(The Other) Roger & Me

February 17th, 2010

I just read an interview with Roger Ebert. Surgeries have finally removed his cancer, but left him unable to eat or drink. Or talk. He called it a gift from the gods – all his desires had been replaced by all his memories of satiety.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/01/nil_by_mouth.html

I froze, unsatisfied with my memories, undone by my own terrors, running mental slide shows of the Roger I once knew, a man incapable of containing his passions, a whirlwind, a mind unfamiliar with the concept of abstinence.

Roger and I went to the same college. He was already one of the elite, already published and traveled and destined for things far outside a Midwestern campus. When our paths crossed, he was editor of the school newspaper and I was his drama critic. (He was very good at this job, I was infinitely less so, but that’s beside the point.)

What I knew then, what I remember now is his passion. A passion for words mostly, but for damn near everything else, too.

My routine was to see a play on campus, then rush to the newsroom to churn out a review before the paper went to press. That gave me about an hour at most, to deliver my art on demand. My date de noir would purse her mouth and prink, tapping her little foot to mark her impatience. “Maybe I should just go home, we can meet next week. Or something….”

I was never good about choosing between art and love. “No, no, I’m almost done here, just a few (hundred) words to go. Wait, wait….”

Invariably, one rewrite from perfection, Roger would burst into the room, larger than the room, louder than the room. And leap onto the communal “desk” that spanned from door to wall, announcing that everyone’s copy was late, that the typesetters were tired of waiting and, louder still, that Thomas Wolfe was the finest writer who ever lived, Shakespeare and Proust be damned.

“A poem, a leaf, a door,” he’d begin, words flowing from memory, filling the space like maple syrup of the mind. It mesmerized the lot of us on Monday. By Wednesday we still paid some attention. At Friday’s end, our ears were closed and we typed on.

If Roger saw, he’d jar us back. Feet solidly planted in Wolfe, he’d leap from the gospels of Goddard and Fellini to Bergman and Kubrick, lunge from film to Pound and Elliot, Mann and Joyce, from the best pizza in town to the little dive that had the richest barbeque….

What he loved the most was goading anyone into argument. He would lay trails of verbal crumbs to trap us. “No, I don’t’ think so…” someone would say.

Roger would light up, puff up, pounce up, joyous to find a worthy sparring mate. His words were weapons to shred any opponent who failed to meet him on even ground. Bruce Lee in battle with the knowledge ninjas.

I’m sure Roger still fights the same battles, though the vocals are gone. Ever the loud sort, demanding to own the room, he now settles for owning the page. I’m glad he writes that he’s content with it.

Of course Roger was (and is) incredibly talented. Smart, too, with a prodigious memory (and enough bluster to cover any lapses). Essential skills for success, but that’s not why I remember him. Or why I treasure his books, his reviews, his thoughts.

It’s the passion that endures. Passion.

Passion makes movies worth seeing. Passion turns painting into art, gold into treasure, writing into literature. Passion makes any little thing worth everything. Passion.

When I look at movies now, my memories of Roger have become my rule of thumb. I ask myself, is this film pounce-worthy? Would it coax a tirade from anyone, make poets leap to desktops, raise voices in delight, in dissension, in discussion. Does the artist’s passion make me want to scream, strut, sing, slide their words around my mouth like honey….

If not, I don’t have room for it. I’m far too busy thinking of the way things should be. Thanks for that, Roger.


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Posted by Norman Berns in Creativity, Memory, passion | No Comments »

My Minnesota Christmas

December 26th, 2009

We had a Minnesota Christmas this year.  Or, at least, promises of one.

The weather gurus called for a foot of snow yesterday.  With urgent warnings, threats, and dire predictions for up to two feet more overnight….  Hurry, get inside, the storm is coming, the storm is coming.

The natives were so excited.  They went varooming up and down the streets, taking their four-wheel-drive manhood for test runs before the snow.  A bit fell. More all around us, but here we got dusted with, oh, four or five inches.   No matter, the four-wheelers varoomed back and forth.

Yesterday I cleared the driveway and the sidewalk with the snowblower.  That didn’t go as well as I’d hoped.  My snowblower’s new power cable snapped, the victim of parts imported from the low-bidder.  Spent three hours jury-rigging a patch that sort of makes the broken wire work again.   Except that it’s now two feet shorter and I’m forced to imitate a hunchback in order to make it go.  No matter.  I hunker down.  I’m ready for the BIG snow that’s coming.

By some perversion of the gods, the overnight temperatures go up instead of down.  Two feet of snow somehow ends up as a few sodden inches.  Which continues to fall, only now in some odd rain-snow-sleet mix.  No problem.  I have a repaired cable on the snowblower.  Off I go, bent like a wizened old warlock….

