#Music Producers Guild of the Americas

[ariel-seagull-wings]

@themousefromfantasyland @the-blue-fairie @thealmightyemprex @piterelizabethdevries

"I've always been a big fan of Ke$ha. The music of her early years was like a gateway for me letting myself to like Top 40.

I was a huge fan of her aesthetic of this flagrant shameless image... it was fun, it let you feel like being broke and young and partying all the time was aspirational.

It felt like a pass not to care about the world. At least as long as her music was on.

But then, years pass and it comes out that all of those party girl songs were made during years of physical and emotional abuse by her producer, that the party girl image was a construct that she didn't really have control over and maybe even didn't really like.

And knowing that in a world where otherwise I would still play the hell out of those Ke$ha early years music, it just doesn’t feel the same anymore.

I want to go back to the way her music made me feel in 2010, just unapologetic and dumb and glittery, but even though I want to, I can't.

Because now I know the circunstances under which that music was made.

And if you watch a piece of media, had an emotional reaction, whatever it was, and then learned that the context involved a certain level of exploitation, it changes the way you view the media, wheter you want it to or not.

Maybe Harper Lee's old age and deteriorating mental state were exploited by her publisher, in order to knock out a quick sequel to an American Classic before the door closed.

Maybe Ke$ha's party-girl image was carefully crafted by a sexually abusive iron-fist producer who had 100% control of her public image.

Maybe a lot of the art you consume, or even that you love, only exists because a person or people, or an entire island nation, were exploited by more powerful business interests.

But, that's capitalism.

Profit driven exploitation doesn't always have the last word.

Ke$ha's still locked into a contract with the label that enabled her abuser, but at least he's not there anymore?

And there are elements of the Hobbit Law that are up for repeal now that Labour is back in power, particularly the bit about outlawing collective bargaining, which to me is the most heinous part.

But these are only half measures, particularly the Hobbit Law repeal, which itself is no guarantee. I reached out to several people affiliated with the various New Zealand film guilds, but none are making comments to the media about the law until the law gets repealed.

If it does get repealed...

If you discover that a brand or company, like a bank or something, did something bad or unethical, it isn’t surprising. People just kind of shrug and go, yep that's how banks roll.

And maybe you'll close your account and go to a different bank, but the reality is that you probably don't care enough to even do that much, because unethical multinational corporations doing terrible things to people in the name of profit is just, kind of, the world.

You don’t have the brain space to care about all of them. We pay monopolistic cable companies for internet access, we have 401ks run by morally bankrupt hedge fund managers that we will never know, we still buy IPhones, we still buy cheap clothes while paying vague leap service to the knowledge that people are being exploited somewhere so we in America can boss Siri around.

In some ways we engage with a multitude of brands and corporations every day that someone, somewhere is getting exploited by, often cruelly so.

But media is different. Media is personal.

Media is designed to provide an escape, to stir emotions, to inspire.

The film industry is by no means the industry with the highest incidence of sexual harassment, but people care more about it when it gets exposed in the film industry, because the film industry creates media that hits emotional nerves.

And then when we find out that something we loved was made by someone who said or did bad things, it's like betrayal.

When people ask wheter is moral to separate art from the artist, or in this case, product from multinational conglomerate, what they're really asking is:

'How can I go back to consume media like I did when I was a kid? When the most context I had or cared about was who the author of my favorite book was, or why I like this actor, or what Ke$ha's real name and birthday is.'

But as an adult, you're expected to be an ethical consumer of media.

And it's somewhat inevitable that some people resent that, because consuming media the way children do is comforting.

Consuming media like The Hobbit as an adult is complicated and in this day and age, it's hard to do so innocently.

And I totally understand wanting to return to that innocence, and I don’t really have an argument against that worldview other than... that's adulthood."

(LINDSAY ELLIS: THE HOBBIT AN UNEXPECTED AUTOPSY (PART 3/2)- THE DESOLATION OF WARNERS )

[shewhoworshipscarlin]

Fredi Washington

Fredericka Carolyn "Fredi" Washington (December 23, 1903 – June 28, 1994) was an American stage and film actress, civil rights activist, performer, and writer. Washington was of African American descent. She was one of the first Black Americans to gain recognition for film and stage work in the 1920s and 1930s. Washington was active in the Harlem Renaissance, her best known role being Peola in the 1934 film version of Imitation of Life, where she plays a young light-skinned Black woman who decides to pass as white. Her last film role was in One Mile from Heaven (1937), after which she left Hollywood and returned to New York to work in theatre and civil rights activism.

Fredi Washington was born in 1903 in Savannah, Georgia, to Robert T. Washington, a postal worker, and Harriet "Hattie" Walker Ward, a dancer. Both were of African American and European ancestry. Washington was the second of their five children. Her mother died when Fredi was 11 years old. As the oldest girl in her family, she helped raise her younger siblings, Isabel, Rosebud, and Robert, with the help of their grandmother. After their mother's death, Fredi and her sister Isabel were sent to the St. Elizabeth's Convent School for Colored Girls in Cornwells Heights, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

While still in school in Philadelphia, Washington's family moved north to Harlem, New York. Washington graduated from Julia Richman High School in New York City.

Washington's entertainment career began in 1921 as a chorus girl in the Broadway musical Shuffle Along. She was hired by dancer Josephine Baker as a member of the "Happy Honeysuckles," a cabaret group. Baker became a friend and mentor to her. Washington's collaboration with Baker led to her being discovered by producer Lee Shubert. In 1926, she was recommended for a co-starring role on the Broadway stage with Paul Robeson in the play Black Boy. She quickly became a popular, featured dancer, and toured internationally with her dancing partner, Al Moiret.

Washington turned to acting in the late 1920s. Her first movie role was in Black and Tan (1929), in which she played a Cotton Club dancer who was dying. She acted in a small role in The Emperor Jones (1933) starring Robeson. In 1933, Washington married Lawrence Brown, the trombonist in Duke Ellington's jazz orchestra. That marriage ended in divorce. Washington also played Cab Calloway's love interest in the musical short Cab Calloway's Hi-De-Ho (1934).

Her best-known role was in the 1934 movie Imitation of Life. Washington played a young light-skinned Black woman who chose to pass as white to seek more opportunities in a society restricted by legal and social racial segregation. As Washington had visible European ancestry, the role was considered perfect for her, but it led to her being typecast by filmmakers. Moviegoers sometimes assumed from Washington's appearance—her blue-gray eyes, pale complexion, and light brown hair—that she might have passed in real life. In 1934, she said the role did not reflect her off-screen life, but "If I made Peola seem real enough to merit such statements, I consider such statements compliments and makes me feel I've done my job fairly well." She told reporters in 1949 that she identified as Black "...because I'm honest, firstly, and secondly, you don't have to be white to be good. I've spent most of my life trying to prove to those who think otherwise ... I am a Negro and I am proud of it."[7] Imitation of Life was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, but it did not win. Years later, in 2007, Time magazine ranked it as among "The 25 Most Important Films on Race."

Washington's experiences in the film industry and theater led her to become a civil rights activist. In an effort to help other Black actors and actresses find more opportunities, in 1937 Washington co-founded the Negro Actors Guild of America, with Noble Sissle, W. C. Handy, Paul Robeson, and Ethel Waters. The organization's mission included speaking out against stereotyping and advocating for a wider range of roles. Washington served as the organization's first executive secretary. She was also heavily involved with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, widely known as the NAACP. While working with the NAACP, Fredi fought for more representation and better treatment of Black actors in Hollywood because she was one of the few Black actors in Hollywood who had some influence with white studio executives. Aside from working with those organizations to fight for the rights of Black actors, Washington also advocated for the federal protection of Black Americans and was a lobbyist for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which the NAACP supported.

