You know, other than calling the guy who caught you out lying "being without character". It gets old, it is entirely predictable, and I find it tiresome. And it is amazing to me that – even if you tell them up front exactly what is going to happen when they lie, when they do something behind your back – that they still try.
Just like that producer did on Tuesday.
And when you cut their throats (as I did today), they go all huffy and puffy on you, "oh, this was not what I expected from you, waah waah".
Also, the next person who tells me "I am burning bridges" that has me working on something for three months or more, with everybody else taking vacations and/or not responding to emails while I am trying to give them more information, new ideas and infos... leaving me to do all the heavy lifting and them not even being able to fully read the script versions you deliver... should shut the fuck up.
What I find so interesting is that in the past month, private emails always got a reply, especially if one could brag where in Europe one was on vacation, whereas the other guy didn't reply to anything at all... but the emails with relevant information were not even read.
How do I know that? Because I tested it in that phone conference.
It's how you catch liars. You give them the rope.
They hang themselves.
And when they do, it was of course all your fault.
Because you caught them.
Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.
Entirely predictable parameters of behaviour.
So, boys and girls, after I finish Live, my German thriller, I will start on the biggest book series project I have ever undertaken. I'm glad. I'm happy.
It is called The Cage.
And it will show how much looking for the truth will hurt you.
And how much it is still worth it.
August 7, 2010
STUPIDITY MAKES ME SICK
And I do mean that quite literally. After having dealt for over two years with that amazingly stupid retard publisher, I was slowly moving upward and onward for the past couple of months, but after Tuesday, it all came back. The constant feeling of nausea, the stomach cramps, the adrenaline rushes in the middle of the night as my brain kept on working around the clock, the vomiting in the early morning.
I called up another old colleague of mine last night. And he relayed this. He works for a rather big international clothing company (and when I say big, I mean it) as an outsourced productioner, responsible for the production of their catalogues et al. And recently, the interiors were given for design and layout to a super-über-we-are-so-awesome PR agency in Boston. And we all know what that means, eh? Yes. We are expensive! That's how awesome we are!
The pages arrived at my former colleague's company for final checking and print pre-production. And the entire layouts had been done in...
... guess, boys and girls?
In RGB! Yes, the big "professional" agency in Boston had built it all in unprintable RGB! But wait! Wait! It gets better! Upon being called up and after the layouts had been converted to CMYK over here by my former colleague's company, the people at the agency were livid, stating that all the colours had been muted, and that was not what they had done.
Yes, boys and girls.
They. Didn't. Even. Know. What. CMYK. Was!
And that you have to adjust the raw photos differently for CMYK than you would for RGB! They had no fucking clue! "Professionals"!
"How the hell did you stop yourself from strangling them, very slowly, so that you can still see it when the stupid flicker of light finally goes out in their eyes?" I asked him.
"They were in Boston," he said. "Hard to do that when an ocean protects them."
True. So very true.
I called up another old colleague of mine last night. And he relayed this. He works for a rather big international clothing company (and when I say big, I mean it) as an outsourced productioner, responsible for the production of their catalogues et al. And recently, the interiors were given for design and layout to a super-über-we-are-so-awesome PR agency in Boston. And we all know what that means, eh? Yes. We are expensive! That's how awesome we are!
The pages arrived at my former colleague's company for final checking and print pre-production. And the entire layouts had been done in...
... guess, boys and girls?
In RGB! Yes, the big "professional" agency in Boston had built it all in unprintable RGB! But wait! Wait! It gets better! Upon being called up and after the layouts had been converted to CMYK over here by my former colleague's company, the people at the agency were livid, stating that all the colours had been muted, and that was not what they had done.
Yes, boys and girls.
They. Didn't. Even. Know. What. CMYK. Was!
And that you have to adjust the raw photos differently for CMYK than you would for RGB! They had no fucking clue! "Professionals"!
"How the hell did you stop yourself from strangling them, very slowly, so that you can still see it when the stupid flicker of light finally goes out in their eyes?" I asked him.
"They were in Boston," he said. "Hard to do that when an ocean protects them."
True. So very true.
August 6, 2010
WHY YOUR MOVIES AND TV SHOWS ARE AS BAD AS THEY ARE
Do you remember, boys and girls, when I said that the insanity of my Hollywood dealings just may drive me over the edge? Or when I said that I was merely waiting for the other shoe to drop on me regarding the TV show.
Well, that shoe dropped on Tuesday.
It dropped in a sentence. Well, more than one sentence, really, but one sentence in particular as I realized that the good ideas and notes that had happened before had been caused by luck and not by forethought.
Want to know what that sentence was?
"Nobody will remember what was said in dialogue two minutes later. I don't."
Well, Aaron Sorkin. It must be tough to be you. I am sorry to inform you that nobody here remembers anything that you have written in dialogue, like "This is bad... on so many levels" or "She called you a New York Jew, Josh. That's what she did" or "If we are going to discuss this, then at least get the damn commandments right! It is the damn third commandment". "What is the first commandment?" followed by one of the best entrances in TV history, Martin Sheen's president going, "I. Am. Your. God."
