Found television writer/producer Tom Fontana’s website after reading this short reply he’d given a fellow blogger William Speruzzi. The site’s okay, but the script archive is great, complete with notes on his favorite scenes/episodes from “OZ”, HOMICIDE, ST. ELSEWHRE etc.
Extra:
Fontana is currently filming 3 lbs.
The character, Det. Fontana from Law & Order, played by Dennis Farina, is a tribute to the real Fontana.
Check out this great section tucked within the BBC pages called Country Profiles. You’ll find information on countries as well as several organizations, such as Red Cross, IMF/WorldBack etc.
For example, I pick Bangladesh (gee, I wonder why), and want to have my friend Joe listen to the national anthem. Or let’s say Joe got all jazzed up from the anthem and wants to find out a chronology of the country, but not get it over the head with too much information. Can be done. Perhaps Joe wants to keep up with current events over there and would like a list of major media outlets, and he is merely a click or two away from all his queries.
Alrighty then, I pick G8 from a list of organizations. Pretty good, just enough information to understand what this group is about. I’ve always wanted to know why it’s G and, well, 8? The facts from the site tell me:
“The G8’s roots lie in the oil crisis and global economic recession of the early 1970s. In 1973, these challenges prompted the US to form the Library Group – an informal gathering of senior financial officials from Europe, Japan and the US. At the instigation of the French, the 1975 meeting drew in heads of government. The delegates agreed to meet annually. The six nations involved became known as the G6, and later the G7 and G8 after the respective entries of Canada (1976) and Russia (1998).”
So there you go. Enjoy.
I wore black this morning. I wasn’t mourning, or planning to. I wasn’t trying to make a fashion statement; I don’t think I’m capable of making one. I wasn’t trying to make a point or connection with today’s day and date -Friday 13th. Either I was expecting something to happen- either good, or bad- or hoping something would. The day isn’t over yet and I’m twisted for thinking that way. Nothing new there.
However, the good came to me in the form a news headline on AOL. ‘Bangladeshi Wins Nobel Peace Prize.’ Holy micro-credit!! There was no name mentioned on the news headline, but I knew! It had to be him. And it was.
Coming from a South Asian country where people’s lives are deeply rooted in religious customs and beliefs, and where the number 13 is avoided as if it were the plague, who would have known the date would become a historic one for all Bangladeshis
around the world. Don’t get me wrong, there are a few Bangali’s who’ve won the Nobel prize, but no one we -or I rather- can call Bangladeshi. The distinction is similar to being an American and being
a New Yorker. Trust me, New Yorkers know what the hell I’m talking about.
So, for those of you who’re thinking, “What’s the big freakin’ deal?” Well, this man was long due this award. Prize notwithstanding -and the man can fill a mid-size room with all the ones he’s received thus far - Dr. Muhammad Yunus is a man with a plan. His plan works. His plan has worked. Millions have benefited from his plan. Grameen Bank is not an idea, it’s a work in progress to eliminate poverty by assessing its levels and having a strategy that attacks the root of its existence.
If you don’t find the concept of micro-credit revolutaionary, Dr. Yunus takes his idea even further that makes a bold statement - as he’s talked about in this Charlie Rose special from 2004 - eliminate world poverty and live to witness it. Anyone who knows him knows
that he won’t make such a statement without a plan. So, why haven’t more influential people jumped on the concept? Have they at least reached out to him and asked him how? I’m sure some have, but why don’t we hear about them?
I’ll do my best for now and and give you links to websites you can visit. It’s a start.
ASCEND
THE NEW HEROES
ENDING GLOBAL POVERTY
The Next Steps for Micro-Credit
STANFORD’S GRAD BUSINESS SCHOOL
OTHER:
The Global Microcredit Summit (Nov 12-15, 2006)
My friend Steve Dackson forwarded a link to Pinewood Dialogues, via the Museum of Moving Image site. The page has 40 conversations with filmmakers, each archived as downladoable mp3 and pdf transcripts as well with a streaming option.
Just a few examples of filmmakers listed are:
Fernando Meirelles (with Rachel Weisz), Ang Lee (with James Schamus),
Mike Leigh, Brad Bird, Robert Altman, Bennett Miller, Sidney Lumet, Tim Burton, Mira Nair, Terry Gilliam, Francois Ozon, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, Francis Coppola etc.
