BIZ BUZZ
[The run-down formally known as SPICY BITS.]
...The Screen Actors Guild, the Writers Guild of America, the Directors Guild and the Recording Industry of America have all joined together to express their shock and outrage that the FCC has fined Bono for using the expression "f*cking brilliant" during the live Golden Globes telecast last year. The industry organisms are all very clear that when Bono said it, the F word was NOT indecent. They haven't decided what it was. But we can all be relieved to know what it wasn't.
...Mike Leigh's "abortion film" (those are Daily Variety's words, not mine) Vera Drake has been picked up by New Line's shingle, Fine Line, for a fall release. The film is about a kindly woman in the 1950's who helps women, you know, kill their kids in utero. Mychial Lynne of New Line is staking his word of honor that this film isn't an insulting, pro-choice propaganda piece noting, "It's a very emotional and sympathetic film which deals with the controversial issue of abortion, (but) raises the debate to the level of asking how you deal with guilt and innocence in a society." I suppose any attempt to "raise the level of debate" on the pro-choice side past "KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF MY BODY!!!" is welcome. But why don't I feel happy?
...There's an indie film in very limited release this weekend that represents my first screen credit. (Well, except for that Sorority System at Northwestern blockbuster I produced.) A Foreign Affair is a sweet romantic comedy that stars David Arquette, Tim Blake Nelson, Emily Mortimer and Megan Follows (Anne of Green Gables in a former screen life). I worked as script doctor on the piece, and they kindly put my name in the credits. The two fellows behind the script also have the distinction of being two Christian producers who actually took every piece of advice I gave them - and look what happened?! They got some stars attached. They got into Sundance. They got into some other festivals. They got theatrical distribution! "For those to have ears to hear..."
...ANNOYING QUOTE OF THE MONTH: (We're talking about the new ClearPlay DVD machine that blocks smut.) "What the new sex-blocking, language-skirting, violence-busting DVD player does is homogenize everything into a single chaste and wholesome standard. And when that happens, the big loser is creative expression." (Ray Richmond, writing in Hollywood Reporter) Okay I want a show of hands from all the non-baby boomers out there. Does this move any of you to tears? Kids on this hand, creative expression over here....nope, time to let it go guys.
...Lots of Hollywood people are nervously watching the release of Van Helsing this weekend. With a cost of around $200 million, Van Helsing represents "the new threshold" (Daily Variety, 4/19/2004) for major studio releases. Spider-Man 2, Troy and Polar Express are other projects also nudging up against that - almost immoral - budget number. A lot of people in town are secretely hoping the film will fail and then diffuse the upward momentum in making movies that literally represent a studio betting the whole farm on one project. In this sense, these movies aren't tentpoles, they ARE the whole tent. The success of these projects will make it that much harder to get movies made that do not justify themselves in terms of sequels, TV spin-offs, merchandisizing, DVD tie-ins and, what Variety labels, "other synergistic opportunities."
Friday, May 07, 2004
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
"THE ARTS CAN PREPARE PEOPLE FOR CHURCH"
Here's an interview that just appeared today in ZENIT. It is in anticipation of my speech in Spain next week, hence all the questions about European cinema.
VALENCIA, Spain, MAY 5, 2004 (Zenit.org).- The film industry won't change with criticism, but with the positive contribution of believers, says the director of a school for Christian scriptwriters in Hollywood.
Barbara Nicolosi, program director of Act One, was interviewed by ZENIT before participating in the first International Symposium on the Cinema, organized by St. Vincent Martyr Catholic University of Valencia. The symposium takes place May 13-15.
Q: What is Act One and what is its mission?
Nicolosi: Act One provides formation, training, mentorships and Christian fellowship for writers and executives who are looking to become part of the mainstream entertainment industry.
We were founded in 1999 and have since evolved many programs that advance the program's keynote values of artistry, professionalism, ethics and spirituality in the context of mainstream Hollywood.
Q: What are the main differences you find nowadays between European and American cinema?
Nicolosi: I am not an expert on European cinema. Clearly, however, the main difference between our cinema and that of the rest of the world's is that ours is more successful at finding and entertaining the global audience. In pretty much every country, American movies are eight of the top 10 at any given time.
American movies tend to reflect a sense of individual destiny that we call "the American dream."
That is, our movies tend to tell stories about the promise and value of the individual person to surmount obstacles and attain to a kind of heroism that in some way heals the world. This makes our stories very compelling for people.
American movies also pay a great deal of attention to the needs of the audience. It's less about an artist expressing himself or herself, and more about what we call "the contract with the audience."
That is, the goal of our cinema is to take the audience on some kind of emotional journey in which they will be engaged intellectually and emotionally. I find many European projects much more about the filmmaker's needs than about serving the audience.
Q: You are going to participate in a symposium where the educational role of cinema will be discussed. Are you sure that the current cinema is educationally oriented in general?
Nicolosi: For a film to work with audiences, there has to be some kind of new information offered to the audience. Aristotle called this the "logos" element of drama. However, it is a mistake to try to make cinema into something it is not.
It is not the best medium to teach particular theological or intellectual formulations. Cinema is at its best when it is providing a meditation to the audience, as opposed to a message.
Q: Do you think that it meets the youngest audience's expectations or specific needs regarding spiritual issues?
Nicolosi: Probably not. It will be up to the filmmakers of the current generation to bring their spiritual questions onto the screen.
The problem is, not too many people who take theology seriously opt to become part of the filmmaking universe.
Religious people are trapped in the mode of criticizing instead of creating. I find media criticism pretty much useless. You really have to earn the right to criticize by putting your own artistic efforts out there first.
Q: Do you think that cinema is able to be an active player for religious teaching purposes? In this sense, do you prefer films offering religious-related information -- historical facts, saints' lives, etc. -- or those ones including topics or values from the point of view of Christian faith?
Nicolosi: The goal is never going to be to replace what needs to happen at church. We will always need churches. In the same way, we will always needs arts and entertainment.
The arts can prepare people for church. They can lead people to the Church. They can deepen what happens at church. But a movie theater is never going to be a substitute for the Church.
People of faith have much more to offer the creative communities than just sacred art. If our faith is true, it has something to say about every area of human life.
The Church's preoccupation is always to have a "preferential option for the poor." In terms of cinema, who are the poor? The corporate world, advertising world and artistic worlds are all well-represented in the global culture.
The one group who has no voice is the audience. The Church could and should represent the needs of the viewing public, asking questions that only we can ask, and providing guidance that is informed by our faith.
Questions like: What is the role of entertainment in human development? What is healthy entertainment? What is the role of the artist in society, and what is the authentic prophetic role of the arts? How should the sacredness of the human person affect dramatic content, and even the way dramas are produced? What does the theology of the body have to say about the portrayal of sex and violence on the screen?
We have things to say to the secular world about all of these things. We don't need to make reference to God to share our insights in these areas. We just need to translate what we have to say to people who do not speak our language.
Here's an interview that just appeared today in ZENIT. It is in anticipation of my speech in Spain next week, hence all the questions about European cinema.
VALENCIA, Spain, MAY 5, 2004 (Zenit.org).- The film industry won't change with criticism, but with the positive contribution of believers, says the director of a school for Christian scriptwriters in Hollywood.
Barbara Nicolosi, program director of Act One, was interviewed by ZENIT before participating in the first International Symposium on the Cinema, organized by St. Vincent Martyr Catholic University of Valencia. The symposium takes place May 13-15.
Q: What is Act One and what is its mission?
Nicolosi: Act One provides formation, training, mentorships and Christian fellowship for writers and executives who are looking to become part of the mainstream entertainment industry.
We were founded in 1999 and have since evolved many programs that advance the program's keynote values of artistry, professionalism, ethics and spirituality in the context of mainstream Hollywood.
Q: What are the main differences you find nowadays between European and American cinema?
Nicolosi: I am not an expert on European cinema. Clearly, however, the main difference between our cinema and that of the rest of the world's is that ours is more successful at finding and entertaining the global audience. In pretty much every country, American movies are eight of the top 10 at any given time.
American movies tend to reflect a sense of individual destiny that we call "the American dream."
That is, our movies tend to tell stories about the promise and value of the individual person to surmount obstacles and attain to a kind of heroism that in some way heals the world. This makes our stories very compelling for people.
American movies also pay a great deal of attention to the needs of the audience. It's less about an artist expressing himself or herself, and more about what we call "the contract with the audience."
That is, the goal of our cinema is to take the audience on some kind of emotional journey in which they will be engaged intellectually and emotionally. I find many European projects much more about the filmmaker's needs than about serving the audience.
Q: You are going to participate in a symposium where the educational role of cinema will be discussed. Are you sure that the current cinema is educationally oriented in general?
Nicolosi: For a film to work with audiences, there has to be some kind of new information offered to the audience. Aristotle called this the "logos" element of drama. However, it is a mistake to try to make cinema into something it is not.
It is not the best medium to teach particular theological or intellectual formulations. Cinema is at its best when it is providing a meditation to the audience, as opposed to a message.
Q: Do you think that it meets the youngest audience's expectations or specific needs regarding spiritual issues?
Nicolosi: Probably not. It will be up to the filmmakers of the current generation to bring their spiritual questions onto the screen.
The problem is, not too many people who take theology seriously opt to become part of the filmmaking universe.
Religious people are trapped in the mode of criticizing instead of creating. I find media criticism pretty much useless. You really have to earn the right to criticize by putting your own artistic efforts out there first.
Q: Do you think that cinema is able to be an active player for religious teaching purposes? In this sense, do you prefer films offering religious-related information -- historical facts, saints' lives, etc. -- or those ones including topics or values from the point of view of Christian faith?
Nicolosi: The goal is never going to be to replace what needs to happen at church. We will always need churches. In the same way, we will always needs arts and entertainment.
The arts can prepare people for church. They can lead people to the Church. They can deepen what happens at church. But a movie theater is never going to be a substitute for the Church.
People of faith have much more to offer the creative communities than just sacred art. If our faith is true, it has something to say about every area of human life.
The Church's preoccupation is always to have a "preferential option for the poor." In terms of cinema, who are the poor? The corporate world, advertising world and artistic worlds are all well-represented in the global culture.
The one group who has no voice is the audience. The Church could and should represent the needs of the viewing public, asking questions that only we can ask, and providing guidance that is informed by our faith.
Questions like: What is the role of entertainment in human development? What is healthy entertainment? What is the role of the artist in society, and what is the authentic prophetic role of the arts? How should the sacredness of the human person affect dramatic content, and even the way dramas are produced? What does the theology of the body have to say about the portrayal of sex and violence on the screen?
We have things to say to the secular world about all of these things. We don't need to make reference to God to share our insights in these areas. We just need to translate what we have to say to people who do not speak our language.
RECLAIMING THE OTHER F-WORD
Friend (and co-Founder with me of the currently in ideological utero but destined to be earth-shattering Association of Cool 21st Century Women Saving the Planet...) Zoe Romanowsky-St. Paul (I'm so jealous that she gets to have MY PATRON SAINT as her last name!) has a good piece on Godspy this week. Here's a snip...
"When Pope John Paul II used the f-word back in 1995, it got my attention.
Not that f-word. I'm talking about the other one—feminism. In his encyclical, The Gospel of Life, the Pope challenged women to promote a "new feminism that rejects the temptation of imitating models of 'male domination' in order to acknowledge and affirm the true genius of women in every aspect of the life of society and overcome all discrimination, violence and exploitation."
...As a young adult, I didn't readily identify with the word feminism. Women who proudly sported the feminist title seemed to hang most of their ideas on one main belief: that abortion is a necessary and fundamental right of women. That's what my feminist sociology professor sold my class for an entire semester. That's what I saw in the papers and on television. As much as I agreed with many planks in the feminist platform—like better healthcare, maternity leave, reform in the workplace, and programs and services that better women's lives—I couldn't buy a label that came with abortion. Until the day I discovered I didn't have to...."
I have the same experience as Zoe. Even though I have always been a Type A, over-educated, achievement oriented female, I have always shrunk from the label "feminist."
My agent and her partner are both grey-haired warriors from the women's movement of the 70's. They are members of NOW and NARAL and count Steinem as one of their close friends. They asked me over an entree once if I would consider myself a feminist. I remember shrugging in confusion, "I have never thought of myself as a victim." They looked at me with a kind of melancholy, the way honest atheists must feel when they see a funeral procession go by. The gleam of irrelevance is on the horizon.
Friend (and co-Founder with me of the currently in ideological utero but destined to be earth-shattering Association of Cool 21st Century Women Saving the Planet...) Zoe Romanowsky-St. Paul (I'm so jealous that she gets to have MY PATRON SAINT as her last name!) has a good piece on Godspy this week. Here's a snip...
"When Pope John Paul II used the f-word back in 1995, it got my attention.
Not that f-word. I'm talking about the other one—feminism. In his encyclical, The Gospel of Life, the Pope challenged women to promote a "new feminism that rejects the temptation of imitating models of 'male domination' in order to acknowledge and affirm the true genius of women in every aspect of the life of society and overcome all discrimination, violence and exploitation."
...As a young adult, I didn't readily identify with the word feminism. Women who proudly sported the feminist title seemed to hang most of their ideas on one main belief: that abortion is a necessary and fundamental right of women. That's what my feminist sociology professor sold my class for an entire semester. That's what I saw in the papers and on television. As much as I agreed with many planks in the feminist platform—like better healthcare, maternity leave, reform in the workplace, and programs and services that better women's lives—I couldn't buy a label that came with abortion. Until the day I discovered I didn't have to...."
I have the same experience as Zoe. Even though I have always been a Type A, over-educated, achievement oriented female, I have always shrunk from the label "feminist."
My agent and her partner are both grey-haired warriors from the women's movement of the 70's. They are members of NOW and NARAL and count Steinem as one of their close friends. They asked me over an entree once if I would consider myself a feminist. I remember shrugging in confusion, "I have never thought of myself as a victim." They looked at me with a kind of melancholy, the way honest atheists must feel when they see a funeral procession go by. The gleam of irrelevance is on the horizon.
THE PARTING OF FRIENDS
I reasonate with Jan the Maven about the final episode of Friends this week.
Friends started the year I walked out of the convent, and I will probably always think of it as background music for things I did in my thirties: working in Cambridge, graduate school at Northwestern, moving to L.A., working at Paulist Productions, starting Act One.
One Friends related memory: At Northwestern, I was a grad student R.A. to an all female dorm of mostly freshmen. We were living in a renovated mansion that had recently been reclaimed from a defunct sorority, and so I actually had my own large suite of rooms with a good size living room. Every Thursday night at about 7:45pm, the girls would start to arrive in my living room, packing the sofas, window ledges, floors, until the room was filled to over-flowing. I took to providing snacks, so that it became even more of a community experience. It really was Must-See TV for us all to watch Friends together, and then most of them would drift back to the books.
It's true that the show has been one that I have at many times hated to love. Having just migrated from NYC when the show first started, I remember watching its first episodes with disdain for the absurd premise of an all white group of mostly under-employed twenty-somethings in Manhattan being able to afford apartments that would probably cost $1,000,0000 a year.
From a moral standpoint, it depicts a world without God and really without any moral framework outside of tenuous loyalty to one's friends. It's a show which glorified and normalized pornography, homosexuality and promiscuity.
But the core of the show which caught on with 18-35 year old viewers, was once again, the fantasy community it provided. Most of my generation, the Xers, have grown up in fractured families, with aborted siblings, watching every authority structure of church, state, ivory tower, fifth estate, everything, reveal nothing but clay feet. Because our parents were more mobile than past generations, we have had little if any relevant extended family.
Hence, Xers are always irresistably drawn to any entertainment that offers a vision of people belonging to each other, staying together no matter what and especially "when the rain starts to fall." The show never fell into the cynicism and shrill irony that critics tended to love in shows like Roseanne, anything by Norman Lear, a lot of David E Kelley, but which always sets me wondering if that kind of thing isn't an undermining of the nature/purpose of comedy. (Sorry about that sentence structure. It's worth it to work it though...wink wink)
As Jan notes, Friends has consistently been one of the funniest half-hours in prime-time, and offered the weekly delight of getting to watch Jennifer Aniston's fabulous comic timing. I really think she's one of the great commedienes of our time.
I'm ready for Friends to go. But it does feel strange to see it end.
I reasonate with Jan the Maven about the final episode of Friends this week.
Friends started the year I walked out of the convent, and I will probably always think of it as background music for things I did in my thirties: working in Cambridge, graduate school at Northwestern, moving to L.A., working at Paulist Productions, starting Act One.
One Friends related memory: At Northwestern, I was a grad student R.A. to an all female dorm of mostly freshmen. We were living in a renovated mansion that had recently been reclaimed from a defunct sorority, and so I actually had my own large suite of rooms with a good size living room. Every Thursday night at about 7:45pm, the girls would start to arrive in my living room, packing the sofas, window ledges, floors, until the room was filled to over-flowing. I took to providing snacks, so that it became even more of a community experience. It really was Must-See TV for us all to watch Friends together, and then most of them would drift back to the books.
It's true that the show has been one that I have at many times hated to love. Having just migrated from NYC when the show first started, I remember watching its first episodes with disdain for the absurd premise of an all white group of mostly under-employed twenty-somethings in Manhattan being able to afford apartments that would probably cost $1,000,0000 a year.
From a moral standpoint, it depicts a world without God and really without any moral framework outside of tenuous loyalty to one's friends. It's a show which glorified and normalized pornography, homosexuality and promiscuity.
