Elizabeth Gilbert/ Justin Cronin/ cancelled shows

This is on my www.badcb.blogspot.ca:

Jun. 4 TED conference: I cut out the Globe and Mail article “The instants that sparked the ideas” by Marsha Lederman on Mar. 22, 2014:

Elizabeth Gilbert:

Elizabeth Gilbert produced a massive bestseller with Eat, Pray, Love, but that came with its share of terror. How to follow up such a huge success? She felt certain that fans of her memoir would be disappointed with whatever she wrote next. She considered giving up writing altogether.

She, weirdly, found herself identifying with her younger self – an unpublished waitress in a diner coming home daily to a mailbox stuffed with rejection letters for almost six years. It made no sense. What did constant failure have to do with success beyond her wildest dreams?

Here’s what she discovered: The answer, in both cases, was to keep doing the thing she loved not for the end game but for the activity itself. It was her love of writing that inspired her writing.

“That’s how, in 2010, I was able to publish the dreaded follow up to Eat, Pray, Love. And you know what happened? It bombed. And I was fine. Actually I kind of felt bulletproof because I knew that I’d broken the spell and that I’d find my way back home to writing for the sheer devotion of it.”

Sting: For Sting, it was a glimpse of a different kind of life that provided motivation to get out of his shipyard building town, Newcastle, and what seemed his inevitable future working there. That shipyard at the end of his street made some of the biggest vessels in the world. So big, that sometimes royalty would show up on launch day. When Sting (then Gordon Sumner) was a boy, he remembers the Queen Mother coming to town for one of those events. He stood at the side of the road, in front of his house, wearing his Sunday best and holding a Union Jack. Finally, her Rolls-Royce drew near.

“I started to wave my flag vigorously and there is the Queen Mother,” the superstar musician told the audience. “I see her and she seems to see me, she acknowledges me. She waves, and she smiles. And I wave my flag more vigorously. We’re having a moment, me and the Queen Mother. She’s acknowledged me. And then she’s gone. Well, I wasn’t cured of anything. It was the opposite, actually. I was infected. I was infected with an idea. I don’t belong on this street. I don’t want to live in that house. I don’t want to end up in that shipyard. I want to be in that car. I want a bigger life. I want a life beyond this town. I want a life that’s out of the ordinary.”

My opinion: I never read any of Elizabeth Gilbert books, but the above was inspirational.  I’m going to put it in my inspirational quotes.  I’m not really a fan of Sting’s, but I liked his part in the article too.  The rest of the article talks to Sting and the artist Lars Jan.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/ted-conference-the-instants-that-sparked-the-ideas/article17611869/?cmpid=rss1

Justin Cronin: I wrote about him before.  I found this 2010 Globe and Mail article called “A 13-yr-old’s idea” by John Barber.  I couldn’t find the article on the internet, so I’m going to type up some things. 

Cronin is a university professor and a novelist.  He says “writing has always paid for more writing.”

It says he sold his manuscript and 2 planned sequels for $3.5 million US and the director Ridley Scott would pay $1.5 million for the film rights.

Cronin was talking to his 13 yr old daughter Iris and she loves Harry Potter.  She told him to write a book about a girl who saves the world.  She goes bike riding and he jogs as they talk about the story.  After the summer ends, it’s too dark out.  Cronin wasn’t going to write, but then thought the story seemed really good and decided to write it.

The Twelve: Here is another review of his book called The Twelve.  This is the Globe and Mail article “Apostles of apocalypse” by Zsuzsi Gartner on Oct. 20, 2012.  Here are some excerpts:

Project Noah, a secret military experiment (is there any other kind?) in Colorado, goes haywire, unleashing 12 predators, former death-row inmates injected with a DNA-altering virus, who, in a matter of weeks, lay waste to the entire United States, aided by their millions of bitten followers. (There is no mention of Canada or Mexico, and the world beyond reacts with haste to enforce a quarantine of the North American continent, laying mines along the entire coastline and blowing up the vessels of those who try to flee.)