Despite receiving critical acclaim, she was unable to find much work in the Hollywood of the 1930s and 1940s; Black actresses were expected to have dark skin, and were usually typecast as maids. Directors were concerned about casting a light-skinned Black actress in a romantic role with a white leading man; the film production code prohibited suggestions of miscegenation. Hollywood directors did not offer her any romantic roles. As one modern critic explained, Fredi Washington was "...too beautiful and not dark enough to play maids, but rather too light to act in all-Black movies..."

Washington was a theater writer, and the entertainment editor for The People's Voice (1942–1948), a newspaper for African Americans founded by Adam Clayton Powell Jr., a Baptist minister and politician in New York City who was married to her sister Isabel Washington Powell. She was outspoken about racism faced by African Americans and worked closely with Walter White, then president of the NAACP, to address pressing issues facing Black people in America.

In 1952, Washington married a Stamford dentist, Hugh Anthony Bell, and moved to Greenwich, Connecticut.

Fredi Washington Bell died, aged 90, on June 28, 1994. She died from pneumonia following a series of strokes at St. Joseph Medical Center in Stamford, Connecticut.

[fans4wga]

'Hollywood Is on Strike Against High-Tech Exploitation' - by Alex N. Press

"LOS ANGELES — Before she appeared on HBO’s White House Plumbers and Fox’s New Girl, Stevie Nelson hosted a television show on Nickelodeon. On Crashletes, she and her cohosts, along with an audience of kids, reacted to viral videos of people failing at sports. The production ran for three seasons, wrapping at the end of 2020 with a total of sixty episodes.

Nelson worries that soon, a studio could use that body of work to train artificial intelligence (AI) to create a likeness of her to be used in perpetuity: a digital Stevie Nelson, doing things that she has never done, saying things that she has never said, yet indistinguishable from the real Stevie Nelson, based on her past on-screen work.

“There’s enough footage of me that they could technically have me host other shows for the rest of my life without ever having done it, and I’m sure I would not be fairly compensated for it,” said Nelson. “The idea of not a real person hosting shows is scary. The magic of acting, and of hosting, is its impromptu nature. I can’t imagine how soulless it all would be to replace it with AI.”

Nelson and I were speaking on Monday, July 17, a few feet from the picket line outside of Netflix’s corporate office in Los Angeles. She’s a member of the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), one of 160,000 such members who were then on their second day of a nationwide strike. In walking out, the performers joined roughly 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA), who have been on strike since May 2. The last such double strike was in 1960, when Ronald Reagan was SAG’s president.

Unlike less accessible studios in the Los Angeles area — the standout being NBC Universal, which currently lacks pedestrian walkways and shade thanks to studio machinations — Netflix is in the heart of Hollywood. On Monday, morale was high: hundreds of union members picketed while music that sampled news coverage of the strike blasted from stereos and union staff supplied workers with beverages, snacks, and sunscreen as the temperatures soared above 90 degrees.

Nelson’s fears that an avatar of herself will host television shows indefinitely in a digital purgatory might sound far-fetched, an idea more fit for a Black Mirror script than the real world, but such a possibility is central to what is now the largest strike in the United States. In negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) for a new three-year TV/theatrical contract, SAG-AFTRA is seeking to regulate the use of AI to protect performers like her.

Writers want to regulate the usage of AI in their own negotiations with the studios, but the technology poses an even more immediate threat to performers. SAG-AFTRA proposed provisions that would require the studios to get informed consent from a performer before using her likeness and fairly compensate her for that use. They also offered proposals concerning the use of generative AI for training purposes.

The AMPTP didn’t agree. While the organization called its AI counterproposal “unprecedented,” SAG-AFTRA’s national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland characterized the studios’ offer as unacceptable.

“In this ‘groundbreaking’ AI proposal that they gave us yesterday, they proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get one day’s pay, and their companies should own that scan, their image, their likeness, and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity on any project they want, with no consent and no compensation,” said Crabtree-Ireland at a press conference on Friday, July 15, announcing that the union’s board of directors had voted unanimously to call a strike. “If you think that’s a groundbreaking proposal, I suggest you think again.”

“The companies have responded to a number of the proposals we put on the table, but the problem is that the devil is in the details,” explained Crabtree-Ireland on The Town, a podcast about the entertainment industry. “We had reached some agreement on there being a requirement for consent but from our point of view, it has to be informed consent. Consent is not a boilerplate provision at the time you’re first hired on a project that says, ‘The company can create a digital replica of you and use it for whatever purpose they want, forever.’”

[continue reading]

[eptodaytommorowforever]

Elvis Presley Events In History Today The 21st November in 1964 Is Sixteenth Movie Was Premiered In Hollywood. Roustabout By Paramount.

Elvis Presley’s sixteenth movie was the 1964 Paramount film 'Roustabout'.

Playing opposite Barbara Stanwyck this time out in Roustabout, Elvis Presley was in awe of his costar and worked hard to live up to her professional standards. Unfortunately, the scriptwriters were less demanding of themselves, and the film suffers from banal dialogue and predictable plotting. Elvis Presley starred as Charlie Rogers, a drifter with a chip on his shoulder who lands a job as a roustabout, or handyman, with a down-and-out carnival operated by strong-willed Maggie Morgan, played by Stanwyck. When Charlie breaks into song on the midway one day, throngs of young people flock to hear him sing. As news of his talent spreads, Maggie's carnival begins to turn a tidy profit. Charlie's good fortune continues as Cathy, a beautiful young carnival worker played by Joan Freeman, takes a romantic interest in him. However, after a misunderstanding involving a customer's missing wallet, Maggie and Cathy chide Charlie for his selfish attitudes. The embittered young man quits Maggie's outfit to work for a rival carnival. When Maggie's carnival starts to go under, Charlie returns with enough money to ward off the creditors. His unselfish act wins Maggie's respect as well as Cathy's heart. Having at one time been a carnival worker, the idea for a picture with a carnival background had been that of Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis Presley’s manager. However, Colonel was adamant that the movie 'not cheapen carnival life....that this was a wholesome way of life in which the participants had a legitimate pride'.

The movie was first announced in May of 1961, but production was delayed until March of 1964. In the time between there were changes. Among them were: that the working title went from 'Right This Way Folks' to 'Roustabout'; that Elvis Presley’s character name changed from Charlie Main to Charlie Rogers; and that the character of carnival owner Maggie Moore changed to Maggie Morgan; and that the actress chosen to play Morgan changed from Mae West to Barbara Stanwyck. The writers were Anthony Lawrence and Allan Weiss.

Anthony Lawrence later worked on the scripts for the Elvis movies 'Paradise Hawaiian Style' and 'Easy Come, Easy Go' and the 1979 TV biopic 'Elvis', starring Kurt Russell in the title role. Among his other credits are a number of TV series including 'The Fugitive', 'Hawaii Five-O', 'Cannon', 'Quincy' and 'The Blue Knight'.

Allan Weiss was the screenwriter for the Elvis Presley’s flims 'Blue Hawaii', 'Girls! Girls! Girls!', 'Fun In Acapulco', 'Paradise Hawaiian Style' and 'Easy Come, Easy Go'. He once remarked that the scripts were written to producer Hal Wallis's specifications: 'Wallis kept the screenplays shallow'.

'I was asked to create a believable framework for twelve songs and lots of girls'. However true this was, both Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Weiss received a nomination from the Writers Guild of America in 1965 for their work on 'Roustabout' as the Best Written American Musical of 1964.