But the core of the show which caught on with 18-35 year old viewers, was once again, the fantasy community it provided. Most of my generation, the Xers, have grown up in fractured families, with aborted siblings, watching every authority structure of church, state, ivory tower, fifth estate, everything, reveal nothing but clay feet. Because our parents were more mobile than past generations, we have had little if any relevant extended family.
Hence, Xers are always irresistably drawn to any entertainment that offers a vision of people belonging to each other, staying together no matter what and especially "when the rain starts to fall." The show never fell into the cynicism and shrill irony that critics tended to love in shows like Roseanne, anything by Norman Lear, a lot of David E Kelley, but which always sets me wondering if that kind of thing isn't an undermining of the nature/purpose of comedy. (Sorry about that sentence structure. It's worth it to work it though...wink wink)
As Jan notes, Friends has consistently been one of the funniest half-hours in prime-time, and offered the weekly delight of getting to watch Jennifer Aniston's fabulous comic timing. I really think she's one of the great commedienes of our time.
I'm ready for Friends to go. But it does feel strange to see it end.
Tuesday, May 04, 2004
'GOD IS AVAILABLE TO ALL OF US.'
Here's an interview with TV showrunner, Barbara Hall (Joan of Arcadia) on Beliefnet. I don't know how old it is. I just found it. It is careful, but still has some vintage Hallisms. There's one in here...
One thing I want to do is to debunk the notion that science and spirituality are natural enemies. Joseph Campbell said it's impossible to live without a mythology and it always baffled him how we live without one. But we don't. Our mythology is science—actually it's shifting now to celebrity, but we believe deeply in science. We don't realize that science is a very spiritual concept. There are aspects of it that are completely in line with spirituality. Theoretical physics to me is just the math of God. I didn't make that up—Einstein thought so.
My premise is that it's no more ridiculous to believe in God than it is to believe that there are basic forces keeping us glued to the planet. People embrace gravity because someone in a lab coat said so. It's a fascinating theory, but so is God.
Here's an interview with TV showrunner, Barbara Hall (Joan of Arcadia) on Beliefnet. I don't know how old it is. I just found it. It is careful, but still has some vintage Hallisms. There's one in here...
One thing I want to do is to debunk the notion that science and spirituality are natural enemies. Joseph Campbell said it's impossible to live without a mythology and it always baffled him how we live without one. But we don't. Our mythology is science—actually it's shifting now to celebrity, but we believe deeply in science. We don't realize that science is a very spiritual concept. There are aspects of it that are completely in line with spirituality. Theoretical physics to me is just the math of God. I didn't make that up—Einstein thought so.
My premise is that it's no more ridiculous to believe in God than it is to believe that there are basic forces keeping us glued to the planet. People embrace gravity because someone in a lab coat said so. It's a fascinating theory, but so is God.
CALL FOR PAPERS
I will be speaking at this conference in November. Have some thoughts about art? Go on, send it in...
Epiphanies of Beauty: The Arts in a Post-Christian Culture
November 18-20, 2004
University of Notre Dame
Sponsored by the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture
“Even beyond its typically religious expressions, true art has a close
affinity with the world of faith, so that, even in situations where
culture and the Church are far apart, art remains a kind of bridge to
religious experience.”—Pope John Paul II, Letter to Artists
Pope John Paul II addressed his 1999 Letter to Artists “to all who are
passionately dedicated to the search for new ‘epiphanies’ of beauty, so
that through their creative work as artists they may offer these as gifts
to the world.” In using the word “epiphany,” the Holy Father drew
attention to art as the manifestation, or “shining forth,” of the glorious
beauty of God’s creation. Accordingly, as the pope says elsewhere in the
letter, beautiful works of art serve as “a kind of bridge to religious
experience,” and thus as a genuine source of moral, spiritual and cultural
renewal.
The Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture’s fifth annual fall
conference will examine the variety of ways in which the fine arts can
help build a more genuinely Christian civilization in an era that is ever
more deeply post-Christian in its character. Our first triennial series
culminated in proposals on how to build a genuine culture of life, and
last year’s conference reflected on the renewal and formation at the heart
of such a culture. This conf! erence will focus our reflection on the fine
arts and their place in a culture of life.
We welcome the submission of abstracts drawing on a wide range of moral
and religious perspectives and academic specialties. Possible themes to be
explored are:
- art as cultural formation
- the relationship between art and religion
- the various Christian approaches to art
- the place of art within a culture dominated by mass media
- the economics of contemporary art
- the distinction between artistic excellence and moral character
- the Catholic novel
- art’s reflection of the beautiful
- the place of aesthetics in contemporary philosophy
- past and current movements within the arts
- historical figures in the arts
- the arts and popular culture
- the arts as a means of political expression
- new developments in the arts
- new social and political initiatives involved with the arts
- in-depth examinations of particular techniques and works of art
The Center is especially interested in attracting to the conference as
many working artists as possible, both to speak from their own experience
as artists and to illustrate their commitment to their crafts through live
performance and exhibition.
One-page abstracts for individual papers should include name, affiliation,
address, and e-mail address (if available). Session presentations will be
limited to twenty minutes. Proposals for live performances, panel
discussions and artist-meets-critics sessions are also encouraged.
Deadline for submissions is July 30, 2004. Notification of acceptance
will be mailed by August 31, 2004. One-page abstracts, along with your
full contact information, should be emailed to ndethics@nd.edu or mailed to:
Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture
Epiphanies of Beauty
1047 Flanner Hall
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Up-to-date conference information can be found on our web site: http://ethicscenter.nd.edu.
Notre Dame Center for Ethics & Culture
1047 Flanner Hall
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Tel: 574.631.9656
Fax: 574.631.6290
Email: ndethics@nd.edu
Web: http://ethicscenter.nd.edu
I will be speaking at this conference in November. Have some thoughts about art? Go on, send it in...
Epiphanies of Beauty: The Arts in a Post-Christian Culture
November 18-20, 2004
University of Notre Dame
Sponsored by the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture
“Even beyond its typically religious expressions, true art has a close
affinity with the world of faith, so that, even in situations where
culture and the Church are far apart, art remains a kind of bridge to
religious experience.”—Pope John Paul II, Letter to Artists
Pope John Paul II addressed his 1999 Letter to Artists “to all who are
passionately dedicated to the search for new ‘epiphanies’ of beauty, so
that through their creative work as artists they may offer these as gifts
to the world.” In using the word “epiphany,” the Holy Father drew
attention to art as the manifestation, or “shining forth,” of the glorious
beauty of God’s creation. Accordingly, as the pope says elsewhere in the
letter, beautiful works of art serve as “a kind of bridge to religious
experience,” and thus as a genuine source of moral, spiritual and cultural
renewal.
The Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture’s fifth annual fall
conference will examine the variety of ways in which the fine arts can
help build a more genuinely Christian civilization in an era that is ever
more deeply post-Christian in its character. Our first triennial series
culminated in proposals on how to build a genuine culture of life, and
last year’s conference reflected on the renewal and formation at the heart
of such a culture. This conf! erence will focus our reflection on the fine
arts and their place in a culture of life.
We welcome the submission of abstracts drawing on a wide range of moral
and religious perspectives and academic specialties. Possible themes to be
explored are:
- art as cultural formation
- the relationship between art and religion
- the various Christian approaches to art
- the place of art within a culture dominated by mass media
- the economics of contemporary art
- the distinction between artistic excellence and moral character
- the Catholic novel
- art’s reflection of the beautiful
- the place of aesthetics in contemporary philosophy
- past and current movements within the arts
- historical figures in the arts
- the arts and popular culture
- the arts as a means of political expression
- new developments in the arts
- new social and political initiatives involved with the arts
- in-depth examinations of particular techniques and works of art
The Center is especially interested in attracting to the conference as
many working artists as possible, both to speak from their own experience
as artists and to illustrate their commitment to their crafts through live
performance and exhibition.
One-page abstracts for individual papers should include name, affiliation,
address, and e-mail address (if available). Session presentations will be
limited to twenty minutes. Proposals for live performances, panel
discussions and artist-meets-critics sessions are also encouraged.
Deadline for submissions is July 30, 2004. Notification of acceptance
will be mailed by August 31, 2004. One-page abstracts, along with your
full contact information, should be emailed to ndethics@nd.edu or mailed to:
Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture
Epiphanies of Beauty
1047 Flanner Hall
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Up-to-date conference information can be found on our web site: http://ethicscenter.nd.edu.
Notre Dame Center for Ethics & Culture
1047 Flanner Hall
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Tel: 574.631.9656
Fax: 574.631.6290
Email: ndethics@nd.edu
Web: http://ethicscenter.nd.edu
Monday, May 03, 2004
WHY ACT ONE-DC?
One of our Act One alumns, Erik Lokkesmoe, works in Washington and wrote a thoughtful piece for our Act One community letter which deserves a wider audience.
Why A Creative Renaissance Is Needed In Our Nation's Capital, and How Act One Can Help
By Erik Lokkesmoe
It was more of a statement than a question. "Why Washington?" the senior
government official responded, words heavy with skepticism, when I
shared the news of Act One's month-long session in the nation's capital.
His query conveyed a doubt of both place and purpose: what utility does
a group of screenwriters provide in a political city - a city anxious
about elections and budget hearings - an administrative city that is
impatient with ambiguity, nuance, and imagination?
The question could just have easily been: "why art?"
Politics may be the art of the possible, but is art possible in
politics? In a city of architectural grandeur, National Galleries, the
Kennedy Center, and marbled monuments engraved with poetry and prose,
discussions (or debates) about the arts rarely stray from stale,
predictable exchanges about NEA funding and FCC fines. Art is a
second-thought, a first cut of a bloated budget, a weekend dalliance
with lobbyists. Drawing congressional district maps is often the closest
thing some Members of Congress come to artistic activity.
So, it's an appropriate question for Act One, and for all "creatives"
that live and work in the shadows of federal buildings, "Why
Washington?"
Last year I stumbled across a new book, now a best-seller, by Carnegie
Mellon professor Richard Florida who claimed that economically vibrant
cities have two common factors: a thriving artist community and a large
gay population. The Rise of the Creative Class became the instruction
manual for mayors across the country, as economically-stagnant cities
sought to attract a hip, young workforce by offering bohemian and
business-friendly climates. What caught my attention, however, was
Washington's rank as one of the top "creative cities" in America, as
determined by the proportion of creative workers per total workforce
population. Although Florida uses defines the "creative class" liberally
- including scientists, journalists, and entrepreneurs in the category -
it confirmed a growing suspicion: DC was more than starched shirts and
above-the-ear haircuts; it was, as the professor wrote, that "ultimate
creative center."
Certainly, such a claim will cause New York and Hollywood to shudder.
Many don't even consider Washington a city, let alone a creative center.
Yet the evidence is clear: from bureau reporters to think tanks,
legislators to art galleries, dot com survivors to event planners, the
capital city is not only America's backyard, it is the home of
culture-creators.
A handful of us who work in government are quick to proclaim that the
creatives in the city - and across the country - often hold more power
than the senior politicians seated on the most prestigious committees.
Certainly, these lawmakers affect millions with decisions to raise
taxes, declare war, and fund Social Security. Artists and creatives,
however, are shaping the hearts and minds of the culture, informing the
moral imagination and instructing its beliefs and behaviors.
It is no wonder, then, why so many distrust or fear artists. Through the
subtle brushstrokes in a painting, the complex melodies in a song, the
layered meanings in a film, creatives can exercise a power politicians
could only dream of possessing: to shape the imagination through words
and images and sounds that cascade to the depths of the soul. Only art
has that ability, something Plato realized early on when he declared,
"Let me write the songs [or stories] of a nation and I care not who
writes its laws."
Artists are more than well-trained decorators, adorning culture with
nice and pretty things. Artists create space for dialogue, for circles
of conversations in galleries and theaters, book clubs and concert
halls. They invite us to gaze upon mystery and beauty and to "see with
other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other
hearts, as well as with our own," as C.S. Lewis wrote.
Last September, a group of us at The Voice Behind - a 501c3 non-profit
organization dedicated to creating, commissioning, and celebrating
transcendent works of art and media - started Brewing Culture, a
community of "creatives" that meets monthly at a bar just across the
Potomac. Our hope was to do just that: brew culture by creating space
for creativity and conversation.
It's a speak-easy, really. A haven amidst stiff political life for
ozone-scraping creativity and gritty-as-a-country road conversation. We
invite everyone - left and right, churched and unchurched -- into an
intoxicating exploration of the good, the truth, and the beautiful as
revealed through the works and words of artists. From Damah films to
Johnny Cash tributes, we enter life's big themes - wonder, sacrifice,
discontentment - and wait expectantly on the other side to see what
happens.
As painter Makota Fujimura said over a recent dinner, echoing our
passion for Brewing Culture, "We need secular places for the Church, and
sacred places for the culture." In other words, we need common ground
where we forget to be tame, timid, and temporal in our artistic
endeavors and expressions; we need places that capture the imaginations
of a weary and watching world.
Responding to the launching of Brewing Culture, many have had the same
reaction as that government leader, "Why Washington?" And we respond,
"Above all, here." This is a place where creativity that "flies beyond
the stars," as Francis Schaeffer said, can teach us about common grace,
the Imago Dei, and our innate human need to participate in recreation
and re-creation.
This need is evident in the hollow eyes of passengers on commuter
trains, the rush hour pressing their bodies together in a rhythmic,
synchronized dance as the train halts and jerks away from the city.
Imprisoned in cubicles without windows, passing the time with
predictable days of the same old work, the creative muscle atrophies. It
is no surprise that Washington's suburbs have beautiful homes and
gardens, where workers - free from the confines of gray file-cabinets
and top-down management - can design and create and decorate their own
space.
Artists are oxygen for a city, and people are gasping from asphyxiation.
What Washington - the whole Washington, from the pinstripe suits of
Capitol Hill to the perilous slums of Capitol Heights - needs more than
anything else is an encounter with beauty, that astonishing handiwork of
the Master Artisan and his co-creators. Beauty manifested in eloquent
and honest oratory. Beauty evidenced in grace to political adversaries.
Beauty extended in neighborhoods ravaged by boarded-up homes and lottery
advertising. Act One's presence in this city, if only for a month, can
remind us of our desperate need for beauty, for stories that awaken the
moral imagination and allow glimpses of a world, as Os Guinness says,
"that should have been otherwise."
It is the right time and the right place for Act One, and our prayer is
that these DC screenwriters, like dropping a large stone in a still
pond, will reach the boundaries of our city, soften its dry and cracked
edges, and bring new life to the surface.
One of our Act One alumns, Erik Lokkesmoe, works in Washington and wrote a thoughtful piece for our Act One community letter which deserves a wider audience.
Why A Creative Renaissance Is Needed In Our Nation's Capital, and How Act One Can Help
By Erik Lokkesmoe
It was more of a statement than a question. "Why Washington?" the senior
government official responded, words heavy with skepticism, when I
shared the news of Act One's month-long session in the nation's capital.
His query conveyed a doubt of both place and purpose: what utility does
a group of screenwriters provide in a political city - a city anxious
about elections and budget hearings - an administrative city that is
impatient with ambiguity, nuance, and imagination?
The question could just have easily been: "why art?"
Politics may be the art of the possible, but is art possible in
politics? In a city of architectural grandeur, National Galleries, the
Kennedy Center, and marbled monuments engraved with poetry and prose,
discussions (or debates) about the arts rarely stray from stale,
predictable exchanges about NEA funding and FCC fines. Art is a
second-thought, a first cut of a bloated budget, a weekend dalliance
with lobbyists. Drawing congressional district maps is often the closest
thing some Members of Congress come to artistic activity.
So, it's an appropriate question for Act One, and for all "creatives"
that live and work in the shadows of federal buildings, "Why
Washington?"
Last year I stumbled across a new book, now a best-seller, by Carnegie
Mellon professor Richard Florida who claimed that economically vibrant
cities have two common factors: a thriving artist community and a large
gay population. The Rise of the Creative Class became the instruction
manual for mayors across the country, as economically-stagnant cities
sought to attract a hip, young workforce by offering bohemian and
business-friendly climates. What caught my attention, however, was
Washington's rank as one of the top "creative cities" in America, as
determined by the proportion of creative workers per total workforce
population. Although Florida uses defines the "creative class" liberally
- including scientists, journalists, and entrepreneurs in the category -
it confirmed a growing suspicion: DC was more than starched shirts and
above-the-ear haircuts; it was, as the professor wrote, that "ultimate
creative center."
Certainly, such a claim will cause New York and Hollywood to shudder.
Many don't even consider Washington a city, let alone a creative center.
Yet the evidence is clear: from bureau reporters to think tanks,
legislators to art galleries, dot com survivors to event planners, the
capital city is not only America's backyard, it is the home of
culture-creators.
A handful of us who work in government are quick to proclaim that the
creatives in the city - and across the country - often hold more power
than the senior politicians seated on the most prestigious committees.
Certainly, these lawmakers affect millions with decisions to raise
taxes, declare war, and fund Social Security. Artists and creatives,
however, are shaping the hearts and minds of the culture, informing the
moral imagination and instructing its beliefs and behaviors.
It is no wonder, then, why so many distrust or fear artists. Through the
subtle brushstrokes in a painting, the complex melodies in a song, the
layered meanings in a film, creatives can exercise a power politicians
could only dream of possessing: to shape the imagination through words
and images and sounds that cascade to the depths of the soul. Only art
has that ability, something Plato realized early on when he declared,
"Let me write the songs [or stories] of a nation and I care not who
writes its laws."