Yes, nobody remembers dialogue.
That's why everybody knows exactly three things about Aliens.
And everybody who has seen that movie will know what you are talking about when you say one of the following.
(1) "Anybody ever mistaken you for a man, Vasquez?" "No, you?"
(2) "Game over, man! Game over!"
and
(3) "Get away from her, you bitch!"
See, that's how little can be conveyed in dialogue.
But people are supposed to bow to somebody because they have a title, have a position of power, have been vetted, looked at, fucked, sucked, helped by family connections to rise to a level where idiocy becomes something that is carried proudly in front of them, and intellectual vacuum is a good thing. And then these people buy this...
I am angry. I am totally pissed off. Because one of the things I got told during that phone conference was that "all the [incredibly stupid changes they thought would improve the show] ideas were for the benefit of the potential buyers, and the buyers are very nervous and skittish, and we are merely trying to make the show more sellable".
And you know what? I am not interested in making the show "sellable" to somebody who considers fully reading (and by that I mean, every word and yes, that fucking includes stage directions, these things are there for a reason, you know. They are there so that in shooting the damn thing, there is a visual that explains stuff to the audience without having to use dialogue) a script that is only 42 pages long as something to be done between your fucking golf date and your 3.00 PM blow job appointment with Mistress Erika.
Nor am I interested in having a "career" in Hollywood, especially considering that I am perfectly aware of how such a "career" in Hollywood look these days.
Please play with me! is what they all scream. And beg. Play with me! See, I even will do things for you for free! Play with me! Use me! Abuse me! Call me dirty names. Call me...
... a Mary Sue! Because that is what they all allowed themselves to be turned into. For a gig. For a trick. For a paycheck, they will do anything. They write to an audience of oligarchs with titles and business cards, they do not, let me repeat that, they do not write for you, the audience.
I am doing this to prove a point. I have written THE CAGE to prove a point. That something smart is going to be embraced by you, the ones who are out there and love stories.
And I find the simultaneous kissing of my ass while trying to fist it... to be no longer merely annoying, but angering me on levels that I don't even have words for.
But my favourite line?
"We are not trying to put you on a leash, Thomas..."
To which I replied, "Well, you are not able to put me on a leash. Not you, not your boss, not any person at any TV network. Want to know why? Because I own the damn thing!"
I didn't write it as an assignment.
And while – as I have written previously – am more than happy to implement good ideas (just goes to make any particular charge of "you are not being a team player" already a really stupid argument), I am the person in charge here.
Oh, and incidentally? That charge of not being a team player has been made numerous times in my life. Know who the people are who level that charge against you? People who equate "team player" with "do what I want you to do, good dog, who's a good dog. You are. You are good puppy."
I talked last night with my former deputy editor Martina Vrenegor (one of the smartest women on this planet), told her all this, including the whole "team player" bit, and on that other end of the phone line, there was that laughter I am still missing and that got me through a lot of shit during my Future Publishing years, when at many times it felt like I was the only one who tried to save the company from collapsing on the German market.
And the reason I quietly slipped into a state of deep despair in the three months prior to my depature aftr having tried to warn every person willing to lend me an ear, after I had gone to the main house in Bath and talked to their Launch Editor Matt Bielby, stating that Future Germany is roughly 18 months away from financial collapse, if we didn't kill the German management team structure.
Deaf ears. Always deaf ears.
And the only thing I ever got out of England was the snarky "and you'd want to run the company, then, right?"
"No," I said. "I have no interest in running the company. I want the idiots running the company to do their jobs properly, so I can do mine. Because if they don't start, and by that I mean, yesterday, we are going to crash."
Deaf ears. Always deaf ears.
"You not a team player, T?" Martina said last night. "Maybe they should come around and ask the teams you led. You ran your department with so much respect for everybody else's input that we all stood behind you all the way. The only thing with you? You have the least capacity of dealing with bullshit I have ever seen in my life. You see it, you smell it, and you cannot keep your mouth shut when you do. We all loved you for it. Everybody in management hated you for it. And god, did they hate you. Because, see, even back then... they couldn't find a way to play you. Nobody could ever play you. That made you the most dangerous man in the company."
When we were about to shaft Sega and drop the Offical Dreamcast Magazine in order to beg Sony to make the Official PS2 Magazine, I was called into the office of the Managing Director, you remember the one, we talked about this before, Stefan "I have a sun tan but no brain" Moosleitner.
"I want you to lead the development of the magazine," he told me. "In fact I want you to lead the entire development of every new magazine in the games sector."
"Why me?" I asked
"You are an arrogant asshole," he said.
"Well, it's nice that we both see eye to eye on that."
"I wasn't finished," he said. "You are an arrogant asshole who has no respect for authority, who I would fire the moment I could afford it, but the fact is that you are also the best creative in the entire company."
"Oh dear," I said. "I am so flattered to know that I am the guy who has to do the heavy lifting until you find somebody who is more to your taste."
