Screenwriters Lab mixers July 21, 2008

Here are some great networking opprotunities!

 

 

ScreenPlayLab Industry Mixer on Monday, July 21st…

Meet with upbeat industry players who are writers, actors, directors,
producers, managers, entertainment attorneys, composers, more. Meet in
the secret backroom at Sharky’s Mexican Grill. Order inexpensive Mexican
food at the counter and bring with you into backroom. $3 margaritas in
the backroom only. Sharky’s Mexican Grill, 435 N. Beverly Dr., Beverly
Hills. Monday, July 21st, 2008, 6pm to 9pm+. FREE.

RSVP at www.screenplaylab.com

COMEDY WALK on August 14th…

What a great crowd we had on July 10th! If you weren’t at COMEDY WALK
you really missed it! Six stages, 23 comedians, 90 minutes. Our next
show is August 14th, downtown L.A. By the way, anyone who’d like to help
me as a production assistant or Mini-DV camera operator, email me. FREE
tickets.

www.comedywalk.com

Women in Film Breakfast on July 18th…

Women in Film presents The Beverly Hills breakfast with Michael
Lombardo, President of the Programming Group for Home Box Office,
responsible for HBO Films, Sports and Entertainment. 8am at Sinigual
Restaurant (formerly El Torito) at 9595 Wilshire in Beverly Hills, $35
includes breakfast. (310)657-5144.

Women in Film Dinner on July 23rd…

Women in Film presents Walter Mirisch, past president of the Motion
Picture Academy, and producer of ‘The Magnificent Seven’, ‘Some Like it
Hot’, ‘The Pink Panther’, ‘In the Heat of the Night’. Mixer at Nonna
Restaurant, 9255 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. $35 includes dinner.
(310)657-5144.

Screenplay-in-a-Month Starting Now…

Screenplay-in-a-Month is a program I lead to help screenwriters get
their screenplays done. A lot of workshops will help you start a
screenplay, but this is the only one to help you finish it. Half done?
Stuck on page 1? No idea what story to write? You can complete a
screenplay in one month. $299.

http://www.screenplaylab.com/siam.html

ScreenPlayLab Mission…

ScreenPlayLab is more than 2,700 upbeat producers, actors, writers,
directors, agents and executives working on comedy and light drama for
television and film. FREE membership. FREE events. To join send an email
to info@ScreenPlayLab.com with the subject ‘Subscribe’.

Love you guys!

Robin
–
ScreenPlayLab
Beverly Hills, California
www.ScreenPlayLab.com

Great Tindings July 15, 2008

Last Tuesday’s meeting was simply stupendous!  Although nothing planned in particular, the evening progressed rather smoothly.  Looking  forward to the next meeting

Free Writing Class this Summer June 25, 2008

Dear Writers,

    I’d like to invite you to participate in an autobiographical writing class this summer.  As screenwriters, working with the material of your own life will help you to build a library of dramatic ideas, settings, characters and stories from which to draw in writing screenplays.  Sharing life stories with a diverse group of people is an invaluable tool for screenwriters to spark poignant, true-to-life ideas.  The present group is a fascinating mixture of ages and backgrounds and class members give supportive feedback.  You’ll learn step-by-step techniques for remembering, reflecting and writing about your life clearly and vividly.   It’s offered through LA City Schools and is free.  What could be better?   Class meets Wednesdays, from 2—4:30 p.m. at the Simon Wiesenthal Center Library & Archives,   1399 South Roxbury Drive, Los Angeles, 90035.  For more information: 310-772-7605 or Library@wiesenthal.net. (This is an ongoing class and you can join anytime.  Summer session from July 9-August 13.  Fall semester begins Sept. 3.)

    I’m attaching a flyer.   Please also pass this information on to anyone else you know that might be interested.

    Best wishes,

    Jeanette Shelburne

 

Free Class

Westside Education & Career Center

and

Simon Wiesenthal Center Library

present

 

 

 

 

Record your special memories and family history.

Explore and share the richness of your life experience with others.

Leave a precious legacy for future generations.

Learn step-by-step techniques for remembering and writing about your life clearly and vividly.  No writing experience is necessary. 

Make use of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Library and Archives resources for further research and exploration of your family history.

Even if you’re not ready to start writing, there is no pressure—come join us to hear our fascinating stories and meet others in your community.

 

Free parking at the Museum of Tolerance 9786 West Pico Blvd (southeast corner of Pico Boulevard and Roxbury Drive)   Park in garage, take elevator to street level, then cross to diagonal corner.

 

Wednesdays, 2:00—4:30 p.m.

 

6 week Summer Session: July 9—August 13

 

Simon Wiesenthal Center Library and Archives
1399 South Roxbury Drive—third floor
Los Angeles, CA 90035 

 

No Fee           Register in class         Class is ongoing—join anytime.

 

For more information: 310-772-7605 or Library@wiesenthal.net

Instructor: 818-702-8693 or Shelburne@aol.com

 

All educational opportunities are available without regard to race, color, national origin, gender or handicap

DIVISION OF ADULT AND CAREER EDUCATION * LOS ANGELES UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT

FYI for writers information June 25, 2008

The following are organizations willing to provide free information to writers. While every attempt is made to ensure that FYI listings are purely informational and accurate, the WGAW does not endorse any of the following listings or the information they provide.

Government Departments
Medical Authorities
Religious Information
Psychological References
Miscellaneous
WGA Departments
Points of Interest

Government Departments

 

Department	Phone/Internet
Air Force	310/235-7511
Air Traffic	805/265-8206 natcazla@hidesert.com
Army	310/235-7621 keplerb@earthlink.net
Board of Education	562/922-6111
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives	John Torres 213/534-2450 www.atf.gov
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)	Hollywood, Health & Society at the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center 800/283-0676 www.usc.edu/hhs
Coast Guard	310/235-7817
Drug Enforcement Admin.	213/894-3515
F.B.I.	310/477-6565
Federal Emergency Mgmt. Agency	202/646-2996 holly.harrington@fema.gov
Fire Department	323/881-2411 www.lacofd.org
Human Relations	213/974-7611
Marine Corps	310/235-7272 fax: 310/235-7274 mcmeence@hqmc.usmc.mil
Navy	310/235-7481 directorbob@earthlink.net
Police Department	213/485-3586 fax: 213/847-1760
Sheriff’s Department	323/526-5531
Veterans Admin. Media Office	310/268-3340 (Beverly) fax: 310/268-4264

Back to FYI Index

Medical Authorities

 

Department	Phone/Internet
All-inclusive Health Topics including: National Cancer Institute, HRSA Division of Transplantation, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (medical errors)	Hollywood, Health & Society at the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center 323/782-3311 www.usc.edu/hhs
Amer. Med. Assoc. (AMA)	312/464-5000
Anesthesiology	800/562-8666
Alcohol/Drug Use	800/488-DRUG (3784)
Blindness	213/663-1111 communications@brailleinstitute.org
Brain Research, Brain Imaging (MRI and other techniques), Human Learning and Memory, Reading and Dyslexia	Russell A. Poldrack, Ph.D. poldrack@ucla.edu
Child and Teen Health	847-434-4MRT (4678) 6719112@archwireless.net
Chiropractic/Holistic/Alternative	Dr. Lieberman 310/858-6099
Cosmetic Surgery	Dr. Andrew Berman 310/278-3223 drandrewberman@beverlyhills-surgery.com
CPR	310/281-2753
Dentistry	Judy Covar Rubins 818/783-2770
Dentistry (General & Cosmetic)	Nidhi Pai 650/323-4222
Diabetes (Type 2) and Juvenile Diabetes (Type I)	Toll Free: 888/533-9255 310/203-9486 Flynnadv@earthlink.net
DNA and Genetics	Debra Robertson, Ph.D. 858/792-8019 drobertson@forensicstudygroup.com www.forensicstudygroup.com
Emergency Medicine & Pediatrics	Michelle Shuffett, MD 310/995-6075 mshuffett@yahoo.com
Gay and Lesbian Med. Assn.	415/255-4547 fax: 415/255-4784 GLMAMedia@aol.com
Health Care Research	301/656-3100 www.equals3.com
Immunology	414/272-6071 info@aaaa1.org
Infertility	818/781-6800 818/776-8700
Lymphoma	310/204-7040 larfa@aol.com
Medical	818/707-2270 ab141@lasn.org
Medical Information Guides	301/656-3100 globalone@erols.com
Medical Storyline Development	718/389-9800 cinemaworldstudios@earthlink.net
Medical Technical Advising & Family Relationships	Michelle Shuffett, MD 310/312-6075 mshuffett@yahoo.com
National Society of Genetic Counselors, INC	Janice Berlinger 718/226-6181
NSA (Stuttering)	949/661-2215 irate99@yahoo.com
Nursing	Ellen Langsam, RNC 818/992-8929 langsame@aol.com
Oral Surgery	818/995-8601
Organ Tissue Donation and Transplantation	310/203-9486 flynnadv@earthlink.net
Pain Management	617/667-5558
Pancreatic Cancer	Toll free: 877/272-6226 eflynn@pancan.org
Pediatrics American Academy of Pediatrics	800/433-9016 ext. 7873 fax: 847/228-5097 mrt@aap.org www.aap.org/mrt

Back to FYI Index

Religious Information

 

Department	Phone Internet
Baha’is of L.A.	323/933-8291
Catholicism	818/846-8141
Christian Film & TV Comm.	888/248-6689 tlsnyder42@aol.com
Christian Science	Kim Robert Walker 714/994-2169 compubsca@cssocalifornia.com
Christianity	805/383-2000
Mormons	LeAnn Hull 310/475-7018 800/533-2444 publicaffairsla@aol.com
Muslims and Islam	Imran Anwar imran@imran.com
Scientology	Public Officer 213/960-3100 ccinternational@earthlink.net
Theological Accuracy	Paul Viggiano pastorpaul@integrity.com

Back to FYI Index

Psychological References

 

Department	Phone Internet
AIDS/AIDS Project LA	888/440-APLA
Amer. Humane Assoc.	818/501-0123 info@americanhumane.org
Breast Cancer (emotional)	310/859-1273
California Psych. Assoc.	916/325-9786 jlyman@calpsychlink.org
Cancer Institute	301/496-6641
Domestic Violence/Legal	323/935-8666
Eating Disorders	805/945-2336
Humane Society	301/258-3060
Hunger	310/454-3716
Hypnosis	508/356-0909 WaxCav@aol.com
Literacy	916/324-7358
Medical Info (MPTF)	818/876-1888
Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays	202/467-8180 fax: 202/467-8194 info@pflag.org
Psychiatry/Forensic	415/453-8920
Social Issues (N.C.N.)	310/456-1082
Social Workers	310/456-1082
Southern Cal. Coalition on Battered Women	323/935-8666 www.nami.org
Suicide, Suicide Prevention, Mental Health, Public Policy and Survivors	202/449-3600 www.spanusa.org

Back to FYI Index

Miscellaneous

 

Department	Phone Internet
Aerospace & Engineering	714/962-2587
Alcohol, Drug Prevention	323/463-6852 gmarcellell@health.org
Antarctica	818/798-6490 wmstout@bbs-la.com
Archaeology	310/206-8934
Association of Film Commissioners	323/462-6092 www.afci.org
Astrology	619/568-0425
Children’s Action Network	Jennifer Perry 310/470-9599 fax: 310/474-9665
Computers	505/992-8462 ssalemi@earthlink.net
Croquet	503/838-5697 eliassen@open.org
Dinosaurs	818/848-2646
Disabilities & Wheelchairs	John Carpenter jcarpenter@earthlink.net
Ethnic Images (MIC)	213/974-7621
Environment (EMA)	310/287-2803 joyce@ept.org
Firearms	703/267-1300 www.nra.org
Genetics	310/317-9856 askit@aol.com
GLAAD/LA	323/933-2240 glaad@glaad.org
Gun Violence/Prevention	310/475-6714 cphvwest@aol.com
High Tech and Air Combat	310/640-2765 GJStiles@aol.com
Insurance	818/763-8501
Last Acts (Care & Caring at the End of Life)	www.lastacts.org
Law Enforcement (Fraud Schemes, Undercover Investigations, etc.)	John Auvinen 707/453-0178 Nauroraborealis@aol.com
Lobbying/Congress/Fed Gov.	Jason Bryson-Alderman 415/932-2110 jason@alderman.net
Mexican-American	213/343-2190
Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC)	Salam Al-Mara Yati 213/383-3443 fax: 213/383-9674 mpacusa@aol.com
Muslim Women’s League	Semeen Issa 626/358-0335
Plague History	818/907-0117
Private Investigation	323/935-8451
Safety Council	213/385-6461
Science	818/707-2270 ab141@lasn.org
Search & Rescue	540/582-5708 stroryspinr@aol.com
Sugar Assoc.	202/785-1122 sugar@sugar.org
USO World Headquarters	Terri Kaufman, Public Relations 703/836-9222, x 3035 tkaufman@wwafsp.com
Vaudeville/Circus	851/8948 ext. 328
Violence	818/508-2080 fax: 818/508-2088lallen@mediascope.org

Back to FYI Index

WGA Departments
All listings in 323 area code unless otherwise indicated.