Artists are more than well-trained decorators, adorning culture with
nice and pretty things. Artists create space for dialogue, for circles
of conversations in galleries and theaters, book clubs and concert
halls. They invite us to gaze upon mystery and beauty and to "see with
other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other
hearts, as well as with our own," as C.S. Lewis wrote.
Last September, a group of us at The Voice Behind - a 501c3 non-profit
organization dedicated to creating, commissioning, and celebrating
transcendent works of art and media - started Brewing Culture, a
community of "creatives" that meets monthly at a bar just across the
Potomac. Our hope was to do just that: brew culture by creating space
for creativity and conversation.
It's a speak-easy, really. A haven amidst stiff political life for
ozone-scraping creativity and gritty-as-a-country road conversation. We
invite everyone - left and right, churched and unchurched -- into an
intoxicating exploration of the good, the truth, and the beautiful as
revealed through the works and words of artists. From Damah films to
Johnny Cash tributes, we enter life's big themes - wonder, sacrifice,
discontentment - and wait expectantly on the other side to see what
happens.
As painter Makota Fujimura said over a recent dinner, echoing our
passion for Brewing Culture, "We need secular places for the Church, and
sacred places for the culture." In other words, we need common ground
where we forget to be tame, timid, and temporal in our artistic
endeavors and expressions; we need places that capture the imaginations
of a weary and watching world.
Responding to the launching of Brewing Culture, many have had the same
reaction as that government leader, "Why Washington?" And we respond,
"Above all, here." This is a place where creativity that "flies beyond
the stars," as Francis Schaeffer said, can teach us about common grace,
the Imago Dei, and our innate human need to participate in recreation
and re-creation.
This need is evident in the hollow eyes of passengers on commuter
trains, the rush hour pressing their bodies together in a rhythmic,
synchronized dance as the train halts and jerks away from the city.
Imprisoned in cubicles without windows, passing the time with
predictable days of the same old work, the creative muscle atrophies. It
is no surprise that Washington's suburbs have beautiful homes and
gardens, where workers - free from the confines of gray file-cabinets
and top-down management - can design and create and decorate their own
space.
Artists are oxygen for a city, and people are gasping from asphyxiation.
What Washington - the whole Washington, from the pinstripe suits of
Capitol Hill to the perilous slums of Capitol Heights - needs more than
anything else is an encounter with beauty, that astonishing handiwork of
the Master Artisan and his co-creators. Beauty manifested in eloquent
and honest oratory. Beauty evidenced in grace to political adversaries.
Beauty extended in neighborhoods ravaged by boarded-up homes and lottery
advertising. Act One's presence in this city, if only for a month, can
remind us of our desperate need for beauty, for stories that awaken the
moral imagination and allow glimpses of a world, as Os Guinness says,
"that should have been otherwise."
It is the right time and the right place for Act One, and our prayer is
that these DC screenwriters, like dropping a large stone in a still
pond, will reach the boundaries of our city, soften its dry and cracked
edges, and bring new life to the surface.
Sunday, May 02, 2004
MARCH FOR WOMEN'S SELFISH LIVES
I watched quite a bit of the pro-choice march on C-SPAN last weekend. I found it weird and sad. I was struck by how old the legendary pro-choice heroes looked - Sarah Weddington, Eleanor Smeal, Kate Michelman, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi - they all looked like foolish old ladies way too wrinkled and gray-haired to be seriously screaming "Keep your hands off my body!" I think they were aware of it too, because nearly every one of them made a point of dragging on stage a daughter, grand-daughter, neice -- any female who wasn't alive when Kennedy beat Nixon, and whose presence might indicate that time will not tell in this fight. My Mother always used to say that pro-lifers are bound to win because our side has babies who invariably grow up to be voters.
I was actually shocked by how little progress there has been in the pro-choice movement's arguments. It's still about waving around hangers and anti-rightwing hatred, and fury about being told what to do with their bodies. Nothing at all about any kind of identity for the fetus. This kind of argumentation has been rendered almost null against all the technological developments of the last forty years. The polls show that Americans poring over ultrasound photos for twenty-five years are coming to different conclusions about the existence of another party in the abortion transaction. It's funny that the pro-choice people would use the powerful forum of the march to reiterate essentially failing arguments....But then, as my Mother said, "What else can they say?" Indeed.
The most striking comment from the unoriginal and generally painfully stupid screaching came from a very staid Gloria Steinem. I admit I have always had some weird sympathy for Steinem. Anyway, she stood at the podium looking calmly over the assembled hoard and noted, "More than any other issue, abortion reveals a person's entire worldview. Support of abortion, or opposition to it indicates where a person will stand on a whole gamut of positions: healthcare, education, environmentalism."
I was talking with Janet Smith about it today over breakfast and we marveled together at how telling this statement is. Janet said, "She really gets it." Yup.
I watched quite a bit of the pro-choice march on C-SPAN last weekend. I found it weird and sad. I was struck by how old the legendary pro-choice heroes looked - Sarah Weddington, Eleanor Smeal, Kate Michelman, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi - they all looked like foolish old ladies way too wrinkled and gray-haired to be seriously screaming "Keep your hands off my body!" I think they were aware of it too, because nearly every one of them made a point of dragging on stage a daughter, grand-daughter, neice -- any female who wasn't alive when Kennedy beat Nixon, and whose presence might indicate that time will not tell in this fight. My Mother always used to say that pro-lifers are bound to win because our side has babies who invariably grow up to be voters.
I was actually shocked by how little progress there has been in the pro-choice movement's arguments. It's still about waving around hangers and anti-rightwing hatred, and fury about being told what to do with their bodies. Nothing at all about any kind of identity for the fetus. This kind of argumentation has been rendered almost null against all the technological developments of the last forty years. The polls show that Americans poring over ultrasound photos for twenty-five years are coming to different conclusions about the existence of another party in the abortion transaction. It's funny that the pro-choice people would use the powerful forum of the march to reiterate essentially failing arguments....But then, as my Mother said, "What else can they say?" Indeed.
The most striking comment from the unoriginal and generally painfully stupid screaching came from a very staid Gloria Steinem. I admit I have always had some weird sympathy for Steinem. Anyway, she stood at the podium looking calmly over the assembled hoard and noted, "More than any other issue, abortion reveals a person's entire worldview. Support of abortion, or opposition to it indicates where a person will stand on a whole gamut of positions: healthcare, education, environmentalism."
I was talking with Janet Smith about it today over breakfast and we marveled together at how telling this statement is. Janet said, "She really gets it." Yup.
ANNIVERSARY
Yesterday, May 1st, marked the 10th anniversary of my leaving the convent. I was in for 9 1/2 years, and now I've been out for 10. As I seem to experience major, life altering changes every decade ending in "4", I have to admit I'm a little curious about what might happen to me before the end of this year...
If I had to distinguish between the two decades, I would say that my decade in the convent went much slower partly because I was younger, but also because I was so bored so often. And because it had so much more suffering.
I can divide the two decades by the things I learned in each.
In the convent, I had an almost inconceivable -- to anyone in lay life -- amount of face time with Jesus. In just about ten years, I didn't start a single day without Mass and a half hour of meditation. I made an hour of adoration every day for the first four years, and then a daily hour and a half for the last six. It's really quite amazing. Most of the time, I was reading the Scriptures in an effort to keep from falling asleep. This basically meant I read the Scriptures over and over and over and over and over. In between all of that struggling to stay awake, I learned a lot about prayer - "Praying for your personality type" ; "Praying with St. John of the Cross" ;"Praying with the Liturgy"; "Praying Alone"; "Praying in Groups"....
The convent years were also about every kind of theological study - Church history, ecclesiology, Christology, Patrology, Catechetics, religious sociology, sacramental and moral theology - plus the special studies concerned with religious life. I read a tremendous number of books in thsoe years. Probably two or three a month.
Finally, religious life taught me things about human psychology. We were very concerned with getting very good at friendship, dialogue and collaboration. And I lived with some people who had severe emotional and psychological baggage in those years. I had two years of vocational/discernment counseling and then eight more years of spiritual direction..."Why did you do/say that?" "How did you feel?" "How do you feel about it now?" "Why?"
My decade out of the convent has been about feeling a lot of compassion - for the world (because it doesn't have to be so hard...just don't sin, okay?), for the People of God (because they have been so let down by their shepherds), for young people (it's not that they don't care -- they have just learned to mask their pain), for artists (they are so generous and vulnerable, and they've gotten such a bad rap).
Besides all the practical information about art and writing and movies, my decade in the world has meant ten times as much personal maturity as that required of me in religious life. It is frighteningly possible to live as a perpetual adolescent in the convent. It seems like the minute I left the convent, I started ending up teaching, explaining, mentoring - drawing on all the lessons that the corporate Church had lavished on me in the decade before. I've learned a lot about what you can teach people (mostly in sharing stories) and what they have to learn themselves (...suffering...no other way to courage, insight, compassion, patience...).
All in all, I'm grateful for both decades. Many, many good friends and lots of love in both worlds. "May God who has begun this good work in you, bring it to completion in Jesus Christ the Lord."
Yesterday, May 1st, marked the 10th anniversary of my leaving the convent. I was in for 9 1/2 years, and now I've been out for 10. As I seem to experience major, life altering changes every decade ending in "4", I have to admit I'm a little curious about what might happen to me before the end of this year...
If I had to distinguish between the two decades, I would say that my decade in the convent went much slower partly because I was younger, but also because I was so bored so often. And because it had so much more suffering.
I can divide the two decades by the things I learned in each.
In the convent, I had an almost inconceivable -- to anyone in lay life -- amount of face time with Jesus. In just about ten years, I didn't start a single day without Mass and a half hour of meditation. I made an hour of adoration every day for the first four years, and then a daily hour and a half for the last six. It's really quite amazing. Most of the time, I was reading the Scriptures in an effort to keep from falling asleep. This basically meant I read the Scriptures over and over and over and over and over. In between all of that struggling to stay awake, I learned a lot about prayer - "Praying for your personality type" ; "Praying with St. John of the Cross" ;"Praying with the Liturgy"; "Praying Alone"; "Praying in Groups"....
The convent years were also about every kind of theological study - Church history, ecclesiology, Christology, Patrology, Catechetics, religious sociology, sacramental and moral theology - plus the special studies concerned with religious life. I read a tremendous number of books in thsoe years. Probably two or three a month.
Finally, religious life taught me things about human psychology. We were very concerned with getting very good at friendship, dialogue and collaboration. And I lived with some people who had severe emotional and psychological baggage in those years. I had two years of vocational/discernment counseling and then eight more years of spiritual direction..."Why did you do/say that?" "How did you feel?" "How do you feel about it now?" "Why?"
My decade out of the convent has been about feeling a lot of compassion - for the world (because it doesn't have to be so hard...just don't sin, okay?), for the People of God (because they have been so let down by their shepherds), for young people (it's not that they don't care -- they have just learned to mask their pain), for artists (they are so generous and vulnerable, and they've gotten such a bad rap).
Besides all the practical information about art and writing and movies, my decade in the world has meant ten times as much personal maturity as that required of me in religious life. It is frighteningly possible to live as a perpetual adolescent in the convent. It seems like the minute I left the convent, I started ending up teaching, explaining, mentoring - drawing on all the lessons that the corporate Church had lavished on me in the decade before. I've learned a lot about what you can teach people (mostly in sharing stories) and what they have to learn themselves (...suffering...no other way to courage, insight, compassion, patience...).
All in all, I'm grateful for both decades. Many, many good friends and lots of love in both worlds. "May God who has begun this good work in you, bring it to completion in Jesus Christ the Lord."
Thursday, April 29, 2004
National Day of Prayer for Hollywood
Join Entertainment Industry Professionals in praying for our country, our community, our projects and our people.
Thursday, May 6th, 2004
7:00 pm-10:00 pm
CBS Studio Center
4024 Radford Avenue, Studio City
Stage 2 (parking in CBS parking structure)
Everyone is welcome, but space is limited, so please rsvp.
www.hollywoodprayernetwork.org /(323) 462-8460 x 117
Join Entertainment Industry Professionals in praying for our country, our community, our projects and our people.
Thursday, May 6th, 2004
7:00 pm-10:00 pm
CBS Studio Center
4024 Radford Avenue, Studio City
Stage 2 (parking in CBS parking structure)
Everyone is welcome, but space is limited, so please rsvp.
www.hollywoodprayernetwork.org /(323) 462-8460 x 117
MORE SPICY BITS
The 2004 MTV Movie Award noms are out and - I LOVE it! - Jim Caviezel is nominated for Best Male Performance for his role as Jesus in TPOTC! He is up against Tom Cruise for Last Samurai, Johnny Depp for Pirates, Adam Sandler for 50 First Dates and Bill Murray for Lost in Translation. These awards are completely fueled by the MTV audience which really, really adds to Hollywood's headache about trying to figure out who the hell likes this piece of dark, artistic, non-English, religious weirdness?! Anyway, can you imagine if Jim wins?!! I stood there and watched him lecture a secular audience at the DGA once about how everybody needed to say the rosary, go to confession and receive the "Precious Body and Blood of our Saviour as often as possible." If that happens on an MTV stage, it is defintiely, uneqivocably the official indisputable beginning of the absolute positive real end times.... Probably.
Peter Jackson, et al., are in talks to take over the production of a film based on Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. I haven't yet read the book although two different people have sent me copies. The story apparently has a spiritual element to it. It seems like a weird choice for Jackson who told me he cared about Tolkien's Christian themes "not an ounce." It also feels like a weird "out of genre" experience for a guy who made an epic bloody fantasy series and is currently prepping King Kong. Maybe Fran wants it. She seemed to me to be the most thoughtful of the Jackson creative triumvirate.
...I have a funny Christian friend who runs a "boutique" talent agency in town. She is writing a chapter for our upcoming book Greetings from the Church in Hollywood, and is going to try and explain the spiritual challenges of working in the middle of this incredibly competitive (read: "cut-throat") business. Being an agent is particularly grueling for a Christian. She said to me last night, "The fact is, I deal in human flesh!" Funny. She was relating to me that every time she grooms an actor and they start to find some real success, they get poached by one of the major agencies. It's just the way it is, and my friend has learned to accept that her job is to give the young actors she works with the most loving and principled foundation she can as they start out in the business. It's lovely, holy and saintly, and unseen except by God.
...There is a little bit of additional tension in the air in town these days as the Writers Guild is deep in contract negotiations with the networks and studios. The current Writers Guild contract expires Sunday, May 2. Most of the epidisodic television shows are on hiatus anyway, but it would affect all other television and the feature side of the business. Variety reports this week that "the two sides are nowhere near a deal." Obviously, this town runs on the work of its writers -- a strike could shut down a lot of projects and put a lot of people along with the writers out of work. Keep the negotiations in your prayers.
...The global porn industry, which is feuled principally from Los Angeles' San Fernando valley, is in crisis. One of the sex industry's "talent" has turned out to be HIV positive, and because he has had what the L.A. Times calls "work related contact" with 48 other, um, talent - ed types in his profession, the whole smut industry been shut down for six weeks. But that isn't the crisis. The crisis is that the L.A. Dept of Health just passed a regulation that the smut industry should require its, um, workers, to wear condoms - you know, as a work-related safety precaution. The industry responded with affront and outrage putting out a statement that the rules are "a violation" and "unnecessary and irresponsible." Notes porn "actress" Nina Hartley, "It's a very bad idea to regulate on set behavior." So now, OSHA is involved and, to quote Variety, is showing "a keen interest in regulating the porn industry." The industry is threatening that if the governement tries to enforce these condom regulations it could drive the entire porn industry out of the U.S.! And their point is? Hey smutty ones, don't let the door hit you on your way out!!! On some probably unvirtuous level, I love watching this weird war of power-minded municipal bureaucrats/greedy insurance companies versus greedy and perverted smut peddlers. It's so rare that evil gets divided against itself... That generally only happens to the good guys.
...ABC, NBC and CBA have all passed on the TV rights to The Passion of the Christ. FOX is now the lone broadcast netwrok considering licensing it. I heard from a friend an unconfirmed report that Mel is insisting that the film be shown without commercial interruptions. Okayyyyyyyyy.... Mel's goal seems to be one at a time to render every individual in the entire entertainment industry uncomfortable and ancy. God love him.
...While we're on the subject of "the movie", despite its X-rating which made the movie illegal for anyone under 18, TPOTC just moved into the number three "biggest box-office of all time" spot in Mexico. As of last weekend, Passion has brought in $18,000,000, behind only Titanic ($19.3 million) and Spiderman ($30 million). Of course, neither of those movies were projects in which minors would be arrested for trying to get in.
The 2004 MTV Movie Award noms are out and - I LOVE it! - Jim Caviezel is nominated for Best Male Performance for his role as Jesus in TPOTC! He is up against Tom Cruise for Last Samurai, Johnny Depp for Pirates, Adam Sandler for 50 First Dates and Bill Murray for Lost in Translation. These awards are completely fueled by the MTV audience which really, really adds to Hollywood's headache about trying to figure out who the hell likes this piece of dark, artistic, non-English, religious weirdness?! Anyway, can you imagine if Jim wins?!! I stood there and watched him lecture a secular audience at the DGA once about how everybody needed to say the rosary, go to confession and receive the "Precious Body and Blood of our Saviour as often as possible." If that happens on an MTV stage, it is defintiely, uneqivocably the official indisputable beginning of the absolute positive real end times.... Probably.