The director was John Rich and this was his first time to work with Elvis Presley He came from a strong background in TV, having directed such series as 'Our Miss Brooks', 'I Married Joan', 'Gunsmoke', 'The Rifleman', 'The Andy Griffith Show', 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' and 'Gilligan's Island'. He was anxious to break into film directing with Hal Wallis. He wasn't impressed with Elvis Presley’s Memphis Mafia entourage and their constant hanging around and playing practical jokes on one another. Elvis Presley told Mr. Rich, '...when these damn movies cease to be fun, I'll stop doing them. And if my guys go, (expletive), so do I'. Elvis Presley and Mr. Rich had gotten off to a shaky start when Elvis Presley cajoled the director into allowing him to do his own stunt fight, which was very uncommon then due to the possibility of the star's being hurt and shutting down production. When Elvis Presley indeed was hurt in the stunt and required several stitches above his eye, Mr. Rich was afraid to tell Hal Wallis that he'd allowed their star to become injured. Then he came up with a plan to write into the script the bandage that covered the stitches and thus production wasn't halted and Wallis was appeased. John Rich later directed Elvis in 'Easy Come, Easy Go'. By that time he was disillusioned with Hal Wallis and his methods and had developed a respect for Elvis Presley And No Big Star Had Ever Put Him Straight Like He Did When He Told If These Damn Movies Cease To Be Fun I’ll Stop Doing Them. He Really Admired And Respected Elvis Presley For Standing Up And Speaking Is Mind Although Parker Wasn’t Happy As He Pulled Elvis Presley Up Rich returned to directing TV series including such programs as 'All In The Family', 'Sanford and Son', 'Maude', 'The Jeffersons', 'Barney Miller', 'Newhart', 'Dear John' and 'Murphy Brown' among others. He has received many accolades including seven Emmy nominations with three Emmy wins.

On February 26, 1964, Elvis Presley reported to Paramount for pre-production. He started with soundtrack recording sessions at Radio Recorders of Hollywood. On March 3, Elvis Presley recorded the version of the title song 'Roustabout' that was written by Otis Blackwell and Winfield Scott. It was not used in the film. Instead they used a different song with the same title written by Bill Giant, Bernie Baum and Florence Kaye.

Elvis Presley recorded his vocals for that second song on April 29, 1964 after the principal photography was shot. An acetate of Elvis Presley’s long-thought-lost Blackwell/Scott song was found in Winfield Scott's basement and RCA first released it as a bonus track on the 2003 Elvis 2nd To None album. To differentiate it from the one used in the movie, the title was changed to 'I'm a Roustabout'.

Elvis Presley became frustrated during these sessions when he wanted The Jordanaires to back him up on a song that he would be seen singing alone in the film while riding a motorcycle down the road.

One of the producers questioned him as to where the backup singers would be in the shot.

Elvis Presley snapped back, 'The same damn place as the band!'

One of the songs in the film, 'It's A Wonderful World', written by Sid Tepper and Roy C. Bennett, was for a time in contention for an Academy Award nomination as Best Song.

For authenticity in Elvis Presley’s sixteenth film, 'Roustabout', a real carnival was employed and set up on land near Thousand Oaks, California. This was one of the locations used for exterior shots in the movie. The interior shots used three connecting sound stages (Nos. 12, 14 and 15) on the Paramount lot. The doors between them were opened up to make them into one huge stage, which was needed to accommodate the set for the big tent scenes. This was the first time in the history of the studio that they had done this.

[dweemeister]

July 13, 2023

By Anousha Sakoui

(Los Angeles Times) — SAG-AFTRA’s national board of directors on Thursday voted unanimously to approve a strike action by tens of thousands of Hollywood actors, widening the scope of labor unrest in an entertainment industry that is already facing numerous headwinds.

The vote came after negotiations between the actors’ union and the major studios failed to reach an agreement on a new film and TV contract.

Actors — similarly to screenwriters already on picket lines — have been battling studios for a pact that would deliver far better pay and residuals from streaming and address other issues, including the use of artificial intelligence, that have been roiling the entertainment landscape.

Despite the last-minute involvement of a federal mediator, the 160,000-member union was unable to secure a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents studios in labor dealings. The old collective bargaining agreement expired Wednesday night without a deal in place.

Union leaders announced the board’s vote at a noon news conference in Los Angeles.

“What is happening to us is happening to all fields of labor,” SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said during a fiery speech at the union’s headquarters. “I’m shocked by the way the people we have been in business with are treating us. It is disgusting. Shame on them.”

“We are the victims here,” Drescher added. “We are being victimized by a very greedy entity.”

So, some clarification. This strike covers all movie and TV projects that involve actors and voiceover announcers. This includes animated works. TL;DR: the main concerns are over residuals from streaming services (who are black holes of information that do not release viewership data so as to maintain complete leverage in contract negotiations) and the potential for AI. Unlike the writers, the actors are also trying to require all auditions to be in-person (one lasting impact of COVID is the larger adoption of taped auditions, which does not guarantee that the casting director watches the audition and also deprives the actor of networking opportunities even if they don't pass the audition). These concerns are almost identical - with exception of the in-person auditions - of the Writers Guild of America's (WGA) concerns with their respective strike.

This strike indirectly affects SAG-AFTRA members in radio, audiobooks, non-AMPTP studio video games and interactive media, music, and commercials.

This strike does not cover local news reporters and announcers for AMPTP constituent-owned radio and TV stations (full list here... e.g. every major local English- and Spanish-language channel in Greater LA and both PBS stations in KOCE and KCET). Yes, news reporters and announcers working for a stations owned by an AMPTP constituent are SAG-AFTRA members. They are covered by a separate contract.

[justforbooks]

The Grammy and Emmy-winning director Bruce Gowers, who has died aged 82 of an acute respiratory infection, enjoyed huge success in American television through his work on high-profile awards shows including the Emmys, the MTV awards, the Academy of Country Music awards and the Comedy awards. He also directed nine series of American Idol: The Search for a Superstar, which brought him an Emmy award in 2009. He masterminded a string of TV specials for music legends including the Rolling Stones, Prince, Fleetwood Mac and Rod Stewart, and oversaw coverage of President Bill Clinton’s inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial, which gathered artists from Michael Jackson and Aretha Franklin to Tony Bennett, Bob Dylan and the rapper LL Cool J.

Another standout addition to his CV was Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Celebration (2001), a record of two concerts at Madison Square Garden, New York, peppered with guest stars including Marlon Brando, Liza Minnelli, Ray Charles and Elizabeth Taylor. He won a Grammy for the Huey Lewis long-form video The Heart of Rock’n’Roll in 1986, and a Directors Guild of America award for his work on Genius: A Night for Ray Charles (2004).

But if there was a single event that seared Gowers’ name into the history books, it was his work on Queen’s video for Bohemian Rhapsody (1975). He had already worked with the band, having directed a video of their live performance at the Rainbow theatre, London, in 1974, and they then hired him to make the promo clip for Bohemian Rhapsody to avoid them having to mime it on the BBC’s Top of the Pops. Chunks of the six-minute film show Queen performing the song with their customary flamboyance, but what makes it unforgettable are the sequences where the band’s spectrally lit faces loom against a black background as they sing the song’s multi-layered harmonies. The video took a mere four hours to shoot at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire at a cost of £4,500, but it became recognised as the moment when the pop music video arrived as an invaluable promotional tool for pop musicians, paving the way for the launch of the MTV music channel in 1981.

“At that time it was a new world, the world of videos, and I didn’t think anyone was that into it for making money,” commented Gowers. “The video was just made for Top of the Pops and I don’t think any of us thought it would go beyond that – certainly not to be used live on stage for over 40 years.” In 2018, he claimed that he had been paid a mere $590 for his work on the project, though a proposed lawsuit to reclaim royalty arrears never materialised. The clip has now been viewed more than 1.5bn times on YouTube.