"Do the PS2 development."
"No."
"What?"
"I said, no," I said. "Because if you ditch the Dreamcast Magazine, my team will be ditched. And I won't have that. You want me to do your bidding, I want assurances that I will have my team. Or I can just walk out of this office, and that best creative in your company is telling you to find that person more to your taste right now."
"What?"
"My team. You stay away from my team. Are we clear on that? For that I will bend over for you. I will be your good little doggie. My team. Don't think, don't ever delude yourself that I am going to do it for you or for this company."
"You can keep your team."
"Good."
When I departed Future Germany, I called all of the editors and staffers together to "a final supper". I told everybody the truth. That the company was going to go down. And that they should start looking for new jobs, new positions, that they should do it quietly, that they shouldn't wait. I gave them a time frame. I gave them less than a year.
Most didn't believe me.
I was off by three days in my prediction. That's all. Three days. The collapse happened exactly as I had predicted it. Even now, I sometimes look back and want to scream at the idiots who only cared about their office furniture, their positions, their titles, their corporate benefits, "if you had listened to me, just once, we could have saved this company!"
And so, in this situation here, the only decision other people in this industry can make is to say "no."
And boo-hooo-hooo, cry me a fucking river. I can just as well write this as a series of novels and wait, for in about five years the same people will come knocking on my door and beg to then option it. And know what? Then I'll go the full J.K. Rowling on their asses.
Freedom is the freedom not to care.
Well, that shoe dropped on Tuesday.
It dropped in a sentence. Well, more than one sentence, really, but one sentence in particular as I realized that the good ideas and notes that had happened before had been caused by luck and not by forethought.
Want to know what that sentence was?
"Nobody will remember what was said in dialogue two minutes later. I don't."
Well, Aaron Sorkin. It must be tough to be you. I am sorry to inform you that nobody here remembers anything that you have written in dialogue, like "This is bad... on so many levels" or "She called you a New York Jew, Josh. That's what she did" or "If we are going to discuss this, then at least get the damn commandments right! It is the damn third commandment". "What is the first commandment?" followed by one of the best entrances in TV history, Martin Sheen's president going, "I. Am. Your. God."
Yes, nobody remembers dialogue.
That's why everybody knows exactly three things about Aliens.
And everybody who has seen that movie will know what you are talking about when you say one of the following.
(1) "Anybody ever mistaken you for a man, Vasquez?" "No, you?"
(2) "Game over, man! Game over!"
and
(3) "Get away from her, you bitch!"
See, that's how little can be conveyed in dialogue.
But people are supposed to bow to somebody because they have a title, have a position of power, have been vetted, looked at, fucked, sucked, helped by family connections to rise to a level where idiocy becomes something that is carried proudly in front of them, and intellectual vacuum is a good thing. And then these people buy this...
NBC has closed a deal for Zombies vs. Vampires, a spec script by Jake in Progress creator/executive producer Austin Winsberg. I hear NBC bought preemptively the project, produced by Warner Bros. TV and McG's studio-based Wonderland production banner. Zombies vs. Vampires is described as a "fun buddy cop procedural." It is set in a world where zombies are a part of society, controllable with medication. The show's two leads (one secretly a vampire) are cops assigned to a squad specifically formed to deal with "zombie crime". Winsberg, McG and Peter Johnson are executive producing.Oh, I am sorry. I'm supposed to respect the ones who buy this?
I am angry. I am totally pissed off. Because one of the things I got told during that phone conference was that "all the [incredibly stupid changes they thought would improve the show] ideas were for the benefit of the potential buyers, and the buyers are very nervous and skittish, and we are merely trying to make the show more sellable".
And you know what? I am not interested in making the show "sellable" to somebody who considers fully reading (and by that I mean, every word and yes, that fucking includes stage directions, these things are there for a reason, you know. They are there so that in shooting the damn thing, there is a visual that explains stuff to the audience without having to use dialogue) a script that is only 42 pages long as something to be done between your fucking golf date and your 3.00 PM blow job appointment with Mistress Erika.
Nor am I interested in having a "career" in Hollywood, especially considering that I am perfectly aware of how such a "career" in Hollywood look these days.
This week the Writers Guild of America, West reported that while earnings for screenwriters have bounced back to pre-strike levels, there is a lot less work going around: employment has fallen 11% in the last three years, with 226 fewer screenwriters working in 2009 than 2006, the year before the 100-day walkout and the lowest level in at least six years.So says this rather informative article by the LA Times. Things are looking grim. Of course they are. And yet, I find myself not really feeling a lot of sympathy for any of these "writers". I should. Don't you think I should? After all, am I not in the same boat as they are? Hustling to get something made? Remember what I told you about me growing up? That's what this is, isn't it?
Please play with me! is what they all scream. And beg. Play with me! See, I even will do things for you for free! Play with me! Use me! Abuse me! Call me dirty names. Call me...
