Month: April 2019

Buh-Bye Woodstock 50th Anniversary Festival

Woodstock Music Festival co-producer Michael Lang at a happier occasion

Some things just aren’t meant to be. Today’s case in point – Woodstock 50, an attempt to recreate the magic of the original Woodstock Music Festival  of 1969, on which promoters claim to already have spent $30,000,000 (wtf?!) has been cancelled.

Did somebody really believe that The Killers, Dead and Co, Imagine Dragons, Jay-Z, Miley Cyrus, The Lumineers, Chance the Rapper, Sturgill Simpson, Halsey, Cage the Elephant, and other far from legendary contemporary acts would match the impact of Richie Havens, Ravi Shankar Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Santana Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, Sly and the Family Stone, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, and on and on and on?

In the end, good sense and a desire to maintain the value of the Woodstock Brand (really? there’s a Woodstock fucking brand?) prevailed. As the organizers, Dentsu Aegis Network, put it, “We don’t believe the production of the festival can be executed as an event worthy of the Woodstock Brand name.” read article

David Milch, battling Alzheimer’s, finally finishes ‘Deadwood’

We just discovered this report on Vulture.Com. We’re glad to know that the Deadwood film is in the can, but all in all, the following is sad news for, well, everybody:

by Matt Zoller Seitz

eadwood creator David Milch says he always had faith that his HBO Western would someday get to wrap up its story, even as more than a dozen years have passed since its surprise cancellation in 2006. But he also had doubts. Only when the cameras started rolling on Deadwood: The Movie — a TV movie set ten years after the show’s last episode — could he exhale. “Let’s just say that the exigencies of the business threw up a series of roadblocks over the years,” says Milch, walking along the main thoroughfare at Melody Ranch Studios on a cold December night, his wife, Rita, by his side. “Somehow, they were all surmounted.” read article

Writing Gig: How-To Geek Is Looking for Writer expert in both Mac and iOS

Attention, “die-hard Mac and IOS” users. howtogeek.com needs you to “work up articles ranging from straight-forward how-tos to more complicated explainers and feature stories.”

According to the site, “This is a freelance position where you’ll be assigned topics to write about, but we also encourage you to pitch topics that we haven’t covered yet. It is also strictly a telecommuting job. We don’t have normal office hours—or even an office—so you can be located anywhere.” read article

The Latest on the Writers Guild of America-Association of Talent Agents Situation

by Larry Brody

The latest development, per the Writers Guild of America West Board of Directors last Friday, April 26th:

Dear Members, read article

Larry Brody: Live! From Paradise! #43 – “The Road to Hell”

THE USUAL NOTE FROM LB: From the summer of 2002 to  the spring of 2010, Gwen the Beautiful and I were the proud and often exhausted owners of a beautiful Ozarks property we called Cloud Creek Ranch.

In many ways, the ranch was paradise. But it was a paradise with a price that started going up before we even knew it existed. Here’s another Monday musing about our adventure and the lessons we learned.

Oh, and if y’all detect any irony, please believe me when I say it comes straight from the universe and not your kindly Uncle Larry B. read article