This is H E A V Y snow.  Ice-laden, sodden.  Dour snow.  I clean the patch by the garage so I can get to the wooden door to the back yard.  I open it at last.  And the door, half-frozen, ice-jammed, falls into pieces in my hand.  I’m left with one board and a handle.  The rest of the door lies in pieces in the snow….  I gather the cracked, frozen boards and carefully lay them aside for repairs in the Spring, should the rumors of a Spring turn out to be true.

The snowblower and I lunge ahead.  We are hurling snow to the side.  Hurling wet snow to the side.  Hurling ice to…  the….  We’re hurling nothing nowhere.  The snowblower jams, ice packed.  I turn it off, clear the blades and turn it on.  The success is momentary.  Off again, clear, back on.  Off.  Clear.  On.  Off clear on.  Offclearon….  After six or seven rounds, the chute is finally open enough to push out a piece or two of ice-packed snow.

I have conquered Winter.  I move forward.

The snowblower jams again.

Again.

Again.

I give up.  I shovel the walk by hand.  It is now raining with a sense of urgency.  That stops, only to be replaced by wet snow.  No, that’s rain.  Oh, now ice….  How nice.  It’s about 35 degrees.  Sweating under three layers of heavy clothes to keep me safe & warm from the bitter cold that isn’t, I’m now soaked, in and out.  I’m now shoveling frozen water from the sidewalk, like the debris from a thousand discarded Slushies….

I lug the frozen snowblower back to the garage.  Slowly.  I give it a nice warm place.  I peel off my clothes and hang them up to dry, neighbors be damned.

I’m in.  The snow/rain/sleet is out.  Alicia’s been cooking all day, oblivious to my sodden adventures out our door.  Netflix delivered yesterday. Kieslowski’s Bleu.  Rouge and Blanc are due tomorrow.  I find a safe, warm corner and get the movie set.  Alicia brings her heart-and-soul disguised as food.  It melts the leftover ice in my veins and makes the outside world disappear.  That’s all we need, you know.  A safe, warm corner, love, good food, great art.  Snow and ice be damned.  All’s right with the world, I tell you, all’s right with the world.

And to all, a very merry Christmas….


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Posted by Norman Berns in 2010 | 3 Comments »

The Future is Coming, the Future is Coming….

December 24th, 2009

No doubt the year ahead will be no less interesting than the year behind.  For good or bad, the universe sorta works that way.  I suppose it’s also true that the future wants to (as it always has) come rushing toward us like a puppy, head over heels, panting for love, yapping for attention and peeing all over itself (and us) from the pure joy of its arrival.

Puppy love or not, this year I find myself twisted inside-out, turned into a scowling cynic.  Well, as twisted as ever, but more cynic than usual.

Now that Big Business owns the future, I fear that innovation is no longer really real.  Instead of leaping into our arms, the future gets doled out to us when some Suit decides the time is right (or the money rich enough) for an unseemly profit.  And what we’re being sold (most times) are bargain-priced replicas of the promised goods.  Somewhere, I’m sure, someone somewhere really owns the real thing, but most of us get low-cost floor-sweepings from cheapo-land.  Not only has Big Business sold our jobs, they’ve outsourced the future to the lowest bidder.

Why so bitter?  In this week alone, a computer monitor died (moments after its warranty expired), a TV went blank (because Dell opted to use the cheapest possible chips) and my recently-replaced snowblower cable shredded and snapped (I now fear we import our wires, too).  I’m frozen in place wondering what wonder of modern technology will implode next, its obsolescence carefully planned even as it was being born.

With all that in mind, these are my visions of the near future.  Now do your part.  Hurry, hurry, buy lots of stuff now so that everything can break in time for whatever waits in the wings.

1. HDTV pales next to Ultra-DTV™, which will be announced late in 2010, just in time for the next round of Holiday shopping.

2. More Hollywood films will shoot and deliver in 3D while lame adventures in 4D will go back to whatever dimension brought them.  Will anyone care about the story anymore?  Or just the space it lives in?

3. An Astonishing New Camera will manage to make Ultra-Def™ Video look better, brighter, bolder than film.  Film gasps on, even as its image slowly fades away.  Film is so 20th century anyway.

4. After six months & seven updates, the original version of The Astonishing New Camera will sell at Wal-Mart for $100 ($99 at Costco).

5. The netbook will grow smaller and smaller until it finally morphs into a smart-phone that slides into a shirt pocket.

6. A shirt-pocket-sized, solid-state drive holds two hours of Ultra-Def™ video.  It sells for $100.  Cheapo-land is named the exclusive manufacturer of shirt-pockets; price rises precipitously.

7. The Next Big Thing is the One-Com©.  This amazing wonder shoots 3D stills & Ultra-Def™ video.  It delivers concert-hall-quality sound, includes script writing software, an edit bay and a telescope.  Even has a decent phone.

8. Someone finally figures out what kind of movie actually looks great on a wristwatch. Big Business sells lots of new Wristies© as Hollywood churns out endless new shows and millions watch.  Meanwhile filmmakers keep waiting, keep waiting, keep waiting for their residuals.

