The only thing worse than a Bitter, Liberal, Angry, Hollywood Screenwriter is an Unemployed, Bitter, Liberal, Angry, Hollywood Screenwriter (“U-BLAHS,” as I adoringly refer to them).  There are several thousand U-BLAHS hanging about, primarily in Los Angeles.  They haunt the revival cinemas.  Some dicker around, half-heartedly attempting new “careers,” like being a poker dealer in a market oversaturated with same (that’s Liberal thought for you — no understanding of a free market, much less a saturated free market).  Some U-BLAHS film clumsy internet videos from their computer, concocting a list consisting of the dozen most unintentionally bad jokes they can think of in a desperate attempt to deflect their self-hatred onto Conservatives.

You might find them at the Arclight during December and January, when their WGA memberships permit free admission for themselves and a “guest” (long-suffering spouse/partner? Homeless guy they promised a meal to?). Otherwise, they likely couldn’t afford the premium ticket prices there.  Poker dealing doesn’t pay what it used to.

Theirs is a lost generation, having witnessed their dreams of boarding the luxury cruise ship of the Hollywood Elite dashed — instead relegated to the ship of fools, a half-constructed government-funded behemoth inadvertently launched prior to completion, now residing limply on its side as seagulls crap on its hull.   Flailing madly in the bay, arms slapping the waves of excremental runoff from L.A.’s shores, the U-BLAHS emerge onto dry land, greeted by two herds eager to welcome them.  They recoil from the initial herd, despising it as they do, refusing to accept the herd’s membership card involuntarily thrust upon them: that of the Has-Been. Stumbling for escape, the U-BLAHS run into the arms of the only other herd awaiting new membership, the Never-Weres. (more…)

This is a speech Andrew Klavan gave on Conservatism in American Fiction at the Horowitz Freedom Center Retreat. It’s forty-minutes and well worth your time, especially to anyone thinking of diving into the world of fictional storytelling. The lessons here apply to filmmakers as much as novelists and while many topics are covered, the overall theme looks at the Big Picture ideas every storyteller can learn from:

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Klavan speaks at length about the importance of American ideas in great storytelling, the history of Western ideas and values in literature, the new blacklist, the brilliance of David Mamet as both a writer and thinker, the leftist marginalizing of Saul Bellow for political reasons, and the recent censoring of “Huckleberry Finn.”

Brilliant, fascinating, insightful  stuff — especially the segments on “Finn,”  how post-modern theory threatens intelligent storytelling, and how conservative voices are now being heard in the “great conversation” between Right and Left in the uniquely American search for truth.

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This article addresses those people everyone loves to make sport of: the agents.

Agents have a difficult job, believe it or not. They represent a multitude of clients. Very often, they represent several clients that would each be right for a specific job that comes along. In addition, there are a finite number of producers and a very small number of employers. The ugly truth is that conflicts of interest abound. It’s inevitable. Certain horse-trading must occur in order to get deals done. There are too many crosscurrents for this not to happen. It’s really no different that state or federal politics. It won’t change, simply because there are too many people seeking employment, too few jobs, and billions of dollars at stake.

Agents have it tough. There, I said it. I don’t know of any agent that doesn’t want to see all of their clients working — not just because they want to book commissions, but because they don’t want to feel that they’ve let their clients down. And while jokes abound about the utter inhumanity of agents (and I’m sure there are plenty that are, in fact, not human), many of them have families, just like their clients. They know their clients need to support their families. They know they need employment. Agents must deal with absurd amounts of client insecurity, while also handling deals that are worth millions. Competition is intense within many agencies. There’s a lot of work involved. Think Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross times ten and you start to understand.

Both state law and various Guild agreements effectively prevent agents from owning productions or production entities. The concept is that this protects the artists by preventing conflicts of interest.  If an agency only procures employment for clients in the productions the agency owns, it can limit fees paid to the client in order to maximize the production’s profit. (more…)

The American Theatre world was rocked last year by playwright David Mamet’s confession in the “Village Voice” headlined:  “Why I am no longer a ‘brain-dead liberal”.

Some of us saw it coming.

You need only recall Mamet’s 1992 masterpiece “Oleanna” to see that he was already feeling deeply affected by the left’s intolerant and stifling political correctness and the witch-hunt mentality of sexual harassment manifested by the insidious “hostile environment” charge.  You remember 1992…  the “Year of the Woman”?  The fall-out of the Clarence Thomas hearings?  At the time, NY Times critic Frank Rich (yes, before he was telling us how to run our country, he was merely telling us what plays to see) said at the time:

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