Mimi Leder: “I excel in television. I’ve directed nine pilots and six of them went to air, so my television career was flourishing, but I couldn’t get arrested in features. Saying this sounds like sour grapes, but it isn’t: It’s very different for women filmmakers than it is for male filmmakers. And the film business itself changed dramatically. They just wanted to make tent poles.”
Month: October 2015
How To Make Your Life Better: Make Things With Your Hands
“Skill has been regulated to the margins in a culture that puts a higher value on conception – on self-expression, creativity, imagination – than on execution.”
One Way To Get More Diversity On TV Is To Keep On Asking For It
Lucy Liu, Watson on the show ‘Elementary,’ said, “The one thing I’ve learned, and I think everyone can take this away with them, is that a closed mouth doesn’t get fed. … So open your mouth. If somebody says no to you, that’s fine. You’re going to hear no a lot in your life, and that’s just what it is. And somebody’s gonna say yes sometime. So you always have to ask the question.”
Arts Funders Are Doing A Pathetic Job Of Giving Money To Latin@ And African American Arts Groups
“The ‘Diversity in the Arts’ report contains another potentially controversial finding: When large, mainstream arts organizations put on black- or Latino-themed performances or exhibitions, they siphon away artistic talent, donations and attendance from black and Latino companies.”
Tech Giants Like Dell And HP Are The Real Walking Dead
“When someone asked what we should call that IBM-HP-EMC-Dell-Cisco merger, his response was wonderfully descriptive. He suggested calling we call the company Fucked By The Cloud.”
The Rome Film Festival Is In Trouble. Can A New York Film Professor Save It?
“I am a great tormenter. I break the balls of everybody: “Give me the film; give me the film.” Of course personal relationships have a role. Of course several of these people trust me and trust what I’m doing, yes. But it’s a serious program. They don’t come just to come to Rome — they believe in the festival.”
Going From The Coalfields Of Wales To Music Stardom
John Cale, founder of The Velvet Underground: “When I moved to New York, I was basically penniless. John Cage was kind enough to help me find a job in a bookstore which sustained me while I was experimenting in the New York avant-garde music scene.”
The Academy Rejects China’s Submission For Best Foreign-Language Film For Not Being Chinese Enough
“Officials have replaced the film, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, who is French, with ‘Go Away Mr. Tumor,’ a lighthearted romantic comedy about an optimistic woman coping with cancer.”
We Should Go Back To The Warmth And Immediacy Of Film To Win Back The Movie House
Christopher Nolan: “I have conversations with studio heads and at some point when I’m passionately advocating using film they’ll say ‘at the end of the day doesn’t storytelling trump everything?’ I say ‘no it doesn’t, otherwise we’d be making radio plays, it would be a lot cheaper.'”
The Writer Who Uses ‘Pscyhogeography’ To Root Her Multimedia Narratives
Karrie Higgins: “When I first started writing ‘forensically,’ I thought forensic science was going to be THE way for me to understand the world and convey what was happening inside my head. This constant push-pull and intense desire to expose reasonable doubt—a kind of confidence in doubt as the only viable narrative. When I got to Utah and started embracing the more magical elements of Mormonism, I started to think differently about forensics.”