EXTRA CRITICUM

ND/NF & ALW

cross-posted on http://alifesworkmovie.com/blog/

People who know me well will tell you that I’m modest. But there is one thing I’ll drop without hesitation: I directed a film that screened at New Directors/New Films, a showcase presented by the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. ND/NF showed the early films of Pedro Almodovar, John Sayles, Atom Egoyan, Sally Potter, Wim Wenders, Wong Kar Wai, Guillermo del Torro* -- and those are just the filmmakers I love. There are quite a few more directors on the roster that are now household names, including that guy who made Jaws and E.T. and a few others.

Are 3D Films Good For the Stage?

cross-posted to Lapis Loquens Blog

A recent NPR story about 3D films and their increasing popularity got me thinking again about differences between film and stage.  NPR focused on a young company in San Diego, Legend3D, whose business is converting existing movies to 3D format.  The company is presently converting to 3D six well known films (they won’t say what ones).  If you have any doubts that 3D is hot, consider these numbers:  in 2005 Legend3D had 25 total employees; its current staff numbers 1,200 (400 in San Diego and 800 in India).  That’s not exactly the pattern for the overall economy in recent years.

Sometimes, it's best not to start watching a TV series from the beginning

Cross-posted on Robert David Sullivan blog.

Jaime Weinman tackles a point of modern TV etiquette:

..now that TV series are taken more seriously as complete and coherent works, to say nothing of the fact that we can watch from the beginning no matter how late we discover the show, there’s an increased preference for getting the full experience of the story from beginning to end. Even where the show deals mostly or partly in self-contained stories, like Justified or almost any half-hour comedy, many new viewers prefer to start from episode one.

Our Fear of Ambition. Killing us softly and slowly...

The other day I was having lunch with an old friend and the subject of my latest play came up. I explained that after more than a decade of writing within the confines of what’s commonly considered “produce-able” I’d allowed myself the luxury of writing a sprawling epic play about Teddy Kennedy, requiring a cast of at least eleven actors and told in 55 scenes spanning a period of six years. Make no mistake, this is a big ambitious play. And I’m thrilled to have written it. And grateful to Resonance Ensemble, and Eric Parness, for commissioning it. (They will not, however, be producing it, perhaps, in part, due to the aforementioned scale of the thing.)

But I digress. The point of this post is that after having described my sprawling ambitious new play to my friend, she asked a rather straightforward question: "What do you hope happens with it? Where do you see it?"

Ted Hope offers 35 ways to keep the faith

Ted Hope continues to offer wisdom, wit and encouragement to those of us still committed to creating truly independent film. Check out his 35 Ways to Keep the Faith in Truly Free Film, recently posted on IndieWire:

Readings = Funding

Ran into a playwright buddy the other day and he said to me. “Oh! I have good news! X Theatre Co. is giving me a reading in May!”

“Congratulations,” I said. But it only dawned on me after we’d parted that there’s an implicit characterization of the transaction contained in the language we commonly use in this situation.

Public broadcasting threatened only where it's the voice of the opposition

Cross-posted on Robert David Sullivan blog.

James Poniewozik makes an excellent point about how the Republican Party's incessant attacks on public broadcasting is really targeted at Middle America:

ZOUNDS! Aha! I get it!

I had always had problems understanding certain videos.  However, thanks to technology, and people's willingness to waste time, the greatest music video of all time is now totally understandable.

Piling on Julie Taymor. Enough Already!

There's an edge that creeps into people's voices lately whenever they start trading tidbits about the train wreck that is Julie Taymor's Spiderman. The quality that creeps into the voice is something approaching glee. I suppose, it might be expected that a certain degree of schadenfreude might set in when such vast amounts of money are spent on one production. But, personally, I'm starting to find it a bit off-putting. And I can't help thinking: this is symptomatic of a larger cultural sickness. We have some sort of endless need to prop up artists as demi-gods and then topple them down with gusto at the first signs of cracks in their facade.

Today's Julie Taymor trash fest is reminiscent of similar public outcries that another female theatrical genius director suffered throughout her tumultuous (and spectacular) career. Her name was Sarah Caldwell. And she was the visionary Founding Artistic Director of Opera Company of Boston. Check out this little item from John Rockwell of the New York Times, dated January 20, 1982:

How Jean Stapleton saved "All in the Family" for the ages

Cross-posted at the Robert David Sullivan blog.

Roland posted a good comment to my post about the durability of comedies like The Simpsons:

Recently, Drew has introduced me to Friends, a show I never watched when it was on the air. I have to say, one of the things that most impresses me about the show as we work our way through full-season DVDs is the universality of it. It's basically about relationships. And the way they got to that, of course, (big surprise!) is by creating very specific characters and sticking to their truth. The show gets its laughs from the specificity of what we know about these six individuals and the jokes are not riffing on pop culture. I have a feeling its shelf life will be very long indeed.

I agree, though I'm not sure that I'd pick Friends as the best example.

Will people still "get" The Simpsons in 25 years?

Cross-posted at Robert David Sullivan.

I seem to be banned for life from posting comments on Salon.com because of a typo. The site requires you to set up an account (another password!) in order to submit a comment, but when I tried I mistakenly typed "con" instead of "com" at the end of my email address. So Salon sent a confirmation email to a nonexistent address and now won't let me set up another account because there's already a pending account with my user name (and ISP address, presumably). What a fate: trapped on Salon's No Fly List.

In a Word

Cross-posted on http://alifesworkmovie.com/blog/

I'm revamping the DVD menu for the fundraising sample of A Life's Work, and as I look at that canvas, I keep thinking about a snippet from a wonderful interview with Francis Ford Coppola that's been floating around the Internet. In it the interviewer asks, "What is the one thing to keep in mind when making a film?" Coppola's response:

Charlie Sheen is making me quit writing.

Charlie Sheen is now broadcasting his own show.

Street Theatre: Too hysterical not to post

Enjoy!

Remember: One dead giveaway you need another rewrite

Went to see a dreadful new play last night. I won't be so cruel as to name it.

Within the first two minutes on stage, the first two characters to appear had probably each uttered the word "remember" at least twice. At this point, Drew and I looked at each other and realized we were in for a long ride in the passenger seat of a vehicle being driven by someone not in command of his or her craft.