MAN THE BARRICADES!

Okay, maybe not.

However, the long battered and beleaguered assistants in Talent and Management Agencies have begun a web site to vent steam in ways that don't involve urine and a vente mocha latte.

It's called Can Yooouuu and allows those assistants to leave little stories of unreasonable demands, obnoxious behaviour, and just plain insensitivity on the part of their cruel masters.

You know how I feel about the whole agent/assistant situation, and if you don't, then read this.

Saturday Silliness Cinema: Zach Galifinakis

Sorry for not posting yesterday. I got drafted into helping plant rose bushes and the experience served to remind me that I hate, and I mean loathe, gardening. Especially when it involves digging in a front yard that has more rocks in it than granite quarry. Now I'm sore and cranky.

So it's a perfect time for a laugh.

With the movie The Hangover staying in the top 5 of the box office after 3 weeks, let's take a look at one of its breakout stars comedian Zach Galifinakis.

Zach Galifianakis Live at the Purple Onion from Zach Galifianakis

New Characters from ZACH GALIFIANAKIS from Zach Galifianakis

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis from Between Two Ferns

Hollywood Babble On & On #308: Agents, Assistants, & Absolute Poverty

Nikki Finke had a recent post about how the millionaire power-brokers at the newly merged William Morris-Endeavor Entertainment Agency are going to slash the salaries of their assistants to make them more in line with the more parsimonious policies of the Endeavor Agency.

There are literally tons of stories about already overworked, and underpaid assistants, being used, abused, and refused until they either quit, or get adopted by Barry Diller.

Now there are two reasons why they treat, and pay their assistants so poorly, and no, it does not come from a taste for having angry assistants piss in their soy latte.

1. MONEY & CONNECTIONS: Basically agencies don't appear to want anyone who might actually have to live on the wages they pay. Assistant is just an entry level position, and for agents it is all about connections, who is related to whom, and they don't want to have their positions entered by anyone who doesn't already have money and status in their little community.

The time when a poor kid from the old neighborhood could get a gig in the mail room and making it to the top spot through pluck, luck, and hustle is long over. Hollywood is a shrinking and inbred community, and if you don't have any connection to someone who is already a somebody in the industry, you will never get that mail room job.

2. TRIAL BY FIRE: When you base your hiring on contacts over merit, you are going to get quite a few weeds in your garden of talent.

So to get rid of those weeds, you need the Garden Weasel of Simple Brutality. That means shitty pay, long hours, no overtime, brutal workload, and employers who are demanding bottomless pits of need.

Hopefully you will get the jokers out of the deck, and hopefully find a few with the hustle and drive to become real agents.

This system goes back a long way, in fact, it's the oldest form of training known to civilization, and it's called the Apprenticeship.

You see, you can't really learn how to be a good agent in university. Sure, you can learn contract law, and some of the more technical aspects, but there are literally hundreds of other aspects that they don't teach in school. You can only learn how to handle those things by doing, and by doing it under the most stressful, wretched conditions they can finagle, so that when you do make it to the corner office, you can handle everything fate throws at you.

Now these systems tend to get worse as the industry gets richer. This is because those who were assistants when they first started had it rough, so they feel that they must make it rougher to make up for some feeling of inadequacy in the face of the legendary generation that preceded them.

I sort of picture the discussions about treating assistants going a lot like the old comedy sketch the Four Yorkeshiremen:

AGENT 1: Assistants these days have it easy. They don't know the meaning of working hard. When I started out I was only paid three cents an hour, had to live under my desk, and work 23 hours a day. Then my boss would make me crawl over broken glass to serve him coffee.

AGENT 2: You had it easy. When I was an assistant I was paid three cents a day, was forced to live behind the copier machine, work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, swim through a tank full of piranhas to serve him coffee, and then he'd toss it in my face, horribly scalding me.

AGENT 3: Ya pussy! When I was an assistant I was paid three cents a week, had to live in my boss' waste paper basket, work 36 hours a day, 9 days a week, and crawl on hot coals to give my boss his coffee, which he would then throw in my face, and then he'd shoot me in the kneecaps, crippling me for life.

