Malicious Content: Gossipmongers and the Paparazzi
by Jaden
The media has massacred all that was charming, exciting, and glamorous about Hollywood.
Today’s press makes me sick; they have snuffed out the allure of entertainers, making them impotent at their job to fascinate.
I want to watch a movie and not think about how the actor had a booger hanging out of her nose at Coffee Bean. I want to believe in a character and not know about the actor’s real sexual history. I want to fall in love with a story and not be distracted by the actor’s personal life.
Watching TV with an actress friend of mine, a news clip came up about a new law to try to protect celebrities from the paparazzi. They showed aerial footage of photographers running into traffic and sticking their cameras up against the car windows of Britney Spears. She couldn’t see the road or drive. The cameramen looked like blood-sucking mosquitoes. It was disgusting. My friend added that she too once almost drove over a gang of stalker photographers because they just ran right out in front of her car while she was driving. Too bad she didn’t flatten a few of ‘em and make the world a safer place.
These stalkers with an apparatus give photography a bad name. It is not freedom of the press; it is a creep with a mental illness. The press are invited to premieres and official places where they are welcome to take pictures. Trespassing on private property, stalking, and violating traffic laws are illegal acts.
Wasn’t the death of Princess Di enough? It has only gotten worse since then. Hey, let’s see how many celebrities we can murder with our cameras. BONK!
Worship and envy combine to kill.
These things exist because the public pays for it. The public pays for the pictures. The public pays for the news about whose armpits stink. The public makes this happen and they need to realize that as long as they are buying, as long as the demand is there, the goods will be supplied.
To me, our society has degenerated into something ignoble. When we should be advancing, we are digressing.
Let entertainers do their job and entertain. If you want to voice your opinion about the quality of their work, go right ahead, but why pick apart every little detail about them that you hate? Hate and envy are ugly.
To endanger lives for a stupid picture is an embarrassment to our society. Why do you care whether they wipe their babies’ butts? Or buy coffee? Or eat? Or drive? Or get in arguments with their spouses? Of course they do! They are human beings.
Why are people so hell bent on breaking down and destroying others more successful than themselves? One should be inspired and feel hopeful by viewing others’ success, not held back and angry by it.
All someone else’s success means is that you can do it too. Everything is possible. You don’t have to be a beauty queen or have an operatic voice; success is available to everyone. There are endless examples of hugely imperfect people who have excelled to great heights. You just have to find the right niche for youself.
“That’s what they get. I don’t feel sorry for them.” 
Several different people have said this to me about celebrities having to deal with the paparazzi.
Why do entertainers deserve it? Because they enjoy performing for you? They deserve a bunch of creepy people harassing them day and night? What is the logic in that?
Acting and singing are jobs, and I am telling you from first-hand experience, they are a lot harder (and more fun) than sitting in a cubicle. Can you memorize 120 pages and deliver each line with believable emotion? Can you handle auditioning for years, several times a day, and deal with the endless rejections? Can you stand on a stage, dance, and sing in front of thousands of people or two strangers? If you think celebrities deserve it because you are envious of what they do, you ought to move to Hollywood, give it a try, and see how easy it is not.
When you hear about their salaries, take into consideration that half that amount goes to the government in taxes. The more money you make, the more they take. The next chunk of it (about 25-40%) goes to their representation: agents, lawyers, and publicists. They are then left with maybe 10-20% of that enormous sum. With that, they have to pay for food, home, and family, just like everyone else. On top of that, they have to pay for clothes, make-up, and whatever else so that they look fabulous when the paparazzi catches them off guard. Taking the expensive location of Hollywood into consideration, celebrities are not as rich or glamorous as you might think.
Briefly, I was an organ in the beast, but I could only go to so many red carpet functions and ask celebrities so many personal or trite questions about their face lotions, pets, and marital plans. It was humiliating. I wanted to ask respectable questions about the film and their role in it, but for that information, I was not being paid.
There is a difference between what is news, what is a critique, and what is malicious gossip.
“The movie tanked at the box office,” is news.
“The movie sucked,” is a critique.
“The actress looked fat,” is gossip.
A nude photo up a woman’s skirt is illegal.
One is informative. Two is an opinion. Three and four are simply malicious and creepy.
Some positive respectful movie-lover sites focused on news and opinion are:
For a fresh raging backlash at the catty press by Mystery Man on Film, click to read this excellent piece about 2008 Oscar winning screenwriter Diablo Cody.
Are you a malicious consumer?
Heath Ledger and Wuthering Heights Live Long After Death
by Jaden
On January 22nd, a full moon lit up the sky; a moon full of bright souls stopping for a layover on their way to the sun.
“Is it true?” A production assistant asked.
“I don’t know,” I told her.
The rumor spread like wildfire on the movie set, one person telling the next. No one could believe it. Was it some kind of sick joke? Was young Heath Ledger really dead? Later when we all returned home to our faithful Internet bases, the rumor was confirmed true.
Heath and his sister Catherine, sources are reporting, were named after the Heathcliff and Catherine characters from one of my favorite novels, “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë.
“Wuthering Heights” is a dark story. One might guess that Heath’s mother, if she was the one who named him, liked complex passionate men and tragic love stories.
In one article I read, it said that Heath liked dark brooding roles.
