Bryce Zabel's FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH

Jan Rubes: The End of an "Incredible Journey"

Brad Markowitz is a Hollywood writer/producer with extensive TV credits. This is his first contribution to "For What It's Worth."

The older you get, the more friends you lose. I haven’t spoken to Jan Rubes in years, but when I heard that the venerable actor had passed away at the age of 89, it certainly felt like a death in the family, as it did when the ultimate pro, actor Lane Smith passed on a couple of years ago.  Lane and Jan were both part of the cast of my first television series, “Kay O’Brien,” a medical show about a young female surgeon, which had a short but distinguished run on CBS back in the late eighties.

Jan may not be a household name, but millions would instantly recognize his stern visage and distinctive, accented voice lecturing Harrison Ford about “the gun of the hand” in his portrayal of the Amish patriarch in Peter Weir’s film “Witness.”  Jan in fact had a long and distinguished performing career, both as an actor and an opera singer.

A native of Czechoslovakia, Jan emigrated to Canada as a young man and got his first film credit in 1963 for “The Incredible Journey.”  It was a full 25 years later that I first met him as one of the candidates to play the wise, senior teaching surgeon on “Kay O’Brien.”  Our executive producer, (the inimitable Bill Asher) and everyone else agreed he was perfect for the part.  As myself and my then writing partner Bryce Zabel were absolute neophytes at writing and producing network TV shows, Jan’s authoritative voice and demeanor made it seem as if he were patiently teaching us, even when he was reading words we’d written for him.

Guys and Molls

Check out Sherry Coben's latest Movie Smackdown! between "Public Enemies" and "Bonnie and Clyde." Guns, women, fast cars and cool sunglasses. Beatty versus Depp. Did we mention the cool sunglasses?

Got Green?

Charlotte Safavi is an Iranian-American journalist who writes for numerous publications, including the Huffington Post

Last week as Iran's Tweet-A-Thon raged on my Facebook, an unrelated post caught my eye from an American Facebook friend, "Green twitter pictures are stupid as f***." I knew my friend did not know what the green images meant. But his comment made me stop and think.

Since the disputed election results of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's win came out of Iran on June 12, 2009, green wheels started turning on the Internet. The clamp down on international press coverage in Iran only meant green-colored avatars spread faster than the plague on the social networking sites, now operating as de factonewsrooms.

I scroll through my Facebook friends' profile pictures. Among them, I see simple statements of protest on green backgrounds: Where is My Vote? Where is Their Vote? Free Iran. I see bold graphics on green squares -- a clenched fist, the black snail-shaped map of Iran, a splatter of red. I see recent photographs with green elements -- a pair of green-ribbon bedecked fingers and thumbs forming a heart-shape, green-painted fingers making the V sign, defiant Iranians demonstrating on the streets of Iran in green clothing and accessories.

I am most touched by my American Facebook friends, many of whom are not multicultural mutts like me, who have taken on green avatars, some by green-washing their regular profile pictures. Of course, I know those who have not changed their profile pictures -- I have not -- also support the Iranians. A plea for democracy in real time spreading throughout the Web is potent and addictive.

Color for a cause is also powerful. Think of the pink ribbon of breast cancer awareness, the yellow ribbon of wanting to see loved ones home safely, the red ribbon of AIDS.

WGA Politics 2009: One for the History Books?

This year I served as a member of the Writers Guild of America west's "Officers Nominating Committee." It was our job to come up with two candidates each for the offices of President, Vice-President and Secretary-Treasurer.

We've just concluded by phone conference our final meeting. While I'm sworn to secrecy until the WGA announces those candidates and the candidates who will also run for the Board of Directors in this year's election, I think it's pretty safe to say that this is going to be one astonishingly competitive election, maybe even one for the Guild history books.

Some people around town already know what's going on (obviously, since the candidates and their supporters talk). The likelihood is that either Daily Variety or the Hollywood Reporter or even Nikki Finke are likely to break this news before the WGA gets around to announcing it. Hell, at dinner on Friday, one of my friends told me what the news was and he was spot-on. That was 48 hours ago.

Anyway, after last year's strike, the WGA is about to put a couple of presidential and vice-presidential candidates out there who will have dramatically different takes on what it meant, what we won or lost, and what we should do next. That's democracy, folks, and the WGA is about to practice it, big-time. Stay tuned...

Green is the Color of Growth

Charlotte Safavi is an Iranian-American journalist who writes for numerous publications, including the Huffington Post

I am a child of nowhere--at least I thought so until this week. Though born in London and educated at Oxford, my heritage is Iranian. Both my parents are from Tehran, where I also spent part of my childhood. I immigrated to Los Angeles in 1985, later married an American and gave birth to an American son. When it comes to explaining my cultural identity, my head spins uncontrollably like that of Linda Blair in The Exorcist. No single country defines me, rather a combination of all three, depending on the situation. Living far from Iranian family and friends in suburban DC, Iran has been creeping lower on my totem pole.