9. Film unions begin to disintegrate as more indie productions shoot with more indie crews.  Farewell pensions, bye-bye health-care, so long retirement.  And everyone wonders when their deferred wages will arrive.

10. Cloud computing wins. No one owns anything.   Hardware downloads everything from the ether. Big Business sells access to lots of clouds.  Everyone else gets water vapor.

11. With ever-lower prices on hardware, Everyman is finally able to electronically encode endless images of everything.  The results flood We-Tube©. We watch, eyes crossed.  A rare few still make movies, even fewer remember what a real movie really is.

12. And as the year staggers toward the wings, I’ll have become a year older, though that’ll have little impact on me or the world.

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Posted by Norman Berns in 2010, Big Business, Cheap, Greed, Obsolescence | 2 Comments »

When Good Productions Go Bad: The Money Squeeze

November 19th, 2009

When production finances get squeezed, it’s easy to consider shooting the same show for less.  Instead of, say, three pages a day, you start planning to cram in six or seven or ten.  Of course it can be done; you can work harder, shoot smarter….

And then you start hitting the wall.

Maybe you try to get by with fewer setups.  Tell the gaffer to leave the big lights on the truck.  Send the dolly grip and second makeup and three PAs home.  You wrap your days without getting all the coverage you planned.  Avoid rehearsals.  Let the crew eat lunch from a bag.  Jackhammer be damned, tell sound to live with that last take.  No time, no time now, you’ll fix it in the mix….

That’s about when the wall starts hitting you.

The problem is, budgets are each handmade to fit one and only one specific script.  Even episodes of cookie-cutter TV shows warrant different budgets.  This show has one more location, that has a bit more pow-bang-boom than whoosh-swish-wow.

When you’re struggling to cobble together those last few dollars of a tight budget, there’s always a temptation to shave costs here and there.  Oh well, I wanted $500, but $450 is close enough.  So let’s shoot anyway….

Nice thought.  Very bad idea.

Productions start from a concept.  The director’s job is to translate that point of view to the screen.  Your budget is based on the results of that vision.  It’s based on the REALITY of the script.

Danger comes when you try to squeak by with a bit less.  When your funds are cut, you can’t expect to make the same film.  You want to, but if you try, all you’ll make is a film that’s just not made well.

What to do?

When money’s tight, it’s time to tighten your script.  Not lengthen your shooting days.  Heresy you say, knowing that your heart & soul are in your script.  That may be so, but if you want to tell your story, you’ll have to do it with fewer words.

This is where the real pros and wannabes go their separate ways.  Losing a location or two, a few actors, even a page of dialogue could put you right back on budget.  And on schedule to shoot the setups you need.  It might even tighten up your script.

Here’s the good news and the bad.  When the buck stops before the bank has closed, you have to make sure your script matches your money.  Do the necessaries or your movie will never match your dreams.

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Mr. Smith Makes a Pizza Pie

July 1st, 2009

Pizza night.  That’s usually my job.  Been working on the crust for, oh, let’s say forever.  And finally settled on my vision of perfection.  Like a Woody Allen movie, there’d be no point in changing things once the formula was right.

Except tonight, my stomach had no time for rising dough and my brain had slipped into its standby mode.  So Alicia and I went off to Black Sheep, the town’s newest, most heavily hyped, boundlesslyBlack Sheet Logo ballyhooed, primo pizzeria.

Black Sheep (named for no discernable reason except its trés cute logo) is the love child of local chef, Jordon Smith.  Trained for twenty years at local upscale eateries, he worked his way up the food chain from kitchen help to Executive Chef.  Loving - even as he mastered high-end gourmet - that simplest of street foods, the humble pizza pie.

Love taught him that truly great pizza needs - among many other things - a truly great oven.  Which turned out to be a mega-buck coal burning behemoth that could hold its temperature at a mind-searing 800 degrees.

About the price of a RED and just about as hot. Funny how every business has its paragon.

Smith brought his hot mama on home and taught himself how to use it.  The pizza lover in me mourns the many pies that died before he finally mastered the intricacies of the crust.  Then it was time for the toppings, each carefully hand-crafted, adjusted and weighed so it would be enhanced by the unforgiving forge he used.  And by now, you can believe that the pizza-lover in me was really pissed with impatience.

When all the little pieces were in place, Smith flung up the doors and invited the public to his show.  And the rest is pizza legend, a pie as fine as anyone has seen around here.  Or around almost anywhere, I’d imagine, though I haven’t been everywhere.  I ate far too much.  I have a tendency to do that when I’m around really good food.

Some of you may be pleased to learn that my dinner went so well.  But most, I’m sure, are wondering why I’ve driveled on so long about a thing like pizza.  Thing is, I wasn’t really talking about pizza at all, though it was a very tasty metaphor.

I’m talking about learning craft.  And how that leads to art.  And that ain’t drivel.