The (d)evolution of this man (to name him would to give away too much) over the course of almost a century is a study in how a human being loses his moral compass to become a being of unadulterated evil. Cronin also manages to wring sympathy from the reader for all manner of cretins, including a hapless pedophile who gains humanity through becoming inhuman.

He invests a dizzying array of primary and secondary characters with satisfying backstories, emotional lives and distinct voices.

(Wouldn’t it be great if some of our iconic writers of fine prose and character studies followed Margaret Atwood’s lead and speculated about the future and other levels of reality, combined soulfulness with page-turning narratives?)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/the-twelve-a-spiritual-journey-a-horrifying-thriller-and-a-love-story/article4623224/

Jun. 9 3.5 floppy disks: I was helping my brother find his glasses in his room and I found a green Memorex 3.5 floppy disk.  From the label, it seemed the last time he used it was in high school, so probably 2004.  I tried it on the computer and it doesn’t work.  The disk looked like it was only used for one class.

A few days ago, I tried my orange Memorex disk, and it stopped working.  It had my weekly emails saved onto it.  Fortunately, I saved it also in my drafts in my email.  A gray disk stopped working back in Apr. and it had my emails saved onto it.

The orange one was used by my sister when she was in university.  I saved my The Vertex Fighter 1, 2, 3, and 4 drafts onto this before I transferred it onto another disk.

I’ll give Memorex points that they lasted this long.  They were bought in 2002.

Jun. 12 Recycle: I was talking to my friend Jessica earlier this week and she found lots of dead pens when cleaning.  I told her to recycle them at the Staples in Oliver square and she says it won’t be worth the trip to drive there to recycle it.  I told her I can take the pens from her and recycle it for her.  Seriously.  I’m very into recycling. 

The Staples also recycle batteries and printer toners.

Meet Up: Yesterday I went to my second Meet Up for screenwriting.  There were 4 more people than last time, so I met them.

Jun. 16: I went to Staples twice in May to recycle.  2 weeks ago I was going to recycle some more pens and batteries, but then I decided not to because I was kind of sick of going there.  So I should go there once a month so I won’t get bored of it.

Cancelled shows: This was awhile ago but in Fall 2013, there were a lot of TV pilots I saw.  I saw a whole bunch, but I only liked two shows where I kept watching it.

1. The Tomorrow People- cancelled

2. Marvel Agents of SHIELD- renewed

3. Dads- cancelled

4. Hostages- cancelled

5. Dracula- cancelled

6. The Blacklist- renewed

7. Sleepy Hollow- renewed

8. Brooklyn Nine- Nine- renewed

9. Believe- cancelled

10. Helix- renewed

I only kept watching Dracula and Believe, and they’re both cancelled.  I just saw the series finale to Believe on ctv.ca.  It was a good ending.  It was a little open.  Dracula was open ended too.  The thing is with season and series finales, you have to finish some story lines and set up new storylines for the next season.

Here’s a site with all the Fall 2013 TV shows that got cancelled.

https://ca.celebrity.yahoo.com/photos/shows-that-won-t-be-back-this-fall-1398986782-slideshow/cast-photo-1379966070108.html

China Canada Gateway for Film Script Competition

 This is on my www.badcb.blogspot.ca:

Jun. 4 China Canada Gateway for Film Script Competition: I cut out this Globe and Mail article “It’s a giant learning experience” by Marsha Leander on Dec. 5, 2013.  Here are the excerpts:

A year ago, the Whistler Film Festival launched its China Canada Gateway for Film Script Competition with much fanfare.

Three projects were selected: an animated children’s movie, Butterfly Tale; a romantic comedy set primarily in France, Blush; and The Eddie Zhao Story, based on a real-life Chinese immigrant to the United States who fell victim to a con man and became a private eye. But, 12 months later, all of the deals made at Whistler are off.