 

Department	Phone
Administration	782-4520
Agency	782-4502
Awards & Elections	782-4569
Claims	782-4663
Contracts	782-4501
Credits	782-4528
Department of Organizing	782-4511
Dues	782-4531
Employment Access	782-4548
Executive Offices	951-4000
Film Society	782-4502
Finance	782-4585
Human Resources	782-4615
Journal	782-4630
Legal	782-4521
Library	782-4544
Management Info Systems	782-4555
Membership	782-4532
Public Affairs	782-4574
Publications	782-4522
Registration	782-4540
Residuals	782-4503
Signatories	782-4514
Theater Operations	782-4502
Credit Union	213/849-1712 818/840-9220
Pension & Health	818/846-1015 800/227-7863
WritersCare Info.	323/782-4568

Back to FYI Index

Points of Interest

 

Department	Phone/Internet	Address
Aviation Research Center	310/864-4116	12032 E. Firestone Blvd., Norwalk, CA
CA Institute of the Arts Library	805/253-7887 mhanft@calarts.edu	24700 McBean Parkway, Valencia, CA
California Institute of Technology	818/397-2704	Archive Office, Pasadena, CA 91125
California Historical Society	818/449-5450	San Marino, CA
Eddie Brandt Saturday Matinee	818/506-4242	North Hollywood, CA
Institute of the American Musical	323/934-1221	121 N. Detroit St., L.A., CA90036
National Museum of Natural History	(202) 633-1000	10th St & Constitution Ave NW Washington, D.C. 20560-0135
Railway History	818/449-4423	700 S. Lake Ave., Pasadena, CA 91106
Southwest Museum/Library	323/221-2163	234 Museum Dr., Highland Park, CA 90042

Writers Resources June 25, 2008

The Hotlist: June 2008

By Elliot Feldman, New Media Committee

The “Hot List” is a regular feature keeping Guild members abreast of developments in emerging entertainment platforms.

Members are welcome to send site addresses to elliotfeldman@yahoo.com

 

---

 

http://www.stanford.edu/group/cwstudents/shakegirl/
17 Stanford students complete a slick graphic novel in only a few weeks. The results are online.

http://theprocesscomic.com
Joe Infurnari’s gorgeous Web comic

http://www.afterworld.tv/
Part video game, part interactive art, part sci-fi series, all genius!

http://theburg.tv/
An online hipster sitcom taking place in rapidly gentrifying Williamsburg, Brooklyn — Much better than it sounds

http://www.dategarden.com/
If you’re a wounded casualty of the online dating scene, this hilarious spoof site is just for you.

http://crackle.com/
Several cuts above the usual “television network for the Internet” with the added value of rants from Penn Jillette

http://www.trailersfromhell.com/
A very cool selection of old-time movie trailers with added commentaries from noted Hollywood “grindhouse” filmmakers such as Joe Dante, Allan Arkush, John Landis, and Eli Roth.

http://www.littleminx.tv/
A collection of brilliant original online videos from possibly the next wave of big screen talent

http://mediastorm.org/
Sponsored by the Washington Post, Mediastorm is a photojournalist showcase that synchs perfectly with the Web

http://www.jonathanyuen.com/main.html
Jonathan Yuen’s site is a stunning mix of art, music, video, and poetry with justified self-promotion thrown in.

http://drawger.com/index.php
An artist and writer social networking site that may also be the ultimate arts and letters magazine for smart people

http://www.signandsight.com/
Who says that no one reads novels anymore? Sign and Sight offers hyper-intelligent book reviews with a Euro perspective.

http://pitchfork.tv/
One of the Web’s oldest and smartest music zines, Pitchfork now offers Pitchfork TV.

Guild Signatory Agents and Agency – from WGA June 25, 2008

Guild Signatory Agents and Agency

 

As a service to all writers (WGAW members and non-members), the Writers Guild of America, West now provides this online version of its Agency List. These agencies represent film, television and interactive writers.

 

 

The WGAW does not offer assistance in finding or suggesting an agent, nor does it assume liability for any acts or omissions of the agencies listed herein.

Each agency has its own submission policy. The WGAW recommends that a writer send a query letter, rather than submitting an unsolicited script. This letter should be concise, outlining relevant credentials and briefly describing the nature of the work.

As a courtesy, most agents will return literary material if a self-addressed stamped envelope is included with the submission. However, agencies are under no obligation to return the submitted material, nor can the WGAW assist in the recovery of non-returned material. <!–WGAw “No Fees” Policy: Guild policy prohibits an agency from appearing on this list if it charges reading fees or similar fees as a condition to read literary material. Such literary material includes but is not limited to screenplays, teleplays, telescripts, stories, treatments, bibles, formats, plot outlines, breakdowns, sketches, narration, non-commercial openings and closings, long form story projections and/or pilots- including all rewrites and polishes thereto. Please contact the Guild at (323) 782-4502 if you find that any of the listed agencies charge reading fees or similar fees for this type of literary material. The WGAW “No Fees” policy also applies to agencies that refer writers to entities which charge reading fees or similar fees. NOTE: Some agencies on this list charge reading fees or similar fees for other forms of literary material (e.g., novels or plays). –>

The agencies listed herein are licensed by the State of California. If you believe an agency is a signatory and you do not see it listed here, please contact the Guild’s Agency Department at (323) 782-4502. <!–

---

LEGEND
New Writers OK	This agency indicated it will consider new writers.
References Required	This agency indicated it will consider writers ONLY as a result of references from persons known to it.
Letter of Inquiry Required	This agency indicated it will accept ONLY a letter of inquiry.
No Unsolicited Material	This agency will not accept unsolicited material.

---

–><!– Select a State:

Data access failed! — Please contact your system administrator.

Details:

