Category: Opinion

Is “Entertainment Weekly” Screwing Writers?

This article in Salon sure makes it sound like they are:

ew_cover-620x412by Daniel D’Addario

Entertainment Weekly, the venerable consumer-friendly magazine about movies and TV and the like, is under the same crunch as the rest of the media industry; its parent company, Time Inc., has recently gone through a series of layoffs. But the manner in which the magazine is attempting to build out its brand is the absolute worst-case scenario — bad for authors and for readers.

Lucia Moses at Digiday reports that Entertainment Weekly is to launch an online “contributor network” that is to feature readers as writers, particularly on “TV and eventually other areas […] staff reporters don’t cover deeply.” In other words, anyone can now write for Entertainment Weekly, but they shouldn’t expect a check. Per Digiday: read article

The problem with 22 episode seasons

But – but – but we like 22 episode seasons. LB remembers when they were 24 episodes seasons. Hell, he can even talk about 26 and 39 week seasons – and how many more writers were able to make a good living by doing what they loved in TV. But that was then, and this is now:

by Simon Brew

tvseasonsThe announcement from ABC of the finale date for season one of the bumpy Agents Of SHIELDhas revealed that the finale of Marvel’s high profile TV show will land 231 days after the premiere. That’s 33 weeks, over which a 22 episode season has – in the past few months been dribbled out.

Putting aside the numerous complaints aimed at the show, it means that episode 22, the last of season one, will screen on May 13th. Sadly, for those trying to follow the show, the erratic scheduling has made the job several times trickier than it needed to be. Whilst the first ten episodes ran on a weekly basis, since then, it’s been anything but. We had two episodes in January, one in February, two in March, and the final, uninterrupted run will start in April. read article

JOHN OSTRANDER: SEQUELS AND PREQUELS AND REMAKES, OH MY!

sequels

by John Ostrander

Fox Movies has announced the possibility of re-making the musicalWest Side Story because Steven Spielberg has evidently expressed an interest in doing so. A part of me, a large part of me, wonders if that’s a good idea. The original won ten Oscars and is considered a movie classic. So – why? Why do a remake? It might be different but will it be better? How likely is that?

It puts me in mind of Gus Van Sant’s shot by shot re-make of Psycho. Why did he bother other than as an artistic exercise? Why did the studio okay it? One of the justifications I heard is the younger generation won’t go to the original because it’s in black and white. Seriously? They can’t be that shallow.

At one point there was talk of doing a re-make of Casablanca as a film. That was fortuitously abandoned. There was a TV prequel to it in 1983 that lasted about a season. There was also a TV remake of Going My Way which starred Gene Kelly in the Bing Crosby role and Leo G. Carroll in the Barry Fitzgerald part. This one actually had a large impact on me; I was in the 8th grade at that point and it made me want to be a priest. My “vocation” lasted only a little longer than the series. But the TV series was my first experience with the material and so the TV series was always my “real” Going My Way. read article

Hollywood Must Ride the Wave of Change, Not Resist It

Ooh, waves of change! Ride ’em, baby! Cowabunga! A certain legendary agent/studio dude (and owner of the L.A. Dodgers and the Golden State Warriors) has a few things to say about the state of entertainment right now, today:

linkedinwaveby Peter Guber

Once upon a time, Hollywood lived by the golden rule – he who had the gold, made the rule. Studios, networks and other gatekeepers enjoyed the keys to the kingdom for a long time and earned enormous economic success. But a funny thing happened on the way to eternal domination – the digitization and subsequent democratization of content creation and distribution which forever changed and continues to change who is holding those keys to success.

This is the current state of the filmed entertainment industry. read article

LB: Writers’ Showbiz Promotion Services – Yay or Nay?

public_relations1

Glad You Asked Dept. 3/25/14

Today’s question comes from JR in – well, in Mexico City, what do you know? But his question is relevant to everyone – everywhere – who wants to write for TV or, for that matter, film. So:

Hey LB,

I’m an American living in  Mexico City, and what I want more than anything is to write for TV. Insofar as I’m pretty darn far from Hollywood and have absolutely no show business contacts of my own, I wonder if you could tell me what’s your take on the online services that send out and otherwise make available your resume, logline, synopsis, script, etc. to various agents, studios, and producers? Can they help me get discovered? read article