Here's a lit manager's assessment of the spec screenplay sales market over the last six months. Please keep in mind, these are just the numbers for the scripts that got sent out by the various major agencies & management companies in town. It doesn't account for how many actual writing clients each of these companies rep that they AREN'T sending out, let alone the scores of writers represented by smaller companies, and the multitude of unrepresented screenwriters. And that's just here in L.A.
In short, the odds are VERY long for selling a completely original screenplay to a studio.
This is why I've become a big advocate of independent film. Don't wait for Warner Bros. or Sony to give you permission. There's more money out there than studio money. We all just need to retrain ourselves to sniff it out.
Write it. Shoot it. Screen it.
Repeat.
June 23, 2009
June 16, 2009
In Defense of Michael Bay
You know, I've written about some controversial things over the years here at Macroscope.
Torture. Election fraud. Katrina. Iraq. Rwanda. "There is no Hell".
Why do I get the feeling that this one will generate the most hate mail?
I didn't realize that my first exposure to the film director Michael Bay was one of the coolest commercials I'd ever seen. It made such an impression on me that I didn't even realize just how old it was, and by that, I mean the original "Got Milk?" commercial:
Just beautiful, right? Simple, fun, and award-winning. And directed by Michael Bay.
Who knew, right? A far cry from what we assume about the director and his filmmaking preferences, right?
Now, the first time I could name Bay was after I and a bunch of brothers back at Princeton had formed a new organization, the Black Men Awareness Group, which was basically a safe haven on campus where we could voice our unique frustrations ("I have no mentors because the professors don't understand me or my culture", "I'm experiencing extreme culture shock in this Ivy covered tower from my predominantly black town/school", "the sisters on campus don't want me, but will crucify me if I so much as look at a white girl", "I barely have time to study & work through school while my roommate is so rich he's ineligible for financial aid", etc.).
So, one weekend, our little group therapy club decided to go out, 30 deep, to have a day just to hang out and feel good. Now, there isn't much to do in Princeton, NJ, and it's too much of a pain to organize 30 dudes to head up to NYC for a weekend, so we just did something silly: we went bowling (yeah, I know), and then we went to see this new movie that had just come out in theaters that weekend.
Yes, it was Bad Boys. And, yes, we all rolled out of that theater charged, pumped, excited, happy. It was like we were seeing some of our own up on screen. It was great.
And it was directed by Michael Bay.
While I was working in New York after college, I went with some of my AC co-workers & buddies to see Bay's next film, "The Rock".
Eh. Kind of fun, especially the Nic Cage/Sean Connery banter, but I didn't buy Ed Harris' character. Did I HATE it? Of course not. I didn't love it. It was pretty forgettable. No big deal.
A few years later, that same crew of mine did a triple-feature weekend. In one day, we saw "Lethal Weapon 4" (which kicked ass. Literally. Pleased to meet you, Jet Li.), "Toy Soldiers" (which, exactly as I predicted, absolutely sucked. Not my choice. My buddy had kids with him), and "Armageddon".
FUN FACT: for those of you who hate "Armageddon" but love, say, "Lost", "Alias", "Fringe", or the new "Star Trek", it was written by J.J. Abrams.
Now, a few weeks earlier, I'd seen "Deep Impact". This was during the time when the studios had a ton of dueling movies. "Deep Impact" had Morgan Freeman as the President of the United States, was directed by one of the regular directors for "ER" and was written by guys who'd done "Jacob's Ladder", "Ghost" and "The Player".
In short, from a dramatic and emotional perspective, it's a vastly superior piece of mature filmmaking in comparison to "Armageddon". "Armageddon" was a shameless summer crowd pleaser.
And, you know what? That's actually OK. My biggest problem with "Armageddon" was that, frankly, it gave me a headache.
Of course, that may have something to do with the fact that it was the 3rd action movie in a row I'd seen that day. Maybe.
The point is, when I look at "Armageddon" on TV now, it's perfectly fine. It's overdirected, but fine.
And that's probably my biggest problem with Bay: he clearly trusts the camera more than his actors to elicit an emotional response from the audience. Hence, the turning, spinning, sweeping, steadicam crane shots of people standing against a blue sky, instead of just holding the frame on the actor giving a performance.
Anyway, Armageddon's OK. Not great, but not horrible either.
Which brings us to "Pearl Harbor". And I'm pretty sure this is where I got on the "FUCK Michael Bay!" bandwagon. I was a film student when "Pearl Harbor" came out, and that was the first time I became acutely aware of the power of film marketing. Because I actually didn't want to see "Pearl Harbor". I knew I wouldn't like it. And, yet, there I was at the El Capitan theater on Hollywood Blvd. on opening day.
And it was exactly what I thought it would be.
Well, let's qualify that a bit:
The combat scenes, and especially the dog fight scenes are dynamite. But the story around it, of the love triangle, was just a complete joke. Not only was it a joke, but they spend all of this time building up the 2nd guy as a sympathetic love interest only to toss him aside in the end. Now, clearly, Randall Wallace (screenwriter) deserves some of the blame, but it's a partnership between the writer and the director.
It's clear that Bay loves the military, so he was a kid in a candy store in making this film (In fact, he's the PERFECT guy to do a real film adaptation of "G.I. Joe" instead of this "Iron Man" knock-off crap that's lumbering it's way to a theater near you this summer, but I digress.). But it's WAY too long, and it fills it's time with a lot of nonsensical fluff.
Pearl Harbor's a bad movie. A super expensive bad movie about a real life tragedy. They were trying to make a World War II version of "Titanic", but even "Titanic" is too long, and Ben Affleck is not Leonardo DeCaprio (who, in 1997, may as well have been the 6th Backstreet Boy in terms of his teen idol status) , and Kate Beckinsale (who I think is a great, fun actress) is definitely not Kate Winslet. It was poorly conceived from the start.
But I knew all of this. I knew it the minute I heard about it in detail, despite the pretty pictures. In the end, I only really have myself to blame.
"The Island", on the other hand, is another matter entirely. In my humble opinion, this is the best, most complete, most fun film Bay has ever made. Smart. Fun. Satisfying. Great cast (Ewan Macgregor, Scarlett Johanssen, Djimon Honsou, Sean Bean, Steve Buscemi). It's biggest problem, sadly, was it's title. It's the anti-Pearl Harbor: a great film with rotten marketing.
More importantly, when I heard that Speilberg specifically reached out to Bay to get him to direct this film, it told me that he sees more in this guy than most. Personally, I think Bay has the ability to do more complete films like "The Island", with the right script and the right producer.
"Transformers"? Hey, I was a fan as a kid. I even had the soundtrack for the animated movie they did back when I was in high school.
So much so that a kid on the intramural soccer team used to make fun of me by calling me "Optimus Prime". And, you know what? For the most part, I enjoyed it. I think it could benefit from more locked off camera shots. And there are some huge logic gaps. But I'll probably go see the sequel. No stress.
So, why this trip down Michael Bay memory lane? Because I simply don't understand the absolute hatred that people have for this guy. I mean, if he's a jerk on the set and you work in the business, I sort of understand. But, whatever - don't work with him.
I think to some people, he's the poster child for a certain kind of filmmaking - the summer blockbuster, critics-be-damned, budget busters. But, at the end of the day, I basically had a good time in most of his films. I rarely walked out feeling cheated or tricked (I'm looking at YOU, M. Night Shymalan!). The money that goes into his films could make 20 indie features, so I definitely can understand that sense of waste. Although, from a studio perspective, would those same 20 little movies have gotten the same rate of return on their investment as, say, Bad Boys II?
The dirty little secret in Hollywood is that popcorn pays for award season gold. Miramax couldn't afford to make "Shakespeare in Love" if it's sister company, Dimension, hadn't made a ton of money on "Scream". And a movie like "Transformers" probably paid for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". So the Michael Bay's make the Slumdog Millionaire's possible.
What I really really don't get is the fanboy hatred.
Well, I suppose, if I think about it, it makes sense. It's not like Bay is Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson. He's clearly not one of us. He's a little too cool and too tanned and too tall and too permed, and how DARE a non-geek give Optimus Prime a mouth!
But, then again, Hater-Aid never makes sense.
And it's his obvious disdain for the original material that burns people when it comes to Transformers. But, you know what? The stuff DOESN'T age well. Most Saturday cartoons aimed at kids don't (with the rare exception of "Robotech"). I mean, have you tried watching "Challenge of the Superfriends" recently on Boom or Cartoon Network? It's painful!
I'm not saying that people shouldn't hate Bay. It's a free country. But I would say, take a step back and think about it. After all, the guy did help make Transformers cool again. That's got to count for something.
The sad thing is, when you look at his films, Bay is clearly a fan boy at heart. He should do himself a favor and come to Comic-Con. He'll probably get geek religion.
May 12, 2009
From Wanssee to Gitmo
I interned at HBO Films for a time when I was in film school, and, during that period of time, they produced a great film called "Conspiracy", about the Wannsee Conference.
In short, when Hitler decided he wanted to kill all the Jews, he ordered his military and bureaucratic leaders to get together and figure out how. After all, organizing the apparatus of a nation to systematically murder 6 million people is a helluva thing to pull off. So, they all got together in a mansion in Wansee to work out a plan.
Over dinner.
In short, you can find a lawyer to figure out a way to justify anything. Even a crime against humanity.
In case you were wondering, here's a treaty the U.S. signed back in 1988 (i.e. under Ronald Reagan), and ratified in 1994 (under Bill Clinton) which bans the use of torture under ALL circumstances.
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
And, it defines torture as:
But, let's be honest, wasn't the whole point of using these techniques was because it was torture? It's not just about interrogation and stopping attacks. It was payback for 9/11, right? And it was to send a message to anybody else - here's what happens if you fuck with America, suckers!
Which proves a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of Mr. Cheney and others: Al Qaeda has already been calling us The Great Satan, and this is how they're helping to rally people to their cause. By using these tactics, to try to prove that we're bigger and badder than Saddam or the Soviets or any other bad actors in the world simply proves their case.
And, more to the point, the people who need to prove that they're bigger and badder than everybody else are usually motivated by fear. I'm beginning to believe Larry Wilkerson's evaluation that Dick Cheney is "a profoundly fearful man." I know it's a joke, but I'm reminded of my thoughts on Dark Sidious:
How scared do you have to be if you need to subjugate the universe?
In short, when Hitler decided he wanted to kill all the Jews, he ordered his military and bureaucratic leaders to get together and figure out how. After all, organizing the apparatus of a nation to systematically murder 6 million people is a helluva thing to pull off. So, they all got together in a mansion in Wansee to work out a plan.
Over dinner.
In short, you can find a lawyer to figure out a way to justify anything. Even a crime against humanity.
In case you were wondering, here's a treaty the U.S. signed back in 1988 (i.e. under Ronald Reagan), and ratified in 1994 (under Bill Clinton) which bans the use of torture under ALL circumstances.