But this week feels different. The Iranian in me is piping up. All you halves and mutts, like my son, all you multicultural schizophrenics, like me, there will come a time when parts of you come to life when you least expect them. However long or for whatever reason you suppress them, those parts of you that are from somewhere else will be at the fore.

For me, it started on Facebook. At first, the election in Iran meant little to me as an American bystander with no Iranian passport and no right to vote, except that I think a dangerous president who denies the Holocaust should be in a lunatic asylum, not running a large country.

Whither Newspapers?

L.A.-based entertainment journalist Kate O'Hare also blogs regularly on Hot Cuppa TV and The Accidental Futurist

As a journalist (that's the day job), every day I hear the question, "What is the future of newspapers?"

My answer is, "There isn't one, if you expect the industry to look like it does today."

One can wander far into the weeds of monetizing online content, micropayments, content cannibalization, etc., etc. Far cleverer folks than me, and those that have actually worked in a major-newspaper newsroom (I've always been either a freelancer or a wire-service staff writer), have tackled these questions and no doubt do a better job of discussing these topics than I can.

Some recent sources for views on the subject are linked at the bottom of this post. But, as a newspaper outsider who is also a journalistic insider -- and vested in the outcome of this debate -- I'll default to what I do best, ask questions.

I'll offer a couple of answers for each, but you may have a very different perspective, and I hope you'll share it with me. Here we go...

What is a newspaper?

Literally speaking, it's a pile of inky newsprint, a delivery system for information, advertising and photographs. But when people say "newspaper," they usually refer to what I call the newsgathering infrastructure, the people and technology that produce what winds up on the inky newsprint.

For the record -- not fond of inky newsprint. I went more than a decade without a newspaper subscription, because I just detest dealing with inky newsprint. I get a Sunday paper now...for the coupons. The inky newsprint generally gets tossed.

But, I consume vast quantities of news, both on screen and online, much of it newspaper and magazine content. That's partly because it's free but mostly because it's convenient. If I had to pay, I probably would, but hardly anybody asks me to. Which leads me to another question...

Why do people buy a newspaper?

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire?

Lee Goldberg writes regularly on A Writer's Life

My friend author Joe Konrath has done extraordinarily well selling some of his unpublished books on the Kindle, making $1250 in royalties this month alone. That's very impressive. And since its free and easy to upload your book to Amazon for sale on the Kindle, I'm sure that Joe's success is very exciting and encouraging news to a lot of aspiring writers out there. But I suspect Joe's success is the exception rather than the rule. That said, he is encouraging others to follow his lead. He writes:

The average advance for a first time novel is still $5000. If Kindle keeps growing in popularity, and the Sony Reader opens up to author submissions like it intends to, I think a motivated writer will be able to make $5000 a year on a well-written e-novel. Or more. All without ever being in print.

[...]Robert W. Walker, has written over forty novels. Most of them are out of print, and the rights have reverted back to him. If he digitized and uploaded his books, and priced them at $1.59 (which earns him 70 cents a download), and sold 500 copies of each per month (I sold 500 of Origin and 780 of The List in May), he'd be making $14,000 a month, or $168,000 a year, on books that Big NY Publishing doesn't want anymore.
Even if he made half, or a third, or a fifth of that, that's decent money on books that he's not doing anything else with. Now, all of us aren't Rob, and we don't have 40 novels on our hard drives, especially 40 novels that were good enough to have once been published in print. But how long do you think it will be before some unknown author has a Kindle bestseller?

Joe is making a lot of assumptions based on the admirable success of his own Kindle titles. It's a big, big, BIG leap to think, just because his book has done well, that Robert W. Walker (or any other mid-list author) will sell 500 copies...or even 50 copies...of his out-of-print books on the Kindle each month. 

Lee Goldberg writes regularly on A Writer's Life

My friend author Joe Konrath has done extraordinarily well selling some of his unpublished books on the Kindle, making $1250 in royalties this month alone. That's very impressive. And since its free and easy to upload your book to Amazon for sale on the Kindle, I'm sure that Joe's success is very exciting and encouraging news to a lot of aspiring writers out there. But I suspect Joe's success is the exception rather than the rule. That said, he is encouraging others to follow his lead. He writes:

The average advance for a first time novel is still $5000. If Kindle keeps growing in popularity, and the Sony Reader opens up to author submissions like it intends to, I think a motivated writer will be able to make $5000 a year on a well-written e-novel. Or more. All without ever being in print.

