To protest Fox $15 million suit against PJ Mc Ilvaine for the common act of sharing scripts, send letters to:
Rupert Murdoch
Chairman and Chief Executive
News Corporation
1211 Avenue of Americas
8th Floor
NY, NY 10036
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Bad day for Screenwriters and script fans
pj mcilvaine & goliath
Supposed to be celebrating the baptism of a child, two strangers knocked on her door and informed her, in front of her children, 20th Century Fox was suing her for 15 million dollars. Two hours later, after grilling her with questions for two solid hours, they left her stunned and crying in her living room staring at a business card that stated they were “private investigators.”
This was the first contact PJ had from 20th Century Fox regarding a Media Fire online script library she created — and was the day 20th Century Fox filed a law suit against PJ in federal court for fifteen million dollars.
PJ is a struggling screenwriter who sells flowers over the phone by day and writes scripts by night. She has two produced credits. She is a recognizable presence on internet screenwriting bulletin boards ["Limama" on Done Deal]. She collected scripts she found [already] posted online and placed them in an online library on a Media Fire web page and made those scripts available to other screenwriters. Free of charge. As an educational tool.
•She doesn’t sell advertising.
•She doesn’t charge a membership fee.
•She doesn’t sell the material.
•She makes it available to other screenwriters for free.
•She posts scripts for educational purposes only.
•She only posts scripts already available on other sites online.
PJ doesn’t have the kind of cash needed to hire an attorney. Like I said, days she works a telephone line selling flowers to make ends meet and nights she writes — fighting to bridge that artist-who-does-art vs. artist-who-gets-paid-for-art gap. In between she is caring for an elderly relative suffering from dementia. In between that she is caring for an infant. She is going to need help. If you can help, please send a small gift donation via :::PayPal::: to pjscriptcooperative@gmail.com — people are putting together a small fund to help PJ retain an attorney.
Supposed to be celebrating the baptism of a child, two strangers knocked on her door and informed her, in front of her children, 20th Century Fox was suing her for 15 million dollars. Two hours later, after grilling her with questions for two solid hours, they left her stunned and crying in her living room staring at a business card that stated they were “private investigators.”
This was the first contact PJ had from 20th Century Fox regarding a Media Fire online script library she created — and was the day 20th Century Fox filed a law suit against PJ in federal court for fifteen million dollars.
PJ is a struggling screenwriter who sells flowers over the phone by day and writes scripts by night. She has two produced credits. She is a recognizable presence on internet screenwriting bulletin boards ["Limama" on Done Deal]. She collected scripts she found [already] posted online and placed them in an online library on a Media Fire web page and made those scripts available to other screenwriters. Free of charge. As an educational tool.
•She doesn’t sell advertising.
•She doesn’t charge a membership fee.
•She doesn’t sell the material.
•She makes it available to other screenwriters for free.
•She posts scripts for educational purposes only.
•She only posts scripts already available on other sites online.
PJ doesn’t have the kind of cash needed to hire an attorney. Like I said, days she works a telephone line selling flowers to make ends meet and nights she writes — fighting to bridge that artist-who-does-art vs. artist-who-gets-paid-for-art gap. In between she is caring for an elderly relative suffering from dementia. In between that she is caring for an infant. She is going to need help. If you can help, please send a small gift donation via :::PayPal::: to pjscriptcooperative@gmail.com — people are putting together a small fund to help PJ retain an attorney.
Boot out the Re-boots
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a brand. It is not a license to print money. A new movie without Joss Whedon running it will be counterfeit. It will weaken Joss' oppotunity to revisit the characgter himself, perhaps with an older Sarah Michelle Geller. This non-Joss Buffy deserves to be abandoned. It is even worse than Sony's wrong-headed reboot of Spider-Man where they have trashed a team, an infrastructure. Buffy in general is little more than a blip on my radar, but I have grown to respect Whedon thanks to Firefly and to a lesser extend Dollhouse (which was however smart and well done in all respects). Regard this new Buffy as a step backwards. The feature with Swanson didn't involve Whedon enough and there were points of concern. But its director participated in the TV series. No harm done there. But this planned re-boot is a producer's wet dream - being puppeteer to any director or writer who comes along to adhere to prodcucerial instructions. For the show to have a vision and a reason to exist it should go back to Joss. Studios can recklessly crank out crap eploitations of brands it owns, but the blame will rest with whatever audience plays along and pays to see it. Boycott the re-booted Buffy. Boycott the re-booted Spider-Man. Tolerate he re-booted and then cancelled V.
Friday, November 26, 2010
gossip sucks it
Congratulations to Travolta and his wife on the birth of their new son. Shame on the gossip industry, which is frankly amplified by supposed legitimate media every time they recount accusations and innuendo. It is a form of bullying. When a male adult molests a young boy, he is officially NOT considered gay. Why? Because statistically supposedly they call themselves straight and go home to a wife. But Movie stars aren't given the same consideration. The man has humour enough to play a gay vampire in a Saturday Night Live skit and to play a woman in Hairspray and he has not used his fame as a bully pulpit to condemn gays so why is this constant badgering tolerated? If someone "outs" someone they claim to have been intimate with we know nothing about the accused but we know one of two things about the accuser: either the accuser is a liar exploiting someone else' fame or that person is indiscrete and reckless about his own sex partners. In either case, attention and weight is being given to the claims of a very pathetic and rotten person be it Paul Barresi or Robert Randolph.