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
And, it defines torture as:
"any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."Now, with regard to waterboarding, as described by Bent Sørensen, a Senior Medical Consultant to the IRCT and former member of the United Nations Committee against Torture:
'"when water is forced into your lungs in this fashion, in addition to the pain you are likely to experience an immediate and extreme fear of death. You may even suffer a heart attack from the stress or damage to the lungs and brain from inhalation of water and oxygen deprivation. In other words there is no doubt that waterboarding causes severe physical and/or mental suffering – one central element in the UNCAT’s definition of torture”.Which directly contradicts the conclusions of the Bybee memo, namely that it wouldn't constitute pain equivalent to organ failure or imminent death, or that it doesn't cause lasting pyschological trauma, and, therefore, doesn't rise to the level of torture.
“In addition,” he continues, “the CIA’s waterboarding clearly fulfils the three additional definition criteria stated in the Convention for a deed to be labelled torture, since it is 1) done intentionally, 2) for a specific purpose and 3) by a representative of a state – in this case the US.”
“Finally,” says Prof. Sørensen, “it should not be forgotten that the consequences of torture – including waterboarding - are often long-lasting or even chronic. For instance, anxiety attacks, depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder are very common sequelae after torture, regardless of course, whether the victim is guilty or innocent. So torture is never just a momentary infliction of suffering.”'
But, let's be honest, wasn't the whole point of using these techniques was because it was torture? It's not just about interrogation and stopping attacks. It was payback for 9/11, right? And it was to send a message to anybody else - here's what happens if you fuck with America, suckers!
Which proves a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of Mr. Cheney and others: Al Qaeda has already been calling us The Great Satan, and this is how they're helping to rally people to their cause. By using these tactics, to try to prove that we're bigger and badder than Saddam or the Soviets or any other bad actors in the world simply proves their case.
And, more to the point, the people who need to prove that they're bigger and badder than everybody else are usually motivated by fear. I'm beginning to believe Larry Wilkerson's evaluation that Dick Cheney is "a profoundly fearful man." I know it's a joke, but I'm reminded of my thoughts on Dark Sidious:
How scared do you have to be if you need to subjugate the universe?
May 11, 2009
Ground Zero
I'd been going back through my old, unfinished drafts here on Macroscope when I came across this old article I'd saved from The Atlantic. It's a letter from a woman who was in Hiroshima on the only day that most of us in the rest of the world know anything about Hiroshima, and how, as Wayne Gale would put it, she lived to tell the tale.
Choice quote:
This, my friends, is pure, unadulterated horror.
But worth a read when we consider the modern state of nuclear proliferation.
The Atlantic | August 1980 | 'I Thought My Last Hour Had Come...' | Guillain
Choice quote:
I rubbed my nose and mouth hard with a tenugui (a kind of towel) I had at my waist. To my horror, I found that the skin of my face had come off in the towel.
This, my friends, is pure, unadulterated horror.
But worth a read when we consider the modern state of nuclear proliferation.
The Atlantic | August 1980 | 'I Thought My Last Hour Had Come...' | Guillain
April 22, 2009
About Torture
It's all very simple:
Before actually having any suspects in custody from the War on Terror, officials in the Bush Administration took a program created to help captured American soldiers resist torture techniques crafted by the Red Chinese in the Korean War to illicit false confessions and reverse-engineered it so that they could APPLY those techniques in a way that would illicit false confessions about a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda to justify an invasion of Iraq.
Anyone who says the techniques helped prevent terrorist attacks on Los Angeles are wrong. That presumed attack was thwarted months before the torture even started.
And, consider this - after being waterboarded 180 times, KSM never gave up Osama Bin Laden.
Effective, huh?
Anyone who says it's not torture is wrong. The United States has prosecuted people as war criminals for using these very same techniques going back as far as the Spanish American War.
Anyone who says that 9/11 was so extraordinary that we had to violate the law is wrong. Is Al Qaeda really more dangerous that the Nazis or Mutual Assured Destruction? Get real.
Or, actually, let me put it to you this way: Let's assume that there is a ticking time bomb. Let's assume you have absolute proof that an attack is imminent and you have a suspect in custody that you are absolutely sure knows how to prevent it but he'll only talk if you break the law and violate him physically in some way. And let's assume, by torturing him, you prevent an attack and save millions of lives.
We are STILL a nation of laws, with a court system where you're judged by a jury of your peers. When the dust has settled, you should still have to stand trial and answer for your crimes. Because if a jury of your peers agrees that you made the right decision, they'll acquit you. The law is upheld with the people kept safe. Problem solved.
And if the jury DOES convict you, but the President knows that you did a great service for this nation, he can pardon you.
But the law is still the law. We don't just pretend that torture is OK. It's not OK. And if you think the circumstances are so dire that you're required to do some awful things, you should be man enough to stand up, say it proudly, and take your lumps because you believe in America and our system of laws.
To do otherwise, to say the law shouldn't apply to you, I'm sorry, that's just fundamentally un-American.
You want to know how you're REALLY supposed to interrogate prisoners? Read "The Interrogators", about the first guys on the ground in Afghanistan and how they got real actionable intelligence without resorting to torture.
But I think my man Shepard Smith said it best:
Before actually having any suspects in custody from the War on Terror, officials in the Bush Administration took a program created to help captured American soldiers resist torture techniques crafted by the Red Chinese in the Korean War to illicit false confessions and reverse-engineered it so that they could APPLY those techniques in a way that would illicit false confessions about a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda to justify an invasion of Iraq.
Anyone who says the techniques helped prevent terrorist attacks on Los Angeles are wrong. That presumed attack was thwarted months before the torture even started.
And, consider this - after being waterboarded 180 times, KSM never gave up Osama Bin Laden.
Effective, huh?
Anyone who says it's not torture is wrong. The United States has prosecuted people as war criminals for using these very same techniques going back as far as the Spanish American War.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Anyone who says that 9/11 was so extraordinary that we had to violate the law is wrong. Is Al Qaeda really more dangerous that the Nazis or Mutual Assured Destruction? Get real.
Or, actually, let me put it to you this way: Let's assume that there is a ticking time bomb. Let's assume you have absolute proof that an attack is imminent and you have a suspect in custody that you are absolutely sure knows how to prevent it but he'll only talk if you break the law and violate him physically in some way. And let's assume, by torturing him, you prevent an attack and save millions of lives.
We are STILL a nation of laws, with a court system where you're judged by a jury of your peers. When the dust has settled, you should still have to stand trial and answer for your crimes. Because if a jury of your peers agrees that you made the right decision, they'll acquit you. The law is upheld with the people kept safe. Problem solved.
And if the jury DOES convict you, but the President knows that you did a great service for this nation, he can pardon you.
But the law is still the law. We don't just pretend that torture is OK. It's not OK. And if you think the circumstances are so dire that you're required to do some awful things, you should be man enough to stand up, say it proudly, and take your lumps because you believe in America and our system of laws.
To do otherwise, to say the law shouldn't apply to you, I'm sorry, that's just fundamentally un-American.
You want to know how you're REALLY supposed to interrogate prisoners? Read "The Interrogators", about the first guys on the ground in Afghanistan and how they got real actionable intelligence without resorting to torture.
But I think my man Shepard Smith said it best:
April 20, 2009
No. 1 on the call sheet
This interview with J.J. Abrams about his process for the new "Star Trek", coupled with a Fast Company article about McG, where he likened directing a big budget movie to being hired as the CEO of a $200 million company that only gets to launch one product, put a new idea in my head.
So, I'm about a month away from starting serious casting for my feature film, and it occurred to me, for as many actors who want to be stars, how many of them are conscious of the responsibilities, from a filmmaking perspective, that stardom brings?
I'm reminded of a conversation Tom Cruise and Jada Pinkett Smith had with Tavis Smiley
just before the release of "Collateral", where Tom said, at the time, "I've never lost the studio money". It struck me at the time because, honestly, it hadn't occurred to me that he, as the star, felt personally responsible for making sure that the people who invested their money in his performance would see a return on their investment.
As a director, I'm reminding myself that it's not just important to cast someone who can give a performance, but someone who can also be a responsible filmmaker: supporting the performances for the other actors, treating onset crew with proper respect, being engaged in the evolution of their character with the director and the writer, using their fan base to promote the film, and, in many, many cases, helping to bring in the money to make sure there even IS a film to make in the first place.
It sounds like J.J. was very blessed by Chris Pine's onset presence. He was the star of the film, and he knew it, and acted appropriately.
I hope other actors are taking note - if you want to be a star, act like one. And that doesn't mean being a diva. It means being someone that a filmmaker and a producer and a studio and your castmates can put their trust and faith in. Being a star is about having broad shoulders.
Anyway, just something on my mind right now.
February 27, 2009
The toughest five minutes you'll ever love
So, as most of you know, I make movies.
That's my true passion. It's the reason I quit an insanely well-paying job in New York and moved all the way to Los Angeles nearly 10 years ago to get my MFA in Screenwriting at the American Film Institute.
Ironically enough, I pursued screenwriting after I took a production class at NYU back in 1998 and realized that I really didn't care enough about F-stops and film stock to devote my energy to cinematography and directing. I figured, if I could learn how to tell a good enough story, I can draw in all of the technical people I needed to make my films happen.
That was, of course, before I moved to Hollywood.
Now, don't get me wrong - you will never see a good movie that doesn't begin with a good script. But, after getting my degree and years of trying to push various feature film scripts in the marketplace, I came to realize that, when all you do is write, you're completely at the mercy of other people's tastes. Certainly, spec sales happen, but, given how many scripts there are out there in the system, selling a spec (i.e. a script you wrote on your own, with out anyone paying you to do it up front) is a lot like winning the lottery. Of course, if we're going to stick with the lottery analogy, going to film school is sort of like living in Montgomery County, MD - there's just an abnormally high number of state lottery winners there, just like you're more likely to know spec sellers if you go to film school.
Anyway, I came to realize that, contrary to popular rumors, scripts are not the coin of the realm in Hollywood. Only actual finished films are the real currency in Hollywood. From a buyer's perspective, buying a script is too big of a risk - WAY too many things can go wrong because of way too many people before you get your money back. There are far more buyers for films - cable networks, foreign territories, film markets, etc. - than for scripts.
Which gets to a piece of advice a lawyer buddy told me he received from his mentor at his first law firm: He told my friend that there were lawyers at that firm who could never understand why they didn't make partner. But making partner had nothing to do with seniority or legal skill. In a partnership, you have to split the pie, and anytime you add a new partner, you have to split the pie a little thinner. So the only reason why they would ever add a new partner is if he or she has something, a client or a relationship or something, that makes the pie bigger.
No one will hand you their equity for nothing.
And, as I thought about it, I noticed that a lot of the screenwriters I really loved were also directors: Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, Spike Lee, David Lynch, etc.
In short, I realized that, if I wanted to see my movies made, I had to start making them.
So, I did this:
You like? If so, show "5" a little love: make it your favorite on YouTube, give it 5 stars, leave a funny comment, and, of course, forward it to every single person in your address book. :-)
You'll feel better when you do.
But, back to my original point, I've gotten FAR more traction as a screenwriter from this little short than from any of my feature screenplays. Why? Because it only takes 5 minutes to watch, while I script can take hours.
Which is why, whenever I run into a frustrated actor or writer, I tell them, take control of your destiny and make a film. Give yourself the role you want. Make yourself the producer who loves your writing.
Give yourself your own equity.
