Reject Radio Revamps

I’m usually keenly aware about most of our “competitors” in the film podcasting world (and that word is in quotes only because podcasting is not a zero sum game; people can obviously listen to more than one in any given week). That being said, there are few movie podcasts that I feel truly elevate the genre and offer a good mix of entertainment and information. The ones that come to mind immediately are probably obvious to anyone with even a cursory interest in this field: The Treatment, Filmspotting, Creative Screenwriting Magazine, not to mention the podcasts I’ve mentioned I can’t live without. Aside from these, most of the podcasts that I hear about represent some minor variation of the “Random Guys Talking About Movies” genre, which I have no real interest in, primarily because I produce one of those shows myself (Of course, there are exceptions to this).

For a time, I felt like Reject Radio fell into the latter, less favorable camp. In my opinion, that show (under the umbrella of Filmschoolrejects) had a rough start but really started to find its voice towards its more recent episodes. However, its host, Cole Abaius, has recently “rebooted” the show with some pretty impressive results. The new format involves interviews with a variety of interesting people (a format I’m attempting myself), as well as an awesome game-show segment towards the front end that will delight anyone who reads these movie blogs on a regular basis.

My only concern is: Man, this must take a helluva lot of work! Hopefully Cole can keep it up. But regardless of whether you’re a fan of Reject Radio you gotta give them props for trying something new and different.

You can check out the first revamped episode here.

Why Movies Succeed And Fail

Drew McWeeny on why you shouldn’t give Universal crap for deciding not to finance Guillermo Del Toro’s newest film:

There are so many reasons good movies fail to find an audience, and it is myopic to claim marketing is the only key. I’ve seen good movies that were marketed well die. Just plain die. And you can sift through the ashes of a disaster and proclaim this and assert that, but all you really know for sure is that people did not want to see the movie in the theater. Maybe the movie was misrepresented to them, and they would have loved it, and they will kick themselves years later, a la “The Shawshank Redemption” or “The Iron Giant.” Maybe so. Or maybe the general audience just plain didn’t want something. And no matter how good it is, no matter how sure you are it deserved an audience, it just wasn’t meant to be. It happens. Sometimes it’s about timing. Harry kept telling me how “The Thing” was mismarketed back in 1982 today, and I’m afraid I don’t agree at all. That was the same summer “E.T.” came out, and if you look at what did well that year, there was an optimism that was embraced, and it simply looks to me like audiences wanted their aliens sweet and cuddly that year, instead of shape-shifty and nightmarish. It happens. You can’t control that. You can’t make the audience go see something. There was 100% nothing anyone in 1982 could have done differently to make “Blade Runner” into a $300 million grossing hit movie. Nothing. Absolutely no trailer or poster would have changed that movie’s fate. You take Han Solo and Indiana Jones and you put him in a movie where he’s an emotionally vacant “hero” who murders one woman in cold blood, gets his ass beat by another, and who has one of the most ineffective final showdowns possible with a bad guy who wins and who chooses to spare his life. I love that film, but I can understand why it failed.

Universal’s been on a pretty spectacular run lately, and I don’t necessarily mean that in a good way. They’ve made some pretty ballsy moves and when I read about the box office returns in the news, I see more misses than hits. Nonetheless, I agree with McWeeny’s overall point: at least they’re trying. Movies like State of Play, Land of the Lost, Paul, Duplicity and Your Highness might not all be your cup of tea, but they are all, to a significant degree, different than the big studio pap that they are shoving into our faces. Universal deserves our support.

The Case Against Anonymity

Facebook has recently rolled out Facebook Comments, an exciting new commenting system for blogs and websites. Why is it so exciting? Because it forces people to comment using their real names (or at least, makes it more difficult to continue creating fake ones). TechCrunch has tried implementing the system, and it’s had some pretty interesting results so far.

