Comments Off
Posts Tagged ‘film’
75 items.
My goodness. All they could write on the foreign website where I first saw this was posts about “stupid Americans”.
Well, it looks good to me. But then, I like a man with pecs.
- Share this:
- Digg
- StumbleUpon
Comments Off
I haven’t seen The King’s Speech. I’d like to. We don’t get movies out here, so I suppose I will see it whenever it comes on cable.
It’s a film about the King of England’s speech impediment and his relationship with his therapist, and it won all kinds of awards. It also precipitated a number of articles about the isolation caused by speech problems.
I had speech therapy for both a lisp and a stutter when I was in high school.
I knew I had a stutter, but I don’t recall anyone ever making a big deal about it. I trained myself to handle it fairly early on. Avoid W, mostly. It got worse when I got tired, and if I got tired, I just didn’t see any point in speaking anyway.
I had no idea I had a lisp until my parents were called to a conference. It was all very hush-hush. I sat outside the guidance counselor’s office in mortal terror, waiting to find out what the hell I had done wrong. My mom emerged from the office, her face twisted in disgust – not with me, of course, but with the school for creating mystery and drama where none was necessary.
“You’ve got to take speech therapy,” she said.
“That’s all? That’s the big secret?”
The school was afraid of hurting my tender feelings, so instead of simply telling me they felt I needed therapy, they kept me in the dark about the nature of the parent/counselor conference and subjected me to the public humiliation of having my parents summoned while I sat in the hall. I never felt a moment of embarrassment or isolation about my speech problem until the day the school made a scene about it.
Blissfully unaware that there was anything genuinely wrong with me, despite my handicap, I’d landed the lead in the school musical. I stood up in front of 1500 people and lisped away. This precipitated a number of complaints about my lousy diction. Not one of these people came to me. Instead, they went to the school and complained about me. I thought that was pretty dickish, but at least it prepared me for the internet.
The very nice lady to whom I was sent for therapy was a Mrs. Fiskus. After some time, I got my release from the ritual of practicing the S sound, which was dandy, since it was time for summer break, and now I could pronounce summer like a champ.
I didn’t go through anything like the trauma of many other people with speech problems. I had fun times with Mrs. Fiskus. I’d never heard my voice recorded before. When Mrs. Fiskus played it back to me over and over, the problem was clear, and fixing it seemed like a good thing to do. I recall my drama teacher saying “We think you are going to be somebody, so we just want to help you.”
I think I would have felt better about it if I had been directly addressed about the matter instead of having the school have a meeting and then do an end run to my parents, like I would fracture were I to be confronted with the objective reality of my difficulty with the letter W. I don’t know if this is the sort of thing schools just do as a matter of course or not.
I still lisp a little, and I still stutter a bit. But it doesn’t bother me much, and no one mentions it.
Here’s a nice article on the real teacher behind The King’s Speech.
It makes me wonder about Mrs. Fiskus, about whom I know very little.
Thank you, Mrs. Fiskus.
- Share this:
- Digg
- StumbleUpon
I glom this. The Archie Comics grim and gritty fan film Riverdale.
Find out more HERE.
Jughead is perfect, and I must say, but for that bad dye job, Archie is kinda tasty. The fake freckles look like acne, though.
For those who don’t know, a few year’s back, I was asked by Archie to do a miniseries in my style for their new line-up of comics. Love Archie Comics, but the pay and contract offered were pretty bad. So bad, I was better off self publishing A Distant Soil.
I noticed uber-producer Michael Uslan doing some books for them, and I assume he got a better deal. One of the things in the contract is that you can’t do parodies of Archie Comics, or do anything that might show Archie in a bad light, which might include posting this nifty fan film. Who knows? I was unable to get them to clarify contract points, and we shook hands and walked away. Alas.
Too bad, I would have enjoyed the assignment. I got offered better work later, so it all worked out in the end.
I’m sure my original Archie prelim sketches are around here someplace. I’ll have to dig them up.
Absolutely lousy weather. Must stay offline so I can preserve bandwidth and load some Gone to Amerikay pages to DC’s FTP.
- Share this:
- Digg
- StumbleUpon
Agent/headhunter sues over non-payment for Twilight Franchise
by Colleen Doran on February 20th, 2011Posted In: Creator Resources, Agents/managers, Blog, Creator Resources, Culture, Film and Television
Lit scout Nanette Shipley claims she has been ripped off by Madonna’s Maverick Studios over non-payment for headhunting services which brought both Stephanie Meyers’s Twilight franchise and Percy Jackson to the silver screen. Shipley was promised $175,000 for her work on the films, but has only received $20,000, according to the complaint. Shipley also asks the court for legal costs.
I have a literary agent, and the more I work with her, the more I treasure her. After 30 years in this business, I thought I’d seen it all. She has taught me that I don’t even come close to knowing it all.
An agent can be even more valuable than a lawyer. The agent knows the right things to ask for. A lawyer may not be able to tell you what you can get, they can only tell you what’s legal in the language of your contract.
Lots of people complain about the “middlemen” of publishing, and then they run right to places like iUniverse or Createspace to self publish their books. And they blithely sign contracts I wouldn’t sign with any publisher. They pay a lot of money for the privilege to get published. Badly.
…they want to make a buck from your ignorance.
First off, you guys gotta realize that once booksellers see your book coming from iUniverse, they know it is self published and are far less likely to stock it. Booksellers know Vanity Press when they see it. OK? Let’s just get that out of the way right now.
I’m still reeling from the stratospheric prices Createspace asks to print bookmarks, business cards, and postcards. As I typed this, I saw an ad pop up on my sidebar, and ran the numbers on the same services from PS Print.com. The quote came in at less than half the rates of Createspace.
Then I looked at the ridiculous prices they ask for the privilege of getting a book review: from $399-$595…for a book review. From Kirkus or Clarion.
Kirkus Reviews does not cover self published books. Kirkus Discovery does. This will set you back a minimum of $425.
This ought to tell you something.
Just a few weeks ago, a self published prose author railed at me over the evils of big business publishing – like I need a lecture by a total newbie about self publishing. Or publishing in general. Such is the nature of the internet.
Even though he makes no money, he’s really, truly published, for his books are on Amazon.com!
This is not really an accomplishment when you publish your books at Createspace, a company owned by Amazon. It does not appear he sells many copies, what with a ranking of lower than 4,000,000, which indicates something like one sale in six months. Amazon rankings are dicey, but a ranking of 4,000,000 is pretty bad for a recent release. For all I know, his work is great and he is happy with his sale.
But let’s not conflate getting on Amazon.com with some sort of objective measure of accomplishment. Even guides to pedophilia can get on Amazon.
Self publishing is great. I’ve done it. It’s dandy. But a lot of these services are so expensive, and such a big rip off that the author makes no more money self publishing through these things than they would going through the standard distribution system. If they make any money at all. It takes publishing business chops to figure out what you need and what you don’t, and what you’re being overcharged for.
Middlemen can be a bad thing, but when they are good, they are very, very good. They understand things you don’t understand, and they take on tasks that free you up to do what you do best.
A good agent or publisher is worth every penny. A bad agent or publisher will take you for every penny.
Here’s a post about how to find agents with a list of agents who handle graphic novels. I haven’t updated it in months, but many of the listings are still good.
Everyone who appears on the graphic novel agent list here has a good rep, but remember, you are entirely responsible for doing your own legwork. Listings on the Predators and Editors site can be a little out of date. Note that under the publishers listings, many well-known comics companies are not listed at all. However, the notorious Tightlip Entertainment gets the Not Recommended tag, as well it should.
- Share this:
- Digg
- StumbleUpon