Allegations come and go. Certain movie starts who are ostensibly straight are cool whatever the truth may be. Most of the time stories fade away and scandals tire.
Maybe they are bought off while other stars refuse to pay off. I don't think they are obligated to announce themselves as gay or bi either and embarrass their wives. Either someone's private life is his or her personal business or it isn't, simple as that. If a celebrity's private life is a gossip monger's actual profession, I have no sympathy for that career and it doesn't have to exist. Movie stars can afford hit men, so I'd like to see at least one movie about using a contract killer to deal with nosey little paracites.
Allegations come and go. Certain movie starts who are ostensibly straight are cool whatever the truth may be. Most of the time stories fade away and scandals tire.
Maybe they are bought off while other stars refuse to pay off. I don't think they are obligated to announce themselves as gay or bi either and embarrass their wives. Either someone's private life is his or her personal business or it isn't, simple as that. If a celebrity's private life is a gossip monger's actual profession, I have no sympathy for that career and it doesn't have to exist. Movie stars can afford hit men, so I'd like to see at least one movie about using a contract killer to deal with nosey little paracites.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Monday, November 8, 2010
Blogging
It's very important to blog, even when there is nothing to say. So that people know you are filling your time with useless rants and not reducing the in-box pile of items that threaten to become creative product.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
trueisms and axiums
I forgot, forgot the 5th of November. Someone on Facebook mentioned it in an status thingy. The end result was to mark the day by watching the first 45 minutes of V For Vendetta. Maybe it's not so necessary to remember the 5th of November. But a better way to mark the day might have been to look up the Toronto G20 documentary.
I didn't realize really how bad it went. This clip is especially interesting.
"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people
always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can
become great."
- Mark Twain
If your ambition is to become a great blogger, I guess it's tough to stop that.
I don't have that ambition, personally. But it is an axium that resonates as
true, so I gues then it gratuates to "trueism" or truism however that should be spelled. Which every spelling is true.
"One man's food is another man's poison." Or one man's meat is another man's poison.
What's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander, though I've heard that quote wrong for years as "IS good for the gander." In that case someone is being classed as gander, so it's not really fair.
When people hear One man's food is another man's poison" the message they seem to take away is that we should all tolerate each other's differences. But I see it as meaning that there will always be inherent conflict. If your office is ordering food and the money spent is on something you can't eat for medical reasons, or religious reasons, that's a problem. If you are watching a movie about something you find beautiful and all of a sudden you have to sit through something you find disgusting, that's a problem of a diffent sort. There is really no such thing as "fun for the whole family."
Whether it's the G20 or Toronto's Mega City amalgamation, we keep seeing that having something in common or common turf does not mean it is necessarily fair and accurate representation to create a false umbrella that claims to encompass us all. There is Rob Ford Country and then Smitherman country. There is an attitude that it is okay to work in the core of the city but your identity is defined by where you sleep and park your car between shifts. It's not to say that it's a matter of "emphasizing differences" to pick a fight. But we have to acknowledge those issues and ensure that someone isn't making decisions for you impating your life based on someone else' values system or geographic or financial circumstances. Suppose two tribes live alongside the same river and those upstreme decide to use it as a toilet and those downstream are expected to accept that. Such a system is an invitation to inevitable conflict and/ or disease.
There is occasionally a "community of emotion" in movie theaters, but even this is being compromised. But I have a dim memory of that period. The fact is that audiences did laugh out loud at Vice Vaughn's line in a trailer for The Dilema, "Electric cars. . .are gay." And also the follow-up line, "Not gay as in homosexual, gay as in my parents are chaparoning the dance." Unfortunately, people can't make up their own minds about it because the line can't be found in any trailer for the film as they exist online. Is "gay" a pejorative ? Yes. In common usage, it is. A character in a movie or a teen is likely to say it. I personally don't, though that isn't evidence of kindness to gays or open mindedness on my part. It's just self-preservation. Here's the existing trailer for what looks like a good, funny flick anyway:
Of course the timing was unfortunate for the early trailers to make any mention of anything gay-related or gay word related at a time when Hollywood has finally chosen to acknowledge a handful of recent gay teen suicides. I don't want to seem sarcastic but this is something that has gone on for years with no such effort. How long has Ellen DeGeneres been on TV? How long has GLAAD existed? Are kids still allowed to be called "Emo?" It's tempting to initiate a trend toward expressing hatred of behaviours, as opposed to social groups or human beings. I HATE cattiness, and snooty, affected ways of talking. That doesn't mean that I fear it or condone someone being abused physically. The person behaving that way is hoever due to receive a retort or equal or greater value. If a man behaves like Lovey Howell on Gilligan's Island, that's his life and I couldn't care less. It's not much different than a man self-consciously standing up straighter and sucking his gut in when a girl goes by. But in either case I might either break out in laughter or work on my poker face because I know that is expected. I don't think people should be judged for flinching or shuddering or involuntarily laughing at the sight or sound of something unusual. I also think it is peeing in the wind to go after high school students and ask one group to reign in its nature.