AGENT 4: Too much soft living, that's your problem. When I was an assistant I was paid three cents a year, had to live in the urinal of the executive washroom, worked 48 hours a day, 30 days a week, 3,650 days a year, and everyday I had to swim across a pool of acid to get my boss his coffee, and then he'd throw it in my face, saw off my head with a rusty knife, and shit down my neck.

AGENT 1: B'ah, wuss.

This system isn't always foolproof. It leaves too many openings for ass-kissing, conniving, and scheming, and the judgment of the mentors who are supposed to do the weeding, can be too easily swayed by such things, or by the connections of the assistant and their relatives. So some of those weeds do bloom, and often these weeds lack the "start from nothing" hustle that made the founding of the Hollywood agency system legends.

And another flaw in this system, is that the really big agencies, drunk on their own prestige, usually are the worst employers. This means the really clever candidates with the rare and precious hustle aim for the smaller agencies, work their way up, become big fish in a small pond, and when the majors come to recruit them and their mojo, they have to pay the big bucks. The funny thing is, if they made a few adjustments to their system, they could probably get these people at the start, and keep them loyal to the agency that brought them, at a more reasonable cost.

Of course the key word is loyalty, and if you want that in Hollywood, you better get a dog.

Hollywood Babble On & On #307: 1982, The SF Golden Age?

Website The Wrap posted a piece that discussed how 1982 was a banner year for science-fiction and horror films.

Take a look at the list and see how you can't agree:

• E.T.
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• Poltergeist
• Blade Runner
• The Thing
• Tron
• Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior

I mean those are some pretty heavy hitters. Even films like Blade Runner and The Thing, which lost money in their initial release became, first cult classics, in the then nascent pay-tv and video rental markets, and then grew to be considered full on classics of their genre.

I think this was due to a trend that started in the 60s, where filmmakers tried to take the genres of SF and horror, from their "B-movie" roots, and thanks to Star Wars now had the commercial viability, and special effects technology to do it.

Now I think those very things that SF/F/H so great in 1982 have now made most modern SF/F/H so damned forgettable.

Thanks to the past success of genre films, studios will toss a minimum of $100 million into the budget, and thanks to CGI, all you have to do is think of something, and you can make it happen on screen.

Sadly, once the novelty of being able to see everything wears off, it becomes a crutch to all but the most imaginative filmmakers. Why need to be subtle with your monster, when you can render its every pore and pimple in 3D and the studio is giving you millions to do it?

So where old filmmakers used story, and characters to make their films stand out above the limits of visual effects, modern filmmakers simply just toss in the CG and let that do all the work.

What do you think?

Can the SF/F/H cinema become as memorable as it was in good old 1982, or am I just an old fart enamored with nostalgia for the years I discovered such cinema?

Hollywood Babble On & On #306: On Comedy

There's a scene in an old episode of Seinfeld where Jerry visits a Catholic Priest in the confessional to discuss his dentist's recent conversion to Judaism, and how Jerry suspects he did it only for the jokes.

"Does that offend you as a Jew?" asks the Priest.

"No," answers Seinfeld, "it offends me as a comedian."

That's sums up how I feel about the whole David Letterman/Sarah Palin kerfuffle.

It doesn't offend me on any political level, I'm a Canadian, and American politics doesn't really involve me, but the fact that he allowed such a poorly conceived and executed joke make on air, offends me as someone who at least tries to be funny without the benefit of a multi-million dollar salary and staff of writers.

And it doesn't matter what side of the political spectrum you are on, it was a bad joke that was badly executed, and Letterman didn't give any thought into it all, because if he did, he wouldn't have done the joke.

And here's why:

1. RELEVANCE: The 2008 election ended in November 2008. Sarah Palin then went back to being governor of Alaska, and pretty much stopped being national news. The only reason most people even heard that she had visited New York, was because Letterman made jokes about it. It wasn't big news, it wasn't even little news, and doing the routine meant that it was done at the expense of more relevant stories.

