Veronica is a filmmaker and writer. Her film DANDELION DHARMA -- currently on the festival circuit -- won the Audience Award for Best Live Action Short at the 2009 Palm Springs International ShortFest. DiPippo’s screenplay writing assignments have included developing and writing original and adapted works for studio and independent producers. She has written and directed short films including “Nightsweats,” which premiered at the DGA, went on to screen at several festivals, and garnered nominations for Best Short at ShockerFest and Syracuse International Film Festival. An award-winning playwright, numerous productions of DiPippo’s plays and one-acts have been produced at theatres in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Maine. Theatre directing credits range from original works such as “Sins of the Father” (at the Met Theatre) to classics like August Wilson’s “Fences” (for Theatre 40, Los Angeles). DiPippo is a partner in inde film production company Crunch Entertainment where she is currently developing a new feature project and an animated web series. She is married to Crunch producer Marc Aramian and is a member of the Writer’s Guild, Women In Film, and the Alliance of Women Directors.
Veronica DiPippo
9/12 Tea Party: Talking With the ‘Turf’
by Veronica DiPippoOn September 12, 2009, I grabbed my MiniDV camera and moseyed on over to the Tea Party protest in West Los Angeles to chat with some super-charged “Astroturf.” I spoke with numerous varieties from a vast spectrum of turfdom including the ever-vivacious, Evan Sayet polypropylene turf with advanced Anti-Intellectual Dishonesty Guard™, and the high-performance, all-weather Sonja Schmidt turf.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
| 
Why Amy Fears Obamacare
by Veronica DiPippoMost liberals claim to be more “compassionate” than the rest of us. Currently, the “health-care crisis” has topped the left’s “Top 10 Moral Outrages” list. Suddenly, cries to free the latest victim class du jour (”the 47 million”) from their uninsured bondage can be heard from lib lips coast to coast. Whipped to a frenzy by Barry “the sky is falling” Obama, the MSM, ACORN and Nancy Pelosi are pushing hard to change the face of American medicine before their political capital evaporates. Why more people aren’t wary of a President who, with every (daily) speech, reveals himself to possess a disturbing tendency towards exaggeration, distortion, and outright lie, is beyond me. Bush may have practiced lying as a science, but this man does it as an art. This is the guy, after all, who – with enough hoden to make even a Stasiland apparatchik blush – dubbed 2010’s bloated, pork-laden, crony ass-kissing, $3.55 trillion budget as “a new era of responsibility.”
Yes, I know. Our current system IS unquestionably in need of reform and there are several excellent ideas out there for accomplishing this. But reform is not what this administration has in mind. While our transparency-reneging officials regroup for the next assault on our individual liberties, Americans need to ask themselves one, simple question: WHAT THE HELL IS THE RUSH? We are, after all, dealing with something that will eventually impact the lives of every single man, woman and child in America. And yet, Congress is being pressured to pass legislation – a kind of ‘gateway drug’ to socialized medicine – in the form of an unread bill roughly the size of Atlas Shrugged minus any of that distinguished novel’s wisdom. (more…)
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
Let Them Eat Che
by Veronica DiPippoMuch has been written about Hollywood’s obsession with Communist poster child and fashion icon Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Despite the protestations of those who actually knew and were tortured or persecuted by Che, the stories of hundreds of thousands of Cuban exiles and a vast body of easily accessible knowledge on the failed state he helped create, the bad boy “Butcher of la Cabaña” still holds an unholy fascination with the historically-challenged. Though Che was opposed to free elections, freedom of religion, free speech, free press, freedom of assembly, and even freewheeling rock and roll, he has morphed into the ultimate freedom fighter célèbre. Is the phenomenon of the world’s wealthiest and most privileged paying homage to a destroyer of wealth and privilege unique? In a word: no.
In school, we’re told we learn history in order to prevent ourselves from repeating the mistakes of the past. If only that were true. For those who study history and pay attention to its warning signs, this is a particularly painful period in the annals of western civilization on many fronts; a virtual smorgasbord of willful ignorance and denial. (more…)
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
Og, The Original Forgotten Man
by Veronica DiPippoPerhaps it went something like this…
Og, Bog, and Grog were out hunting mammoth one day somewhere in the mountains of Prehistoric Europe. Grog’s job was to select the most succulent, Grade A Prime Mammuthus primigenius available in the Mesolithic grocer’s aisle and herd it towards his spear-bearing buddies who were hidden in the brush. Grog made his choice and, using his trusty, flaming torch, chased the big woolly one brush-ward. Unfortunately, in the midst of all the excitement, Grog forgot the cardinal rule of torch-bearing hunters everywhere: always stay at least ten stone lengths away from the back end of a mammoth after it’s eaten a fir tree for lunch.
Over Grog’s ashes, Og ponders the lesson of his friend’s untimely incineration and thinks: “I’m gonna recommend the Chief hold a hunter’s refresher course and change it to twenty stone lengths.” Meanwhile, Bog, though he has access to the same information, processes it differently. He ends up dismissing the whole episode as a fluke and decides that, even if the conditions were similar, the same result could never happen to him. As Og is busy absorbing the cause and effect of Grog’s sudden demise, Bog thinks: “Let’s see, I had half a bison for breakfast, eighteen crow eggs, hand full of pine cones, pig fat smoothie with a scoop of roe deer hoof powder…which means, if I jog back to the cave reallyreally fast I can eat that entire pit of flame-broiled grubs.” (more…)
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
How Hollywood Taught Me Not to Behave
by Veronica DiPippoAs the Obama era commences, I find myself pausing to reflect upon the lessons I’ve learned over the last eight years. Feeling somewhat shell-shocked by the sudden surge of America-love exploding from the far-left corners of the Hollywood universe, I am otherwise oddly drained of emotion. Besides an inner, rumbling disquiet – perhaps due, in part, to the burrito I ingested at lunch – I can pinpoint another peculiar sensation: relief. As if I’ve just been sprung from an elementary school classroom full of spoiled, vicious, ten year-olds engaged in a perpetual, two thousand, nine hundred and twenty-day temper tantrum.
Let me explain. I am the product of political “diversity.” My father – a retired professor and classics scholar who speaks six languages – was raised “a Kennedy Democrat.” Involved in east coast politics, he actually met Jack and Bobby on several occasions and briefly toyed with the idea of moving to Washington to work in JFK’s administration (as per an invitation, mind you). Bluntly acknowledging that today’s Democrats have more in common with Karl Marx than JFK, he is currently disgusted with the whole lot of them. My mother, also a retired professor, is a direct descendant of a family who came to America in the 1660’s. A legacy Republican, her ancestors fought in every American war and her 18th Century, childhood home was used to house escaped slaves. Not surprisingly, I was raised to seek out at as many facts as I could lay my hands on before opening my mouth at the dinner table. Improperly rationalizing an opinion could lead to a deadly, thirty-minute lecture featuring etiological references in both Greek and Latin. More importantly, I was raised to be polite. “Polite: showing good manners towards others, as in courteous behavior and speech. Civil, refined, cultured.” (more…)
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
|
Follow Us on Twitter
Subscribe via RSS
Tips & Feedback