We only know the official version of what happened in any suicide case. We don't know that someone who has been bullied or feels like an outsider wasn't considering other options than suicide. The 1999 Colmbine massacre was perpetrated by two guys who had been called gay. Even Gus Van Sant's movie closely following those events depicted those boys as gay and having a relationship. I am concerned that the appeasement of lobby groups and organizations like GLAAD (which may be well-meaning) gets in the way of useful study of these dynamics. Does the outsider or the outcast gain a polish if there is an insinuation of his being gay? Is the herd picking up on something less benign than gay identity when it rejects someone? I don't know. Most of the people I consider friends are creative types who may choose to stand out or stand up and have sympathy for the traditional outcasts. But I work with people who tell gay jokes and has told the following joke he laughed at proudly:
"What did the deaf, dumb and blind retarded kid get for Christmas? Cancer."
Something like that. But is it my duty to speak up and cut him down? I don't know. This is a person breathing dust and gas fumes most of the day, better paid than me, but not with much interest in comprehension or self-improvement. So the emphasis on these kinds of things really should be on reminding the non-bullies and non-idiots that it is okay and cool to intervene. In an internet poll, nobody is a racist or prejudiced. But when it means stepping away from the anonymity of group think and defending someone you DON'T hang out with and whom you don't want to give your home phone number and who you don't really want to see kissing his lover, there is a lot loaded in any moment of defending that other person.
Marc Lepine killed 14 young women at Ecole Polytechnique around the same time as Colmbine, and John Salvy shot the RECEPTIONIST of an abortionist. Whatever their stated motives, these people are outsiders. Had they just killed themselves, larger tragedy might have been averted. Some people may know that a screw is loose and that they are due to cause harm. They might not have been formed right. If they were fetuses that miscarried, we could take it for granted that something in that organism wasn't growing right and it stopped living. There might be a mental equivalent in grown adults or teens. If that is the case, we might be less likely to catch it and examine it if we write off these acts as someone who could not take bullying. We are somewhat responsible for the image we project. We are marketing ourselves to others. We are deciding either counciously or unconsciously who we want to blend in with and who we want to keep a distance from.
In grade school, there were two TV movies by Mickey Rooney, Bill and Bill: On His Own. He had a catch phraise "My name is William, Bill for short." For any kid named Bill, this was the annoying gift that kept on giving. I remember a girl named Gwen who later became a friend was a pest sho sat at the back of the school bus and when I got on to take a seat she would make laser-gun sounds and there would be laughs because I was still a Star Wars fan and its hipness was in a lull. But even through that, by grade eight I managed to be President of the student council which is the high point of my brief political career.
Apart from being short and chubby, I remember seniors at my high school calling me Radar O'Reilly and singing "Turn on your radar, radar, radar" but even though it was partly because I wore glasses and was quiet and had a mole (which is now gone) I have to take some responsibility because on Frosh day or initiation day when we all had to wear togas, I had a MASH t-shirt under mine. It's funny now, but I remember my guidance councillor actually visited my dad to talk to him about it at our house so I must have been disproportionately bothered by that. I still continued wearing the MASH t-shirt when not at school, but I think I put that away for a year.
It would be cruel to say to someone persecuted, "man up" I believe the current phrase goes. But it just seems to me that in high school and in childhood people have their own problems fitting in without being Jesus befriending the leppers. It asks for a lot of sophistication from people who are all about announcing confidence and attractiveness and athletic skill so they can get the social perks that are so urgently sought. What does it mean for the Breakfast Club jock to befriend the geek? What will they talk about without the contrivance of Saturday detention and marijuana? And even if they recount the detention, when does that bubble burst? What if the job was less multidentional than Emillio's character in that film? What if he actually did just care about the team and winning? That describes most of the jocks I've known. I was involved in theater so I side-stepped a lot of that. There were terms like Dramoids or drama-fags, but I didn't hear any individual called either and I don't think anyone was offended. Every line from The Breakfast Club was like an axium though, as commonly referenced as Shakespeare, the Bible or Star Wars.
I think there is more than one scale of bullying. What if Ron Howard's new film was damaged by - who? Anderson Cooper or some name like that - griping about the gay joke on Ellen and then GLAAD's Ellen-watching department springing into action to denounce the use of the word gay and damaging their claim on that brand? I think there are some "activists" who get a lot of miliage by claiming that movie stars have to have thick skins and should be able to take punishment. They also benefit from the falsehood that calling someone gay is not derogatory. They are supposedly against defamation, but make defamation possibly legal by stating that what they accuse someone of being is not a step down. In fact, in a market where 18-35 year old males are the ones buying movie tickets much of the time, it is very easy to be branded uncool. They should not be in the business of outing people and are no different than the teens who uploaded video of their classmate in a gay situation and causing a humiliation that lead to his suicide. The fact is that equality isn't something imposed. It exists. Each person has the same vote. But SPITE and jealousy motivate a lot of the supposedly proud gay reportage out there. As if there is something necessary about exposing married ostensibly heterosexual stars for some gay act they believe to have happened. There is no good reason for it. And I'll be honest - I hate that. Call it hate literature that I'm writing it here. Hatred of outing people against their will. And these are the people preaching at us in the media about how we can speak and what words we can give a character in a comedy?
