It's been a while from any sort of personal update on this blog. Thus, to summerize:
* After our roadtrip in April, Seong-joo and I debated for a while on what we should do for the future. With some helpful advice from a friend, we eventually decided that I would go back to school and complete my degree, angling towards a teacher-education with an emphasis on history/english. The debate then shifted to where we would go... Austin & Colorado Springs were considered and discarded and we eventually settled on Ft. Lewis College in Durango, the school I attended in 1994-95. "Fort Loser" is close to home, cheap & I won't lose credits in transfer.
* A few months previous to our trip we decided that my wife would return to Korea for a couple months in the summer. This way she could work and visit her family. I know returning home is prob'ly very, very good for her health and sanity (backwaters buttfuck colorado is not entirely endearing to a city girl) but I have to say it sucks to have that "presence" missing. She also cut her hair and despite repeated badgering for a photo she has YET to send me a shot! EDIT - Seong just sent me a photo! guess that shows me to check my email before myspace ranting.....
seong-he with hae-dam
seong-joo with hae-dam
* After five months of planning/slacking I've finally got into the second novel of my trilogy -- currently hovering around 20,000 words. Only 260k to go. I still intend to finish it this year, though we'll see how much my 19 credit hours interrupt my schedual... (I foresee another two years of getting up a 4 in the morning. I slept in until almost 9 today -- saving up that rest, you know...). Also would like to start that children's book and complete a few hanging short stories this summer, but we'll see...
* Seong and I moved out of our apartment at the end of May and I've spent the last month or so organizing my personal amassment of books, CDs and other misc. distractions. This has been quite a process, particularly organizing my live & studio mixes from a few years back. I do have a lot of free time, with Seong gone and all, but between the book(s) and spending time with the family, free time feels anything but.
* Increasing disinterst towards the blockbuster summer machine. I watched Prince Caspian (yawn) and Indy and, other than The Dark Knight, I doubt I'm going to spring for any more films in the theater...too damn expensive, with gas above 4.00. I intended to write a blog 'epic fail' about this -- exploring my own curious shift from 'Rusty Brown'-esque media collecting/obsession to a growing indifference towards all but writing/literature -- but said blog, inspired by the less-than-inspiring Indiana Jones flick*, hasn't materialized yet.
(* my inner five year old loved the movie. The outer adult enjoyed it, with certain specific reservations).
* hmmm, what else? suddenly I realized why I don't blog like I used to...my life is much more calm and yet busy than it was a few years ago.
I'm REALLY tired of this bullshit circulating lately (for shame HC and your wishful thinking), and this clip takes the case. Oh, Obama's former pastor is racist, but we can openly speculate on his murder on prime time?
Fucking disgusting. It makes me ashamed to be an American.
For the past five months I've worked as a photographer up at wolf creek, soliciting tourists and sometimes snapping family photos for desktop memories. The job was difficult at times, snowy and windy and boring...but I did get a free pass and it was rewarding to sharpen the salesman edge (my first experience in this occupation, truth be told).
The following are select groups from my portfolio:
Scott Bradford, fulfilling a friend's final request.
These girls were awesome. Dad and fam. loved the photos, but dad and my boss got into a heated bargaining session that ended up with Dad refusing to buy the lot for $7 a piece and walking off with the parting comment: "really good photos, my man." Around 10 minutes later these two sisters came in with their stepmom -- they'd snatched dad's credit card for "food."
One of the backdrops I regularly used...
...I also had, at the very end of the season, the opportunity to shoot a few "action sequences". Above: Jon Ashley, shiftie
backside 3 off a rather sketchy jump -- 3 minutes after this a snowboarder broke his tailbone on this jump..
