Archive for Writing
I love working on this blog, and wish I had time to write here more often. But I work for an hourly wage (I’m permitted a little leeway on the numer of hours I work), and have many projects on the side, the number of hours I spend on my job a week means I often can’t work on the blog that much.
This gives me less time to discuss the state of Christians in Hollywood or the history of myth in our culture, or documentary filming or issues in the Church. I would also love more time to put up new installments about the controversy over John Paul I.
Being a little extra money ahead would help me a lot.
Hence the little button on the side. You can donate through credit or debit card or your own PayPal account. Or e-mail me at immaginativa@yahoo.com to find out how you can send me a check.
Every little bit helps! (Donations made here are separate from those made to the St. Elizabeth documentary: to donate to that, go to www.stelizabethdocumentary.com).
And do check out the links to my books The Smiling Pope and The Greatest of These is Love on the bottom right button. Every book bought by clicking on the Amazon button also brings me a little money.
Thanks!
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The St. Elizabeth documentary has been moving slowly the last few months. But something wonderful has been shaping up.
On November 15-22, I will be at the Manreza Spiritual Center near Esztergom Hungary for the General Chapter of the SFO, to film the ceremonies that close the two-year centenary celebrations for St. Elizabeth.
And I have a new DP (Director of Photography). He is Michael Eaton, who has shot video for a number of productions, and who co-directed a DVD released by a major distributor, Lionsgate, called The Case for Christ. You can watch the trailer for it here. Like me, Michael is an alumni of the Act One program.
My brother Nick had originally planned to come with me again, and do the taping, but had to drop out because of business problems.
Among other things, we will attend the closing Mass of the centenary, celebrated by the former primate of Hungary, the Franciscan Cardinal Laszlo Paskai, tour Esztergom castle, the seat of the medieval royal family of Hungary, where Elizabeth would have lived as a young child, and take a day-long tour of Budapest.
And we will be filming this partly for the documentary, but also because the Order wants a record of this historic chapter, and will make their own video of it.
It should be quite an adventure. Please pray for its success. I will be posting updates here. You can find out more and also donate funds for completion of the documentary at this website.
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. . . But Hollywood is still at war with itself.
“It is not all that we hoped for, and not all that we deserved,” Writer’s Guild of America West President Patric Verrone admitted in a press conference yesterday (Sunday,
February 10). But he still counts the tentative deal that the Guild has worked out with Hollywood’s producers (the AMPTP) as a victory. Why?
For starters, WGA members did at least gain some of what they wanted, that is acknowledgment that writers do deserve compensation for the use of their work in “new media” such as downloads and streamed content from the Internet. Though not as much as they had hoped — and the producers get a 17-day free “promotional” window for content. But, as Verrone says, “this strike was about the future, and this deal assures for us and for future generations of writers a share in the future…”
He is right to be happy. The Guild, by clever shows of strength — including getting most of the Hollywood acting community, represented by SAG (the Screen Actors’ Guild), to rally around their cause and boycott the Golden Globes and the Oscars — put fear into the moguls’ hearts. The separate deals the WGA made with companies such as David Letterman’s World Wide Pants, the Weinstein Company and United Artists was also a bold move – a move worthy of creative, business savvy and powerful artists – which is not what the AMPTP wants them to be. No, the AMTPT clearly would have preferred writers to be meek, submissive and obedient wage-slaves.
Which is what writers were when the Guild was first founded back in the 1930’s. In the fight to get writers a chance at better working conditions, fair contracts, and health benefits, the Guild acted as a real labor union. But somehow in the process, their creative independence went by the wayside. One important sign of this is that the writers agreed to give up copyright of their works to the studios. Yes, that’s right: all work done by writers for the WGA is work for hire, and when aspiring screenwriters finally sign that Hollywood deal, they give up ownership of their work; this means that the studio can drop the original writer at any time and have the whole script rewritten by someone else – or five or ten other people. And the writer has no legal recourse.
This is very unlike the theater, where playwrights always own their own work, can make sure that not a single line of it is changed, have the final say on when, where and how it is performed, and are in full control of the royalties they receive. Hollywood producers have long claimed, of course, that the enormous expense of motion pictures makes the studios’ ownership of content necessary – but then Broadway plays are about as expensive as most top-level independent films nowadays (I’m not an expert, but I would say that this would be those in the $1-2 million range). And if playwrights can maintain control of these all-important creative rights, why not film writers? In the many online comments by WGA writers I’ve read over the last few months, several indicated regret that writers ever gave up this and so much else to the studios.
In short, while the Guild has won a temporary victory, not much has changed. The war is still not over. And the writers are finally realizing some of their true power. And this, is no doubt causing the moguls to shake in their boots. After all, in a world where anyone with an Internet account and a URL has a potential media empire of their own at their fingertips – with their own radio station and TV network available through online podcasting and videocasting, YouTube, and hundreds of other outlets – is clearly a world where writers “don’t need no stinking moguls.” Writers can be their own producers and distributors, at the fraction of the cost of a $100 million (or even $1 million) Hollywood film. The many clever “Speechless” videos developed by Hollywood actors and writers in support of the strike over the past three months, and available to the public on the Internet, are proof enough of that.