Peter Jackson, et al., are in talks to take over the production of a film based on Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. I haven't yet read the book although two different people have sent me copies. The story apparently has a spiritual element to it. It seems like a weird choice for Jackson who told me he cared about Tolkien's Christian themes "not an ounce." It also feels like a weird "out of genre" experience for a guy who made an epic bloody fantasy series and is currently prepping King Kong. Maybe Fran wants it. She seemed to me to be the most thoughtful of the Jackson creative triumvirate.
...I have a funny Christian friend who runs a "boutique" talent agency in town. She is writing a chapter for our upcoming book Greetings from the Church in Hollywood, and is going to try and explain the spiritual challenges of working in the middle of this incredibly competitive (read: "cut-throat") business. Being an agent is particularly grueling for a Christian. She said to me last night, "The fact is, I deal in human flesh!" Funny. She was relating to me that every time she grooms an actor and they start to find some real success, they get poached by one of the major agencies. It's just the way it is, and my friend has learned to accept that her job is to give the young actors she works with the most loving and principled foundation she can as they start out in the business. It's lovely, holy and saintly, and unseen except by God.
...There is a little bit of additional tension in the air in town these days as the Writers Guild is deep in contract negotiations with the networks and studios. The current Writers Guild contract expires Sunday, May 2. Most of the epidisodic television shows are on hiatus anyway, but it would affect all other television and the feature side of the business. Variety reports this week that "the two sides are nowhere near a deal." Obviously, this town runs on the work of its writers -- a strike could shut down a lot of projects and put a lot of people along with the writers out of work. Keep the negotiations in your prayers.
...The global porn industry, which is feuled principally from Los Angeles' San Fernando valley, is in crisis. One of the sex industry's "talent" has turned out to be HIV positive, and because he has had what the L.A. Times calls "work related contact" with 48 other, um, talent - ed types in his profession, the whole smut industry been shut down for six weeks. But that isn't the crisis. The crisis is that the L.A. Dept of Health just passed a regulation that the smut industry should require its, um, workers, to wear condoms - you know, as a work-related safety precaution. The industry responded with affront and outrage putting out a statement that the rules are "a violation" and "unnecessary and irresponsible." Notes porn "actress" Nina Hartley, "It's a very bad idea to regulate on set behavior." So now, OSHA is involved and, to quote Variety, is showing "a keen interest in regulating the porn industry." The industry is threatening that if the governement tries to enforce these condom regulations it could drive the entire porn industry out of the U.S.! And their point is? Hey smutty ones, don't let the door hit you on your way out!!! On some probably unvirtuous level, I love watching this weird war of power-minded municipal bureaucrats/greedy insurance companies versus greedy and perverted smut peddlers. It's so rare that evil gets divided against itself... That generally only happens to the good guys.
...ABC, NBC and CBA have all passed on the TV rights to The Passion of the Christ. FOX is now the lone broadcast netwrok considering licensing it. I heard from a friend an unconfirmed report that Mel is insisting that the film be shown without commercial interruptions. Okayyyyyyyyy.... Mel's goal seems to be one at a time to render every individual in the entire entertainment industry uncomfortable and ancy. God love him.
...While we're on the subject of "the movie", despite its X-rating which made the movie illegal for anyone under 18, TPOTC just moved into the number three "biggest box-office of all time" spot in Mexico. As of last weekend, Passion has brought in $18,000,000, behind only Titanic ($19.3 million) and Spiderman ($30 million). Of course, neither of those movies were projects in which minors would be arrested for trying to get in.
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
YEAST IN THE CULTURAL LUMP
I've been brooding a lot lately over the idea of being leaven in the lump. It's such a great metaphor for the lay apostolate. I rediscovered it in Vatican II'S Apostolicam Actuositatem a couple of weeks ago while preparing my RCIA class. The document is mandatory reading for my students -- who are getting the best $#@! preparation to be Catholics on the planet. (One of my former students, as it happens, Barbara Hall, the creator of Joan of Arcadia, noted to me early on it the process, "I think I can be a bad Christian." I told her, "Sure. But you're going to be a good Catholic!")
I love the idea that yeast has to be kneaded into the lump. I remember a vision from my childhood, of my mother pounding the dough on the kitchen counter; turning it, working it, stretching it -- there really isn't any other ordeal like being kneaded. The kneading mixes the yeast into the dough, principally by breaking it up. So, how has God kneaded you (for the larger lump)?
Yeast then needs time in the darkness. I remember my mother covering the bowl of dough with a towel and then putting it aside for a few hours. It's like the Spirit hovering over the waters right before God said, "Let there be..." If you haven't had this time of darkness -- and I do mean TIME; it can be years -- you aren't ready yet.
The process of raising the lump requires the death of the yeast. I remember Mom many times throwing out a package of yeast because it was dead. It had to die in the lump. Anything else was useless to the dough.
The yeast doesn't turn the lump into yeast. It disappears. It helps the dough reach its own destiny - which isn't to be yeast.
"For those to have ears to hear, let them hear."
Anyway, I am developing the "Christian as leaven" metaphor for several talks, and also for my next column in the National Catholic Register. Here's a snip...
Lots of young people have been inspired by Mel Gibson’s Passion to come to Hollywood and do more of the same. That’s all well and good, but making sacred art isn’t being the “yeast” that Jesus said we believers are supposed to be in the world. Yeast does its work by vanishing. It doesn’t make the lump turn into yeast. It gets lost in the lump, which then becomes a different kind of lump, a better lump.
So, the goal for Christians in the arts and entertainment isn’t just that we produce a continuous stream of movies about the Bible, saints and religious themes....
We have things we might say about entertainment and creativity that no one else is saying, and that the people who work in the arts and media desperately need to hear. We need to speak not as religious people separate from the world, but as human beings in the world, who happen to be informed by our religion.
Applying the Holy Father’s philosophy of personalism to entertainment and the arts would be a wonderful beginning. How can some methods and themes in entertainment inhibit broad human freedom? How can certain stories make us want to be more who we are supposed to be? We can propound the idea that entertainment is not optional, but a constituent element of human development. There are places we need to go in our entertainment time to stretch the muscles of our inner person, our soul and psyche; places that our normal worlds of work and activity will not take us. There are diseases of the human spirit that mere reality cannot heal.
I've been brooding a lot lately over the idea of being leaven in the lump. It's such a great metaphor for the lay apostolate. I rediscovered it in Vatican II'S Apostolicam Actuositatem a couple of weeks ago while preparing my RCIA class. The document is mandatory reading for my students -- who are getting the best $#@! preparation to be Catholics on the planet. (One of my former students, as it happens, Barbara Hall, the creator of Joan of Arcadia, noted to me early on it the process, "I think I can be a bad Christian." I told her, "Sure. But you're going to be a good Catholic!")
I love the idea that yeast has to be kneaded into the lump. I remember a vision from my childhood, of my mother pounding the dough on the kitchen counter; turning it, working it, stretching it -- there really isn't any other ordeal like being kneaded. The kneading mixes the yeast into the dough, principally by breaking it up. So, how has God kneaded you (for the larger lump)?
Yeast then needs time in the darkness. I remember my mother covering the bowl of dough with a towel and then putting it aside for a few hours. It's like the Spirit hovering over the waters right before God said, "Let there be..." If you haven't had this time of darkness -- and I do mean TIME; it can be years -- you aren't ready yet.
The process of raising the lump requires the death of the yeast. I remember Mom many times throwing out a package of yeast because it was dead. It had to die in the lump. Anything else was useless to the dough.
The yeast doesn't turn the lump into yeast. It disappears. It helps the dough reach its own destiny - which isn't to be yeast.
"For those to have ears to hear, let them hear."
Anyway, I am developing the "Christian as leaven" metaphor for several talks, and also for my next column in the National Catholic Register. Here's a snip...
Lots of young people have been inspired by Mel Gibson’s Passion to come to Hollywood and do more of the same. That’s all well and good, but making sacred art isn’t being the “yeast” that Jesus said we believers are supposed to be in the world. Yeast does its work by vanishing. It doesn’t make the lump turn into yeast. It gets lost in the lump, which then becomes a different kind of lump, a better lump.
So, the goal for Christians in the arts and entertainment isn’t just that we produce a continuous stream of movies about the Bible, saints and religious themes....
We have things we might say about entertainment and creativity that no one else is saying, and that the people who work in the arts and media desperately need to hear. We need to speak not as religious people separate from the world, but as human beings in the world, who happen to be informed by our religion.
Applying the Holy Father’s philosophy of personalism to entertainment and the arts would be a wonderful beginning. How can some methods and themes in entertainment inhibit broad human freedom? How can certain stories make us want to be more who we are supposed to be? We can propound the idea that entertainment is not optional, but a constituent element of human development. There are places we need to go in our entertainment time to stretch the muscles of our inner person, our soul and psyche; places that our normal worlds of work and activity will not take us. There are diseases of the human spirit that mere reality cannot heal.
[PLEASE CUT, PASTE, FORWARD AND LINK! HELP US GET THE WORD OUT...THANKS!]
act one inc. and Artists for a Renewed Society present,
Making a GOOD Writer GREAT
A Creativity Workshop
Saturday, May 22, 2004
Featuring:
Linda Seger, PhD (Making a Good Script Great,The Art of Adaptation, Web Thinking, Creating Unforgettable Characters)
Plus:
Barbara Nicolosi
Tom Provost
Join Hollywood insiders Linda Seger, Tom Provost and Barbara Nicolosi for an intensive, day-long workshop focused on the writer as artist.
What’s holding you back? If you want to be more than just a competent writer, a firm grasp of craft is not enough. A writer needs something extra to take his talent to the next level — to create work that is truly original and meaningful.
Learn to think and work more creatively.
This unique workshop will cover such pivotal creative concepts as nonlinear thinking, visual thinking, metaphorical thinking, oppositional thinking and utilizing one's unconscious mind.
Learn how a mature faith can improve your writing — and how an immature faith can hinder it .
The Christian writer should have a leg up on greatness. So why are non-Christian writers often better than Christian writers? The workshop will examine how Christians tend to let faith play the wrong role in their writing, and we will attempt to define its proper place in the work of the artist. Finally, we'll take a look at the works of Flannery O'Connor, one of the great Christian writers.
The Making a Good Writer Great workshop is for novelists, screenwriters, and playwrights at any level of experience.
Take your writing to the next level.
“Dr. Seger humanizes the writing process by acknowledging the role that psychology, our personal stories, and our personal spirituality play in our work.” — Linda Woolverton (screenwriter, Beauty and the Beast; co-screenwriter, The Lion King)
“Linda’s technique is a light to see by.” — Ray Bradbury
Saturday, May 22, 2004
John Paul II Cultural Center
3900 Harewood Road, NE
Washington DC 20017
SCHEDULE
8:30 a.m. Registration / Continental Breakfast
9:00 a.m. Opening Prayer and Greeting - Barbara Nicolosi
9:30 a.m. Making a Good Writer Great - Linda Seger
12:30 p.m. Lunch (provided)
1:30 p.m. Making a Good Christian Writer Great - Barbara Nicolosi
3:30 p.m. Flannery O’Connor: A Great Writer is Hard To Find - Tom Provost
5:00 p.m. Closing Prayer
TO REGISTER
The cost of admission is $75.00 and includes a continental breakfast, lunch, and a copy of Linda Seger’s Making a Good Writer Great.
The deadline for admission is May 14
To register with a Visa or Mastercard, call (323) 462-1348 or email Anthony Platipodis at aplatipodis@fpch.org.
OR
Send a check or money order to:
Great Writer Workshop
Act One Inc.
1763 N. Gower St.
Los Angeles, CA 90028
All registrants will receive a complimentary copy of Linda Seger’s Making a Good Writer Great. Register now to receive your copy early!
ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS:
Dr. Linda Seger is the author of five popular books on screenwriting and filmmaking, including Making a Good Script Great, Creating Unforgettable Characters, and The Art of Adaptation: Turning Fact and Fiction into Film. She created and defined the job of script consultant in 1981, and since that time has consulted on more than 2,000 film and television scripts and presented seminars for ABC, CBS, NBC, Disney, Turner Network, the Motion Picture Academy, the Directors Guild, the Writers Guild, the American Film Institute, UCLA, and USC, as well as for companies around the world.
Barbara Nicolosi is Executive Director of Act One Inc. She has been a director of development, a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, and a consultant on many film and television projects.
Tom Provost adapted the French Film Garde a Vue into the screenplay Under Suspicion, which was nominated for an Edgar Award. He has worked as an editor for independent films, television shows, and hundreds of promos for the WB and Bravo. He has worked as a television actor and had a recurring role on the first season of Steven Spielberg’s SeaQuest DSV.
act one inc. and Artists for a Renewed Society present,
Making a GOOD Writer GREAT
A Creativity Workshop
Saturday, May 22, 2004
Featuring:
Linda Seger, PhD (Making a Good Script Great,The Art of Adaptation, Web Thinking, Creating Unforgettable Characters)
Plus:
Barbara Nicolosi
Tom Provost
Join Hollywood insiders Linda Seger, Tom Provost and Barbara Nicolosi for an intensive, day-long workshop focused on the writer as artist.
What’s holding you back? If you want to be more than just a competent writer, a firm grasp of craft is not enough. A writer needs something extra to take his talent to the next level — to create work that is truly original and meaningful.
Learn to think and work more creatively.
This unique workshop will cover such pivotal creative concepts as nonlinear thinking, visual thinking, metaphorical thinking, oppositional thinking and utilizing one's unconscious mind.
Learn how a mature faith can improve your writing — and how an immature faith can hinder it .
The Christian writer should have a leg up on greatness. So why are non-Christian writers often better than Christian writers? The workshop will examine how Christians tend to let faith play the wrong role in their writing, and we will attempt to define its proper place in the work of the artist. Finally, we'll take a look at the works of Flannery O'Connor, one of the great Christian writers.
The Making a Good Writer Great workshop is for novelists, screenwriters, and playwrights at any level of experience.
Take your writing to the next level.
“Dr. Seger humanizes the writing process by acknowledging the role that psychology, our personal stories, and our personal spirituality play in our work.” — Linda Woolverton (screenwriter, Beauty and the Beast; co-screenwriter, The Lion King)
“Linda’s technique is a light to see by.” — Ray Bradbury
Saturday, May 22, 2004
John Paul II Cultural Center
3900 Harewood Road, NE
Washington DC 20017
SCHEDULE
8:30 a.m. Registration / Continental Breakfast
9:00 a.m. Opening Prayer and Greeting - Barbara Nicolosi
9:30 a.m. Making a Good Writer Great - Linda Seger
12:30 p.m. Lunch (provided)
1:30 p.m. Making a Good Christian Writer Great - Barbara Nicolosi
3:30 p.m. Flannery O’Connor: A Great Writer is Hard To Find - Tom Provost
5:00 p.m. Closing Prayer
TO REGISTER
The cost of admission is $75.00 and includes a continental breakfast, lunch, and a copy of Linda Seger’s Making a Good Writer Great.
The deadline for admission is May 14
To register with a Visa or Mastercard, call (323) 462-1348 or email Anthony Platipodis at aplatipodis@fpch.org.
OR
Send a check or money order to:
Great Writer Workshop
Act One Inc.
1763 N. Gower St.
Los Angeles, CA 90028
All registrants will receive a complimentary copy of Linda Seger’s Making a Good Writer Great. Register now to receive your copy early!
ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS:
Dr. Linda Seger is the author of five popular books on screenwriting and filmmaking, including Making a Good Script Great, Creating Unforgettable Characters, and The Art of Adaptation: Turning Fact and Fiction into Film. She created and defined the job of script consultant in 1981, and since that time has consulted on more than 2,000 film and television scripts and presented seminars for ABC, CBS, NBC, Disney, Turner Network, the Motion Picture Academy, the Directors Guild, the Writers Guild, the American Film Institute, UCLA, and USC, as well as for companies around the world.
Barbara Nicolosi is Executive Director of Act One Inc. She has been a director of development, a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, and a consultant on many film and television projects.
Tom Provost adapted the French Film Garde a Vue into the screenplay Under Suspicion, which was nominated for an Edgar Award. He has worked as an editor for independent films, television shows, and hundreds of promos for the WB and Bravo. He has worked as a television actor and had a recurring role on the first season of Steven Spielberg’s SeaQuest DSV.
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
SEE ME IN S.D.
Go here for information about my talk for the San Diego Christian Writers Guild this Friday. I love speaking to this particular group of writers. They are really a model community to help writers understand and embrace their vocation in the Church and in the world.
Go here for information about my talk for the San Diego Christian Writers Guild this Friday. I love speaking to this particular group of writers. They are really a model community to help writers understand and embrace their vocation in the Church and in the world.
Monday, April 26, 2004
Saturday, April 24, 2004
BACK IN L.A.
Thanks to everyone who came to my talks in Philadelphia and NJ. Thanks especially to Juli et al for forgiving me for not loving LOTR and bringing two pews worth of family members to Philly. Altogether, they tell me about 200 people were at the speech. I finally left the reception somewhere around midnight. There were still people milling in impassioned discourse. My feet were killing me because I was wearing my cool light tan boots which I'm very vain about but which are still really painful to stand in after about thirty minutes. Well, I was standing for about three hours last night between the talk and the reception and started balancing backward on the heels in between greeting people until in the middle of a profound response to somebody's question, I felt the heel snap and I went plummeting profoundly into a pirouette. My guardian angel is always looking out for my ego in charming ways like that. I know his touch.
Anyway, thanks to Mike Wallacavage and the amazing Haas clan of the International Institute for Culture for organizing such a great event.