First, to get the 'negative' out of the way.... I recently submitted query letters to a couple agents and was resoundly rejected right off the bat. If I was ten years younger I might have taken it harder, but my skin has grown thick over time and by this point I'm well aware of how the industry operates -- a curious admixture of fear and hype tossed into the cauldron of power-lunch schmoozing and occasional serendipity. Some of the most successful authors of the genre I'm toiling in were rejected dozens, even hundreds of times before making the pivitol contact. The second agency I approached recieves on average 30,000 queries a year. And, in some ways, I'm actually relieved. I figured it would be a lot of work to attract attention in the hyperbolic din of this day and age, and that I might as well bite the bullet early and get used to rejection, to having my lil' baby scorned and trampled on ( we authors can be a melodramatic lot when it comes to personal expression......). Now, of course, part of me simply wants to resume work on the second novel of the trilogy, to continue the refining of the first book, and to gradually hone my presentation-package in the course of the next year or so -- my financial difficulties from late last year being my initial motivation to actually engage with an industry I have only smatterings of respect for; now that the financial issue is resolved (for now), I feel less inclined, less... desperate .
It's all dust on the wind anyway.... for on the heels of rejection comes a much worked-for resolution, an approval from official channels as to my marriage. On Wednesday Seong Joo and I ventured from the Four Corners in the midst of a raging blizzard, our goal to reach Denver for our final immigration process. In the four days prior Wolf Creek Pass had been closed because of avalanches -- (it piled up to 18 feet in some areas) -- and by the morning-come the Pass was still off-limits. Thus we had to drive three hours south and east, enduring the rather sketchy crossing of Cumbrus Pass (where a semi had jackknifed an hour before we ascended), then contining along to the interstate and finally, after a total of 10 hours, reaching Mile High. The next day we attended our meeting and though the interviewer hammered at us for a while (trying to sniff out if we were faking it -- apparently it's not uncommon for people to pay Americans to marry them so they can get a green card -- amusing, in hindsight, given Seong's somewhat-poor perception of the USA quote "It's like Africa") -- but eventually we convinced him. So -- approval. Lawyer fees and required meetings are over. Now it's all about matramonial bliss..... *contented sigh*.
Current future goals: Seong wants to travel across the West Coast after the ski area closes, so she can visit San Fran et al. before we decided to move. I'm thinking a short excursion into Baja might be on the agenda, as well.
a merry christmas after all!
Current mood: relieved
This morning, while going through my book, I recieved a call from my former boss. As readers of this blog will know, I've been waiting for a paycheck for over a month now. Financial stress was driving me nuts; Seong and I didn't have enough money to even splurge on grocery-store visits, much less christmas presents. But now........ the money has been delivered! WHOO HOO!
writer’s strike, continued
Current mood: contemplative
Over at the westeros message board, a member called Brudewollen posted this about the strike. I'm putting it on my blog to remind myself (and anyone who is interested) what is at stake here.
.QUOTE
Why can't a writer choose to either join the union or not?..QuoteEnd-->
They can, but writers in Hollywood WANT to join the WGA because it guarantees them better pay for work done. Believe me, no writer wants to only be offered $5,000 or $10,000 for a script they spent three months, maybe six months writing...but I've seen offers that low for non-union writers (and sometimes they take it anyway just in the hopes of getting a produced credit under their belt!). Hell, I've seen an offer that low for a UNION writer who couldn't, by the rules of the Union, take an offer below the WGA minimum. These asshole producers wanted to make a deal with the writer on the sly, pay him crap and make him risk getting tossed for life from the Union just so they could get something on the cheap. To say he was insulted would be an understatement, especially as this was a guy who had made as much as half a million bucks on an individual script sale in the past and this was the best script he ever wrote (it really was fucking great).
It's treatment like this that makes the WGA a necessity. This is how all writers were always treated in Hollywood before the WGA existed. Now, even non-union writers will usually get offers from the studios of at least WGA minimum, simply because the existance of the union has made that the going rate for such things. Even so, WGA minimums are barely enough to support even most working writers as there are so many of them and so few sales to go around.
QUOTE
I don't buy the notion that there isn't any untapped writing talent outside of the union. If you offer enough money, you will find the talent you need. Most TV is crap these days anyway...QuoteEnd-->
The talent is out there, sure, I spent years trying to sell writers who were often way better than many working writers in the biz, yet many of them didn't go anywhere. Why? Because bean-counters who don't know good writing from their asshole tend to make the final decisions on these things in Hollywood. Usually the decision to buy something is more about: a) internal politics at the studio, b) what script gets the most "buzz" that week in the "script game" or c) whether or not one of the studio readers wanted to risk their crap-ass paying job by actually giving a "Recommend" on their coverage report.
