I’ve had a little time to digest some of the spirit and energy I saw first-hand on the now joint picket lines of SAG-AFTRA and WGA on Friday. I listened intensely as an actor, being interviewed at length by an outstanding entertainment news reporter I happened to run into chronicle in detail one particular issue … Read more
The first thing one cannot help not notice when you meet Mike Darnell is that he’s, how shall we say, vertically challenged. I’m hardly an imposing figure myself, but I have actually have had to look down when I’ve been huddled in a production truck with Mike, and he wasn’t sitting at the time. The … Read more
So it was only Thursday the 13th, but it was nevertheless a very unfortunate as well as the first truly hot day of the year. SAG-AFTRA indeed struck despite aribitration efforts, and in a lunchtime press conference union president Fran Drescher took to the airwaves and delivered one of the most mspiring and passionate extemporaneous … Read more
As Hollywood awakens to what looms to be, pending an official vote , as the first “double strike” of both writers and actors since yours truly was an infant, there are quite a number of Hollywood executives who owe the world, and certainly union members who directly or indirectly make their livings from them, some … Read more
I keep some strange hours of late. Los Angeles is finally joining a whole lot of the country with a heat wave, and while I’m a bit better off than many (I won’t be experiencing triple digits or ultra-high humidity), the difference is noticeable to me. My body tends to collapse just after lunch and … Read more
One reason I am still so passionate about consumer research is that no matter draconian, desperate and conflated billion dollar companies get about how they try and justify business practices in pursuit of Wall Street cred is that when the end user is finally presented with the option of whether or not they are down … Read more
Sixty summers ago, one of the most unlikely songs ever to make #2 on the Billboard charts was a comedy parody called CAMP GRANADA, which chronicled the laments of a city kid who was sent away to a remote summer camp and began to methodically run off a list of all of the diseases and … Read more
So a show of hands, please–how many of you found this musing from Twitter? From what I can tell from available analytics, as well as the comments I have received in the more than two years since these musings began, I dare say I’d be looking at something in the single digits–or worse. So I’m … Read more
When I had the opportunity to briefly see one Preston Padden in action during our shared time as fellow FOX executives I saw first-hand someone who possessed the poise of a politician and the nuanced skills of a lawyer–basically, someone who could have easily been an elected official had he chosen that path. And yet, … Read more
The first time I stepped onto a studio lot was life-changing for me. After years of trolling in nondescript office buildings, and even for a period when I worked in the main building on a TV studio lot, nothing compared to the majesty and the sense of history I felt when I first stepped onto … Read more