All States   

–>

California
Above The Line Agency 468 N Camden Dr Ste 200 Beverly Hills, CA 90210 (310) 859-6115
Acme Talent & Literary Agency 4727 Wilshire Blvd Ste 333 Los Angeles, CA 90010 (323) 954-2263
Agency For The Performing Arts (LA) 405 S Beverly Dr Beverly Hills, CA 90212 (310) 888-4200
Aimee Entertainment Association 15840 Ventura Blvd Ste 215 Encino, CA 91436
Alpern Group, The 15645 Royal Oak Rd Encino, CA 91436 (818) 528-1111
Amsel, Eisenstadt & Frazier 5055 Wilshire Blvd Ste 865 Los Angeles, CA 90036 (323) 939-1188
Angel City Talent 4741 Laurel Cyn Blvd Ste 101 Valley Village, CA 91607 (818) 760-9980
Ann Waugh Talent Agency 4741 Laurel Cyn Blvd Ste 200 N. Hollywood, CA 91607 (818) 980-0141
Annette Van Duren Agency 4303 Irvine Ave Studio City, CA 91604 (818) 752-6000
Beth Bohn Management Inc 2658 Griffith Park Blvd Ste 508 Los Angeles, CA 90039 (323) 664-2658
BiCoastal Talent & Literary Agency 210 N Pass Ave Ste 204 Burbank, CA 91505 (818) 845-0150
Bohrman Agency, The 8899 Beverly Blvd Ste 811 Los Angeles, CA 90048 (310) 550-5444
Bonnie Black Talent Agency 12034 Riverside Dr #103 Valley Village, CA 91607 (818) 753-5424
Brant Rose Agency 6671 Sunset Blvd Ste 1584 B Los Angeles, CA 90028 (323) 460-6464
Candace Lake Agency, Inc. 10677 Somma Way Los Angeles, CA 90077 (310) 476-2882
Cary Kozlov Literary Representation 16000 Ventura Blvd Ste 1000 Encino, CA 91436 (818) 501-6622
Catalyst Agency, Inc. (818) 597-8335
CEO Creative Entertainment Office 1801 S Catalina Ave Ste 103 Redondo Bch, CA 90277 (310) 791-4494
Cerise Talent Agency 11715 Hortense St N. Hollywood, CA 91607 (818) 766-8226
Chasin Agency, Inc., The 8899 Beverly Blvd Ste 716 Los Angeles, CA 90048 (310) 278-7505
Contemporary Artists, Ltd. 610 Santa Monica Blvd Ste 202 Santa Monica, CA 90401 (310) 395-1800
Coralie Jr. Theatrical Agency 907 S Victory Blvd Burbank, CA 91502 (818) 842-5513
Creative Artists Agency, LLC 2000 Ave Of The Stars Los Angeles, CA 90067 (424) 288-2000
Criterion 4842 Sylmar Ave Sherman Oaks, CA 91423-1716 (818) 995-1485
Dale Garrick International 1017 N La Cienega Blvd Ste 109 W. Hollywood, CA 90069 (310) 657-2661
David Shapira & Associates 193 N Robertson Blvd Beverly Hills, CA 90211 (310) 967-0480
Diverse Talent Group, Inc. 1925 Century Park East Ste 880 Los Angeles, CA 90067 (310) 201-6565
Don Buchwald & Associates 6500 Wilshire Blvd Ste 2200 Los Angeles, CA 90048 (323) 655-7400
Endeavor Agency, The 9601 Wilshire Blvd 3rd Floor Beverly Hills, CA 90210 (310) 248-2000
ES Agency, The 6612 Pacheco Way Citrus Hts, CA 95610 (916) 723-2794
Featured Artists Agency 1880 Century Park East, Ste. 1402 Century City, CA 90067 (310) 286-3200
Frank Elliott Shapiro Agency (818) 376-1583
Fred R. Price Literary Agency 14044 Ventura Blvd Ste 201 Sherman Oaks, CA 91423 (818) 763-6365
Gage Group, Inc., The 14724 Ventura Blvd Ste 505 Sherman Oaks, CA 91403 (818) 905-3800
Gerald K. Smith & Associates (323) 849-5388
Gersh Agency, Inc., The (LA) 232 N Canon Dr Ste 201 Beverly Hills, CA 90210 (310) 274-6611
Glick Agency, LLC 1250 6th Street Ste 100 Santa Monica, CA 90401 (310) 593-6500
Grant, Savic, Kopaloff & Associates 6399 Wilshire Blvd Ste 414 Los Angeles, CA 90048 (323) 782-1854
Hohman, Maybank, Lieb 9229 Sunset Blvd Ste 700 Los Angeles, CA 90069 (310) 274-4600
Hollywood View 5255 Veronica St Los Angeles, CA 90008
IFA Talent Agency 8730 Sunset Blvd Ste 490 Los Angeles, CA 90069 (310) 659-5522
Innovative Artists 1505 Tenth St Santa Monica, CA 90401 (310) 656-0400
International Creative Management 10250 Constellation Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90067 (310) 550-4000
Irv Schechter Company, The 9460 Wilshire Blvd Ste 300 Beverly Hills, CA 90212 (310) 278-8070
J.K.A. Talent & Literary Agency (818) 980-2093
Jack Lenny Associates 9454 Wilshire Blvd Ste 600 Beverly Hills, CA 90212 (310) 271-2174
Jack Scagnetti Talent Agency 5118 Vineland Ave Ste 106 North Hollywood, CA 91601 (818) 762-3871
Kaplan Stahler Gumer Braun Agency 8383 Wilshire Blvd Ste 923 Beverly Hills, CA 90211 (323) 653-4483
Kathleen Schultz Associates 6442 Coldwater Cyn Ste 206 Valley Glen, CA 91606 (818) 760-3100
Larchmont Literary Agency 444 N Larchmont Blvd Ste 200 Los Angeles, CA 90004 (323) 856-3070
Larry Grossman & Associates 2129 Ridge Dr Los Angeles, CA 90049 (310) 550-8127
Laya Gelff Agency 16133 Ventura Blvd Ste 700 Encino, CA 91436 (818) 996-3100
Lenhoff & Lenhoff 830 Palm Ave W Hollywood, CA 90069 (310) 855-2411
Lisa Callamaro Literary Agency 427 N Canon Dr Ste 202 Beverly Hills, CA 90210 (310) 274-6783
Lyons/Sheldon/Prosnit Agency 800 S Robertson Blvd Ste 6 Los Angeles, CA 90035 (310) 652-8778
Maggie Roiphe Agency 1721 S Garth Ave Los Angeles, CA 90035 (310) 876-1561
Marian Berzon Talent Agency 336 E 17th St Costa Mesa, CA 92627 (949) 631-5936
Media Artists Group 6300 Wilshire Blvd Ste 1470 Los Angeles, CA 90048 (323) 658-7434
Metropolitan Talent Agency 204 N Rossmore Ave Los Angeles, CA 90004 (323) 857-4500
Michael Lewis & Associates 2506 Fifth St Ste 100 Santa Monica, CA 90405 (310) 399-1999
Mitchell J. Hamilburg Agency 149 S Barrington Ave Ste 732 Los Angeles, CA 90049 (310) 471-4024
Mitchell K. Stubbs & Associates 8695 W Washington Blvd Ste 204 Culver City, CA 90232 (310) 838-1200
Monteiro Rose Dravis Agency 4370 Tujunga Ave. Ste. 145 Studio City, CA 91604 (818) 501-1177
Natural Talent, Inc. 3331 Ocean Park Blvd Ste 203 Santa Monica, CA 90405 (310) 450-4945
Original Artists 9465 Wilshire Blvd Ste 324 Beverly Hills, CA 90212 (310) 275-6765
Paradigm 360 N Crescent Dr North Bldg Beverly Hills, CA 90210 (310) 288-8000
Paul Kohner, Inc. 9300 Wilshire Blvd Ste 555 Beverly Hills, CA 90212 (310) 550-1060
Preferred Artists 16633 Ventura Blvd Ste 1421 Encino, CA 91436 (818) 990-0305
Progressive Artists Agency 400 S Beverly Dr Ste 216 Beverly Hills, CA 90212 (310) 553-8561
Qualita Dell’ Arte 6303 Owensmouth Ave 10th Floor Woodland Hills, CA 91367 (818) 598-8073
read. 8033 Sunset Blvd Ste 937 Los Angeles, CA 90046
Rebel Entertainment Partners, Inc. 5700 Wilshire Blvd Ste 456 Los Angeles, CA 90036 (323) 935-1700
Rothman Brecher Agency, The 9250 Wilshire Blvd Penthouse Beverly Hills, CA 90212 (310) 247-9898
Sarnoff Company, Inc., The 10 Universal City Plaza 20th Floor Universal City, CA 91608 (818) 753-2377
Schiowitz Connor Ankrum Wolf, Inc. 1680 Vine St Ste 1016 Los Angeles, CA 90028 (323) 463-8355
Shapiro-Lichtman, Inc. 1333 Beverly Green Los Angeles, CA 90035 (310) 859-8877
Shirley Wilson & Associates 5410 Wilshire Blvd Ste 227 Los Angeles, CA 90036 (323) 857-6977
Stars, The Agency 23 Grant Ave 4th Floor San Francisco, CA 94108 (415) 421-6272
Starwil Productions 433 N Camden Dr 4th Floor Beverly Hills, CA 90210 (818) 761-3213
Stein Agency, The 5125 Oakdale Ave Woodland Hills, CA 91364 (818) 594-8990
Stone Manners Agency 6500 Wilshire Blvd Ste 550 Los Angeles, CA 90048 (323) 655-1313
Stuart M. Miller Co, The 11684 Ventura Blvd Ste 225 Studio City, CA 91604 (818) 506-6067
Suite A Management Talent & Literary Agency 120 El Camino Dr Ste 202 Beverly Hills, CA 90212 (310) 278-0801
Summit Talent & Literary Agency 9454 Wilshire Blvd Ste 203 Beverly Hills, CA 90212 (310) 205-9730
Susan Smith Company, The 1344 N Wetherly Dr Los Angeles, CA 90069 (310) 276-4224
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Food For thought – that may make you paranoid June 25, 2008

NOTE: Elements within the U.S. Government have been threating web site
administrators all over the internet and forcing them to take down the
following article because it’s exposes the Bush/Cheney cabal’s
involvement in the coming economic collapse of 2008.

Everyone make copies of this article and send it everywhere so
everyone will be fully aware of how the economic collapse was
engineered to happen on purpose.
———————–

“Everybody knows that the dice are loaded.  Everybody rolls with their
fingers crossed.  Everybody knows the war is over.  Everybody knows
the good guys lost.  Everybody knows the fight was fixed.  The poor
stay poor, the rich get rich.  That’s how it goes,  Everybody knows” -
Leonard Cohen

PROTOCOLS FOR ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IN AMERICA
by
Al Martin

And this is how the U.S. Treasury would handle an economic collapse.
It’s called the 6900 series of protocols. It would start with
declaring a force majeure, which would immediately be interpreted by
the marketplaces as a de facto repudiation of debt. Then the SEC and
the various regulatory exchanges would anticipate the market’s
decline, hour by hour — when Japan’s markets opened the next day,
what would happen when the European markets, and all the inter-
linkages of the global markets. On the second day, US Special Forces
would be dropped in by parachute in the cities where the twelve
Federal Reserve district banks are located.

The origin of these protocols comes from the Department of Defense.
This is contingency planning for a variety of post-collapse scenarios.
Those scenarios would include, obviously, military collapse, World War
III, in other words, and its aftermath. What we’re talking about now
is aftermath — how the aftermath would be handled.

One does not necessarily know how the events would transpire that
would cause the collapse, whether it’s military collapse or economic
collapse. In World War III, it would become obvious — when the
mushroom cloud started to appear over cities.

Economic collapse scenarios were always premised on the basis of a US
declaration of force majeure on debt service. It’s a very extensive
scenario. The scenarios are all together, i.e., military, economic,
political and social complete destabilization leading to collapse.
Then they break down individual scenarios. In the economic collapse
scenario, the starting point would be the United States Treasury
declaring a force majeure on debt service, which is de facto
repudiation, and that’s how it would be interpreted by the world’s
capital marketplaces. Then the scenario goes on from there. The US
Treasury would obviously declare a force majeure sometime after the
European markets had settled down. In other words, they had gone out
on the day, which means 11:38 a.m. EDT, our time. They’d wait until
the European markets closed, and the US markets had been open for a
couple of hours. That’s when they’d determine how to begin the process
of unwinding or controlling the collapse to the best extent possible,
mainly because they know that the greatest hedge pressure would be
people seeking to use other markets to hedge their long exposure in
the United States and that the US would be the biggest seller in all
the rest of the world’s markets. Therefore you would want to declare
the force majeure when the rest of the world’s markets closed. The
declaration of force majeure would be precipitated by the declaration
that the United States is no longer able to service its debt. That’s
pretty simple. Who makes that decision? The Treasury Department. The
President does not make that decision. The Secretary of the Treasury
does. He has that authority.
You might ask — wouldn’t he have his arm twisted not to do that?

The answer is that if there isn’t any money left to service the debt,
it doesn’t make any difference what the current regime might want to
do.

The day of reckoning is now coming. What has happened in the interim,
from 2001 to present, is dynamic, global economic deterioration. The
economic deterioration visited upon the United States by Bushonomics
is not a localized event. It is, in fact, global. We have a planet now
that is sinking into a sea of red ink.

The United States is consuming 80% of the planet’s savings rate to
finance its debt. The central banks of Germany, Japan and Saudi Arabia
are no longer the powerhouses they used to be. Their reserves have now
been substantially depleted. They can, therefore, no longer hide the
fact that they own a certain number, likely in the trillions of
dollars, of U.S. Treasury debt that isn’t being serviced, because they
can’t hide it through bookkeeping tricks anymore because their
reserves are so depleted.

Therefore somebody has covertly been putting demands on the Bush-
Cheney regime for payment. Why do you think 2900 metric tons of gold
is depleted from U.S. inventory since March of `01?

Why do you think that $2 billion in currency seized from Iraq last May
is now unaccounted for?

Someone is putting demands on the Bush-Cheney regime. Someone is
saying to the Bushonian Cabal that — You’ve got to start servicing
this debt because we, foreign central banks, are in nations – European
and Asian – whose reserves are now nearly exhausted.

Who could be putting that kind of pressure on them?

It has to be coming from whoever is organizing this thing at the very
top, which I would tend to think has got to be most likely a cabal of
people that would involve Henry Kissinger, James Baker, George
Schultz, possibly William Simon. It would be somebody at the very top
that is familiar with how to do this. It would have to be someone
familiar with finances.

So would this be one faction of a cabal blackmailing or forcing
another faction? No, it’s not really blackmailing. It’s being done out
of desperation. The German, Japanese and Saudi central banks are
saying to the Bushonian cabal, You’ve got to start servicing this debt
because we don’t have the reserves to cover you anymore. We can no
longer make it appear that the debt is being serviced because our own
reserves are so substantively depleted. Therefore you must begin to
cover this debt. If you don’t, then, at some point, we will have to
publicly admit in order to save our own necks — that we were the end
buyers of a lot of stealth debt, a lot of debt that your Treasury
issued illegally and has never serviced. That would then expose the
whole cabal.

The Kissinger-Baker faction are at the top of how this was done on the
economic side of the equation. They were not the original insiders so
much, but the managers of the conspiracy from the U.S. Treasury, to
wit, the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve role-play the part.

Take Henry Kissinger. It may not have occurred to anyone why in the
last 3 years Henry Kissinger has been back in Washington more than he
has in the last 30 years. And why are all these quiet meetings in
Washington with alleged senior Bush-Cheney regime officials, as
foreign news services endlessly put it. It’s because Kissinger is the
point man. He’s the one that is telling them the disposition of other
foreign central banks.