Happy listening!
I know. You’re probably thinking, “Why’re you doing this, man? Things will pick up for you.” Naturally, I too thought of this as a scam. How can it be so simple and so free?
So, I’ll let NYTimes’s David Pogue blog tell you how to make calls overseas for FREE!!
I’ve known of, but have never met, Doug Block whose new film 51 Birch Street, a documentary about his parents 50-year marriage, is set for a limited release this
October 18th. Doug visited my MySpace page this morning, left a comment, and let me
know of the New York Times review of his movie. Doug is also a member of my recently set up
NYProducers group on MySpace. I said to myself that if I don’t take a few minutes to
promote his movie, what purpose do I serve as the group member?
So, check out the movie and also Doug’s new post on his reaction to the NYTimes review on
his blog Around The Block.
+ 
= INLAND EMPIRE
No surprise there. In this new NYTimes article, Lynch expresses his admiration for the digital format. Many established filmmakers have taken the DV route in many different ways, but not for the obvious reasons that many would like to believe, and that is, “It’s tape, so it’s cheap.” It’s not cheap. The tape maybe, but people seem to forget that there are other expenses that take up most of the budget, like, for example, that you have to pay people on set working too…like the crew! The DV format has made it so accessible for students or poor (most of us are in the beginning stages) filmmakers to get their films made. However, few filmmakers seem to be willing to take advantage of this format. The enthusiasm seems to be high with established filmmakers or amateur filmmakers and not students of film schools. I will save my thoughts on film schools and MFA programs for another post. I’ve heard student filmmakers maintain that their short script can only be realized on film. They’ll spend an awful lot of time looking for money so they can shoot on 35 mm. Meanwhile their story and script sucks ass. I am not saying people give up shooting on film and go digital – I’d make a film on film, if I have the chance too – but don’t tell me a story is better told on film, or film is superior in quality, and all the other bullshit that will make your purist professor at the over-rated and over-priced school happy.
Some filmmakers seem to forget that the audience doesn’t give a shit whether their movie is made with 3- perf stock or mini-DV tapes from Costco. The regular film goer won’t give a shit if they’ve created a perfect contrast between light and shadow. They will care if the story made any sense, if the actors were any good, or if the movie was worth their time. Have you ever heard someone waiting outside the theater going, “I can’t watch this shit, they’ve used Fuji instead of Kodak”?
My point is, if you are a good story teller, you can shoot it with mobile phone camera and smelly sock puppets doing Hamlet and you’ll have an audience . So much time is wasted on things that ultimately don’t matter. Perhaps it’s not surprising to find filmmakers like Michael Mann, George Lucas, David Fincher, James Cameron, Soderbergh,
Robert Rodriguez, among many, going digital. While some of them are using high end equipment and even shooting tapeless, some have, with consumer cameras and, now out of date equipment and tape, made Dancer In The Dark, Festen, November, Bamboozled, Personal Velocity, Tadpole, Pieces of April, In This World, and the most recent example, Lynch’s Inland Empire, which was shot with a Sony PD-150. Documentary legends like Pennebaker/Hegedus and Albert Maysles are exclusively filming on DV. Some of the filmmakers don’t even bother with posting to get the ‘film look’ that so many new filmmakers sweat over. They’re going the digital route for all the right and all the practical reasons. DV makes their process flexible and does not constrain their creative process. It doesn’t bind you with ancient methods. Remember when writers used to compare between the new word processor and type writers? That debate doesn’t exist any more. This film vs digital won’t either. Just a matter of time.
I should stop before I foam at the mouth over this. Check out the films I’ve mentioned above. If you have saved a good amount of money to make your first movie, spend it wisely. Shooting on 35mm and but not spending enough on sound is a bad idea. Hire a good crew, hire a good sound recordist, just to name two. So many filmmakers think about sound late in the game that it ends up destroying their whole movie. If I had a nickel everytime I heard some filmmaker say ‘We’ll fix the sound in post,’ I’d be loaning money to Warren Buffet.
