David A. Price is the author of The Pixar Touch: The Making Of A Company. In the book, Price takes a look back at Pixar's humble beginnings as a technology company and reveals how the company developed into the computer animation behemoth that it has become today. Price reveals some major players in Pixar's dramatic history, George Lucas, John Lasseter, and Steve Jobs to name a few. Listen to This Week's Show Online
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Scott Tobias of the AV Club has a thoughtful and informative piece in the AV Club this week about one of my all-time favorite films, "Babe: Pig in the City."
"Pig in the City" is a lot like "The Wire," in that it's about flawed but mostly virtuous characters trapped in a world that seems to conspire against them -- and that forces them to conspire against each other. Unlike "The Wire," which has often been compared by its creator David Simon to a Greek tragedy, where the characters' sense of agency is completely illusory, "Pig in the City" is a hopeful story. Because Babe believes in virtue and in the power of behaving virtuously, he's able to overcome circumstance and bring together all of the scared, trod-upon animals in the Big City. And they win. They remain flawed, but by believing in themselves and each other and most importantly in being good, they win. And I cry every time and am inspired every time I watch the film.
Also: it is not too scary for children, who face the same problems every day and could really use the example that Babe offers. I know that both of my brothers -- who were about 10 and 4 when the film came out -- grew up loving this film and watching and rewatching it.
A MaxFunster named Thomas di Napoli sent me this funny, charming short film he made. It concerns a bitter breakup and a missing sixth disc of a box set of "Lost." Be aware that there are no "Lost" jokes in the film, or if there were, I didn't get them, because I've never seen Lost.
Word on the street is that The Foot-Fist Way is the funniest thing since ever. Or maybe since Wet Hot American Summer. We'll see... the people behind it are making a TV series for HBO and they cast Andy Daly, so they've certainly got that going for them.
Interview: Jonathan Green and Gabe Miller of "What We're Not Writing" by Rob Baedeker
Jonathan Green and Gabe Miller are Emmy-nominated writers whose credits include CBS’s “Late Show With David Letterman,” Comedy Central’s “The Showbiz Show With David Spade,” and MTV’s “The Andy Dick Show.” When the Writers Guild went on strike in November, they launched a new website, “What We’re Not Writing." Rob Baedeker interviewed the pair this week.
Describe your site, “What We’re Not Writing,” and tell me how it got started.
GM: Every day we’ve been posting a description of the show or movie we’re not working on because we’re on strike. The idea was to bring the studios to their knees by letting them know the brilliance they’re missing out on.
JG: We know there are important issues at stake, but we felt like a lot of writers were starting to take themselves too seriously, as far as the contribution they’re making to society with “One Tree Hill” or whatever. So we decided to make fun of that a little.
These unwritten scripts are jokes, but have you come up with any that actually seem viable? For example, I would watch "Small Plates, Big Problems", a feature screenplay about a petty thief on the run from the mob who hides out by opening a tapas bar.
GM: Really? Do you want to buy it? 35 bucks.
JG: Most of the time, we try to play on some recognizable genre or premise or character, but we try to make the idea a little bit worse in some way. But it’s a fine line. We don’t want to get too wacky. We’d rather err on the side of “I could imagine them making that.”
GM: Sometimes we come up with the title first, usually a bad pun, and then figure out what the show or movie would be.
JG: In general, we’ve realized that it’s a lot easier to come up with ideas not to write than ideas to write.
Do you each have personal-favorite entries?
JG: Asking us to choose between these horrible ideas is like asking us to choose between our children. In that having children was also a horrible idea.
GM: I like anything where the story is set in motion by someone getting struck by lightning. So that’s been a recurring theme.
JG: But we do have a place on the site where other writers can post what they’re not writing, and some of those have been really funny. Like “Keepin’ It Zipped!”, a teen sex comedy about a bunch of guys trying not to lose their virginity.
GM: And I also liked the one-stop TV drama called “Detective Law, M.D.”
What’s the worst idea you’ve actually pitched (as non-striking writers)?
GM: We pitched a movie called “Mathletes,” which played all the conventions of a sports movie in the world of high school math. But we were told that for some reason audiences wouldn’t want to watch kids do math for an hour and a half.
JG: And we once put together a pitch for an idea a production company had, which was basically that a kid wakes up to find he has an alien penis. That was before we realized we were allowed to say no to things.
Is that true?
GM: Yes, unfortunately. The idea was something about how when you go through puberty, you feel like you’re an alien, and making that literal. But it pretty much boiled down to “alien penis.”
Has it been cathartic to step out of the industry and parody it?
