MCN Curated Headlines Archive for April, 2018

University of San Francisco, Fordham University, Oberlin College, Ohio State University, Tufts University, Brown University, Baylor University, Boston University, Carnegie Mellon, Temple University, Notre Dame University, Johns Hopkins University, Wesleyan University
Colleges And Universities Flock To Revoke Honorary Degrees To The Convict Bill Cosby

Temple University Rescinds Bill Cosby Honorary Degree

variety

“Time Warner chairman-CEO Jeff Bewkes received a windfall of stock awards in 2017, pushing his total compensation for the year to $49 million.”

“How Bill Cosby’s ‘Pound Cake’ Speech Helped Lead to His Downfall”

“We’ve spent lifetimes trying to dismantle rape culture and an environment that protects rapists and abusers instead of their accusers.”
“Why Women Never Expected Bill Cosby To Be Convicted”

“The old open Internet was a marvelous gift to readers, a vast cornucopia of great writing upon which we’ve been gorging for the past two decades. But there’s a limit to how long one can keep handing out gifts without some reciprocity. At the end of the day, however much information wants to be free, writers still want to get paid.”

“I don’t think that people who were victims would feel particularly supported by going to someone and asking for help, whether that person was in HR or that person was a colleague.”
Washington Post: NBC News Faces Skepticism Over In-house Sexual Harassment Investigation With Fresh Accusations Against Tom Brokaw

variety

First Female Director Boards A Star Trek Big-Screen Episode; S. J. Clarkson Credits Include “Dexter,” “Bates Motel,” “Orange is the New Black,” “Jessica Jones”

New York’s 2015 Cover Story: “‘I’m No Longer Afraid’: 35 Women Tell Their Stories About Being Assaulted by Bill Cosby, and the Culture That Wouldn’t Listen”

variety

“I felt powerless to say no. He could ruin my career. I just remember being frozen.”
“I met with Linda Vester on two occasions, both at her request, 23 years ago because she wanted advice with respect to her career at NBC.  The meetings were brief, cordial and appropriate, and despite Linda’s allegations, I made no romantic overtures towards her at that time or any other.”
Former NBC Anchor Accuses Tom Brokaw Of Sexual Impropriety

If It’s Not One Thing, Well… Shit.
Terry Gilliam’s Man Who Killed Don Quixote May Be Barred From Cannes By Writ From Producer Paolo Branco

NY Times

“We face a transition — a potential merger that will have lasting implications for the movie business. I have no more insight into this transaction than you do. But I am holding onto the very basics — what helped make The Greatest Showman a hit. Let’s stay dedicated to the future of cinema and passionate about the films to come. Let’s wear our hearts on our sleeves and aim to please in every frame.”
Stacey Snider At CinemaCon

“I’ve gotta hand it to Mitch Lowe – he realized what its previous owners didn’t – that when you have a subscription business, only two things matter: subscriber acquisition rate (cost to get a new subscriber) and churn rate (how fast you lose them). Supposedly he’s gotten them both close to zero, and it has become the fastest-growing subscription service ever. MoviePass is a great idea that has a window of about 12-18 months to either become a colossus or disappear. In addition to adding subscribers, it needs to get serious and visionary.”

Brad Pitt’s Plan B And Annapurna Moot Harvey Weinstein Downfall Fiction, “To Which No Stars Or Directors Are Yet Formally Attached,” Based On The Work Of Jodi Kantor And Megan Twohey

Sandra Ignagni On Twenty-Five Years Of Documentaries At Hot Docs

“The classical part of the colorful spectacle of BraVo was a cross between the Oscars and Eurovision. ‘I went to the Bolshoi Theatre, and saw how officials and dilettantes, hidden behind the names of people with talent, amused themselves at the expense of state-owned companies,” wrote a theater blogger afterwards. ‘It would have been better if they’d shot the money from the Theater Square into the sky with a big cannon.'”

“Belgium’s prime minister has criticised one of the country’s leading universities over its plan to honour Ken Loach”

“To portray myself as antisemitic simply because I add my voice to those who denounce the plight of Palestinians is grotesque.”

You can only find out the value of an idea by doing it… oh shit I am quoting Nick Cave here. You gotta trust your instinct if that idea feels right.
“What little known or under-seen film would you recommend to any cinephile?”
Morvern Callar.
“Tips to a good screenplay?”
Keep it tight, don’t over-describe, write economically. Read Graphic Novels.
Lynne Ramsay Gives Plain, Good AMA

People Promotes Gwyneth’s GOOP By Reporting on GOOPcast Banter Of Her Mother Blythe Danner Turning Down Offer Of Tinder, Jdate Or A Vibrator

“The idea of Bill Cosby as network kingpin is greeted with enthusiasm by those who appreciate his creative genius and moral commitment. But it doesn’t sit well with some entertainment veterans who have worked with Cosby in a business capacity. The picture that emerges from these sources is of an ego out of control, someone who is not used to hearing ‘No.'”
From 1993, Nikki Finke On Bill Cosby’s Hope To Buy All Of NBC

 “Here’s the 1969 Bill Cosby Routine About Wanting to Drug Women’s Drinks”