I came home to find that Tibby the cat had pretty much thrown up in artistic patterns all over my room and even on my bedspread. She tends to have abandonment issues, and generally doesn't favor sleeping on an empty bed, but this was truly an exceptional display of feline discontent. Again, nothing like scrubbing up five piles of cat barf to really balance out a successful tour of speaking engagements. [Tibby responds: "Feed me."]
Anyway, I am so far behind in my writing, teaching, reading and job commitments that the only way I can see my way out of it is an untimely death. You know it's getting bad when it seems to you that it would be an extravagant waste of time to have a panic attack. So, blogging will probably stay light for the next few weeks....Which is too bad because I have some really cool ideas you are all going to miss out on. [Tibby responds visually by lifting her leg and cleaning herself.]
Thanks to everyone who came to my talks in Philadelphia and NJ. Thanks especially to Juli et al for forgiving me for not loving LOTR and bringing two pews worth of family members to Philly. Altogether, they tell me about 200 people were at the speech. I finally left the reception somewhere around midnight. There were still people milling in impassioned discourse. My feet were killing me because I was wearing my cool light tan boots which I'm very vain about but which are still really painful to stand in after about thirty minutes. Well, I was standing for about three hours last night between the talk and the reception and started balancing backward on the heels in between greeting people until in the middle of a profound response to somebody's question, I felt the heel snap and I went plummeting profoundly into a pirouette. My guardian angel is always looking out for my ego in charming ways like that. I know his touch.
Anyway, thanks to Mike Wallacavage and the amazing Haas clan of the International Institute for Culture for organizing such a great event.
I came home to find that Tibby the cat had pretty much thrown up in artistic patterns all over my room and even on my bedspread. She tends to have abandonment issues, and generally doesn't favor sleeping on an empty bed, but this was truly an exceptional display of feline discontent. Again, nothing like scrubbing up five piles of cat barf to really balance out a successful tour of speaking engagements. [Tibby responds: "Feed me."]
Anyway, I am so far behind in my writing, teaching, reading and job commitments that the only way I can see my way out of it is an untimely death. You know it's getting bad when it seems to you that it would be an extravagant waste of time to have a panic attack. So, blogging will probably stay light for the next few weeks....Which is too bad because I have some really cool ideas you are all going to miss out on. [Tibby responds visually by lifting her leg and cleaning herself.]
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
GREETINGS FROM PRINCETON
I'm here in this lovely university town for a Legatus talk later tonite. What is it about some towns that make you want to walk through the streets reading Aristotle and humming Gaudeamus Igitur? Walking around the quaint shops spotted by Free Tibet bumper stickers, anti-Bush petitions and selling things like environmentally responsible clothing took me back to my days of working in Cambridge, MA at another center of the privileged proletariat. It's certainly in the family intellectual/academic-oriented genes, but I always find visits to Ivy League places disorienting experiences of outraged attraction. I love schools and scholars and learning. Love coffee shops where people are talking about ideas. Love the passion that people seeking the truth get caught up in. Can't stand preening and posturing and leftist tyranny. Another healthy tension to incorporate into the mainframe.
I had lunch with the much-esteemed Kris and Buzz McLaughlin and their son-in-law and friend. Buzz is a playwright and the author of The Playwright's Process, a great resource for those writing for theater. I love talking with Buzz and Kris because they spend as much time brooding over writing as I do, and it means immeasurably much to me to have such thoughtful, experienced and smart people echo much of my sense of what is wrong with art in the Church, and what the rememdy will look like. I also can't say how much it means to me to have someone to pass on "how do I write a play?" referrals to. That's about a hundred or so queries a year that I don't have to answer because Buzz is out there. No need to thank me, Buzz. [wicked screech of glee]
I'm here in this lovely university town for a Legatus talk later tonite. What is it about some towns that make you want to walk through the streets reading Aristotle and humming Gaudeamus Igitur? Walking around the quaint shops spotted by Free Tibet bumper stickers, anti-Bush petitions and selling things like environmentally responsible clothing took me back to my days of working in Cambridge, MA at another center of the privileged proletariat. It's certainly in the family intellectual/academic-oriented genes, but I always find visits to Ivy League places disorienting experiences of outraged attraction. I love schools and scholars and learning. Love coffee shops where people are talking about ideas. Love the passion that people seeking the truth get caught up in. Can't stand preening and posturing and leftist tyranny. Another healthy tension to incorporate into the mainframe.
I had lunch with the much-esteemed Kris and Buzz McLaughlin and their son-in-law and friend. Buzz is a playwright and the author of The Playwright's Process, a great resource for those writing for theater. I love talking with Buzz and Kris because they spend as much time brooding over writing as I do, and it means immeasurably much to me to have such thoughtful, experienced and smart people echo much of my sense of what is wrong with art in the Church, and what the rememdy will look like. I also can't say how much it means to me to have someone to pass on "how do I write a play?" referrals to. That's about a hundred or so queries a year that I don't have to answer because Buzz is out there. No need to thank me, Buzz. [wicked screech of glee]
Monday, April 19, 2004
TARANTINO ON THE PASSION
Unmitigated Blatherskite has reproduced a recent interview with Quentin Tarantino that the street paper L.A. Weekly is running. I've never been a real fan of Tarantino, but he wins huge points with me for his honest take on the high art in Mel Gibson's film. He notes, "I think it actually is one of the most brilliant visual storytelling movies I've seen since the talkies -- as far as telling a story via pictures. " Go here for more.
Unmitigated Blatherskite has reproduced a recent interview with Quentin Tarantino that the street paper L.A. Weekly is running. I've never been a real fan of Tarantino, but he wins huge points with me for his honest take on the high art in Mel Gibson's film. He notes, "I think it actually is one of the most brilliant visual storytelling movies I've seen since the talkies -- as far as telling a story via pictures. " Go here for more.
BLOGGING LIGHT...BLEGGING HEAVY
I am traveling a lot in these days. Blogging will depend on a combination of how late I get to hotel rooms and whether my brain is still functioning at those times.
The summer Act One programs are coming along very well. We have booked just about all the faculty and are now busy about scheduling, hotels and airfare for them all. The classes have been chosen, and now, we spend several months working out payment schemes and scholarships for the incoming students. For some reason, an inordinate number of students need financial aid this year. We generally get donations earmarked for student scholarships, but also for some reason I don't know, we didn't get any this year. That means, every scholarship I bestow in my "I sound tough but I am really a big softie" sympathy means money in my budget that is vanishing. (If any of my Board members are reading this, I am kidding, of course, heh heh...cough...) Anyway, if anyone out there hasn't made their annual contribution to support the next generation of artists, Act One is a worthy place to tithe your hope for the future. Email actone@fpch.org for more info about how to help us help a needy student.
I am traveling a lot in these days. Blogging will depend on a combination of how late I get to hotel rooms and whether my brain is still functioning at those times.
The summer Act One programs are coming along very well. We have booked just about all the faculty and are now busy about scheduling, hotels and airfare for them all. The classes have been chosen, and now, we spend several months working out payment schemes and scholarships for the incoming students. For some reason, an inordinate number of students need financial aid this year. We generally get donations earmarked for student scholarships, but also for some reason I don't know, we didn't get any this year. That means, every scholarship I bestow in my "I sound tough but I am really a big softie" sympathy means money in my budget that is vanishing. (If any of my Board members are reading this, I am kidding, of course, heh heh...cough...) Anyway, if anyone out there hasn't made their annual contribution to support the next generation of artists, Act One is a worthy place to tithe your hope for the future. Email actone@fpch.org for more info about how to help us help a needy student.
EMILY MONDAY
611
I see thee better -- in the Dark --
I do not need a Light --
The Love of Thee -- a Prism be --
Excelling Violet --
I see thee better for the Years
That hunch themselves between --
The Miner's Lamp -- sufficient be --
To nullify the Mine --
And in the Grave -- I see Thee best --
Its little Panels be
Aglow -- All ruddy -- with the Light
I held so high, for Thee --
What need of Day --
To Those whose Dark -- hath so -- surpassing Sun --
It deem it be -- Continually --
At the Meridian?
611
I see thee better -- in the Dark --
I do not need a Light --
The Love of Thee -- a Prism be --
Excelling Violet --
I see thee better for the Years
That hunch themselves between --
The Miner's Lamp -- sufficient be --
To nullify the Mine --
And in the Grave -- I see Thee best --
Its little Panels be
Aglow -- All ruddy -- with the Light
I held so high, for Thee --
What need of Day --
To Those whose Dark -- hath so -- surpassing Sun --
It deem it be -- Continually --
At the Meridian?
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
CROSSING THE CYBER
It's done. This post constitutes my first public profession as a Macatholic. After several discouraging starts, I persevered in eRCIbay and finally found salvation in a G4 15" Titanium Powerbook with 256MB of RAM and a 20 GB harddrive.
I am still in the first flush of my conversion, so maybe take it with a grain of salt when I say I love my Mac already, and "O technology ever functional ever cool, where was I when I was not computing with you?"
I did have one experience of being an alien in the PC planet tonight. I went to my former hangout in the computer software aisle at Best Buy and after a few disorienting minutes, stopped a salesguy. I was a little sheepish - just like a convert. "Excuse me, where is the Mac software." Was it me, or did the guy get a little hostile? "We don't have a lot for you people. You need to go to an Apple store. They can take care of you there."
Even despite his snippiness, I felt a wave of compassion for him. "He doesn't know what he's saying. He isn't responsible. I used to be like him. I used to think I needed my right-side click button...."
Amazing TiBook, how sweet your sound, how cool your look to see! I once was PC, but now I'm Mac, was submissive, but now I'm free...
It's done. This post constitutes my first public profession as a Macatholic. After several discouraging starts, I persevered in eRCIbay and finally found salvation in a G4 15" Titanium Powerbook with 256MB of RAM and a 20 GB harddrive.
I am still in the first flush of my conversion, so maybe take it with a grain of salt when I say I love my Mac already, and "O technology ever functional ever cool, where was I when I was not computing with you?"
I did have one experience of being an alien in the PC planet tonight. I went to my former hangout in the computer software aisle at Best Buy and after a few disorienting minutes, stopped a salesguy. I was a little sheepish - just like a convert. "Excuse me, where is the Mac software." Was it me, or did the guy get a little hostile? "We don't have a lot for you people. You need to go to an Apple store. They can take care of you there."
Even despite his snippiness, I felt a wave of compassion for him. "He doesn't know what he's saying. He isn't responsible. I used to be like him. I used to think I needed my right-side click button...."
Amazing TiBook, how sweet your sound, how cool your look to see! I once was PC, but now I'm Mac, was submissive, but now I'm free...
WHAT DOES YOUR FAITH GENERATE?
Conor Dugan kindly references some of my ranting over at his blog TriCoastal Commission. It is an honor to even be mentioned in the same breath as Gregory Wolfe of Image. Conor drives home the great point that a faith that is real will absolutely tend toward creating culture. Check it out here.
So, Christianity is the kind of religion that when it is internalized, leads its adherents to do things like build cathedrals, and paint frescos and write Summas and compose music. I am tempted to push this idea to brood over why people who take Islam really serioously tend to not generate culture, but rather to demolish culture. Isn't that part of what made 9/11 so horrific? We knew that there were religious people somewhere, who were rejoicing as they watched the perfect symmetry of those Towers crumble. There is something wrong with a religion which only tears down, but isn't moved to build. Blow up statues, destroy art, kidnap and kill people, suicide bomb buses and hotels and clubs and restaurants, crash planes into buildings - and all of it as an act of religious worship. It is actually an anti-religious impulse...ask the dead Greeks. They'll tell you.
Conor Dugan kindly references some of my ranting over at his blog TriCoastal Commission. It is an honor to even be mentioned in the same breath as Gregory Wolfe of Image. Conor drives home the great point that a faith that is real will absolutely tend toward creating culture. Check it out here.
So, Christianity is the kind of religion that when it is internalized, leads its adherents to do things like build cathedrals, and paint frescos and write Summas and compose music. I am tempted to push this idea to brood over why people who take Islam really serioously tend to not generate culture, but rather to demolish culture. Isn't that part of what made 9/11 so horrific? We knew that there were religious people somewhere, who were rejoicing as they watched the perfect symmetry of those Towers crumble. There is something wrong with a religion which only tears down, but isn't moved to build. Blow up statues, destroy art, kidnap and kill people, suicide bomb buses and hotels and clubs and restaurants, crash planes into buildings - and all of it as an act of religious worship. It is actually an anti-religious impulse...ask the dead Greeks. They'll tell you.
"IF I LIVE, I SHALL GO TO AMHERST. IF I DIE, I SURELY WILL."
Sooooooooooooo exciting! CNN reports here that the house next to Emily Dickinson's in Amherst - called The Evergreens - is now open for tours. This was Austin's house - Emily's brother - and his wife Susan, who was Emily's closest confidant - and, as people argue in some screenplays (ahem...), the source of her greatest suffering. It was to Sue that Emily wrote with grim irony, "You have taught me more than any other person."
My father and I got a personal tour of The Evergreens five years ago. It was far from being tour ready at that point, and they didn't let us go upstairs because the artifacts were still unorganized and unprotected. I stood at the bottom of the stairs and projected myself up past the scarlet silk wallcovering to the rooms beyond. The house was eery because it was kept exactly the same as it had been when Sue and Austin had held court there as Amherst's first family a hundred years before. "What sagacity perished here?" - One can't help thinking in Emily phrases whilst in Amherst.
According to the article, they will be painting Emily's house the original mustard yellow that it was in her lifetime. (Amherst College had been desecrating the poet's home for decades, using it as faculty housing and adding modern amenities. When we first went on pilgrimage to Amherst in the early 1980's, my father, a museum curator, was horrified and affronted for the historical loss. I, for the Poet's memory. As Dad noted with umbrage, "On the other side of town, they preserve Robert Frost's house like it was a shrine to a God!" Frost is a minor, minor poet next to Dickinson. We concluded that it was a sexist thing.) I'll make my next pilgrimage once the house is painted....Or any time I can get there, of course.
Thanks to Clayton for the heads up.
Sooooooooooooo exciting! CNN reports here that the house next to Emily Dickinson's in Amherst - called The Evergreens - is now open for tours. This was Austin's house - Emily's brother - and his wife Susan, who was Emily's closest confidant - and, as people argue in some screenplays (ahem...), the source of her greatest suffering. It was to Sue that Emily wrote with grim irony, "You have taught me more than any other person."
My father and I got a personal tour of The Evergreens five years ago. It was far from being tour ready at that point, and they didn't let us go upstairs because the artifacts were still unorganized and unprotected. I stood at the bottom of the stairs and projected myself up past the scarlet silk wallcovering to the rooms beyond. The house was eery because it was kept exactly the same as it had been when Sue and Austin had held court there as Amherst's first family a hundred years before. "What sagacity perished here?" - One can't help thinking in Emily phrases whilst in Amherst.
According to the article, they will be painting Emily's house the original mustard yellow that it was in her lifetime. (Amherst College had been desecrating the poet's home for decades, using it as faculty housing and adding modern amenities. When we first went on pilgrimage to Amherst in the early 1980's, my father, a museum curator, was horrified and affronted for the historical loss. I, for the Poet's memory. As Dad noted with umbrage, "On the other side of town, they preserve Robert Frost's house like it was a shrine to a God!" Frost is a minor, minor poet next to Dickinson. We concluded that it was a sexist thing.) I'll make my next pilgrimage once the house is painted....Or any time I can get there, of course.
Thanks to Clayton for the heads up.
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
THE DRUMBEAT...PEOPLE NOT PROJECTS
Here is my latest article for National Catholic Register. Thank God people send me emails when the columns come out or I would never know. Gotta remember to subscribe one of these days....
So, this is my most prototypical schtick. I think even my cat Tibby can summarize the salient points. A snip...
Eventually, the industry will need overt preachers and evangelists to support the troops by teaching and ministering here. But as the first wave, Hollywood needs artists who have their spiritual, moral, emotional and professional acts together.
We need people in place who give a witness to the truth of the Gospel by their lives and by the quality of the work they do. We don't need sermons, tracts, conferences and study guides from the Church. We need people of rectitude, discernment, peace, joy, passion, mercy, kindness -artists and professionals who have been transformed by the love of Jesus - to come to Hollywood, to make beautiful things and to build bridges of friendship with the people outside their family of faith.
Another...
We need people to be sent [to Hollywood], but we need people who know what awaits them and have a spiritual strategy to transform the realities of an industry career from stumbling blocks into stepping stones to deeper communion with God.
The Christians who make it in both the business and in their relationship with God are those who take seriously what the Holy Father calls "the artist's special relationship to beauty." This is to live keenly focused on beauty in terms of mastery of their craft and then beauty of life and beauty of soul. They take Christian community very seriously, the way a man in a desert knows where the wells are.
Here is my latest article for National Catholic Register. Thank God people send me emails when the columns come out or I would never know. Gotta remember to subscribe one of these days....
So, this is my most prototypical schtick. I think even my cat Tibby can summarize the salient points. A snip...
Eventually, the industry will need overt preachers and evangelists to support the troops by teaching and ministering here. But as the first wave, Hollywood needs artists who have their spiritual, moral, emotional and professional acts together.
We need people in place who give a witness to the truth of the Gospel by their lives and by the quality of the work they do. We don't need sermons, tracts, conferences and study guides from the Church. We need people of rectitude, discernment, peace, joy, passion, mercy, kindness -artists and professionals who have been transformed by the love of Jesus - to come to Hollywood, to make beautiful things and to build bridges of friendship with the people outside their family of faith.
Another...
