What's that got to do with it?

Will Ferrell may introduce more young writers to Raymond Carver and the guy with all his furniture out on the front lawn: Everything Must Go

The very idea of a guy drinking whiskey and looking out on his front lawn where he has trotted out all the furniture of his former life for a sort of crazy man’s yard sale, gets my writing blood up.

So much so that I’ve shared the origin of the idea with many of my writer students across the years. It is inevitable the best students will wander into my office, sit down underneath Albert Einstein, and want to talk about writing. Often, they are discouraged. College can be discouraging to writers. It is full of criticism and — boy, I hate to say this — literature they often find remote, and the pleasure they feel in putting words together becomes more mathematical than joyful.

Often they are searching for themselves at the same time they are searching for clues to a writing life. Tough in spades. Read more…

Have some diabetes with your movie!

Last week saw the debut of DIRECTV’s controversial movie rental service called Home Premiere to millions of its subscribers across the country. The simple premise of this premium feature by DIRECTV in conjunction with several big Hollywood studios is the release of films barely two months into their theatrical run to the home market via rental. As a Ranter and staunch purist of all good things in cinema, I’m surprisingly apathetic about the plan. One reason being that it doesn’t appeal to me personally, which I’m sure will be the case for many.

So I wondered, who is the target audience for this premium video-on-demand model? Who wins and who loses? What are the new issues arising from it? Do you get free popcorn?

Theater chains such as Regal and AMC have already taken a stance against Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Universal Studios and Warner Brothers involved with DIRECTV’s Home Premiere, which went live April 21st, by threatening to not show their films and their trailers that partake in the venture. Theater owners received a boost of support a day later when several prominent Hollywood filmmakers including James Cameron, Guillermo del Toro, Michael Mann, Michael Bay, and Peter Jackson signed an open letter opposing the “cut-throat new model” of premium video-on-demand that threatens lower budget films and jeopardizes the tradition of the movie-going experience. Read more…