Steve Cheney, for one, claimed that the new comments were killing authenticity:

People yearn to be individuals. They want to be authentic. They have numerous different groups of real-life friends. They stylize conversations. They are emotional and have an innate need to connect on different levels with different people. This is because humans are born with an instinctual desire to understand the broader context of their surroundings and build rapport, a social awareness often called emotional intelligence.

In the beginning, Facebook catered to this instinct we all have. But FB in its current form, a big graph of people who may or may not know anything about one another, does not. And forcing people to comment – and more broadly speaking to log-on – with one identity puts a massive stranglehold on our very nature. I’m not too worried about FB Comments in isolation, but the writing is on the wall: all of this off-site encroachment of the Facebook graph portends where FB is really going in pushing one identity. And a uniform identity defies us.

The argument is basically: you’re only free to be yourself when you’re not being yourself.

Robert Scoble responded thusly:

Where did my authenticity come from? I knew that REAL change comes from people putting their necks on the line. I couldn’t remember a time when an anonymous person really enacted change in, well, anything. It’s why I sign my name to everything, even stuff that could get me fired. Hell, I live in an “at will” state. THIS post could get me fired! My boss could wake up tomorrow and decide he doesn’t like the shirt I’m wearing and fire me. People have been fired in Silicon Valley for less you know. Look at all the images from Egypt (and I hope you don’t think I’m comparing myself to those heroes who sacrificed their lives there) but they put their necks on the line and they signed their name to the ultimate sacrifice. They were NOT cowards. THEY LOVE FACEBOOK AND THE VOICE IT GIVES THEM!

As usual, I think the true answer lies somewhere in between. We can’t all be like Robert Scoble. Not everyone has his outsized personality, his willingness to put himself out there, his defiance of any potential consequences that could arise from the things he says. That being said, Facebook Comments seem like they’d be a boon to any website that finds itself in a never-ending battle with trolls. As Scoble points out, for a site such as Techcrunch, “the flow has gone down,” but “the quality has gone way up.” Facebook Comments still have a long way to go to compete with more flexible commenting systems like Disqus, but you can’t really argue with a system that makes your website a more pleasant place to be.

Update: Laura June at Engadget has weighed on this debate with a thoughtful piece on the costs of forcing identity disclosure.

[I]f I have to be the Laura June that my step-mother (who was friends with me on Facebook, back when I had an account) knows when I’m commenting on Gawker, well, my behavior will be much different. In fact, I might not comment at all. The problem isn’t that idea: it is of course, absolutely true. The problem is that very few people seem to be questioning whether or not that is, in fact, a good thing. Because… is it? Am I no longer entitled to some separation between who I am when I’m talking about technology rather than when I’m talking about my political beliefs, should I choose to separate those things? Is a teenager no longer entitled to explore and even comment on blogs about, say, homosexuality, without logging in to Facebook to do so? Does everybody need to know everything that I like? Do they even want to?

If I was that exploring teenager, of course, and the whole world had flipped the Facebook switch, I could always just make a fake Facebook account, for sure. But it seems to me that this is a false necessity, where we force people to lie about who they are, rather than merely enabling them to choose not to disclose who they are to begin with.

Charlie Sheen’s War Against Women

Jezebel founder Anna Holmes has written a NYTimes op-ed detailing Charlie Sheen’s violent run against his fairer halves. It’s not only a smart piece about Sheen, it’s also an incisive look at how society devalues certain types of women, and the implications that that devaluation has:

The privilege afforded wealthy white men like Charlie Sheen may not be a particularly new point, but it’s an important one nonetheless. Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears are endlessly derided for their extracurricular meltdowns and lack of professionalism on set; the R&B star Chris Brown was made a veritable pariah after beating up his equally, if not more, famous girlfriend, the singer Rihanna. Their careers have all suffered, and understandably so.

This hasn’t been the case with Mr. Sheen, whose behavior has been repeatedly and affectionately dismissed as the antics of a “bad boy” (see: any news article in the past 20 years), a “rock star” (see: Piers Morgan, again) and a “rebel” (see: Andrea Canning’s “20/20” interview on Tuesday). He has in essence, achieved a sort of folk-hero status; on Wednesday, his just-created Twitter account hit a million followers, setting a Guinness World Record.

