Simpsons Movie Collateral Benefits

The hope I held out in my earlier post about The Simpsons Movie has come true -- our local CW affiliate is now running syndicated Simpsons episodes at 10 on weeknights. Not quite the 2 hours of Simpsons we used to get in New Jersey, but better than 30 minutes a week.


The director told me that November 3 will be the start date for shooting on our little G-rated D2DVD picture. I'll visit L.A. for a couple days while they're shooting, to meet the various people involved and see what's up.

This one looks pretty locked in, unlike the continuing death throes of The Sound. Marvista, the company financing the film, would like shooting to start immediately, but the director wants to spend a little extra time getting things set up right since extra planning really helps when you're working with a lower budget. Marvista's already talking to him about turning right around and doing a thriller -- so this might work out to be a busy year.

When we get closer or when I'm told it's okay, I'll try to share more info about what kind of story it is, maybe who some of the actors are (anyone remotely famous is in it as a sole result of the director having a lot of friends!), and so on.

Evolution Out of Control

Craggy Air tagged me with a meme -- but he neglected to include the rules of the meme! Memes must have rules upon which natural selection can operate, otherwise the following might occur:


1) I have two eyes.
2) Tom Baker is Craggy Air's favorite Doctor Who.
3) Craggy Air spells favorite "favourite", but I translated so that my American friends would understand.
4)
5) Fnord.
6) If you trace all the way back to the original source of the meme you discover that you are supposed to list seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself.

!!!

Slate has an article on the use of exclamation points in email -- a recent email style guide suggests that we be more liberal with their use and proper writing education suggests that we keep them to a minimum.

One thing I noticed once I started actually having Hollywood types communicate with me (instead of just the other way around), was how enthusiastic they were. Everything's always great and terrific -- or GREAT and TERRIFIC!!! Your script is either "not for them" or they LOVE IT!! Even when it needs some work they still love it.

And that enthusiasm starts to infect you. I use more exclamation points than ever in emails nowadays. And I have a concern that if I use my normal method of saying that I thought a script worked well, or a movie was good, that such restrained praise will, relative to Hollywood terms, come off as damning condemnation. They'll be thinking, "damn, this guy hates everything".


That said, I do think it's worthwhile to throw a few more exclamation points in your emails. Not because, as the Slate article suggests --

Like 24-hour cable newscasters, we compensate for the unworthiness of our meanings by being emphatic!

-- that emails are unworthy of being written. But because emails are so often terse little functional things, a simple little "got it" to note that you received a package or "see you there" to say that you will show up at a function. These notes are often needed, and would just blend into a phone conversation, but in an email they can come off as cold and perhaps even hostile (my wife frets terribly when she reads a brief and functional email from a colleague, has she made them angry?!) By adding in a little ! you help clarify that you're enthusiastic, but are just keeping the email brief.

Virginia's Impact on Screenwriting

One of the worst parts about being in Virginia is that the humidity makes the paper swell up just enough so that you have to futz around with a stack to get it into the printer -- then the hot, damp pages that come out of the laser printer curl up into a disorganized mess that requires half an hour of knocking against the table to get straight.


In other bits, my attorney, Gordon Firemark, has a blog where he occasionally posts various entertainment related legal articles.

The Death of the Journalist

-- or at least the journalist columnist.


Since the rise of blogging -- and, particularly, the rise of its respectability, so that we get serious scholars and experts willing to blog -- I've become more aware of the paucity of interesting and insightful, or even correct, thinking in official newspaper columns. Here's two recent examples.

Screenwriter Craig Mazin took apart an article criticizing residual payments for screenwriters by columnist Brooks Barnes of the New York Times in his blog. While there are certainly a lot
ways to compensate writers for their work, and there's no reason not to discuss them, the column was simply poorly researched (essentially echoing bullshit studio press releases about how hard they have it, the kind of press releases that say ludicrous things like My Big Fat Greek Wedding didn't turn a profit) and thinking that would've made me groan if I saw it in an undergrad philosophy paper. Obviously, I might be a little biased here, so I'll leave it at that.


Yesterday Slate posted an article regarding the draft, essentially arguing that an all-volunteer army is incapable of maintaining the manpower levels required for extended overseas operations -- thus we either need to institute a draft or (I take it what the author's really trying to get at) get out of Iraq. The problem I habve with this article is that it's filled with the same kind of generic, uninformative and uninteresting pap that so much of mainstream journalism is.

Compare to Freakonomics author Steven Levitt's recent column, now being hosted at the New York Times. This article is full of interesting insights and new ways of looking at the problem, not merely a rehash of ideas that were tired decades ago. I thought this quote from the article was particularly nice:

A draft is essentially a large, very concentrated tax on those who are drafted.

Because it points to a core part of the issue: what the draft does is allow us to not pay our soldiers market value for their labor and the risks they take. If we keep to the all-volunteer army we have to raise salaries, benefits, and moderate the sacrifices our soldiers make. But if we institute a draft, we not only get a bunch of cheap soldiers, but we also can keep the price of our volunteer soldiers lower, since we can simply replace them with what amounts to slave labor.

