Screen Actors Guild - Tumblr Posts

I support SAG and I support the writers. As a viewer and fan of quality art no matter the medium, I am happy to wait patiently until they reach an agreement. Humanity needs the arts. Humanity needs diversity of thoughts, ideas, and means of expression.

Strike is on. Actors will be joining the writers on the picket lines. This is the first strike in 60 years for SAG, and essentially shuts down the entire US film and television industry.

Chuck Dickens Has His Day In The Sun

It was the best of times...

It was the worst of times...

And somewhere on a sun-scorched L.A. sidewalk, I really hope there is a card carrying guild writer who is not suffering from heat stroke and manages to consider a modern day tale of two cities movies set amidst the strife and sorrow of modern day life and the class struggles and the gender struggles, and the race struggles that continue to exist. Wherein Chuck Dickens, producer, stepping outside in the scorching sun; runs across his old pal Carton. Carton, (whose nickname derives from his current state of homelessness), can barely recall what life was like before and during the year of the strike when the answers seemed so obvious and yet "it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness." While Dickens buys him lunch and they chat, and Carton thinks of one on his own: it was the age of conspicuous cruelty.

Is the tale I just constructed obscenely obvious (as to its origin) and didactic in its manner? Yep. But that's because I'm not the talent; the writers are. The artists are. Not the machines, but the humans. The ones who come up with the stories that make us laugh and cry and rage and wonder and most importantly: think, consider, imagine the possibilities.

I cannot imagine life without the tapestry of human experiences that continue to be woven as we speak. Pay the humans who help us discover perspectives, who help provide services and goods that improve our lives, and whose labor and efforts have value beyond numbers and machines. The choice to have done the better thing is sometimes made too late and the Age of Regret begins.

Cosmo's Moonstruck (Strike)

I simply cannot picture AI ever coming up with the delightful original screenplay (written by John Patrick Shanley) for the film Moonstruck (1987). Perhaps those in the AMPTP can heed Loretta Castorini's words and change the way they do things. What the WGA and the SAG-AFTRA are asking is not unreasonable. But then again, Loretta inherited her wisdom from her mother and Rose Castorini was a smart cookie...

Cosmo Castorini: I have no money.

Rose Castorini: You're as rich as Roosevelt. You're just cheap, Cosmo.

Hear that studio executives?

I hope the AMPTP won't wait until the moon is full and bright to make up. Even in darkness, the path forward is quite clear: compensation and safe treatment assist creativity and productivity and everyone benefits.

To those that say well, the studios could use AI and then have a writer polish it up:

Where Hugo, I Go...

Rewatched for the umpteenth time, the lovely film, Hugo (2011). If you haven't seen it, nor read the book by Brian Selznick upon which it is based, please consider a look and a read.

We rewatch films for a variety of reasons, just as we often do for books. Always something new and different to see, to hear, to learn, to experience.

But that wasn't why I put this film on the blog. With the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes, now more than ever, the Martin Scorsese directed piece seems relevant. Here we have the young orphan, Hugo Cabret, living in the train station and maintaining the clocks; the timepieces that make the trains, and presumably society, run on time. Those horological machines are human made and what time represents in the lives of humans is a constant tick tock, tick tock. With every beat of our heart, every breath taken, time passes.

Hugo senses this, as does his young friend, Isabelle. At one point in the film, Isabelle questions the future and what her purpose in life is to be. Hugo thinks for a moment and remarks:

"I'd imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn't be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too."

And during their conversation, Hugo also states:

"Maybe that's why a broken machine always makes me a little sad, because it isn't able to do what it was meant to do… Maybe it's the same with people. If you lose your purpose… it's like you're broken."

Turning that scene over in my mind and thinking about the plot (w/o spoiling too much, it is a wonderful homage to humans and art and film and history and human connections) and the ongoing strikes...but...

How is it that we humans have so readily turned the machines into the masters and the humans who created them into the extra parts?

This marvelous film would be nothing without the humans who dreamed and created and built and moved and loved it into being along with the original work upon which it was based. The humans aren't broken, the system is. The studios/corporations must recognize the labor that gives purpose to our lives and place the technology in the place wherein it serves the greater good before time runs out.

I could contemplate this film and its themes for a long time, it is a real gem to view and think about in the context of the past, the present, and the future. Hats off to all involved.

Capturing Dreams

If the studios persist with their endeavors to disregard humans in favor of machines and the pursuit of profit for the few and paucity for the rest, get used to *The Sound Of Silence, for the synergy will be lost and we'll be alone...with our machines.

An earlier post of mine talked about the lovely film, Hugo, directed by Martin Scorsese and its relevance in relation to the ongoing WGA & SAG-AFTRA strikes and continuing in that vein, here's an additional thought or two:

A scene from the film has Isabelle, (pictured above-played by the actress Chloe Grace Moretz) reading to lead Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) an excerpt from a book, The Invention of Dreams.

"The filmmaker Georges Méliès was one of the first to realize that - films had the power - to capture dreams."

While Georges Méliès was a real person; if I recall correctly, the book title was created by author, Brian Selznick, who wrote the original novel from which the movie screenplay was adapted. Apparently there is now a group for writers that takes its name from that fictitious book included in both the novel and the film.

The word synergy is likely overused as a buzzword these days, but it seems apt here. Selznick's writing, Scorcese's direction, actors acting, filmgoers, the writing group mentioned above, and it expands ever outward. The numbers of people involved in this creative output are tied together in so many ways and so many dreams, some of which are yet to be realized. Film technology has changed since the 1930s setting of the story, without a doubt-- but machines cannot be allowed to replace the dreamers, the storytellers, the actors, the humans who labor to capture these dreams.

*The Sound Of Silence (1964, written by Paul Simon; performed by Simon & Garfunkel; Columbia).

LA's environmentalist lawyers pulling up to Universal:

Strike is on. Actors will be joining the writers on the picket lines. This is the first strike in 60 years for SAG, and essentially shuts down the entire US film and television industry.

what black mirror episode are we in now