Looking for a modestly priced gift for a special friend? Want it to make them think of you over and over? Would you like it to help make the world a better place. Well, that would be The Hollywood Cookbook. Every copy of it sends $5 straight off to a group of twenty charities, hand-chosen by each of the participating celebrities. It was just written up in this week's TV Guide article "The Goods: Gifts That Give Back." They ask the question: "Doing some last-minute holiday shopping? Consider a present that will make everyone happy."
If you click on the above image, it'll take you straight to the Amazon page where you can order the "Gourmand Award" edition of The Hollywood Cookbook.
If you want to really get into it, see the celebs and the recipes, etc., click here for a great website that has all things Hollywood Cookbook.
Google sent me an alert this morning that my name was in the New York Times. It's an article called "World Falls for American Media, Even as It Sours on America" which pretty much explains the gist of the whole thing.
The author, Tim Arango, had called me up a few months ago to talk about such matters, based on the fact that I was chairman/CEO of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences when 9/11 hit. He was interested in the fact that I'd attended those high-level Hollywood meetings that were called by Karl Rove in the immediate blow-back from the attacks.
I'm not a big Karl Rove fan but, at the time, there was nothing insidious about the meetings. After 9/11, everybody wanted to talk about what they could do to help. Hollywood knows how to communicate and a lot of people out here were wondering if there was a piece of that in a solution.
In any case, here's my bit from the article:
Bryce Zabel, a television producer who was chairman of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences at the time and a participant in the 2001 meetings with the White House, argued then that the United States needed to regard itself like a consumer brand.
“Products like Coca-Cola are far more effectively branded around the globe than the United States itself,” he wrote in a memo that was circulated around Hollywood. “The American entertainment and communications industry has the technological and creative expertise to improve relations between our country and the rest of the world."
It seems like a perfectly fine quote, I think, except for the context which may cause some people to think I was advocating the dreaded "P" word, or propaganda. So, for the record, I most emphatically was not doing that.
My point then, and now, is simply that while every freaking corporate enterprise in the entire damn world spends time, money and effort on their "brand," the United States of America, arguably one of the potentially strongest brands on the planet, acts as if it's an irrelevant concept for us.
Personally, I think we have taken a massive step forward in "re-branding" America by our election of Barack Obama. Let's hope so.
Last January, while we were still on strike as members of the Writers Guild of America, my wife Jackie and I sat down in a Los Angeles coffee shop with our good friend, musician Cherish Alexander.
Before the coffee was cold, we decided, improbably given the time frame -- as a couple of striking screenwriters and a singer-composer -- to write, produce and distribute the song you'll soon hear. It happened over a five day period and we released it immediately before the California primary.
So far, "Ready to Believe" has cumulatively had its video versions viewed close to 100,000 times on YouTube. Plus, it's available on iTunes. You, however, don't have to buy it in the closing days of the 2008 campaign. We want you to download it for free and to send it to your friends.
It was written to stand-up for Barack to the Clinton campaign's charges claiming he wasn't ready for the presidency. We find that the need for this song is as solidly right-on today as it was last February (only Clinton is on the team now and the argument's being made by John McCain). It needed rebuttal then, and it needs rebuttal now.
Please give it a listen. Click the link below to just hear it. Otherwise,right-click to actually... we'll say it again... download "Ready to Believe" for free. Again, you have our express permission to download it and to give it away.
Please also visit the web-page of singer-composer Cherish Alexander (http://www.cherishalexander.com/ready_to_believe/) where all the goodies are also available. She and fellow producer Damian Valentine did an awesome job with this project as you can hear for yourself.
We know the hour is late but if you support Barack Obama, we'd urge you to join us and expose as many people as you can to this song. Especially Obama volunteers. We've received a good deal of email from campaign workers who thought it was like an anthemic "fight song" for the cause. That's certainly what we intended it to be.
Remember to vote. Even if the polls say he's ahead, you have to vote. Take nothing for granted.
