Yes, I am continuing to follow news about the Writers’ Strike and, yes, given my previous posts of Adam Conover videos, there was really doubt I’d post a video with Adam Conover talking about the Writers’ Strike? (I mean, he was one of the WGA folks in the negotiating room): One of the arguments you hear early in the video goes something like this: That got me thinking about how the studios are defining “profitable,”…
I am still following accounts of the Writers’ Strike, which looks like it’ll be a long one, but while you can continue to check out information, like the Strike Diaries from the Hollywood Reporter, for today, I wanted to just post about film, specifically a great example where writing, performance, and fight choreography comes together beautifully. I’m talking about the climactic duel in the 1956 comedy The Court Jester. I love the duel because, as…
So the not-quite-a-week-old writers’ strike is still on my mind, in part because much of the online forums I visit are full of, well, writers. So here’s a few more resources that I feel give you a bit more context about what’s being demanded, how the studios usually respond and what is officially on the table. First up, an 8 1/2 minute video from Nerdist that sums up the strike: If you’ve been following other…
Last Thursday, I wrote a little bit about the potential strike between the Writers Guild and the major studios (those groups are generalizations, nuance with the links). The contract between the WGA and AMPTP expired last night with no extension. That means as of this writing, about 11,500 writers of film and television are on strike. Discussions have popped up on various online forums I’m part of and even at my dayjob, so I figured…
In the host of posts on this site, this one may be one of the least evergreen, but I had mention something about the impending, still-might-be-avoided WGA strike set to go into effect this coming week on May 2nd. The Writer’s Guild membership has overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike, and strike guidelines have been sent out. Not only that, the Writer’s Guild has a recent victory –a major one that you may not have…
I haven’t gotten around to reading more about Jack Kirby’s life (Mark Evanier’s book is on my to-read list), so I found this article by Roy Schwartz about how much of Kirby’s life went into Captain America intriguing. For example, I didn’t know much, if anything, about Kirby’s service in World War II, something that I’d be interested in learning about all the comic creators of that era (similar to what was covered with the…
How I managed to miss this article last year is something I chalk up to the vast depth of the Internet, but still: I love The Expanse and part of that ardor is absolutely the multi-layered world-building. Those of you who have checked out my space opera Rogue Tyger and its ever-growing “Encyclopedia of the Imperium” will not be surprised at that fact. So I was all into this article by James Hoare for The…
To kick off this week, where I’m fitting in writing every moment I reasonably can, I’m thinking of an article I read last year, knowing I’d want to share it on the blog at some point. It’s a little quiet memoir of a piece, about a young student shepherding a visiting writer about the city of Rochester, New York. Is Alison Smith’s piece about wandering about town with Ursula Le Guin writing motivation? Maybe. Maybe…
I’ve been a fan of writer Ray Bradbury since reading The Martian Chronicles and listening to Bradbury 13, a fantastic series that did audio fiction adaptations of, well, 13 short stories (the latter is still an inspiration for our work with Jabber Audio). So when Bradbury passed in 2012, I read the various obituaries and remembrances and several mentioned an anecdote Bradbury had told about an encounter with a magician in the 1930s. It’s a…
I continue to talk to people online and offline about machine learning and the current zeal for AI doing creative work and one of the writers, Chuck Wendig, who I linked to last month (and who, unsurprisingly, does not find AI-authored writing as a wave of the future to be surfed). One of his posts from last week drills down to one of the reasons I find the AI creativity craze so annoying: the fact…