You know those pigeonholes that hotels used to have at the registration desk for guests' mail? This is mine, for whatever long-term obsessions or short-term outrages cross my mind and need to be slotted somewhere convenient.
—David Milch, creator of Deadwood and Luck, “The Men Behind the Curtain: A GQ Roundtable”
I could easily hear this coming out of a very weary Doc Cochran.
1. Improv will save your life.
I don’t mean this literally, but I do mean that studying improv forces you to follow your gut, and that’s something that I think, nine out of ten times, serves you better than ruminating about something, on stage OR in life. Almost every time I’ve ignored my gut instinct I’ve regretted it, in my personal life or my career. The problem is that thoughts like, “Make sure not to make anyone mad!”, or “That won’t work, no one does it like that.” etc etc, have gotten in the way of hearing that instinct’s voice clearly. Training myself to RECOGNIZE that my gut is talking to me, and dismiss those “logical” thoughts that squash it, has been an ongoing process for me this year, but one that, now I’m conscious of it, has let me make decisions faster and made me more secure and decisive. And headed off a few disasters during production!
Detroit is attracting much-needed commerce by offering Hollywood production companies hefty tax rebates to shoot series and movies on its recession-wracked streets:
The dilapidated Michigan Central Station, once a transportation hub, with marbled floors and Corinthian columns, has served as a symbol of urban ruination for years. It’s now a key location for productions including “Transformers 3” and HBO’s “Hung.” On Tuesday “Hostel: Part III” and “Vamps,” a horror-comedy with Sigourney Weaver, both shot in the city’s neo-Gothic Masonic Temple. When “Harold and Kumar 3” finished a scene this summer that required turning a downtown street into New York City at Christmas, set designers left the fake subway entrance intact, knowing another production would soon need it.
The graf that drew my eye:
Want to blow up a building, or burn it down? Detroit is happy to help. Wayne County officials, sitting on countless empty homes and factories, ask only that producers pay for demolition and clean-up. “Stone,” a thriller opening Oct. 8 and starring Robert De Niro, Edward Norton and Milla Jovovich, burned two houses to the ground. Location scouts found them on the county’s online “land bank,” which lists thousands of abandoned properties.
Compare with this offer from the town fathers of Springfield, USA to the crew of the Radioactive Man movie:
Assistant: All right, we have $30 million to spend.
Mayor Quimby: We’ll blow up dams, destroy forests, anything! If there’s a species of animal that’s causing problems, nosing around your cameras, we’ll have it wiped out!
Director: Look—we just want make movies, not kill things.
Chief Wiggum: [winking] Riiight, we understand, heh.
—Songwriter Jimmy Webb, interviewed in rich detail at The Onion AV Club.
If he’d stopped at “Wichita Lineman,” he’d be ranked a legend. Nope. “MacArthur Park,” “Galveston,” “Up, Up and Away,” “The Worst That Could Happen,” and “By The Time I Get To Phoenix.” Got-damn!
The dry wit of William Gibson.
“Google’s Earth,” NYT, September 1, 2010
(Source: The New York Times)
Don’t like something on the internet? The best strategy is often to ignore it:
The “just don’t look” strategy works for more than advertising…it’s effective in any situation where someone or something runs on attention. On the web attention comes in the form of links and pageviews so “just don’t look” translates roughly into “just don’t link or read”. If you don’t like who’s on the cover of Wired, just don’t look. If no one talks about her, she’ll go away. Think media gossip sites are ruining the web? Don’t read them. Leggy blonde conservative got your knickers in a knot? Just don’t look. Commenters ruining the internet? Moderate your comments or close them up. If some Web 2.0 blowhard says something stupid, just don’t look. Hate blonde socialites? Just. Don’t. Look.This has always been my approach to blogging — I only blog about the things I love and want people to look at.
It’s also called “Criticism by Omission.”
By coincidence, this comes after a discussion I had over Labor Day weekend about responding to anonymous Internet comments to news stories, blogs, and other poorly moderated thought-sinks.
My opinion? Trying to change the mind of some anonymous commenter is like pissing into a bonfire. The fire won’t go out, but it will raise a stink.
“You have so many amazing and beautiful things here. I don’t know how you can remember them all.”
“The trick is not to try and remember. You learn what the ingredients are and how to use them, what to mix or never to mix. You learn how to distill the essence and find the true heart of each ingredient and potion. As you learn those things, you learn the names and the methods, which books are good for one type of potion, which instruments produce the best results. You don’t try to remember. You just learn. Once you’ve done that, your hands will remember what to take and what to use and which books to open.”
Vidocq, an alchemist, to Allegra, a normal, in Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim.
This resembles many of the answers I received to my various questions from designers about how to best use Photoshop. When I would watch these folks work, I could see they’d done a lot of experimentation in what to mix or never to mix, and that their hands remembered quite a bit of it.
Fun book so far. I’m forcing myself to digest it in bites rather than stay up until two devouring it. It has richly rewarded such care.
The leaders who, for many years, were at the head of French armies, have formed a government. This government, alleging our armies to be undone, agreed with the enemy to stop fighting. Of course, we were subdued by the mechanical, ground and air forces of the enemy. Infinitely more than their number, it was the tanks, the airplanes, the tactics of the Germans which made us retreat. It was the tanks, the airplanes, the tactics of the Germans that surprised our leaders to the point to bring them there where they are today.
But has the last word been said? Must hope disappear? Is defeat final? No!
Believe me, I speak to you with full knowledge of the facts and tell you that nothing is lost for France. The same means that overcame us can bring us to a day of victory. For France is not alone! She is not alone! She is not alone! She has a vast Empire behind her. She can align with the British Empire that holds the sea and continues the fight. She can, like England, use without limit the immense industry of the United States.
This war is not limited to the unfortunate territory of our country. This war is not finished by the battle of France. This war is a world-wide war. All the faults, all the delays, all the suffering, do not prevent there to be, in the world, all the necessary means to one day crush our enemies. Vanquished today by mechanical force, we will be able to overcome in the future by a superior mechanical force.
The destiny of the world is here. I, General de Gaulle, currently in London, invite the officers and the French soldiers who are located in British territory or who would come there, with their weapons or without their weapons, I invite the engineers and the special workers of armament industries who are located in British territory or who would come there, to put themselves in contact with me.
Whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance not must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished. Tomorrow, as today, I will speak on Radio London.
—General Charles de Gaulle, June 18, 1940
I spent too many years last decade listening to otherwise intelligent Americans shit on France in dysenteric displays of post-9/11 jingoism; I’m not letting the anniversary of this speech, which Winston Churchill (who knew from inspirational oratory) arranged to be broadcast to a subjugated France, pass unobserved.
