February 2012
7 posts
Pilot Season
phillamarr:
For non-show biz people, the best way to describe pilot season is this: you know how when the Lotto prize goes up to $100 Million and everyone starts buying 4 and 5 tickets at a time because if lightning strikes it could change your life forever. It’s like that, except even if you get a pilot most of them never become series and most of the ones that do get canceled before anyone’s...
1 tag
Why Hollywood Is So Dumb About Piracy
[caption id=”flickrImage_1” align=”aligncenter” width=”335” caption=”Fireman Trying to Turn Off Broken Hydrant Under the Hollywood Sign, LA, 2006 © by exposo”][/caption]
Hollywood is always behind the times - whether being the last to know “oh no you didn’t” is not funny or the loudest objectors to new technologies (which they...
1 tag
Things Are Bad For Women, And Getting Worse
[caption id=”flickrImage_1” align=”aligncenter” width=”425” caption=”Releitura - Cindy Sherman © by BrunoEddy”][/caption]
Women are the bitch of society - and it’s getting worse and worse -
Between inequality in the workplace - TV shows starring domestic abusers - a political climate focused on diminishing women’s rights -
My question...
tommy's tenacious tumblr: What I've Learned About... →
tmac721:
Going to Harvard means I have the very unique opportunity to be around a lot of smart people. Now, when I say “smart people,” I don’t mean that guy who always wins trivia night. I mean, blazingly intelligent individuals who are regarded as the pre-eminent scholars in their field. It’s pretty…
1 tag
Cults, Communities, and The Heidi & Frank Show
The roar of my neighbor’s un-mufflered pick-up greeted me in the carport. She got out and told me she was going to a live broadcast of her favorite pirated internet radio show - The Heidi & Frank Show - at the Hooter’s in North Hollywood. She strongly encouraged me to come.
As appealing as that sounded, I had to regretfully decline. However, I was struck by her zeal in...
1 tag
What To Do If You Are Depressed
[caption id=”flickrImage_2” align=”aligncenter” width=”500” caption=”Lounging Pup © by Teeejayy”][/caption]
There are a few people in my life whom I suspect may be depressed. This isn’t the kind of thing you can just ask about - unless you’re super close. Even then, it feels presumptuous, like advice-giving (which I’m trying to...
1 tag
Co-Sign
[caption id=”flickrImage_1” align=”aligncenter” width=”500” caption=”Hollywood Hills © by djjewelz”][/caption]
I hadn’t talked to my dad in a few months because I was buried in script-mode. So I almost forgot just how crazy he is.
The point of the call was just to catch up - as I drove to a doctor’s appointment across town. But since...
November 2011
6 posts
On Not Rolling the Log
lareviewofbooks:
Image: © Paul Bausch onfocus.com
Today The Dial is in the hands of novelist Glen David Gold, who explores the prickliness of literary sociality, the loneliness of an aging William Faulkner, and other tribulations that flesh is heir to.
— Tom Lutz
Transactions along the Mississippi Delta GLEN DAVID GOLD Recently, I spoke to a group of MFA students at the University of...
Antoine Wilson's Notes on "Hack"
lareviewofbooks:
¤ ANTOINE WILSON Notes on “Hack” “Taste has no system and no proofs.” —Susan Sontag, “Notes on ‘Camp’”
1. To start with comedy. There is only one unimpeachable criterion: Is it funny? But a question follows close behind: Funny to whom? 2. Apocrypha from the world of television: A sitcom writers’ room is working late into the night, trying to generate the...
lynda barry card w/ purple paint spatters © by xinem
… [Lynda Barry] told a story about the neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran, who helps patients experiencing phantom-limb pain. Barry discussed one patient who felt that his missing left hand was clenched in a fist and could never shake the discomfort — could never “unclench” it.
So Ramachandran used a mirror box — a compartment into which...
1 tag
See Your Own Trouble Reflected
[caption id=”flickrImage_1” align=”aligncenter” width=”375” caption=”lynda barry card w/ purple paint spatters © by xinem”][/caption]
… [Lynda Barry] told a story about the neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran, who helps patients experiencing phantom-limb pain. Barry discussed one patient who felt that his missing left hand was clenched in a...
“….from Bernard Malamud:
“If the stories come, you get them written, you’re on...”
– The Drawing Board (Terri Windling’s blog): On Creative Burn-out: Part IV
Reading all the parts, all the quotes, and everything Terri posts: Always recommended.
(via gwendabond)
October 2011
4 posts
I don’t know what nationality this werewolf perched in London is, but I have to think he’s American.
If I were to make blog t-shirts, the first would say PROVOKE ANXIETY.