“You walk out of the room thinking that your movie is finally going to get made,” says Heidi Foss, who wrote Butterfly Tale. “It kind of sounded too good to be true when it happened, and it turns out it was.”

Canadian filmmakers can access development money and the increasingly important Chinese film market as they try to get their movies made. And China, eager to become a film powerhouse, gains access to the expertise of Canadian screenwriters and producers as they look for works suitable for both the Chinese domestic and international markets.

Applicants were advised in the application form that Chinese film projects are “incredibly fast by North American standards. From concept to release in 12 months.”

But organizers remain optimistic about the initiative, and say the main point of the Gateway is to make connections between Canadian filmmakers and Chinese studios.

Accessing development financing was a problem for both Butterfly Tale and Blush. In both cases the writers were reluctant to do work on their scripts on spec.

“Am I going to change my beautiful little film with no money up front?” says Montreal-based Foss, who is confident her film ultimately will be made outside this deal. “I’m not going to do a million rewrites to satisfy a company that hasn’t made a commitment other than sort of a handshake at the end of the competition.”

Richard Bell, Vancouver-based writer of Blush, says he and his producer had a hard time contacting the studio in China, and when he was encouraged to flesh out his synopsis, he refused. “I thought to myself: ‘My time would be better spent playing video games on my Wii than writing this script.’”

The number of entries is down this year – 26 compared with 110 last year – but Milner says the proposals are stronger this time around. Twelve finalists will pitch their projects this week. At least three will be selected for development.

Both Bell and Foss, in the runup to this year’s festival, say they have been approached by other writers and asked if it’s worth their while to enter the competition. Both said no.

But Massey says the competition was a huge boost to his project, even if his film didn’t end up getting made through the Gateway.

“The main point is that Gateway provided instant feedback. It was the first time we presented the project to any buyers or financiers and it validated immediately that we had a good project. The fact that it didn’t work out with the party that offered the deal is par for the course. Some of those things work out, some don’t.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/what-three-teams-learned-from-whistler-film-fest-script-competition/article15760276/

My opinion: I have never heard of Gateway before.  I guess I could look it up.  I’m making The Vertex Fighter into a TV movie.  If the ratings are good, it  can be a back door pilot.

What stood out to me was this line: “My time would be better spent playing video games on my Wii than writing this script.”

Canadian movies: I was reading the Globe and Mail article “Canadian movies had 2 percent share of domestic box office in 2013” by James Adams on Jan. 10. 2014.

It was compared to 2.5% share in 2012.  “The Quebec-made francophone films dominated the domestic market.”

My opinion: That’s kind of discouraging, but I am aiming more for TV than movies.

Canadian TV: I was reading the Globe and Mail article "How Canadian TV can start thinking really big "by Kate Taylor on Jun. 16, 2012.  Here are some excerpts:

The rise of the cable drama, expanding episodic television into long-form narratives that represent the most sophisticated audiovisual storytelling the culture has to offer, has no Canadian equivalent. Here, network television produces a handful of more-or-less successful procedural dramas (Republic of Doyle, Flashpoint, Rookie Blue), co-produces a few high-end European entries (The Tudors, The Borgias); and often relegates what little distinctive fare it does produce (in particular, unusual comedy, such as Ken Finkleman’s Good Dog and Good God; and the nasty Less Than Kind) to the relative obscurity of the Canadian specialty channels.

Canada isn’t playing television’s game of thrones. That’s partly because it doesn’t have the big audiences and big money to compete; but also, more sadly yet more reversibly, because its risk-averse television broadcasters are failing to back talent in a culture that too quickly turns to airing U.S. television rather than demanding better from its own.

“Every show that has succeeded has had people who stuck by it.”