Although I've noted the blurbs here and there about the guy Perez Hilton recognizing that he has been a bully and planning to correct that, I think there is ongoing nastiness. Not just on that issue. There are some truly scummy things being said in an effort to keep Mel Gibson down, for example. There is just careless reporting and editorial snark that really pisses me off. And it comes from people who don't care to know the facts and just want to do damage. I can do without propaganda. I'm waiting to see Mel Gibson's movie about depression by Jodie Foster, The Beaver, and also his movie about wrongful imprisonment How I Spent My Summer Vacation. I've learned a lot about the media and the community of people who like to blog or post their opinions on message boards. A lot of gay people hate Mel. They may say it's all about "antisemetism" but it's not. I never heard him say anything about gay people, but apparently if anything was ever said it becomes your defining characteristic. I think those people are Melphobic.
I look forward to seeing Kevin Smith's Red State which is somewhat about the people who picket funerals. I'm interested in what a creative person has to say, but not the guardians of taste who are themselves annoying and should be irrelevant. I expect the wider the audience the more thin a movie is going to be, so I think all great comedy and movies in general that piss some people off are actually brave and more worthwhile than safe cowardly movies with token side-kicks built in to appease lobby groups instead of demo-graphics. People might not want a theater charged with an awkward vibe or some anger and maybe some walk-outs. I remember the n-word used by Dennis Hopper in the famous True Romance 'Sicillian" scene. That got walk-outs when I saw it. Malcolm X was a charged movie to watch. Milk was uncomfortable, but it was half way between a full-on Gus Van Sant and his more commercial films. I didn't feel like he was testing the audience; that film had more to get on with. My feeling is always if you don't like what you are seeing then make your own film.
There is really no such thing as totally blending in, whether it be a person in a high school or a movie that pleases "the whole family" or a mega-city that serves the suburbs the same way it serves the core. If an actor or a student wants to be seen as straight, let them be. Any organization preaching against bullying and yet strong arming actors and moviemakers is an organization vulnerable to be dismantled or disregarded. ASAP.
I didn't realize really how bad it went. This clip is especially interesting.
"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people
always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can
become great."
- Mark Twain
If your ambition is to become a great blogger, I guess it's tough to stop that.
I don't have that ambition, personally. But it is an axium that resonates as
true, so I gues then it gratuates to "trueism" or truism however that should be spelled. Which every spelling is true.
"One man's food is another man's poison." Or one man's meat is another man's poison.
What's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander, though I've heard that quote wrong for years as "IS good for the gander." In that case someone is being classed as gander, so it's not really fair.
When people hear One man's food is another man's poison" the message they seem to take away is that we should all tolerate each other's differences. But I see it as meaning that there will always be inherent conflict. If your office is ordering food and the money spent is on something you can't eat for medical reasons, or religious reasons, that's a problem. If you are watching a movie about something you find beautiful and all of a sudden you have to sit through something you find disgusting, that's a problem of a diffent sort. There is really no such thing as "fun for the whole family."
Whether it's the G20 or Toronto's Mega City amalgamation, we keep seeing that having something in common or common turf does not mean it is necessarily fair and accurate representation to create a false umbrella that claims to encompass us all. There is Rob Ford Country and then Smitherman country. There is an attitude that it is okay to work in the core of the city but your identity is defined by where you sleep and park your car between shifts. It's not to say that it's a matter of "emphasizing differences" to pick a fight. But we have to acknowledge those issues and ensure that someone isn't making decisions for you impating your life based on someone else' values system or geographic or financial circumstances. Suppose two tribes live alongside the same river and those upstreme decide to use it as a toilet and those downstream are expected to accept that. Such a system is an invitation to inevitable conflict and/ or disease.
There is occasionally a "community of emotion" in movie theaters, but even this is being compromised. But I have a dim memory of that period. The fact is that audiences did laugh out loud at Vice Vaughn's line in a trailer for The Dilema, "Electric cars. . .are gay." And also the follow-up line, "Not gay as in homosexual, gay as in my parents are chaparoning the dance." Unfortunately, people can't make up their own minds about it because the line can't be found in any trailer for the film as they exist online. Is "gay" a pejorative ? Yes. In common usage, it is. A character in a movie or a teen is likely to say it. I personally don't, though that isn't evidence of kindness to gays or open mindedness on my part. It's just self-preservation. Here's the existing trailer for what looks like a good, funny flick anyway:
Of course the timing was unfortunate for the early trailers to make any mention of anything gay-related or gay word related at a time when Hollywood has finally chosen to acknowledge a handful of recent gay teen suicides. I don't want to seem sarcastic but this is something that has gone on for years with no such effort. How long has Ellen DeGeneres been on TV? How long has GLAAD existed? Are kids still allowed to be called "Emo?" It's tempting to initiate a trend toward expressing hatred of behaviours, as opposed to social groups or human beings. I HATE cattiness, and snooty, affected ways of talking. That doesn't mean that I fear it or condone someone being abused physically. The person behaving that way is hoever due to receive a retort or equal or greater value. If a man behaves like Lovey Howell on Gilligan's Island, that's his life and I couldn't care less. It's not much different than a man self-consciously standing up straighter and sucking his gut in when a girl goes by. But in either case I might either break out in laughter or work on my poker face because I know that is expected. I don't think people should be judged for flinching or shuddering or involuntarily laughing at the sight or sound of something unusual. I also think it is peeing in the wind to go after high school students and ask one group to reign in its nature.