Want to know how to make a really good film…?  You go about it about the same way Mr. Smith went about making his pizza.  Slowly. Carefully. With lots of training. From the bottom up, learning the craft, studying, testing, trying, finding the courage to fail, having the smarts to dump your failures and move on, always aware you’re working with something hot enough for creation and deadly enough for destruction.

Had Mr. Smith opened his pizzeria while still green from some short-ends culinary school, odds are good whatever he turned out would have been bad.  Or, at least, nowhere near as gob-smacking GOOD as what he delivered last night.  Maybe he’d have survived, won a few food festivals and carved out a bit of living.

Fortunately for everyone who’s tasted the state of his art, he took the time to learn his craft.  And made a thousand hungry fans happy in the process, delivering fine food, I mean DAMN fine food that borders on art, a feast for heart and soul.

All in all, Mr. Smith puts on a very tasty show for the young wannabes who should be taking home this extra tidbit with their takeaway pizzas.  If you want art, real art, learn HOW before rushing out to DO.  There’s already enough bad pizza (and bad film) in the world.  Wouldn’t it be better to learn how to do it right instead of just getting it done.


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Strange Times, Evil Ways

June 15th, 2009

These are strange times. Adrift, no moral compass, our every reality is being twisted and shredded, as if we were in the grip of some black hole. Eaten alive and spit out the back end. Or some equally obscene metaphor that boils down to “everything’s going to hell lately.”

Once-sane people are doing dastardly deeds and pretending they’re normal. Pretending their deeds are normal, too. And it’s happening so often it seems it will keep going until there’s nothing left of humanity. Nothing worth more than one final flush out the back end of the universe’s black hole.

Let’s start with the fact that we’ve all just run out of money. Perhaps you’ve noticed.

How the hell could the whole world have run out of money? Where’d it go…? I know I’ve been pushing the limit on a credit card or three, but surely this can’t all be MY fault. The money must be somewhere. I know it’s not hidden behind the Chinese toys at Wal-Mart. Sure as hell, SOMEONE took it.

And while the greedy are gouging their piece of flesh - OUR flesh - we stand by and let it happen. As fast as we can whip out our credit cards, we’ve morphed the ME Generation into the I Got Mine so Screw You Generation.

I never cared if The Suits wanted to worship Mammon on their own time. But time’s up, worship’s over and they’re passing the plate to me.

Bad enough that bankers grab personal millions as their public empires crumble. Billionaires con ordinary folks into buying sporting fields, then charge entry fees no ordinary folks could pay. And so-called “movie stars” snatch million-dollar paychecks out of unwatchable films.

Instead of complaints, the studios raise box-office rates to cover the tab,. Do we stay home in protest? Hell no. We rush the line to drop five bucks for a dime bag of popcorn, then douse it with hydrogenated fat and orange-colored food dye (no doubt imported from China where it’s cheaper to buy).

Why aren’t we up in arms, leaning out windows, screaming our fury and pledging not to take it anymore? Apparently our souls have grown as empty as our pocketbooks. Like these wealthy failures before us, our wish seems to be to get OURS, before anyone notices that everything has become a giant Ponzi scheme. And we all, arms linked, rush into oblivion.

Have we really become them…?

Even as we’re all being flushed headlong toward dark ends, villains abound, hiding their intentions behind movie magic and hype. Bernie Madoff. The lads and ladies of Wisteria Lane. And an endless parade of film producers trying to stay ahead of the broker, the banker and their mortgage holder.

When things get too tough for them, too scary, do they ever do the right thing? Do they look out for the people who help them do their work…? Not in these times. They just grab their profits and devour their young. They think they can avoid the black hole they’re facing by hiding behind whoever may be standing next in line.

Here’s a recent post.

Come join the fun and make a movie! Long hours on a relaxed set. Experience required. This is an important new film by an award-winning filmmaker. No pay.

Wal-Mart may pay less than morally right, but some filmmakers skip the morals entirely and troll for unpaid workers. Normal people in normal times might be ashamed to con little green newbies into investing their only real assets – their talent and hard work – to support someone else’s FUN. Funny, no one ever mentions profit-sharing.

I called and asked. It turns out that this particular film is “important” because the producer-director-writer-cinematographer-editor said so. She has high hopes of a film festival screening. Last year’s film won an award. To prove it, she shows me her certificate, in genuine simulated parchment, suitable for framing.

Even as we’re all getting sucked into the black hole, we’ve become the pit. Even as some giant maw is devouring us, we are turning around and devouring our young.

Will these times ever end …?

Every time another check bounces, every time another filmmaker is conned into carrying the load for someone else’s project, every time a professional is forced to squeeze two days of work into one (then settle for a half-day’s pay for the effort), the event sits on the horizon mocking us as we move closer to oblivion.

I can only hope these times will end before they end us.