We need people to be sent [to Hollywood], but we need people who know what awaits them and have a spiritual strategy to transform the realities of an industry career from stumbling blocks into stepping stones to deeper communion with God.
The Christians who make it in both the business and in their relationship with God are those who take seriously what the Holy Father calls "the artist's special relationship to beauty." This is to live keenly focused on beauty in terms of mastery of their craft and then beauty of life and beauty of soul. They take Christian community very seriously, the way a man in a desert knows where the wells are.
LEAVENING THE MTV LUMP
Here's a piece I was interviewed for by MTV On-line on the impact of The Passion. I have to admit, getting interviewed by MTV News was not something I ever saw coming ten years ago when I was trying to imagine what life after the convent would be like...
I am still learning how to do this press interview thing. For example, for the one and a half quotes that are in this article, I talked for about 30 minutes to the journalist doing the story. I am always amazed how a long conversation gets whittled down to one or two soundbites. The good journalist is the one who chooses a soundbite that reflects the whole spirit of the interviewee on the subject in question. It is quite possible to lift a quote out that is nearly anithetical to what the interviewee really believes or thinks.
I have been really lucky with journalists thus far. Part of it is that I really try to speak to them as people, and not try to talk through them to whomever the faceless millions might be who will hear or read the interview. Making it personal between me and the journalist goes a long way to having them feel that I am a person with, you know, a mother, and not just a thing to be manipulated for an effect.
The biggest thing religious people need to realize is that the one thing journalists need is a good quote. Giving a good quote that makes them chuckle and get excited can trump what they may have started to want to write before they interviewed you. At the end of the day, journlaists have a job to do, and that is rendered easier if they can get some good clear sound-bites.
So, what makes a good sound-bite? "He spoke with authority, and not like their scribes." A good sound-bite takes a clear opinion. It puts the interviewee "out there" without having a place to hide. It is usually memorable because of the way the idea is expressed. That is, a good sound-bite has a poetry about it - a parallel formation of words, or a rework of a platitude to be something new and memorable. It's matter plus form.
Or in other words, art, art, art, art.
Here's a piece I was interviewed for by MTV On-line on the impact of The Passion. I have to admit, getting interviewed by MTV News was not something I ever saw coming ten years ago when I was trying to imagine what life after the convent would be like...
I am still learning how to do this press interview thing. For example, for the one and a half quotes that are in this article, I talked for about 30 minutes to the journalist doing the story. I am always amazed how a long conversation gets whittled down to one or two soundbites. The good journalist is the one who chooses a soundbite that reflects the whole spirit of the interviewee on the subject in question. It is quite possible to lift a quote out that is nearly anithetical to what the interviewee really believes or thinks.
I have been really lucky with journalists thus far. Part of it is that I really try to speak to them as people, and not try to talk through them to whomever the faceless millions might be who will hear or read the interview. Making it personal between me and the journalist goes a long way to having them feel that I am a person with, you know, a mother, and not just a thing to be manipulated for an effect.
The biggest thing religious people need to realize is that the one thing journalists need is a good quote. Giving a good quote that makes them chuckle and get excited can trump what they may have started to want to write before they interviewed you. At the end of the day, journlaists have a job to do, and that is rendered easier if they can get some good clear sound-bites.
So, what makes a good sound-bite? "He spoke with authority, and not like their scribes." A good sound-bite takes a clear opinion. It puts the interviewee "out there" without having a place to hide. It is usually memorable because of the way the idea is expressed. That is, a good sound-bite has a poetry about it - a parallel formation of words, or a rework of a platitude to be something new and memorable. It's matter plus form.
Or in other words, art, art, art, art.
Monday, April 12, 2004
FORGET THE ALAMO!
I tend to have a bias in favor of historical war epics. My father is a naval historian. I grew up on hi-stories, and I never get tired of seeing them played out on screen. Unfortunately, almost every war epic has the same Waterloo. Because a battle is the story of so many players, most war movies end up getting blitzed by too many actors, not enough characters.
The new $100 million dollar Alamo gets flanked early on by the crowd of personalities who made the battle such high drama, but who can't possibly all be developed in a two hour and sixteen minute drama. Every character can only get a few minutes of screen time to be established, so the film resorts to easy, obvious attempts to gain sympathy or notoriety. This is particularly unfortunate in the case of Gen. Santa Anna, as he is reduced to such a stereotype, that the studio executives must have balked at what they ended up having on their hands. So, they had Hancock inject an anti-war/anti-American kind of PC moment in the end of the film, just so we know that nobody at Disney or Imagine is, you know, anti-Latino or anything. There is also a completely grautitous anti-racism against slaves moment, just so we can all remember that, hell, Americans are just as bad as the bad Mexican guys.
(I don't object to these sentiments. I object to them being inserted in a half-hearted attempt to cover the filmmakers' creative butts...)
From a directoral standpoint, there aren't enough establishing shots in the film. This was weird and disconcerting in a war film. I kept wanting to see things from the air to get a broad sense of the opposing armies, but the most director John Lee Hancock gives is a wide shot from either sides lines.
The script was clearly problematic and episodic, so they ended up getting a film that is choppy and hard to follow. There is no attempt to use any imagery, which might have made the film work emotionally. Instead, all the director ended up using is the strong cast at his disposal. Billy Bob Thornton does a great job - as usual - this time fleshing out David Crockett. Thornton is the best thing in the film.
While I was sitting out the last hour of the piece, I started a revery about which epic war films have worked. I only came up with two. The Great Escape and The Battle of the Bulge have huge ensemble casts, but they manage to hold together the main story, clearly communicate the lynchpins of the real history, and establish all of the myriad characters. Of course, The Great Escape takes almost four hours to do this, and The Bulge runs long too. Gettysburg would be on the next tier down. It was a solid and fascinating film with a huge cast - but I would be remiss to count anything with beards that fake looking alongside The Great Escape....Anybody have any other epic war films with huge ensemble casts that worked? (Don't say Lawrence of Arabia or Bridge Over the River Qwai. They are both one or two guy's stories, not ensemble pieces.)
Anyway, this Alamo won't be remembered...except by the studio that lost a wad of cash on it.
I tend to have a bias in favor of historical war epics. My father is a naval historian. I grew up on hi-stories, and I never get tired of seeing them played out on screen. Unfortunately, almost every war epic has the same Waterloo. Because a battle is the story of so many players, most war movies end up getting blitzed by too many actors, not enough characters.
The new $100 million dollar Alamo gets flanked early on by the crowd of personalities who made the battle such high drama, but who can't possibly all be developed in a two hour and sixteen minute drama. Every character can only get a few minutes of screen time to be established, so the film resorts to easy, obvious attempts to gain sympathy or notoriety. This is particularly unfortunate in the case of Gen. Santa Anna, as he is reduced to such a stereotype, that the studio executives must have balked at what they ended up having on their hands. So, they had Hancock inject an anti-war/anti-American kind of PC moment in the end of the film, just so we know that nobody at Disney or Imagine is, you know, anti-Latino or anything. There is also a completely grautitous anti-racism against slaves moment, just so we can all remember that, hell, Americans are just as bad as the bad Mexican guys.
(I don't object to these sentiments. I object to them being inserted in a half-hearted attempt to cover the filmmakers' creative butts...)
From a directoral standpoint, there aren't enough establishing shots in the film. This was weird and disconcerting in a war film. I kept wanting to see things from the air to get a broad sense of the opposing armies, but the most director John Lee Hancock gives is a wide shot from either sides lines.
The script was clearly problematic and episodic, so they ended up getting a film that is choppy and hard to follow. There is no attempt to use any imagery, which might have made the film work emotionally. Instead, all the director ended up using is the strong cast at his disposal. Billy Bob Thornton does a great job - as usual - this time fleshing out David Crockett. Thornton is the best thing in the film.
While I was sitting out the last hour of the piece, I started a revery about which epic war films have worked. I only came up with two. The Great Escape and The Battle of the Bulge have huge ensemble casts, but they manage to hold together the main story, clearly communicate the lynchpins of the real history, and establish all of the myriad characters. Of course, The Great Escape takes almost four hours to do this, and The Bulge runs long too. Gettysburg would be on the next tier down. It was a solid and fascinating film with a huge cast - but I would be remiss to count anything with beards that fake looking alongside The Great Escape....Anybody have any other epic war films with huge ensemble casts that worked? (Don't say Lawrence of Arabia or Bridge Over the River Qwai. They are both one or two guy's stories, not ensemble pieces.)
Anyway, this Alamo won't be remembered...except by the studio that lost a wad of cash on it.
EMILY EASTER MONDAY
318
I'll tell you how the Sun rose --
A Ribbon at a time --
The Steeples swam in Amethyst --
The news, like Squirrels, ran --
The Hills untied their Bonnets --
The Bobolinks -- begun --
Then I said softly to myself --
"That must have been the Sun"!
But how he set -- I know not --
There seemed a purple stile
That little Yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while --
Till when they reached the other side,
A Dominie in Gray --
Put gently up the evening Bars --
And led the flock away --
318
I'll tell you how the Sun rose --
A Ribbon at a time --
The Steeples swam in Amethyst --
The news, like Squirrels, ran --
The Hills untied their Bonnets --
The Bobolinks -- begun --
Then I said softly to myself --
"That must have been the Sun"!
But how he set -- I know not --
There seemed a purple stile
That little Yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while --
Till when they reached the other side,
A Dominie in Gray --
Put gently up the evening Bars --
And led the flock away --
ACT ONE BLOGGER
I'm adding another new blogger to the blog roll. Kris Rasmussen (Act One, '99) is blogging over at The Alpine Path. She is meeting my Emily Mondays and raising with Madeleine (L'Engle) Mondays. Welcome, Kris!
I'm adding another new blogger to the blog roll. Kris Rasmussen (Act One, '99) is blogging over at The Alpine Path. She is meeting my Emily Mondays and raising with Madeleine (L'Engle) Mondays. Welcome, Kris!
Sunday, April 11, 2004
"GO FORTH TO PARADISE" - DAVID SCHALL, RIP
One year ago today, my boss, friend and colleague, David Schall died suddenly of a massive heart attack. Jan Batchler has beautifully summarized here what David meant to the organized Christian community in Hollywood.
I was with David at 4:30pm that afternoon. He had stopped by my office to tell me that he had decided to take a sabbatical starting in the Fall. He said, "I feel like I have done what God wanted me to do. I need to take some time to figure out what He wants me to do next." On the way out of my office he stopped and said, "I don't say enough how proud I am of everything you have done with Act One....And, by the way, I love that color blouse on you." It was so wonderfully David. An hour and a half later, he was in eternity.
I can't believe it has been a year since David walked out of my office that afternoon. So many days I walk up the stairs to my office and catch myself thinking, "Have to tell David about that."
That's the thing I miss the most. Having David's unconditional support and affirmation one office away. Because of his faithfulness to his vocation, David shares in the good done through every work of love, sacrifice and beauty that comes from the Act One community.
"Good and faithful servant. Come, share your Master's joy."
One year ago today, my boss, friend and colleague, David Schall died suddenly of a massive heart attack. Jan Batchler has beautifully summarized here what David meant to the organized Christian community in Hollywood.
I was with David at 4:30pm that afternoon. He had stopped by my office to tell me that he had decided to take a sabbatical starting in the Fall. He said, "I feel like I have done what God wanted me to do. I need to take some time to figure out what He wants me to do next." On the way out of my office he stopped and said, "I don't say enough how proud I am of everything you have done with Act One....And, by the way, I love that color blouse on you." It was so wonderfully David. An hour and a half later, he was in eternity.
I can't believe it has been a year since David walked out of my office that afternoon. So many days I walk up the stairs to my office and catch myself thinking, "Have to tell David about that."
That's the thing I miss the most. Having David's unconditional support and affirmation one office away. Because of his faithfulness to his vocation, David shares in the good done through every work of love, sacrifice and beauty that comes from the Act One community.
"Good and faithful servant. Come, share your Master's joy."
A TV WRITER BLOGS...
Here is a very informative blog from a TV writer. For those of you who are fantasizing about being part of the television industry, this is a great place to linger and see if the life she is describing seems like a place you would thrive....and where God wants you, of course, which is ultimately the only reason to do anything, isn't it? I like this writer because she clearly loves what she does, although she doesn't have any illusions about it either. She also must be a pretty pastoral soul to take so much time to go into the fine details of network TV inner-workings.
Thanks to Evefor making me aware of it.
Here is a very informative blog from a TV writer. For those of you who are fantasizing about being part of the television industry, this is a great place to linger and see if the life she is describing seems like a place you would thrive....and where God wants you, of course, which is ultimately the only reason to do anything, isn't it? I like this writer because she clearly loves what she does, although she doesn't have any illusions about it either. She also must be a pretty pastoral soul to take so much time to go into the fine details of network TV inner-workings.
Thanks to Evefor making me aware of it.
HERE WE GO AGAIN...SEE ME IN SAN DIEGO
I'm keynoting the annual awards celebration for the San Diego Christian Writers Guild on Friday, April 30, 2004. If you are a writer anywhere south of Orange County, the San Deigo Writers Guild is probably the best organized, most successful fellowship of writers in the whole country. The Guild's web newsletter is here. Information on the awards dinner is here.
I'm keynoting the annual awards celebration for the San Diego Christian Writers Guild on Friday, April 30, 2004. If you are a writer anywhere south of Orange County, the San Deigo Writers Guild is probably the best organized, most successful fellowship of writers in the whole country. The Guild's web newsletter is here. Information on the awards dinner is here.
Saturday, April 10, 2004
Christians, to the Paschal victim
offer your thankful praises!
A Lamb the sheep redeems:
Christ, who only is sinless,
reconciles sinners to the Father.
Death and life have contended
in that combat stupendous:
the Prince of life, who died,
reigns immortal.
Speak, Mary, declaring
what you saw, wayfaring:
"The tomb of Christ, who is living,
the glory of Jesus' resurrection;
"Bright angels attesting,
the shroud and napkin resting.
"Yes, Christ my hope is arisen;
to Galilee he goes before you."
Christ indeed from death is risen,
our new life obtaining;
have mercy, victor King, ever reigning!
Amen.
(Wipo, ca. 1030)
offer your thankful praises!
A Lamb the sheep redeems:
Christ, who only is sinless,
reconciles sinners to the Father.
Death and life have contended
in that combat stupendous:
the Prince of life, who died,
reigns immortal.
Speak, Mary, declaring
what you saw, wayfaring:
"The tomb of Christ, who is living,
the glory of Jesus' resurrection;
"Bright angels attesting,
the shroud and napkin resting.
"Yes, Christ my hope is arisen;
to Galilee he goes before you."
Christ indeed from death is risen,
our new life obtaining;
have mercy, victor King, ever reigning!
Amen.
(Wipo, ca. 1030)
Monday, April 05, 2004
A BISHOP GETS IT
Here is a link to a new Pastoral Letter on Cinema from Most Rev. Michael Saltarelli to the People of the Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware. The document takes a strong stand in support of The Passion of the Christ among other movies, encouraging the People of God to look to works of cinema to see reflections of the Fact of Christ.
I actually was invited to give notes on the letter when it was being written, which I was pleased an honored to do.
Here's a snippet...
...the brutality of the film, which has been the center of so much controversy, is itself a visual device to express saving truths about the inconceivable horror of sin, and the boundless love of God. For every sin is truly an act of violence against God. And only Divine Love could have powered Jesus to his feet over and over through the torment of pain and suffering that was the journey to Golgotha.
The Passion of the Christ also offers some of the most striking Eucharistic imagery ever seen on the screen. One of the great themes of encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia is the Holy Father's emphasis on the sacrificial nature of the Mass: "The Eucharist is indelibly marked by the event of the Lord's passion and death, of which it is not only a reminder but the sacramental re-presentation. It is the sacrifice of the Cross perpetuated down the ages."(#11) The Holy Father has diagnosed that over the past few years, some in the Church have lost the sense of the reality that the Mass is the unbloody renewal of Christ's sacrifice on Calvary. Gibson’s film makes this point visually by interspersing scenes of The Last Supper with scenes of the Crucifixion. We cannot leave this film without understanding that the Mass is both a sacred meal and the unbloody renewal of Christ's sacrifice.
Here is a link to a new Pastoral Letter on Cinema from Most Rev. Michael Saltarelli to the People of the Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware. The document takes a strong stand in support of The Passion of the Christ among other movies, encouraging the People of God to look to works of cinema to see reflections of the Fact of Christ.
I actually was invited to give notes on the letter when it was being written, which I was pleased an honored to do.
Here's a snippet...
...the brutality of the film, which has been the center of so much controversy, is itself a visual device to express saving truths about the inconceivable horror of sin, and the boundless love of God. For every sin is truly an act of violence against God. And only Divine Love could have powered Jesus to his feet over and over through the torment of pain and suffering that was the journey to Golgotha.
The Passion of the Christ also offers some of the most striking Eucharistic imagery ever seen on the screen. One of the great themes of encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia is the Holy Father's emphasis on the sacrificial nature of the Mass: "The Eucharist is indelibly marked by the event of the Lord's passion and death, of which it is not only a reminder but the sacramental re-presentation. It is the sacrifice of the Cross perpetuated down the ages."(#11) The Holy Father has diagnosed that over the past few years, some in the Church have lost the sense of the reality that the Mass is the unbloody renewal of Christ's sacrifice on Calvary. Gibson’s film makes this point visually by interspersing scenes of The Last Supper with scenes of the Crucifixion. We cannot leave this film without understanding that the Mass is both a sacred meal and the unbloody renewal of Christ's sacrifice.