You see, if you are a studio reader in Hollywood and give a "Recommend" on a script and the exec who then has to take it home and read it over the weekend hates it, there is a good chance you will be out of a job come Monday. No kidding, I know of one story, friend of a friend actually, had been working as a reader at one studio, while his wife worked at another. Both of them had been at it for over a year. One day he comes across a script he actually thinks he's going to recommend but he has to call his wife and discuss it with her first because she's pregnant and they need to pay the bills and have enough money for the kid and all that. Of course she counseled him to "Reject" or "Not Recommend" the script because it wasn't worth his job and their child's future.
You want writers in Hollywood to trust their careers to a pure "free market" system that operates like that? No, it's bad enough as it is. They need better pay because it's nearly impossible to sell anything in Hollywood.
..
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QUOTE(Commodore @ Dec 13 2007, 01.05)
..I got no problem with people choosing to collectivize. It's the black balling of those that choose not to that's the problem...QuoteEnd-->
..But then it doesn't work. It kind of sucks, but that's the only way the system can work. But if you think that's any kind of bullying what people get from the people that run the studios, agencies and top production companies is far, far worse.
Hollywood is one of the most brutally aggressive and probably one of the most authoritarian industries out there. Those at the top rule their roosts often as kingdoms and those near the top rule their feifdoms - those words are used a lot because that's often how they operate and anyone under them, or trying to break into working under them is subject to their harsh rule. There is no power for those lower down, except whatever they can exact from those even lower on the totem pole than them. It's often a pretty mean business, see "Swimming With Sharks" for an idea of what it's like in the trenches for many in Hollywood - the only hyperbole in that film is Frank Whaley's character's reaction to his suffering at the hands of his boss.
Writers aren't even really a part of this system, so much. They are largely outside looking in just trying to get a few crumbs thrown their way. If it was soley up to the studio execs, they'd give them barely more than nothing for their work (and that was how it used to be a long time ago). If there was no strong union to stop them from doing that, they would still be getting away with it. If the union can't enforce its strength they have no power and Hollywood is all about pure power. The union can't enforce its power without peer-pressure, because if people don't support the union via that means, it has no teeth and the whole system that makes the union viable falls apart. In the end, peer-pressure is the only thing the union and its supporters have to keep it strong. There is no other force that can make it work. ..
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QUOTE(Commodore @ Dec 13 2007, 01.05)
It sucks when you have one group trying to wield a monopoly on a commodity while people like the OP are put out of work and commerce is stifled...QuoteEnd-->
OP? Also, are you talking about the writers trying to wield a monopoly on the commodity (that being the writing that THEY produced in the first place) or are you talking about the studios who try to buy it and produce it from them for a song?
Commerce is being stifled because the studios are not paying what should be fair market value for the work being done. They are using their overwhelming monopolistic and collusive power to drive down the prices they need to pay for the creative work of the writers. Why shouldn't the writers hold back their product and get themselves a living wage for their work? Most of them need to take second jobs and such when they aren't working or selling anyway becuase their pay is too low to keep them going through the lean times. Meanwhile, studio heads who produce nothing of real hard value in the industry make tens of millions a year - Mike Eisner once made $300 million in a single year. Or try Mike Ovitz who got an $80 million severance package after getting fired from Disney after 6 months as the 2 man there.
QUOTE(Commodore @ Dec 13 2007, 02.08)
..I think the writers should be free to negotiate their contracts individually if they want to without fear of retribution...QuoteEnd-->
Blackballing from the film business is not something that was invented by the WGA. Have you ever heard the phrase "you'll never work in this town again!"? It's something that was said by a hundred studio executives and producers hundreds of times long before the Writer's Guild ever existed. Retribution is how the movie industry works. You piss off the wrong person, they ruin you. You're done, it's over, might as well go back to De Moines. That's life out there and it began that way with the studios and the producers, not with the writers. Most of the time its the talent: writers, actors and maybe directors who are ruined this way.