JG: A lot of the writing we’ve done, especially on late-night shows, even though it’s done within the industry, has sort of a critical point of view, making fun of all the crap that’s out there. So it’s not new to us, but it’s definitely fun.
GM: Also, since back on The Andy Dick Show, we’ve loved writing characters who are overly confident idiots, and in a way, we get to be those guys on the blog.
JG: So, yes, it’s been nice to “step out of the industry” for a while, but we can’t wait to step in it again. We want to step in it so good that we can’t wipe it off, and it starts stinking up the place, and you try to take an old toothbrush to it, but at some point you realize you’re just going to have to throw out the shoes. Wait, what are we talking about?
There are rumors that the strike may be ending soon. Are you going to continue to do the blog? Has it been fun enough to keep it going, or was it just a way to kill time? Have you been getting a lot of good response to it?
JG: We’d like to keep some kind of Miller & Green website going. We don’t know exactly what it’ll be, but this has been fun to do, and a good way to make sure we write at least one joke every day. And it seems to be getting a good response, and even some press. Which is fun, too.
GM: I guess the first thing we’ll do on the blog is take a lot of credit for ending the strike. It took over 60 unwritten projects, but it worked. You’re welcome, America.
I was lucky enough to have actor and writer Danny Hoch on my live show in San Francisco. It won't be podcast until tommorow, but it's in the top ten of all-time TSOYA interviews, at least for me. His newest show, "Takin' Over," deals with gentrification in Brooklyn, and is currently running at Berkeley Rep in the long-since gentrified Berkeley, California.
There's precious little of the new show available online, but his last major one man show, "Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop" was made into a film. The movie was financed by Rawkus Records, who were planning to use the film as promotion for an accompanying soundtrack album. Unfortunately, the label folded before the album could be released, and the film was thrown into limbo.
Eventually Danny and his associates managed to get the movie into DVD release, and thank goodness they did. Like Luis Valdez' "Zoot Suit," the film lives in the liminalities between staged performance and real life. Each character monologue is seen performed live in a theater, in public, in a prison and in the fictional world of the piece. The technique balances the needs of the show with the needs of the piece's inherent theatricality beautifully. It's one of my favorite films of all time. I cry several times every time I watch it. And laugh a lot, too.
Above, I've pasted a scene from the film, in which Hoch portrays a street vendor and hip-hop afficionado in Cuba. Unlike pretty much any other hip-hop art concerning Cuba I've ever seen, it's insightful, balanced and humane, not just Castroist agitprop. Of course, those qualities are typical of Hoch's work. Indeed, perhaps the most sympathetic character in "Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop" is a prison guard, the frontline soldier of the prison industrial complex.
Anyway, enjoy the above, check out the interview tommorow, make plans to see Danny's show if you're in the Yay Area, and cop that disc if you're elsewhere.
Tony Silver, director of the best hip-hop film ever made, Style Wars, passed last night. Not only was Tony a gifted artist, he was also a close family friend, and he'll be missed both my my family and his. I'm thinking of his wonderful wife Lisa. Tony had been suffering from a degenerative brain condition for quite some time, so in some ways, it is a release.
When Tony made Style Wars, the seminal documentary about hip-hop and particularly graffiti in New York, he wasn't a part of hip-hop or graffiti culture. He and his partner Henry Chalfant made a film that is immensely intelligent and respectful of its subjects, a bunch of New York kids who were discovering something that would really and truly change the world. By allowing these kids to speak for themselves to a world that at the time was at best borderline contemptuous of them was really a watershed decision.
If you want to remember Tony, I can't imagine a better way than by buying or renting Style Wars. For many years, the film was only available in expensive educational VHS editions, sold to university libraries for hundreds of dollars. Graf heads made dubbed copies and passed them to friends. A few years ago, Tony spent quite a long time putting together a definitive DVD edition, which features not only the full film and outtakes, but also interviews with the subjects, some 25 years later.
I'm thinking of Tony today, a kind, intelligent man and a brilliant artist.
Wet Hot American Summer the Musical? IT COULD HAPPEN.
In response to published reports that there "has been talk of" David Wain & Co creating a musical version of the brilliant film Wet Hot America Summer, we put our reporter hats on and went straight to the source: David Wain himself.
Here's what he told us: "the quote is both accurate and complete, I'm afraid. "There's been talk" and that's about it, so far."
He also told us: "tell your listeners to check out The Ten on DVD!"
Check out The Ten on DVD. It's great.