... a Mary Sue! Because that is what they all allowed themselves to be turned into. For a gig. For a trick. For a paycheck, they will do anything. They write to an audience of oligarchs with titles and business cards, they do not, let me repeat that, they do not write for you, the audience.
I am doing this to prove a point. I have written THE CAGE to prove a point. That something smart is going to be embraced by you, the ones who are out there and love stories.
And I find the simultaneous kissing of my ass while trying to fist it... to be no longer merely annoying, but angering me on levels that I don't even have words for.
But my favourite line?
"We are not trying to put you on a leash, Thomas..."
To which I replied, "Well, you are not able to put me on a leash. Not you, not your boss, not any person at any TV network. Want to know why? Because I own the damn thing!"
I didn't write it as an assignment.
And while – as I have written previously – am more than happy to implement good ideas (just goes to make any particular charge of "you are not being a team player" already a really stupid argument), I am the person in charge here.
Oh, and incidentally? That charge of not being a team player has been made numerous times in my life. Know who the people are who level that charge against you? People who equate "team player" with "do what I want you to do, good dog, who's a good dog. You are. You are good puppy."
I talked last night with my former deputy editor Martina Vrenegor (one of the smartest women on this planet), told her all this, including the whole "team player" bit, and on that other end of the phone line, there was that laughter I am still missing and that got me through a lot of shit during my Future Publishing years, when at many times it felt like I was the only one who tried to save the company from collapsing on the German market.
And the reason I quietly slipped into a state of deep despair in the three months prior to my depature aftr having tried to warn every person willing to lend me an ear, after I had gone to the main house in Bath and talked to their Launch Editor Matt Bielby, stating that Future Germany is roughly 18 months away from financial collapse, if we didn't kill the German management team structure.
Deaf ears. Always deaf ears.
And the only thing I ever got out of England was the snarky "and you'd want to run the company, then, right?"
"No," I said. "I have no interest in running the company. I want the idiots running the company to do their jobs properly, so I can do mine. Because if they don't start, and by that I mean, yesterday, we are going to crash."
Deaf ears. Always deaf ears.
"You not a team player, T?" Martina said last night. "Maybe they should come around and ask the teams you led. You ran your department with so much respect for everybody else's input that we all stood behind you all the way. The only thing with you? You have the least capacity of dealing with bullshit I have ever seen in my life. You see it, you smell it, and you cannot keep your mouth shut when you do. We all loved you for it. Everybody in management hated you for it. And god, did they hate you. Because, see, even back then... they couldn't find a way to play you. Nobody could ever play you. That made you the most dangerous man in the company."
When we were about to shaft Sega and drop the Offical Dreamcast Magazine in order to beg Sony to make the Official PS2 Magazine, I was called into the office of the Managing Director, you remember the one, we talked about this before, Stefan "I have a sun tan but no brain" Moosleitner.
"I want you to lead the development of the magazine," he told me. "In fact I want you to lead the entire development of every new magazine in the games sector."
"Why me?" I asked
"You are an arrogant asshole," he said.
"Well, it's nice that we both see eye to eye on that."
"I wasn't finished," he said. "You are an arrogant asshole who has no respect for authority, who I would fire the moment I could afford it, but the fact is that you are also the best creative in the entire company."
"Oh dear," I said. "I am so flattered to know that I am the guy who has to do the heavy lifting until you find somebody who is more to your taste."
"Do the PS2 development."
"No."
"What?"
"I said, no," I said. "Because if you ditch the Dreamcast Magazine, my team will be ditched. And I won't have that. You want me to do your bidding, I want assurances that I will have my team. Or I can just walk out of this office, and that best creative in your company is telling you to find that person more to your taste right now."
"What?"
"My team. You stay away from my team. Are we clear on that? For that I will bend over for you. I will be your good little doggie. My team. Don't think, don't ever delude yourself that I am going to do it for you or for this company."
"You can keep your team."
"Good."
When I departed Future Germany, I called all of the editors and staffers together to "a final supper". I told everybody the truth. That the company was going to go down. And that they should start looking for new jobs, new positions, that they should do it quietly, that they shouldn't wait. I gave them a time frame. I gave them less than a year.
Most didn't believe me.
I was off by three days in my prediction. That's all. Three days. The collapse happened exactly as I had predicted it. Even now, I sometimes look back and want to scream at the idiots who only cared about their office furniture, their positions, their titles, their corporate benefits, "if you had listened to me, just once, we could have saved this company!"
And so, in this situation here, the only decision other people in this industry can make is to say "no."
And boo-hooo-hooo, cry me a fucking river. I can just as well write this as a series of novels and wait, for in about five years the same people will come knocking on my door and beg to then option it. And know what? Then I'll go the full J.K. Rowling on their asses.
Freedom is the freedom not to care.
August 4, 2010
WIKILEAKS: SlLENCE OF THE LAMBS
When Winston Churchill said that "the price for freedom is eternal vigilance", I am quite sure he didn't mean that governments of the world conspire with big corporations and "volunteer" semi-legal organisations like Project Vigilant in order to spy on their own citizens, preemptively creating movement profiles and trawling the internet for "suspicious" blog posts and commentaries and then assigning them the IP addresses of their users, thus essentially making 1984 looking like a steampunk fairy tale.