He was born in West Kilbride, to Robert, a teacher, and Violet. The family later moved to Enfield in north London, and Bruce attended the Latymer school in Edmonton. After a stint at the BBC Training College he entered the industry as a cable puller, cameraman and production manager. Subsequently he worked for Rediffusion and London Weekend Television in both directing and producing capacities, involved in programmes at different times with Kenny Everett and Stanley Baxter, before moving to the US in the late 1970s.

As the music video developed into an increasingly powerful dimension of the music industry, Gowers delivered some of its most memorable specimens. His clip for Prince’s 1999 captured the louche exoticism of Prince and his band, while for the Bee Gees’ How Deep Is Your Love he relied merely on some coloured lights and closeups of the artists’ faces. Gowers matched the sheer preposterousness of Rod Stewart’s Hot Legs with a video that resembles a parody of TV show The Dukes of Hazzard, while for Van Halen’s Dance the Night Away he exploited the band’s dynamic stage presence with a punchy live-perfomance video. For Chaka Khan’s I’m Every Woman he presented viewers with multiple Khans in a contrasting array of costumes.

He proved himself flexible enough to move between a variety of genres. Much in demand for comedy spectaculars for the HBO and Showtime networks, he worked with a string of the biggest names in the business including Robin Williams, Jerry Seinfeld, Billy Crystal and Eddie Murphy. He directed episodes of the showbiz magicians Penn & Teller’s Sin City Spectacular, and enjoyed much success with programming for children in the form of the Teen Choice awards and the Kids’ Choice awards. With his third wife, the writer and producer Carol Rosenstein, whom he first met on the video shoot for Rod Stewart’s Tonight’s the Night in 1976, he created the long-running Kidsongs franchise, which includes a TV show, DVDs and music CDs. Gowers and Rosenstein had been resident in Malibu for 23 years.

She survives him, along with his son, Sean, his stepdaughter, Katharine, and four grandchildren.

🔔 Bruce Gowers, television director and producer, born 21 December 1940; died 15 January 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[mariacallous]

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) is striking against studios in pursuit of a new contract that lets writers participate more fully in the industry. The central disagreements are about economics, but the issue that has captured the most public attention is the threat posed by so-called artificial intelligence—products like ChatGPT—to the livelihood of creative professionals, including writers.

ChatGPT is a generative AI program that has been trained on a massive corpus of text to predict the word or words that should follow a text prompt or word string. It is not intelligent, though its user interface has been designed to create that illusion.

Studios perceive that generative AI is a tool they can use against writers. Some kinds of programming can be formulaic—awards shows and sitcoms, for example—which encourages writers to mimic scripts that have been successful in the past. In theory, a well-constructed generative AI could provide a first draft of such a script. But studio executives have gone one step further, imagining that products like ChatGPT will transform the writing process for everything from awards shows to feature films. Studios see this as both a potential cost savings and a way to convert script writing from copyrightable work to work for hire.

It is almost certain that they will embrace generative AI, even if it produces nothing but junk, which is what they will get. They have drunk the Kool-Aid poured by Silicon Valley’s hype merchants.

My experience working in Hollywood—as a consultant on Silicon Valley for five seasons and through involvement in documentaries like The Facebook Dilemma, The Social Dilemma, and The Great Hack—has led me to believe that if studios are smart, they will understand that their interests are aligned with those of writers, directors, and all creative people. Silicon Valley is coming for their profit margin.

CEOs believe that generative AI will reduce their labor costs. What they are missing is that Silicon Valley plans to use AI to do to Hollywood what it did to news and music. Silicon Valley’s bait-and-switch tactics follow a pattern that Cory Doctorow, writing about social media, refers to as “enshittification.” Social media platforms offer benefits to users until they are hooked, then they “enshittify” the product to appeal to advertisers. Once advertisers are on board, platforms “enshittify” their experience, as well as that of users, to extract maximum value. They perfected the game plan at Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, SnapChat, and TikTok and are now extending it outside of social media.

We see this in video streaming technology, the first step in a siege against Hollywood. As Big Tech always does, it baited the trap with short-term benefits, such as an increased investment in programming, which emerged in the form of a golden age of high-quality, limited run series. Streaming caused an explosion in the number of shows, but each show had many fewer episodes, which meant writers would only be employed for eight or 10 weeks at a time. In addition, streaming undercut television syndication, which had been a big source of income for writers. Streaming’s touted benefits have eroded rapidly over the past two years as studios have entered the streaming market, saturating consumer demand and forcing all involved to cut costs.

Now, generative AI is the potential kill shot, the one that could cause copyright owners to surrender their library of scripts, created over decades, in exchange for promised benefits that will never arrive.

When it comes to generative AI and video, Silicon Valley only needs to hook one constituency— Hollywood executives. Once studios buy in, they will be at the mercy of the purveyors of that technology. It happened in journalism. It happened in music. Silicon Valley did not kill those industries, but it gained control of the audience and extracted a huge percentage of the potential profits. For studio executives, generative AI is an intelligence test.

The best path forward is for studios and writers to acknowledge four realities.

First, generative AI will eventually be a valuable tool in some creative realms, potentially including script writing, but only if the AI has been built from the ground up for that task.

Second, the flaws of today’s generative AIs make them unsuitable for serious work, especially in creative fields. General purpose AIs, like ChatGPT, are trained on whatever content the creator can steal on the internet, which means their output often consists of nonsense dressed up to appear authoritative. The best they can do is imitate their training set. These AIs will never be any good at creating draft scripts—even of the most formulaic programming—unless their training set includes a giant library of Hollywood scripts.

Third, Silicon Valley is the common enemy of studios and writers. It is an illusion that studios can partner with AI companies to squeeze writers without being harmed themselves. Silicon Valley is using a potential reduction in writer compensation as the bait in a trap where the target is studio profits.

Fourth, there is no reason Hollywood cannot create its own generative AI to compete with ChatGPT. Studios and writers control the intellectual property needed to make a great AI. A generative AI that is trained on every script contributed by a single studio or collection of studios would produce wildly better scripts than ChatGPT. Would it produce the next Casablanca? No. But it could produce an excellent first draft of an Emmy Awards show script. And it would safeguard the business model of Hollywood for the next generation.

If studios work separately or together to create AI they control, the future of Hollywood will be much brighter. Central to this fourth point is a legal strategy of copyright infringement litigation against the major players in generative AI. If copyright is to mean anything at all, Hollywood must challenge Silicon Valley’s assertion of the right to “permissionless innovation,” which has become a safe harbor for law-breaking in domains ranging from consumer safety to public health to copyright.

Some might say that Hollywood does not have the ability to “do technology.” That is ridiculous. Pixar, Weta Digital, and the CGI special effects industry demonstrate that Hollywood can not only master technology, but also innovate in it.

There are many open source architectures for generative AI. Studios and the WGA can license them cheaply and hire a handful of engineers to train their own AI. It will take many years, but copyright litigation will buy the industry the time it needs, and it may even become a giant profit center.

There are serious issues to be resolved between the writers and studios. AI is part of the negotiation, but it is substantively different from the other issues on the table. The tech industry wants to use generative AI to extract profits from film and television, just as it has done in other categories of media. The question is whether studios will repeat the mistakes of journalism and music.

[denimbex1986]

'There will be no fresh helpings of The White Lotus, The Last of Us or even Emily in Paris beaming into front rooms when summer fades. Nor will a screen version of the musical Wicked, starring Ariana Grande, be showing in your local cinema in the spring. And all shooting on Gladiator 2 in Morocco is likely to be indefinitely paused. Already, the wails are almost audible.