But there’s something else at work here: the seeming imperfection of Mr. Sheen’s numerous accusers. The women are of a type, which is to say, highly unsympathetic. Some are sex workers — pornographic film stars and escorts — whose compliance with churlish conduct is assumed to be part of the deal. (For the record: It is not.)

I had the privilege to speak with Holmes today by phone. While I haven’t always agreed with all of her viewpoints, I’ve constantly looked up to her and respected her as a writer and thinker, so it was a thrill to chat with her regarding her thoughts on the whole Sheen situation. We also discussed my (extremely negative) thoughts on Piers Morgan, as well as the fact that Jezebel was recently parodied by 30 Rock. I’ve released the conversation as this week’s Chencast.

You can download the episode by clicking here (right-click and “Save As”).

Or, even better, subscribe to the Chencast in iTunes to have future interesting conversations downloaded automatically!

Taking Down The Hype Ma-Sheen

Sure, Charlie Sheen has been making the rounds non-stop on the talkshow circuit, but for my money, his Today Show interview is still absolutely astonishing. It was one of the first ones he did and not only does Sheen look like complete and utter crap, but the interview also shows him spouting off his incoherent babble before it became extremely rehearsed:

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Here are some of my favorite takes on the topic of Charlie Sheen and the media frenzy he’s stirred up. First up, James Poniewozik:

Sheen’s problems may be psychological, pharmaceutical, moral—but above all, he’s a poster boy for that most dangerous and common of celebrity intoxicants, entitlement. He was “tired of pretending I’m not special,” he said. He had decided to embrace his “rock star life,” and while he claimed to be clean now, he was proud of his epic run of partying: “I exposed people to magic.” Was that drug lifestyle dangerous? Oh sure—for “normal” people. For losers. Overdosing, he said, “is for amateurs.”

Where could he have gotten that sense of entitlement from? Oh, maybe from being essentially celebrated for the same lifestyle that brought him down. From being a notorious playboy paid a couple million an episode to play a notorious playboy, named Charlie, on TV. For continuing to stay thus employed even after abuse complaints, rampages and an assault plea—things that might get you fired if you were a normal person, a loser, an amateur.

Jeff Jarvis writes on how the media is doing a disservice to mental illness:

So why are they interviewing him? Not because they expect him to say smart things that give insight. Neither are they trying to give a picture of mental illness, for they give no context. On Piers Morgan’s nightly exhibition of ratings neediness, the star dismissed doctors’ mentions of bipolar disease and then Morgan stepped up to give him a clean bill of mental health, telling Sheen he is “alarmingly normal.” I think in the field they call that enabling.

But my favorite take comes from Linda Holmes over at Monkey See:

There could hardly be a starker contrast than the one between Ferguson’s treatment of Sheen and the treatment Sheen got from Piers Morgan last night on CNN, where Morgan poked him and enraged him, coddled him and encouraged him. It’s exactly like paying your penny at Bedlam, only Morgan gets the penny.

The people who watch his show are, in effect, paying Piers Morgan to provoke Charlie Sheen for them. To push his buttons, ask him about the women he prefers, coyly compliment him on his benders, all because it’s so easy to get him to brag about all of that. Sheen wants to say “epic” and “winning” and “the scoreboard doesn’t lie.” He’s got a pocket full of speed-related metaphors — he returns over and over to rocket fuel, jets, bombs, the let’s go of it all — and he wants to share all of them.