This feels like a founding principle to me – of the way I write, the way I live, the way I encounter the world.
If I’m doing something that doesn’t make me anxious – that doesn’t make me delay, worry,...
1 tag
Provoke Anxiety
[caption id=”attachment_1706” align=”aligncenter” width=”461” caption=”I don’t know what nationality this werewolf perched in London is, but I have to think he’s American.”][/caption]
If I were to make blog t-shirts, the first would say PROVOKE ANXIETY.
This feels like a founding principle to me - of the way I write, the way I live, the...
Positions of Privilege
lareviewofbooks:
MATTHEW SPECKTOR on Joan Didion’s Blue Nights. Joan Didion © Ed Wexler The Los Angeles Review of Books gives its pages this week to discussions of Joan Didion on the occasion of her latest book, Blue Nights. Didion, an icon of literary L.A. despite living in New York much of her life, wrote in 1976 that “[t]o shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that...
August 2011
7 posts
Follow the Rabbit Holes
Follow the rabbit holes. As many as you like.
They are like the fractal flowers: everything is connected underground. Following something that appears to be a distraction is not a waste of time, if — and it’s a big all-caps IF — you can do it consciously.
Here is what happens down the rabbit holes.
You find that one small seemingly unrelated thing plants seeds for the next piece.
The piece...
Night London Panorama with Full Moon © by Dimitry B
I’m going to London for a month.
I’ve got to turn in a script first, then I’m going. Because I can. Because this is the kind of thing I always fantasized about as a child – this is what I thought my life would be like. And so far, for the most part, it hasn’t been.
But something big shifted inside me this year. Maybe it was that I got so...
Delusional Nicholas Sparks Interview
Sparks says: “I’m going to interrupt you there. There’s a difference between drama and melodrama; evoking genuine emotion, or manipulating emotion. It’s a very fine eye-of-the-needle to thread. And it’s very rare that it works. That’s why I tend to dominate this particular genre. There is this fine line. And I do not verge into melodrama. It’s all drama. I...
Megan Amram: Ed Hardy, Art Historian →
meganamram:
MONA LISA (LEONARDO DA VINCI)
What up what up what up!!!!!! Let’s talk about some weak-ass gay-ass art! I’m Ed EFFIN’ Hardy and I’m gonna be your M-F-in’ DOCENT! Which is just a silly fancy McGaylord way of saying “art yeller-at-er”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I got a B.A. in ART from internet college…
Siberia: Teenager Olga Moskalyova talks to mother...
A teenager has died after she and her father were attacked by a bear while on a camping trip. And Olga Moskalyova, 19, phoned her mother and spent almost an hour talking to her while the bear toyed with her and ate her slowly.
It’s believed that Olga Moskalyova first saw the bear attack and kill her stepfather, Igor Tsyganenkov. The girl then ran away, but the bear chased after her and pulled...
Dan Harmon on Procrastination
Right now, there’s an arm wrestling match going on between your desire to write well and your fear that you write badly. Until one side gives out, you’ll remain in creative stasis.
A lot of people would tell you to drop the fear and ride your desire into the station. I say that’s horse shit, it will never work. We desire things that we believe we don’t have. We fear things...
1 tag
On Narcissism And Dating Writers
I’ve been thinking about this guy I dated.
He was smart, engaging, interesting, sexy. Great writer. (Most of the guys I date are writers - not because I have some rule or fetish about it. Instead I think it’s because I love my career so much, and I want to spend time with people who are interested in what I’m interested in, and who can talk with me about the stuff of my...
July 2011
18 posts
Just Manic Enough - Seeking Perfect Entrepreneurs... →
But this thought exercise hints at a truth: a thin line separates the temperament of a promising entrepreneur from a person who could use, as they say in psychiatry, a little help. Academics and hiring consultants say that many successful entrepreneurs have qualities and quirks that, if poured into their psyches in greater ratios, would qualify as full-on mental illness.
Which is not to suggest...
“Most of us remember the mythology stories they taught us in school (Zeus and...”
– Seth’s Blog: Just a myth
“If you are not doing your life’s work, you will feel perfectly comfortable....”
– How to tell if you’re doing your life’s work
This makes me feel a lot better.
““I mean, the minute I saw the first two episodes, I knew this was for me....”
– ‘Breaking Bad’: Michael Slovis, a visual storyteller - latimes.com
I love many many things about Breaking Bad, but one of the most distinctive I think is the way they allow imagery to tell the story. Truly cinematic.
“FUSSELL BELIEVED IN an escape pod from this tyranny of classhood: residence in a...”