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Posted by Norman Berns in Big Budget, Greed, Manipulation, Newbies, Work for Free, obsession | 3 Comments »

Taught Another Class…. Pass it on

March 19th, 2009
Taught another class this past week, this one a killer.  Eight straight hours of non-stop words.  My throat was raw from talking, my thumb numb from pushing the button to slide up to the next graphic, my feet sore from standing.

So why do I bother…?  Not fortune, for sure.  I’d make more sitting in the big chair, working the phones and running a film.  Nor fame.  Even if enthusiasm were really riches, there are limits to working the backroom at the software store.Then why…?

Reason #1.  Good students make smarter teachers.

Happens every time I teach a class like this.  A hand shoots up or a voice shuts me up.  And someone asks something I’d never considered before.  And in an instant my whole world lights up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve.  I gain Insights I’ve never seen before, concepts I’ve never conceived before.

Good questions like that kick the rust out of the immovable parts of a brain and grease the gears to turn again.

After all, all work needs proofreaders.  Mistakes slip past us because brains are hard-wired to find meaning in everything.  Even phrases with missing vowls and newly minted words de void of meaning. It takes good questions to jostle the wisdom of established rules and regulations.  Whole societies have been created from moments like that.

So to the tall ones in the back of the room who stumped me, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Reason #2.  We teach or die.

Not personally of course, but still quite literally.  Unless we teach, we risk losing an entire generation of filmmakers.  We learn the rules at school, but our art and craft are hand-made and home-honed.  We need each other’s wisdom to smooth the long road to success.

Filmmaking is one of the few apprenticeship systems.  Think of the term, “bestboy.” It was (and still is) the smartest, hardest working kid in the long line of eager urchins hoping to learn from the gaffer (the set’s juiced old “grandfather”).  Or the Guild Trainee in training to the second 2nd AD who’s in training to the 2nd AD who’s in training to the 1st AD.

Let’s not get too carried away here.  No doubt filmmaking could survive without the last generation leading each new generation gingerly into the next.  But here’s the line on it.  it wouldn’t survive as well.  And OUR way of working (whatever that might be) would be lost forever.

That’s why we’re compelled to write books, teach classes, train newbies.  Selfishly, we’re trying to preserve our little pearls of wisdom.  Altruistically, we’re doing our damndest to assure the continuity of an entire industry.  Mind you, that’s the industry we’re hoping to build in our own image.  Our style, our way, our wisdom.

After all, someone taught our teachers.  And they made things their own before they passed their knowhow on to us.  And we invested a career to make their hand-me-down wisdom our own.

Then, from time to time, every once in a lucky day, we get the honor, the pleasure, the joy of passing good bits and tasty pieces on to another generation of filmmakers. And if we’re very good at it, someday they’ll pass it on, too.

That’s the trick.  We have to be really good at passing on everything we know or it will be lost forever.  So our own immortality depends on trying as hard as humanly possible.

Now how cool is that…?  Certainly worth the long day, sore throat, tired feet.  I figure I came out way, way, way ahead.

Damn, that was a fine, fun day.

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The Money Spigot

August 10th, 2008
Incentives. Refunds. Rebates. Certified tax credits. Refundable credit. Transferable credit. The instant the AD calls WRAP, the money spigot flips into reverse; film budgets sprout columns of negative numbers to show all the money flowing BACK to the production.

Brokers and bankers have turned up, specializing in “monetizing the credits” (turning future rebates into current cash) for a piece of the pie. And states (even whole countries) are lining up to create ever-larger, ever-sweeter pies.

Any way you slice it, filmmakers are being paid to shoot in this place or that. “Come shoot in MY state and we’ll rebate 20, 30, 40% of whatever you spend.” As siren songs go, that one is sweetly seductive for most filmmakers. Raising money has never been easy. Investments that provide a guaranteed (and instant) return can be a huge help.

Of course, this has been around for quite a while in somewhat less democratic forms. It used to be called an “inducement” or a “perk.” You may know it as a “bribe” or “the vig.” No matter the name, those cash disbursement usually stopped at the producers’ pockets, not the investors. Now the process has been institutionalized and the pockets are open. Well, partially open, at least to investors.

So more or less, it’s business as usual. We’ve just changed from personal payoffs to a state-sponsored lottery. I don’t intend to look askance at this gift. But I’m amazed that so many states are competing to give away more, more, more money.

Two thoughts come to mind.

(1) Films are good business.

They’re a great investment for states. The bigger the giveaways, the greater the growth in new business. Studios, rental houses and post facilities are popping up where vacant lots once stood. And in places like Michigan, state investments are buying on-the-job training for newbies and wannabe filmmakers. A whole, new industry is being primed. Of course, had Hollywood decided to produce cars, Detroit might not have been quite as happy. But they didn’t. And now we have an unlikely new film capital sprouting in the “The Flyovers.”

Hollywood ain’t very pleased right now. But who’s the blame for that…? And that brings me to my second thought.

(2) Movies are too damn expensive.