In the meantime, I'm planning to make something considerably.... longer. :-)
That's my true passion. It's the reason I quit an insanely well-paying job in New York and moved all the way to Los Angeles nearly 10 years ago to get my MFA in Screenwriting at the American Film Institute.
Ironically enough, I pursued screenwriting after I took a production class at NYU back in 1998 and realized that I really didn't care enough about F-stops and film stock to devote my energy to cinematography and directing. I figured, if I could learn how to tell a good enough story, I can draw in all of the technical people I needed to make my films happen.
That was, of course, before I moved to Hollywood.
Now, don't get me wrong - you will never see a good movie that doesn't begin with a good script. But, after getting my degree and years of trying to push various feature film scripts in the marketplace, I came to realize that, when all you do is write, you're completely at the mercy of other people's tastes. Certainly, spec sales happen, but, given how many scripts there are out there in the system, selling a spec (i.e. a script you wrote on your own, with out anyone paying you to do it up front) is a lot like winning the lottery. Of course, if we're going to stick with the lottery analogy, going to film school is sort of like living in Montgomery County, MD - there's just an abnormally high number of state lottery winners there, just like you're more likely to know spec sellers if you go to film school.
Anyway, I came to realize that, contrary to popular rumors, scripts are not the coin of the realm in Hollywood. Only actual finished films are the real currency in Hollywood. From a buyer's perspective, buying a script is too big of a risk - WAY too many things can go wrong because of way too many people before you get your money back. There are far more buyers for films - cable networks, foreign territories, film markets, etc. - than for scripts.
Which gets to a piece of advice a lawyer buddy told me he received from his mentor at his first law firm: He told my friend that there were lawyers at that firm who could never understand why they didn't make partner. But making partner had nothing to do with seniority or legal skill. In a partnership, you have to split the pie, and anytime you add a new partner, you have to split the pie a little thinner. So the only reason why they would ever add a new partner is if he or she has something, a client or a relationship or something, that makes the pie bigger.
No one will hand you their equity for nothing.
And, as I thought about it, I noticed that a lot of the screenwriters I really loved were also directors: Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, Spike Lee, David Lynch, etc.
In short, I realized that, if I wanted to see my movies made, I had to start making them.
So, I did this:
You like? If so, show "5" a little love: make it your favorite on YouTube, give it 5 stars, leave a funny comment, and, of course, forward it to every single person in your address book. :-)
You'll feel better when you do.
But, back to my original point, I've gotten FAR more traction as a screenwriter from this little short than from any of my feature screenplays. Why? Because it only takes 5 minutes to watch, while I script can take hours.
Which is why, whenever I run into a frustrated actor or writer, I tell them, take control of your destiny and make a film. Give yourself the role you want. Make yourself the producer who loves your writing.
Give yourself your own equity.
In the meantime, I'm planning to make something considerably.... longer. :-)
January 20, 2009
"....proud to be an American..."
"I, too, sing America.I know I've been pretty quiet since the election back in November. A lot has
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--
I, too, am America."
- Langston Hughes
happened since then - personally, professionally, artistically, romantically.
In many ways, I feel like anything I could write now would really pale in comparison
to the reality of the moment.
But I would like to say a few things:
- I love that Michelle's mother is moving into the White House, because it is representative of the reality for many Black families here in America. My grandmother lived in my parents' house since before I was born, and there's something to be said for having another adult who is not working a full-time job there to help raise the children. And, let's be blunt, it's much more likely for Blacks to BE the nanny instead of HAVING a nanny. But, even more importantly, having a blood relative to help with your babies is probably always better. So I love that America is going to have a "First Nana".
- I went to the Martin Luther King Day parade here in Los Angeles yesterday, and I love the weird trick of fate that we get to celebrate MLK the day before we inaugurate our first Black president. There were Obama t-shirts & signs & bootleg merchandise EVERYWHERE. But what's even more cool is how crazy diverse the MLK Day Parade itself was - there was a huge Korean contingent; Brazilian carnival-style dancers & floats, even freakin' Hari Krishnas. :-) A reminder that King's dream wasn't just about Black people. It was, and continues to be, about everybody.
- Needless to say, I can understand how some on the left are highly pissed off about the whole Rick Warren thing. But, as I think those who oppose things like Prop 8 here in California are beginning to learn, this is a democracy, and the only way to win a majority for your beliefs is to change hearts and minds. And that means you have to talk to people who may believe in things that you hate, and they have to actually be in the room in order to talk to them. I stopped listening to some folks that I like because they believe something different than me, and, frankly, that's a sign of my own weakness. And ours. So, let's be real about this. Rick Warren is a far cry from Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson, and he probably represents a very large cross-section of the church-going populace of this country. Even if you're a big believer in separation of church and state, even if you're an atheist or an agnostic, you still have to share the country with the religious people. You can't get rid of them just like they can't get rid of you, no matter how much either of you would like. That, my friends, is what democracy is all about. Just like talking to Iran is not appeasement, giving an olive branch to the Christian middle is not an endorsement. Have faith that the President may just know what he's doing.
- Don't you just love that last sentence? Above all else, I love the return of a presumption of competence to the Federal government.
- The last time I was on the national mall was 1995 for the Million Man March. After watching the festivities of the day, I'm suddenly itching to go back and go on all the tours. If I may paraphrase our new First Lady, this may not be the first time I've been proud of my country, but today is definitely the day that I've felt MOST proud to call myself an American.
December 16, 2008
Comic Book Quote of The Day
"The Earth is at ground zero of a Doomsday Singularity. The impact of Darkseid's fall is causing cracks to spread through all space sectors."
"John Stewart's still down there! Darkseid's dragging all our friends into Hell with him!"
"Then I say we go in after him, Guy. You, me, Kyle, anybody else who wants to. And we kick his ass."
"Then I say we go in after him, Guy. You, me, Kyle, anybody else who wants to. And we kick his ass."
- Green Lanterns The Green Man, Guy Gardner, and, finally, Hal Jordan, pictured here, in DC Comic's Final Crisis #5
Gotta love those cosmic superheroes with no fear. DC editorial may be a colossal train wreck, but this is easily the deepest, neatest, most broadly conceived superhero comic I've read in quite a while. Grant Morrison rocks.
Gotta love those cosmic superheroes with no fear. DC editorial may be a colossal train wreck, but this is easily the deepest, neatest, most broadly conceived superhero comic I've read in quite a while. Grant Morrison rocks.
November 14, 2008
For Guido, or requiem for a true tiger
When I was in college, the term "facebook" may as well have been more accurately translated to "sex menu".
I cannot tell you how many hours I and my fellow classmates spent looking through the official guide book published by the university, listing names, addresses, and, yes, pictures of the faces of all the members of our incoming class to determine who was hot or not and just how far away that hotness was from our respective dorm rooms. The freshmen facebook was irreparably dog-eared well before the end of orientation week every September, and I suspect that tradition still lives on today.
Of course, Facebook now has a totally different meaning, turning into an online version of the game show "where are they now?" In many ways, I think the reason Facebook has garnered so much more attention than MySpace is that it seems uniquely designed to help you rediscover those people whom you never thought you would miss until you see their name in a friend request.
Guido Sohne was one of those people.
It would be a bald-faced lie to say that Guido and I were anything more than casual acquaintances back at Princeton. And, considering how few black faces there were, especially within the confines of the Computer Science department during the early '90's, that says a lot. It wouldn't be accurate to say Guido kept to himself, because all I really know is that he didn't really hang out with me. And there's clearly an element of arrogance there on my part - after all, I was the president for Princeton's chapter of NSBE, the National Society of Black Engineers, for two years running and organized an entire little community within a community of Black & African students aimed at helping ourselves survive the Princeton E-Quad gauntlet. So I knew and studied and partied and traveled with everybody. If he wasn't where I was, he couldn't possibly be out somewhere else with a whole other set of people, right?
I think that was the weird trick about Princeton: for even a relatively small school (~4,500 undergraduates back in the day), there was enough self-segregation that you could always find ways to make it seem even smaller. As one brother once told me, "I don't even see the white people. I walk around campus, and, it's like they're blurry. Like they're not even really there."
All I really knew about Guido was that he was very cool, friendly, and way, way, way smarter about computer science than I was. He'd disappear for seemingly entire semesters, while the rumors circled around him about some amazing thing he'd done back in his home country of Ghana or some other part of the world.
So, I must admit that I was very pleasantly surprised to reconnect with him via Facebook. Just glad to see his face.
He sent me a pretty long e-mail back describing all of the amazing technological and political activist work he was involved in back in Africa, although he hadn't been back to the US since he left Princeton because, in his words, he'd decided that he was going to come back successful or not at all.
That was October 1, 2007.
And I never replied.
I guess I was just lazy. Like Louis Armstrong said, "we have all the time in the world", right?
The next time I saw Guido's name was when a mutual friend send me a Facebook message this past June asking me if I'd heard that he'd died.
Died.
Of heart failure.
Guido was 34 years old.
Here's a guy who founded companies, co-founded NGOs, advised international foundations, all in the interest of bringing the promise of technology and innovation to those in his home who were less fortunate than he was. He was the living, breathing embodiment of everything Thomas Friedman talks about in his book "The World Is Flat". Someone who had dedicated his life to nothing less than transforming Africa.
It wasn't right.
Guido's death just struck me as colossally, cosmically unfair. Like a tiny crime against humanity had been committed.
And, on top of the injustice of it all, I must admit that I also felt a tremendous sense of shame.
I mean, let's be honest: I firmly believe that what I do, namely tell stories that can both move people's hearts and, if I'm really good, shift their perspectives a little, is one of the single most powerful and important ways to effect the human condition. Everything that is begins with an idea, and it takes storytellers to help grow the new ideas that become the future, especially the one that we desire. But even if I'm the most successful filmmaker the world has ever known, my effect on the world is very subtle. It's not an exercise in direct action like what Guido did every single day in Ghana. Hell, just BEING an open source programmer and advocate in the middle of Accra is a form of direct political action. Let alone those who have been educated, or empowered, perhaps even enriched, directly through his efforts.
Guido was in the arena. And his death reminded me that I hadn't really done much to get my hands very dirty.
But we all have our specific roles to play, and the fact remains that I, personally, will never be as technically proficient or politically courageous as Guido Sohne.
I cannot be Guido Sohne.
But it occurred to me that I could certainly do my best to find the NEXT Guido Sohne.
So, after a summer of informal chats with some of my other classmates and members of the university faculty and administration, we've created the Guido Sohne Memorial Fund at Princeton University.
The idea is this: In conjunction with the Engineering School, we'll conduct a search each semester for an African college student who's studying computer science, and, when we've identified the top candidate, we will pay for him or her to spend a semester studying in Princeton. And, at the end of the term, if there are funds left over, we'll send an American Princeton student over to Africa for a summer to study as well.
In order to do that, we're all engaged in the process of raising the initial $50,000 that's necessary to establish the scholarship. Ultimately, we need to raise $250,000 to make the scholarship self-sustaining over a period of years.
Most of the time, if I ask you folks who read Macroscope to do anything, it's usually to go see a movie or vote in an election. Maybe read a specific book every now and then. I believe this is the first (and, most likely, the last time) I will ever ask you to reach into your wallets so directly.