We only know the official version of what happened in any suicide case. We don't know that someone who has been bullied or feels like an outsider wasn't considering other options than suicide. The 1999 Colmbine massacre was perpetrated by two guys who had been called gay. Even Gus Van Sant's movie closely following those events depicted those boys as gay and having a relationship. I am concerned that the appeasement of lobby groups and organizations like GLAAD (which may be well-meaning) gets in the way of useful study of these dynamics. Does the outsider or the outcast gain a polish if there is an insinuation of his being gay? Is the herd picking up on something less benign than gay identity when it rejects someone? I don't know. Most of the people I consider friends are creative types who may choose to stand out or stand up and have sympathy for the traditional outcasts. But I work with people who tell gay jokes and has told the following joke he laughed at proudly:
"What did the deaf, dumb and blind retarded kid get for Christmas? Cancer."
Something like that. But is it my duty to speak up and cut him down? I don't know. This is a person breathing dust and gas fumes most of the day, better paid than me, but not with much interest in comprehension or self-improvement. So the emphasis on these kinds of things really should be on reminding the non-bullies and non-idiots that it is okay and cool to intervene. In an internet poll, nobody is a racist or prejudiced. But when it means stepping away from the anonymity of group think and defending someone you DON'T hang out with and whom you don't want to give your home phone number and who you don't really want to see kissing his lover, there is a lot loaded in any moment of defending that other person.
Marc Lepine killed 14 young women at Ecole Polytechnique around the same time as Colmbine, and John Salvy shot the RECEPTIONIST of an abortionist. Whatever their stated motives, these people are outsiders. Had they just killed themselves, larger tragedy might have been averted. Some people may know that a screw is loose and that they are due to cause harm. They might not have been formed right. If they were fetuses that miscarried, we could take it for granted that something in that organism wasn't growing right and it stopped living. There might be a mental equivalent in grown adults or teens. If that is the case, we might be less likely to catch it and examine it if we write off these acts as someone who could not take bullying. We are somewhat responsible for the image we project. We are marketing ourselves to others. We are deciding either counciously or unconsciously who we want to blend in with and who we want to keep a distance from.
In grade school, there were two TV movies by Mickey Rooney, Bill and Bill: On His Own. He had a catch phraise "My name is William, Bill for short." For any kid named Bill, this was the annoying gift that kept on giving. I remember a girl named Gwen who later became a friend was a pest sho sat at the back of the school bus and when I got on to take a seat she would make laser-gun sounds and there would be laughs because I was still a Star Wars fan and its hipness was in a lull. But even through that, by grade eight I managed to be President of the student council which is the high point of my brief political career.
Apart from being short and chubby, I remember seniors at my high school calling me Radar O'Reilly and singing "Turn on your radar, radar, radar" but even though it was partly because I wore glasses and was quiet and had a mole (which is now gone) I have to take some responsibility because on Frosh day or initiation day when we all had to wear togas, I had a MASH t-shirt under mine. It's funny now, but I remember my guidance councillor actually visited my dad to talk to him about it at our house so I must have been disproportionately bothered by that. I still continued wearing the MASH t-shirt when not at school, but I think I put that away for a year.
It would be cruel to say to someone persecuted, "man up" I believe the current phrase goes. But it just seems to me that in high school and in childhood people have their own problems fitting in without being Jesus befriending the leppers. It asks for a lot of sophistication from people who are all about announcing confidence and attractiveness and athletic skill so they can get the social perks that are so urgently sought. What does it mean for the Breakfast Club jock to befriend the geek? What will they talk about without the contrivance of Saturday detention and marijuana? And even if they recount the detention, when does that bubble burst? What if the job was less multidentional than Emillio's character in that film? What if he actually did just care about the team and winning? That describes most of the jocks I've known. I was involved in theater so I side-stepped a lot of that. There were terms like Dramoids or drama-fags, but I didn't hear any individual called either and I don't think anyone was offended. Every line from The Breakfast Club was like an axium though, as commonly referenced as Shakespeare, the Bible or Star Wars.
I think there is more than one scale of bullying. What if Ron Howard's new film was damaged by - who? Anderson Cooper or some name like that - griping about the gay joke on Ellen and then GLAAD's Ellen-watching department springing into action to denounce the use of the word gay and damaging their claim on that brand? I think there are some "activists" who get a lot of miliage by claiming that movie stars have to have thick skins and should be able to take punishment. They also benefit from the falsehood that calling someone gay is not derogatory. They are supposedly against defamation, but make defamation possibly legal by stating that what they accuse someone of being is not a step down. In fact, in a market where 18-35 year old males are the ones buying movie tickets much of the time, it is very easy to be branded uncool. They should not be in the business of outing people and are no different than the teens who uploaded video of their classmate in a gay situation and causing a humiliation that lead to his suicide. The fact is that equality isn't something imposed. It exists. Each person has the same vote. But SPITE and jealousy motivate a lot of the supposedly proud gay reportage out there. As if there is something necessary about exposing married ostensibly heterosexual stars for some gay act they believe to have happened. There is no good reason for it. And I'll be honest - I hate that. Call it hate literature that I'm writing it here. Hatred of outing people against their will. And these are the people preaching at us in the media about how we can speak and what words we can give a character in a comedy?
