Month: July 2012

Mayberry and the Decline of America – Or Not?

Once upon a time, Frank Rich was a brilliant TV critic. Now he’s a brilliant, full-fledged social/political observer and just about the smartest guy we know. (Except maybe for Stephen Colbert?) Here, he combines both his obsessions:

Mayberry R.I.P.
by Frank Rich

Andy Griffith was a genial and gifted character actor, but when he died on Independence Day eve, you’d have thought we’d lost a Founding Father, not a television star whose last long-running series, the vanilla legal drama Matlock, expired in 1995. The public tributes to Griffith were over-the-top in a way his acting never was, spreading treacle from the evening newscasts to the front page of the New York Times. read article

LB: Actors Have Feelings Too

by Larry Brody

Actually, actors have Very Deep Feelings, so much deeper than those of writers that we can’t possibly fathom what’s going on. Yes, years of experience being overwhelmed by the stars and not-stars I’ve worked with have taught me this. Which is why the following makes me so sad:

Rachel Ward Reveals She Left Acting After Bad Reviews for ‘Thornbirds’
by Marisa Guthrie (The Hollywood Reporter)

Rachel Ward — who starred in the wildly popular 1983 miniseries The Thornbirds with Richard Chamberlain — appeared at the semi-annual Television Critics Association press tour Sunday and admitted that it was the critics that drove her out of acting. read article

RIP Frank Pierson

A sensational writer. If you love great, funny, serious films and TV (yes, that’s intentional) you probably already love Pierson’s work even if you didn’t know he was the writer.

Former President of Motion Picture Academy Dies — He Wrote One of the Movies’ Most Iconic Lines Deadline
by TeamTVWriter Press Service

A veteran TV and movie screenwriter, director and producer who served as president of both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and the Writers Guild-West has died, Deadline.com reports. Frank Pierson was 87. read article

You Don’t Need to be Rich to Develop Your Own Series

Robert Glenn Plotner, one of LB’s students, has been working like a sonufabitch on his own lilve-action self-created TV/web series, LET’S GET SPUNKY!

How’s it going? Hey, glad you asked. Here’s what RGP has to say: read article

Remember Charlie Kaufman’s and Dan Harmon’s Kickstarter Project?

Guess what? It’s already funded. In fact, more than funded. After only 9 days.

Just think how quickly you could get funding if you were the writer of BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, ETerNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, and ADAPTATION., working with the creator of COMMUNITY. read article