The notoriously expensive 2010 pilot for Boardwalk Empire cost $18-million (U.S.) according to Variety. Of course, American budgets are bigger, typically $2.5-million to $3-million an hour-long episode versus $1-million in Canada. While Canadian series can access more money through international co-productions, especially for historical dramas, such productions aren’t visibly Canadian. Bigger budgets provide the money to pay for the fancier costumes and big-name stars that lure viewers – a Joseph Fiennes on Camelot or Jeremy Irons on The Borgias – but, more importantly, they pay for more writers, and more time to shoot.

Industry insiders say shows such as Mad Men on AMC or, previously, The Sopranos on HBO are considered loss leaders: What they deliver is critical buzz and Emmy nominations that will build a channel’s reputation and its subscription base. While Canadian specialty channels can also afford to be less ratings-driven than the networks, the space for high-quality Canadian drama in what is already a small niche in a small market is getting increasingly cramped.

“The problem in Canada is that there are so few networks, it’s hard to stick your neck out and make shows that are unconventional.”

Programmers often look to procedural dramas – always a favourite with audiences – which may explain why Canada has had a fair amount of success in that field in recent years, with U.S. partners signing on for shows such as Flashpoint, The Listener and the new medical drama Saving Hope. And yet, for the most part, the talked-about U.S. cable dramas are not programs that fit recognized genres; they’re character-driven shows created by individual visionaries.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/television/how-canadian-tv-can-start-thinking-really-big/article4267928/

My opinion: It was a good article, and I really learned how hard it is to get a Canadian TV show produced.

Kijiji: I got this Kijiji newsletter.  I clicked on the video on how they made a commercial for their website.  They called all these people who were selling things on the site and bought the items from there.  The video looked professionally made.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tksBjRiOkpI&feature=youtu.be

Jun. 5 Whistler Film Festival: I looked up “China Canada Gateway for Film Script Competition” and it lead me to this website.  It’s a very big site.  It has lots of info like festival info, industry, film and events, press, box office, etc. 

http://www.whistlerfilmfestival.com/

Paul Austers/ Your Sister’s Sister/ Ann Patchett

This is on my www.badcb.blogspot.ca: 

May 28 Paul Austers: I cut out this National Post article “The Mechanics of Reality” by Iris Benaroia on Nov. 1, 2012.  Here are some excerpts of the article:

His most recent book, Winter Journal, gives readers a glimpse of the man behind the pen — and it is a pen; Auster writes longhand before hitting the typewriter. Written in his 64th year, the author has taken a freewheeling approach to the 230-page journal, a disordered collection of enticing and personal mini-essays.

“Look, there’s nothing particularly exceptional about my life. I’m not even very interested in myself in the way that most people who write autobiographies are. But I feel that in the very ordinariness of my life I share things with just about everybody,” says Auster, sitting in his publisher’s Toronto office earlier this week, in town to promote the book at the International Festival of Authors.

“First-person seemed too exclusionary to me, which is traditionally the voice of an autobiography,” he adds, in his alluring gravelly voice. “Therefore the second person seemed to me a very intimate voice, but a way of separating myself from myself a little bit so I can enter into a kind of quiet dialogue with myself. At the same time, I hoped to bring the reader into the story as well.”

“I don’t believe in those mystical approaches to life,” he says. “There are people who are accident-prone, who are constantly falling down stairs, but I think it has to do with a lack of attention to one’s surroundings.”

“Life is arbitrary. These things happen all the time, And they seem to defy all the odds,” he says. “But what I’ve always been interested in is what I call the mechanics of reality. Going by this, I am eliminating a kind of mystical interpretation because then you have to start believing in things like destiny, and I don’t.”

“[When I sit down to write], I have a sense of what I want to accomplish with the book — who the characters are, and obviously you need that first sentence to launch yourself into the project,” he says. “Sometimes it has taken me years to find the first sentence. Sometimes the first sentence is a gift that comes out of nowhere.”

“Ideas that I thought were good turn out to be no good whatsoever. I scrap them. Things that had never occurred to me pop up,” Auster says. “New characters, new situations — so I’m improvising. I think if I mapped everything out in great detail, the adventure of writing would be lost to me.”