Kissinger would probably also be involved in transfer or hypothecation
of any assets from the cabal. In other words, they’re being stolen
from the American people by the Bush-Cheney regime and the Bushonian
Cabal, and they are being used to hypothecate, transfer, service, or
otherwise carry this debt held by certain foreign central banks.

The process of unraveling has already begun because of ever-spiraling
Bushonian budget deficits. The Bush-Cheney regime, even in its overt
policies (now they’re overt political, economic, social and military
policies) is generating $600-billion-plus deficit per year, which is
consuming 80% of the planet’s net savings rate.

It doesn’t have the slack. In other words, it can’t refinance stealth
debt by issuing more stealth debt anymore. Nor can they bleed money
out of the system like they could in the 1980s by hiding it when the
overt policies of the Bush-Cheney regime are already producing a
budget deficit of 6% of Gross Domestic Product. There is no other
mechanism that they could use anymore to hide expansion of debt that
could be used to service said stealth debt, and they are, frankly,
running out of assets that they can steal from the American people.

So the proverbial day of reckoning is coming. The Bush-Cheney regime
(and I give them credit for this) are telling the American people
what’s coming, knowing the American people are too stupid to
understand. They are telling the American people about the re-
institution of the Gold Confiscation Act and the sudden scrapping of
the Treasury’s emergency post-collapse gold note scheme to maintain
domestic liquidity.

David Walker, US Comptroller General and chief of the GAO has said
that should the Bush-Cheney regime be re-ensconced into power and,
hence, the scourge of Bushonomics persist, that the United States
could no longer service its debt beyond 2009. They’re not hiding it
from anybody anymore. They are telling you what’s happening. Now, what
does that mean? The key is in what Walker is saying when he says the
debt can no longer be serviced. I’ve been asked this on the radio
shows. People have noticed what Walker said because he’s out in the
news more often than he used to be. It’s unusual for the Comptroller
General of the United States, which is a rather arcane position, to be
out in the news so much.

It simply means that when he says the United States will no longer be
able to sustain Bushonian budget deficits, he means that by 2009, if
Bush-Cheney have a second term in office, the United States will be
consuming 100% of the planet’s savings rate to finance Bushonian
budget deficits.

Therefore, if the planet can no longer generate any more liquidity to
lend to the United States, one of three things have to happen: A)
There has to be a sudden and dramatic reduction in federal spending.
There are only two places that can come from. There would have to be
an immediate $100-billion cut in defense spending, which would end any
hopes the Republicans had of getting into office for years to come
because it would destroy any confidence the NFWCs (Naïve Flag Waving
Crowd) had in them. Or you would have to scrap the multi-trillion-
dollar Bushonian tax cuts for the Republican rich, something that’s
equally unpalatable.

The other option, B, as Paul O’Neill mentioned, is a dramatic increase
in the rate of federal income taxation from the current nominal rate
of 28% to 65%, which is what the Treasury Department estimated would
be required post-2009 to provide the U.S. Treasury with sufficient
revenues to continue to service debt.

The third option, or C, becomes the declaration of a force majeure on
credit service of U.S. Treasury debt by the United States Treasury,
which is tantamount and would be accurately construed as de facto debt
repudiation by the United States of America.

There are other signs to look for. They’re not going to happen now,
but if Bush-Cheney is re-elected, you’ll begin to see more signs that
the end is coming. I know a lot of people may disagree, but you wait
and see. If Bush-Cheney has a second term, see if they do not
institute some currency expatriation control. See if that doesn’t come
in the way Nixon tried it in May-June of 1971.

In the second term, there will be some sort of currency expatriation
control in the United States, but there will also be loopholes that
will allow the large money to escape. The restrictions will apply to
the 10- and 20-thousand-dollar people. It ain’t going to apply to the
10- and 20-million-dollar people. It would be self-defeating to do
that.

When that day comes, in other words, when the U.S. Treasury declares a
force majeure on debt, it wouldn’t be broad-cast on mainstream media.
There’s no sense because the American people don’t even understand
what it means. But the announcement would actually be put on the
Federal Reserve wire system, which would, of course, immediately be
picked up by all media outlets anyway.

The U.S. Treasury would declare a force majeure on debt after the
Asian and European markets closed, probably at 12:30 p.m. EDT. The
reason why that hour was always selected is because Asian and European
markets close. It’s also the lunch hour for the markets. It’s when
you’re going to have the fewest people on the floor of the exchanges.
That would be the ideal time to make such an announcement.

A few seconds after that announcement was made, all United States
markets, both equities debt and commodities i.e., stock, bonds,
commodities, that have trading collars or permissible daily limits
would all be limit-offered with pools. Limit-offered means that there
are more sellers at the limit i.e., limit down, than there are buyers.

So-called ‘pools’ would immediately begin to form, probably a thousand
contracts every few minutes. ‘Limit-offered with pools’ – this is
trader language. Pools to sell 2,000 lots, 3,000 lots. That means, the
number of sellers over and above the available buyers at the limit-
offered price. That would begin to build.

By 1:00, the news would begin to sink in because it would take awhile
before panic selling would arise from the public. This news is being
released at lunch hour.

A lot of the American people initially would not even understand the
temerity of the news. You would see professional selling first, and as
that professional selling intensified over the afternoon, the SEC, the
CFTC, NASDAQ, and various market regulatory authorities would begin to
institute certain emergency market protocols. This would be the
installation of the so-called ‘declaration of fast market conditions,’
for instance; the declaration of ‘no more stop orders,’ the
declaration of ‘fill at any price,’ etc. in a desperate bid to
maintain liquidity.

That first day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and related indices
on a percentage basis would lose about 20% of their value by the close
of business that day. The real impact would come overnight when the
American people found out what this was all about and when it was
explained to them.

At 7:30 a.m. EDT, the Tokyo markets would open, and no price would be
affixed for probably three or four hours into the session due to the
avalanche of selling. Once prices were established, the government of
Japan would close all of its financial markets. Europe would not even
open. All European governments would close all capital exchanges the
next day.

The United States would, in order to accommodate global electronic
trading, attempt to open the market on the second day, which they
would do, regardless of price, just to maintain some liquidity. At the
end of Day Two, the Dow Jones and related indices, would have lost two
thirds of their value, and prices would be set accordingly.

On Day Three, the New York Stock Exchange, the SEC and other related
agencies would recommend to the United States Treasury and the Federal
Reserve that all markets be closed. That would be on the morning of
Day Three. Eleven a.m., the Federal Reserve would then order all
domestic banks closed. All of the twelve Federal Reserve district
banks would (30 minutes later) have special U.S. forces parachuted in
and around them to secure whatever gold bullion reserves they had
left.

Day Three, 9:00 p.m., the President of the United States would declare
a state of martial law. All financial transactions would come to an
end. The Treasury would act to formally de-monetize the U.S. dollar
and declare it worthless.

This would be totally unprecedented. In the past, collapses have been
temporary and have been brought back up. But what we’re talking about
now is the end.

These protocols that I’m referring to aren’t even all that secret.
They were publicly available all through the Clinton era. These are
Treasury protocols that were instituted mostly in the late 1970s when
the Treasury and Federal Reserve began to feel that it was important
to have an emergency-collapse protocol in place.

What precipitated the timing of this was the inflationary spiral of
the late 1970s. The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve were both
concerned that this inflationary spiral, which was occurring not only
domestically but globally, might lead to a global, uncontrollable
hyper-inflation that the Federal Reserve or major central banks could
not stop by traditional means, i.e., by raising interest rates and
contracting money supply.

There was also the recognition, of course, that global central reserve
bank bullion inventories had been so depleted over the previous 30
years that any re-institution of a species currency, even on a
temporary basis, and even within a regional or individual nation-state
basis, was no longer possible.

This is an analogy. In a military scenario, it’s like the President of
the United States pushing the final red button — the commit button.
The Treasury Secretary of the United States has a similar mechanism.
It’s called the yellow button, the commit button. The Secretary of
Defense has the same system. This is what happens. Computer program
starts to institute these protocols. Imagine the complexity of trying
the manage all this. I think it’s going to happen all simultaneously.
There are hundreds of different agencies involved, both domestically
and internationally. In order to maintain liquidity for as long as
possible, it has to be extremely well-coordinated, and there must be
existing collapse protocols that can be used.

The reason I was familiar with them was because I used to see the U.S.
Treasury 6900 Series Collapse Protocol, 6903, 6904 there’ll be A, B,
and so on which keyed in to the Department of Defense to be
incorporated within the Department of Defense’s own World War III
scenario and various types of military/ political/ social instability/
war/ pestilence, chaos, etc. scenarios.

All federal agencies had individual collapse protocols that ultimately
got coordinated through the Department of Defense. Obviously, the
Department of Defense would be the ultimate coordinator because it
would need to have special forces available, on a stand-by basis,
ready, that could quickly parachute into areas all over the country,
into the cities particularly, to secure federal properties and assets.

And that’s literally how it would begin. By the end of the third day,
it would be all over — a state of martial law. We’re not talking
about war, now; this is just economic collapse.

There’s no military implication here, no political, no social
implication or policy directive thereunto. This is strictly economic
collapse. By the end of Day Three, effectively, all banks in the world
will be shut down, all paper currencies will become valueless. Martial
law would be declared. There would be no continuing transactions, at
least for a period of time, of commodities. All providers of fuels and
foods would be shut down automatically.

They have this in great detail too. U.S. Department of Defense Special
117th Assault Unit would parachute in to seize control of the cattle
yards in Oklahoma City. This is how well it’s planned. In other words,
economic collapse would automatically involve expansive military
action and control.

By the end of the third day, when you no longer have a domestic medium
of exchange, you have to have secured food and fuel stocks. You’ve got
to have troops that have secured distribution points where there is
food and fuel stocks, warehouses, tanks, etc. Otherwise people are
just going to go get them, and the people have to know that if they
try to go break into that store and steal that loaf of bread, they’re
going to be shot.

Protocols for environmental disasters are called ’scaling-circle
scenarios.’ ‘Scaling circles’ is a Department of Defense euphemism.
It’s also used in FEMA, OEM and other emergency management services.
In environmental catastrophes, which are going to become national or
global, it’s got to start someplace. It’s going to start in one very
small, specific area. Therefore what happens is that the immediate
force containment is the greatest in the first circle, to try to
contain the spread of the disaster and keep it within that circle.

The environmental problem, to whatever extent it’s possible, before it
spreads, will be neutralized or mitigated, in order to keep that
catastrophe within that circle, or, if it is likely that it is to
escape that circle, to attack whatever it is in such a fashion as to
mitigate its strength and its ability to contaminate or otherwise
affect other areas.

In the case of earthquakes, for instance, affecting the west coast,
beginning at Mt. Rainier and moving southward — that’s a different
type of scenario. That does not include as much Department of Defense
involvement. It includes separate protocols, wherein mostly FEMA and
OEM act as the senior coordinating agencies between municipal, county
and state disaster and containment, which is called Disaster and
Containment Units. Federal troops would only be brought in for the
purposes of maintaining control.

In a military or economic collapse situation, National Guard units
would provide any spare help they could in combating whatever the
problem is. Federal troops would be used in order to have the specific
authority simply to shoot anyone. There are plans for all sorts of
scenarios. The economic-disaster scenario is the one I always found
the most intriguing because it is the one that is least understood by
the American people.