Oops, said it. Hollywood didn’t want you to know that. But in my mind, basic as it may be, $150,000,000 seems like a bit much to grind out 90 minutes of vaguely entertaining entertainment. Why the hell should any movie cost so much…?

The higher the budget, the bigger the salaries. Or vice versa. So there’s quite an incentive for studios, producers, executives and stars to deliver ever-more-expensive movies. That forces the megaplex to gouge $10, $12, $15 a ticket so it can reimburse Hollywood’s vig. Then, like mothers at a bake sale, theatres are reduced to peddling overpriced popcorn and carbonated-sugar-water to pay their own bills.

Hollywood keeps increasing Hollywood’s budgets. They’ve been building their own disaster and this one’s not fiction.

Hollywood’s angry complaints aside, can you guess who’s first at the trough for a handout? Yep, Hollywood, fat palms outstretched for more grease. If little filmmakers can push into line (in time, before the money’s all gone) then there’s cash for everyone. Except these state coffers aren’t infinite and big bully Hollywood is there first, grabbing a whopping huge slice of the pie.

By the way, that’s the same Hollywood that refuses to have any film incentives (refunds, rebates, whatever) in its own state. Of course, they’re justly afraid that it would cost them their own tax dollars, which would slice into their own profits. So they’re pissed that the other states are draining their business, but far too greedy to compete for that business. The film industry’s head honchos have never been known for playing nice or sharing their piece of the pie.

Instead, Hollywood’s happy for a handout of State welfare, as long as it’s some other State shouldering the burden. Happy, hell. They’re addicted to it. It’s part of their cashflow analysis. Hollywood budgets are so top-heavy that Hollywood couldn’t survive without State-sponsored film welfare.

Here’s my solution.

Any time a film costs more than, oh…, let’s say something outlandishly huge, right on the boundaries of obscenity. $75,000,000.00. You’d think that ought to be enough to make a decent movie. Any time a film exceeds that grotesquely huge number, everyone making over $100K has to take a 10% pay cut. And keep on cutting until the film’s budget is back down to a mere $75M. That might whack up some of those multimillion-dollar purses, defer some deferments and slash gross income sharing. Gross, indeed.

Okay, now that we’ve lopped the head off Hollywood, let’s get back to the states.

State Film Offices have to stop encouraging over-priced productions. These outsized budgets exist only because the states (and foreign countries) are willing to pick up so much of the tab. I’d suggest a money czar to review every film budget, nipping and tucking at overpaid producers and egregiously overpaid stars.

Oh, productions could still pay whatever they liked, of course, but no outside entity (including the overprice movie theatres) should be a partner in the budget’s irresponsibility.

Some states have already set caps on reimbursements. Every state needs to do it. Hollywood will be pissed, that’s for sure. Maybe pissed enough to take their marbles and go home. But that just leaves a bigger slice of the pie for all the smaller (and usually independent) filmmakers who really need those rebates to survive. Not to thrive, mind you, just to survive.

Wouldn’t that make sense? Hollywood, which refuses to share its bounty, gets to go home and support its own overpriced industry. Everyone else, struggling to make a movie with budgets as trim as a long-distance runner, can afford the films they’re making. And the States get to help the whole indie industry survive. Here, there, everywhere.


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Posted by Norman Berns in Big Budget, State Incentives, Tax Credits | 10 Comments »

Dangerous Ingredients

June 2nd, 2008
Foodie that I am, I belong to almost as many food sites as film groups. The hope is that one or the other will deliver a never-ending orgy of delights, either for my stomach or my brain. Today wasn’t quite as good a day.

The food conversation wandered to my favorite drink from an ice cream chain. Something delightfully sinful, something, alas, I’d been known to chug to the point of brain-freeze on hot summer days. Who am I kidding? Cold winter days, too.

Today I got a list of its contents and nutritional values.

Each large drink has over 2300 calories, enough to feed a horse of a man for a hard-working day plowing fields. The same cup holds 108 grams of fat, (60% of it the bad, bad, bad kind, a heart attack delivery system). Cholesterol tops 295 mg; there are 303 grams of carbs (poor Dr. Atkins, spinning helplessly); over half a pound of sugar and, insult to injury, most of a day’s allotment of sodium, too.

