02/27/2014 Film Industry, Opinion
The LA Times recently rounded up the annual Oscar nominees with their predictions. On deserving films for this year’s Academy Awards, here’s my view: I loathed American Hustle. O’Russell is hugely, vastly over-appreciated in my never-humble view. Like his similarly over-praised Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle is a lot of yelling and screaming and repetition. […]
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02/23/2014 Film Industry, Opinion
In more than forty years of WGA membership, it seems there’s a strike threat with the expiration of every contract as talks between the studios and the WGA went into a two week recess in mid-February. Nobody ought to be surprised that I blame the studios. An ancient movie executive characterized writers as “schmucks with […]
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02/18/2014 Newsletter, Screenwriting
Einstein told us there are two—and only two—constants in the universe: 1) the speed of light and 2) The Rolling Stones. They showed up in downtown Los Angeles last spring celebrating their fiftieth anniversary. The first time I saw them was October of 1965, in Syracuse, New York, when I was enrolled in a jackpot, […]
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