Monday, October 19, 2015

Worth Noting Pages 41-45

WORTH NOTING PAGE 41


·         From The Sopranos:  “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”

·         On Music’s inexplicable nature (Elvis Costello?):

            “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”

·         On the manpower & resources dedicated to the Empire State Building (William Starrett,
            William Starrett Construction; completed the Empire State in a record 18 mos.!)

            “Building a skyscraper is the peacetime equivalent of war.”

·         On Sculpture & Architecture; from renowned 20th Century architect, I.M. Pei

            “Sculpture and Architecture are related.  Function is the only thing that prevents an            architect from being a sculptor.”

·         On addiction: An addict relies on a chemical to get rid of stress and uncomfortable emotions.  Pressure and stress triggers an addict to use their drug of choice.

On Impatience & Baseball, from SI p. 20 4/19/99 -- “Impatience is a virtue in America, where even fast food isn’t fast enough.  Americans once ate leisurely dinners but then discovered TV dinners, and then McDonald’s, and then drive-through McDonald’s, and finally the number-coded meal ordered through the drive-through window at McDonald’s.  The trouble with instant gratification is that it takes too long, a notion best expressed by comedian Steven Wright, who aspired to put instant coffee in the microwave oven and actually go back in time.

Baseball introduced “Wait till next year” into the public lexicon.  But who has time to wait anymore?  In its account of a recent Cubs victory, Associated Press declared, “Sammy Sosa remained homerless for the season ...” It was only the Cub’s third game, but already Sosa was
consigned to a homerless shelter, hopelessly behind a record pace.  Perhaps that’s a blessing.  If he or someone else take the nation on another joyride this summer, it will be one
in which members of the media shout daily from the backseat, “Are we there yet?  Are we there yet?”

During the Yankees’ hopelessly shower-soaked home opener last Friday, new Bombers TV analyst Tim McCarver suggested waiving the mandatory 45-minute waiting period before a game can be called due to rain.  It was an outrageous proposal.  For years the only upside to Braves games were the impromptu Sanford and Son marathons shown during Biblicallty long rain delays on the Superstation.

·         On Size & Effectiveness, from Wendy Schaetzel Lesko, head of the youth project Activism 2000, which encourages kids to participate in policy making

“If you ever think you’re too small to be effective, you’ve never been in bed with a mosquito.”
           
·         Pomobabble: The jargon of postmodernism, the intellectual movement that says truth doesn’t exist and that all values and knowledge are “socially constructed” -- made up to serve the interests of the powerful.  The obscurity of pomobabble “bullies the reader into granting that, since one cannot figure out what is going on, there must be something significant going on.”

WORTH NOTING PAGE 42


·         On Movie Poster Design from Civilization, Popcorn Psychology p. 35, April/May ‘99

Film advertisers will tell you that every poster has got to have a gun or a naked woman on it -- period.  It’s not that simple according to John Fahy, Miramax’s creative director and vice president of advertising, who says that least in the case of his studio, each poster is intended to tell you something substantive about the film it advertises.  He notes that one of the more subtle, but effective, techniques poster designers use in trying to show what a film is about is to show its stars looking in a particular direction or at something specific.  Horror movie posters, for example sometimes show actors looking off to one side, or over their shoulders, practically inviting you to help search for whatever’s about to get them.  Not surprisingly, a poster for a romantic film will often will often show  its two leads looking into one another’s eyes.  Posters for films about loftier subjects commonly show characters looking up and off in the distance, to let you know they’re thinking about something really important.  Lately, though, you may have noticed that many posters at the multiplex show the stars looking somewhere else: right at you.  You’ll most often see this in posters for films put out by the major Hollywood studios, but their smaller competitors do it also -- as in the poster for Miramax’s romantic comedy She’s All That, in which leading lady Rachel Leigh Cook stares straight ahead rather than toward co-star Freddie Prinze, Jr.  According to Mary Corliss, curator if the film poster collection at the Museum of Modern Art, this sort of thing was less common during Hollywood’s so-called golden days of the 1930’s and 40’s.  Back then, a poster was supposed to show characters interacting with one another, thereby conveying a sense of the film’s premise.  And although studios were just as interested as they are now in using stars to sell tickets, Corliss says poster designers were less likely to show stars looking at their fans because the actors were supposed to be larger than life -- aloof and unattainable.  Now that we know everything about every star’s personal affairs, those days are past, and this fact may be reflected in today’s movie poster designs.  Hollywood actors now are just like us, or at least a little like us; perhaps film advertisers are trying to lure us into the cinema by convincing us that we have a personal link to the people we pay to watch.  In posters, stars still sell tickets, but differently than before: they tell you very little about the movies they promote.  They simply show actors and actresses eyeing you so as to say, “Fork over for a ticket, and you get to spend two hours alone with me, in the dark.”