On this, the first weekend of the American screen actors’ strike, the level of frustration registered by film and TV drama fans around the world has dwarfed earlier reactions to the equivalent writers’ strike, running since the beginning of May.

Since negotiations collapsed in Los Angeles on Thursday, the gloves are off in a fight over the way the streaming services are seen to be pushing down pay and investing in the use of artificial intelligence in production.

And if an industrial relations struggle benefits from a dose of charisma, then the battle to secure the income of the talent behind a large proportion of the world’s streaming content suddenly has much more of the right ingredient. On Friday, George Clooney became the latest celebrity to back the campaign. “Actors and writers in large numbers have lost their ability to make a living,” the actor said, going on to speak of “an inflection point in our industry”.

The recognisability of many of the faces now taking a stand, from Clooney to Margot Robbie and Brian Cox, compared to their counterparts inside the writers’ rooms, has brought the Hollywood dispute to the top of the international news agenda. Productions involving leading American talent, stalled in many countries ever since work on scripts has been prohibited, will now probably grind to a near standstill. And the actors say they are prepared for a long fight.

Among them is Barbie star Robbie, who has stepped out of promotional events, and Oscar winner Susan Sarandon, who argued this weekend that “the issues of streaming and AI are things that have to be dealt with now”. “We’re in an old contract for a new type of business and it’s just not working for most people,” the actor told reporters in New York.

Sarandon’s words follow a protest move in London on Thursday when the stars of the new Christopher Nolan film, Oppenheimer, walked out of the premiere. Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy and Florence Pugh left with Matt Damon, whose new production company with Ben Affleck is also set to suffer, he said. The cast had the support of the British director Nolan, who has spoken of the moment being ripe for action. Monday’s red carpet event ahead of the New York premiere of Nolan’s film is also cancelled. “In support of the ongoing SAG strike, the film-makers of Oppenheimer will instead screen the movie to celebrate the crew and craftspeople who contributed to making this film,” said a statement from Universal.

Festivals and fan events are threatened too. Organisers of the Toronto International film festival still hope it will go ahead in early September and have told the BBC: “The impact of this strike on the industry and events like ours cannot be denied. We urge our partners and colleagues to resume an open dialogue.” The Venice festival schedulednext month is also in jeopardy, and San Diego’s Comic-Con could be held without its main attraction – celebrities.

On Friday, more than 160,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (Sag-Aftra) stopped work, joining the 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America in the biggest strike for more than 60 years. Both writers and actors were negotiating with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers over residuals, the payments made when a show or film is repeated. Streaming services such as Netflix have large audiences because of their big libraries of films and shows and yet they pay much less in residuals than broadcast television.

Actor Fran Drescher, the serving president of Sag-Aftra known for her role in The Nanny, claims responses from studio and streaming bosses so far have been “insulting and disrespectful”.

Her sentiments have been echoed by Cox, the Scottish actor behind Succession’s ruthless Logan Roy. “If our residuals go down, it means our health insurance isn’t going to be met,” he said on Friday. “The streaming services have shot themselves in the foot because they’ve said, ‘We’re going very well on this front.’ And when we called them to task and said, ‘What about our residuals, what about our money?’ everything kind of closes down and … you know, it’s not going to happen.”

Cox also attacked plans to use AI programming to replicate talent. “There would never be an original voice,” he argued, citing the British writer behind Succession, Jesse Armstrong, and Mike White, the creator and sole writer of The White Lotus. “It would be some kind of copy monkey of the show. And that is unacceptable.”

If screen talent is now playing its part to the full, then the tough-talking industry moguls are also getting into character. On Thursday, ahead of the strike, Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger told CNBC that stoppages had come at “the worst time in the world”. “There’s a level of expectation that they have that is just not realistic, and they are adding to a set of challenges that this business is already facing, that is quite frankly, very disruptive,” he said.'

[lboogie1906]

Tracey Elaine Edmonds (McQuarn; born February 18, 1967) is a businesswoman, television producer, and personality. She is the CEO of Edmonds Entertainment Group Inc and Alrightnow.com and is a former host of the television show Extra. She sits on the national board of directors for the Producers Guild of America. She has created and produced projects for television, film, music, and digital media. In 2014, she joined Extra and left the company in 2017. While at Extra, she earned an Emmy Award for co-hosting. She currently serves as CEO and President of Edmonds Entertainment. In 2013, Edmonds founded Alright TV, a family- and faith-oriented Web network. She produced Games People Play (BET). She married Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds (1992⁠–⁠2005)​, and she has two sons. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence https://www.instagram.com/p/CozfVrArpwX/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[fafaweng]

🖤♾⚫️ ❖ Happy Black History Month Opera： ___ ❶ Follow along throughout February as we highlight operas by Black composers. First up is Champion by Terence Blanchard. This groundbreaking piece combines the disciplines of opera and jazz and depicts the life of boxer Emile Griffith. Don't miss the Met Opera debut of Champion this spring! ____ ❷ The Central Park Five by Anthony Davis tells the true story of five teenagers wrongly accused of a crime, then sentenced to years in maximum security prisons. The opera's harrowing account of these convictions, incarcerations, and eventual exonerations remains a devastatingly relevant indictment of the racial injustices in America. ___ ❸ Troubled Island by William Grant Still portrays Jean Jacques Dessalines and the corruption of his leadership in the Haitian revolution. This work was the first grand opera composed by an African American to be produced by a major company - debuting at New York City Opera in 1949. ___ ❹ Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed that Line to Freedom by Nkeiru Okoye depicts the life of the legendary Underground Railroad conductor. Based on recent Tubman biographies, the story is told in the context of Tubman’s tight-knit family of lively characters. ___ ❺ Treemonisha by Scott Joplin takes place in 1884 on a former Texas slave plantation and tells the story of Treemonisha - a young freedwoman. Joplin was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1976 for this unique "ragtime opera." ___ ❻ Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Terence Blanchard follows Charles, a boy of "peculiar grace," as he finds his place in the world and heals from childhood trauma. The work made history in 2021 when it became the first opera by a Black composer to be performed at the Metropolitan Opera. ___ ❼ We close out our #BlackHistoryMonth features with X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X by Anthony Davis. Based on the life of the civil rights leader Malcolm X, this work is set to make its Met Opera debut next season - don't miss it! ___ ✦ The Metropolitan Opera ᰽ The Metropolitan Opera Guild ► [ nk.bio/metopera / metopera.org ] ___ #BlackHistoryMonth #TheMetropolitanOpera #TheMetropolitanOperaGuild #MetOpera #MetOperaGuild （在 The Metropolitan Opera Guild） https://www.instagram.com/p/CpKx6ZRvE-d/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[albertanimation]

Rooty Toot Toot - 1951, Dir. Jon Hubley

As I discussed in my previous post examining the interviews by Don Peri with Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, during the 1940's the Walt Disney Productions studio underwent a serious restructuring of goals and methods of animation. Following a contentious change in direction from a studio that was largely concerned with creating new kinds of entertainment through artistic experimentation, Disney began to focus more on consistently producing a more refined, realistic style of animation that would supposedly be more accessible to the average viewer. This coincided with the 1941 Disney Animator's strike, which by and large was concerned with uneven pay and practices at the studio which was a non-unionized workplace (although this was contested by Thomas and Johnston who believed there to be communistic ideals behind the strike). In retaliation to this strike (in addition to more underhanded tactics like allegedly hiring goons to break up picket lines and testifying against strikers in anti-communist hearings) Disney fired many of the animators, and although he was eventually pressured into allowing some of them to return by the Screen Cartoonist's Guild, others were disillusioned with the studio and instead left to pursue their own projects. The most notable of these is likely the highly influential independent studio known as the United Productions of America, or simply UPA.