What I eventually realized late in life was that if you do keep a diary your whole life, you’re writing to your future self because when you’re young you don’t realize how much you’re going to forget.”

My opinion: I agree with the last paragraph.  All of you guys need to keep a journal or a blog.  I read in a women’s magazine to keep a blog even if it’s something like taking a picture and putting it up.  It’s to show the passage of time.

It’s good to keep a record of where you spend your time at.

http://arts.nationalpost.com/2012/11/01/the-mechanics-of-paul-austers-reality/

Your Sister’s Sister: I cut out this Globe and Mail article “No one knows what’ll happen next” by Johanna Schneller on Jun. 16, 2012.  It talks to the director Lynn Shelton who makes “scriptments” like half story treatment and half script.  Here are some excerpts:

There's a moment in the new indie Your Sister's Sister, which opens in select cities on Friday, when one sister (Rosemarie Dewitt) drops an embarrassing detail about the personal grooming habits of another (Emily Blunt) during a drunken dinner with a male friend (Mark Duplass). It's a perfect moment: surprising, funny, genuine. It furthers the emotional action, and reveals something about both the speaker and the spoken of.

Your Sister's Sister is one of the new breed of films that began life as a scriptment – that is, a treatment which details the tone and direction of the scenes and the emotional points that must be hit, along with some scripted lines – rather than a fully fleshed-out screenplay.

First of all, the scriptment method is fleet. Instead of one writer alone, banging his head against the wall for months or years to perfect a screenplay, scriptments require only a killer concept, promising characters, a map of the story – and the faith that the details will be worked out in the process.

For this one, Duplass had a long-gestating idea: A man is grieving his dead brother. The late brother's girlfriend offers the man her family's remote island cabin as a place to get it together. He goes, meets the girlfriend's mother, and things develop from there. Duplass told this idea to Shelton, his friend and sometime collaborator. She changed “girlfriend's mother” to “sister.” (“I guess ‘mother' was kind of the indie film circa 1998,” Duplass says now, laughing at himself.) Then boom, within six weeks they had the schedule, the budget, and the cast, and Shelton was scouting accommodations on an island in Maine.

An actor can go deep into character, and know her voice will be heard. “So often you're so structured, and it's quite straight-jacketing,” Blunt says. “This way is quite exposing, because you're having to act and create story. But the fact that everyone was willing to jump in, no hands, head first, was essential to us creating that chemistry, and creating something unique. You rely heavily upon what everyone else is doing, so your brain is like [she makes a whirring noise] the whole day. I find it really awakening. It's an exercise in Who Knows? And I think that's the joy of it.”

“You have to say, ‘I know it looks like we're all burning doobers and running around improvising, but it's hard work, we're going to fall on our faces a lot, we'll feel lost, and you have to be not put out by it.' They don't have to show me smarts. They just have to be a good actor who's a kind, generous human spirit, who's interested in exploring human behavior.”

Third, this method is truly collaborative. For eight months, the three talked on the phone, throwing out ideas and plot developments. 

Those jewels are the fourth, and main, reason this method is so appealing: It can lead to this generation's ever-elusive goal – authenticity. “It's all about the quest for naturalism,” Shelton says. “My first film, We Go Way Back, was traditionally scripted, and I always felt it was a struggle to get the lines to sound as if they were naturally coming out of the characters' mouths. We did one scene that was improvised, and it felt like there was electricity suddenly zinging through the room. I remember thinking, ‘Could you make an entire movie that felt like this?'”

My opinion: I really like structure in a script.  But then again, improvisation is good and mostly used for comedy.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/with-scriptments-no-one-knows-whatll-happen-next/article4267765/?cmpid=rss1&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheGlobeAndMail-Front+%28The+Globe+and+Mail+-+Latest+News%29

Ann Patchett: I cut out this Edmonton Journal article “Witnessing a caesarean too much research for Patchett” by Pauline Askin on Sept. 11, 2011.  Here are the exceprts:

Prize-winning U.S. author Ann Patchett has always taken research for her novels seriously - but never more so than with her latest, State of Wonder.