Yes, she did run as Vice President, but that was last year, she lost as well, and she went back to Alaska. Her visit to New York had about as much resonance nationally as the Governor of Wyoming visiting New York. Before this boondoggle the only people who seemed to care a whit about Palin were the people of Alaska who see her as their governor, a handful of Republican supporters who think she's their messiah, and the upper-echelons of the New York-Los Angeles media community, who think she's Lucifer incarnate.

Inadvertently, Letterman made her politically relevant again, and put a big fat target on his own head by attacking her child, and giving her supporters the material they need to get her back in the news.

2. ETHICS: Making jokes about the children of public figures is just plain tacky. Making sexual jokes about the teenage daughter of a public figure is really tacky. It doesn't matter if Letterman meant the 18 year old with the baby, or the 14 year old without, it's still really tacky. The children of politicians often find themselves the subject of unwanted media attention, constant questions from reporters, watching by cameras, and gossip by bloggers. They're trapped in a catch-22, if they do try to control the situation by doing occasional interviews, they're accused of being exploited as the puppets of their parents, if avoid the press, they're damned for participating in an alleged cover-up.

Teenage girls, whether they had a baby or not, don't need some comedian telling the country that they're so slutty they put out baseball players in the dugout, or getting propositioned by a hooker-chasing ex-governor. Ridicule the parent as much as you like, they wouldn't be in politics if they couldn't take a joke, but their children are not fair game. The question a comedian would have to ask is: "Would I want someone saying that about my own daughter?" The answer would be no, and those who would ridicule the children of someone famous deserve all the scorn they get.

3. LAZINESS: The whole routine struck me as the sort of material someone blurts out in the Writer's Room, gets a giggle, and then is quickly forgotten, because while it may amuse a bunch of people buzzed on caffeine, Chinese food, and Xenu knows what else, it's just not good enough for national television. It's like making fun of a colleague's genitals with a rudely placed egg-roll, it may get a laugh in the writer's room, but it doesn't make it worthy of late-night.

The fact that it made it through the usual process of getting a joke through to air, shows a decided lack of effort on the part of the writing staff, and on Letterman himself. I know that producing relevant news jokes on a daily basis is tough, but it's been done since the dawn of television, so it's not impossible. And the laziness shows in the structure of the routine itself.

Saying Palin has a "slutty flight attendant look" was cheap, and inaccurate. She has more of a naughty librarian look, but the writer was probably watching some p0rn with flight attendants on his computer, and that stuck in his head. (My advice to Letterman, if he has to fly commercial, bring your own food and drinks, flight attendants have feelings too, and ways of getting revenge.)

Plus, when you do news related material you have to make sure that you at least know who is in the story. You don't just make an assumption and run with it. If Dick Cheney said something joke-worthy, it would be poor work on the part of the comedy writer to go and place the quote in the mouth of Vladimir Putin. Not knowing which daughter was on the trip, and putting the wrong daughter in the cross-hairs, is a sign that someone wasn't doing their job.

4. ARROGANCE: Letterman made the joke because of a simple, yet false assumption. The bulk of his narrow social circle in New York opposed her run for the VP seat. That is their right, it's a free country, but they seem unhealthily obsessed with her, viewing her as a combination of Elmer Gantry, Forrest Gump, and Dracula in heels.

This goes beyond the simple attitude of "I don't agree with them politically so I will ridicule them and their positions," to an attitude of "I don't agree with them politically, so they must be retarded and evil, so I will ridicule them and their children."

Since everyone in Letterman's social circle shares his attitude, he assumed that the entire country shared his attitude.

And let's remember that bit of wisdom: Don't ASSUME anything, because you will only make an ASS out of U and ME.

Letterman didn't count on Fox News, talk radio, and conservative bloggers to jump on the issue like stink on a mule. I get the feeling that's because he doesn't watch Fox News, listen to talk radio, or read conservative bloggers, because if he did, then he would have seen this coming.