When I was in the service I got about 15-16 thousand a year after four years (or something close to that). Not terrible and the benefits are nice, but the sacrifices are immense too. Little to no control over where you're stationed and a lot of restrictions on your personal life. I felt that the U.S. Army, and probably other branches, was relying almost wholly on patriotism to get and keep enlisted soldiers. After all, almost all of the guys that you'd most like to keep would easily be able to get out and go into law enforcement, which is compensated much better and lets you live where you want to live.

And that was in peacetime! I can only imagine that this is even more the case now when we've got our troops trying to enforce the peace in a country much better armed and more volatile than L.A., but getting nowhere near the pay of an L.A. cop.

A volunteer army forces us to pay soldiers what they feel is sufficient compensation -- and that puts the tax on us, instead of the guys we're sending in harm's way.

Woohoo!

Jaru left on Saturday morning instead of Friday morning so we managed to catch The Simpsons Friday night.

The first thirty minutes of the film was like the D-Day of comedy -- it reminded me of the first 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan but just replace action with laughter.

After that it got more into plotted comedy instead of rapid-fire random jokes, but I think that's usually necessary for a 90 minute or so film.

Why South Park is better than The Simpsons

The Simpsons Movie is coming out this week and that gives me hope -- hope that it'll finally get back into syndication 2 to 4 episodes per day on various channels like it used to back in Jersey.

After moving to Florida we were dropped to having The Simpsons in syndication on only one channel, and that maybe once per day. As of right now the only Simpsons is what comes on Sunday night -- this despite there being 19 years of Simpsons available, five years of which where we haven't even seen any new episodes.

That's why South Park is better than The Simpsons. I can watch 2 or more episodes of South Park every night.

Moreover, this points to a problem endemic to network TV. If I miss an episode of Lost I've missed it, whereas if I miss an episode of John from Cincinnati I can catch it late on the Pacific Coast feed, or a couple other times during the week. That means that I simply don't watch Lost or Heroes or Battlestar Galactica, and instead studiously avoid all mentions of the programs until they come out on DVD a year later.

Anyway, despite the movie coming out this week, I'll have to wait until late August to see it since part of being married is that you go to see The Simpsons together and Jaru flies to Taiwan this Friday.

Our Own Countess Bathory

I noticed that after our cat eats her dry cat food she immediately starts licking herself all over -- i.e. taking a bath.

And I'm thinking that here she has crunchy little bits of IAMS stuck to her tongue and is now working all that kibble into her fur. Who knows, perhaps that's how the hairball care part works.

But it occurred to me that this is evolved behavior, and thus developed long before cats could eat food in convenient kibble form -- that is, they evolved to do this back when they ate live rats, birds, and baby bunnies. And what they'd be bathing in then is the blood of their devoured prey.

Rutgers Philosophy Flashbacks

Now that we're living high in Virginia we've got TV again -- including HBO.

Which means I can watch Flight of the Conchords -- a show about a pair of musicians from New Zealand who have a much harder time distinguishing e's from i's than Gary and perform music which I'm not quite sure would qualify as danmusic or not. BTW, HBO has the first epsiode available on the web via its site -- listen carefully for the Australia name check towards the last third.

Then, 90 minutes later, catch a show about surfing.

The Allegory of the Cave: 2007

via Wonkette -- a commenter responds to CNN pointing out that Ron Paul's strong showing in online polls doesn't seem to be borne out in scientific, real-world polls:

It is only “some kind of joke” if you watch the national media and get your information there. The only real truth is online. Get a clue. --Posted By Michael, Knoxville TN : June 7, 2007 2:15 pm

Virginia Update

We arrived in Lexington VA just under two weeks ago, and have been getting ourselves arranged. There's this 10-15 year long period of one's life where it seems you move once per year--and grow to loathe it. Eventually your hatred of moving exceeds your hatred of wherever you're currently located, and that makes it your home.

The photo was taken on the Blue Ridge Parkway. It's the most American national park since it is entirely designed around a highway. It's a gorgeous drive, but they've actually got quite a few gorgeous drives around here that don't even need national park level protection.

The theater in town has three screens. So please don't taunt me with the array of films you've seen recently. We just got Delta Farce in this week...

I've got a new advertising slogan: "In the stix? Go NetFlix!"

In addition to the moving, I've been busy for happier reasons too. I've received two screenwriting assignments. They'll both be low budget direct-to-DVD things, but, in addition to getting paid, one of them looks highly likely to go into production at the end of August or in September. Appropriately enough, my first produced film will be a family film, rated G or PG. For this I'm working off the director's outline--so that makes it a little less work and helps, since I've not worked in the genre. This director is also taking one of my others scripts around to try and get it made.

The other assignment is more in my mode, but less certain that it'll get produced.

And I've got to do some re-writes on a recent screenplay--so this'll keep me busy for the summer.

But Does it Have a Cup Holder?

UK newspapers are better than American newspapers:

The World's Fastest Loo