Set deep in the Amazon, the book centres on a doctor who goes in search of a former mentor engaged in research on a tribe where the women are fertile until they die - but also touches on topics such as malaria, corporate greed and facing up to questions from the past.

“I wanted to write a book about a teacher/student relationship in which the teacher and the student meet again as adults as equals. This is not the story of a child student but of a medical student who was so profoundly influenced by her relationship with this teacher and the teacher essentially doesn't remember her.”

The thing that I love about being a writer is that I love going outside of myself and my personal experiences and I like to write about things that I don't know anything about because it's a great opportunity to educate myself. I can think of something that I don't know anything about, that I'm interested in, malaria, and say I'm going to write a book in which there is malaria and it gives me the opportunity to study and research and think about it. It's wonderful. . In the last several books I have gone into places and characters and situations that are very far outside of my experience.

Q: Do you write the outline of the books before you write and if so why?

A: Yes I do, I tend to write the scene and then do the research and I use the research to correct myself.

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/archives/story.html?id=0825a29a-b769-4d78-bae6-337dedc10928

Edmonton Filmed Entertainment Fund/ Filmmakers find each other

This is on my www.badcb.blogspot.ca: 

May 20 Edmonton Filmed Entertainment Fund: I was going through my old news articles and I found this Edmonton Journal article “Zooming in on Edmonton” by Jamie Hall on Dec. 19, 2012.

Here’s an Edmonton Sun article in 2011:

http://www.edmontonsun.com/2011/09/08/city-providing-5-million-in-film-subsidies

In Mar. 2012, there’s this Play Back article, here’s an excerpt:

The Edmonton Filmed Entertainment Fund, a partnership between the city of Edmonton via the Edmonton Economic Development Corporation and L.A.-based Kilburn Media, is structured as an equity investment fund for pre-sold film projects.

 “Pre-sold is perhaps the most important criteria,” Edmonton film commissioner Brad Stromberg tells Playback Daily.

“It’s not looking to be a development fund where we’ll give somebody a grant and hope their project goes well,” he explains.

Stromberg adds that Edmonton is looking to make a profit on its investment by targeting projects that already have a deal in place.”


http://playbackonline.ca/2012/03/01/new-edmonton-investment-fund-aims-to-create-work-in-the-city/

Here’s the Edmonton Journal article:

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=02e01aca-6821-4555-92f2-1c384cea7518&p=1

I’m going to add this to more resources I have to look up.

Filmmakers find each other: I also cut out this Edmonton Journal article “Filmmakers find each other” by Jamie Hall on Jun. 21, 2010.  Here are excerpts of it:

It is sheer happenstance that the names of former Edmontonians Ian Clay and Binh Hunyh appear on the credits of what is essentially a made-in-Hollywood feature film. Currently making the rounds of the international film festival circuit, Losing You was co-written and directed by Clay and produced by Hunyh.
The story is about an actor involved in a long-distance relationship who drives across the country with his friend after he thinks he overhears his girlfriend being sexually assaulted during a phone conversation.

So far, it has won awards at the Worldfest Houston International Film Festival, the Canada International Film Festival (in Vancouver) and the award of merit from the Accolade Competition.

Most recently, Netflix, a major vehicle for renting and streaming DVDs online, said it would consider uploading the film if enough interest is shown by potential viewers.

Clay was a high school English teacher by day and filmmaker by night, while Hunyh crunched numbers for Sony Pictures Entertainment. They became friends and, ultimately, collaborators.

"Ian has been a good support for me through the years and has given me sound advice about living in Los Angeles; in return, I have helped him in his entertainment pursuits," Hunyh said. "For Losing You I worked directly with him to produce the film while still working at Sony Pictures. Ian was the backbone of the film; he not only wrote a brilliant script, he was also the executive producer and director."