It's the perfect storm for them, Letterman's a millionaire late night comedian, who refuses to make jokes about the current ruling administration, employed by a multi-billion dollar mega-conglomerate, attacking the child of the governor of a state that's literally two countries away from his Manhattan circle in what appears to be some sort of petty revenge for campaigning for a party he doesn't like.

Letterman didn't seem to realize the law of unintended consequences. He made the joke in the hope of belittling a former candidate and her family, but instead gave her supporters the ammunition they needed to revive her standing on the national stage. The millions of people who voted for her, and even those who didn't, saw the joke as an attack on a child and joined in on the outrage, seeing a middle class mother turned governor of a relatively politically small state being attacked while the politically powerful walk unscathed on a nightly basis.

Why didn't Letterman see the shit-storm coming?

The only reason I can think of is arrogance.

Letterman runs his own shop, nobody dares say no to him about anything, he apparently listens to no one that doesn't agree with him completely, and after too many years of that you start to think that you're all that and a bag of chips, and that you can make a really bad joke, and not see the wave of shit it's going to start.

Should Letterman be fired?

No, I don't think so, and I doubt he will. He'll ride it out, and in a week or two it'll all be forgotten.

What he should do is obtain a little humility, because humility is the comedian's best tool. It's what helps a comedian tell the difference between a joke that deserves to get on air, one that can only causes shit.

Now I hope that Letterman sees that he screwed the pooch, and makes himself and his writers aim for a higher standard in their material.

And let this be the last we talk of politics here.

It's not my bailiwick.

Hollywood Babble On & On #305: Dismal Developments About Development

An interesting piece was posted on Nikki Finke's site yesterday. Apparently a lot of the studios are running out of money to develop new projects, and the market for spec screenplays has been described as "shitty."

Well, first thing I have to say is that the studios have no one to blame but themselves for this.

But I guess I should do a little explaining...

First, a spec screenplay is industry slang for a "speculative" screenplay, which is basically a script that was created completely by the writer, and not from an assignment by a studio.

Second, development is the process where the studios weed through spec scripts, find the ones they like, buy an "option" on that script which gives the studio a year to get the film made, go through about 500 rewrites, hire a director, cast, and all the other things that a studio needs to do before they get around to actually make a movie.

As in all things in Hollywood, this costs money. People need to be paid, to read the scripts, to write reports called "coverage" about the scripts, then the producers have to decide which ones to buy, they have to pay the writer, not only for the rights to the script, but for rewrites, or they hire another writer to do it, etc...etc...

Now a lot of scripts go into development, costing a lot of money, and never get a green-light in the end. So the whole process, like everything else in movies, is pretty expensive and risky.

The studios running out of development money, and finding it hard to find decent spec scripts have basically the same cause.

CONSOLIDATION

You see when the major studios became big media conglomerates everything became about "consolidation," "synergy," and other corporate consultant spewed bullshit. This gave the studios the idea that they could do anything and everything "in house," and playing it safe with the familiar. Basically this meant doing mostly sequels, remakes of old movies/TV shows that the studio already owns, and adapting comic book characters.

Which leads to a problem.

You see, the entertainment business is all about being actually entertaining. That means a certain amount of novelty and originality is necessary to keep the industry going.

But big corporations are terrified of new ideas, because they are inherently risky, and the people who create those ideas are less likely to just hand over the entire farm to the studio. So they aim to create a sense of novelty not through originality, but through spending money, money, money.

I'm talking about money for stars, millions upon millions of dollars, whether they can deliver an audience or not.

And then tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars on production, and marketing. I'm talking about lots of special effects, and more advertising than you can shake a stick at.

Of course if you know the history of film, you'll probably know that many of the things that made many past films so memorable were the things done by filmmakers to save money. A classic example was Spielberg's spare use of the mechanical shark in Jaws. He didn't do it originally to build suspense. He did it because the shark kept breaking down, and looked crappy. So he kept it to a bare minimum, and made a horror blockbuster.