All this bad news comes from a collection of 73 ingredients, many with names unknown or hidden in secret jargon. (There’s no telling the contents of catchalls like “artificial flavors.”) Curious? I asked for a cooling drink and this is the crap delivered. Maybe I should appreciated the slimming start of “reduced fat milk.”

reduced fat milk, heath bar crunch ice cream (cream, nonfat milk, caramel ribbon (corn syrup, sweetened condensed whole milk (milk, sugar), water, high fructose corn syrup, butter (cream, salt), propylene glycol, sodium alginate, salt, natural and artificial vanilla flavors, potassium sorbate (preservative), soy lecithin, annatto color, sodium bicarbonate, propyl paraben (preservative)) , heath® bar candy pieces [milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, nonfat milk, milk fat, lactose, soy lecithin (an emulsifier), salt, and vanillin (an artificial flavoring)), sugar, palm oil, dairy butter (milk), almonds, salt, artificial flavoring, and soy lecithin], sugar, corn syrup, toffee base (sweetened condensed whole milk, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, water, natural flavor, disodium phosphate, and salt), whey powder, cellulose gum, mono and diglycerides, guar gum, carrageenan, polysorbate 80), fudge topping (corn syrup, sugar, water, hydrogenated coconut oil, nonfat milk, cocoa (treated with alkali), modified corn starch, salt, sodium bicarbonate, disodium phosphate, potassium sorbate (a preservative), natural and artificial flavors, soy lecithin), jamoca ice cream (cream, nonfat milk, sugar, corn syrup, jamoca extract (coffee extract, sugar, potassium sorbate and methyl paraben (as preservatives)) whey, caramel color, cellulose gum, mono and diglycerides, carrageenan, polysorbate 80, carob bean gum, guar gum), caramel praline topping (corn syrup, sweetened condensed whole milk, water, sugar, modified food starch, butter, salt, propylene glycol, natural and artificial flavor, sodium citrate, xanthan gum, lecithin, potassium sorbate and propyl paraben as preservatives), hershey’s® heath® milk chocolate english toffee (milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, nonfat milk, milk fat, lactose, soy lecithin [an emulsifier], salt, and vanillin [an artificial flavoring]), sugar, palm oil, dairy butter (milk), almonds, salt, artificial flavoring, and soy lecithin), whipped cream (cream, milk, sugar, dextrose, nonfat dry milk, artificial flavor, mono & diglycerides, carrageenan, mixed tocopherols (vitamin e), to protect flavor, propellant: nitrous oxide).

Okay, say you, it was my choice to drink the glop. Who cares what abuse I dump into my body. And gee, golly, gosh what does this have to do with movies anyway?

We’re being fed equivalent pap from Hollywood. (“Hollywood” being the generic term for that mystical place where movies were once made.) Just as milkshakes used to come from milk, ice cream, a squirt of syrup and a good shake, once-upon-a-time movies provided a distilled reality we called “art” or “humor” or just a plain, old damn good time.

Things like “a good story” or “a gripping thriller” have been replaced with the Jiggery-pokery of movie descriptions. Get a load of these ingredients from the local paper, listing the current slate of must-see-movies.

Extinction, conquest, lack of mercy, murder, tyranny, crude sexual content, graphic nudity, pervasive language, drug use, violence, murderous demons, killing, “evildoers must die in order to create a better society,” devastating weapons, nefarious villains, partial nudity, crudity, bloodshed, weird encounters, life-and-death struggles….

I’d go along with the “life-and-death struggle.” That sounds like a real movie theme. But why in the world does “pervasive language” get noted. Like “artificial flavor,” it’s undoubtedly code for things unwanted and unknown, yet somehow unknowable.

And that’s what gets me. We permit restaurants to serve poison. I mean artery-clogging, brain numbing, heart-stopping foods. Do we rank restaurants UHC (unfit for human consumption) or LF (for lack of flavor) or TD (tacky décor)? Of course not. That would be, uh, totally realistic, medically sound and probably un-American.

Se we allow our citizens to ingest foods with unknown ingredients, but label the hell out of our movies. And what is it we’re worrying about? Art, you say? Don’t be silly.

It seems we employ a gang of perverts to search for vulgarity of every sort in every frame of every film. Mind you, nary a thought to quality or value or art. Minds kept empty and safe from sin, we line up at concession stands and cram our bodies with unknown food-like substances.

Meanwhile, back at the movies, the perverts are warning people about bad words and heavens to mergatroid, the barest hint of a bare breast glimpsed through gossamer. Does anyone actually care? Let me rephrase that. Does anyone in his (or her) right mind actually care?

Films are tagged PG or R or the Voldemort of all ratings, the NR. All for the sin of reality. For the sin of flesh. For the sin of mortal love. Instead of “humanity” or “quality” or “reality” what does the MPAA worry about? Here’s a quick rundown of the things to fear.

Sexual content, nudity, crude and sexual humor, a drug reference, suggestive content, violence, smoking, strong language and there we go again right to the bane of mankind’s existence, pervasive language. Someone thinks it’s okay to fill out minds and bodies with unspeakable, unpronounceable filth. Artificial flavors and murderous demons. But worries about what we might SEE. Blood, death and mindless mutilation are just fine for children of all ages, thank you very much, but be very wary of watching too much kissing or bare skin because it can lead to…. Well, you know.

Where’s the part that says “good movie” or “brain freeze ahead.” Why do we worry about every bare breast, but give nary a glance to ideas, reality, thought, feelings, charm, wit….