"I got my first taste of working in the entertainment industry," he (Hyungh) said.

Clay, who's now 30, graduated from the University of Alberta, where he studied criminal justice, drama and English. He arrived in L.A. via the United Kingdom, stopping in New York along the way to teach in the South Bronx for a year.

For the past six years, he has spent his days talking to students about English and his evenings and weekends talking to his fellow actors about their craft. "As soon as the day is over, and the grading is done, there is another life I live, which is filmmaking and acting," he said.

He bankrolled the movie using some of his own money, plus money he borrowed from a bank. Hunyh, meanwhile, helped with financing and budgeting. Clay used his summer off to film the movie and then edit it.
"My teaching pays for these adventures; I knew a major studio wasn't going to make this film so the only way it was going to get made was if I did it," Clay said.

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=b42bd10f-9d2c-42aa-a830-ab1276308bdf

Here’s more info:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1269699/

My opinion: I went on imdb.com, and there are no reviews.  The rating was 8.1/10 from 7 users.  I checked out the trailer and it looks like a really indie film.  It looked low budget and real.  I see suspense, drama, and tension.  It looked good.

May 25 Gugu Mbatha- Raw: She’s been in the news because of her new movie Belle.  She was in the TV show Touch and Undercovers.  That’s where I saw her from.

On imdb about Belle: “An illegitimate mixed race daughter of a Royal Navy Admiral is raised by her aristocratic great-uncle.”

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2404181/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_6

I was reading “Being biracial is not a modern concept” by Johanna Schneller on May 10, 2014.  In the article:

“It does seem, however, that Dido Belle is a role Mbatha-Raw was born to play – as proof, she stayed with the project for the seven years it took to pull financing together. Because it’s a British story, she contends, it’s about class as much as race. “Society defines you as something, but you don’t have to accept that,” she says.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/belle-shows-being-biracial-is-not-a-modern-concept/article18590335/

My opinion: I thought that was inspirational, so I’ll put it in my inspirational quotes.  I also thought that it took 7 years to get this movie produced.

May 26 Meet up: That Screenwriter’s Meet up last week sure has an effect on me.  One of them asked why it’s taking so long to write the Rain script.  I have said I was working at my job.  I also said it’s the big confrontation scene where I’m stuck at.  

Yesterday I went and worked on it.  I wrote one page to the scene.  I had my notes to look at.  Then I thought to send that one scene to the writer in residence at EPL.  I didn’t send my scripts to any writer in residence’s in 2013 or this year until now.   

May 27 JJ Abrams: He created Alias and produced the new Star Trek movies.  I cut out this article called “Prolific Abrams keeps secrets” by Horatia Harrod on Jan. 28, 2014.

"I'm drawn to typewriters and printing and papercraft, and the idea of actual bookbinding and box-making," he says.

"I do think there's something about the digital age that is increasingly dehumanizing us. We're in this very weird place where we're being pulled into experiences that aren't really experiences at all. When you're printing something on a letterpress, even though it might take a long time and it's imperfect, isn't that the point?"

"We're living in a moment of instant information ... but I think there's nothing wrong with a sense of anticipation."

Late last year, Abrams found time to publish a novel. S is not just a book, but a J.J. Abrams' production, complete with an enigmatic online trailer and teasing backstory.

The book wasn't actually written by Abrams: that job was given to a writer named Doug Dorst, who batted ideas back and forth with Abrams chapter by chapter. In truth, S is an extraordinary creation, a beguiling fake artifact: the main text is a book apparently printed in 1949, the pages lovingly yellowed. In the margins, a love story plays out in the alternating annotations of two American college students, and there are also editorial interventions in the footnotes that point to a shadowy global plot centred on the author of the novel.

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=840e60c5-f6c4-4ee9-b3de-bbcfa09f7ee4