"A THING OF BEAUTY IS" AN ETERNAL SUNSHINE
I am going to take a hiatus from blogging for Holy Week, but because I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind this weekend, I am going to push the start of the hiatus until just after I can write a rave here for this film. I'll be quick because I have to get to the stupid gym which I hate before work.
The film - which will achieve cult status for its style and insight - slams the cinematic coffin on the Sexual Revolution. I was thinking to put together a talk based on three films from three different periods of the Sexual Revolution. (Good grief! Can't we come up with a more apt name for the last forty years of this hedonistic nightmare? How about the Sexual Devastation? Or if it has to be "revolution", how about "The Sexual French Revolution"? I mean, it was as big a mess as that travesty in the name of liberte egalite fraternite... "Monsieur, eh, can you make, eh, the amor and not the guerre, s'il vous plait? Or, eh, we will, eh, cut off your head, oui?")
Love Story starts the cycle with its sham requirement that "Love means never having to say you're sorry." The legacy of that piece of dialogue idiocy, is that a generation and a half of people went around killing their relationships whenever the inescapable need for "being sorry" came in to it. The deformed thinking seems to have run like this:
A) "Love means never having to say we're sorry." That is, when you meet "your perfect soul-mate" (ewwwwwwwww retch! retch!), it will be the person who never really offends you (such that, you know, repentance would be required), and whom you never offend (such that, you know, you should have to ask forgiveness).
B) My lover and I do nothing but end up sinning against each other.
C) We mustn't be in love....Let's end it.
The next movie in the cycle is The Ice Storm. This movie takes a look at people who are ravaged by being in the first decade of the Sexual French Revolution. Even in just ten years, it is already a failure, leaving people stripped and isolated, with nothing certain except their own isolation. The people in this movie are trapped like in an addiction - loving it and hating it, but basically not seeing any other way to live. So, they drug themselves and end up deadening every emotion except cynicism.
Flash forward to 2004, and we have Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - a new cinematic thesis for the folks who are stolidly rejecting the anti-life-style of the Baby Boomers. Prof. Mary Ann Glendon (HERO! HERO!) at Harvard has noted that the "Y" in Gen Y could stand for "Yearning." Played perfectly by perennially underestimated Jim Carrey, and the so much better than Titanic , Kate Winslet, the film follows a Gen Y couple who make it through the following syllogism:
A) I love you.
B) You hurt and bore me sometimes.
C) Maybe being hurt and bored is part of love? I forgive you. Let's stay together.
It's really, really astounding. The culture is working its way out of the pit, folks! I almost couldn't believe my eyes.
The film is about a couple who - taking their cue from thier Baby Boomer elders - futilely attempt to use a material method to root out/fix something in their spirits. How stunning is that?! Is there anything that has exemplified the Selfish Generation more than the way they have engaged and worshipped the material and ignored, subjugated, discounted and fled from the just as real reality of the spiritual?
All through the film I kept hearing in my head a line someone said to me once in high school, that because of my particular wounds, just stuck: "If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, it is yours. If it doesn't, it never was." I think this line is ultimately one more of the many stupid selfish creeds of the Sexual French Revolution. It is compelling because we are all infected with this age, but it is really a lie. Another way to say it is, "Hell, if somebody hurts you, screw them. Certainly don't make yourself vulnerable by going in search of them." Eternal Sunshine, instead, asks the question, is letting go of love even possible? Once it has you, you can't escape it...
There is a lot of great technical stuff in the film: great structure, emart writing, beautiful cinematography, wonderful acting. The supporting characters are also great - and all add something to the central theme. So, Kirsten Dunst, plays a Gen Y'er who, uncovering the lies and selfishness of her Boomer former boss and lover (played by Tom Wilkinson,...because, I guess, Bill Clinton, was unavailable to play himself), ends up rejecting nihilism and cynicism and makes a heroic truth-affirming choice.
It's a very smart and encouraging film, without any noticeable quantity of the crassness in which Boomer filmmakers generally couch (and so, obscure) their insights.
Two thumbs up for Eternal Sunshine. A must see for those who wait expectantly for the better Day.
I am going to take a hiatus from blogging for Holy Week, but because I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind this weekend, I am going to push the start of the hiatus until just after I can write a rave here for this film. I'll be quick because I have to get to the stupid gym which I hate before work.
The film - which will achieve cult status for its style and insight - slams the cinematic coffin on the Sexual Revolution. I was thinking to put together a talk based on three films from three different periods of the Sexual Revolution. (Good grief! Can't we come up with a more apt name for the last forty years of this hedonistic nightmare? How about the Sexual Devastation? Or if it has to be "revolution", how about "The Sexual French Revolution"? I mean, it was as big a mess as that travesty in the name of liberte egalite fraternite... "Monsieur, eh, can you make, eh, the amor and not the guerre, s'il vous plait? Or, eh, we will, eh, cut off your head, oui?")
Love Story starts the cycle with its sham requirement that "Love means never having to say you're sorry." The legacy of that piece of dialogue idiocy, is that a generation and a half of people went around killing their relationships whenever the inescapable need for "being sorry" came in to it. The deformed thinking seems to have run like this:
A) "Love means never having to say we're sorry." That is, when you meet "your perfect soul-mate" (ewwwwwwwww retch! retch!), it will be the person who never really offends you (such that, you know, repentance would be required), and whom you never offend (such that, you know, you should have to ask forgiveness).
B) My lover and I do nothing but end up sinning against each other.
C) We mustn't be in love....Let's end it.
The next movie in the cycle is The Ice Storm. This movie takes a look at people who are ravaged by being in the first decade of the Sexual French Revolution. Even in just ten years, it is already a failure, leaving people stripped and isolated, with nothing certain except their own isolation. The people in this movie are trapped like in an addiction - loving it and hating it, but basically not seeing any other way to live. So, they drug themselves and end up deadening every emotion except cynicism.
Flash forward to 2004, and we have Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - a new cinematic thesis for the folks who are stolidly rejecting the anti-life-style of the Baby Boomers. Prof. Mary Ann Glendon (HERO! HERO!) at Harvard has noted that the "Y" in Gen Y could stand for "Yearning." Played perfectly by perennially underestimated Jim Carrey, and the so much better than Titanic , Kate Winslet, the film follows a Gen Y couple who make it through the following syllogism:
A) I love you.
B) You hurt and bore me sometimes.
C) Maybe being hurt and bored is part of love? I forgive you. Let's stay together.
It's really, really astounding. The culture is working its way out of the pit, folks! I almost couldn't believe my eyes.
The film is about a couple who - taking their cue from thier Baby Boomer elders - futilely attempt to use a material method to root out/fix something in their spirits. How stunning is that?! Is there anything that has exemplified the Selfish Generation more than the way they have engaged and worshipped the material and ignored, subjugated, discounted and fled from the just as real reality of the spiritual?
All through the film I kept hearing in my head a line someone said to me once in high school, that because of my particular wounds, just stuck: "If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, it is yours. If it doesn't, it never was." I think this line is ultimately one more of the many stupid selfish creeds of the Sexual French Revolution. It is compelling because we are all infected with this age, but it is really a lie. Another way to say it is, "Hell, if somebody hurts you, screw them. Certainly don't make yourself vulnerable by going in search of them." Eternal Sunshine, instead, asks the question, is letting go of love even possible? Once it has you, you can't escape it...
There is a lot of great technical stuff in the film: great structure, emart writing, beautiful cinematography, wonderful acting. The supporting characters are also great - and all add something to the central theme. So, Kirsten Dunst, plays a Gen Y'er who, uncovering the lies and selfishness of her Boomer former boss and lover (played by Tom Wilkinson,...because, I guess, Bill Clinton, was unavailable to play himself), ends up rejecting nihilism and cynicism and makes a heroic truth-affirming choice.
It's a very smart and encouraging film, without any noticeable quantity of the crassness in which Boomer filmmakers generally couch (and so, obscure) their insights.
Two thumbs up for Eternal Sunshine. A must see for those who wait expectantly for the better Day.
EMILY MONDAY OF HOLY WEEK
561
I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, Eyes --
I wonder if It weighs like Mine --
Or has an Easier size.
I wonder if They bore it long --
Or did it just begin --
I could not tell the Date of Mine --
It feels so old a pain --
I wonder if it hurts to live --
And if They have to try --
And whether -- could They choose between --
It would not be -- to die --
I note that Some -- gone patient long --
At length, renew their smile --
An imitation of a Light
That has so little Oil --
I wonder if when Years have piled --
Some Thousands (of moments) on the Harm that hurt them early --
(If) such a lapse could give them any Balm --
Or would they go on aching still
Through Centuries of Nerve --
Enlightened to a larger Pain -
In Contrast with the Love --
The Grieved -- are many -- I am told --
There is the various Cause --
Death -- is but one -- and comes but once --
And only nails the eyes --
There's Grief of Want --
And Grief of Cold --
A sort they call "Despair" --
There's Banishment from native Eyes In sight of Native Air --
And though I may not guess the kind correctly --
Yet to me --
A piercing Comfort it affords
In passing Calvary --
To note the fashions -- of the Cross --
And how they're mostly worn --
Still fascinated to presume
That Some -- are like My Own --
561
I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, Eyes --
I wonder if It weighs like Mine --
Or has an Easier size.
I wonder if They bore it long --
Or did it just begin --
I could not tell the Date of Mine --
It feels so old a pain --
I wonder if it hurts to live --
And if They have to try --
And whether -- could They choose between --
It would not be -- to die --
I note that Some -- gone patient long --
At length, renew their smile --
An imitation of a Light
That has so little Oil --
I wonder if when Years have piled --
Some Thousands (of moments) on the Harm that hurt them early --
(If) such a lapse could give them any Balm --
Or would they go on aching still
Through Centuries of Nerve --
Enlightened to a larger Pain -
In Contrast with the Love --
The Grieved -- are many -- I am told --
There is the various Cause --
Death -- is but one -- and comes but once --
And only nails the eyes --
There's Grief of Want --
And Grief of Cold --
A sort they call "Despair" --
There's Banishment from native Eyes In sight of Native Air --
And though I may not guess the kind correctly --
Yet to me --
A piercing Comfort it affords
In passing Calvary --
To note the fashions -- of the Cross --
And how they're mostly worn --
Still fascinated to presume
That Some -- are like My Own --
Sunday, April 04, 2004
SEE BARB IN DC!
On May 22, 2004, Act One and Artists for a Renewed Society (ARS) are co-sponsoring a day long conference called Making a Good Writer Great, at the John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington, DC.
The day is in conjunction with the month-long Act One-DC program, but will be open to the general public. It will focus on the writer's craft in general, and will feature as our main speaker, the great and wonderful Dr. Linda Seger.
Dr. Seger, whose doctorate is in theology, is one of the most sought after script-doctors on the feature side of Hollywood. She is the best-selling author of many books on writing and filmmaking including: Making a Good Script Great, Webthinking, The Art of Adaptation, Creating Unforgettable Characters, When Women Call the Shots: The Developing Power and Influence of Women in Television and Film, Advanced Screenwriting: Raising Your Script to the Academy Award Level, and From Script to Screen: The Collaborative Art of Filmmaking. Linda will have three hours to do a talk and some exercises from her book, Making a Good Writer Great.
Also speaking at the event is screenwriter, and Flannery O'Connor afficionado Tom Provost. I knew Tom and I would be friends when I went to his house in Glendale for a party one night, and he had a pciture of Flannery O'Connor on his refrigerator....you know, where most people put their family photos.... Tom will do a talk using Flannery O'Connor as a case-study for Christian writers. What was she doing as a writer? How did she do it?
Finally, I will be giving a talk on the themes that should define a Christian writer.
If you are a writer anywhere East of the Mississippi, this will be a great day. For more info, email actone@fpch.org.
On May 22, 2004, Act One and Artists for a Renewed Society (ARS) are co-sponsoring a day long conference called Making a Good Writer Great, at the John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington, DC.
The day is in conjunction with the month-long Act One-DC program, but will be open to the general public. It will focus on the writer's craft in general, and will feature as our main speaker, the great and wonderful Dr. Linda Seger.
Dr. Seger, whose doctorate is in theology, is one of the most sought after script-doctors on the feature side of Hollywood. She is the best-selling author of many books on writing and filmmaking including: Making a Good Script Great, Webthinking, The Art of Adaptation, Creating Unforgettable Characters, When Women Call the Shots: The Developing Power and Influence of Women in Television and Film, Advanced Screenwriting: Raising Your Script to the Academy Award Level, and From Script to Screen: The Collaborative Art of Filmmaking. Linda will have three hours to do a talk and some exercises from her book, Making a Good Writer Great.
Also speaking at the event is screenwriter, and Flannery O'Connor afficionado Tom Provost. I knew Tom and I would be friends when I went to his house in Glendale for a party one night, and he had a pciture of Flannery O'Connor on his refrigerator....you know, where most people put their family photos.... Tom will do a talk using Flannery O'Connor as a case-study for Christian writers. What was she doing as a writer? How did she do it?
Finally, I will be giving a talk on the themes that should define a Christian writer.
If you are a writer anywhere East of the Mississippi, this will be a great day. For more info, email actone@fpch.org.
SEE BARB IN PITTSBURGH!
Because of an upcoming confluence of business engagements in the heartland, I will be able to squeeze in a speech at the St. David's Christian Writers Mini-Conference on April 17, 2004.
I used to do a lot more Christian Writers Conferences - they were the first ones who started inviting me to teach seminars and give speeches - but as my schedule has loaded up, I have had to pass offf most of these events every year. I miss them sometimes because they are generally such faith-filled, encouraging opportunities to meet other writers. I have made some great friends through the writer's conferences - Linda Seger, Jim Bell, Deidre Knight, Christy (put Married Name Here), Chip MacGregor, Carmen Leal, several of the Act One alumns - really, many more.
I am continually amazed at the large network of Christian (read: Evangelical) Writers Conferences that are happening all the time in every state. And then I start to muse as to why we Catholic writers don't have a similar network? Or, because I hate reinventing the wheel, why we Catholics don't make up a larger presence at the "Christian" Writers conferences.
Part of the reason is undoubtedly because the CBA (Christian Booksellers Association) drives a lot of the conferences - by sending publishers, reps. editors and sponsorships - and the CBA is 95% Evangelical. Another part of the reason might be the polarization in the Catholic Church would have most of the biggest Catholic publishers sitting out events because they are either too-rightwing or not rightwing enough. Protestants are able to work together with much less ideological verisimilitude. (Am I using that word right?)
Anyway, it would be very neat if we could muster at least a couple of annual Catholic Writers Conferences. (I have been to two only - one at St. Thomas Aquinas College and one at Franciscan University.) Someone, see to it, won't you?
Anyway, here is the info about the upcoming near-Pittsburgh conference:
Writing Success XIII
April 17, 2004
at
Bethany United Presbyterian Church
100 Venango Street, Mercer, PA
9:00 - 4:45
Keynote Address: "Five Things Christians Can Do to Fix the Culture Fast" by Barbara Nicolosi
Click here for more and then click on "Mini-conference."
Because of an upcoming confluence of business engagements in the heartland, I will be able to squeeze in a speech at the St. David's Christian Writers Mini-Conference on April 17, 2004.
I used to do a lot more Christian Writers Conferences - they were the first ones who started inviting me to teach seminars and give speeches - but as my schedule has loaded up, I have had to pass offf most of these events every year. I miss them sometimes because they are generally such faith-filled, encouraging opportunities to meet other writers. I have made some great friends through the writer's conferences - Linda Seger, Jim Bell, Deidre Knight, Christy (put Married Name Here), Chip MacGregor, Carmen Leal, several of the Act One alumns - really, many more.
I am continually amazed at the large network of Christian (read: Evangelical) Writers Conferences that are happening all the time in every state. And then I start to muse as to why we Catholic writers don't have a similar network? Or, because I hate reinventing the wheel, why we Catholics don't make up a larger presence at the "Christian" Writers conferences.
Part of the reason is undoubtedly because the CBA (Christian Booksellers Association) drives a lot of the conferences - by sending publishers, reps. editors and sponsorships - and the CBA is 95% Evangelical. Another part of the reason might be the polarization in the Catholic Church would have most of the biggest Catholic publishers sitting out events because they are either too-rightwing or not rightwing enough. Protestants are able to work together with much less ideological verisimilitude. (Am I using that word right?)
Anyway, it would be very neat if we could muster at least a couple of annual Catholic Writers Conferences. (I have been to two only - one at St. Thomas Aquinas College and one at Franciscan University.) Someone, see to it, won't you?
Anyway, here is the info about the upcoming near-Pittsburgh conference:
Writing Success XIII
April 17, 2004
at
Bethany United Presbyterian Church
100 Venango Street, Mercer, PA
9:00 - 4:45
Keynote Address: "Five Things Christians Can Do to Fix the Culture Fast" by Barbara Nicolosi
Click here for more and then click on "Mini-conference."
SEE BARB IN PHILLY!
BARB NICOLOSI ON MEL GIBSON'S THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST
On April 23, 2004 at 7:30 PM in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the International Institute for Culture is hosting a lecture on the significance of The Passion of The Christ. In terms of the climate of the entertainment industry, the film has the opportunity to usher in a new wave of projects that will present religious subjects in a positive light. The film also sets a new benchmark in terms of cinematic artistry, combining imagery, composition and editing to heighten its storytelling power. Ms. Barbara Nicolosi, Director of Act One, Inc. will discuss the film as a work of cinematic art and its implications for the broader entertainment and popular culture. Seating is limited, so reserve your seat today. For details click here.