UPA logo, Alvin Lustig, 1947

UPA became known for its extremely stylized, exaggerated and sparse style. Intentionally stepping away from the standard "funny animal" characters that were at that time very common in animation, especially in Disney productions, UPA often instead focused on caricatures of humans that could be animated relatively quickly and cheaply in its limited animation style, similarly to another one of my previous posts, The Dover Boys. Although they were producing shorts as early as 1944, the studio's main animated successes were the series based around Mr. Magoo, a short-sighted elderly curmudgeon who repeatedly avoids certain death by sheer luck, and the popular theatrical short Gerald McBoing-Boing, a young boy who can only communicate in sound effects, the original story of which the short was based upon being written by Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss.

A screenshot of Gerald McBoing-Boing, featuring UPA's stylized human characters and sparse background art.

John Hubley, although not a founder of UPA, was one of its earliest employees and like many others of his ilk, was a former Disney artist who, while supposedly one of the better paid of the strikers, still felt limited by the artistic restrictions of Disney's mandates for realism. Despite the successes the studio had experienced so far, there allegedly existed a fair bit of animosity between the key artists working in UPA. Gerald McBoing-Boing won the studio an Academy award, and Hubley was eager to create a film that was equally influential. This led to the creation of UPA's most expensive and artistically ambitious cartoon yet, 1951's Rooty Toot Toot.

Poster for Rooty Toot Toot.

The short exudes a film noire vibe, its story being a retelling of a now over a century-old tune, Frankie and Johnny. A classic American murder ballad, the song details the murder of an unfaithful pianist by his jilted lover, and the film follows the song very faithfully. The story is presented as a musical courtroom drama, with the testimony of witnesses during the trial of Frankie as flashbacks to the events of the murder. Rooty Toot Toot is notable in animation for the time for the use of adult themes such as sex, violence, corruption, infidelity and ultimately, murder. Although these concepts were not unknown to the animation scene at this point (Fleischer cartoons, for example, often featured some of these concepts) it was still considered quite shocking for the time and as a result, Rooty Toot Toot was withheld from TV syndication for many years.

A screenshot of Rooty Toot Toot, featuring the short's highly exaggerated style and use of colour.

What really strikes me upon watching the short, however, is its unique art style. Even by UPA standards, Rooty Toot Toot is unique and experimental. Animated by, among others, Art Babbitt, the original creator of Goofy, and Grim Natwick, animator on Betty Boop for the Fleischer Brothers, the film oozes a Jazzy personality that really adds to the darkly comedic tone. Great care has been given to help establish personality through animation acting in almost every scene. Characters pirouette through their choreography in ballet-like motions (referenced, but not rotoscoped, from poses by dancer Olga Lunick), the put-upon bartender hunches with the weight of the cruel world on his shoulders, Frankie's sweet expressions are quickly replaced by barely-contained fury.

The backgrounds, made by Paul Julian, were created by taking a corroded gelatin roller to produced the distressed look of the dingy, sleazy setting. One thing that strikes me as particularly interesting; characters are often portrayed as "transparent", the bright colours of their garments or the background bleeding through their limbs in an almost cubist or modernist style. The linework is simplistic but clean and clear, and the strong posing really helps characterize the less-than-moral personalities of the story. I think overall it is not unreasonable to say that Rooty Toot Toot was the artistic peak of UPA's catalogue.

Frankie shooting down her attorney.

Unfortunately, not unlike Fantasia, Disney's own ambitious artistry-driven film, Rooty Toot Toot was not the smash success that Hubley had hoped for. Although it did receive an Academy award nomination, it would lose out to The Two Mouseketeers, a Tom and Jerry short. Worse still, not long after its release, the House Committee on Un-American Activities was informed that many of the artists working at UPA were communist sympathizers. Columbia sent a letter to UPA threatening to end the studio's distribution unless the named artists, including John Hubley, publicly denounced communism, and upon his refusal, Hubley was fired from UPA. From that point on the studio floundered and its artistic ambitions, despite its original attempt to distance itself from Disney, ultimately winnowed in the same way Disney's had after the failure of Fantasia.

Today, the short is widely acclaimed as one of the most important pieces of independent animation from an American studio ever made. It was voted as one of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of All Time by industry professionals in 1994, and it is still used as a point of reference for animators for posing and personality. Even now, younger generations of artists are still taking inspiration from this extremely unique and engaging piece, over 80 years later.

References:

http://amodernist.blogspot.com/2012/06/rooty-toot-toot-1951.html

https://www.skwigly.co.uk/100-greatest-animated-shorts-rooty-toot-toot-john-hubley/

https://reedart.wordpress.com/2020/03/25/rooty-toot-toot-1951-upa-studios/

https://www.beyondeasy.net/2017/04/animation-april-rooty-toot-toot-1951.html

[ao3feed-ateez]

Over the Horizon

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/tOsQnRv by Starillusion Utopia: Quest for Freedom is the hottest MMORPG on the market. The number one guild in the game, Astra Noctis is thought to be a group of hardcore players bent on being the best. As it turns out, they're really just a group of idiots enjoying the game, but yes, they do want to be the best. Hongjoong works hard as a music producer, and Utopia is his stress relief. It helps that he has grown so close to one particular member known only to him as Toothless. The crush is all encompassing at times, but Hongjoong does his best to ignore it. He is sure he can keep it under wraps... but then they all start talking about meeting up in real life at Utopia's upcoming game convention. The thought of meeting Toothless in person fills Hongjoong with a mix of excitement and anxiety. Will the reality match his expectations? Or will he find himself acting like a fool, lost for words in Toothless's presence? The potential for awkwardness only adds to the anticipation of the meeting. Words: 2618, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English Fandoms: ATEEZ (Band), Stray Kids (Band) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Categories: M/M Characters: ATEEZ Ensemble, Stray Kids Ensemble Relationships: Kim Hongjoong/Park Seonghwa Additional Tags: MMORPG setting, Made Up Game, Real Life, They're all in America for reasons, Cause the author is more familiar with America, And for travel reasons - need more travel room, Video Game Mechanics, Lots of game mechanics mentioned, Lots of game lingo, Author made a whole MMO here, The Author Regrets Nothing, Friendship, Team Bonding, Guild friends, Online Friends, Real life friends - Freeform, some tension, some jealousy, Kim Hongjoong is Whipped, Kim Hongjoong is crushing!, Top Kim Hongjoong, Bottom Park Seonghwa, Seonghwa is just so sweet, Seonghwa is mother!, of 13 freaking kids now, Minor relationships in the background, yungi, Woosan, Others too that I'm just not mentioning in tags, Guild dynamics, Online Relationships, meeting irl, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Fluff and Humor, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Romantic Fluff, Light Angst, maybe more who knows, Mostly fluff and friendship and happiness, Lighthearted, oh and smut too, Eventual Smut, Eventual Romance, Anal Sex, Everyone Is Gay, Deal with it!, Teasing, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Tags Are Hard read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/tOsQnRv

[tenaciouspostfun]



Nimbus Blog

WHAT'S HAPPENIN' NEW YORK

a look inside the great white way by Broadway Bob

All American Sex Addict/Woke AF

4/3/2024

0 Comments

 

​"All American Sex Addict/Woke AF" at The Sargent Theatre of Actors is unique play. The real positive about this play is the even level of actors in this show; no one stands above the other in any noticeable way. In many off off Broadway shows one or two actors are leaps and bounds above the rest of the cast, but not here:the blend and workmanship is pretty consistent throughout the 80 minutes due to nice direction by Phoebe Leonard- Dettmann. While the female actors put forth a better performance than the male actors, the plot of the story keeps the audience locked in and we never really see any weak links.