But this is what's happening, and Glen Greenwald has a good round-up on the relevant information, now coming out as it relates to the Wikileaks scandal (you know, the one where former Dubya speechwriter Marc Thiessen called for the arrest and prosecution of Wikileaks members as traitors). See, it never surprises me anymore when these things come to light.
It also never surprises me anymore that – once again – nobody will care.
Just like in the former GDR (where everybody spied on everybody), people will say that "if you have nothing to hide, if you have done nothing wrong, nobody should care."
Because some people are lambs.
Still bloaking while they are being led to the slaughter.
But this is what's happening, and Glen Greenwald has a good round-up on the relevant information, now coming out as it relates to the Wikileaks scandal (you know, the one where former Dubya speechwriter Marc Thiessen called for the arrest and prosecution of Wikileaks members as traitors). See, it never surprises me anymore when these things come to light.
It also never surprises me anymore that – once again – nobody will care.
Just like in the former GDR (where everybody spied on everybody), people will say that "if you have nothing to hide, if you have done nothing wrong, nobody should care."
Because some people are lambs.
Still bloaking while they are being led to the slaughter.
August 3, 2010
MAINSTREAM MEDIA MAYHEM (OR, NEVER HAVE SO MANY "JOURNALISTS" WORKED HARDER TO PRODUCE SO LITTLE IN BOTH RESULT AND IMPORTANCE)
Oh, John Stewart and your staff, (uh, okay, that didn't come out right), how much I love thee for pointing out the obvious on a consistently high level, especially when it comes to the absolute stupidity disguised as sincerity about things that don't matter to begin with.
Case in point, the absolutely uninteresting daughter of an uninteresting ex-president gets married to another totally uninterresting guy.
Cue to television "news" going bonkers!
My personal favourite here? Fox News (how could it be any different), with poor blonde "correspondent" Courtney Friel on the streets of Rhinebeck, NY, grasping – quite literally – at straws, pointing out that "she may have seen Oprah's dog".
But to be fair (and balanced), the others were not any better.
And to these people in the mainstream media... you do not have a Royal Family, okay? That was one of the whole points of 1776. And yes, I know, I know, royal weddings are such a glamorously stupid affair, I believe there was one a few weeks back here in Europe, was it in Norway? Sweden? Denmark?
Somewhere or another, and over here, we have the same sycophants in studios (and the European yellow press, which would not even exist if there weren't a couple of royal houses left), detailing the size and length of the "plucked from middle class obscurity" bride or the "look, a princess can fall in love with one of the little people" guy.
I mean, really?
Personally, I don't want to abolish them, royality, I mean. I think that a King or Queen can serve a very vital social role and provide cohesion not tainted by political parties in today's world (if one looks at Sweden or Great Britain, where it kind of works)
But that doesn't mean one should give royality, both perceived and real, any more weight than they have. And in the case of Chelsea Clinton? What the hell? Obviously, there was some kind of "we need to know, because nobody is telling us anything" feeding frenzy that I kind of missed when one of the Bush girls married in 2008.
And to be perfectly honest, nobody should give a damn whether the daughter of somebody rich or famous gets drunk (again, the Bush Wonder Girls), gets married or, in the case of Larry "Morpheus" Fishburne's daughter, is now on her way to celebrity Stupidville by the way of hardcore porn.
In the meantime, nobody in the mainstream media cared – as Stewart pointed out – about the Wikileaks documents, nobody cared about the shafting of 9/11 responders, nobody cared that this July was the worst month in civilian casualties in Iraq (why should they, most of the US troops apparently barely leave their barracks anymore, so barely any one of them gets killed), nobody cared that the Dutch are saying to Afghanistan, "hey we are outta here", nobody cared that BP is drawing down the oil spill clean-up efforsts and is clamping down on scientists...
... and if nobody in the mainstream media cares, the mainstream of the people will not be able to care, for they are never given the facts. And while I love Jon Stewart and the Daily Show for pointing it out again and again, it fills me with sadness that the show has maybe a million or two viewers in all of Ameirca (maybe multiply that by the factor 5 for internet viewing), and that means most of the mainstream will never know.
And will be caught up in a wedding.
And not even even their own.
Case in point, the absolutely uninteresting daughter of an uninteresting ex-president gets married to another totally uninterresting guy.
Cue to television "news" going bonkers!
My personal favourite here? Fox News (how could it be any different), with poor blonde "correspondent" Courtney Friel on the streets of Rhinebeck, NY, grasping – quite literally – at straws, pointing out that "she may have seen Oprah's dog".
But to be fair (and balanced), the others were not any better.
And to these people in the mainstream media... you do not have a Royal Family, okay? That was one of the whole points of 1776. And yes, I know, I know, royal weddings are such a glamorously stupid affair, I believe there was one a few weeks back here in Europe, was it in Norway? Sweden? Denmark?