Military control would be necessary when lines begin to form at the
banks, people trying to access their money. But that wasn’t even
anticipated as a big problem. Lines would form at the banks, but it
was not even envisioned until sometime on Day Three because the
American people wouldn’t get it. It would be announced that the stock
markets are down 2000 or 3000 points, and since we’ve always been
taught they’ll come back, the people would still be buying stocks.

You could count on everybody remaining in ignorance all the way down
because the American people have never been taught Economics 101. The
American people wouldn’t realize the full extent of it until the
markets were closed on the third day, or until the time when they went
down to cash a check and the bank was closed with soldiers out in
front. Then they would go down and see the gas station’s closed. They
see the local supermarket has been shuttered, and there’s federal
troops in front of it. Then they might begin to catch on. And remember
– it’s not just federal troops. In emergency-collapse protocols, even
before the declaration of a formal state of emergency or a state of
martial law, the local military authorities within any given county or
jurisdiction have the ability to essentially militarize anyone, that
is, any civilian. This would be more than just deputizing civilians.
It’s federal. In other words, they would have the ability to
militarize and give military authority to a civilian force. This would
include not only police and the sheriffs and state police, but all
local law enforcement that exists below the state level would be
immediately militarized. They wouldn’t take just anybody like they did
in Iraq. It would be like the military when they call for volunteers.
Then they’d have everybody and their brother-in-law volunteering,
waving around the American flag and so on.

You’ve got a lot of pickup-driving guys in this country with the gun
racks in the back and the Confederate flag flying. So you start waving
the American flag in front of their face and say, Hey, you’re going to
get your chance you always wanted — to fit your potbelly inside an
army uniform and carry a gun and shoot people. How appealing would
that be?

And besides, if you do this, then you’re going to get to eat.

In other words, this is how it would unfold over three days, but, in
fact, very few Americans would know what to do about it or how to take
any precautions. They wouldn’t have a clue because they don’t
understand enough about economics to know what is happening. So that’s
what it is — Economic Armageddon. If the Bush-Cheney regime is re-
installed into power, that is effectively what Comptroller General
David Walker is saying.

In conclusion, since there is very little the people of the United
States can do to protect themselves. We’re not going to make any
suggestions of how to protect yourselves because there’s very little
you can do.

We could tell you to go out and buy gold coins and bury them in the
coffee can in the back yard and go to your nearest survivalist store,
but, frankly, that’s useless. In the last analysis, it’s a lot of
hype. There is very little the average US citizen could do.

The only thing that can prevent this, as the Comptroller alluded to
when he was asked by Barbara Walters, How do we prevent reaching the
problem by 2009? He said simply, “A change of regimes.”

So how do you prevent it? Don’t vote for Bush and Cheney — and hope
that Bush does not use his emergency powers to cancel or postpone the
election by edict, powers which you, the flag-waving citizens, have
given him.

All flag-waving citizens, be warned. If you want to vote for Bush-
Cheney again, make sure you got plenty of Spam on hand.

Here’s an interesting and humorous aside. A couple of days ago, Hormel
Foods, which makes Spam, announced that in the last six months there
have been record sales of Spam in the United States the survivalists’
food of choice. After all, they pride themselves on the fact, as the
spokesman for Hormel said, “It is the only food product you can buy
with an expiration that’s 50 years.”

When everything goes to hell, when all that man has created has turned
to dust again, the final legacy is going to be Spam. It will be the
last surviving item — when the anthropologists of 20 thousand years
from now are digging sites and they see these enormous mountains of
unopened cans of Spam They’ll have monuments to the past out of Spam.

So if Bush-Cheney has a second term in office, there will be some sort
of currency restriction, like Nixon did in 1971. On April 13, 2004,
Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary John Boine talked about potential
currency restrictions. He used the word that’s going to fuel the
flames of the survivalist and gloom-and-doom collapse people.

It’s very, very telling that the U.S. Treasury may institute a
restriction on the amount of U.S. dollars that can be converted into
gold.

Furthermore, he intimated (and I suspected that this was coming,
although this wouldn’t actually become law until Bush-Cheney was in
office for second term one way or another) that the Bush-Cheney regime
determines that the Gold Confiscation Act gives to Treasury the power
for so-called forced disclosure of gold holdings.

I’m not quite sure of the language of the Gold Confiscation Act from
1933. It just says, “compelled”, as in citizens are lawfully compelled
to redeem gold for script. I don’t think there was any such provision,
which he was inferring that there is. That was FDR’s “Raw Deal” of
1934, when people were coerced into giving up their gold. But nowhere
in this act does it specifically authorize the Treasury to mandate
citizens to report their gold holdings. So if this gets any press at
all, particularly within the circles of gold bugs and so on, watch
out.

Furthermore, on Washington Journal they were talking about how FEMA
has recommended to the Office of Homeland Security to have increased
restrictions regarding citizen hoarding of long-term food and fuel
supplies. That’s pretty sinister too.

What they’re talking about is the purchase of long-term so-called
stores of survival food. FEMA was talking about some sort of
restriction preventing people from accumulating food stores; putting
it simply, that’s what it means. The second point was to increase
restrictions that already exist.

FEMA was recommending even tighter restrictions on citizens building
their own private property underground storage tanks for the purposes
of long-term storage of fuel. The real intent of this is is threefold:
a) to restrict citizens’ ability to hoard food; b) restrict citizens’
ability to hoard long-term storage of fuel; c) the forced
identification of citizens to reveal food and fuel stocks they may be
hoarding.

And that, in my opinion, is the real essence. The Bush-Cheney regime
was scared of having the FEMA angle put into the equation because they
knew what it means and how people would interpret it.

They have tried to use environmental legislation to restrict people’s
ability to build fuel storage facilities on their own property — to
get around what the true intent of that was.

But the bigger picture is that if you start to limit citizens’ ability
to hoard fuel and food and shake them up by potential forced
identification of gold holdings or forced redemption.

In other words, what you don’t want is citizens who have the ability
to store a lot of food and fuel and to own gold because they would be
able to resist state control in the future.

You’ve got to have every citizen on a rationing card to control the
civilian population. You can’t have citizens out there hoarding food
and fuel because then people can say to government,”I ain’t taking a
rationing card, baby, with my national ID card. I don’t have to. You
can’t control me through food and fuel and ever-worthless paper
currency.”

I used to make fun of these people. But now, things have come full
circle on this debate. The Bush-Cheney regime is making it
increasingly clear through their small changes in policy. Not a lot of
people monitor these decisions, but I do. And the pattern is becoming
increasingly clear.

In fact, I would believe that those of the survivalist mentality (the
food, fuel, the gold coins in the coffee can in the back yard) people
who think that way will be ultimately vindicated – if George Bush has
a second term in office.
People should quit making fun of them because they would be vindicated
- even though they were all burned out, twenty-dollared to death,
buying books and tapes, and discredited by mainstream media. It may
sound like a hollow victory, but it won’t be a hollow victory for them
- them that’s got the Spam…

First-Ever WGA Silverdocs Documentary Screenplay Award Goes to Writer-Director Anna Broinowski for Forbidden Lie$ June 24, 2008

LOS ANGELES — The Writers Guild of America, West and the Writers Guild of America, East have named writer-director Anna Broinowski as the winner of the first-ever WGA SILVERDOCS Documentary Screenplay Award for her film Forbidden Lie$, presented at Saturday night’s awards ceremony at the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Springs, MD. The honor goes to the qualifying screenwriter of a feature-length film who demonstrates screenwriting excellence in the documentary genre.

“The Writers Guilds are proud to be the sponsors of this new award, which highlights the fact that many compelling documentaries are indeed written and include a story structure. While nonfiction writers are honored through our own annual Writers Guild Awards, we also felt it was important for them to receive recognition at the SILVERDOCS film festival,” commented WGAW President Patric M. Verrone.

“The art of writing documentaries is one often overlooked and underappreciated in the entertainment world. We are thrilled that this new WGA Award at SILVERDOCS will recognize those who work so diligently and creatively to enhance the imagery of non-fiction film with their well-crafted words and ideas,” added WGAE President Michael Winship.

“SILVERDOCS is honored to work with the WGA to recognize the art and craft of screenwriting in documentary, a critical element in shaping non-fiction storytelling,” said SILVERDOCS Festival Director Patricia Finneran.

Forbidden Lie$ investigates accusations that Forbidden Love author Norma Khouri fabricated her biographical tale of a Muslim friend who was murdered for dating a Christian. Broinowski’s documentary also recently won the Australian Film Institute’s Best Documentary Award.

The WGA SILVERDOCS Documentary Screenplay Award carries with it a prize of $2,500 and the winner will be granted membership, free of charge for the first year, in the WGAW Nonfiction Writers Caucus or WGAE Nonfiction Writers Caucus.

Nominees for this year’s WGA Documentary Screenplay Award at SILVERDOCS 2008 were:

DEAR ZACHARY: A LETTER TO A SON ABOUT HIS FATHER – Writer, Director, Composer Kurt Kuenne

FORBIDDEN LIE$ – Written and Directed by Anna Broinowski

GONZO: THE LIFE AND WORK OF HUNTER S. THOMPSON – Screenplay by Alex Gibney; From the Words of Hunter S. Thompson

IN THE FAMILY – Written, Produced and Directed by Joanna Rudnick

I.O.U.S.A. – Written by Patrick Creadon, Christine O’Malley, and Addison Wiggin; Story by Addison Wiggin and Kate Incontrera

LETTER TO ANNA – Written and Directed by Eric Bergkraut, Coauthor: Therese Obrecht Hodler

LUCIO – Script and Direction by Jose Mari Goenaga, Aitor Arregi

To be eligible for this Award, SILVERDOCS documentaries were required to meet the following criteria: Writer(s) must have received an approved onscreen screenwriting credit, and a script must be submitted for consideration, i.e., a screenplay or transcript.

In recent years, the Guilds have increased their outreach and organizing efforts to build a strong community of nonfiction writers, with an aim to bring more documentaries under WGA contracts.  The WGA’s Documentary Screenplay Contract enables writers to write and sell documentary screenplays using partial or completely deferred fees while receiving Writers Guild benefits and protections. Questions regarding joining the Writers Guild through documentary work may be directed to the WGAW’s Kay Schaber Wolf at (323) 782-4731 or email: Indie Program and also the WGAE’s Alexis DiVincenti at (212) 767-7800.

This season, SILVERDOCS 2008 presented a total of 108 diverse films, representing 63 countries selected from 1,861 submissions with six World, eight North American, six U.S. and seven East Cost premieres, as well as two retrospective programs. Now in its sixth year, SILVERDOCS and its concurrent International Documentary Conference honors excellence in filmmaking, supports the diverse voices and free expression of independent storytellers and celebrates the power of documentary – past, present, and future – to enhance the understanding of the world. At this year’s week-long festival, a wide range of documentary films from around the globe screened in six distinct sections: U.S. Feature Competition, World Feature Competition, Best Music Documentary, Silver Spectrum (formerly known as World View), Short Films, and 1968 and Beyond, a special thematic sidebar added for 2008. Additional information about SILVERDOCS is available at www.silverdocs.com.

The Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) and the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) represent writers in the motion picture, broadcast, cable, and new media industries in both entertainment and news.

For more information about the Writers Guild of America, West, please visit www.wga.org; for more information about the Writers Guild of America, East, please visit: www.wgaeast.org.

2008 Board of Directors Election Noticen – WGA June 24, 2008

Each year the Guild conducts an election for eight of the 16 seats on the Board of Directors.
 