But, if you're motivated and inspired by Guido's story the way I was, I would ask you to contribute. You don't have to be associated with Princeton in any way to make a donation. Simply mail a check made out to `Princeton University', referencing the "Guido Sohne Memorial Fund", to the following address:
Jotham Johnson '64
Director of Stewardship
Princeton University
330 Alexander Road
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
Yes, I know - checks are so 20th century. Apparently, the university still only accepts direct credit card donations for their annual giving campaign, so we're still trying to figure out a way to facilitate credit card and/or PayPal donations to Princeton that doesn't put either me or any of my classmates (i.e. people who are not official representatives of the university) in charge of anyone else's money (and we're definitely open to suggestions). And I would LOVE to find a company who could do a matching gift of some sort.... especially since Guido was actually working FOR Microsoft at the time of his death (still trying to figure out how to recruit them to get involved).
The point is, contribute. However you can. If we can help even one kid come across the Atlantic and live up to his full potential, there's no telling how many lives will be directly transformed for the better. It's opportunities like these that can literally change the world.
If you're on Facebook, click the title of this blog post to become a fan of the Guido Sohne Fellowship there. Or just click this URL:
http://www.facebook.com/inbox/?ref=mb#/pages/Guido-Sohne-Fellowship/42008299168?ref=ts
On that page, you can find links to a number of articles detailing Guido's work and life. And you should absolutely feel free to forward this e-mail and/or blog post to as many other people as you see fit.
Princeton's unofficial motto is "In The World's Service". Guido helped remind me of that. And I hope I'm not the only one.
I cannot tell you how many hours I and my fellow classmates spent looking through the official guide book published by the university, listing names, addresses, and, yes, pictures of the faces of all the members of our incoming class to determine who was hot or not and just how far away that hotness was from our respective dorm rooms. The freshmen facebook was irreparably dog-eared well before the end of orientation week every September, and I suspect that tradition still lives on today.
Of course, Facebook now has a totally different meaning, turning into an online version of the game show "where are they now?" In many ways, I think the reason Facebook has garnered so much more attention than MySpace is that it seems uniquely designed to help you rediscover those people whom you never thought you would miss until you see their name in a friend request.
Guido Sohne was one of those people.
It would be a bald-faced lie to say that Guido and I were anything more than casual acquaintances back at Princeton. And, considering how few black faces there were, especially within the confines of the Computer Science department during the early '90's, that says a lot. It wouldn't be accurate to say Guido kept to himself, because all I really know is that he didn't really hang out with me. And there's clearly an element of arrogance there on my part - after all, I was the president for Princeton's chapter of NSBE, the National Society of Black Engineers, for two years running and organized an entire little community within a community of Black & African students aimed at helping ourselves survive the Princeton E-Quad gauntlet. So I knew and studied and partied and traveled with everybody. If he wasn't where I was, he couldn't possibly be out somewhere else with a whole other set of people, right?
I think that was the weird trick about Princeton: for even a relatively small school (~4,500 undergraduates back in the day), there was enough self-segregation that you could always find ways to make it seem even smaller. As one brother once told me, "I don't even see the white people. I walk around campus, and, it's like they're blurry. Like they're not even really there."
All I really knew about Guido was that he was very cool, friendly, and way, way, way smarter about computer science than I was. He'd disappear for seemingly entire semesters, while the rumors circled around him about some amazing thing he'd done back in his home country of Ghana or some other part of the world.
So, I must admit that I was very pleasantly surprised to reconnect with him via Facebook. Just glad to see his face.
He sent me a pretty long e-mail back describing all of the amazing technological and political activist work he was involved in back in Africa, although he hadn't been back to the US since he left Princeton because, in his words, he'd decided that he was going to come back successful or not at all.
That was October 1, 2007.
And I never replied.
I guess I was just lazy. Like Louis Armstrong said, "we have all the time in the world", right?
The next time I saw Guido's name was when a mutual friend send me a Facebook message this past June asking me if I'd heard that he'd died.
Died.
Of heart failure.
Guido was 34 years old.
Here's a guy who founded companies, co-founded NGOs, advised international foundations, all in the interest of bringing the promise of technology and innovation to those in his home who were less fortunate than he was. He was the living, breathing embodiment of everything Thomas Friedman talks about in his book "The World Is Flat". Someone who had dedicated his life to nothing less than transforming Africa.
It wasn't right.
Guido's death just struck me as colossally, cosmically unfair. Like a tiny crime against humanity had been committed.
And, on top of the injustice of it all, I must admit that I also felt a tremendous sense of shame.
I mean, let's be honest: I firmly believe that what I do, namely tell stories that can both move people's hearts and, if I'm really good, shift their perspectives a little, is one of the single most powerful and important ways to effect the human condition. Everything that is begins with an idea, and it takes storytellers to help grow the new ideas that become the future, especially the one that we desire. But even if I'm the most successful filmmaker the world has ever known, my effect on the world is very subtle. It's not an exercise in direct action like what Guido did every single day in Ghana. Hell, just BEING an open source programmer and advocate in the middle of Accra is a form of direct political action. Let alone those who have been educated, or empowered, perhaps even enriched, directly through his efforts.
Guido was in the arena. And his death reminded me that I hadn't really done much to get my hands very dirty.
But we all have our specific roles to play, and the fact remains that I, personally, will never be as technically proficient or politically courageous as Guido Sohne.
I cannot be Guido Sohne.
But it occurred to me that I could certainly do my best to find the NEXT Guido Sohne.
So, after a summer of informal chats with some of my other classmates and members of the university faculty and administration, we've created the Guido Sohne Memorial Fund at Princeton University.
The idea is this: In conjunction with the Engineering School, we'll conduct a search each semester for an African college student who's studying computer science, and, when we've identified the top candidate, we will pay for him or her to spend a semester studying in Princeton. And, at the end of the term, if there are funds left over, we'll send an American Princeton student over to Africa for a summer to study as well.
In order to do that, we're all engaged in the process of raising the initial $50,000 that's necessary to establish the scholarship. Ultimately, we need to raise $250,000 to make the scholarship self-sustaining over a period of years.
Most of the time, if I ask you folks who read Macroscope to do anything, it's usually to go see a movie or vote in an election. Maybe read a specific book every now and then. I believe this is the first (and, most likely, the last time) I will ever ask you to reach into your wallets so directly.
But, if you're motivated and inspired by Guido's story the way I was, I would ask you to contribute. You don't have to be associated with Princeton in any way to make a donation. Simply mail a check made out to `Princeton University', referencing the "Guido Sohne Memorial Fund", to the following address:
Jotham Johnson '64
Director of Stewardship
Princeton University
330 Alexander Road
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
Yes, I know - checks are so 20th century. Apparently, the university still only accepts direct credit card donations for their annual giving campaign, so we're still trying to figure out a way to facilitate credit card and/or PayPal donations to Princeton that doesn't put either me or any of my classmates (i.e. people who are not official representatives of the university) in charge of anyone else's money (and we're definitely open to suggestions). And I would LOVE to find a company who could do a matching gift of some sort.... especially since Guido was actually working FOR Microsoft at the time of his death (still trying to figure out how to recruit them to get involved).
The point is, contribute. However you can. If we can help even one kid come across the Atlantic and live up to his full potential, there's no telling how many lives will be directly transformed for the better. It's opportunities like these that can literally change the world.
If you're on Facebook, click the title of this blog post to become a fan of the Guido Sohne Fellowship there. Or just click this URL:
http://www.facebook.com/inbox/?ref=mb#/pages/Guido-Sohne-Fellowship/42008299168?ref=ts
On that page, you can find links to a number of articles detailing Guido's work and life. And you should absolutely feel free to forward this e-mail and/or blog post to as many other people as you see fit.
Princeton's unofficial motto is "In The World's Service". Guido helped remind me of that. And I hope I'm not the only one.
November 11, 2008
Seven Days Later
Barack Hussein Obama II will be the 44th President of the United States of America.
Honestly, I don't even know where to begin.
Moments after the networks called the election on Obama's behalf, my friend called me and said, simply "this proves that Love Beats Fear."
A few days later, another friend called and said this:
"Yo, man. I had this dream last Tuesday night, where this whack dude was the President, and he was fuckin' everything up. So we had an election, and there was another old whack dude running against a black dude.
And you know what? The black dude won.
Crazy shit, right?
So, I was just callin' to ask, did you have the same dream?"
My own personal analogy is that it's the difference between standing in a room in the dark for eight years, and suddenly someone switches on the lights. Nothing physically in the room has changed. But the light banishes the shadows. It makes the gems in the room shine. It illuminates the paths forward. Where once there was nothing but fear and uncertainty, we can now, all see the possibilities.
Now, let's take them.
U.S.A.
For the Vets
Those of you who've seen my short film "5" know that, at the end credits, there's a dedication in honor of my brother and all of the other brave men and women who put on the uniform of the United States military to defend our nation.
Now, I'm far from a jingoist. I do think there's more than a little veracity to Smedley Butler's claims about the relationship between American military activism and the advancement of corporate agendas.
On the other hand, I like to think of myself as an aggressive pacifist. Or, in the words of our new president elect, I'll never throw the first punch, but I'll for damn sure throw the last one.
And, as much distaste as I have for non-fictional violence, I do recognize that sometimes you do have to throw that punch. And, consequently, you need people who are willing and able to throw it.
As my brother so aptly put it, "It's easy to stand on your principles when you aren't responsible for people's lives."
So, today, I want to take a moment to salute not just my brother, recently minted as a major in the U.S. Army Reserves, but to all of my family members - cousins, uncles, even dear old Dad - who've put on the colors.
Happy Veterans Day, gentlemen. You deserve it.
Now, I'm far from a jingoist. I do think there's more than a little veracity to Smedley Butler's claims about the relationship between American military activism and the advancement of corporate agendas.
On the other hand, I like to think of myself as an aggressive pacifist. Or, in the words of our new president elect, I'll never throw the first punch, but I'll for damn sure throw the last one.
And, as much distaste as I have for non-fictional violence, I do recognize that sometimes you do have to throw that punch. And, consequently, you need people who are willing and able to throw it.
As my brother so aptly put it, "It's easy to stand on your principles when you aren't responsible for people's lives."
So, today, I want to take a moment to salute not just my brother, recently minted as a major in the U.S. Army Reserves, but to all of my family members - cousins, uncles, even dear old Dad - who've put on the colors.
Happy Veterans Day, gentlemen. You deserve it.
October 28, 2008
Movies That Are Actually Scary
Because far too many people falsely believe bloody=scary.
And, frankly, there's a difference between thrilling (i.e. 28 Days Later) and frightening.
I'm talking about the stuff of nightmares, here.
So, in honor of All Hallow's Eve, here are some films that legitimately made me afraid to turn off the lights at one point or another, in no particular order.
Anyone out there want to suggest any additions to my list?
And, frankly, there's a difference between thrilling (i.e. 28 Days Later) and frightening.
I'm talking about the stuff of nightmares, here.
So, in honor of All Hallow's Eve, here are some films that legitimately made me afraid to turn off the lights at one point or another, in no particular order.
