Layoffs at the new William Morris Endeavor Entertainment giant is symptomatic of the overall contraction going on in the industry and traditional media in general. Some may smirk, some may wince, but what will the trickle down effect be (directly or indirectly) for everyone else?
Link to the article in Variety.
This past week's episode of KCRW's "The Business" lets you know that you are not alone. Listening to the show just might make you feel better. Then again, it might make you feel worse.
The first half is about NBC's upcoming slate, but around the 16:45 mark, screenwriter-turned psychoanalyst, Dennis Palumbo, starts dropping some knowledge. You can go to the KCRW site or just click the link below to listen and/or download here.
"The Business: New TV Season, New TV World; Taking Hollywood's Temperature"
Another scene from Mr. Sadman in which Mounir meets his new Los Angeles neighbor, Stevie, played by Scoot McNairy.
Scoot's a crazy talented guy who produced and played the lead in the film, In Search of a Midnight Kiss, which won the John Cassavetes Award at this year's Film Independent Spirt Awards.
Don't ask why. Make of it what you will…
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Shot with an old single-chip dv camera and its crappy onboard mic.
I went to a panel with the above title at the VC Film Fest today hosted by my man Tad Nakamura and old school Asian American doc maker, Spencer Nakasako.
It was a colorful, informal chat, but in the end two issues seemed to bubble up to the surface:
1) the fact that it's difficult to get Asian Americans to support Asian American films,
2) the fact that, while there are more Asian American films than ever before, many of them are bad.
Cross out the word "Asian American" (or even just "Asian") and both of these read as truisms about film and media today in general. Nothing new. I think the added problem for Asian American film, however, is that the phrase technically covers a lot of disparate groups that don't necessarily feel the need to support each other. It's a blanket label that in these times might be stretched too thin.
While skimming through Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott's "Memos to Hollywood" on nytimes.com, I noticed this bit:
To: Heads of production, Sony, Universal, Paramount, Fox, Disney
Cc: Joe Swanberg, Andrew Bujalski, Greta Gerwig, Aaron Katz and all their Facebook Friends
From: A.O.S.
You all keep trying to make Rock Hudson-Doris Day-style romantic comedies with the golden guys and gals of the moment, and the results are sexless, subtextless, bland career-girl-in-search-of-Mr.-Right retreads. Meanwhile, a bunch of hungry directors with digital cameras, time on their hands and not much money are making free-form studies about tentative hookups and long conversations among actual, overeducated, undermotivated young folks.
I'm digging Mr. Scott's vibe on this, but the phrasing "among actual, overeducated, undermotivated young folks" succinctly describes, from what I have gathered in conversation and in reading, the traits that largely turn many people off of some of the listed directors' films.
On the other hand, those same traits clearly appeal to those filmmakers' core audiences, so they must be doing something right.
In a culture of quick fixes, a sad guy is trying to get happy–and so is everyone else.
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My old roommate back in San Francisco used to listen to a lot of self-help tapes. That's where I got this idea from.
Shot on a Canon PowerShot S40.
Featuring Alex Fay, Ly Nguyen and Jim Espinas.
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