·         Stanley Kubrick on Schindler’s List:  “That was about success, wasn’t it?  The Holocaust is about six million people who get killed.  ‘Schindler’s List’ was about six hundred people who don’t.”

·         I think Life resembles Painting: Often we try to improve the overall picture by dabbing in small strokes -- until the whole thing is overworked, and the true colors of happiness are muddied.  Sometimes it’s best to plunge a brush into the paint, and change things with a broad stroke.    Me

·         From Psychedelic Furs’ The Ghost In Me:

            But falling over you is the news of the day.  Angels fall like rain.  And love is all of
            Heaven away.

·         Favorite Line From The Sopranos (HBO series first season viewers poll):
                       
“What?  No fuckin’ ziti?”  -- Anthony Jr. on seeing the table for a family party.
                                                                          

WORTH NOTING PAGE 43


·         On Cape Cod:  A man may stand here and put all America behind him.

·         On the assumed truth of the written word  (from Spencer’s Mountain, Henry Fonda) 

      “Just because somethin’s wrote down, don’t make it so.”        Clay Spencer

·         “Your Name”  (author unknown)

You got it from your father
It was all he had to give
So it’s yours to cherish
For as long as you may live.
If you lose the watch he gave you
It can always be replaced.
But a black mark on your name,
Can never be erased.
It was clean the day you took it
And a worthy name to bear
When he got it from his father,
There was no dishonor there.
So make sure you guard it wisely,
After all is said and done
You’ll be glad the name is spotless
When you give it to your son.

·         Hollywood’s Nastiest Insults
1.     “I knew her before she was a virgin.”  -- Groucho Marx on Doris Day
2.     “Lily Tomlin has been in and out of the closet more times than my hunting jacket.”
-- Rock Hudson
3.     “I wouldn’t sit on her toilet.” -- Bette Davis on Joan Crawford
4.     “Marilyn Monroe was the original good time had by all.”  -- Bette Davis
5.     “Oh sorry, I thought you were a fellow I knew.” -- Groucho Marx on Greta Garbo

·         Being a screenwriter in Hollywood is like being a eunuch at an orgy.
-- Albert Brooks in “The Muse”

·         Honor modesty more than your life.  -- Aeschylus

·         Teach us like men, treat us like women. -- Mia Hamm to her national team skipper, Tony DiCicco

·                     On the differences of coaching women (Tony DiCicco)
“There are actually more similarities than differences between men and women.  Women demand to be trained hard but they don’t like a coach to get in their face as a yelling, ranting, lunatic.  They prefer more direction.  One of the things that is most important to women is relationships with one another.  This is not to say that men are some lesser level of Homo Sapiens but with men it’s more like, ‘You can play a little bit so you can be on my team’, but women can’t easily make that transfer. They will discount for relationships more than anything else.

WORTH NOTING PAGE 44


·         On the differences of coaching women cont’d:  “Also, you have to talk to men players as individuals, you can talk to women as a group because they internalize everything.  You can say to a group of women, ‘We need to be fitter’, and each one thinks you’re talking about her, so they work on it.  With men, if you say that, each one is thinking, “Yeah, I’m the only fit one on this team.’

Response to George Will’s column: “Who needs public broadcasting?” (Richard Cohen 8/9/99 NYPost) “This morning, as I have done almost every morning for the last 20 years, I switched on the radio to listen to National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” Later, if I have time, I will listen to “All Things Considered”  These are the two best news shows on the air -- any air, radio or television -- and they are my answer to a headline The Washington Post put on  recent George Will column:  “Who needs Public Broadcasting?”   I do.  Will, clearly does not.  He says, as do others, that pubic broadcasting is vaguely socialistic, not to mention redundant.  The old network monopoly (ABC, CBS, NBC) is gone.  Now we have more networks and, of course, cable -- 500 or so channels.  Anything done on public television can be found on cable.  But not those two public radio shows.  Nothing like them exists anywhere else.  They are not on commercial radio and certainly not on commercial television.  You can surf those mythical 500 channels until your remote control unit gives you carpal tunnel syndrome and not find a commercial TV news program that comes close, in quality or reach, to what is done daily by “Morning Edition” or “All Things Considered.”  By and large, TV news is a joke.  The network news shows are now parodies of themselves -- anchors standing and anchors walking and anchors pretending to bring you an in-depth report when, half the time, they are rehashing that morning’s paper.  Compared to what they once were, these network news shows are to journalism what burlesque was to theater.  Once-proud news organizations now report to accountants.  Bureaus all over the world have been closed and great reporters talk like boobs -- simple sentences, simple words: simply awful.  The public-radio shows -- and PBS’s “News Hour with Jim Lehrer”-- are of a much higher quality.  They retain an interest in foreign news which the networks, short of war, mostly ignore.  These shows also cover America better than any newspaper I know, and while they are just goofy about space shots, Antarctica and regional cooking (Hi Linda), for public radio’s 29 million listeners, they help bind the nation.  They make us one community.  This is important.  If there is a single -- although unstated -- theme running through the Republican argument about why we deserve a tax break ($792 billion over the next 10 years), it’s that we don’t owe each other very much.  The GOP keeps saying the surplus belongs to each of us -- not, mind you, all of us -- and we ought to get it back.  It’s all about the indiviual.  It’s not about the collective.  But the collective -- a fusty term from a bygone era -- has certain legitimate demands.  For instance, it may be true that cable television has some dandy programming for children.  But “Sesame Street” comes free, and free is all that some people can afford.  In a different sphere, it may be true that the national parks have been improved since fees were instituted, but some people can’t afford those fees -- and the parks (or museums), by all rights, ought to be theirs to enjoy as well.  With PBS, with the national parks, with a whole lot of programs, we are not talking much money.  (Public broadcasting gets only 15 percent of its funds from the government anyway.)  But we are talking about the public realm, of the use of government funds to perpetuate something that otherwise would not exist.  No cable channel, no network -- no nobody -- is going to do what public broadcasting does.  Its market is too small, too old -- to uninterested in buying an SUV when a mere car will do just fine, thank you.  I could live without most public broadcasting -- even the classical music programs.  But Scott Simon on Saturday, “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” during the week -- these are essential listening.  I pay for them, contribute to my public radio stations, but like that my government contributes, too. 