The election cycle starts in the spring, when the Board appoints a nominating committee that will select candidates for the September election. The committee selects at least two candidates for each of the eight Board seats. It will seek potential candidates from the various work areas within the Guild’s jurisdiction: features, episodic and long-form television, animation, reality, nonfiction, made-for-pay TV and made-for-basic cable, interactive, comedy-variety, daytime serials, new media, news and documentaries.

The Guild encourages members to participate in the nomination process. You are invited to suggest names of prospective Board candidates, including your own. The nominating committee will consider all prospective nominees suggested by members. Eligible candidates must be Current members in good standing for the 12 months immediately preceding the September 2008 election (Constitution, Article V.A.§5.a.). Successful Board candidates will be elected for two-year terms. In order to be considered for candidacy by the nominating committee, members’ names must be received by Jennifer Burt at the Guild, 7000 W. Third St., Los Angeles, CA 90048, by Thursday, May 15, 2008. Names may also be faxed to Ms. Burt at (323) 782-4801, or emailed to Jennifer Burt. The nominating committees will make its selections by June 18, 2008.

In addition to selection by the nominating committee, eligible members may also run for a Board seat by petition (Constitution, Article V.A.§4.). Petitions for Board candidates must be signed by 25 or more Current members in good standing. The signed petitions must be received by Ms. Burt on or before Monday, July 21, 2008. Each candidate’s name must appear on each page of a petition containing members’ signatures. Fax signatures are acceptable.

If you have questions about the Guild’s election process, call Ms. Burt at (323) 782-4569. You can have a significant impact on the governing body of your Guild, and we welcome your active participation.

Submit nomination petition online
Download petition form (.pdf)

From the Computer Screen to the TV Screen June 24, 2008

In the LA Times (Monday June 16) Scott Collins wrote an insightful piece on Hulu, NBC Universal and News Corporation’s online video joint venture. The occasion was the addition of Comedy Central’s Daily Show to the Hulu roster. As he points out, the greater significance of that appearance is that it inaugurates a relationship with Viacom. If Hulu wants to be the “department store” for video on the web, new partners are the metric of success to watch. Collins also helpfully assesses another important metric of success for a video site, which is depth of content. Hulu’s 700 titles are only a start at what they will need to develop a habit among viewers for dropping in. 

If Collins misses anything it is in his contrast of Hulu on the computer with the TV set. These are not the competitors he poses, but rather stops along an evolutionary path. For replays of traditional media content, computer viewing is just the first incarnation of Internet delivery and it may not be the most significant one. As Apple TV and the new Roku Netflix set top box demonstrate (with pay television business models), the next step for the Internet is migration from the computer screen to the TV screen. This process is one writers need to be keenly aware of. When Hulu, and other services like it, compete with cable-based Video On Demand on the TV set they will move from the minor leagues to the majors. Under the Guild’s new Minimum Basic Agreement, ad-supported VOD via cable or via Hulu to the computer, or eventually to the set top, will pay 1.2% of distributor’s gross receipts for feature films produced after July 1, 1971 and 2.0% of distributor’s gross receipts for television programs produced after 1977 (and a small number produced prior to 1977). Great potential is there for reuse of network and studio libraries on current and future digital platforms—and thanks to writers’ resolve it will be covered by our new contract.

Read the article: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-channel16-2008jun16,0,1733921.story

POV June 24, 2008

It’s the System That Needs to Change 

Jeffrey Korchek, a lawyer for toy company Mattel and former Universal Studios lawyer, wrote in the Hollywood Reporter recently (June 11, 2008)  that the industry doesn’t have the money for the studio lawyers at the AMPTP and the industry unions to indulge in the luxury of a “fight” to resolve a contract negotiation. He thinks union contracts should be for longer than three years and thinks it’s more important to keep everyone working than to hold out for an acceptable contract. He advises SAG to follow the example of the DGA, which, in his view, did not need to strike to achieve an acceptable contract. Mr. Korchek is wrong on three points worthy of a response.

First, Mr. Korchek characterizes the strike as a luxury in resolving the contract negotiation. If the studios thought of it as an optional strategy, the WGA certainly did not. The strike was born out of necessity in the face of a November 4 walk out by the studios that left a devastating offer on the table. The situation hadn’t changed much when the studios walked out on resumed talks December 7. The issues were not small. The offer included pennies on the dollar for new media compared to long-established standards of residuals and the elimination of key provisions of the contract. In the end, writers were successful in avoiding the rollbacks, and they won residuals for new media that largely conform to the standards of prior contracts for other uses.

Second, while the DGA brought its own leverage and negotiating skill to the table, there is no doubt that the WGA’s strike added to the DGA’s ability to get a deal and exposed the AMPTP’s willful scuttling of negotiations with the WGA. If the companies had conducted the three weeks of substantive negotiations that resolved the WGA contract in February of 2008 back in July of 2007, the WGA would have welcomed it. Those conversations and that offer were not available then. The studios and networks are well-informed about their businesses. We must take it at face value that they made a business decision they judged in their interest to delay the offer that long.

Finally, Mr. Korchek describes the industry’s economics as “shaky” and opines that the pressure of a strike is “too great a strain.” Actually, while industry revenues are shifting, they are growing. The entertainment business only appears shaky to those who do not look closely or those who have no strategy to adapt. Industry CEOs continue to brag to Wall Street that the economic outlook is bright and even claim that the strike improved their profits.

Mr. Korchek has raised a worthwhile criticism of the industry’s labor relations. He writes that “The whole labor negotiation process has become contentious and distracting and costly.” That is certainly true. If the studios and networks look back and agree with Mr. Korchek’s conclusion that they should have found a way to make the offer earlier that they were eventually satisfied to make, there is a change to make. The cause of unnecessary conflict is a labor negotiating process disconnected from the operating divisions of the studios and networks. In February, when two seasons of television and the Academy Awards were about to go down the drain, and it became too costly not to settle, the CEOs got involved and the issues were resolved. That was the serious negotiation the WGA had sought from the start, but could not achieve without the pressure of a costly strike. Reconnecting the labor negotiating process to the operating realities of the business is a change that would solve the problem that Mr. Korchek raises. His solution to “just stop messing with the system” is neither specific nor helpful. It’s specifically the system that needs to change.

-Chuck Slocum, WGAW Staff

CNET Cuts 120 Jobs June 23, 2008

The Associated Press reports that tech publisher CNET is cutting 120 positions – all in the U.S.

All the layoffs – about 4.4 percent of CNet’s work force – will involve employees in the U.S., according to a document CNet filed Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

CNet’s suite of popular websites commands a huge worldwide audience, but its investors have long complained the company’s profits haven’t kept pace with the growth of Internet advertising.

The company indicated in the filing that the layoffs would be effective immediately and cost at least $3.8-million in severance pay, outplacement and other expenses.

TV Viewership Down After Writers’ Strike June 23, 2008

Since the writers’ strike ended, television shows have not been rebounding to their previous viewership levels. In fact, top television shows’ ratings are plummeting. Once reason proposed is that no one knew when their shows were back, so they never tuned back in.

Spring has sprung leaks in big-network lineups. Ratings shortfalls for some top series have sparked Hollywood hand-wringing on the eve of next week’s fall schedule announcements. Such shows as ER, CSI: Miami, My Name Is Earl, The Simpsons and Supernatural hit all-time lows in recent weeks, and others — including Grey’s Anatomy and Cold Case — are down sharply from last spring.

Some observers blame the writers’ strike, which forced a three-month gap in most scripted series and led viewers to stray. Most series have trickled back but without the usual marketing fanfare. “I’m not convinced people realized their shows were back,” says ABC prime-time research chief Larry Hyams. “It’s not like there was a premiere week” that lured them.

Strike-hobbled scripted series weren’t the only ones to lose ground. American Idol, Survivor and Deal or No Deal did, too, part of the typical ratings erosion as series age. “There has been significant slippage compared to normal series averages,” says ad buyer John Rash of Campbell-Mithun in Minneapolis. “What’s difficult to discern is if this is a post-strike media malaise that will be corrected” next fall.

But it’s not as if viewers abandoned TV. Nielsen data show overall viewership is flat or up slightly from last spring. Instead, more people are watching cable. And more of them are recording shows on DVRs, now in 24% of homes, up from 16% last spring. More than 2 million Grey’s viewers — 10% of its total audience — now watch the show one to seven days after it airs.

We think viewership will rebound in the fall — so long as there are some interesting new shows. But we also think people are watching their favorite shows online. For example, on Friday afternoons every hour on the hour, you can watch the livestream of that night’s episode of Battlestar Galactica on Scifi.com for free. You watch 80% less commercials, it’s in HD, and best of all – it makes the time you were supposed to be working just breeze by. Mark it down as research for your next science fiction novel,

Writer’s Blog: Vatican Still Angry at Dan Brown June 23, 2008

The Vatican is still quite peeved with Dan Brown. In fact, it’s still so mad that it has banned Tom Hanks and Ron Howard from shooting any scenes from the upcoming film Angels & Demons at the Vatican or at any Catholic churches in Rome.

The Vatican has banned the makers of Angels & Demons, the latest Dan Brown thriller to be filmed, from shooting scenes not only in the Vatican but in any church in Rome on the ground that it is “an offence against God” and “wounds common religious feelings”.

Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, head of the Vatican’s Prefecture for Economic Affairs, said that the author had “turned the Gospels upside down to poison the faith. It would be unacceptable to transform churches into film sets so that his blasphemous novels can be made into mendacious films in the name of business.”

Father Marco Fibbi, spokesman for the diocese of Rome, said: “Normally we read the script, but this time it was not necessary. The name Dan Brown was enough.” The Vatican fiercely condemned both the novel The Da Vinci Code and its film version, which starred Tom Hanks as the Harvard professor Robert Langdon.

Hanks also stars in Angels & Demons which, like The Da Vinci Code, is directed by Ron Howard. Published before The Da Vinci Code — which suggested that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and had children — Angels & Demons revolves around a plot by a sinister elite known as The Illuminati to seize control of the papacy during a conclave to elect a new Pope.

“The name Dan Brown was enough”? That’s pretty harsh. No doubt Ron Howard will find an acceptable substitute site for filming. After all, the Vatican couldn’t stop the filmmakers from shooting the exteriors of the churches in question because they had permission from the local authorities.

Kindle: Amazon’s New Wireless Reading Device June 23, 2008

Kindle: Amazon’s New Wireless Reading Device

 

Product Overview

• Revolutionary electronic-paper display provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper.
• Simple to use: no computer, no cables, no syncing.
• Wireless connectivity enables you to shop the Kindle Store directly from your Kindle—whether you’re in the back of a taxi, at the airport, or in bed.
• Buy a book and it is auto-delivered wirelessly in less than one minute.
• More than 130,000 books available, including more than 98 of 112 current New York Times® Best Sellers.
• New York Times® Best Sellers and New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise.
• Free book samples. Download and read first chapters for free before you decide to buy.
• Top U.S. newspapers including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post; top magazines including TIME, Atlantic Monthly, and Forbes—all auto-delivered wirelessly.
• Top international newspapers from France, Germany, and Ireland; Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine, and The Irish Times—all auto-delivered wirelessly.
• More than 300 top blogs from the worlds of business, technology, sports, entertainment, and politics, including BoingBoing, Slashdot, TechCrunch, ESPN’s Bill Simmons, The Onion, Michelle Malkin, and The Huffington Post—all updated wirelessly throughout the day.
• Lighter and thinner than a typical paperback; weighs only 10.3 ounces.
• Holds over 200 titles.
• Long battery life. Leave wireless on and recharge approximately every other day. Turn wireless off and read for a week or more before recharging. Fully recharges in 2 hours.
• Unlike WiFi, Kindle utilizes the same high-speed data network (EVDO) as advanced cell phones—so you never have to locate a hotspot.
• No monthly wireless bills, service plans, or commitments—we take care of the wireless delivery so you can simply click, buy, and read.
• Includes free wireless access to the planet’s most exhaustive and up-to-date encyclopedia—Wikipedia.org.
• Email your Word documents and pictures (.JPG, .GIF, .BMP, .PNG) to Kindle for easy on-the-go viewing.
• Included in the box: Kindle wireless reader, Book cover, Power adapter, USB 2.0 cable

RECYCLE! June 23, 2008

greatgreengoods.com –
Hand-printed notebook by British brand Sukie. Made out of 100% rescued recycled paper. We all need a place to write down our deepest thought and wildest dreams.
$19.99 at Mod Cloth

recycled vinyl record clock June 23, 2008

Filed Under art, environment | Leave a Comment

hautenature.blogspot.com – I like the more unusual looking records that The Grateful Thread uses for their repurposed clocks.