The real question in this war is: how long can the Guild and the studios themselves keep going with the present structure, which is quickly becoming antiquated? The producers and moguls, now feeling threatened, will grab onto all the power they can. They will still want to give writers as little as possible, and still want to treat them like labor, while the writers themselves are potentially tomorrow’s powerful self-producers. This whole structure is going to have to give somehow.
Verrone hinted at this coming change when he said at yesterday’s press conference:
“The legacy of the ‘88 strike was the ability of the companies to develop content without writers and creators. The legacy of this strike will be the ability of writers and creators to develop content without the companies. We are making deals, and we will continue to make deals, with Google, Yahoo, and others beyond just the 7 conglomerates.”
It’s the wave of the future. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. For my part, as a potential film writer, it will be especially important for my own future. And somehow I feel it will be a bright one.
(You can read more on the strike news of the last few days at Deadline Hollywood Daily (a really killer blog with hundreds of comments by writers) and at screenwriter and Act One screenwriter Janet Batchler’s blog. And don’t forget the WGA blog, United Hollywood)
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Just wanted to add that a couple of days ago, I made a contribution to the agonized theological debate over “why did the chicken cross the road?” that has been called “fantastic” and “hysterical” by the Ironic Catholic — I can assure you that this is the first time any of my jokes have been called this. I will have to put this site on my permanent blog roll!
You can read all the inspired contributions here. (Scroll down to the bottom to find mine).
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Not very much time to post here before the Oscar nominations are announced. I’ve been continuing my efforts to see at least a few of the likely-to-be-nominated films. I’ve seen precisely two. So here goes.
I finally got to see Juno right after I got back from Christmas vacation. All except the late 11 o’clock showing were once again sold out here in NY, this time at the Times Square theater. So I finally got in the last showing of the evening. And the film was as delightful as people had been saying.
Juno MacGuff is a self-confident, quirky sixteen-year-old outsider with a smart mouth. The film opens as she takes a yet another home pregnancy test and confirms once again that yes, she’s going to have a baby. Her first instinct is to go to the “Women Now” clinic for an abortion. But she unexpectedly meets one of her classmates outside picketing the place - who tells Juno that her baby even has fingernails. She goes inside nevertheless. The sleaziness inside, the casual assumption that she is going to continue to be sexually active, and the insistent handing out of condoms really turn Juno off. But it’s the fingernails that haunt her. She leaves before her appointment. This must be the most resounding prolife moment in a movie this year.
The baby’s father, her classmate Paulie Bleecker (Michael Cera), is too dumbfounded to offer any advice when Juno tells him about the baby. Their single sex act was more experimental than passionate. So Juno figures she’d best move on from that relationship, and begins to make plans to find the perfect couple to adopt her baby. Her parents (J. K. Simmons and Alison Janney) turn out to be surprisingly supportive. The adoptive couple, of course, have to be really cool people, from Juno’s perspective. She approves of Vanessa (Jennifer Garner), and and Mark (Jason Bateman), a glamorous yuppie couple. She especially approves of Mark, a songwriter, and a fan of some of the same obscure 70’s bands she loves. They have a hilarious conversation about this early on; when Juno says of one band “You had to have been there,” Mark replies grumpily, “You weren’t even born then!” Things seem great. But unfortunately for Juno things don’t always turn out as you hope. She becomes an outcast at school, where she refers to herself as “The Cautionary Whale.” Even the ultrasound technician judges her. She now suspects that she’s actually in love with Paulie, who’s just invited someone else to the prom. And even Mark and Vanessa aren’t exactly what they seem. There are many surprises, heartbreak and heartwarming developments along the way.
The film’s sparkling script and quirky characters are standouts — though admittedly the hipster quotient of the dialogue frequently approaches surreal levels. And the script at times passes over much of the obvious in its search for the quirky, including the physical discomforts of pregnancy, and some of the recriminations real parents might offer. Some of the late second and third act developments are a little thin. But the movie has a genuine heart, and a brilliant young lead actress, Ellen Page, who can actually make that hip dialogue seem as if it’s realistically coming out of a human mouth — not only that, but this particular individual girl’s mouth. This warm movie has come out of nowhere to become a possible dark horse Best Picture contender.
I’ve also seen Charlie Wilson’s War - in some ways more delightful than I expected, and in other ways a disappointment. A brilliantly witty script with something of a letdown at the end. Some good acting all around and a particularly brilliant performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman as a rogue CIA agent who’s a model of keen intelligence, deadpan wit and unflappable cool — all wrapped up in a schlubby pot-bellied figure and unkempt mustache. Believe it or not, he’s based on a real person. But it’s getting late, I still have the Oscar nominations to write about — and more on the film will have to wait for later.
Other films I’ve seen: Enchanted, Hairspray. Those I’ve missed include many of the top contenders: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men; There Will be Blood. The Assassination of Jesse James. The Savages. And on and on. I desperately hope to see Once on video soon. Now on to the Oscars.
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