12:45-2:45 AM
The Happy Ending
Jean Simmons, John Forsythe (1969) An affluent Denver woman gets drunk, pops pills and walks out on her lawyer husband after sixteen years.
Turner Classic Movies
January 30, 2010Another Underrated Movie
January 29, 2010My boss is writing a script right now and reading over some scripts in order to “get into the mode.” One of the scripts we have is I Heart Huckabees, which I know was a very polarizing film but I, as someone who finds existential humor probably way funnier than it is, freaking ADORED it. Mark Wahlberg being funny=always great. Like crashing parties. It’s just math!
BACK TO: TOMMY AND ALBERT
TOMMY (SMILES):
What are you doing tomorrow?
ALBERT:
I was thinking of chaining myself to a bulldozer. Do you want to come?
TOMMY:
What time?
ALBERT:
Like one o’clock.
TOMMY:
That sounds good. Should I bring my own chains?
ALBERT:
We always do.
Fade out.
And some wisdom from aggressive yet funny man, director David O. Russell.
Q: News feels largely like entertainment at this point, doesn’t it? I mean, that line between journalism and entertainment gets blurred more every day, and i feel like the incarnation we’re experiencing now began with teh first Gulf War, when CNN started with the graphics and theme music. Now who can tell the difference between the news and Entertainment Tonight?
David: You should see the morning shows out here in LA, where the girls practically wear bikinis. The most popular morning show has this guy who’s like 55 or 60 with these two super hot girls. I remember seeing it after the Bush/Gore election, and I was like, Well, that’s why Bush won. Just look at this morning show and it tells you everything you need to know about why Bush won. It’s all in the little tops and the giggles and the subtext is, “No thinking or questioning.” People used to think our totalitarian future would look like Orwell’s 1984 or Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 411 with an oppressive police state — but the mind control turned out to be more insidious than that — it looks like “Wild on E!”
A Formula for Success
January 28, 2010A Formula for Success
If you find yourself with a runaway hit (book, movie, television show) on your hands, the key to serializing while maintaining artistic integrity and increasing profits is to try to be determine the number of installments in the series as early on as possible and inform the fan base of said number of episodes soon after you’ve decided. This way the excitement to the finale BUILDS in proportion to time as opposed to fizzles.
Good examples of this type of success:
The Harry Potter series
Seinfeld
Sex and the City
Lost
The Twilight Saga (that’s what it’s called, right?)
Star Wars
Another rule: if you are involved in a hit television show, the popularity of which is waning, and writers discuss one of the central couples having a baby, DOCTOR K THAT SHIT IMMEDIATELY!
Good examples of this type of failure:
Growing Pains
Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (hello, Vivian Deuce was like, at least 50 when she popped Nicky out)
Full House
Unfinished Business
January 25, 2010I once fantasized about putting all my unfinished writing into one document and publish it as “Unfinished Masterpieces,” or something similar. There is a genius in what is left undone, in letting the reader or viewer finish it. I remember part of a quote from the brilliant French movie Camille Claudel that expresses that sentiment much better than that. “It’s pure genius before…” Something like that. Michaelangelo repeatedly didn’t finish his sculptures, and these unfinished works are widely considered masterpieces. Not saying I’m Michaelangelo, but really, isn’t completion a myth anyway?
A new way to think about the unfinished:
“I see unrealized projects as the most important unreported stories in the art world. As Henri Bergson showed, actual realization is only one possibility surrounded by many others that merit close attention. There are many amazing unrealized projects out there, forgotten projects, misunderstood projects, lost projects, desk-drawer projects, realizable projects, poetic-utopian dream constructs, unrealizable projects, partially realized projects, censored projects, and so on. It seems urgent to remember certain roads not taken, and—in an active and dynamic, rather than nostalgic or melancholic way—transform some of them into propositions or possibilities for the future.”
-Hans Ulrich Obrist
This man is the quote most important art curator in the world, and an alien end quote, according to partner-in-conceptual-art-crime PS. So often when I’m evaluating texts for literary magazines (which I do, sometimes…I wear many hats) I think to myself, “This writer would have done her/himself such a favor if he/she had just cut it off two sentences earlier, instead of going into the whole, ‘And this incident with my grandparents is why I am afraid of bananas today.'” And so maybe everyone ought to quit while they’re ahead? Maybe you should always stop yourself two
James Wright
January 24, 2010My boss’/my (?) literary agent turned me on to this poet…
Trying to Pray
This time, I have left my body behind me, crying
In its dark thorns.
Still,
There are good things in this world.
It is dusk.
It is the good darkness
Of women’s hands that touch loaves.
The spirit of a tree begins to move.
I touch leaves.
I close my eyes and think of water.
Congrat…ulations?
January 21, 2010
My girl crush is engaged!
January 19, 2010
Waiting for Law and Order SVU to come on so I can be lulled back to sleep by the sweet ramblings of Munch and the soothing voice of Mariska Hargitay.
The Wee Hours
January 19, 2010One of the only things I know by heart…
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones
When small birds sighed she would sigh back at them
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one
the shapes a bright container can contain
Of her choice virtues, only God should speak
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek
How well her wishes went
She stroked my chin
She taught me turn, and counter-turn, and stand
She taught me touch, that undulant white skin
I nibbled meekly from her proferred hand
She was the sickle, I, poor I, the rake
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
But what prodigious mowing we did make
Love likes a gander, and adores a goose
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize
She played it quick, she played it light and loose
My eyes they dazzled at her flowing knees
Her several parts could keep a pure repose
Or one hip quiver, with a mobile nose
She moved in circles, and those circles moved
Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay
I’m a martyr to a motion not my own
What’s freedom for? To know eternity
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone
But who could count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways
I measure time by how a body sways
(I’ve forgotten/not included the punctuation…shapes change when words become memories…)
Amazing!
January 15, 2010KM to ID, 10:04 AM Friday, January 15, 2010:
So I don’t usually have dreams that I remember, at least not good ones, but last night i had a dream that I was at a fancy book party for you and you were on the nyt best seller list. Every so often I have dreams that become real and I think this is one of them. Your book party is going to be baller.
Re: ID to KM, 10:56 AM Friday, January 15, 2010:
OMG! That’s the best dream I’ve ever heard in my LIFE! It may even top the one in which I was with some friends in a field of daisies and we dropped acid and then Gandhi gave a speech! And it was fancy, too…amazing.
A Question
January 15, 2010If you’re a porn star, are your bikini waxes tax write-offs?