Above: a stirring performance of "Day Bidet" from the musical Godspell, as performed by the campers of Wet Hot American Summer. Previously: David Wain on TSOYA Live in NYC
Jeffrey Blitz is the director of the film “Rocket Science,” which follows the story of a New Jersey teenager with a stuttering problem who joins his high school's debate team. His last film, 2002’s “Spellbound,” was nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary. He has also directed several episodes of NBC’s “The Office.” Discuss this episode on the forum! Download This Show (MP3)
If we've learned anything here, it's that when people don't like something, they will object to and complain about every choice made within that thing. On a perverse level, I kind of enjoy how the "Juno" soundtrack punishes the hipster viewer/listener for knowing so much obscure music. Whereas the rest of the world is oblivious to the songs' sources and can just take them at face value, the hipster will go crazy with every needle drop and become filled with the indignant rage of a villager whose homeland has been invaded and his family raped. I have no doubt that, to the learned music fan, the "Juno" soundtrack is a cloying, ham-handed appropriation of indie music that tries too hard and exposes the filmmakers as hopeless poseurs... but then again, there were probably die-hard folkies who felt the same way about "The Graduate."
Jesse interviews Eric Lax. Lax is the author of "Woody Allen: A Biography," "On Being Funny" and most recently "Conversations with Woody Allen." Since being assigned to profile Allen for the New York Times magazine almost forty years ago, Lax has followed the comedian and filmmaker's career, interviewing him regularly. We talk about Allen's life and enormous ouvre, from the great to, well... The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. Discuss this episode on the forum! Download This Show (MP3)
Podcast: The Best Music & Movies of 2007 with the editors of The Onion's AV Club
This one's a podcast exclusive -- the best music and movies of the year for 2007. Managing editor Josh Modell runs down the music side, and Film Editor Scott Tobias runs down the world of film. You can find the full film list here, and the full music list here. Discuss this episode on the forum! Download This Show (MP3)
Chris Elliott is an alternative comedy legend. He began his career as a runner on Late Night with David Letterman, before becoming an iconic writer/performer on that show. He turned his fame into a bizarre sitcom called Get A Life and a perhaps even stranger film called Cabin Boy. More recently, he's appeared in films like There's Something About Mary, Groundhog Day and Scary Movie and in many TV shows, including The King of Queens and Everybody Loves Raymond. He's now an author, with a new novel called "Into Hot Air: Mounting Mount Everest." Discuss this episode on the forum! Download This Show (MP3)
This week on the show Jordan and Jesse talk with Adam Kempenaar from the podcast Filmspotting and we hear about Jesse's new dog - basically there aren't a lot of scary things.
THIS WEEK'S ACTION ITEMS:
* What was your worst holiday ever and why? Tell us the story! * It's the semi-final of the battle of the animals. It's Hippo vs. Bear!
CONTINUING ACTION ITEMS:
* Review the show on iTunes. * Do you have a dispute Judge John Hodgman can solve on a future broadcast? Email it to us! Put Judge John in the subject line. * Have personal questions for Jesse and Jordan? Call 206-984-4FUN and tell us what they are! * Does It Hold Up? JJGo's new action item!! Tell us about the things you liked in your youth that are still entertaining in 2007! Call 206-984-4FUN! * Would you like to play Would You Rather with us on a future episode? Email us or give us a call at 206-984-4FUN.
Call 206-984-4FUN to share your thoughts on these ACTION ITEMS.
Podcast: Sarah Lamm, director of "Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox"
Sarah Lamm is the director of the documentary "Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox," which examines the Bronner family and their counter-culturally iconic soap. She talks about the original Dr. Bronner, who created his famous soap in a tenement apartment after being briefly committed to a mental institution. The soap's text-dense label includes wisdom from Ghandi, Jesus and Olympic champion Mark Spitz. Sarah also discusses the second and third generations of the family, who've built the soap into an international force and more recently into a leader in the field of sustainable business practices. Discuss this episode on the forum!
Interview: Robert Jackson, The Art of the American Snapshot 1888 - 1978.
“The Art of the American Snapshot 1888 – 1978” is currently running in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, until 31st December 2007. The exhibition features photos from the collection of Robert E. Jackson from Seattle, one of the country’s premier snapshot collectors. I spoke to Robert about the exhibition and all things ‘snapshotty’ – here’s what he had to say.
EMcD: How would you define a snapshot?
RJ: The snapshot can be defined as a democratic photographic phenomena arising out of the technological advances in the mechanics of camera processing. This produced a product which allowed the amateur to take photos with some of the same degree of ease and sophistication as found in professional photography at a cost which was affordable. The act of taking a snapshot is personal response to a moment involving telling a story using the camera as a surrogate for memory.