Although I've noted the blurbs here and there about the guy Perez Hilton recognizing that he has been a bully and planning to correct that, I think there is ongoing nastiness. Not just on that issue. There are some truly scummy things being said in an effort to keep Mel Gibson down, for example. There is just careless reporting and editorial snark that really pisses me off. And it comes from people who don't care to know the facts and just want to do damage. I can do without propaganda. I'm waiting to see Mel Gibson's movie about depression by Jodie Foster, The Beaver, and also his movie about wrongful imprisonment How I Spent My Summer Vacation. I've learned a lot about the media and the community of people who like to blog or post their opinions on message boards. A lot of gay people hate Mel. They may say it's all about "antisemetism" but it's not. I never heard him say anything about gay people, but apparently if anything was ever said it becomes your defining characteristic. I think those people are Melphobic.
I look forward to seeing Kevin Smith's Red State which is somewhat about the people who picket funerals. I'm interested in what a creative person has to say, but not the guardians of taste who are themselves annoying and should be irrelevant. I expect the wider the audience the more thin a movie is going to be, so I think all great comedy and movies in general that piss some people off are actually brave and more worthwhile than safe cowardly movies with token side-kicks built in to appease lobby groups instead of demo-graphics. People might not want a theater charged with an awkward vibe or some anger and maybe some walk-outs. I remember the n-word used by Dennis Hopper in the famous True Romance 'Sicillian" scene. That got walk-outs when I saw it. Malcolm X was a charged movie to watch. Milk was uncomfortable, but it was half way between a full-on Gus Van Sant and his more commercial films. I didn't feel like he was testing the audience; that film had more to get on with. My feeling is always if you don't like what you are seeing then make your own film.
There is really no such thing as totally blending in, whether it be a person in a high school or a movie that pleases "the whole family" or a mega-city that serves the suburbs the same way it serves the core. If an actor or a student wants to be seen as straight, let them be. Any organization preaching against bullying and yet strong arming actors and moviemakers is an organization vulnerable to be dismantled or disregarded. ASAP.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Adopt a DVD
I look at my DVD collection and I first think of the missing teeth. One disc is missing from a 2-disc John carpenter case which had The Thing (I already have a better copy of that) and Prince of Darkness which I intended to watch and ended up looking for on Youtube when I gave up looking for the disc. I loaned Fido - a Canadian zombie movie with Carrie Anne Moss and Billy Connely - to a producer named Anthony who hasn't responeded to a message or a prod or a reasonable question in. . .well, in February 2011 it will be 2 years. I'm not re-buying it unless it is with money voluntarily given by Anthony or mugged from him. (Of special note: the most important quality of a producer is honesty. He's welcome to lie to everyone else, but he must deal with me only with integrity. And since is doesn't HAVE TO kiss up to me or honor a simple thing like returning a borrowed DVD, and he has failed to do that, his window for proving he is honorable is closing fast. I forgot to open my Something MORE About Mary box, and so I don't know off hand if I still have my special features disc. Jay, the friend who introdced me to would-be-producer Anthony still has one of my discs, Orgazmo by Trey parker. But that's not theft or neglect. It was found and I decided to pointedly leave it until it has been watched. But maybe movies can't be forced on people.
The next thing I notice when I step back from the DVDs is the cheer volume. If I equate these with mental clutter I think maybe I should remove them carefully like moduals of memory from HAL 9000. Is it really necessary for me to use all of these as a touchstone to transport back to the 80's or 90's or the Zeros? There was a time when it all felt necessary, or part of learning my craft as a budding screenwriter and director. Am I ever going to need to watch Ace Ventura again? Well, maybe. I start making a pile of movies I might never watch again. Maybe I got them as part of a deal.
Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 may be the worst movie I own. I can't get rid of it because it's on the same disc as the other two. That also means that if I watch it on my laptop it won't fill the screen so I won't get full picture quality of the crap.
On the other end of the spectrum is David Cronenberg's Fast Company, which also has two of his shorts Crimes of the Future and Stereo. I have listened to the commentary and seen these movies dutifully and nothing has found purchase in my brain let alone my spirit. Stereo has a nice mind-reading premise and there is a shot I plan to reference in my own mind reading film but the tone is far more arty than anything I would want to make. Both shorts feel like there was an assigned running time and everything was shot long and edited long to fill that out. If an image is laid bare it doesn't gain meaning, as far as I'm concerned. it just seems ponderous. Fast Company is a serviceable bit of "Canadian film" in the usual sense. It doesn't look like a Cronenberg film. It may be a personal expression of his, as he says, because he does like race cars. But it would have been nice if one of the cars was a giant bug. All things considered it is better than his other car movie, Crash which I don't have (not to be confused with Paul Haggis' Oscar-winning and self-important yet forgetable multi-story LA TV movie of the week, which I do have in the most expensive version). Cronenberg's crash was notable for having a car chase that manages to be slow and boring, as well as sex that is kind of boring, and I was never stoned enough to appreciate it apparently.
