Bet you wished extending that contract now James Corden. Hey! All that paid leave thanks to the Actors/Writers Strike. All that CBS paid time with your wife and kids. Putting your feet up and watching Shoah, the entire Ken Burns archive, Bela Tarr movies and DVD boxed sets of Carson/Letterman and Saturday Night Live. Not to mention your very exclusive Creature Channel membership-bit like the Friars Club just with more cat on dog action than The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. Don’t knock any of the latters! We know: it ain’t the same as ‘being there’.
So the Hamptons now a staycation? Though just remember Werner Herzog’s doc. Cocaine Bear-how life imitates art! Wherefore Cassavetes when we need you? Greta Gerwig’s busy on the Barbie sequels;) To think upon a time I could have been a Ken-contender! Making small bollocks talk ‘cross a Margot Robbie table Marty! What about a more senior Ken scenario? Surely there’d be a mature, discerning Barbie ‘Rock chic’ ready to hurl purple popcorn across an assisted living cinema!
Love him, hate him, Piers Morgan at his behest.
All jokes aside. Can they ever? A news channel [hint’ I’m too lazy to do the research] should run something on the financial downsides to the SAG/AFTRA strikes. Not a mean way. It’s a defining moment in actors/writers rights. The product/distributor/shareholders would be nothing without the talent. Bottom line. A painstaking itty-gritty all of this.
The world always will crave pioneers. Took an Antiques Roadshow for me to learn of Maria Dickin.
There’s a lot to criticize in America but one great virtue is grassroots belief. The demise of local newspapers.
Another word about the Hollywood Actors/Writers Strike. Remember when, not so long ago, everyone joked about Hollywood grosses and ‘creative accounting’? Only a very very few A-list could challenge that by a %of the gross. Alec Guinness agreed to do a sci-fi movie only if he got a tiny % [was it 1 or 2%] of the gross. He and his family were well provided for: Star Wars.
Playing Devil’s Advocate, easy to see why streaming services [as Hollywood] don’t want their accounting practices scrutinized. And yet: doesn’t this all boil down to a ‘fair trade practices act’? HBO had a hit, and many before, with Succession. But it ain’t/wasn’t necessarily so. Nothing is no matter how amazing everything seems. The public can be wrong. Hello democracy. There is a leveling in bringing streaming ‘studios’ to account. If you had a great part in a hit series only to receive a world-wide residual paycheck of $20 you’d be mighty ‘fffing’ miffed!
Just can’t see how the Actors and Writers are not creating a better world. Deeply worrying is the potential hardship faced by many the longer the strike continues. And sadly that’s American capitalism at its worst as the Studios and Streamers hold out longer knowing the harder will fall the axe and perhaps the easier a compromise. Disney’s Bob Iger isn’t a bad person. But he was asked back again, after leaving, to negotiate a better bottom line throughout that complex company. The shareholders rule and they also demand guaranteed residuals for their investment.
The upside? The consumer will win in the end? Hopefully. Will ‘streamers’ and studios take more or less risks with their greenlighting of projects once the strike’s resolved? The marketplace has been constantly changing over the last decade. Risk a payoff? America ever was thus!
Now KITTY [during the writers’ strike] has become a pet-setting ‘meowlange’ of musical signs [think she’s got the better deal!],
What/wherefore you up Schätze! Somewhere...A camera on you...
But ANDREW now has ultimate control of the channel changer!
ANDREW’s Saturday Night Movie double bill:
Meowlange, comme tu es
ANDREW’s Saturday Night Movie [KITTY’s paw prints all over the remote]
Steve Martin on David Geffen. If you don’t care they can’t get to you. Of course you do care just not about all the nonsense.
A soupçon online taste of artist Hiroyuki Doi. Seeing his work up close and personal is truly sublime.
Two great shows opening at the Whitney Museum this Fall: Ruth Asawa and Harry Smith. Worlds apart? No artist cannot be part of the same world. Asawa started flying low on the radar a few years before her death in 2013. It took the Whitney 10 years? !Well. What is time to an artist? To a performer everything I guess. Crotchety and quavery. Always wondered how say Sutton Foster would have fared had she not got that Thoroughly Modern Millie break from understudy to star for press night. Similarly Katrina Lenk right place, right face, right time for The Band’s Visit. No doubt their talent and tenacity would have paid off eventually?
A visual artist different, non? Exhibition always welcome. Ego. Yet, if it isn’t the work fueling motivation aren’t you just another moth ‘round a human flame replicating an ever reverential spiral of acceptance? Political correctness in art ought be arrested by PC Banksy Boop. Broadway, though, inching more interesting not less?
A few thoughts before C. Bear’s austere Hamptons Maui benefit party. Should I wear white frills on the Druid dress or pink? Orange was the new black. Was a while ago kittens….wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled…all all a a talk talk show!
Then there’s Walter Winchell. What happened? Amerika.
Then, were the early years of Rupert Murdoch. There’s a one line hint in the fictional Succession. Logan’s character cemented.
There was a light of hope in my youth: Sir Michael Parkinson (1935-2023).
There she is, there she is…that’s where you’re hiding tonight schatzi…
I promise not to tell who you are. Know what would impress Sir Simon is if you could hide in the Mahler 9th! All can safely say Gustav would be purred. All be listening out for you, your small yet prestigious band of critters.