Somewhere or another, and over here, we have the same sycophants in studios (and the European yellow press, which would not even exist if there weren't a couple of royal houses left), detailing the size and length of the "plucked from middle class obscurity" bride or the "look, a princess can fall in love with one of the little people" guy.
I mean, really?
Personally, I don't want to abolish them, royality, I mean. I think that a King or Queen can serve a very vital social role and provide cohesion not tainted by political parties in today's world (if one looks at Sweden or Great Britain, where it kind of works)
But that doesn't mean one should give royality, both perceived and real, any more weight than they have. And in the case of Chelsea Clinton? What the hell? Obviously, there was some kind of "we need to know, because nobody is telling us anything" feeding frenzy that I kind of missed when one of the Bush girls married in 2008.
And to be perfectly honest, nobody should give a damn whether the daughter of somebody rich or famous gets drunk (again, the Bush Wonder Girls), gets married or, in the case of Larry "Morpheus" Fishburne's daughter, is now on her way to celebrity Stupidville by the way of hardcore porn.
In the meantime, nobody in the mainstream media cared – as Stewart pointed out – about the Wikileaks documents, nobody cared about the shafting of 9/11 responders, nobody cared that this July was the worst month in civilian casualties in Iraq (why should they, most of the US troops apparently barely leave their barracks anymore, so barely any one of them gets killed), nobody cared that the Dutch are saying to Afghanistan, "hey we are outta here", nobody cared that BP is drawing down the oil spill clean-up efforsts and is clamping down on scientists...
... and if nobody in the mainstream media cares, the mainstream of the people will not be able to care, for they are never given the facts. And while I love Jon Stewart and the Daily Show for pointing it out again and again, it fills me with sadness that the show has maybe a million or two viewers in all of Ameirca (maybe multiply that by the factor 5 for internet viewing), and that means most of the mainstream will never know.
And will be caught up in a wedding.
And not even even their own.
STALLONE AND THE EXPENDABLES DEBT: THE GUARDIAN SHOWS HOW REPORTING IS DONE ON A STORY, SHAMES AMERICAN MAINSTREAM MEDIA IN DOING SO
(and no, Perez Hilton does not count, neither do I. I am talking about news organisations, not people with opinions, of which there are many, and most opionions are like assholes, everybody has one)
... I will now show you how good, original reporting is done. The man's name is Tom Phillips, and he is apparently the British newspaper Guardian's Brazilian/South American correspondent. Taking the AFP report as a starting point, an editor at the Guardian gave the story to Phillips and probably said, as a good editor should, "look into it, tell me if there's any validity to these claims".
And this is what original reporting looks like. Mind you, not investigative reporting, there was definitely not enough time for investigative reporting within this news cycle, but Phillips did what a reporter does, oh hell, what every reporter should do, it's called "ground work".
According to the Brazilian magazine Veja, Stallone, 64 – who filmed scenes in and around Rio in April 2009 – is facing a lawsuit brought by his Brazilian partners, O2, the firm behind Blindness and City of God. "While the Americans were in Brazil, weekly payments were made into O2's account," the magazine claimed. "But as soon as Stallone and his team returned home, the funds dried up."And expansion of the original source's claims, which had been somewhat thin in the AFP wire story. Here, we get the Veja story, with several quotes.
Veja claimed O2's accountants had been forced to hire armed guards after being harassed by unhappy and unpaid employees. Out-of-pocket Brazilian drivers who worked on the production had "threatened to invade O2's offices in Rio".
In a statement, O2, one of Brazil's most respected production companies, said: "In 2009 O2 performed production services for the film [The] Expendables, directed and acted in by Sylvester Stallone … until now, the company is awaiting reimbursement for its expenditure."A statement by the Brazilian company that claims to have been wronged. The final sentence here shows that Phillips did call for additional information.
The total value owed was around £1.36m, the company claimed. O2 declined to comment on reports that unhappy ex-employees had laid siege to their offices.
A spokesperson for the film's US production company, LA-based Nu Image/Millennium Films, told the Guardian the accusations were "not accurate". The spokesperson refused to comment further on the allegations.A simple call for comment to the US production company. Whether they commented or declined to comment is not relevant here. It is relevant that at least it was tried to obtain further information.
And you're trying to tell me that this is something none of the US media organisations could have done? Or are they merely very "selective" on how they cover certain things, and Nikke Finke's site apparently is in the pockets of Stallone or his producers, running stories on how well the movie is tracking (something they don't do for all films. If they did, then it would be part of the editorial make-up and could not rightfully be criticised by anybody, but the selection and pushing of certain movies while other movies are deemed only snark-worthy are either signs of corruption or a serious bias based on some other rationale)
And the LA Times has been given Stallone's movie so many glorious PR blow jobs in the past couple of weeks, it is either that the newspaper's entertainment section has been invaded by fanboys (always a possibility) or they are being secretly paid/paid off as part of one of them not-so-new-fangled-watch-ma-callits, ah, yes, coordinated PR news campaigns that have been a staple years ago in video game mags and in radio stations/networks when it came to the playing of music.