I have 2010 The Year We Make Contact, and yes I have watched it this year. But I don't have 2001: A Space Odyssy. The last time I saw the Kubrick film was January 2001 whwn I borrowed a friend's VHS tape of it and watched it alone in the dark at home and actually kind of liked it. I did this because I had heard MGM had no plans to re-release it which seems a shame. I don't feel any impulse to see it again though. If I do, I'll borrow a DVD and just listen to the cast commentary.
I have the Canadian movie Defendor (sic) about a mentally challenged superhero. I like it, but I also know it is unlikely I will watch it again. Maybe it's just a matter of age. It's harder for me to forget movies even though other vital issues fall by the wayside. I have Doctor Detroit, a mugging fest about a guy posing as a pimp, which is a lesser pimp movie than Night Shift but I think more entertaining than Risky Business (which I don't have but recently borrowed from the library).
Closets full of DVDs anyway appear to present a statement: this person appears to have too much time on his hands.
90 minutes to two hours or more per DVD case, then commentaries and docs and anso some TV series. I have every episode of Wonder Woman, and I remember the circumstances under which I was able to get through most of those as they hit the stores. But for possible legal reasons I won't go into that here. It would undermine the field that I work in. Even though I was on nights at the time. I have every Young Indiana Jones episode, and I know I haven't made it through all of that and yet I like Indy. There are some great documentaries about real history, very educational, but since I had no choice but to have those as part of a very expensive package I have been stubborn about not watching them. I would have preferred some behind the scenes or commentaries or interviews or inclusion even as a special feature George Hall's bookend sequences as OLD Indiana Jones with an eye patch. Maybe those were tossed aside when Lucas realized Indiana Jones at Age 70 would look pretty much exactly like Harrison Ford - numerically old but nimble and fit. I have every Mork and Mindy available on DVD, though they don't seem to have yet released the Merth episodes which I have had to look up on a certain website. I wouldn't mind forcing myself to sit through the animated series either, but maybe I would just have it, watch one episode and just never get around to enduring it.
I have a lot of VHS to unload while it can still be unloaded. VHS was my generation, the eighties an early nineties, how I saw most of the great film and a lot of the crap - the good and bad crap. I have at least set aside a box of those for the day I have the gusto to haul it to a store than might buy it or to a library that might find the tapes a good home for donations. Maybe the latter will be the case for a lot of these. Even my Star Wars and Raiders movies on VHS are little more than paper weights. It isn't like they can be handed down like a family heirloom. Any kids of my own I might have or my neice and nephews won't be interested in the historical significance of VHS any more than Super 8. I'm old enough that when I was single digits until age 12 or so I would go to North Bay's public library and borrow a Super 8mm projector or a 16mm projector and sometimes a screen and a bunch of film reels and play those for family and neighbors. Then I was borrowing the record LP size cartridge movie discs that predated laser discs. Those tended to skip a bit but they were pretty cool anyway.
I have a hard time throwing anything out. I want to think it will benefit humanity in some way. It's like the generous way someone offers you the last rancid slice of pizza before it goes into the garbage.
Maybe a library or The Liason of Independant Filmmakers of Toronto or some other organization can put out a call for DVDs that people want to get rid of that they are simply storing but that should go to people who are actually interested in watching movies rather than using them as coasters. Tyler Durden, in a movie I'm not giving away, says, "The things you own end up owning you." Very true. I mean I question the impulse to give anything away, since that is what suicidal people do as an early warning sign and it's not like I've made great leaps in the personal life or career lately. But clutter is clutter.
I have moments of posessive tension when people take too long to watch a movie and give it back, maybe partly because of matters mentioned above. But in a sense the leap of faith in loaning out movies is something I've done since I was a kid or showing movies. That's my way of connecting and communicating. THIS means something to me. See if you like it. Of course a person can wonder why officially escapist movies mean something to me, but those people dont impress me. A well told story is a ritual, and even the silliest contains elements people can connect to. Or impose themselves on and interpret in their own private and maybe opposite way.
Anyway, still making lists to separate the wheat from the chaff.
(And yes, I just googled that line to see how to spell "chaff." )
The next thing I notice when I step back from the DVDs is the cheer volume. If I equate these with mental clutter I think maybe I should remove them carefully like moduals of memory from HAL 9000. Is it really necessary for me to use all of these as a touchstone to transport back to the 80's or 90's or the Zeros? There was a time when it all felt necessary, or part of learning my craft as a budding screenwriter and director. Am I ever going to need to watch Ace Ventura again? Well, maybe. I start making a pile of movies I might never watch again. Maybe I got them as part of a deal.
Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 may be the worst movie I own. I can't get rid of it because it's on the same disc as the other two. That also means that if I watch it on my laptop it won't fill the screen so I won't get full picture quality of the crap.