There's been a lot of talk about how eyebrows were raised over Sarah Palin being plucked from obscurity to serve as VP on the Republican ticket. Now it appears that her running mate (remember him? the McCain guy?) is having to play catch-up to compete. In the issues of Time and Newsweek that just came out (September 8 cover date), there's a fine full-page picture of the Senator inside Newsweek and his mug gets the full cover treatment on Time. Here they are: take a good look before we continue...
As a producer out here in Hollywood, I've studied my share of head shots while considering actors for parts. While I was looking at McCain to see if he seemed up for the role, it hit me. The man had all the grey hairs plucked out of his eyebrows.
Now we always knew that McCain was a gutsy warrior but we never would have thought to apply the adjective plucky but there it is. Somehow, John McCain got his picture taken for Newsweek and then must have gone off to Time to be photographed for the cover shot. Along the way, somebody got rid of all those pesky white hairs because they are gone, baby, gone. Because of our commitment to investigative journalism here at For What It's Worth, we have gone the extra mile. Take a look yourself and you tell me if we have a Brow-gate on our hands or not?
Above: Newsweek | Below: Time
Look, I'm all for sartorial striving and all, but there is a little irony here. Isn't John
McCain the guy who "approved" the ads that tried to make Barack Obama
seem like a lightweight by branding him with the "celebrity" brush and
running pictures of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton next to his? Then
this same candidate runs out and plucks his brows for his big Time cover?
Did one of his consultants tell him that the grey in his
eyebrows made him look, well, a little old? Especially compared to his
much younger new running mate? Did the famously irritable McCain fuss
and fume before agreeing? Did the Secret Service have to inspect the
tweezers first? We just ask the questions, you decide.
Here's the biggest question. If Barack Obama had done the exact same thing before his recent cover shoot, would any of the Republican speakers last night have missed the opportunity to use that against him in dismissive and contemptuous sound-bites?
Yeah. Probably not.
Oh, well. It's just another trivial issue that probably won't even make it past a news cycle.
The Smackdown. With the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Track & Field coming up in Eugene, more than a few people will be thinking about the runner who pretty much owned Hayward Field back in the day, Steve Prefontaine. It's been a decade since Hollywood made two films back-to-back about the legendary distance runner, and you may be tempted to go rent one of them to see for yourself what the fuss was all about.
Track's been on my mind for other reasons, too. My wife and I have a film that just finished filming in Los Angeles last Friday, "Miles from Nowhere," about a high-school athlete who decides to go for a sub-four minute mile. During the time we were polishing up our screenplay's last draft before production, we looked for a little inspiration and watched both "Prefontaine" and "Without Limits" within a couple of days of each other. It was like a film school assignment to see what different production teams and actors could do with essentially the same source material. But there was another element here, for me, that put even this challenge through a separate creative filter.
Steve Prefontaine wasn't actually a legend to me, you see, because I was there when he was breaking all these incredible records.
As a native Oregonian I had seen him win the state high school two-mile in a barn-burning race when I was just a kid, then I had gone to the University of Oregon at the same time he attended and ran, and was working at a local TV station as an intern at the time of his death. Later, I used to log a lot of miles running on the wood-chip trail dedicated to him, "Pre's Trail." I can't claim that I knew him, but I saw him on campus (vividly remember watching him chug some beer at Duffy's Tavern) and when he ran at Hayward field during my freshman year, my dorm (Douglass-Walton) faced the track and we literally watched and cheered from our room window.
I don't imagine too many people are ever going to watch both of these films so our Smackdown answers a practical question: if you want to see one single film that captures the essence of Steve Prefontaine, which one should you see?
Tim Russert had a few years on me but not that many and so, like a lot of Americans, I'm guessing his passing isn't just about the loss of his wit and humor in the political arena but also a heads-up about mortality.
Of course, it's doubly impactful because the "empty chair" on Sunday's Meet the Press came on Father's Day and Russert has become known for his own love for his father and his son.
Today, during this Father's Day that he never got to, I took a walk, went for a swim and thought about what I can do to stick around a little longer for my own family. There's work to be done but it's important work. Probably Russert would approve of using his untimely death as a chance to take stock. Can't write much more now, we've got some family time carved out...