Fringe JJ Abrams project June 18, 2008

It seems as though another Fall pilot episode has “leaked” it’s way all over the scene. This time from rival ABC, coincidence after all the attention the FOX leak of Fringe and the HBO leak of Pure Blood received? Not likely.

So then, how is it you ask? It’s not bad, it’s not Fringe though!

I took a look at one of the original British episodes that spawned it and I wasn’t particularly more entertained with one over the other. The common consensus online however, seems to be in favour of the British cast, maybe I haven’t given it enough of a chance; although if it is better, it can’t be by much.

Primarily, it follows the events in the life of a cop that gets hit by a car in the present time and “wakes up” in 1972. Unbeknownst to him, he’s actually in a deep coma and 1972 as it were, is all in his arguably intact mind. He receives glimpses of his family and friends by his bedside, manifested in his dreamworld taking the form of TV broadcasts and hallucinations that he struggles to comprehend and justify the very existence of to his coworkers.

I’m not entirely certain how they’re planning on expanding the premise into an entire series, if they do, lets hope they get a little more creative with the dialogue and scenes which are all too bland and cliche.

Group Release: June 18, 2008
Posted…………..: June 18, 2008
To Air…………….: September, 2008
Size……………….: 357.75 MB

View Source

The End of Our Class June 17, 2008

Hi all my writing friends,

Just wanted togive the head up that I will be hosting the writers group at my home in West Hollywood next Tuesday at around 630/7. Hope to see you all. If you need directions or questions, email me. Also Email me if you are comming so I can prepare. thanks 

 

-Lauren

 

Hollywood Hill – This Tuesday June 17, 2008

You and a guest are cordially invited to a Hollywood Hill introductory evening    DATE: Tuesday June 17, 2008   TIME: 7:30pm – 9:30pm            RSVP: rsvp@twokillfour.com                                                                    LOCATION: Hollywood Hill Event Center       (directions will be emailed with your confirmation)                                      As you may know, I am on the strategy council of the Hollywood Hill and it is an organization I am very proud of.  We have made many great strides since the last intro evening I hosted this time last year including opening a new event facility and producing some really outstanding events (see list below of upcoming events).  I would like you to find out more about this extrodinary group and how you can be part of it by coming to an introductory evening and reception this Tuesday.   The Hollywood Hill’s entertainment industry’s largest nonprofit membership organization introducing film, television, and music professionals to the world’s leading innovators and providing collaboration tools that enable them to support social change projects. The Hollywood Hill’s primary focus is on the accelerated deployment of new science and technology innovations into the marketplace and leveraging our power and resources to act as the tipping point on social change projects that will shape a better future. To keep our members informed on a wide variety of social topics, the organization hosts weekly speaker-driven presentations. Wired Magazine and Yahoo! are two of our leading sponsors. A few of our upcoming MEMBERS-ONLY events include: THE NEXT HUMANS: The New Science of Advanced Body Modification with Journalist Quinn Norton on June 18th. HOLLYWOOD MEETS GOOGLE (AT THE BUS STOP) with Google’s Kevin Mathy, L.A. Deputy Mayor Jaime De La Vega, L.A. Metro executives, and Film Studio reps on June 25th. THE LOW DOLLAR EFFECT ON THE STATE OF U.S. FILM FINANCING with a panel of international film financers, on July 15th. WILL WEB START-UPS AND VCs REPLACE THE TV NETWORKS? with a panel including Producer Marshall Herskovitz (Quarterlife), Dmitry Shapiro (Founder, Veoh), and Stan Rogow (Director, Gemini Division) on July 29th. THE FUTURE OF REALITY TV with a panel including RJ Cutler on Aug 5th. DESIGNING A NEW VOTING EXPERIENCE with Silicon Valley OSDV Co-Founder Gregory Miller and others on Aug 12th. For more information please visit www.HHill.org or email Jessica Kill at Jessica@twokillfour.com.

Screen Play Lab June 16, 2008

You can check out their website at screenplaylab.com

Options in Self Publishing! June 16, 2008

 

Free ad Space for headshots June 10, 2008

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send artwork as .jpg to webmaster@rockcitynews.com
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Call 323-461-4700 or email webmaster@laactor.net

Writing Job off UTA listing June 9, 2008

New one-hour drama for a major network seeks a Writer’s Production Assistant.  Duties include craft service, making script copies, running errands, etc, and some special projects as necessary.  Writer’s room based in Burbank.  Please send resume and cover letter to writerpagig@gmail.com  5/20

more fesstivals June 9, 2008

This week, 8 festivals have opened their Calls for Entry, and numerous festivals announce their end-of-month deadlines below, including a whopping 19 exclusive WAB Extended Deadlines – don’t miss your chance to participate in the best events for your film or screenplay. From Earlybirds to Extendeds, the deadlines will soon be here and gone. Seize the day, and submit, submit, submit!

NEWLY OPEN OPPS…
- Foyle Film Festival (N. Ireland – UK)
- EcoFocus Film Festival
- Charleston International Film Festival
- Flatland Film Festival

AND SOME BIG WEEKEND DEADLINES…
- Final Draft’s Big Break Screenplay Contest
- Hawaii International Film Festival
- Hollywood Film Festival
- Rhode Island International Film Festival (RIIFF)

…ALL OVER THE WORLD:
- CHINH INDIA KIDS FILM FESTIVAL (INDIA)
- Cambridge Film Festival (UNITED KINGDOM)
- GLOBIANS Film Festival: 4th world & culture documentary festival (GERMANY)
- Festival du nouveau cinema (CANADA)

GO FOR THE SILVER: SILVER SCREENWRITING COMPETITION
Win a prize worth over $1,000 just for submitting your script to the Silver Screenwriting Competition! Enter your script by June 1, 2008, and become eligible to win a spot in Jim Mercurio’s Killer Screenwriting Class in Los Angeles this June or in New York this July; and that’s just for submitting. The lucky recipient will be announced on Monday, June 2.

Win it all, and walk away with much more. To be announced in September, the Competition’s Grand Prize winner will win a round-trip ticket to Los Angeles, accommodations, meetings with three managers, $2500 in cash, and cocktails with SAVE THE CAT’S Blake Snyder at the Chateau Marmont. Sponsored by The Script Department and Jim Mercurio, former columnist for Creative Screenwriting, this new competition is looking to make some very big waves…and a big difference, for talented emerging screenwriters. Submit today!
View Listing: http://www.withoutabox.com/03film/03t_fin/03t_fin_fest_01over.php?festview=1&festival_id=6992

FIND FILMMAKER FRIENDS…ON THE BOARDS!
www.withoutabox.com/boards
_________________________________________________________________

WELCOME BACK TO OLD FRIENDS:

Flatland Film Festival, Lubbock, TX
June 5, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4217

Boulder Asian Film Festival, Boulder, CO
June 27, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4761

Rockport Film Festival, Rockport, TX
June 30, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6175

Foyle Film Festival, Derry, N. Ireland, UNITED KINGDOM
July 19, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
Earlybird Deadline Fee is NO ENTRY FEE
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1733

Charleston International Film Festival, North Charleston, SC
August 23, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6400

AND WELCOME TO THESE BRAND NEW PARTNERS:

EcoFocus Film Festival, Athens, GA
June 10, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6806

Peace on Earth Film Festival, Chicago, IL
June 23, 2008 – Regular Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/7059

Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival, Philadelphia, PA
July 7, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6998
____________________________________________________________

LAST CHANCE EXTENDED DEADLINES – EXCLUSIVE TO WITHOUTABOX:

Kansas International Film Festival, Kansas City, KS
MAY 28, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4858

Landlocked Film Festival, Iowa City, IA
MAY 30, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5541

Napa Sonoma Wine Country Film Festival (formerly Wine Country Film Festival), Glen Ellen, CA
MAY 30, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1421

Sacramento Film and Music Festival, Sacramento, CA
MAY 30, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3781

2008 SF Shorts: San Francisco Int’l Festival of Short Films, San Francisco, CA
MAY 31, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4705

ACE Film Festival, New York, NY
MAY 31, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5776

San Francisco Frozen Film Festival, San Francisco, CA
MAY 31, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4885

VISIONFEST, New York, NY
MAY 31, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3907

Action/Cut Short Film Competition, Los Angeles, CA
JUNE 01, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3902

Black Earth Film Festival, Galesburg, IL
JUNE 01, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4370

California International Animation Festival, Modesto, CA
JUNE 01, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4693

Downtown Film Festival – Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
JUNE 01, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6879

Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary Ocean Film Festival, Savannah, GA
JUNE 01, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4724

Moondance International Film Festival, Boulder, CO
JUNE 01, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1240

River’s Edge International Film Festival, Paducah, KY
JUNE 01, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4297

Rome International Film Festival, Rome, GA
JUNE 01, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $20
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3360

Southern Winds Film Festival, Tecumseh, OK
JUNE 01, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5232

Eugene International Film Festival, Eugene, OR
JUNE 02, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4794

HollyShorts Film Festival, Hollywood, CA
JUNE 06, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4655
____________________________________________________________

THESE BIG DEADLINES APPROACHING FAST:

Dances With Films, West Hollywood, CA
MAY 28, 2008 – Late Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5932

Austin Asian American Film Festival, Austin, TX
MAY 30, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/7018

Big Bear Lake International Film Festival, Big Bear Lake, CA
MAY 30, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1032

Continental Drift International Short Film Festival, Saint John, CANADA
MAY 30, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4543

Feel Good Film Festival, Sherman Oaks, CA
MAY 30, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6743

Harvest Moon Film Festival, Muncie, IN
MAY 30, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6346

Honolulu International Film Festival, Honolulu, HI
MAY 30, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5505

INDIE FEST USA, Garden Grove, CA
MAY 30, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6055

Movie Script Contest, Burbank, CA
MAY 30, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6912

SoCal Movie Nights – An All Ages Festival, Huntington Beach, CA
MAY 30, 2008 – June Screening Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6986

True West Cinema Festival, Boise, ID
MAY 30, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4978

Urbanworld Film Festival, New York, NY
MAY 30, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5067

2008 Great Lakes Film Association Scriptwriting Competition, Erie, PA
MAY 31, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6699

CHINH INDIA KIDS FILM FESTIVAL, New Delhi, INDIA
MAY 31, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6253

Cambridge Film Festival, Cambridge, UNITED KINGDOM
MAY 31, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/2046

Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, Chicago, IL
MAY 31, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1088

DC Asian Pacific American Film Festival, Washington, DC
MAY 31, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5151