On the other end of the spectrum is David Cronenberg's Fast Company, which also has two of his shorts Crimes of the Future and Stereo. I have listened to the commentary and seen these movies dutifully and nothing has found purchase in my brain let alone my spirit. Stereo has a nice mind-reading premise and there is a shot I plan to reference in my own mind reading film but the tone is far more arty than anything I would want to make. Both shorts feel like there was an assigned running time and everything was shot long and edited long to fill that out. If an image is laid bare it doesn't gain meaning, as far as I'm concerned. it just seems ponderous. Fast Company is a serviceable bit of "Canadian film" in the usual sense. It doesn't look like a Cronenberg film. It may be a personal expression of his, as he says, because he does like race cars. But it would have been nice if one of the cars was a giant bug. All things considered it is better than his other car movie, Crash which I don't have (not to be confused with Paul Haggis' Oscar-winning and self-important yet forgetable multi-story LA TV movie of the week, which I do have in the most expensive version). Cronenberg's crash was notable for having a car chase that manages to be slow and boring, as well as sex that is kind of boring, and I was never stoned enough to appreciate it apparently.
I have 2010 The Year We Make Contact, and yes I have watched it this year. But I don't have 2001: A Space Odyssy. The last time I saw the Kubrick film was January 2001 whwn I borrowed a friend's VHS tape of it and watched it alone in the dark at home and actually kind of liked it. I did this because I had heard MGM had no plans to re-release it which seems a shame. I don't feel any impulse to see it again though. If I do, I'll borrow a DVD and just listen to the cast commentary.
I have the Canadian movie Defendor (sic) about a mentally challenged superhero. I like it, but I also know it is unlikely I will watch it again. Maybe it's just a matter of age. It's harder for me to forget movies even though other vital issues fall by the wayside. I have Doctor Detroit, a mugging fest about a guy posing as a pimp, which is a lesser pimp movie than Night Shift but I think more entertaining than Risky Business (which I don't have but recently borrowed from the library).
Closets full of DVDs anyway appear to present a statement: this person appears to have too much time on his hands.
90 minutes to two hours or more per DVD case, then commentaries and docs and anso some TV series. I have every episode of Wonder Woman, and I remember the circumstances under which I was able to get through most of those as they hit the stores. But for possible legal reasons I won't go into that here. It would undermine the field that I work in. Even though I was on nights at the time. I have every Young Indiana Jones episode, and I know I haven't made it through all of that and yet I like Indy. There are some great documentaries about real history, very educational, but since I had no choice but to have those as part of a very expensive package I have been stubborn about not watching them. I would have preferred some behind the scenes or commentaries or interviews or inclusion even as a special feature George Hall's bookend sequences as OLD Indiana Jones with an eye patch. Maybe those were tossed aside when Lucas realized Indiana Jones at Age 70 would look pretty much exactly like Harrison Ford - numerically old but nimble and fit. I have every Mork and Mindy available on DVD, though they don't seem to have yet released the Merth episodes which I have had to look up on a certain website. I wouldn't mind forcing myself to sit through the animated series either, but maybe I would just have it, watch one episode and just never get around to enduring it.
I have a lot of VHS to unload while it can still be unloaded. VHS was my generation, the eighties an early nineties, how I saw most of the great film and a lot of the crap - the good and bad crap. I have at least set aside a box of those for the day I have the gusto to haul it to a store than might buy it or to a library that might find the tapes a good home for donations. Maybe the latter will be the case for a lot of these. Even my Star Wars and Raiders movies on VHS are little more than paper weights. It isn't like they can be handed down like a family heirloom. Any kids of my own I might have or my neice and nephews won't be interested in the historical significance of VHS any more than Super 8. I'm old enough that when I was single digits until age 12 or so I would go to North Bay's public library and borrow a Super 8mm projector or a 16mm projector and sometimes a screen and a bunch of film reels and play those for family and neighbors. Then I was borrowing the record LP size cartridge movie discs that predated laser discs. Those tended to skip a bit but they were pretty cool anyway.
I have a hard time throwing anything out. I want to think it will benefit humanity in some way. It's like the generous way someone offers you the last rancid slice of pizza before it goes into the garbage.
Maybe a library or The Liason of Independant Filmmakers of Toronto or some other organization can put out a call for DVDs that people want to get rid of that they are simply storing but that should go to people who are actually interested in watching movies rather than using them as coasters. Tyler Durden, in a movie I'm not giving away, says, "The things you own end up owning you." Very true. I mean I question the impulse to give anything away, since that is what suicidal people do as an early warning sign and it's not like I've made great leaps in the personal life or career lately. But clutter is clutter.
I have moments of posessive tension when people take too long to watch a movie and give it back, maybe partly because of matters mentioned above. But in a sense the leap of faith in loaning out movies is something I've done since I was a kid or showing movies. That's my way of connecting and communicating. THIS means something to me. See if you like it. Of course a person can wonder why officially escapist movies mean something to me, but those people dont impress me. A well told story is a ritual, and even the silliest contains elements people can connect to. Or impose themselves on and interpret in their own private and maybe opposite way.
Anyway, still making lists to separate the wheat from the chaff.
(And yes, I just googled that line to see how to spell "chaff." )
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