Anyone out there want to suggest any additions to my list?
Three Strikes
Christopher Nolan on 'Dark Knight' and its box-office billion: 'It's mystifying to me' | Hero Complex | Los Angeles Times
Reading this great interview with Christopher Nolan as he contemplates the possibility of doing a third "Batman" film really does raise the question: Has there EVER been a third film in a trilogy that's as good or better than the first two?
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was quite good, and definitely better than The Temple of Doom.
Revenge of the Sith? Well, it's the best of the three, but the whole trilogy is so suspect, I don't really want to count it.
Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is a very good 80's horror film, definitely better than part 2, but not as freakishly scary as the first film.
Matrix Revolutions contains elements of a brilliant film, but there spliced in with nearly an hour of a really terrible mecha war movie, so, no.
Rocky III? Not a particularly artistic or emotionally honest film like the first, but MAN, that movie is good clean fun! Mr. T and Hulk Hogan? What's there not to love?
Die Hard With A Vengeance? I enjoyed it, but it's not nearly as tight or well written as the first film, and the ending is kinda random, so, no.
Batman Forever? Again, I enjoyed it, but it was not nearly as rich as either of Burton's two films (of which, I think Batman Returns is the best).
The Bourne Ultimatum is an exceptional action movie, but, without the Marie character, it really lacks emotional resonance and, in the end, it's about very little.
Return of the King is, in my mind, the only one that surpasses the other two films in the series. And that's only because the entire series was conceived as one complete story beforehand, where Act Three is the big payoff.
Most other part threes are commissioned largely for commercial purposes, with people trying to find a story to justify a reason to capitalize on the success of the first two films.
In short, I would LOVE to see Nolan find a reason to do a 3rd Batman.
(My recommendation? Cast Daniel Day Lewis as Dr. Hugo Strange for the main villain. "Who the Hell is Hugo Strange?" you ask? Who cares? Outside of comic fanboys, who the Hell ever heard of Ra's Al Ghul before "Batman Begins"?)
But I hope it's for the right reasons. Story reasons.
Reading this great interview with Christopher Nolan as he contemplates the possibility of doing a third "Batman" film really does raise the question: Has there EVER been a third film in a trilogy that's as good or better than the first two?
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was quite good, and definitely better than The Temple of Doom.
Revenge of the Sith? Well, it's the best of the three, but the whole trilogy is so suspect, I don't really want to count it.
Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is a very good 80's horror film, definitely better than part 2, but not as freakishly scary as the first film.
Matrix Revolutions contains elements of a brilliant film, but there spliced in with nearly an hour of a really terrible mecha war movie, so, no.
Rocky III? Not a particularly artistic or emotionally honest film like the first, but MAN, that movie is good clean fun! Mr. T and Hulk Hogan? What's there not to love?
Die Hard With A Vengeance? I enjoyed it, but it's not nearly as tight or well written as the first film, and the ending is kinda random, so, no.
Batman Forever? Again, I enjoyed it, but it was not nearly as rich as either of Burton's two films (of which, I think Batman Returns is the best).
The Bourne Ultimatum is an exceptional action movie, but, without the Marie character, it really lacks emotional resonance and, in the end, it's about very little.
Return of the King is, in my mind, the only one that surpasses the other two films in the series. And that's only because the entire series was conceived as one complete story beforehand, where Act Three is the big payoff.
Most other part threes are commissioned largely for commercial purposes, with people trying to find a story to justify a reason to capitalize on the success of the first two films.
In short, I would LOVE to see Nolan find a reason to do a 3rd Batman.
(My recommendation? Cast Daniel Day Lewis as Dr. Hugo Strange for the main villain. "Who the Hell is Hugo Strange?" you ask? Who cares? Outside of comic fanboys, who the Hell ever heard of Ra's Al Ghul before "Batman Begins"?)
But I hope it's for the right reasons. Story reasons.
October 16, 2008
Diary of a bunch of Mad Black Writers
According to Nikki Finke, it looks like Tyler Perry finally got the message and is going to sign onto the WGA contract.
"Peace in our time", ladies and gentlemen.
And I'll refrain from referencing Chris Rock's old joke about people who want credit for things they're supposed to do. For now.
"Peace in our time", ladies and gentlemen.
And I'll refrain from referencing Chris Rock's old joke about people who want credit for things they're supposed to do. For now.
Mirror, Mirror
As I've mentioned in the past, one of my favorite episodes of the original Star Trek is entitled "The Enemy Within" - a transporter malfunction creates two versions of Captain Kirk.
One is intelligent, wise, compassionate, yet indecisive.
The other is....
Well, see for yourself:
Forceful? Yes. Decisive? Yes. But also crazed, lustful, paranoid.
And yet, as Spock points out, while separated, neither one is capable of surviving without the other. In the end, as much as the two repulse each other, they're forced to literally embrace each other to both survive and lead.
So, I've been following the coverage of the growing lynch mob qualities of the Palin/McCain rallies over the last few weeks.
And let's be real about this: McCain may be the official party nominee, but Sarah Palin is really the standard bearer for this particular facet of the Republican party these days. Given the choice, I'm sure many of them would prefer to have her at the top of the ticket simply because they trust her more. In their mind, she's one of them, through and through. McCain is, sadly, just someone who's hitched his carriage to them on the vain hope that this pony will carry him all the way to the Oval Office.
Honestly, I feel sort of sorry for both of them.
McCain, because, after the abuse he suffered at the hands of Bush & Co. back in 2000, could not get over his Presidential fixation and has debased himself over and over again by cowtowing to Bush, Falwell, et. al., hoping that these people that he once scorned will finally let him in the club. Frankly, much of his career has been spent seeking acceptance from the "cool kids". Originally, he hoped that by being a rebel Republican, he'd be popular among the Hollywood & press elites. And it worked. But it wasn't enough to get him elected, because as far as most Democrats are concerned, he's still a Republican. One they might want to have a beer with, but a Republican, nonetheless. So he did a switch, seeking favor from within his party. But, by then, it was too late, he'd pissed too many of them off. And the only reason he's the nominee now is because everyone else in the GOP field proved to be unacceptable to at least one sizable faction within the party (Rudy's too liberal and Romney's too Mormon for the cultural conservatives, and Huckabee was too much of a policy lightweight for the neocons and finance conservatives). In short, everyone else's constituencies killed the one guy they were the most offended by, and none of them were paying attention to McCain, leaving him the last man standing.
Sarah Palin's just like McCain in that her ambition consistently overrides whatever better judgment she may have about her career. I get the sense that when she was approached about taking the VP spot, she must have said to herself "well, how hard can it be?" My sympathy for her comes from the fact that she'll probably go down in the annuls of presidential election history in the same breath as Admiral Stockdale or Dan Quayle as a figure of national ridicule. But don't be misled. Even if McCain loses, we've probably not heard the last of Gov. Palin on the national stage.
Of course, there are limits to my sympathy.
And I suspect that McCain didn't fully appreciate the Frankenstein's monster he'd created by turning Palin loose to stoke up her base with the notion that Obama might somehow be a member of some fictitious joint Black/Muslim sleeper cell.
And, for the record, I'd just like to say two things:
1. If I were Obama, I would stand up during that prime time speech he's going to give the week before the election and say "Yes, my full name is, in fact Barack HUSSEIN Obama, and I have about as much in common with with Saddam Hussein as Bill Clinton has with George Clinton. Think, people!"
2. "Muslim" != "Enemy". My family was all raised in Protestant, Methodist traditions in the country churches on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Yet, my uncle converted to Islam some 30 years ago. And I can tell you that he, his wife, and his six children are among the most thoughtful, considerate, compassionate, disciplined, spiritual people I have ever known. His Islamic faith has given him a core of inner peace and personal strength the likes of which I feel I have almost never seen among even Christian clergy. And the VAST majority of Muslims are like that. Blaming all Muslims for the actions of a man like Bin Laden is like blaming all Christians for the actions of Hitler. Or Jim Jones. Or Timothy McVeigh.
But my point is this:
Even if Obama wins in a landslide next month (which, according to FiveThirtyEight.com, has a better than 50% probability of occurring. Hope springs eternal), these people who are currently literally screaming for his head aren't going anywhere.
The fearful, the paranoid, the hateful - these, too, are very much part of America. Always have been.
And yet, in these very same parts of the country, you probably get the highest recruitment ranks from the military. The highest church participation and activism. These people love this country. Many of them have wildly different, and, in some cases, mutually exclusive view of what this country is supposed to be.
And, as long as no one is picking up a pitchfork or a rope, that's actually OK.
It's called democracy.
I know Kos likes to talk about "breaking their spirits" and Karl Rove was renowned for seeking a permanent Republican majority, the fact of the matter is, short of straight up genocide, neither side can ever get rid of the other.
No matter how much it disgusts or repulses us, that other America is still America. And we could not have what we have without it.
That's not to say that it's a good thing. Far from it. The provincial hatreds and prejudices and fears are, in my mind, a part of our national shame.
And the generational times are changing for the better. But I don't think any of us on either side of the divide should delude ourselves into thinking that we can ever be rid of the other completely.
So, with that in mind, we have to look for the common ground, where it can be found.
And, where it cannot, and it comes to a point where we have to lay hands on each other in a non-Christian way to resolve our differences...
Well, just the thought of that makes me sad. But I have to acknowledge that there may just be some people who are beyond reasoning.
At which point, like Jill Scott said, we just have to take off these rings and deal with it.
It's ALL America. The good and the bad.
But, personally, just like J.J. Abrams, I'm encouraged by the fact that Star Trek is making it's return in the same year that a transformative, hopeful figure like Barack Obama potentially becomes the new leader of the free world. It's no accident that Star Trek's Final Frontier was the projected future from JFK's New Frontier. I mean, who can dispute the Kennedy-eque qualities of a character like this:
Yes, it's always been a challenge. But I, for one, am filled with hope.
The hope that this country will have leadership again who will once again make us proud through their actions at home and abroad. The hope that we will find the means and the will to resolve our most pressing problems while capitalizing on our most golden opportunities.
I believe the cultural zeitgeist is changing. I believe the sci-fi worlds of "Blade Runner" and "Mad Max" where an outgrown of our sense that The Future was dying. But now, people have hope again. The future looks bright again.
There will always be serpents. But that doesn't make the fruits of the garden any less sweet.
One is intelligent, wise, compassionate, yet indecisive.
The other is....
Well, see for yourself:
Forceful? Yes. Decisive? Yes. But also crazed, lustful, paranoid.
And yet, as Spock points out, while separated, neither one is capable of surviving without the other. In the end, as much as the two repulse each other, they're forced to literally embrace each other to both survive and lead.
So, I've been following the coverage of the growing lynch mob qualities of the Palin/McCain rallies over the last few weeks.
And let's be real about this: McCain may be the official party nominee, but Sarah Palin is really the standard bearer for this particular facet of the Republican party these days. Given the choice, I'm sure many of them would prefer to have her at the top of the ticket simply because they trust her more. In their mind, she's one of them, through and through. McCain is, sadly, just someone who's hitched his carriage to them on the vain hope that this pony will carry him all the way to the Oval Office.
Honestly, I feel sort of sorry for both of them.