The word on the street is that Heath was so disturbed by his role of playing the twisted Joker in “Batman” that he needed sleeping pills to fall asleep; the prescribed sleeping pills that may have killed him.
Isabella says of Heathcliff:
“Is Mr. Heathcliff a man? If so, is he mad? And if not, is he a devil? I sha’n't tell my reasons for making this inquiry; but I beseech you to explain, if you can, what I have married . . .” — Emily Brontë
Heathcliff to his true love Catherine as she is dying:
“You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry, and wring out my kisses and tears; they’ll blight you - they’ll damn you. You loved me–then what right had you to leave me? …Because misery, and degradation and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart–you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.” — Emily Brontë
Heathcliff to the ghost of Catherine:
“Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you–haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe–I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always–take any form–drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!” — Emily Brontë
Catherine about Heathcliff:
” . . .he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same…” — Emily Brontë
Published in 1847, “Wuthering Heights” is about a love hindered by racism and wealth, a love that transcends time and goes beyond death.
It takes a unique and interesting person to name her child after Heathcliff.
A writer inspires a reader. A reader inspires an actor. An actor inspires a writer.
Whatever role we take in life, we are all connected and all affecting each other. Time is no matter.
Today’s teen girls will grow into women; some of them will name their beautiful sons after Heath Ledger, their favorite movie star.
After we die, we all live on through that which we have loved.
A book.
A person.
A movie.
A career.
The more love and passion you have to give to the world, the longer will be your life after death.
What is Coverage?
by Jaden
You are 45 years old and you just spent three years of your life writing a screenplay about your mother who died of toe cancer when you were eight. You put your blood, tears, and coffee splatters into it.
You are so lucky because you have a step-daughter who has a friend who knows someone who works at CAA (Creative Artists Agency) in Hollywood.
Your script arrives on an agent’s desk who does not know who the heck you are or why he should care. The agent is running late to meet George Clooney for lunch to discuss one of his clients for a role in George’s next movie. The agent hands your precious script to his assistant and says, “Get me coverage on this.” The assistant hands the script off to his usual reader and requests coverage.
The reader is a 22-year old broke struggling screenwriter himself who knows everything there is to know about what is good — or so he thinks. He only likes Sci-Fi genre films and he is doing some serious text-messaging to get into the Matrix 7th Heaven Premiere Party that very night. He hates reading scripts about falling in love or death because he hasn’t experienced either.
The coverage lands back on the agent’s desk in a huge stack of broken dreams. Your script collects dust for three months until your distant connection follows up with him and asks about it. He digs it out of the Non-Priority stack (right under “Rambo, XXII”) and upon seeing “PASS” in the usual spot, he says, “Uh, oh yeah, we passed on that.”
The word comes back up the line to you. “Sorry, they’re not interested, they PASSED.”
You never see the coverage that came back from the reader to the agent. You can’t believe they passed and you wonder why. It was so good! You could see the audience getting all teary-eyed.
The agent would have actually liked your story because it would have reminded him of his recently deceased aunt. Still, had he even glanced at it, he would have passed because your formatting was all wrong; this being a red flag signaling that you, with all your unrealistic demands and inexperience, would be more trouble than you are worth. Your script wasn’t that good anyway; it was just ok.
What can you do now that CAA has you on record with a PASS script and your only avenue to Hollywood is a dead end?
RULE NUMBER ONE: If you truly believe in what you are doing and in yourself, NEVER GIVE UP!!! IF YOU HAVE THE WILL, THERE’S A WAY; it’s just a matter of finding it and taking all the right steps.
Make your script the best it can be before you get rejected. After rejection, there are other avenues you can take.
Click here for a Blank Coverage Sample.
RECOMMEND = This script is great! Let’s think about buying it.
CONSIDER = It’s pretty good, but needs a lot of work. Maybe we could use the writer on something else.
PASS = We cannot make money from this script.
LOGLINE = 1 to 3 lines, summation of story
SYNOPSIS = 1 to 2 pages, summary of story
ANALYSIS = 1 to 2 pages, comments about script’s strengths and weaknesses
Pulp Fiction Becomes Screenwriter Avary’s Reality
by Jaden
In RadioShack today, buying a cord and some tools for my broken speaker wires, as the cashier was ringing me up, he mindlessly read out loud a news blurb from Yahoo! Oscar-winning screenwriter Roger Avary was the driver of a single-car accident that seriously wounded his wife Gretchen and terminated the life of his Italian friend Andreas Zini when the car spun out of control on a curve and hit a pole.
I feel sincere regret and sadness for these people.
Two days ago, a friend was telling me about a guy he knows at school who had been drinking and driving a year ago and also killed his passenger / best friend.
What a horrible tragedy. I thought about it a lot and it really disturbed me. And here, I hear it again in a store tonight.
A common fear among writers is that we will make something happen, just by thinking it or writing it. Why? Because this sort of mysterious thing often occurs to us.
It is regular that writers produce stories about something that has already happened in real life, something they heard or read or experienced. But sometimes we write a story of complete fiction, and yet, lo and behold, the next day, it happens! Or maybe we meet a character in real life who resembles in appearance and action one we recently created.
“Stranger than Fiction” captures this phenomenon with humor and warmth. Does the writer psychically tap into an existing person? Or does the writer create an existence out of thin air?
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LOVE and PEACE be with the Avary and the Zini families.
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