG and DGA want to avoid having to go through all of this next summer they should sit down at work. IATSE should join in out of principal. The Teamsters should stop driving studio vehicles. This strike would be over in a week if that happened. It won't; but really, that would make the studios get to the table damn quick. Plus DGA and SAG would have better leverage come next June (bet their contracts would be worked out before the end of the year).

- John Stewart's video which sums things up pretty well:



- John Roger with a pretty detailed analysis of the whole thing.

- Moriarty from AintItCoolNews details his day on the picket line.

- Deadline Hollywood Daily has the best coverage during the day as things are happening from rumours to actual news.

- Rumours are already flying even here in our backwater of film production. Mike Scott of the Times-Picayune has a piece about how it oculd affect us in Louisiana:

Freeze frame: Local film industry braces for Writers Guild strike


Posted by Mike Scott, movie writer November 05, 2007 10:36AM

With Hollywood screenwriters preparing to put down their pencils, power down their laptops and walk off the job following the collapse of talks between producers and the Writers Guild of America, workers in the still-blossoming New Orleans film industry are left wondering exactly how the story will end for them.

The short answer: It depends.

Among other things, it depends on how long the strike drags on, how many scripts have been stockpiled by producers, and how many small, nonunion independent productions keep things rolling in the interim. It also depends on whether other unions honor the Guild strike.

"You really don't like to hear the word 'strike,' " said Chris Stelly, who heads up the Governor's Office of Film and Television Development. "But at this point, to be honest, it's hard to determine what, if any, impact we're going to have here."

Because the production cycle for feature films is longer than that for TV shows, and because the local production industry is more dependent on film than TV, it is possible the strike won't have a major local economic impact unless it drags on for several months.

Feature film productions already in town -- such as "Welcome to Academia," "American Inquisition" and "Spring Break '83" -- as well as those that have committed to coming in the next few months, such as reshoots set for this month on the Brad Pitt film "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," are expected to proceed as planned, Stelly said.

Because the script development process for a TV series is ongoing, the state's handful of scripted TV productions, such as the Fox series "K-Ville," could be forced to shut down production if the strike drags on for weeks or months.

"We're watching and we're concerned, like everyone else," Stelly said, "but as for what effect we'll see, we'll just have to watch at this point."

One group that will affect how deeply the Guild strike cuts into the local film industry is the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. One of the nation's largest labor unions, the Teamsters covers drivers and others in the film industry and has expressed its solidarity with Hollywood's writers.

"While our members are contractually bound to continue to work active productions if the WGA does go out on strike, each and every (Hollywood) Teamster has the right to honor any picket line if it is raised at their place of employment without fear of reprisal from the studios," Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa said in a statement Thursday.

Teamster officials said the New Orleans branch, Local 270, abides by the same rules.

"They're the ones who move the vehicles," Louisiana film producer Milena Merill said. "Which means if they honor the strike, things will not move. Nothing will happen. Things will stop."

If there's any good news for those hoping to keep the local film industry running during the strike, it's that IATSE Local 478 -- the local branch of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the union that covers the bulk of film and TV crew members in New Orleans -- is reminding its members that they're contractually obliged to keep working.

"We have contracts with various production companies, and we have no-strike clauses in our contracts, so our members are reminded of that and also reminded that they can be replaced" if they honor the Guild strike, said Phil LoCicero, president of IATSE Local 478, which covers workers in Louisiana and southern Mississippi. "It's within your rights to honor somebody else's picket line if you want to, but, in doing so, you'd be replaced. You'd basically be walking off the job."

If the strike goes unresolved for very long -- as it did in 1988, when writers stayed off the job for five months -- and local productions temporarily cease, the impact could be severe for the 550 set builders, set painters, special effects techs, electricians, grips, wardrobe workers, props workers and other members of the IATSE Local 478.

"A lot of these technicians were making $12 to $15 to $20 an hour and working very sporadically before the (state's film) incentives came," Merill said. "Now, those incentives have made them not wealthy, but really capitalized people for the first time, and many have done things like buying homes. If this is yanked from them and they have to go back to jobs that are paying $10, $12, $15 an hour, it would really be horrible for these people.

"What's here in town filming is probably going to finish by December. Come spring, if this thing isn't settled, it could be pretty sad."

. . . . . . .

Movie writer Mike Scott can be reached at mscott@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3444. To comment on this story or read other film-related features and reviews, go to blog.nola.com/mikescott.

- Chud Message Board Thread where I and some others have been discussing the strike.

Labels:

11.05.2007

Bookmark: News War

11.02.2007

Child's Play 2007!!!!

Child's Play Charity is once again up and running. Time for everyone to help out some sick kids with fun and games.

More thoughtful post later.

Labels:

Gordon from Sesame Street

I have meet some famous people, but can anyone compare to someone from Sesame Street:



He also has a book out called Ricky & Mobo.

Labels:

David Lynch and Psychosis

11.01.2007

Antonioni Piece from artforum