WORTH NOTING PAGE 45


Response to George Will’s column: “Who needs public broadcasting?” cont’d
Otherwise, sooner or later, public broadcasting -- like its commercial counterpart -- will be dumbed down.  Already, PBS airs specials like Yanni’s “Live at the Acropolis” that make you cringe.  In the search for scratch, public broadcasting will find virtue in mediocrity.  One morning, if conservatives and the market have their way, I will wake to Howard Stern or rip-n’read all-news radio or, maybe, someone making a salad on the “Today” show.  I’ll hear nothing from the Balkans and nothing about culture and very little, even, about my own country.  I’ll crave radio reporting that sometimes has me sitting in the car, motor idling, afraid I’ll miss something precious just by running into the house.  Who needs public broadcasting?  We all do.

·         On the insecurity of artists
Asking someone if they like your painting is pretty much the same as asking if they like you.   Me

·         On Focus Groups: from Civilization, Oct./Nov. ‘99 In Defense of Focus Groups p. 33
These days, films, novels and musicians’ lyrics (as well as their looks) aren’t finalized until a group of “average age” citizens has had its say.  Has the reliance on focus groups compromised art?  We asked two men familiar with the process: Bill Weylock, a former president of the Qualitative Research Consultants Association who has led focus groups for NBC and Nickelodeon, and Tony Kaye, who built his reputation shooting ads for the likes of Volvo and Reebock -- and who publicly clashed with New Line Cinema over creative control of his film debut, American History X. 

Civilization:  Author James Patterson changed the ending of a recent novel because it tested poorly.  Are there limits to the power of the focus group?
Tony Kaye:  To take the advice of many and have the privilege to decide on your own -- I don’t find anything wrong with that.  However, it’s totally inappropriate if a publisher puts a novelist’s work in front of a focus group and then, based on the results, decides to tell the novelist to make a change. 
Bill Weylock:  I compare Patterson’s decision to the staged reading of a new play, when the playwright wants to hear his words in the air instead of being trapped in his head.  Focus group respondents are not there to collaborate on the creation; they’re there to explain their response to the creation so the creator can fine-tune. 
Civ:  Maybe it’s not the fault of marketers.  Do artists abdicate responsibility by accepting such a practice?
TK:  Not too many people are prepared to stand up for excellence.  It makes for a very difficult life.
BW: You can’t be an auteur and get along with everybody.  But getting along is a priority for most people.  I suppose it’s what keeps us from killing each other.
Civ:  Is there room for serendipity in the world we are devising, or is it inimical to commercial success?
BW:  You can always screw something up, using whatever tools, including focus groups, survey results, restrictive laws, or nasty social conventions.  If someone bleeds the inspiration out of their product because they want to please the muddy middle that they think they are in touch with through focus groups, they are going to fail.  Nobody will buy the stuff.  The audience won’t be fooled; they’ll always opt for inspiration.  Focus groups don’t yield truth.  They yield insight.
Civ:  Does peer pressure make focus groups conservative?

BW:  Questions implant answers.  If a horror film is put in front of an audience and the moderator asks, Were you scared by that,” then the focus group can only respond, “I was scared,” “I was not,” “I was somewhat scared.”  You’ve only given them three possible responses, as opposed to asking, “What was happening to you while you were watching?”  If you ask them what they think, they have a responsibility to pontificate.

No comments:

Post a Comment