As I said, Hollywood is about power, and it's also about fear as I have explained in other threads. That is the only thing anyone really understands in the business. If you want it to work any other way, sorry, that's just not how it goes. That's not reality but a fantasy world. The real business of Hollywood has never been and never will be a laissez-faire utopia; such a thing does not really exist, at least not in my experience. People bring whatever power they can to bare to get what they want and, at least in the case of Hollywood, that means making someone afraid for their livelihood, their careers...in some extreme cases even their life (yeah, it happens - Arthur Miller has a famous story about a producer who once asked him to hook him up with a hit man to off someone).
The only way to make your case for getting what you want with anyone out there is to make them afraid of you. If you are an individual (probably very desperate) writer you have no ability to strike fear into anyone and you will be used and abused by the system. The WGA serves to bring fear to bare not on other writers, but on the studio executives. That it must use a bit of fear vs. those few writers who don't get why they are working for their own greater good is unfortunate, but probably necessary. But as a body the WGA can strike fear into the execs where an individual writer simply can't. When individual writers start competing with the WGA - that's really what they are doing when they take work at a time the WGA is trying to impose its will on the studios - they damage the WGA's ability to get what it (and its members) want. The WGA must fight back against this competition and in Hollywood that means retribution.
Don't expect to ever change this system of fear, either. Anyone who does will just be gobbled up and destroyed by the system. It's a self perpetuating cycle that is nearly a hundred years old now. In that time, different groups have held sway and achieved power for themselves and their own kind, but always they have done it by making the other guy afraid of them somehow. First it was the studios and then came the auteurs and then came the agents. Writers have always been on the outs and have always held the least amount of power. The WGA is the only thing they have to get some power for themselves, too.
..
QUOTE(Commodore @ Dec 13 2007, 02.08)
The commodity they are trying to monopolize is labor...QuoteEnd-->
The studios try to monopolize the fruit of labor. They are in competition with other studios for that labor. Why is that right and it wrong for the WGA to try and monopolize a pool of labor so as to gain better working conditions for its members? The WGA is merely in competition with those writers who refuse to join them. If those writers want, they can form an alternate union and try to negotiate their own terms if they think the WGA is serving them poorly. So far, I don't think any have ever tried. If a time comes when it seems the WGA is making bad decisions along these lines or not being aggressive enough in negotiations, then I wouldn't be surprised to see the UWL (the Unite Writers League) or some such thing get formed. Until then, the WGA is the only game in town.
There are tons of good writers out in Hollywood who are not working, or not working nearly enough. The reasons are complicated why this happens but it mostly has to do with the perception of a writer as "A-list" or not. Nobody at a studio gets fired for championing a script by an A-list writer that then turns into a movie that flops, or becomes an expensive property with lots of pre-production costs but that still never gets made. If you champion an unknown writer and the movie flops, you are probably going to lose your job and possibly your career. A-list writers sell pretty much everything they write; even their old crappy scripts get dredged up and bought - the stuff they were writing when they were honing their craft at the age of twenty-two. Sometimes a new production company wants to show the industry they are for real and buying properties so that lots of big-time agents will send their scripts by "A-list" writers their way …quot; to do this they will buy any old piece of crap that's in limbo or unsold by a known A-list writer, and they will usually do it for big bucks out of their discretionary funds. If they bought a script by a no-name writer it wouldn't be noticed much when the big agents and managers read about it in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter.
There are other factors, but this is probably the main one holding many writers back. The system is such that you will almost always be rejected, that is unless and until you are not. If you break through and have a big hit movie, then you join the ranks of A-listers. Then you get paid a million bucks a script and a quarter million a month to do rewrites for films that are in production or similar rates to do partial rewrites.
All of this means that a lot of good writers are never heard from because the bean-counters who have no ear for good writing only look at the name and whether or not they were successful in the past. There are other writers who are known and respected and tend to sell well but it's still a struggle for them.
One of the best writers my company had sold a script a year for nearly 10 years at about $100k each yet nothing ever got produced. Had he ever broken through with a hit movie he might have become an A-lister, who knows, but it hasn't happened yet. I'd guess you'd call him a B-lister: respected and able to sell consistently but it's often a struggle to sell that one script a year. In one case he had to go on 40+ pitch meetings before he sold one of his projects as a TV movie to F/X (which never even got made in the end despite his script being great). He only had the one bite out of 40+ producers and studios, but that was enough to pay his bills for the year. But even he is the exception and not the rule and nothing was ever certain that he would sell that average of 1 script per year. If he didn't one year, he'd probably have to get a day job to support his son (he was a single father) and that would cut into his ability and the time he had for writing.