Is it any wonder, then, that they would not report on something like this?
Especially since with all that previously evidenced access, can you really make the claim that it was impossible for you to pick up the damn phone? And simply ask for comment?
Like I said, I am not surprised.
P.S.: Some of my friends (all two of them) have told me that it is dangerous for my own career to even debate something like this as openly as I do. What if somebody in LA reads this and goes, "well we ain't never going to work with that motherfucker"?
Is that a possibility? Of course it is. And if somebody doesn't want to work with me, because I refuse to stay silent, then these people can go and fuck themselves. They have already failed my shibboleth, then, even before we have met
The TV show I invented is all about the truth, and how you cannot turn your back on it, even it if hurts yourself. What kind of a man would I be if I were to stand on that soap box and shout it loud and clear and then turn a blind eye to these things in real life, for the sole reason to benefit or potentially benefit myself?
A yes. A hypocrite.
August 2, 2010
TRUE COMPANION
In a way, this is a soundtrack for me, because when I first thought about The Watchmaker's Wings, this was the tune that ended the story for me, and the tune that began it all. Once you have read it, you will understand why. For various personal reasons, I could not listen to it for a long, long time without feeling empty and sad and without hope.
But there is hope. There is always hope.
Never forget that.
Baby i've been searching like everybody else
Can't say nothing different about myself
Sometimes i'm an angel
And sometimes i'm cruel
And when it comes to love
I'm just another fool
Yes, i'll climb a mountain
I'm gonna swim the sea
There ain't no act of god girl
Could keep you safe from me
My arms are reaching out
Out across this canyon
I'm asking you to be my true companion
True companion
True companion
So don't you dare and try to walk away
I've got my heart set on our wedding day
I've got this vision of a girl in white
Made my decision that it's you allright
And when i take your hand
I'll watch my heart set sail
I'll take my trembling fingers
And i'll lift up your veil
Then i'll take you home
And with wild abandon
Make love to you just like a true companion
You are my true companion
I got a true companion
True companion
When the years have done irreparable harm
I can see us walking slowly arm in arm
Just like the couple on the corner do
'cause girl i will always be in love with you
And when i look in your eyes
I'll still see that spark
Until the shadows fall
Until the room grows dark
Then when i leave this earth
I'll be with the angels standin'
I'll be out there waiting for my true companion
Just for my true companion
True companion
HOLLYWOOD LESSON NUMBER ONE: IT'S NOT DEBT, IF YOU LEAVE IT IN ANOTHER COUNTRY, RIGHT, MR. STALLONE?
SAO PAULO, Brazil—Sylvester Stallone may be heading for box-office success when his latest action flick opens this month, but in Brazil—where the movie was filmed—companies are complaining he left a string of unpaid debts, according to a report.
The Brazilian weekly news magazine Veja said Sunday the producers of the movie, "The Expendables," owed more than $2 million to the local partner company O2, a lighting firm, drivers, security guards, and other workers.
This AFP report, picked up Spiegel and a variety of other, smaller international news outlets – no American majors have apparently picked up on it yet, but then again, it is the middle of the night there as I write this, so maybe they will – alleges one of the worst things I have seen in quite a while, if true.
If true, then Stallone,
If true, then Stallone exploited in the worst fashion those who make their living this way and who cannot turn to anybody else, before he then fled – yes, fled – back to the United States, somewhat secure in thinking that they wouldn't be able to afford coming after him.
If true, then Stallone considred the workers' payments... expendable.
If true, then Stallone's movie is expendable, too.
Why am I saying "if true" all this time? Simple. Because so far it is merely one journalistic scource, the news magazine Veja. But considering that there are numerous different sources that are apparently in that magazine (I count at least five), and these types of companies and people usually do not seek the attention of the media, knowing how quick Hollywood is with blacklisting them (does the phrase, "you will never work in this town again" mean anything to you?), I consider the story to be rather valid.
And that means, pay the fuck up, Stallone.
You who recalls so fondly how you made it out of the dirt and the poverty should respect those who are still in it, making their meagre money with hard labour. 2 million may sound like a lot, but I'm sure that most of these drivers and security guards are owed less than what you pay up every fucking day for your Human Growth Hormone treatments. Ten of them probably could live off the money you wasted on your plastic surgeries.
If this story is true, I am disgusted with you.
[UPDATE, 4 PM, MESZ] True to from, we are now at least eight hours into the news cycle since the story broke onto the international stage by the way of AFP. And how many major American news media outlets on the web have even addressed the issue so far?
Zero.
After repeated Google searches with different search parameters, personal visits to the LA Times, the New York Times, Salon.com, Variety, THR.com, Deadline.com or the Huffington Post?
Zero.
Not a single one of them deemed it even necessary of a little news item that stated that there are these allegations. You know, these are all the media outlets who masturbate gloriously and openly about every sex and drugs scandal, who get all huffy every time when the useful idiot Oliver Stone opens his mouth. You can no longer use the excuse that it's in the middle of the night in the United States.