Reminiscent of the 80's, 90's and well into the 2000's, off off Broadway had many shows like this one... raw, edgy and in your face; after Covid, however, many of the off of went the way of climate change, political and LGBTQ. It left a vacuum of what was off off Broadway and what it should be. Oddly enough, "All American" focused on the woke but in a fun way, a comical way. It poked fun at the up tightness of the politically correct, it drove a spike in a way at the heart of the easily offended. We get a debate about whether there is a such thing as a sex addict. According to Jack (Peter Buck Dettmann) there is, he has written a screen play that says so. Unfortunately, the people involved in the story are offended by the many things that Jack has to say. Jack will defend his writing by stating that there is no one more woke than himself.

As Jack is a real character, he firmly believes what he is doing and who he is doing it too is correct and justifiable. His ex girlfriend, Ashley (Shelby Allison Brown) has had it with him, she feels that Jack has not captured her in the movie. Andie (Danielle Aziza) who is pragmatic and the voice of reason tries to reel in the movie with her thoughts and comments. More insults fly when Riley (Alex Mayer) enters the play. She too is insulted at her being portrayed in a negative light. In Matt Morillo's play, we get a smattering of the absurd, and what it is like to live today in America.

Under greens, blues and cool white lighting, Maile Binion keeps the lighting basic. As in the staging, the basic lighting is unassuming and yet effective. The costumes range from creative to erotic. Where the policewoman's uniform was a comical touch, Riley's costume near the end of the performance was oozing sexuality, her dance was the creative highlight of the show.

Even though the show about an hour in gets slow for about 5 minutes, it is a worthwhile show to see. It has a bohemian edge to it as well as comedy and the PC bantering has the audience taking sides. In this small theater the audience feels like part of the action which adds to the plays allure.

......................................................................................................................

Next up is The Sign of The Times at The New World Stages. Based on a tale set in the 1960's and amid social change it features songs from that era.

Songs like Downtown", Rescue Me", and "Give me some lovin are just a few in this anticipated show. Jukebox musicals are dependent on the staging, acting and the songs that are chosen. It always helps too when the lighting hits the mark and that the costumes are believable as well.

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Author

ROBERT M. MASSIMI

is a resident drama critic for Metropolitan Magazine and other sources.  He has produced a dozen plays on Broadway, has worked as a film editor, and is also a member of the Dramatists Guild.  He is the acting director of  the SWM-NY division.

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[carmenvicinanza]

Debbie Allen

Debbie Allen è l’attrice, ballerina, coreografa, regista e produttrice televisiva, conosciuta in tutto il mondo per la sua interpretazione dell’insegnante di danza Lydia Grant nella serie culto degli anni Ottanta Saranno famosi.

Ha lavorato a più di 50 film e produzioni televisive collezionando una bella sfilza di premi tra cui un Golden Globe, cinque Emmy Awards su venti nomination, due Tony Awards e dieci Image Award. Nel 1991 le è stata dedicata una stella sulla Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Come coreografa detiene il record per il maggior numero di vittorie e nomination agli Emmy.

Ha fatto parte della Commissione Presidenziale della Casa Bianca per le Arti e gli Studi Umanistici.

Un altro suo personaggio passato alla storia delle serie tv è stato la dottoressa Catherine Avery in Grey’s Anatomy.

Il suo nome completo è Deborah Kaye Allen ed è nata a Houston, il 16 gennaio 1950, sua madre è Vivian Ayers Allen, poeta e attivista culturale autrice di Spice of Dawns raccolta poetica nominata al Pulitzer e sua sorella è l’attrice e regista Phylicia Rashad, che è stata la famosa Clair Robinson nella sitcom The Cosby Show (in italiano I Robinson).

Debbie Allen, che danza da quando era una bambina, è laureata in letteratura greca alla Howard University e ha studiato recitazione alla HB Studio di New York.

Dopo anni, la sua università l’ha insignita col dottorato honoris causa così come la University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

Ha debuttato a Broadway nel 1970 e, dopo diversi musical e serie tv, è stata nel cast in un altro film televisivo che ha fatto epoca: Radici.

Nel 1980 ha ottenuto la prima candidatura ai Tony Awards come protagonista di West Side Story vincendo il Drama Desk Award. La sua prima volta al cinema è stata nel 1979, ma il ruolo che l’ha resa famosa è stato sicuramente quello di Miss Grant in  Saranno famosi. Oltre a recitare era anche la coreografa. È stata l’unica protagonista a lavorare nel film del 1980, diretto da Alan Parker, nella serie tv, girata tra il 1982 e il 1987, che le è valso due Emmy Awards e un Golden Globe (prima donna nera a vincere come miglior attrice per una serie tv) e anche nel remake del 2009 in cui era la preside della scuola d’arte.

Dopo diversi film e spettacoli a Broadway, ha diretto e prodotto 83 episodi della fortunata A different World serie spin-off del Cosby Show.

Ha anche inciso due dischi da solista Sweet Charity (1986) e Special Look (1989) e continuato a recitare, dirigere e creare coreografie per film, musical e numerose serie tv. Ha anche prestato la sua voce per diversi film d’animazione.

Come coreografa ha ricevuto 10 nomination agli Oscar, delle quali consecutivamente dal 1991 al 1994 e per Motown 30: What’s Goin’ on!  dedicato ai 30 anni della Motown che le è valso un altro Emmy per il segmento African American Odyssey.

Nel 1997 ha co-prodotto il film di Steven Spielberg Amistad, che le è valso il premio Producers Guild of America.

Nel 2001, a Los Angeles, ha fondato la Debbie Allen Dance Academy organizzazione no profit per incoraggiare giovani talenti.

Non ha mai smesso di dirigere musical e serie di successo come Scandal, Le regole del delitto perfetto, Empire e altre ancora, quasi tutte hanno come protagonista una donna nera.

Nel 2020 ha diretto, prodotto e curato le coreografie di Natale in città con Dolly Parton, che le è valso la quinta statuetta per le coreografie oltre al Governors Award 2021. Premio per meriti artistici accumulati o straordinari al di là delle candidature degli Emmy. Tre mesi prima era stata festeggiata ai Kennedy Center Honors.

Debbie Allen non ha mai mancato di dare il suo contributo in cause contro razzismo e violenza sulle donne, ha composto la coreografia del famoso flash mob mondiale One Billion Rising e marciato contro le politiche misogine di Trump.

Una carriera lunga cinquant’anni la sua, accompagnata dalla partecipazione sociale come artista e come singola cittadina per rivendicare diritti non ancora raggiunti o in continuo pericolo. Una vera forza della natura.

[somewherenearcool]

rich people need to be stopped

generally speaking, but i want to talk about nepo babies and music.

this isn't a new discussion, we have all heard about king princesses great grandpa who founded macys and died on the titanic, and yeah, even if they didn't receive any sort of inheritance as they claim, there is still some generational wealth that allowed their dad to become a sound engineer and start his own business, which allowed king to get musical training and record music and blah blah blah.

but i don't want to talk about king princess i want to talk about this band called Lawrence.

specifically, these two: Clyde and Gracie Lawrence.

you may have seen them across other social media platforms. they identify as an R&B/soul group...

and they all look like this. which i guess is fine, live your truth.

but what is really interesting is the way they market themselves.

They often describe their collective as "just some siblings and friends making music." and it is really easy to take this at face value considering none of the members have their own wikipedia pages, despite the band having been established for over a decade.