I'm a political junkie who relentlessly watches the talking heads, especially during this year's election. I live for watching the "Round Tables" on all three of the Sunday morning shows. Whenever Russert did a single guest, I was disappointed I wouldn't get to see him hold forth and direct a collection of his colleagues. The best. It's hard to accept that he's gone. When I heard the news today, it felt like a good friend had just passed away.
On the same night that the WGA leadership presented to the membership the details of a tentative deal that looks almost certain to end the strike this week, the Guild also announced the winners of the "Writers Guild Awards '08" and PANDEMIC, a screenplay I co-wrote with my wife, Jackie, actually won the "Long Form Original" category!
This odd merging of events happened because, pre-strike, the Writers Guild Awards were scheduled for February 9. Once the strike was on, all attention had to go to that, so the black-tie and gown festivities were sacrificed. A simple posting of the winners on the web-site was substituted. Then, as fate would have it, the tentative deal came together this past week, and the membership meeting got scheduled for -- you guessed it -- February 9!
Who cares? Jackie and I are thrilled that the long nightmare of a strike is almost over and with a deal that seems to be reasonable, if not everything we'd want.
"Pandemic" was a Hallmark miniseries, four hours, that was, as the award states, "original," meaning that it was not based on any pre-existing material. It's a number of interlocking stories about an unexpected strain of Avian flu and how an outbreak in Los Angeles leads the military quarantine of the entire area. In its struture, it's a bit like "Crash" with microbes.
On a personal level, Jackie and I are so honored because this award comes from a panel of writers who actually read the scripts instead of watch the movies. We think it's humbling to be among the honored screenwriters who demonstrate why the work of writers is valuable and worth fighting for at this critical moment in the WGA's history. Here's to everyone going back to work in the days ahead!
The contract between the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) expires on October 31, 2007. Currently, the WGA leadership has called for a strike authorization vote. Here is an e-mail I received from another WGA friend and board member (we worked together on an ABC series) Peter Lefcourt.
In the mail you have received, or will soon, a ballot for a strike authorization vote. This is probably the most important Guild membership vote in the last 20 years. Some exposition: First of all, A STRIKE AUTHORIZATION VOTE IS NOT A STRIKE VOTE. It merely authorizes your elected representatives, the officers and Board of Directors, to call for a strike if we deem that management has not negotiated in good faith and/or floated a substandard contract. It is, in essence, a vote of trust that the people you helped elect will make a reasoned decision if and when a strike becomes a clear option.
A strong membership vote, 90% plus, will give the Negotiating Committee leverage and may prompt the conglommerates we are in business with actually to stop stonewalling and get serious. The fact is that up till now the only thing they seem to be interested in talking about is the dismemberment of our residual system -- something we've had for 30 some odd years and had to strike to get. They have refused even to discuss any of our pattern of demands: compensation for digital delivery; jurisdiction over reality TV, improved percentages for DVD's, etc.
As you may have heard, the contract between the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) expires on October 31, 2007. Currently, the WGA leadership has called for a strike authorization vote. I'll be writing more about that, and the issues involved, on this blog, as a two decade member of the WGA, and a former member of the Board of Directors. We'll also be posting what other people have written about it, and start today with this e-mail I just received from a good friend.
I am writing to all of you -- my friends and colleagues and writers I barely know whose e-mail addresses I happen to have -- to urge you to vote in favor of the strike authorization that your WGA leaders have asked you to support.
Why are you being asked to approve a strike authorization now?
Because there has been no movement on the part of the AMPTP in negotiations. The draconian rollbacks they are offering is untenable (making residuals profit-based, gutting reacquisition, allowing movies and TV shows to run free on the internet as "promotion" etc.), and so far they have been completely, almost belligerently intractable. We need to let them know that we are committed to our well-considered, realistic and reasonable proposals. With the likelihood that distribution will be shifting to new media, we are pretty much screwed unless we can secure a fair share of all future revenue streams generated by our work.
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