It is 10 AM in New York. It's 7 AM in Los Angeles.
Not a single mention.
What did I say up in the headline here?
It's not debt if it is in another country, now, is it?
So far, the American media appears to agree with that assessment.
Why am I not surprised?
Yahoo News. Not surprising, since Yahoo feeds agency news directly through their system, so the wall between an orginal story and its publication is rather thin compared to more traditional media outlets.
[UPDATE, 4.49 PM, MESZ] But hey, it's not like the great entertainment reporters in America aren't working, you know. I mean, how many people does it really take to film and photograph cocaine addicted
You can get up for that at 7 AM Los Angeles time, yes sir, you can. For this is the age of fucking Snooki, where the wart on the insides of the fattened thighs of a reality TV star merits a cloud of reporters descending upon any given location at any given time.
Just don't look at what is really important.
August 1, 2010
SOON ON A KINDLE NEAR YOU: LIVE
While I love traditional books, love the feel of them, love to see them stacked up all neat and tidy on my book shelf, I no longer consider a system that pants like a dog in heat when it comes to celebrity "books", but has no interest in anything that comes with a built-in brand name – usually taken from retarded reality TV shows – to be a viable option to publish original material in.
Especially since said system has become so greedy that it wants you to give them all the rights of your creations for a pittance, so that these motherfuckers can drive their seventh Porsche to their fourth mistress and get blown while they still somehow manage to screw you, the actual creator.
For my English readers (all seven of them), I am also close to wrapping up a book filled with a few magical realism novellas, which will also be on Amazon (and once I figured that one out, the iPad) under the title The Watchmaker's Wings (and other tales of magic). And if my Hollywood dealings do not make me insane – always a possibility, another phone conference on Tuesday, regarding my TV show – that should also hit your Kindle within the next three months or so (barring unforeseen catastrophes, which will very likely happen. They always do).
And after that, well... there are some rather big things coming.
NIKKE FINKE, OR: WHEN SNARK TURNS INTO BOOJUMS EVERY WEEKEND
Look at those dreamy legs… Chris Nolan’s film for Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures just keeps going, and going, with great holds. It’s back as the No. 1 movie after giving it up to Angelina Jolie’s Salt last weekend and to Steve Carell’s Dinner With Schmucks Friday.See, the problem I have with people like Nikki Finke is not that they are sucessful or that they very often run – as it is the case these days with almost every news organisation – with rumours, innuendo and everything between when they push out their blog entries like bloody babies not yet ready for prime time exposure.
The problem I have with Finke is that the woman is too retarded to simply look up a few numbers in retrospect before hammering down her snark. Too retarded, too lazy, too arrogant, and while Finke's site is hardly something that will change the course of world events (no, that just might be Time, look at my previous post and shudder), she displays all of the things that are wrong with journalism today.
As you can see above, taken from her Sunday writethrough on the box office numbers, she claims that the movie INCEPTION gave up the No. 1 spot in the United States to Angelina Jolie's SALT on the weekend of July 23-25.
I care for neither movie in a sense that I'm here, shouting "go! go! go! Inception! go!". What I do care about is that mistakes like that are the norm for Finke's site. Assumption replaces fact, opinion replaces research. And to to find the fact, all you had to do was to go to Box Office Mojo and pull the actual numbers. Three clicks! I am not talking about a day's worth of phone and personal meetings here.
I am talking about three. fucking. clicks.
BOX OFFICE MOJO ACTUALSNow, when exactly did Inception give up anything to Salt during the July 23-25 weekend? Was it in the full moon midnight showing on Sunset in La-La-Land? The matinees in Neverwhere? You know what the thing about snark is? If you are not entirely cautious while hunting for it, somebody will point out that is a boojum.
INCEPTION
Friday, July 23: $13,083,719
Saturday, July 24: $16,512,872
Sunday, July 25: $13,128,421
SALT
Friday, July 23: $12,532,333
Saturday, July 24: $13,393,108
Sunday, July 25: $10,085,802
[UPDATE] Of course, Miss Finke took out the wrong line from her "reporting now", but girl? I still have it in my caché. And that is the other thing that makes me furious about people like her. They don't even have the courtesy of doing a little [UPDATE] at the end of their posts, stating something like an earlier post about this stated that... I apologise for that mistake.
See, we all make mistakes. Fine. But not Finke. The point is that when you fuck something up, you let your readership know. You apologise. That is what is called "professionalism". Not that most people "working" in "news" have any fucking idea what professional behaviour is, these days, all taking their cues from Fox News, what, us? Wrong? Why, we never!
[UPDATE] Also, since I know that a lot of other retards just might come crawling out of the woodwork and say, waah! waah! We went to her site, and you have no proof for anything, waah! waah! You are just jealous, to all of you? Shut! The! Fuck! Up!
Do you honestly think I would say something if I didn't snap a screenshot of this?
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