Nothing is free.  You pay a price for everything.  Anything of value is worth working for.

These are the values my father tried to beat into my thick skull…with varying degrees of success.   Once, still in high school, I approached him on a Saturday night and in my nicest tone, asked for some spending money to go to a concert with my buds.  As he pulled a twenty from his wallet he gave me a wry smile.  “I’m not sure I’m doing you any favors handing you this.”

It was years later that those words settled upon me with their full import.   What was my motivation to work if I had somebody who would hand it to me for free?  By my not planning ahead…and earning the money myself, even before I needed it…I was retarding my independence, my self-respect, and my development as a man.

When I became a man, I put away childish things. 

And childish notions.  Our nation, under the direction of a Leftist administration and abetted by a ‘progressive’ media, is awash in entitlement philosophy.  More and more Americans are looking for their ‘benefits’.   More and more feel entitled to what others earn.  More and more seem happy to sit in the wagon and complain to those who aren’t pulling it fast enough.

For some time now I’ve made a decent living in front of a camera; delivering lines others wrote, hitting my marks without bumping into the furniture or drooling on my shoes.  It’s not rocket science, but still, it’s not that easy, either.  (The drooling part, not the rest.)  Many of us in Hollywood feel that since they pay us so well to do something so relatively easy, that we owe it to ourselves, and to the world, to ‘give back’.  Many of us, with that artificial sense of self-importance that comes with being in the movies or on television, feel we are poised and even obligated to ‘weigh in’ on important issues of national or geo-political nature.

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In the 1930’s, when world audiences were asked to name the capital of the U.S.A., one answer was high on the list: “Hollywood.” That was the location listed at the end of every amazing movie: “Made In Hollywood.” How could such magic not come from America’s capital?

Such is the power of a single word.

That power has not diminished but only increased with an ADD, multi-channel, hyperactive media-centric world. The silver screen has long given us immortal dialogue which now blends so deeply into the culture that people may not know their origin, but we know the meaning.  A wise man I know said, “Image creates perception, perception creates reality.”  It couldn’t be more true in the film business.

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In a media-centric world, from motion pictures to internet to phones, we are pounded with images, forming our perceptions and then creating our reality. How fast did the Internet meme “Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys” become a daily reference at the coffee klatch, in your email, or on phone calls?  Not long.  We forget how powerful words can be when written in a clever and pithy way.  The masters of dialogue like Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, and the Epstein brothers, knew irreverent and immortal lines.  And as producers, writers or just Americans who appreciate a good, nimble turn of a phrase, we should excel at creating phrases that demonstrate the values we hold dear.  Don’t understand?  “What we have here is a failure to communicate!” (more…)