However, if you go to the bands wikipedia page you can learn about The Lawrence Family.

What is the significance of the Lawrence Family? Clyde and Gracie's father is Marc Lawrence. Who's Marc Lawrence?

Marc Lawrence is a well established screen writer, producer, and director. His portfolio is massive and includes works such as Miss Congeniality and Did You Hear About the Morgans amongst other Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant collaborations. Suffice to say-- this guy is loaded.

This guy-- Marc Lawrence-- also has a habit of including his children in his work. When Marc was working on Miss Congeniality, he claims that Clyde (at age five) actually wrote the pageant song, thus making him the youngest ever inducted member of the Song Writers Guild of America. Good on you Clyde. From that point on, as a child, Clyde composed several songs for several of his father's movies, and Gracie acted in several of them.

Both Clyde and Gracie attended the prestigious Dalton School on the upper east side of Manhattan, and both of them went on to study at Brown, where Clyde eventually formed his band "the Clyde Lawrence Band" (classy).

But okay whatever, rich kids gonna rich.

Here's the part that i really feel is so insidious. As i've mentioned before, neither Clyde nor Gracie have their own wikipedia pages, EVEN THOUGH they have both been established in the film industry since childhood. I cannot comprehend how the youngest ever member of the Song Writers Guild of America and his child star sister are able to evade the all powerful forces of wikipedia and yet somehow they have managed.

What is doubly insidious is that their newest single is called "23," and it was released this year. The entire song is sung from Gracie's perspective, and the chorus goes:

"you said that 23 would be the best year,

well i'm 23 and that's a lie.

you said that 23 would be our best year,

but at 23 you said goodbye."

and all the marketing around this song has been birthday themed, as if to insinuate that Gracie Lawrence is 23 now, wrote the song as a 23 year old, reflecting on presently being 23.

and listen that's not me reading too far into it

that's

literally

what they are doing.

What's bonkers about this is i'm 23 right now. I graduated high school in 2018 and i graduated college in 2021. Gracie Lawrence graduated high school in 2015, took a gap year, and was set to graduate from Brown in 2021. So unless Gracie Lawrence skipped three grades in school, which seems unlikely considering that while she was in school she was also acting and touring with her brothers band...she's not 23, she's at least 26.

AND THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH BEING 26, BUT THERE IS DEFINITELY SOMETHING WEIRD ABOUT GOING OUT OF YOUR WAY TO MAKE YOUR ACTUAL AGE DIFFICULT TO FIND ONLINE AND MARKETING YOURSELF AS A QUIRKY GIRL IN YOUR EARLY 20s.

which brings me to my next point. their wardrobe.

people can dress how ever they want, but the outfit choices made by clyde and gracie feel deliberate in two ways.

A.) Gracie's outfits look like they are meant to age her down:

it's a lot of school girl outfits and cheerleading uniforms and shit. furthering my theory that they are trying to make her actual age difficult to discern

B. their outfits are but ugly.

not to be a bully, but i'm going to be a bully here, because they can take it. They are poor-baiting. their outfits are all mismatched, sized wrong, generally thrift store coded. As above you can see gracie has no problem wearing boxy shirts and mixing patterns.

if we examine clyde's wardrobe we see a lot of jerseys, faded t shirts, ball caps, and sneakers.

again, it's all very boxy, casual, not as uncoordinated as gracie's attire, but still it maintains this blue-collar image.

also

this isn't related to anything, i've just seen this outfit so many times on social media and it makes me want to tear my hair out.

their lyrics also hold evidence of poor-baiting, for instance, this song "i'm confident that i'm insecure", which boasts the opening lines:

"well shucks,

i think i need to go to therapy,

but i'm tough,

so i'm just gonna cry in bed for free"

But why wouldn't they want to be perceived as poor? If you're going to call yourself a soul artist or a soul group, you need something to be soulful about. You need to have life experience or else your callowness will shine through in your shallow, heavy handed, tiktok lyrics.

I guess my whole point is... these people are freaks. I think it's difficult enough that the pop genre and other major media is over saturated with the children of last generations famous/grotesquely wealthy. It's bad enough that we normals have to live with the fact that we will never have the time or resources to reach success that these millionaires have. it's bad enough that these two definitely went into that pizza place to have a photo shoot and they have definitely never set foot in a cheap by the slice pizza place earnestly.

But you're telling me that with all those resources, with all the training, the ivy league educations, and all of daddy's money...

the lawrence siblings couldn't have found a single black person to stand as a major member of their soul ensemble???

[yessadirichards]

Writers strike felt in missing NBC stars, absence of Fox schedule for TV sales pitches

NEW YORK

The impact of the Hollywood writers strike was felt as major television networks began their annual week of sales presentations to advertisers on Monday, with news personalities like Willie Geist and Stephanie Ruhle left to hawk comedies and dramas for NBC Universal.

Fox declined to announce a fall television schedule on Monday, citing uncertainties created by the strike.

Some 11,500 members of the Writers Guild for America, saying the rise of streaming has hurt their earning power, walked off the job two weeks after talks on a new contract broke down, and haven't returned to the negotiating table since.

Network late-night shows immediately shut down. Picketing writers targeting some of the few shows shooting episodes forced the shutdown, at least temporarily, of programs including Showtime's “Billions,” “Severance” on Apple TV+ and the new Marvel show, “Daredevil: Born Again” on Disney+.

The network sales presentations, known as upfronts because TV executives use them to convince advertisers to lock in commercial spending months in advance, are major events on the television schedule. They opened with turmoil; writers picketed in front of Radio City Music Hall where NBC previewed programming it hoped viewers would be able to see.

Mark Lazarus, NBC Universal president of television and streaming, quickly acknowledged the uncertainties in speaking to the ad representatives.

“It may take some time, but I know we will eventually get through this,” Lazarus said, “and the result will be a stronger foundation from which we can all move forward together.”

Lazarus came to the stage following a song-and-dance routine by an animated bear, Ted, voiced by creator Seth MacFarlane. Following two movies, the “Ted” character is set to begin a series on the Peacock streaming network.

The upfront presentations are generally known for star power attempting to woo advertisers, but entertainers were notably missing from NBC Universal's presentation. For example, the network and Peacock announced new series that will star Jon Cryer, Jesse L. Martin, Kaley Cuoco and Anthony Hopkins and none of them were there on Monday.

Instead, the new personalities were put in the odd position of pitching entertainment fare, like Geist highlighting programming around the upcoming 50th anniversary of “Saturday Night Live," while Ruhle and business journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin touted new dramas.

Entertainers and creators Amy Poehler, Dick Wolf and Simon Cowell each spoke in taped messages, which NBC said were recorded before the strike began.

Three musicians performed for the crowd, each of them with NBC ties. Reba McEntire was announced as a coach for an upcoming season of “The Voice,” Grace Potter was a winner of a past edition and Nick Jonas is a former coach. Jonas noted the audience's cool reaction on a Monday morning.

“I know it's early,” he said, “but y'all feel free to let loose a little bit.”

In advance of Fox's presentation later Monday, executives talked about upcoming shows, but not when they would appear.

“No one has a crystal ball about the duration and impact of the strike,” said Dan Harrison, executive vice president of program planning and content strategy. “Once we have a clearer view, we will announce our plans.”

Fox executives said that the pandemic offered practice in the need to be flexible when the content pipeline is suddenly shut down.

The strike will likely mean a greater reliance on unscripted fare, said Allison Wallach, president of Fox's unscripted programming. To that end, Fox announced a new game show, “Snake Oil,” hosted by David Spade and a music guessing game, “We Are Family,” produced and hosted by Jamie Foxx.