This post has been edited by Brudewollen: Today, 09.33 .. --------------------
The Writer's Guild of America went on strike yesterday. The beef seems to concern residuals based on downloaded content -- before strike, the writers recieved .04 cents to every DVD sold and .00 cents on shows/product downloaded from official channels. By my somewhat-limited research, it appears the WGA is picketing for an increase in DVD residuals - .08 for every copy sold -- and for a percentage of online content. Of course, the studios don't want to part with any more cash than they can (and Summer Redstone seems to be spearheading their refusal) so...
Many television shows this season are currently on hiatus. I have to admit I've been watching a few shows here and there, usually to wind down from work. Apparently The Office has all its episodes in the bag, except for the finale, and both Steve Carrell and Raine Wilson (Prison Mike and Schrutbuck, respectively) won't be crossing the lines for filming. alas. Jon Stewart has promised to pay his writers two weeks salary so that the striking doesn't effect their day-to-day living expenses (what a guy...!). Tim Kring has written Heroes so that its season will end with 11 episodes instead of a full run (that show sucks anyway...)
From the sidelines, I wish by brothers-in-pens success. Living in LA has to be a frustrating experience as-is, nevermind the studios making bukku bucks on a geek's toil and then haughtily demanding the serfs keep to their pens and not bring up that ambiguous 'online' thing-a-majiger. I suppose once the office-cash box for cocaine and hookers begins to dwindle, negotiations will resume.
On the other hand, if the strike lasts until June, then it will coincide with the DGA and SGA's contract-renogtiation strikes. Burn Hollywood Burn! lol.
I find it faintly amusing that this strike is going on during NaNoWriMo month, essentially "write a novel (or at least 50,000 words) in a month". Hundreds of hungry, amatuer and perhaps semi-talented authors are attempting to reach that 1,667 or so daily word cap while their professional counterparts host signs to the air, contemplate tar-and-feathering effigies of Redstone at the Viacom gates, and refuse to crayon funnies for Two and Half Men.
As for me? Well, as I don't recieve a dime for my own efforts, work continues much as it ever does. As I'm more concerned with completing my current novel than starting some new project, I'm not participating on NaNo (I somehow managed to type 69k in October, so November is a bit of rest month anyway). On the final stretch -- perhaps 20,000 or so words to go.
I used to toil from time to time at product reviews @ amazon.com. Lately I've had a few twinges to express my opinion on recent / ancient media, tho with my current projects I don't have much drive for it.
Those who have spent time at amazon know who the number 1 reviewer there is. In a way, she's a bit of a joke:
""He begins to investigate the drug cartel preying on the local students over the objection of his travel writer wife of over three decades Lolita, but soon finds himself wondering if the red pen is mightier than the sword, make those guns."
A rather typical Klausnerism. A dear friend of mine who I met on amazon -- via jealously re-reading his product reviews and eventually establishing contact on the ol' product discount (sadly discontinued) -- proclaimed his departure from amazon because of the MickyD quality of reviewing, specifically this individual. People actually cyber-stalk Mrs. Klausner, giving negative votes to any reviews she writes, and yet she still made Time Magazine's "15 of the "web generation's movers and shakers."" Uhm, yeah. I suppose hammering out 12,000 reviews in seven years is certainly 'movin'' to some degree...'course, you gotta expect both groupies and critics.
EDIT - Seong just sent me a photo! guess that shows me to check my email before myspace ranting.....
angry
busy
relieved
we authors can be a melodramatic lot when it comes to personal expression......). Now, of course, part of me simply wants to resume work on the second novel of the trilogy, to continue the refining of the first book, and to gradually hone my presentation-package in the course of the next year or so -- my financial difficulties from late last year being my initial motivation to actually engage with an industry I have only smatterings of respect for; now that the financial issue is resolved (for now), I feel less inclined, less... desperate 
.
working
contemplative
artistic
amused
you sir are not alone in disgruntlement...)