McCain, because, after the abuse he suffered at the hands of Bush & Co. back in 2000, could not get over his Presidential fixation and has debased himself over and over again by cowtowing to Bush, Falwell, et. al., hoping that these people that he once scorned will finally let him in the club. Frankly, much of his career has been spent seeking acceptance from the "cool kids". Originally, he hoped that by being a rebel Republican, he'd be popular among the Hollywood & press elites. And it worked. But it wasn't enough to get him elected, because as far as most Democrats are concerned, he's still a Republican. One they might want to have a beer with, but a Republican, nonetheless. So he did a switch, seeking favor from within his party. But, by then, it was too late, he'd pissed too many of them off. And the only reason he's the nominee now is because everyone else in the GOP field proved to be unacceptable to at least one sizable faction within the party (Rudy's too liberal and Romney's too Mormon for the cultural conservatives, and Huckabee was too much of a policy lightweight for the neocons and finance conservatives). In short, everyone else's constituencies killed the one guy they were the most offended by, and none of them were paying attention to McCain, leaving him the last man standing.
Sarah Palin's just like McCain in that her ambition consistently overrides whatever better judgment she may have about her career. I get the sense that when she was approached about taking the VP spot, she must have said to herself "well, how hard can it be?" My sympathy for her comes from the fact that she'll probably go down in the annuls of presidential election history in the same breath as Admiral Stockdale or Dan Quayle as a figure of national ridicule. But don't be misled. Even if McCain loses, we've probably not heard the last of Gov. Palin on the national stage.
Of course, there are limits to my sympathy.
And I suspect that McCain didn't fully appreciate the Frankenstein's monster he'd created by turning Palin loose to stoke up her base with the notion that Obama might somehow be a member of some fictitious joint Black/Muslim sleeper cell.
And, for the record, I'd just like to say two things:
1. If I were Obama, I would stand up during that prime time speech he's going to give the week before the election and say "Yes, my full name is, in fact Barack HUSSEIN Obama, and I have about as much in common with with Saddam Hussein as Bill Clinton has with George Clinton. Think, people!"
2. "Muslim" != "Enemy". My family was all raised in Protestant, Methodist traditions in the country churches on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Yet, my uncle converted to Islam some 30 years ago. And I can tell you that he, his wife, and his six children are among the most thoughtful, considerate, compassionate, disciplined, spiritual people I have ever known. His Islamic faith has given him a core of inner peace and personal strength the likes of which I feel I have almost never seen among even Christian clergy. And the VAST majority of Muslims are like that. Blaming all Muslims for the actions of a man like Bin Laden is like blaming all Christians for the actions of Hitler. Or Jim Jones. Or Timothy McVeigh.
But my point is this:
Even if Obama wins in a landslide next month (which, according to FiveThirtyEight.com, has a better than 50% probability of occurring. Hope springs eternal), these people who are currently literally screaming for his head aren't going anywhere.
The fearful, the paranoid, the hateful - these, too, are very much part of America. Always have been.
And yet, in these very same parts of the country, you probably get the highest recruitment ranks from the military. The highest church participation and activism. These people love this country. Many of them have wildly different, and, in some cases, mutually exclusive view of what this country is supposed to be.
And, as long as no one is picking up a pitchfork or a rope, that's actually OK.
It's called democracy.
I know Kos likes to talk about "breaking their spirits" and Karl Rove was renowned for seeking a permanent Republican majority, the fact of the matter is, short of straight up genocide, neither side can ever get rid of the other.
No matter how much it disgusts or repulses us, that other America is still America. And we could not have what we have without it.
That's not to say that it's a good thing. Far from it. The provincial hatreds and prejudices and fears are, in my mind, a part of our national shame.
And the generational times are changing for the better. But I don't think any of us on either side of the divide should delude ourselves into thinking that we can ever be rid of the other completely.
So, with that in mind, we have to look for the common ground, where it can be found.
And, where it cannot, and it comes to a point where we have to lay hands on each other in a non-Christian way to resolve our differences...
Well, just the thought of that makes me sad. But I have to acknowledge that there may just be some people who are beyond reasoning.
At which point, like Jill Scott said, we just have to take off these rings and deal with it.
It's ALL America. The good and the bad.
But, personally, just like J.J. Abrams, I'm encouraged by the fact that Star Trek is making it's return in the same year that a transformative, hopeful figure like Barack Obama potentially becomes the new leader of the free world. It's no accident that Star Trek's Final Frontier was the projected future from JFK's New Frontier. I mean, who can dispute the Kennedy-eque qualities of a character like this:
Yes, it's always been a challenge. But I, for one, am filled with hope.
The hope that this country will have leadership again who will once again make us proud through their actions at home and abroad. The hope that we will find the means and the will to resolve our most pressing problems while capitalizing on our most golden opportunities.
I believe the cultural zeitgeist is changing. I believe the sci-fi worlds of "Blade Runner" and "Mad Max" where an outgrown of our sense that The Future was dying. But now, people have hope again. The future looks bright again.
There will always be serpents. But that doesn't make the fruits of the garden any less sweet.
October 03, 2008
Crabs in a Barrel
So, first, let's get to the facts:
A few days ago, Tyler Perry fired a bunch of black writers from his cable sitcom "House of Payne". In response, the Writers Guild of America just filed suit against Perry with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging unfair labor practices. Perry says the writers were fired because of the quality of their work. The writers say they were fired because they were pushing to have the show covered under a WGA contract.
When I first heard this, I did a double-take. The highest rated sit-com on basic cable is a non-union show?
But, as I researched it more, it was even worse than I thought.
"House of Payne" is a DGA signatory. Of course it is: Tyler directs most of the episodes, and he's a member of the Directors' Guild, so it would have to be.
"House of Payne" is also a SAG signatory. Of course it is: if it wasn't, he couldn't have cast actors like Allen Payne, who, like most of his castmates, are members of the Screen Actors Guild.
But, "House of Payne" is NOT a WGA signatory.
I mean, the one group that he COULD screw, he DID screw.
Now, to be totally fair, a number of the fired writers are WGAw members, so, they really had no business working on a non-union show in the first place, unless, of course, part of their agreement when they were hired was that the show would become a guild signatory. The guild has provisions to allow for that. And, if I had to guess, that is probably the essence of the case they're bringing to the NLRB.
Tyler recently signed a deal with TBS to create 100 episodes of "House of Payne" for $200 million, or $2,000,000 per episode. The WGA considers a show a "high budget minimum" if its budget exceeds $100,000 per episode for non-network primetime, in which case, the guild minimum fee for writing one such episode is ~$12,000. It also requires that, if you're on staff, meaning you're under the regular employ of the producer instead of a hired gun who's brought in on a one-off basis to write an episode, your minimum weekly salary for a basic cable show of this length is roughly $3,000.
Plus health benefits, pension, etc.
Pretty good work if you can get it. But even if you assume they make an episode a week (and they clearly work much faster, given how many they've produced in the last two years), and let's assume that the pension & health insurance costs as much as the total salary & writing fees involved for these writers (and it's considerably less), and you round up to the nearest $10,000, you're still only talking about $50,000 per episode, or 2.5% of the total budget per episode.
And it's not like House of Payne is an expensive show. It's a three camera comedy, meaning they have a series of standing sets in front of a studio audience with two stationary cameras and a third on a track, so that the actors get to perform almost like it's theater. No expensive locations. No special effects. Allen Payne is probably the highest paid actor on the show after Tyler Perry himself, and I guarantee you that brother is not making a million dollars an episode.
But let's put all of that aside for a moment.
For a guy who's built his career around promoting a certain kind of Black Christian faith and community responsibility....
I just don't understand.
Just like BET. Actually, worse than BET. At least BET is more up front about the fact that they're making money by getting over on Black people.
I was never particularly a fan of Tyler Perry's work. The minute I'm shown yet another Black man in drag for laughs, I immediately turn off. I think this trend, going all the way back to Flip Wilson, and continued through Will Smith & Martin Lawrence, has always been a double-edged diss against Black people. It perpetuates a de-feminized stereotype of Black women & mothers while simultaneously emasculating some of our more prominent Black male performers. And yet, I always had respect for him as an artist and a businessman who'd found a way to successfully navigate the entertainment industry while still owning his original content. I was really happy to see him succeed in film, especially as his films seem to reach for more authentic representations of Black relationships.
But come ON, man!!!! Pay the fucking writers! It's not like you don't have it.
Jeez.
A few days ago, Tyler Perry fired a bunch of black writers from his cable sitcom "House of Payne". In response, the Writers Guild of America just filed suit against Perry with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging unfair labor practices. Perry says the writers were fired because of the quality of their work. The writers say they were fired because they were pushing to have the show covered under a WGA contract.
When I first heard this, I did a double-take. The highest rated sit-com on basic cable is a non-union show?
But, as I researched it more, it was even worse than I thought.
"House of Payne" is a DGA signatory. Of course it is: Tyler directs most of the episodes, and he's a member of the Directors' Guild, so it would have to be.
"House of Payne" is also a SAG signatory. Of course it is: if it wasn't, he couldn't have cast actors like Allen Payne, who, like most of his castmates, are members of the Screen Actors Guild.
But, "House of Payne" is NOT a WGA signatory.
I mean, the one group that he COULD screw, he DID screw.
Now, to be totally fair, a number of the fired writers are WGAw members, so, they really had no business working on a non-union show in the first place, unless, of course, part of their agreement when they were hired was that the show would become a guild signatory. The guild has provisions to allow for that. And, if I had to guess, that is probably the essence of the case they're bringing to the NLRB.
Tyler recently signed a deal with TBS to create 100 episodes of "House of Payne" for $200 million, or $2,000,000 per episode. The WGA considers a show a "high budget minimum" if its budget exceeds $100,000 per episode for non-network primetime, in which case, the guild minimum fee for writing one such episode is ~$12,000. It also requires that, if you're on staff, meaning you're under the regular employ of the producer instead of a hired gun who's brought in on a one-off basis to write an episode, your minimum weekly salary for a basic cable show of this length is roughly $3,000.
Plus health benefits, pension, etc.
Pretty good work if you can get it. But even if you assume they make an episode a week (and they clearly work much faster, given how many they've produced in the last two years), and let's assume that the pension & health insurance costs as much as the total salary & writing fees involved for these writers (and it's considerably less), and you round up to the nearest $10,000, you're still only talking about $50,000 per episode, or 2.5% of the total budget per episode.
And it's not like House of Payne is an expensive show. It's a three camera comedy, meaning they have a series of standing sets in front of a studio audience with two stationary cameras and a third on a track, so that the actors get to perform almost like it's theater. No expensive locations. No special effects. Allen Payne is probably the highest paid actor on the show after Tyler Perry himself, and I guarantee you that brother is not making a million dollars an episode.
But let's put all of that aside for a moment.
For a guy who's built his career around promoting a certain kind of Black Christian faith and community responsibility....
I just don't understand.
Just like BET. Actually, worse than BET. At least BET is more up front about the fact that they're making money by getting over on Black people.