“Bill Cosby’s Lawyers: Every Woman Who Testified Is a Phony, Lying Slut Out for Money”

Film Finances, Inc. Acquires UK Distrib Signature Entertainment

Comcast Launches $30.5 Billion Sky Takeover Bid In War With Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox

wsj

Gawker Slayer Peter Thiel Promises Not To Buy, Scatter The Website’s Ashes

LA Times

Patton Oswalt on Capture of Golden State Killer Suspect: “I think you got him, Michelle”

“Ultimately, if you have to sum up exactly what filmmaking is about, it’s sculpting space.”
Olivier Assayas On Cold Water And Career

hollywoodreporter.com

“Over time, sources say, there were complaints to human resources at both Pixar and Disney Animation. (Disney declined to comment.) A former insider says the thinking was, ‘We have to do everything we can to protect John from himself and keep the truth from the public.’”

Trailering Godard’s Le Livre de Image 74 sec

Charlie Tina Brown Says Charlie Rose Intends To Host #CharlieRoseToo Series Featuring Other Men Who Have Also Hurt Women

SAG-AFTRA on Unanimous Passage of the Music Modernization Act by the U.S. House of Representatives

“Lori McAdams, ‘John Lasseter Protector’ And Key Figure In Alleged Illegal Wage-Fixing Conspiracy, Is Leaving Pixar”

NY Times

Actor And Theater Pioneer Soon-Tek Oh, 85, Challenged Asian Stereotypes

“Olivier Assayas on Cold Water, His Breakout Film, Restored at Last”

“Difficult as it is to believe from the vantage point of the Brexit era, England was once among the world’s hippest countries.”

A Visit With Mel Brooks Before The Fiftieth Anniversary Restoration of The Producers

Arthur B. Rubinstein, 80, Composer On Blue Thunder, Wargames, Lost In America

“I love playing bitches. I love the whole idea of being so impossible that it’s funny.”
Shirley MacLaine

variety

“Making sure our creative works are valued and protected is one of the most important things we can do to keep that industry heartbeat strong. As Chairman and CEO of the MPAA, I guarantee you that fighting piracy in all forms remains our top priority.”

“Music is an artistic pursuit, but the music industry is a business. And, as the lives and deaths of Avicii and Amy Winehouse demonstrate, it can be a brutal one.”

“Is Streaming Music the Final Note for Professional Songwriters?”

indie wire

“This is something that, like curating a diverse and interesting program, is always on our radar. It’s something that we wanted to achieve. This year we knew going in if we could make it happen that we would like to do it. We weren’t going to force ourselves into any contortions to make it happen. We wanted to see what the work was like and what was being made and what would submitted to us. We had no trouble when we started evaluating the work and looking at it and discussing it, no trouble in reaching a parity this year.”
Half Of Hot Docs By Women

“I did the math and apparently only 0.000024 percent of the United States population appears in Avengers: Infinity War.”

Facebook Moves To Republican-Only Lobbyists

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“I don’t think it’s cruel to say this, because John himself would undoubtedly have turned it into a gleeful anecdote: When he had the stroke that killed him, he was at a local dinner theater. Hell of a review.”

“I am inclined to aver that every activity needs its critics, from narcissists bloviating in Washington to exhibitors of knee holes in their blue jeans by way of following a fad. So, too, tennis players and others wearing their caps backward. There is, to be sure, only fairly innocuous folly in puncturing pants or reversing caps, but for political or artistic or religious twisting of thought or harboring holes in the head there is rather less excuse. I have always inveighed against the bleary journalism practiced by newspaper reviewers, as opposed to the real criticism performed by, well, critics.”

“I often felt a twinge of grief at the idea that John Simon had devoted his life to a method of work that could only make him increasingly unhappy. Here was a man, elegant, articulate, and vastly knowledgeable, fluent in at least half a dozen languages, whose gifts of mind gave nothing back to the arts he wrote about except a few unkind remarks that made fun of someone’s performance, ethnicity, physical attributes, or, with a pun, on his target’s name. (“If this is Norman Wisdom, I’ll take Saxon folly.”) Other theatre critics keep such darts in their rucksacks for occasional use; John lived by them.”

“One person’s critic is another person’s crackpot. That they are not united in their opinions is ascribable to the Latin saying: quot homines, tot sententiae. I myself prefer being considered a creep, but that is what you get for having what Vladimir Nabokov called ‘Strong Opinions.’ It is odd that in a country so wallowing in negativity, starting with mass shootings and climaxing with Trump, such an unimportant matter as theater criticism should generate so much hostility. The only target patently more important is lead in the drinking water.”

The DVD Wrapup: Cold War, Betty Blue, Official Secrets, Demons, Olivia, American Dreamer, Land of Yik Yak

E. Scott Weinberg On Youthful Fangoria Encounters

Rome Bookstore Closes

With a Grauniad-Alleged $300 Million Budget, Could The Yet-Unseen But Surely Weird Cats Pass A Billion Dollars at The Box Office?

WEEKEND READS ON MEDIAQUAKE

Tribune Trolley Problem

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon