HOLLYN-wood (Norman, that is)

As I may have said before (well, actually, I know that I’ve mentioned it, but we’re trying to set up a smooth introductory sentence here) (and now I’ve screwed it all up).

Oh, hell, let me start again.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ll be at the Sundance Film Festival this year, doing a Friday afternoon (4:30pm) workshop on Storytelling and Low Budget Filmmaking With High-Budget Values. I’ll be at the festival from Thursday night, January 17th through Sunday afternoon, January 20th.

One of the things that I love about the festival is the possibility of meeting lots of new people. Another things that I like is beer. Combine the two of them, and you get a great film festival (there have actually been some Sundances where I didn’t see a single film and still had a great time).

If you are going to be there and want to try and get together, send me an email. I’d love to see you.

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Thanks to Mike Curtis over at HD For Indies, for pointing me to this fantastic parody of the series 24, shot as if it took place in 1994 — with early Internet and printer technology.

Click here and be prepared to laugh.

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Happy Holidays. To Everyone.

All Around the World.

For your own personalized holiday greeting, just click on this YouTube link.

(And, no, I have no idea who these people are over on the left.)

At every conference I’ve been to, speakers assume that information and media should be democratized.  YouTube and Metacafe may prove them wrong.  Check it out.

http://www.metacafe.com/w/805765

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There’s a local real estate company, owned by the Al Unser family, down in Albuquerque. I was down there this weekend doing some consulting and got stuck behind one of their trucks for a bit.

Incredibly amusing fact is that their slogan, which is plastered in huge letters on the back of their truck is:

We’re not the worst. We’re not the best. We’re a cut above the rest.

Pretty awesome, eh? It’s actually hard to believe that this is an advertising slogan.  Remind me not to hire that ad agency.

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I love walk2web.

It’s a visual representation of the links among web sites that you’re interested in. Very Web 2.0-ey.

You choose a web site and click on the “walk” button (yes, of course it’s in lower case). It shows you the site in a reduced size window, but also shows you a blue ball for the URLs that that site links to. Then you can click on those links and get to see each of those pages. In addition, it reads out some information about each selected page. If it’s an RSS feed, it also scrolls to show you the openings of each of the feed items.

Totally cool. Somewhat visual. It brings me back to the original web, when the phrase “surf the web” meant something.

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Years ago, Dorothy Parker spoke disparingly of an actress, saying that “She runs the gamut from A to B”

Tonight, on the MTV VMA Music Awards Sarah Silverman followed up Britney Spears’ performance thusly (as quoted in the New York Times):

Sure enough, when it was over, Sarah Silverman, the host, smiled cruelly and said, “She is amazing! I mean, she is 25 years old and she’s already accomplished … everything she’s going to accomplish in life.”

Welcome Sarah to the Algonquin.

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People talk about films, television, webisodes. They talk about music and theatre. They talk about books and comedy acts.

But I never hear anything about shadow puppetry.

That’s right. Shadow puppetry. No one talks about that.

No one believes in that as an art. Well, here is one that had me chuckling away.

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When I worked with Michael Lehmann on HEATHERS, we used to joke about the absurd tendency of filmmakers to have characters say some variation of “I’m getting out of here.”  Sometimes a character would say “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”  Other times they’d say “I’m going home.”

Why, we wondered, do you need to SAY that, when you’re going to SHOW it?  Seemed like crappy filmmaking to us. It became a game for us to point out these instances in other films and Michael made me promise to never ever let him do it on his films.

I’ve often thought that this is great fodder for a new drinking game though, frankly, I don’t think I’d last very long.  I get drunk after six or seven stiff ones.

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The billboard on the I-35E on the way from Dallas/Fort Worth to Denton proclaimed in huge letters:

Drink Lone Star Beer
Anything else is treason.

Ah, so that’s where Bush got his “You’re either with me or you’re my enemy” concept.

P.S. The opening night Q&A with Steve Cohen went very well thank you. Much of interest was covered, especially collaboration in the editing room, and how to teach it.

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