BARB NICOLOSI ON MEL GIBSON'S THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST
On April 23, 2004 at 7:30 PM in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the International Institute for Culture is hosting a lecture on the significance of The Passion of The Christ. In terms of the climate of the entertainment industry, the film has the opportunity to usher in a new wave of projects that will present religious subjects in a positive light. The film also sets a new benchmark in terms of cinematic artistry, combining imagery, composition and editing to heighten its storytelling power. Ms. Barbara Nicolosi, Director of Act One, Inc. will discuss the film as a work of cinematic art and its implications for the broader entertainment and popular culture. Seating is limited, so reserve your seat today. For details click here.
Friday, April 02, 2004
ON "THE ECONOMY" OF ARTISTIC GRACE
Probably my favorite phrase from theology is "the economy of salvation." Referring to God's creation and management of the world, and particularly His plan for salvation accomplished through the Church, the word comes from the Greek oikonomia (economy), literally, "management of a household" or "stewardship."
I just like that metaphor of God, CEO, Universe, Inc., parsing out graces and private revelations, inspiring charisms and investing gifts of grace and nature inj them, folding other charisms as they have stopped being profitable for souls. He seems to me to be absolutely in the mold of venture capitalist with His personal power ideal sign hanging over His Office desk in heaven:
"To those who have, even more will be given. To those who do not have, even the little they have will be taken away." (Das Biblical)
There is also a risk whimsy about Him that seems to me to be predicable of most wildly successful investors. There is nothing Socialist about God. He isn't in the least interested in the fair distribution of gifts and graces. He does whatever He wills.
(To whining vineyard workers) "What does it matter to you how I spend my money? Or, are you envious because I am generous?
(To Peter who wanted to know whether John would get martyed painfully too...) "What business is it of yours what I dispose for Him? Your business is to follow me."
I met two billionaires last year and they both struck me as having this kind of risk-whimsy. Particualrly, Phil Anshutz, outlined his own philosophy of financing movies in Hollywood as, "And if I lose tens of millions of dollars, that's my business. I've got it to lose!"
As someone who instructs and works with artists, I come face to face with the "Divine economy of artistic talent" every day. It's one of the reasons running Act One has to be such a patient, deliberative, almost "twiddling the thumbs" kind of process. Because, ultimately, no matter how great our classes, mentorships, community and ongoing formation are, 'if God doesn't endow the artist, than in vain does the Act One programmer program.'
It's such a hard reality to have to engage - and all of us who work in the arts have to evolve a strategy to deal with it. Most of the people who come to us for guidance and help, just do not have the talent to make our efforts on their behalf worthwhile. The trick is, to still give help - but to give the kind of help that will actually be of use to the person really who only wants you to hand their screenplay off to Steven Spielberg.
What makes it all worthwhile is that every so often, when you are probably over-tired and really don't have the time or energy to 'sell everything you have and buy the field,' you come face to face with the Divine Economy in the arts. And it is such a rush.
I am an adjunct professor of screenwriting this year at Azusa Pacific University. My class of eight seniors and juniors just turned in their first drafts of the first acts of the screenplays they are writing for my class. So, the other day, I am plodding through their stack of projects, covering the white pages in red notes. Typos, grammatical errors, word usage problems, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....oh, oh, where was I? Oh yes... formatting errors, style problems, unimaginative scenarios, tedious characterizations, stilted dialogue, wasted transitions, overall clunkiness of prose...You know, just what you expect to find in any stack of screenplays that ever land on my desk from beginners. I'm not picking on APU here. Ask anybody who has to read writing for a living - or audition actors - or supervise painters or sculptors....
So, in the few minutes before class started, I realized that I hadn't looked at one of the student's scripts. It had gotten lost in the bottom of "My bag with my APU stuff in it - the one with the large Indian elephant on it." While the students were shuffling in, I flipped open the draft and uncapped my red pen. And then it happened again. And suddenly I'm thinking of that Emily Dickinson poem...
#208
Beauty - be not caused - It Is.
Chase it, and it ceases -
Chase it not, and it abides.
[Try and] Overtake the Creases in the Meadow when the Wind Runs his fingers thro' it -
Deity will see to it -
That you never do it.
Took me only half a page to see it. One of my students has talent.
My students were throwing me greetings and questions while they settled in. All I wanted to do was duck under my desk and read. "LEAVE me alone! Can't you see I have a good writer here!?!"
I finally pulled myself back to my duties at the bottom of the second page. I looked the writer in the eye with the kind of suspicion that always follows when you find raw talent. (Dark voice from unhappy wounded center:) How many scripts have you written before?
The twenty-one year old, blinked back in confusion. "Three. I have a novel too. And other things..."
I immediately started a kind of Machiavellian planning as to how I could get this young person under the collective wing of people I know who could help her. It will be a joy for us all.
I'm not saying that my other students might not have the chops to make a go of it as writers. They might. They will have to sweat and work very hard and take every opportunity, and cultivate other skills alongside their writing talent to make up for the fact that the Divine Economy of Artistic Grace has not made a lavish investment in them. And sometimes, people make it on will -power because the Divinely gifted people frequently have other huge emotional/psycyhological/spiritual holes that God had to puncture in them to make them good vessels for what He wanted to say through them.
It's all so terribly unfair and wonderful.
Probably my favorite phrase from theology is "the economy of salvation." Referring to God's creation and management of the world, and particularly His plan for salvation accomplished through the Church, the word comes from the Greek oikonomia (economy), literally, "management of a household" or "stewardship."
I just like that metaphor of God, CEO, Universe, Inc., parsing out graces and private revelations, inspiring charisms and investing gifts of grace and nature inj them, folding other charisms as they have stopped being profitable for souls. He seems to me to be absolutely in the mold of venture capitalist with His personal power ideal sign hanging over His Office desk in heaven:
"To those who have, even more will be given. To those who do not have, even the little they have will be taken away." (Das Biblical)
There is also a risk whimsy about Him that seems to me to be predicable of most wildly successful investors. There is nothing Socialist about God. He isn't in the least interested in the fair distribution of gifts and graces. He does whatever He wills.
(To whining vineyard workers) "What does it matter to you how I spend my money? Or, are you envious because I am generous?
(To Peter who wanted to know whether John would get martyed painfully too...) "What business is it of yours what I dispose for Him? Your business is to follow me."
I met two billionaires last year and they both struck me as having this kind of risk-whimsy. Particualrly, Phil Anshutz, outlined his own philosophy of financing movies in Hollywood as, "And if I lose tens of millions of dollars, that's my business. I've got it to lose!"
As someone who instructs and works with artists, I come face to face with the "Divine economy of artistic talent" every day. It's one of the reasons running Act One has to be such a patient, deliberative, almost "twiddling the thumbs" kind of process. Because, ultimately, no matter how great our classes, mentorships, community and ongoing formation are, 'if God doesn't endow the artist, than in vain does the Act One programmer program.'
It's such a hard reality to have to engage - and all of us who work in the arts have to evolve a strategy to deal with it. Most of the people who come to us for guidance and help, just do not have the talent to make our efforts on their behalf worthwhile. The trick is, to still give help - but to give the kind of help that will actually be of use to the person really who only wants you to hand their screenplay off to Steven Spielberg.
What makes it all worthwhile is that every so often, when you are probably over-tired and really don't have the time or energy to 'sell everything you have and buy the field,' you come face to face with the Divine Economy in the arts. And it is such a rush.
I am an adjunct professor of screenwriting this year at Azusa Pacific University. My class of eight seniors and juniors just turned in their first drafts of the first acts of the screenplays they are writing for my class. So, the other day, I am plodding through their stack of projects, covering the white pages in red notes. Typos, grammatical errors, word usage problems, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....oh, oh, where was I? Oh yes... formatting errors, style problems, unimaginative scenarios, tedious characterizations, stilted dialogue, wasted transitions, overall clunkiness of prose...You know, just what you expect to find in any stack of screenplays that ever land on my desk from beginners. I'm not picking on APU here. Ask anybody who has to read writing for a living - or audition actors - or supervise painters or sculptors....
So, in the few minutes before class started, I realized that I hadn't looked at one of the student's scripts. It had gotten lost in the bottom of "My bag with my APU stuff in it - the one with the large Indian elephant on it." While the students were shuffling in, I flipped open the draft and uncapped my red pen. And then it happened again. And suddenly I'm thinking of that Emily Dickinson poem...
#208
Beauty - be not caused - It Is.
Chase it, and it ceases -
Chase it not, and it abides.
[Try and] Overtake the Creases in the Meadow when the Wind Runs his fingers thro' it -
Deity will see to it -
That you never do it.
Took me only half a page to see it. One of my students has talent.
My students were throwing me greetings and questions while they settled in. All I wanted to do was duck under my desk and read. "LEAVE me alone! Can't you see I have a good writer here!?!"
I finally pulled myself back to my duties at the bottom of the second page. I looked the writer in the eye with the kind of suspicion that always follows when you find raw talent. (Dark voice from unhappy wounded center:) How many scripts have you written before?
The twenty-one year old, blinked back in confusion. "Three. I have a novel too. And other things..."
I immediately started a kind of Machiavellian planning as to how I could get this young person under the collective wing of people I know who could help her. It will be a joy for us all.
I'm not saying that my other students might not have the chops to make a go of it as writers. They might. They will have to sweat and work very hard and take every opportunity, and cultivate other skills alongside their writing talent to make up for the fact that the Divine Economy of Artistic Grace has not made a lavish investment in them. And sometimes, people make it on will -power because the Divinely gifted people frequently have other huge emotional/psycyhological/spiritual holes that God had to puncture in them to make them good vessels for what He wanted to say through them.
It's all so terribly unfair and wonderful.
Thursday, April 01, 2004
TPOTC: MEGA-HIT PERSPECTIVE
In four weeks and five days, The Passion of the Christ had racked up domestic box-office total of $315,152,778. Just to put that in perspective, the elfen mega-hit Return of the King racked up $374,556,572 domestic in 14 weeks and 5 days.
If TPOTC has a huge week next week, as it seems like it will, it will surpass ROTK in half the time it took ROTK to rack up its once unbelievable numbers.
Just in case it wasn't in your local newspaper... TPOTC has racked up international box-office so far of $58.7 million. It opened number one this past weekend inthe UK, Argentina ("smashing record set by Titannic"), Venezuala ("outgunning previous industry high Matrix Reloaded"), South Africa, Norway, Finland and Hungary.
It continued as the number one picture in Mexico (now up to "a stellar $11 million"), Brazil, Australia and Poland.
Just lovin' the view from here...
In four weeks and five days, The Passion of the Christ had racked up domestic box-office total of $315,152,778. Just to put that in perspective, the elfen mega-hit Return of the King racked up $374,556,572 domestic in 14 weeks and 5 days.
If TPOTC has a huge week next week, as it seems like it will, it will surpass ROTK in half the time it took ROTK to rack up its once unbelievable numbers.
Just in case it wasn't in your local newspaper... TPOTC has racked up international box-office so far of $58.7 million. It opened number one this past weekend inthe UK, Argentina ("smashing record set by Titannic"), Venezuala ("outgunning previous industry high Matrix Reloaded"), South Africa, Norway, Finland and Hungary.
It continued as the number one picture in Mexico (now up to "a stellar $11 million"), Brazil, Australia and Poland.
Just lovin' the view from here...
AND JUST WHO CALLED YOU YESTERDAY?
So, there I am yesterday, shouldering my daily office burden of basically trying to see if there is indeed a wood surface under all of the papers that are piled on my desk. My assistant, Anthony, has taken to putting "really important" phone messages and reminders on neon yellow and hot pink post-its and sticking them to my computer monitor. So, everyday, my computer looks more and more like a spring flower blossoming into Easter color...just lovely....
The phone rings, and Anthony buzzes in to my office, "Um, I know you said you aren't here for anyone but the Pope or, well, Emma Thompson, but how about the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts?"
[See Barbara lunge for the phone!!!!!!!!!]
Our Chairman: Hello, Barbara. This is Dana Gioia.
Barbara: (oh so suave and cool) Yes! Yes! I know! How cool! You calling me!
OC: How are you?
Barbara: (not used to being excited, so becoming weird) Hey, well. Right now? Great! (here comes the weird part) But you know make it quick, I've got the Pope on the other line!
OC: Well, then...
(Barbara crumpling to ground in mortified horror.)
OC: I wanted to call you personally to inform you that Act One has been selected to receive a National Endowment Grant.
Barbara: (much glibber than it sounds) Thank you! Thank you so much!
OC: I am personally delighted to welcome Act One as one of our Endowment funded projects, and I wanted to call you personally to give you the good news.
Barbara: (Even more wit this time) THANK YOU! Thank you SO much.
Have I mentioned before that Dana Gioia is a wonderful and brilliant man? It is such an honor for the program to have his support and good wishes. He will be giving our Closing banquet address in Washington, DC on June 3rd. It will be open to the public if any of you want to come and hear him.
Overall, this Nat'l Endowment grant is very cool news for Act One. The grant isn't large, but it does give us a lot of credibility to be listed right there along with American Masters, the Metropolitan Opera and Public Radio International, as a recipient of NEA funding.
So, there I am yesterday, shouldering my daily office burden of basically trying to see if there is indeed a wood surface under all of the papers that are piled on my desk. My assistant, Anthony, has taken to putting "really important" phone messages and reminders on neon yellow and hot pink post-its and sticking them to my computer monitor. So, everyday, my computer looks more and more like a spring flower blossoming into Easter color...just lovely....
The phone rings, and Anthony buzzes in to my office, "Um, I know you said you aren't here for anyone but the Pope or, well, Emma Thompson, but how about the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts?"
[See Barbara lunge for the phone!!!!!!!!!]
Our Chairman: Hello, Barbara. This is Dana Gioia.
Barbara: (oh so suave and cool) Yes! Yes! I know! How cool! You calling me!
OC: How are you?
Barbara: (not used to being excited, so becoming weird) Hey, well. Right now? Great! (here comes the weird part) But you know make it quick, I've got the Pope on the other line!
OC: Well, then...
(Barbara crumpling to ground in mortified horror.)
OC: I wanted to call you personally to inform you that Act One has been selected to receive a National Endowment Grant.
Barbara: (much glibber than it sounds) Thank you! Thank you so much!
OC: I am personally delighted to welcome Act One as one of our Endowment funded projects, and I wanted to call you personally to give you the good news.
Barbara: (Even more wit this time) THANK YOU! Thank you SO much.
Have I mentioned before that Dana Gioia is a wonderful and brilliant man? It is such an honor for the program to have his support and good wishes. He will be giving our Closing banquet address in Washington, DC on June 3rd. It will be open to the public if any of you want to come and hear him.
Overall, this Nat'l Endowment grant is very cool news for Act One. The grant isn't large, but it does give us a lot of credibility to be listed right there along with American Masters, the Metropolitan Opera and Public Radio International, as a recipient of NEA funding.
LAP-TOP HELL
The continuing saga.... I have spent the last month seriously flirting with the idea of apostasizing from PC's and becoming a MAC-ford Wife. I actually got myself into an Apple dealer - although one in Santa Monica so no one from my neighborhood might see me going in, and then spent an hour or so trying to decide if I could be happy with a computer with a cover that looks like standard kitchen appliance. And then came the slow scary realization that if I went this way, I would be letting go foreer of the right click button. What is THAT about?
So, then I decided that I like the look of the Powerbook better, but I can't afford it. And if I did spring for the stupid thing, every time I powered it up I would feel guilty for buying a thiing that could feed a family in Mexico for six months. But I also know that if I bought the ibook, every lousy time I would power-up that piece of Tupperware, I would sit there hating it and wishing it was titanium covered instead.
And then the guy tells me that I will need to buy a whole $300 pack of Microsoft software for the MAC, "if you really can't let Word go." He sneered further, "Bill Gates doesn't give anything away, you know." The implication was I should spend the money somehow just to stick it to Gates. But I can't help feeling that he wins wither way.
So, I came home, and in a frenzy of penitent fear, I bid on a Dell on eBay and won. I felt a surge of relief. It was over.
But just now, I get a message from eBay that the seller is not legit or something, so they cancelled the transaction. Is this a sign from God? Am I being moved not so gently toward the MAC? Why don't I feel good about it?
The continuing saga.... I have spent the last month seriously flirting with the idea of apostasizing from PC's and becoming a MAC-ford Wife. I actually got myself into an Apple dealer - although one in Santa Monica so no one from my neighborhood might see me going in, and then spent an hour or so trying to decide if I could be happy with a computer with a cover that looks like standard kitchen appliance. And then came the slow scary realization that if I went this way, I would be letting go foreer of the right click button. What is THAT about?
So, then I decided that I like the look of the Powerbook better, but I can't afford it. And if I did spring for the stupid thing, every time I powered it up I would feel guilty for buying a thiing that could feed a family in Mexico for six months. But I also know that if I bought the ibook, every lousy time I would power-up that piece of Tupperware, I would sit there hating it and wishing it was titanium covered instead.
And then the guy tells me that I will need to buy a whole $300 pack of Microsoft software for the MAC, "if you really can't let Word go." He sneered further, "Bill Gates doesn't give anything away, you know." The implication was I should spend the money somehow just to stick it to Gates. But I can't help feeling that he wins wither way.
So, I came home, and in a frenzy of penitent fear, I bid on a Dell on eBay and won. I felt a surge of relief. It was over.
But just now, I get a message from eBay that the seller is not legit or something, so they cancelled the transaction. Is this a sign from God? Am I being moved not so gently toward the MAC? Why don't I feel good about it?
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