Page 10 of 13

Posted on

Big Brother 9: Shitty Shorts and Poopy Panties

I am a fan of Big Brother on CBS television even though the “reality show” is filled with miscreants, the dishonorable, and the verifiably wacky.

Each season of Big Brother descends deeper into debauchery and a cruel malfeasance blasted on everyone within eyeshot and earshot of each other — and while one recoils from the idea of actually watching the disassembly of lives in real time — one cannot help but find delight in the evolutionary machinations of a house full of people fighting each other for a $500,000.00 USD prize.

This year’s Big Brother is the first “winter” edition, but that doesn’t mean the show, or the people starring in it, are any better than the previous summertime versions.

Continue reading → Big Brother 9: Shitty Shorts and Poopy Panties

Posted on

The Boyd Coddington Custom Legacy

Hot Rod designer Boyd Coddington died yesterday. He was 63. Internet rumors concerning his death said his colon burst, his liver was leaking or his kidneys failed.

After a fall in his home a couple of months ago, Boyd sustained several surgeries. Boyd made his bones designing cars. He made his fame as the star of his own TV show — “American Hot Rod” on The Learning Channel.

Continue reading → The Boyd Coddington Custom Legacy

Posted on

The Nature of the Director

The nature of the director in any form — movies, television, stage, radio — is to serve the spirit of the script. 

A director is not the master of the script — the director must be a slave to the written word in order to understand the greater purpose of the writing.

Many directors believe they are co-authors of a work and that is wrong. 

Weak authors create strong directors and that wrongful power dyad is always terrible for the script.

A script is not a blueprint or an architectural dream.

A script is the bones, sinew, muscle, heart and being of any project.

For anyone other than the author to change the work in situ or to re-arrange established ideas on the page is to threaten the very core of the project that risks creating the common and the ordinary failure that reeks in the marketplace and is immediately forgotten by those in the audience who writhe and yearn for meaning in their escape into entertainment.

Posted on

What Did the Writers Guild Win?

The Writer’s Guild strike is over after a measly 100 days.

What was gained? If you strike, you don’t strike to win parity or a cast off breadcrumb.  You strike to win big.  You strike to take the ball back. Did the WGA win big?  No.

Some believe the strike cost $2 billion dollars to the Hollywood economy in lost production, catering closures, florists dying, valets being laid-off, hotels churning empty rooms, restaurant workers waiting on nobodies and costume-houses going dark. 

The WGA gobbled up a breadcrumb concession on payments from online entertainment.  That’s it.

On December 7, 2007, the Guild was rightfully demanding the unionization of Animation writers and Reality show writers as well as the right to Sympathy Strike.  On February 11, 2008 — when the strike ended — they won none of those demands.

The Writers Guild was whupped by the producers, and in the bloodletting, thousands of people lost their jobs, a few lost their homes, and everyone lost their respect for a Writers Guild strike that turned out, in the end, to be spineless and pointless.

Posted on

The Nature of the Actor

The actor plays a unique role in society by bringing light and meaning to the relationship between the human and the ethereal.

The actor’s role is not to define life, but to interpret it through the blood and muscle of their bodies.

The actor is the heart of us, the beating of us, the rhythm of life within us all.

Without the actor in society, we crumble into our selfish selves and whine away the opportunities for insight into what made us thrive in the past while decaying in the now.

Posted on

Explain the Altar of Oprah Winfrey to Me

Explain the altar of Oprah Winfrey to me.

Continue reading → Explain the Altar of Oprah Winfrey to Me

Posted on

All Television Writing is Shakespeare

I recently wrote a WordPunk article called — Show Business Not Show Show — and the meat of that article argued Show Business is about making money and not creating art.

That said, we need to realize many professionally trained television writers — many are member of the Writers Guild — believe everything they write is on the quality level of Shakespeare… even if they are writing for situation comedies or reality shows.

That need to feel important and to lift the ordinary writing to higher level by historic association is vital to the author ego because it is a form of protection from the dual reality of their job:  Dreck passing for earnest entertainment.

Most television writing is pretty awful.  It lacks structure.  It has no substance, conflict, or dramatic core. 

Of course, no television author reading this thinks I’m writing about them — and we’d have it no other way.

Posted on

Favorites of 2007

Ah, another year, another list of things that I really liked. I’m sorry to say but you won’t find any of these things under your chair once you have finished reading this article – I’m not quite Oprah, alas.

Continue reading → Favorites of 2007

Posted on

The Lesson of the UCLA Screenwriting Gnome

Many years ago I was considering getting an advanced degree in screenwriting at UCLA.

I was invited to sit in on a class and I was glad I did because it was during that visit I realized UCLA was not the right place for me.

Continue reading → The Lesson of the UCLA Screenwriting Gnome

Posted on

Comments on the Writers Guild Strike

There is a Writers Guild strike that is currently and deliciously finally meting out justice to producers who do not value the written word despite their phony, opposite, claims, and I fully support the strike and the effort for writers — the instigators of original inspiration and creation — to get their fair share of future DVD and online entertainment profits.

Fight to the death.  Let the producers find their bloody end.

Continue reading → Comments on the Writers Guild Strike