I was never particularly a fan of Tyler Perry's work. The minute I'm shown yet another Black man in drag for laughs, I immediately turn off. I think this trend, going all the way back to Flip Wilson, and continued through Will Smith & Martin Lawrence, has always been a double-edged diss against Black people. It perpetuates a de-feminized stereotype of Black women & mothers while simultaneously emasculating some of our more prominent Black male performers. And yet, I always had respect for him as an artist and a businessman who'd found a way to successfully navigate the entertainment industry while still owning his original content. I was really happy to see him succeed in film, especially as his films seem to reach for more authentic representations of Black relationships.
But come ON, man!!!! Pay the fucking writers! It's not like you don't have it.
Jeez.
Wrapped in the Flag
Comic Book Resources is running a poll on who should play Captain America in the new movie slated for 2010. So far, here are the results:
And I have to say, I don't like the idea of any of these guys as Captain America, even though many of them are actors I really enjoy and respect.
Pardon me while I think out loud for a bit.
Here's the deal: Captain America is a scrawny blonde-haired, blue-eyed kid who grew up on the lower east side of Manhattan during the Great Depression who gets injected with some super steroids by Uncle Sam to become a patriotic juggernaut against the forces of tyranny during the 2nd World War before being frozen in suspended animation and thawed out in modern times. He's like a character out of a Mickey Rooney movie who gets transformed into the one superhero that every other superhero instantly defers to as soon as they're in his presence.
May favorite line about Captain America comes from the 1st issue of Mark Millar's genius re-imagining of The Avengers in "The Ultimates", where a paratrooper about to be dropped into a Nazi hot zone calls Cap crazy to his sidekick, Bucky Barnes, for not wearing a parachute.
Bucky just laughs and says "Cap things chutes are for sissies."
Or, better yet, towards the end of that same series, where a villain demands that he surrender, a bloodied Cap points to the "A" printed on his mask and shouts:
So, which of those actors can you imagine believably pulling off that role in the same way that you just nodded in total agreement about the casting of Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man? Honestly, the closest to it would be Matthew McConaughey - he's whitebread enough and, judging by his performance in "Reign of Fire" he can do intensity, but he's bit too southern to play a New Yorker, and he doesn't really have the steel in his eyes that I would want for that character.
Aaron Eckhart is pretty close, but just perhaps a bit older than I would want, simply because I have a hard time seeing him doing much of the fighting & stuntwork that goes into Captain America. Although, to be perfectly honest, Tim Roth did a great job as kind of a proto-super soldier in "The Incredible Hulk" this summer, but that was only in one scene against a CGI Hulk. Personally, I want the scene where Cap wades into a gang of 30 Hydra agents and hands them their collective asses like a red-white-and-blue fighting whirling dervish, and I want it as authentic as the fighting Messrs. Bale & Nolan put together in "The Dark Knight".
I love Wil Smith, but, I'm sorry, Captain America is not Black. Period.
Hmmm. Eric Bana? No, that would be like casting a Yankee to play James Bond.
Frankly, I don't think you need a big name. In fact, I think it's better that you go with an unknown and let him create the role.
How about Timothy Olyphant? Anybody who's seen "Deadwood" knows he's an intense bugger, can get physical, and is a heck of an actor. But, to be perfectly honest, I really want him for "Green Lantern" - he was born to play cocky test pilot Hal Jordan.
OK, now I'm really rambling. :-) I'll have a LOT more to say about Green Lantern at a later date.
The short answer is "Go with an unknown, Marvel". Captain America is not Iron Man. Everybody knows who that character is, so you don't need a star to sell the movie.
Pardon me while I think out loud for a bit.
Here's the deal: Captain America is a scrawny blonde-haired, blue-eyed kid who grew up on the lower east side of Manhattan during the Great Depression who gets injected with some super steroids by Uncle Sam to become a patriotic juggernaut against the forces of tyranny during the 2nd World War before being frozen in suspended animation and thawed out in modern times. He's like a character out of a Mickey Rooney movie who gets transformed into the one superhero that every other superhero instantly defers to as soon as they're in his presence.
May favorite line about Captain America comes from the 1st issue of Mark Millar's genius re-imagining of The Avengers in "The Ultimates", where a paratrooper about to be dropped into a Nazi hot zone calls Cap crazy to his sidekick, Bucky Barnes, for not wearing a parachute.
Bucky just laughs and says "Cap things chutes are for sissies."
Or, better yet, towards the end of that same series, where a villain demands that he surrender, a bloodied Cap points to the "A" printed on his mask and shouts:
"You think this letter on my head stands for FRANCE?!?!?!"
So, which of those actors can you imagine believably pulling off that role in the same way that you just nodded in total agreement about the casting of Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man? Honestly, the closest to it would be Matthew McConaughey - he's whitebread enough and, judging by his performance in "Reign of Fire" he can do intensity, but he's bit too southern to play a New Yorker, and he doesn't really have the steel in his eyes that I would want for that character.
Aaron Eckhart is pretty close, but just perhaps a bit older than I would want, simply because I have a hard time seeing him doing much of the fighting & stuntwork that goes into Captain America. Although, to be perfectly honest, Tim Roth did a great job as kind of a proto-super soldier in "The Incredible Hulk" this summer, but that was only in one scene against a CGI Hulk. Personally, I want the scene where Cap wades into a gang of 30 Hydra agents and hands them their collective asses like a red-white-and-blue fighting whirling dervish, and I want it as authentic as the fighting Messrs. Bale & Nolan put together in "The Dark Knight".
I love Wil Smith, but, I'm sorry, Captain America is not Black. Period.
Hmmm. Eric Bana? No, that would be like casting a Yankee to play James Bond.
Frankly, I don't think you need a big name. In fact, I think it's better that you go with an unknown and let him create the role.
How about Timothy Olyphant? Anybody who's seen "Deadwood" knows he's an intense bugger, can get physical, and is a heck of an actor. But, to be perfectly honest, I really want him for "Green Lantern" - he was born to play cocky test pilot Hal Jordan.
OK, now I'm really rambling. :-) I'll have a LOT more to say about Green Lantern at a later date.
The short answer is "Go with an unknown, Marvel". Captain America is not Iron Man. Everybody knows who that character is, so you don't need a star to sell the movie.
October 02, 2008
Fear of a Black President
So, this has been on my mind for a long time.
But first, a speech from Richard Truma of the AFL-CIO:
Now, lets be clear, there's race-based voting happening all over the place.
As a Democrat and as an American, I am proud of the stand, the policies, the campaign, and the kind of thoughtful, principled Federal government that Barack Obama represents. In many ways, he's an extension of what I loved so much about Dean for America.
But, as a Black man in America, I am even more proud that it is a Black man at the center of these representations.
So, yes, there are probably a fair number of people, across all races, who are voting for Barack Obama simply because he's Black.
Now, I'm going to say something that will probably get me into a lot of trouble, but, fuck it, here goes.
I have much less of a problem with people voting for Barack Obama just because he's Black than I do with people voting for, say, Michael Steele or Alan Keyes just because they're Black, because, frankly, I consider Steele and Keyes to be sellouts.
There. I said it.
And here's why.
Whenever you hear about voter suppression, it's almost always targeted at poor Black communities, and it's almost always done on behalf of Republican candidates. It's been that way since Nixon and his so-called "Southern Strategy". Someone, somewhere within the GOP has decided that they stand a better chance of getting into office when Black people are prevented from exercising their rights as American citizens to participate in the electoral process.
Now, if you're a Black conservative - you believe in strong defense (whatever that means) and lower taxes and school choice - that's all well and good. We can agree to disagree on this point, and I can respect your convictions.
But I have NEVER, EVER heard a single Black Republican condemn the obvious and well-documented history of Black voter suppression committed by their own party. Not one. Which says to me that they're more than happy to keep more people who look just like them from voting as long as it helps them advance.
If you are willing to get ahead at the expense of large numbers of people from your own ethnic background who're less fortunate than you, you have, by definition, sold out.
My larger point is, while there is plenty of race-based voting to go around, there is very little moral equivalence, in my mind.
So, just to be clear, yes, given the history of this country, I do think there is, in fact, some nobility in being more inclined to vote for Obama just because he's Black.
Now, let's look at the other side of the equation.
There are two types of anti-Obama race-based votes. There are those who just hate Black people, and there are those who are afraid of Black people.
Needless to say, there's probably quite a bit of overlap there, but I want to speak to these two camps.
Well, I only really want to speak to the 2nd camp because, frankly, if you just hate Black people, chances are, you stopped reading this blog the minute I wrote "as a Black man in America..." And, honestly, what do you and I have to say to each other? You hate me because....
Remind me why you hate me again?
Because I went to Princeton and you didn't? Nevermind the ~3000 rich white people who also got into Princeton while I was there, you're mad at me and the other Black Princetonians (who, at the time, I believe, comprised somewhere between 4-6% of the student body, i.e. half the percentage of our representation in the general population).
Because I got a certain job and you didn't? I'm always amazed when racists complain about how the negroes are taking all of their jobs. As I said before, we're only 12% of the population, and, in case you haven't noticed, a whole lot of us aren't working. Again, maybe you should talk to the 10 other white kids who got hired at that company's particular office at the same time I did. They might have a bit more to do with it, statistically speaking.
Because I hooked up with your sister? I don't know why? I mean, she sure seemed to enjoy it. :-)
Which reminds me of a story one of my college classmates told me, about a study session where the instructor made a comment about the presumed sexual prowess of the Black man, and some young white guy just blurted out "BUT THAT'S JUST A MYTH, ISN'T IT?"
Is that really what the race hatred all comes down to? Should I rename this post "Fear of a Black Penis", just to make it more accurate? And are all of these other little hate bullet points just variations on that theme - the sense of powerlessness and inadequacy that then gets personified in the form of the opposite, the other, The Blacks, and the only way you can prove that you are not, in fact, impotent, is to destroy and humiliate and dehumanize The Black?
In the end, I suppose, it's all based on fear.
There's that word again.
Which brings us to the other, probably larger camp: those who won't vote for the Black man out of fear.
Consider this report I saw a few months ago on AlJazeeraEnglish, at about 2:20 minutes in:
It's the heart of the same fear that mobilized so many in opposition to the Black Panthers. This notion that the Black people, after years of getting dumped on by the white establishment, are going to flip the script as soon as they get into power and bring some righteous retribution against the white majority.
Or, as John Stewart so succinctly put it to Senator Obama himself during an episode of "The Daily Show":
I wonder how many people know that the full name of the organization was "The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense"? Or that it was originally conceived in response to rampant police brutality and officially sanctioned violence against Blacks in cities around the country?
The short answer is, those of you who're afraid that Obama's going to mandate that all the major broadcast networks air a new reality show called "America's Next Top White Lynching", take a chill pill. Your fear has yet again demonstrated your ignorance about Black America. When we say we want what you've got, that doesn't mean we want to take it from you. It means we want one of those for ourselves. This is not a zero sum game. As my dear friend Brokenbeatnik likes to say, the pie is enormous, big enough for everybody to have as big of a slice as they like.
I mean, really, when people say they don't trust Obama or they're afraid of having a Black president, what do you really think is going to happen? Seriously?
Take a moment and really look at your fear. Spend some time with it. Talk it out.