Today's filmmakers don't have to use, you know, actual film-making, to fill the gaps. Nowadays all is possible, and all it takes is money, which Hollywood is willing to spend. Just get the CG department to make the car chase bigger than the last one, and just shake the camera a lot during the fight scenes to make it look like every other movie.

But audiences get bored with the constant remakes, reboots, re-imaginings, and sequels to sequels, and the rather tepid film-making, and they start going to movies less. Cost go way up, profits go down, the cash supply dwindles, and suddenly Hollywood doesn't have enough to pay for the new ideas they need to keep going.

It's a new facet of the self-fulfilling idiocy that dominates Hollywood.

Hollywood Babble On & On #304: NBC Changes The Spin In Their Tailspin!

Jeff Zucker, the Master & Commander of the sinking ship we know as NBC-Universal, has recently let go his Public Relations Czar.

Now I don't know who could project the right public image for the floundering network, but here are some candidates who might do the job:

OBI WAN KENOBI

He's very grandfatherly, wise, and if the reporters start asking really embarrassing questions, about NBC's ratings, then he can do that Jedi Mind Trick. "This is not the failing network you're looking for." And if they get really uppity, a few swipes of his light-saber will settle their hash.

A CUTE PUPPY

Come on, how can you possibly look at that face and accuse the people running NBC of gross incompetence?

MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN

He's slick, stylish, charming, can "gesture hypnotically" to make Nikki Finke think she's a chicken, distract others with rabbits out of his hat, and since he hasn't worked in a while, he's within NBC's price range.

Or, if NBC's willing to do something drastic...

JESUS

He's popular with Americans and can raise the dead. If he can't save NBC's image, then no one can.

LIVE DEBATE! FRIEDMAN VS MURDOCH: THIS TIME IT'S PERSONAL

Greetings true believers!

Sorry, bit of a Stan Lee moment there, but anyway, yesterday I lost my internet connection for a few hours. Being unable to blog left me in curled up in a corner of my office in a fetal position, crying and hugging a bottle of Jack Daniels.

So to recover from that trauma, I've used my deep and powerful connections to the major players in showbiz and got them to debate a pressing issue right here, live. Today I have former Fox.com gossip columnist Roger Friedman, and his former boss Rupert Murdoch to discuss the real reason Friedman was fired from his job.

Go at it!

THE
REAL REASON
I WAS FIRED
BY
ROGER FRIEDMAN

(former Fox gossip columnist)

It's time for the truth to come out!

I was not fired because I wrote a review of a pirated copy of 20th Century Fox's movie Wolverine. I was shit-canned because of an evil conspiracy against me by Rupert Murdoch and the Scientologists.

So let me start from the beginning.

First, Rupert Murdoch is responsible for the piracy of the Wolverine movie. He wanted to see a DVD copy of the movie, and apparently no one ever thought of making a copy for the CEO of the company before, and that strange and radical request led to the piracy, that I then wrote glowingly about in my article.

Plus, the Scientologists pressured Murdoch to fire me, because I've been critical of them a couple of times in the past. And Fox didn't want the awesome power of my words, which are treated as gospel by people all over the world, hurting Valkyrie, which they were distributing globally, or offend the awesome box office clout of Kelly Preston.

That's the real reason why I was fired, and the reason why I am suing News Corp, Rupert Murdoch, and the guy behind this blog for writing a bogus blog post under my name!

WHAT A CROCK!
BY
RUPERT MURDOCH
(Billionaire Tyrant)

I've spent more years in the newspaper business than you've had hot dinners, and I've learned to spot a crock of horseshit when I see it.

First, his charge that I caused the piracy by demanding a copy of the movie.

CRIKEY!!

I'm the fucking CEO of the whole bloody didgeridoo!

Why the hell shouldn't I have a gander at one of my movie studio's big tent-pole movies?