The Price of Charlie Sheen’s Radio Tirade

The LA Times tabulates exactly how much money Charlie Sheen’s on-air meltdown MIGHT cost Warner Bros. in the form of lost royalties and fees from Two and a Half Men episodes:

Warner Bros., which produces the show, has the most to lose if “Two and a Half Men” is over. Currently, CBS pays about $4 million per episode for the show. Warner Bros. uses that money to make the show, pay the cast, etc. But there is always money left over to keep in its pocket. Given that eight episodes won’t be made this season, that translates to $32 million in lost license fees, several million of which would have been pure profit. People close to the show say Warner Bros. would lose about $10 million in profits from the four episodes alone

Contractually, CBS is on the hook for one more season after this one, so if Sheen’s character has indeed drank his whiskey and bedded his last broad, then that is an additional $96 million or so in license fees gone — assuming that 24 episodes would be made next season. Then there is the rerun money. The cable channel FX pays about $800,000 per episode. That’s $3.2 million right there that’s gone for the episodes that won’t be made this season. If the show is gone for good, then that number jumps to more than $22 million after factoring in the 24 episodes that would have been made next season.

Just based on the numbers above, they are already looking at well over $130 million in losses, assuming the show gets canceled. That this many livelihoods and this much money can be subject to the whims of one notoriously unstable man seems the height of ridiculousness. But hey, that’s show business baby.

How Realistic is ‘The King’s Speech’?

Nathan Heller has written one of the most powerful, moving pieces of 2011 (already!) by describing The King’s Speech through the eyes of a stutterer:

Stuttering, in my mind, is a word that conjures beiges and grays: the feeling of always being lusterless and square in conversation; of woozy headaches brought about by gasping through my sentences; of childhood boredom in stuffy, cork-tiled offices where speech therapists told me to slow down and read long lists of words aloud. Somehow, I never wanted to slow down, and still don’t; and in this respect stuttering also signifies a bargain I have spent adult life trying not to make. The disorder is not what might be called “a given” from birth for me, though it’s been a looming specter for as long as my memory reaches. I started speaking in sentences shortly before turning 1. At 3, those sentences first met with some resistance on my tongue, the way a car moves off asphalt, onto dirt—and then, finally, across rocks that jolt the tires and make it hard to track where you are headed. Today, I am still being jolted, and the jagged terrain behind bears the track marks of my own innumerable small humiliations. In the seventh grade: A substitute asks the class to read out loud, and when I stumble over my first sentence, she inquires of the other students whether I’m “OK” and “always like this,” and while I continue fighting with a pr sound, my ears tune in to every judging shudder in the room—the creaking chairs, the restless exhalations, the uncomfortable shifting, in the desk beside me, of a girl with many colored pens who seems to me in some way very beautiful. In high school: A medical assistant taking down my charts asks whether I just have a problem with my speech or whether there is mental retardation, too. (“As far as I’m aware …” my answer begins.) In college: I slow down several seminars trundling through fragile language meant for clever tongues. And so on. In each case, what I feel most impelled to explain to the people who can hear me is just: This is not my voice.

Why Dwight from ‘The Office’ Is Wrong About the Body’s Immune System

Salon has a cool new column debunking health myths in pop culture. The first target? Dwight Schrute:

What’s wrong with this picture?

The first problem with Dwight’s take on the hygiene hypothesis is that he is confusing immunity against infection with protection against allergies. The second is that by the time you’re old enough to eat phlegm-drenched toast for breakfast, it’s too late to confer ironclad immunity against infection or allergy, because you need to develop it in early childhood. (Perhaps, in his toilet-side collection of medical journals, Dwight confused the hygiene hypothesis with a recent study showing that infants and toddlers in daycare who get sick a lot tend not to get sick as often once they hit kindergarten and beyond. Details, Dwight. Details!).

The biggest problem, though, with this pop culture view of the hygiene hypothesis is that in two decades of research since Strachan first made his comments, things are turning out to be far more complicated than anyone imagined. In short, research is showing that exposure to some bugs and allergens at an early age can protect us from allergies, while others do the opposite, triggering your body’s immune system to go haywire and exacerbate allergic symptoms. Why one trigger would protect while the other irritates our bodies probably has everything to do with how our immune system reacts and is regulated, though many details are still beyond our scientific grasp.