– Class Dismissed - Magazine - The Atlantic
I thought I was weird for automatically trashing my alumni mag without opening it, but turns out it just signifies that I’m a member of the creative class! All the other signifiers fit too except the LL Bean. (That was written in 1983).
“The audience isn’t stupid. It just doesn’t know what it wants. Oh, it thinks it...”
– 25 Things You Should Know About Storytelling
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Here’s the thing.
I’m very sensitive.
To many, that’s a bad thing. And I...
“If you’re looking for a simple analogue for this… the...”
– Sunday Movie Blog: Why I Throw Heavy, Antique Typewriters at Producers’ Heads! - Filmutopia’s Sunday Morning Movie Blog
The magic button — Make Everything OK →
“Women are far less likely to behave like ‘alpha females’ - with the...”
– Queen bee syndrome: Women are warned to steer clear of female bosses if they want to rise through the ranks | Mail Online
“I believe, in practical terms, there are only three types of script:
1)...”
– Sunday Movie Blog: The Most Important Thing a Screenwriter Should Know - Filmutopia’s Sunday Morning Movie Blog
“For the very nicest thing Hollywood can possibly think of to say to a writer is...”
– Writers in Hollywood - Magazine - The Atlantic
“Tips for Talking to the Police
The police want to search my server, my...”
– https://www.eff.org/files/EFF_Police_Tips_2011.pdf
“The Cult of Done Manifesto
There are three states of being. Not knowing,...”
– Bre Pettis | I Make Things - Bre Pettis Blog - The Cult of Done Manifesto
WatchThe creative minds behind THE USUAL SUSPECTS, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, THE BIG EASY and LETHAL WEAPON discuss suspenseful storytelling. Featuring Shane Black, Ted Tally, Daniel Petrie, Jr. and Christopher McQuarrie. (via The Austin Film Festival presents On Story: Suspense « The Black List | Blog)
When you have a chronic illness, you wind up seeing a lot of doctors. You start counting the number of times you’ve cried in front of a doctor. (At least twenty.)
Eventually, you start traveling to see doctors. Spending time and money you don’t have in the hope that an expert at the Mayo Clinic can fix your problem. Then when the Mayo experts are like “der, it’s genetic. Here’s even more drugs...
Every Day I Wake Up From Anesthesia To Find My...
When you have a chronic illness, you wind up seeing a lot of doctors. You start counting the number of times youve cried in front of a doctor. (At least twenty.)
Eventually, you start traveling to see doctors. Spending time and money you dont have in the hope that an expert at the Mayo Clinic can fix your problem. Then when the Mayo experts are like der, its genetic. Heres even more drugs for you...
June 2011
17 posts
thinking 'bout being a modern lady
notgoing:
Read More
I Want
I was working on the first sequence in my new feature, and it occurred to me that the first sequence of most films functions like the “I Want” song in a Disney movie. It’s the chance for us to find out what our guy wants, why we’re letting him take us anywhere.
I first heard about the “I Want” song in this episode of This American Life. I’m not a big fan of Disney movies or musicals, so...
Girl Crush Zine: Joan Didion's Packing List →
girlcrushzine:
To Pack and Wear:
2 skirts 2 jerseys or leotards 1 pullover sweater 2 pair shoes stockings bra nightgown, robe slippers cigarettes bourbon bag with: shampoo, toothbrush and paste, Basis soap, razor, deodorant, aspirin, prescriptions, Tampax, face cream, powder, baby oil
To Carry:
…
Want to Boost Your Team's Intelligence? Recruit...
Confirming many people’s suspicions: Having more women—or more socially conscious people—in a group may make the team smarter, according to a recent study. The research found that group intelligence, as tested by several team tasks and complex problem-solving, has relatively little to do with individual team members’ intelligence; teams that had members with higher IQs didn’t...
Off On a Tangent: Jettisoning the Literary... →
offonatangent:
(This essay was originally commissioned by an online publication earlier this year. For various reasons, the piece was killed, but I wanted to make sure it found its way to the public - and could make a last-ditch case for why Westlake’s novel Memory, written in the mid-1960s but not publiished until April 2010, was both worth reading and of literary significance.)
Three years...
The New Inquiry: Un(der)known Writers: Harry Crews →
thenewinquiry:
Harry Crews interviewed by Jim Knipfel in “Stories Told in Blood“
I mean, yeah, I’d been drinking pretty heavy. Look, it’s obvious that my job, or anybody that does the kind of thing that I do, novelist, dramatist and so on, I have to get out of my skin and get into his skin and see the…
“The pervert’s point of view, a scandal when admitted into memoir, has always...”
– LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS | The Pervert’s Point of View