Nobody worries about movies being good. Just not naked or filled with “pervasive language.” Who notes that the flavor’s all gone? Except for Scott and Ebert and others of their ilk, few worry about wit or charm or (forgive me) that deep-down, old-fashioned, real, honest-to-god flavor we used to love so much.

Or talent. We measure talent, it seems, by the dollar. Actors have grown as greedy as oil magnates and about as responsible. But that’s another diatribe.

Meanwhile, back at the multiplex, there’s little hope of getting the concession stand to feed us real food. No one really gives a damn. We’re too busy defending our right to bare fat arms and big bellies. So bad food is just fine, especially when eaten in the dark.

But we pretend to care so much about the movies we SEE in the dark. So here’s my proposal.

Let’s give our foods a simple minded, movie quality rating. G for good. B for bad. And C for crap. We can even include explanations modeled after our movie ratings – too much sugar, killer quantities of fat, incomprehensible amounts of salt and so on.

And now with foods safely categorized, let’s move on to our movies with ratings that matter to REAL people. There’s BD (for Brain Dead), MR (Morally Reprehensible) and PPPPP (Piss-Poor Plot Poorly Performed). Of all, the P-Set is the worst – no one wants their movie to get a pee-pee rating.

We all grew so excited by last year’s Juno. Sure, everyone knew the premise was too cute for reality, the dialog too smart for its own good and the conclusion as neatly wrapped as a baby spoon from Tiffany. But people actually spoke to each other. They listened to each other and cared; they touched and felt real emotions. It was almost as if they were, imagine, real live humans with real live lives. Problems be damned, it was glorious to watch.

Now that’s a rating we all can live with – GW (Glorious to Watch).


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Posted by Norman Berns in Junk Food, film ratings, obsession | 5 Comments »

Too Rich, Too Thin

May 3rd, 2008

The old saw doesn’t cut it: it is indeed possible to be too rich and too thin. At least if you happen to be talking about food or films.

I’m a foodie. Most everyone knows that and, in any case, it’s way easy to spot the rounded contours of my lust. I’ve been known to slam to a stop on the freeway because some Mom-and-Pop looked better than average, worth a try, oh hell, it’s almost lunchtime anyway….

What a lucky kid was I. For whatever reason, maybe because I was the youngest and too small to run away, my grandmother plucked me on top of a kitchen chair and taught me how to cook. The lessons and the food never stopped. Until she did. And then I simply took over her kitchen duties.

When I was in college, my best friends had keys to my apartment so they could sample whatever I’d made that day, no matter the hour. (I thought I had a lot of friends, though now I suspect they were just a lot of hungry people.) I should have become a chef, but that didn’t seem like a guy’s option back then. So I became a filmmaker. Oy, some choice….

We turned to food last night because it was my birthday, choosing one of Minneapolis’ finest. No cracks, please – we ain’t all lutefisk and potluck dinners out here in the flyovers. By fluke (and some of the best theatre in the world), there’s an unending array of serious food in this town. And this was truly a world-class eatery.

Was the food good? Well, yes, but oh forgive me, TOO good. Flavor on flavor on flavor until my taste buds didn’t know when to quiver or where to surrender. They screamed with delight until they were exhausted. Each bite was wonderful; in combination overpowering. I didn’t want the next mouthful, I didn’t need it. But, hell, at twenty bucks a tiny tasting plate, I soldiered on.

And that brings me to the movies. It’s almost summertime, so we’re expected to endure the openings of Catwoman-87, Rocky-142, Gigli–The Prequel and god only knows what else we’d hoped to never see again. Each comes packed with effects, action, adventure, explosions, crashes, car chases, boat chases, bus chases, bicycle chases, up stairs, down stairs and, on rare occasion, even a wee bit of acting.

Our eyes and guts go agog with it all. Every movie is as fun as a roller-coaster and about as meaningful. And stomach-wrenching. Still, at twenty bucks a screening (no sense in missing the popcorn and soda), we soldier on. With apologies to Wallis Simpson, it’s just all too rich and too thin for its own good.

So much screaming, yelling, shooting. Good guys leap from tall buildings, bad guys die (only to be replaced by more bad guys who used to be good guys who we thought were bad guys), clothing is shed (discreetly, of course, in our new Victorian era) and heroes are made and lost and made again.

Macbeth must have been coming back from the megaplex when he opined that it was full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Too rich, too thin.

I miss those good, simple, stomach-warming foods that makes my mouth water with anticipation at every bite. I miss good, simple, heart-warming movies that make my brain quiver with anticipation at every scene.

Real food and real films aren’t about things that insist on screaming and banging pots against pans to get my attention. They’re about refining reality and squeezing it down to its essence. Until you can see Truth.

I can’t see a damn thing at the movies these days because my eyeballs are spinning too fast. And my stomach still aches from last night’s unending indulgences.

Oh, how I ache for food and art that are clean and simple and pure.

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Posted by Norman Berns in Junk Food, Overblown | 2 Comments »