[...]Robert W. Walker, has written over forty novels. Most of them are out of print, and the rights have reverted back to him. If he digitized and uploaded his books, and priced them at $1.59 (which earns him 70 cents a download), and sold 500 copies of each per month (I sold 500 of Origin and 780 of The List in May), he'd be making $14,000 a month, or $168,000 a year, on books that Big NY Publishing doesn't want anymore.
Even if he made half, or a third, or a fifth of that, that's decent money on books that he's not doing anything else with. Now, all of us aren't Rob, and we don't have 40 novels on our hard drives, especially 40 novels that were good enough to have once been published in print. But how long do you think it will be before some unknown author has a Kindle bestseller?

Joe is making a lot of assumptions based on the admirable success of his own Kindle titles. It's a big, big, BIG leap to think, just because his book has done well, that Robert W. Walker (or any other mid-list author) will sell 500 copies...or even 50 copies...of his out-of-print books on the Kindle each month. 

UFOs or SETI: What FIRST CONTACT w/ E.T. Really Looks Like

"When Visitors Come to Call" originally posted on Movie Smackdown!

 Contact (1997) -vs- Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) 

The Smackdown. If you're old enough to remember the marketing campaign for "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," then you'll remember the goosebumps you got when you heard the phrase, We are not alone.  What was great about that simple sentence was that it promised a movie about aliens that was about wonder and mystery and wasn't about the same old Hollywood treatment of life in the universe, namely that if it bothered to interact with humans it was for a nefarious reason, everything from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" to "War of the Worlds" to the later "Independence Day."   Twenty years after "Close Encounters" came another film that promised to make first contact a matter of humanity's growth out of the cradle and not some intergalactic cage match. Both "Close Encounters" and "Contact" were aliens for smart people brought to you first by the immense talent of Steven Spielberg and later by the immense intellect of Carl Sagan.  In my Hollywood career, I've had the good fortune to discuss UFOs and extraterrestrial life with both of these men and found them to have some very different visions of the subject.  They each have used film to express their views about life as it might exist "out there."  The question is, which version comes closest to what might be the truth about first contact, and which one is the better film?

The Challenger. "Contact" (the movie) directed by Robert Zemeckis is a faithful film adaption of Contact (the novel) written by Carl Sagan.  In both tellings, radio astronomer Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster in the film) hits the cosmic jackpot when the giant radio telescopes that are part of S.E.T.I. (Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence) actually turn up a non-random signal from across the universe.  Someone is talking to us or, more accurately, talking back.  You see, they've picked up the very first television transmission the Earth ever leaked outward, amped it up and sent it back to us.  It's an excellent surprise and -- without spoiling it -- let's just say that the first TV signal that went out from Earth is, well, unexpected.  After that, the story kicks into where no film has really gone before.  There's another signal buried in that TV re-transmission that is, basically, the blueprints for building a gigantic spacecraft... for one person!  Well, if there was ever a situation designed to stretch our humanity to the breaking point, it would be trying to determine who's going to be that lucky (or, in failure, unlucky) person.  Where will they go?  Will they ever return?  Will they die?  Is it some kind of trick?

"For What It's Worth" word cloud created by Wordle

Up, Up and Away!

Stephen Bell is a regular contributor on Movie Smackdown!

 Up (2009) -vs- Wall-E (2008) 

The Smackdown.  A year ago on this very site, a small, garbage-collecting robot named "Wall-E" dethroned the king of computer animation, Pixar's beloved "Toy Story." The film found gigantic success, being hailed by critics, winning the Academy Award for best animated feature and receiving a nomination for Best Screenplay. "Wall-E" transformed the genre and pushed the limits of innovation and creativity. Now, a year after its historical upset, "Wall-E" stands ready to defend its title against the newest of Pixar's animated giants, the high-flying adventure story "Up." Headlining opening night of the Cannes Film Festival, a feat never before accomplished by an animated feature (let alone an American one,) "Up" and its cast of elderly men, children and talking dogs (you heard me) have entered the world of cinema at full steam, their focus fixed solely on taking our favorite robot's crown. Will "Wall-E" have enough strength to put down its first challenger, or will his reign prove a short one? Let's find out!

The Challenger.  "Up" tells the story of Carl Fredricksen, an elderly balloon vendor who once dreamt of adventure with his wife Ellie, but now resigns himself to sitting on his front porch while the world moves on around him. In order to keep a promise he had made to his Ellie a lifetime ago, Carl decides to leave the world behind and relocate their home to the mythical Paradise Falls in Venezuela, the last known origins of Carl and Ellie's childhood hero, adventurer Charles Muntz. His plan - to lift their home out if its foundation by thousands of colorful balloons and sail through the heavens to his Paradise Falls. However, what Carl doesn't plan for is to accidentally take Russell, an energetic young boy scout, with him on his adventure. Nor does he plan to be thrown into the middle of a battle for a mysterious giant bird known as "Kevin," a conflict that has the potential to jeopardize his promise to Ellie.