And let's take a step back for a moment. For those of you who say "well, I don't think he's sufficiently patriotic enough to be President, what with Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright and all of that."
Let's just assume, for argument's sake, that you're right. Let's assume that Obama has a negative view of America, which means he wants to be president in order to change it into something more to his liking. Let's assume all of that.
Because clearly George W. Bush and Dick Cheney love America to death. Literally.
It's like, they loved America so much that they gave the country a gigantic bear hug for the last 8 years, breaking all of our ribs and puncturing our lungs in the process. Yeah, they really loved the Hell out of America.
I think what many Whites may not understand is that Blacks are deeply acquainted with the concept of "tough love". In other words, because I love you, I'm going to tell you about all of the unpleasant stuff you don't want to know about, because I believe you can be better and I'm not going to allow you to keep slacking off.
I think we could use some of that kind of love right now. Don't you?
But first, a speech from Richard Truma of the AFL-CIO:
Now, lets be clear, there's race-based voting happening all over the place.
As a Democrat and as an American, I am proud of the stand, the policies, the campaign, and the kind of thoughtful, principled Federal government that Barack Obama represents. In many ways, he's an extension of what I loved so much about Dean for America.
But, as a Black man in America, I am even more proud that it is a Black man at the center of these representations.
So, yes, there are probably a fair number of people, across all races, who are voting for Barack Obama simply because he's Black.
Now, I'm going to say something that will probably get me into a lot of trouble, but, fuck it, here goes.
I have much less of a problem with people voting for Barack Obama just because he's Black than I do with people voting for, say, Michael Steele or Alan Keyes just because they're Black, because, frankly, I consider Steele and Keyes to be sellouts.
There. I said it.
And here's why.
Whenever you hear about voter suppression, it's almost always targeted at poor Black communities, and it's almost always done on behalf of Republican candidates. It's been that way since Nixon and his so-called "Southern Strategy". Someone, somewhere within the GOP has decided that they stand a better chance of getting into office when Black people are prevented from exercising their rights as American citizens to participate in the electoral process.
Now, if you're a Black conservative - you believe in strong defense (whatever that means) and lower taxes and school choice - that's all well and good. We can agree to disagree on this point, and I can respect your convictions.
But I have NEVER, EVER heard a single Black Republican condemn the obvious and well-documented history of Black voter suppression committed by their own party. Not one. Which says to me that they're more than happy to keep more people who look just like them from voting as long as it helps them advance.
If you are willing to get ahead at the expense of large numbers of people from your own ethnic background who're less fortunate than you, you have, by definition, sold out.
My larger point is, while there is plenty of race-based voting to go around, there is very little moral equivalence, in my mind.
So, just to be clear, yes, given the history of this country, I do think there is, in fact, some nobility in being more inclined to vote for Obama just because he's Black.
Now, let's look at the other side of the equation.
There are two types of anti-Obama race-based votes. There are those who just hate Black people, and there are those who are afraid of Black people.
Needless to say, there's probably quite a bit of overlap there, but I want to speak to these two camps.
Well, I only really want to speak to the 2nd camp because, frankly, if you just hate Black people, chances are, you stopped reading this blog the minute I wrote "as a Black man in America..." And, honestly, what do you and I have to say to each other? You hate me because....
Remind me why you hate me again?
Because I went to Princeton and you didn't? Nevermind the ~3000 rich white people who also got into Princeton while I was there, you're mad at me and the other Black Princetonians (who, at the time, I believe, comprised somewhere between 4-6% of the student body, i.e. half the percentage of our representation in the general population).
Because I got a certain job and you didn't? I'm always amazed when racists complain about how the negroes are taking all of their jobs. As I said before, we're only 12% of the population, and, in case you haven't noticed, a whole lot of us aren't working. Again, maybe you should talk to the 10 other white kids who got hired at that company's particular office at the same time I did. They might have a bit more to do with it, statistically speaking.
Because I hooked up with your sister? I don't know why? I mean, she sure seemed to enjoy it. :-)
Which reminds me of a story one of my college classmates told me, about a study session where the instructor made a comment about the presumed sexual prowess of the Black man, and some young white guy just blurted out "BUT THAT'S JUST A MYTH, ISN'T IT?"
Is that really what the race hatred all comes down to? Should I rename this post "Fear of a Black Penis", just to make it more accurate? And are all of these other little hate bullet points just variations on that theme - the sense of powerlessness and inadequacy that then gets personified in the form of the opposite, the other, The Blacks, and the only way you can prove that you are not, in fact, impotent, is to destroy and humiliate and dehumanize The Black?
In the end, I suppose, it's all based on fear.
There's that word again.
Which brings us to the other, probably larger camp: those who won't vote for the Black man out of fear.
Consider this report I saw a few months ago on AlJazeeraEnglish, at about 2:20 minutes in:
It's the heart of the same fear that mobilized so many in opposition to the Black Panthers. This notion that the Black people, after years of getting dumped on by the white establishment, are going to flip the script as soon as they get into power and bring some righteous retribution against the white majority.
Or, as John Stewart so succinctly put it to Senator Obama himself during an episode of "The Daily Show":
"Is it true that, once you're elected, you intend to enslave the white race?"
I wonder how many people know that the full name of the organization was "The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense"? Or that it was originally conceived in response to rampant police brutality and officially sanctioned violence against Blacks in cities around the country?
The short answer is, those of you who're afraid that Obama's going to mandate that all the major broadcast networks air a new reality show called "America's Next Top White Lynching", take a chill pill. Your fear has yet again demonstrated your ignorance about Black America. When we say we want what you've got, that doesn't mean we want to take it from you. It means we want one of those for ourselves. This is not a zero sum game. As my dear friend Brokenbeatnik likes to say, the pie is enormous, big enough for everybody to have as big of a slice as they like.
I mean, really, when people say they don't trust Obama or they're afraid of having a Black president, what do you really think is going to happen? Seriously?
Take a moment and really look at your fear. Spend some time with it. Talk it out.
And let's take a step back for a moment. For those of you who say "well, I don't think he's sufficiently patriotic enough to be President, what with Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright and all of that."
Let's just assume, for argument's sake, that you're right. Let's assume that Obama has a negative view of America, which means he wants to be president in order to change it into something more to his liking. Let's assume all of that.
Because clearly George W. Bush and Dick Cheney love America to death. Literally.
It's like, they loved America so much that they gave the country a gigantic bear hug for the last 8 years, breaking all of our ribs and puncturing our lungs in the process. Yeah, they really loved the Hell out of America.
I think what many Whites may not understand is that Blacks are deeply acquainted with the concept of "tough love". In other words, because I love you, I'm going to tell you about all of the unpleasant stuff you don't want to know about, because I believe you can be better and I'm not going to allow you to keep slacking off.
I think we could use some of that kind of love right now. Don't you?
Coming in the air tonight
I think this video says it way better than I ever could:
Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Except for the telcos that were hoping to make a mint off of new exclusive rights, and who're already unleashing the stormtroopers of lobbying to make that happen.
Do us all a favor. Sign the petition.
Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Except for the telcos that were hoping to make a mint off of new exclusive rights, and who're already unleashing the stormtroopers of lobbying to make that happen.
Do us all a favor. Sign the petition.
October 01, 2008
You ARE registered to vote, right?
Maybe I'm just naive.
I simply cannot think of a single person who might potentially be reading this blog who is SO disconnected that they're not yet registered to vote. It would really just astound me, absolutely astound me to find someone on here who's not registered to vote.
Like, the crazy Jamaican guy next door might not be registered to vote, but, like I said, he's crazy. "Crazy" as in "talks to the side of your head, not to your face, before spontaneously bursting out into reggae free-style lyrics" crazy. Like "punching my driveway gate and cursing at me then saying that he would never do something like that 15 minutes later" crazy. That joker may not even be a citizen.
And, if you haven't guessed, he clearly does not read this blog.
That I know of.
I guess I have to go have a conversation with him.
Maybe I'll talk to his wife, first. She seems, well, normal. Except for being married to him.
But, you get my point.
Are you seriously not registered to vote? SERIOUSLY? Are you actually in the same category as THAT dude?
Wow.
Uhm, go handle that right now.
Thank you.
September 30, 2008
Review: Let The Right One In
Well, more specifically, vampire movies. I've just seen so many and I feel like it's all been done and it's so cliched and the metaphors of vampires for sex or vampires for AIDS or whatever.
I'm just tired. Sick and tired.
Where are the new monsters, people?
When I got to Comic-Con this past summer and saw the signs for HBO's new series "True Blood" plastered all over the place, I think I rolled my eyes for five days straight. And the only reason I even bothered Tivo-ing the pilot episode of the show is because my roommate is an obsessive fan of Christine Feehan's Dark Series and I figured she would like it.
OK, so, maybe I'm not THAT tired of vampires.
I totally overlooked the social metaphors inherent in the Sookie Stackhouse stories, and I have to admit that True Blood has been one of the more consistently compelling hours of TV drama I've seen in the while.
It's good stuff.
So, when I got the invite to check out the Swedish vampire flick "Let The Right One In" as part of Mahalo.com's inaugural Movie Night here in Los Angeles, I was already primed for something good.
It didn't hurt that the film had gotten a nice mention on American Movie Classic's horror movie blog, MonsterFest, as a part of their emerging thesis that all of the good horror is coming from places other than North America (a thesis, with a few notable exceptions, that I tend to agree with).
I must say, even though I found parts of the pacing to be excruciatingly slow, "Let The Right One In" is an incredibly haunting film. It kind of takes the notion of Claudia from "Interview with The Vampire" and explores it to it's full potential. What would it be like to 12 years old... forever? And what's the inherent heartbreak of knowing you can only truly find love with a child, who'll always grow old, always disappoint, always become less than what they were, while you stand still in time?
In many ways, it's heartbreaking, even though it appears to have a happy ending, because we already know what the REAL ending is.
Which, of course, is not to say that it doesn't have it's crazy, only-in-a-vampire-movie moments. The vampire/house cat battle royal has to be seen to be believed.
And I cannot say enough about the two young leads, especially Lina Leandersson. You can totally understand how, even knowing exactly what she is, a lonely young boy could just completely lose himself in her pleading eyes, eternal hellfire be damned.
If you have the patience, it's definitely worth it.
Class War
I wish I could remember who said this first, but I read where some old social scientist said that the problem with democracy is that, eventually, the majority figures out that they can pass a law that just gives them all of the money in the society.
Consider that as you think about the current credit crisis. Eight years ago, we had a massive surplus in taxpayer revenues. Today, we're on the cusp of the biggest deficit in our history, and the vast majority of that money has gone to private entities with no oversight or competitive bids. And now they want to give an extra trillion on the way out the door.
I'm sort of in agreement with Randi Rhodes - we may be witnessing the biggest bank heist in the history of mankind.
And it's an inside job.
Consider that as you think about the current credit crisis. Eight years ago, we had a massive surplus in taxpayer revenues. Today, we're on the cusp of the biggest deficit in our history, and the vast majority of that money has gone to private entities with no oversight or competitive bids. And now they want to give an extra trillion on the way out the door.
I'm sort of in agreement with Randi Rhodes - we may be witnessing the biggest bank heist in the history of mankind.
And it's an inside job.
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