That's like saying I can't get a looky-loo at the front page of a bloody newspaper that I bloody well own! It shows that you don't know much about how a bloody business is bloody run.

And besides, you weren't sacked over who caused the bloody piracy! You were sacked because you wrote about the bloody pirated movie for the whole world to see!

Those pirate bastards are stealing the vegemite out of my bloody cake-hole! And if it's coming out of my cake-hole, then it's not going into your bloody cake-hole, you bloody asshole!

Your article was bloody well telling people how bloody well cool it was to steal movies from the bloody people who paid bloody good money to make them, who also sign your bloody paycheck! That whole article was one big "piss in Rupert's ear and tell 'im it's rainin'" fest.

Now about those Scientologists, your little crusade against Valkyrie was a bit overdone, especially since we have the MGM/UA international rights, and had to make something out of that boondoggle, but it wasn't why you were sacked. As for Kelly Preston, who cares about Kelly Preston, or John Travolta. She's not a star, and he's easily replaced by about half a dozen cheaper, and more profitable actors.

And let's not forget that the biggest ad against Scientology was bloody Tom Cruise himself. Jumping on Oprah's bloody couch, and hooting like a bloody bandicoot in heat. So what if he doesn't do our Cameron Diaz movie? In fact, I can't really think of a reason for us to do a bloody Cameron Diaz movie in the first place!

I bloody well wrestle crocodiles for fun, I don't get pushed around, I do the bloody pushing!!

I'd like to end by saying that you're full of shit, I'll bury you and your lawyers for fun. Now I got to go, a dingo's got my baby again!

Saturday Silliness Cinema: The Trailer Park Boys.

My homeland of Nova Scotia was the home of a television show that ran seven seasons called the Trailer Park Boys. The series was done as a mockumentary following the lives of a small group of petty criminals who lived in the fictional Sunnyvale Trailer Park in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. There's Julian, the "brains" of the operation, whose ambition is to retire by 35, his best friend Ricky, whose only real talents are growing pot, mangling the English language, andmaking up unbelievable excuses that the cops often end up believing, and Bubbles, who lives in Julian's tool shed, tends to cats, and evolved from a background character in the first episode, to become the show's most iconic character, and the gang's voice of reason and morality.

Too keep up the show's mystique the stars would do all public appearances and interviews in character, even hosting a nationally televised awards show in character.

Despite its modest, no budget, beginnings, the show went on to become a global cult phenomenon, winning awards and viewers in Britain, Australia, the USA and a dozen other countries, a profitable feature film, produced by Ivan Reitman, and a sequel movie in the works.

An interesting, possibly apocryphal, but very believable, story, about the making of the show was that after the show's success in foreign markets, MTV made an offer to buy the show. Now you must remember that the show is about pot-smoking, foul-mouthed, drunk, petty criminals. MTV said they loved the show, but would only buy it if the characters stopped smoking pot, using foul language, getting drunk, or committing any crimes.

If that doesn't tell you how that whole MTV-Viacom business thinks, I don't know what does.

Here is the entire premiere episode of the series, and while it was more raw, and not as gut busting funny as later episodes, it does lay the foundation of the entire show. It also marks the first appearance of a character named Cyrus, a crazy, gun waving gangster, and occasional nemesis, who I swear was based on a real life criminal from around those parts.

NSFW for language.

Strictly Business: What Elmer Fudd Can Teach Us

I found this cartoon, that I think is key to explaining some pretty basic economics, and what I believe to be the true reason for the economic downturn that's hurt so many people. So watch, enjoy, and then read on.

Now what's the key thing in that cartoon about investing?

It's that the money gets invested in the creation of something new. A lot of the money-making "financial products" basically had nothing to do with creation, and money that is not being used to create something, like a good, or a service, is basically just a bet on a bubble, and you're better off going to Las Vegas.

Because the only way to safely grow money, and do all the improvements in the standard of living, not just for yourself, but for everyone, is to create, to build. Anything else is just a gamble.

I'm trolling for some show-biz news for me to bitch about, and will try to get something up later.