EMcD: How did you go about accumulating these photographs over the years?
RJ: My interest in snapshots grew out of an earlier interest in paper ephemera. I liked the content of the snapshots--the tricks, the odd poses and costumes, the small jewel-like nature of the medium. And probably most importantly snapshots were inexpensive relative to other types of photographic mediums, and they were plentiful which meant I could build a collection with some ease. One can collect fingers obscuring the lens, photo emulsion mistakes, gay interest photographs, badly tinted photos, photos where faces have been scratched out, photos of pit bulls, photographer shadows, the notations on the backs of photos. Also this most democratic of photographic mediums could have only been built using the internet and most specifically Ebay which allowed me to network with dealers and be exposed to items from around the United States and often the world on a daily basis.
EMcD: You've assembled a huge array of photos spanning a 90 year period in American history. What themes does the exhibition explore?
RJ:The exhibition explores the creativity of the snapshooter and how cultural influences impacted the ways in which the photographer interacted with the times as well as with friends and family. The personal, intimate nature of the snapshot and the often voyeuristic impulses of the snapshooter are highlighted through the portrayal of sleeping photos throughout the time period. The issue of remembrance, narrative, and rituals within the snapshot genre are shown via the presentation, through the decades, of birthday cakes.
EMcD: What impact did the introduction of easily accessible photography have on life in America during the period examined?
RJ: It provided the general population an affordable means to create a narrative of their life. Their ability to record the world around them and to interact, via taking a picture, in the historical and familial events by which they were surrounded allowed for the preservation of a slice of American life which we now can experience and attempt to understand from a sociological and aesthetic vantage point.
EMcD: Since 1978 technology has improved dramatically and the way we now view images has totally changed. Does the fact that we now view many of our photos via computers and not captured as actual physical prints ruin the concept of the snapshot?
RJ: Technology has not necessarily improved in relation to the creation of the snapshot, but rather has changed, and via such change has impacted our way of thinking about the taking and making of a snapshot. Once the price decreases and the ease of taking and editing a snapshot increases, photos which don’t fit within the accepted canon of what a “good” snapshot should be are often eliminated (in that sense one could say something has been “ruined”). Thus the manner in which we interact with our snapshots, our memory, has changed. Snapshots are not viewed anymore as private documents, but rather are viewed as something to exhibit in the public sphere via websites such as Flickr.
As part of the exhibition, the documentary “Other People’s Pictures” will screen on November the 21st and 23rd at 1.00pm in the Gallery. The 53 minute piece tracks nine collectors as they hunt for images of people they do not know. Co-producer of the documentary Lorca Shepperd was a previous guest on TSOYA. Listen to the interview with Lorca Shepperd
Our old pal Bill Weber is a film writer for the online magazine Stylus, and he just compiled a very interesting guide to the top ten comedy duos of all time. You can find the full list, with thoughtful and insightful commentary, here, but I've reproduced the ranking below. I'm happy somebody else is prepared to defend Owen Wilson and Jackie Chan. I loved that movie.
Laurel & Hardy in Sons of the Desert (1933) Loy & Powell in The Thin Man (1934) Olsen & Johnson in Hellzapoppin’ (1941) Hope & Crosby in Road to Utopia (1946) Abbott & Costello in Meet Frankenstein (1948) Martin & Lewis in Living It Up (1954) Cook & Moore in Bedazzled (1967) Allen & Keaton in Sleeper (1973) Arkin & Falk in The In-Laws (1979) Chan & Wilson in Shanghai Noon (2000)
Bill seems to be making an argument for the comic duos of bygone days... what are some of your favorites? I might nominate Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte, off the top of my head.
Podcast: TSOYA Classic: Good Friends and Great Times.
We continue our journey into The Sound of Young America's vast audio archive with this program from The Sound of Young America Classics.
On this week's show Good Friends and Great Times we're joined by guests comedian Doug Benson and author James Frey.
Doug Benson, a stand-up comedian, was part of the writing team who created and performed in the off-Broadway comedy show The Marijuana-Logues. Doug is a real movie lover, so coming up on the show Doug brings us a summer movie preview including his opinion on “Star Wars” and “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”. There’s also a discussion on taxidermy squirrels!
We also talk to James Frey, award winning author of "My Friend Leonard", a memoir based on his friendship with a mobster Leonard, whom he met in a rehab clinic.
. In the book, Price takes a look back at Pixar's humble beginnings as a technology company and reveals how the company developed into the computer animation behemoth that it has become today. Price reveals some major players in Pixar's dramatic history, George Lucas, John Lasseter, and Steve Jobs to name a few.