FILMSTOCK, Luton, UNITED KINGDOM
MAY 31, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3909

Feel Good Film Festival, Sherman Oaks, CA
MAY 31, 2008 – Late Deadline
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GLOBIANS Film Festival: 4th world & culture documentary festival, Potsdam, GERMANY
MAY 31, 2008 – Final Globians Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3821

GiRL FeST Hawaii, Honolulu, HI
MAY 31, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3951

HATCH Audiovisual Arts Festival, Bozeman, MT
MAY 31, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3986

Hawaii International Film Festival, Honolulu, HI
MAY 31, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Hermosa Shorts, Hermosa Beach, CA
MAY 31, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Hollywood Film Festival, Hollywood, CA
MAY 31, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1177

Hubbub: The Las Vegas Global Animation Festival, Las Vegas, NV
MAY 31, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6983

Illinois International Film Festival, Westmont, IL
MAY 31, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5039

Independents’ Film Festival, Tampa, FL
MAY 31, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4649

Jersey Shore Film Festival, Deal Park, NJ
MAY 31, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5406

Mid Atlantic Black Film Festival, Norfolk, VA
MAY 31, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6042

Naperville Independent Film Festival, Naperville, IL
MAY 31, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6204

NextFrame: UFVA’s Touring Festival of Int’l Student Film, Philadelphia, PA
MAY 31, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1255

Poppy Jasper Film Festival, Morgan Hill, CA
MAY 31, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4237

San Diego International Children’s Film Festival, San Diego, CA
MAY 31, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4209

St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival, St. John’s, CANADA
MAY 31, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1884

TriMedia Film Festival, Fort Collins, CO
MAY 31, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5129

Visionfest Feature Screenwriting Competition, New York, NY
MAY 31, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4613

YoungCuts Film Festival, Montreal, CANADA
MAY 31, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5021

2008 Eerie Horror Film Festival, Edinboro, PA
JUNE 01, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3958

Action On Film International Film Festival, Long Beach, CA
JUNE 01, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4156

Artivist Film Festival, Hollywood, CA
JUNE 01, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3900

Barbados International Film Festival, St. James, BARBADOS
JUNE 01, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6150

Berks Movie Madness Film Festival, Reading, PA
JUNE 01, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5974

Boulder Adventure Film Festival, Boulder, CO
JUNE 01, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4787

Estes Park Film Festival, Estes Park, CO
JUNE 01, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5537

Fantastic Fest, Austin, TX
JUNE 01, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5104

Final Draft’s Big Break Screenplay Contest, Calabasas, CA
JUNE 01, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4109

Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, Fort Lauderdale, FL
JUNE 01, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1079

Hardacre Film & Cinema Festival, Tipton, IA
JUNE 01, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6025

Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, Hot Springs National Park, AR
JUNE 01, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1187

Jackson Heights NYC Film Festival, Jackson Heights, NY
JUNE 01, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5366

Melbourne Underground Film Festival, South Yarra, AUSTRALIA
JUNE 01, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6016

New Haven Underground Film Festival, Southington, CT
JUNE 01, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4747

New Jersey Film Festival, New Brunswick, NJ
JUNE 01, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6039

Newburyport Documentary Film Festival, Newburyport, MA
JUNE 01, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3960

Non Violence International Film Festival, Cambridge, CANADA
JUNE 01, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5259

Northern California Film Festival, Modesto, CA
JUNE 01, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5773

Radar Hamburg International Independent Film Festival, Hamburg, GERMANY
JUNE 01, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6970

Red Bank International Film Festival, Red Bank, NJ
JUNE 01, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4914

Reel Women Script Competition, Burbank, CA
JUNE 01, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6035

Rhode Island International Film Festival (RIIFF), Newport, RI
JUNE 01, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1402

San Diego Women Film Festival, San Diego, CA
JUNE 01, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4299

Scottsdale International Film Festival, Scottsdale, AZ
JUNE 01, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/2821

ScriptShark Insider Screenplay Competition, Los Angeles, CA
JUNE 01, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4286

Secret City Film Festival, Oak Ridge, TN
JUNE 01, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4518

ShockerFest International Film Festival, Modesto, CA
JUNE 01, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3819

Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival, Birmingham, AL
JUNE 01, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1328

Silver Screenwriting Competition, Los Angeles, CA
JUNE 01, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6992

SoCal Independent Film Festival, Huntington Beach, CA
JUNE 01, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4392

South Asian International Film Festival, New York, NY
JUNE 01, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4441

The Indie Gathering, Parma Hts., OH
JUNE 01, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4257

The Student Shorts Film Festival, Toronto, CANADA
JUNE 01, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5074

Twin City Arts Festival, Kernersville, NC
JUNE 01, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6779

United Nations Association Film Festival, Stanford, CA
JUNE 01, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4998

Very Short Movies Festival, Los Angeles, CA
JUNE 01, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4556

Wildwood By The Sea Film Festival, North Wildwood, NJ
JUNE 01, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5573

Austin Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival, Austin, TX
JUNE 02, 2008 – Late Deadline (Experimental)
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5832

Bahamas International Film Festival, Nassau, BAHAMAS
JUNE 02, 2008 – Late Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3580

Frame Damage Animation Festival, Denver, CO
JUNE 02, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6838

New York Television Festival, New York, NY
JUNE 02, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4241

Northern California Film Festival, Modesto, CA
JUNE 02, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5773

Sacramento Horror Film Festival, Sacramento, CA
JUNE 02, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5757

San Diego Film Festival, San Diego, CA
JUNE 02, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3261

Savannah Film Festival, Savannah, GA
JUNE 02, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1313

The Twin Cities Underground Film Festival, Saint Paul, MN
JUNE 02, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4860

Tucson Film & Music Festival, Los Angeles, CA
JUNE 02, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5791

Woodstock Film Festival, Woodstock, NY
JUNE 02, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1233

American Black Film Festival, New York, NY
JUNE 03, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1006

Dallas Video Festival, Dallas, TX
JUNE 03, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5775

MICROBUDGET MOVIEFEST, Oakland, CA
JUNE 04, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6875

Action On Film International Film Festival, Los Angeles, CA
JUNE 05, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4156

Flatland Film Festival, Lubbock, TX
JUNE 05, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4217

Atlantic Film Festival, Halifax, CANADA
JUNE 06, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1582

Dallas Video Festival, Dallas, TX
JUNE 06, 2008 – Late Deadline (Video Art)
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5775

Dragon*Con Independent Short Film Festival, Atlanta, GA
JUNE 06, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3380

Global Peace Film Festival, Orlando, FL
JUNE 06, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3941

Jersey Shore Film Festival, Deal Park, NJ
JUNE 06, 2008 – Middlegate Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5406

Raindance Film Festival, London, UNITED KINGDOM
JUNE 06, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1550

Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival & Lecture Series, New York, NY
JUNE 06, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6401

The 2008 Spooky Movie Film Festival, Arlington, VA
JUNE 06, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5311
____________________________________________________________

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Cannes fights for a cause May 23, 2008

As a jury member for this year’s Cannes Film Festival, not only does Portman have to attend all of the often long and difficult films in selection, she also has to look fabulous on the red carpet for evening premieres. Then still her work isn’t done. Late into the evening Portman has been making appearances at premiere after-parties and gala benefits.

Last night, for example, Portman and fellow juror Alexandra Maria Lara  attended AmfAR’s Cinema Against AIDS gala (full coverage by The Envelope’s Pete Hammond here) where the two were implored by host Harvey Weinstein to vote for Steven Soderbergh’s “Che.” Jury president Sean Penn later turned up for the AmfAR after-party where he was probably subject to similar campaigning.

So how will Natalie Portman, Sean Penn, Alexandra Maria Lara and the rest of the Cannes jury vote?

There is an unending amount of speculation about which film will win the Palme d’Or this year. One camp argues that, given jury president Sean Penn’s great interest in Latin American, marked particularly by his public support of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, “Che” is a shoo-in to win. Yet another camp insists that Ari Folman’s animated Israeli quasi-doc “Waltz With Bashir” is in it to win it based on the film’s innovative story-telling style, powerful antiwar message, and unique personal point of view. Still others will tell you that this is finally the year that Clint Eastwood will win Cannes, after a handful of tries, with “Changeling“ his adroit period thriller about a single mother’s battle (Angelina Jolie) against corrupt Los Angeles civic leaders in the late-1920s.

The list of contenders and the arguments go on, but we will not know until Sunday when the Cannes jury reveals their picks. Until then, here are photos from Cannes, including coverage from last night’s big AmfAR’s Cinema Against AIDS gala, in addition to a few red carpet fashion photos from the Palais.

– Sheigh Crabtree

Yeah for healthy dog treats – for the environment and your dog May 22, 2008

treehugger.com – Bark for Peace! dog treats are more than wholesome, organic, non-GMO, gluten-free, corn-free snacks packaged in natural, biodegradable cellophane with labels printed on 100% PCW paper that are carbon-neutral shipped and delivered – they embody a message about saving the world and the love that it will take to get us there. “We think peace is more than the absence of war, rather we hope and work toward the absence of suffering and the flourishing of all! Our dogs show us peace is: rambunctious joy, relentless love, abundant sharing, creative compassion and ever-extended forgiveness,” says B4P founder Lisa Knaggs.

Recently, I had the opportunity to share some of that B4P love. When I returned from last week’s Co-Op America Green Business Conference I was toting two different kinds of tasty eco-treats, one for me and a B4P sample for my puppy Paul. Item #1 contained 100% organic sweet potatoes, tamari, coconut oil, ginger, garlic, turmeric and cayenne; Item #2 was made of 100% organic dates, cashews, goji Berries, lemon juice, and vanilla (take a look after the jump to see which was which).

If you guessed Item #1 was the people treat you might be surprised to learn that those are the full ingredients in the Bark For Peace Sweet Potato Jerky Chews (the other snack was a Cliff Nectar Bar). The real test came when I offered Paul a taste of the jerky chew. Our pup is a bit unusual in his blasé attitude about food so when he went all beggy on me after his first taste I knew this was a real winner, one of the learn-a-new-trick fast variety.

If only there were more goodies – for pets and for their owners – that took as much care to make the world a better place.

Woof! (peace out)

Check out more eco-goodness for your pets on our How To Green Your Pet green guide.

RHODE ISLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL May 20, 2008

In the Spotlight this week is the 12th Annual RHODE ISLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (RIIFF), a highly prestigious event consistently ranked as one of the top film festivals in the United States, and cited by Moviemaker Magazine as one of the “Top 25 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee.” An Academy Award-qualifying event, RIIFF takes place in venues throughout Rhode Island.

Ripe with opportunity, RIIFF is packed with tributes, seminars, and symposia, in addition to screenings, parties, and networking opportunities, all designed to foster connections among filmmakers, industry, and the film-going public. Three films which premiered at RIIFF have won Academy Awards, and another ten have been nominated, while many have gained distribution with companies such as HBO and Showtime.

The Festival hosts a number of high-profile premieres and international films, and yet more than 95% of its program comes from direct submissions, and not from other festivals. To quote Chris Gore, RIIFF is “one of the best international film festivals and top 10 short film festivals in the United States. RIIFF provides the kind of intimate festival experience that will change your life. Don’t miss it.”

   

UPCOMING DEADLINE
June 1, 2008 – Late Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5 off this deadline.

MISSION AND OBJECTIVE
The Rhode Island International Film Festival is dedicated to the creation of opportunities for artistic interaction and exchange. The Festival’s goal is to recognize achievement and innovation in a variety of filmmaking and storytelling disciplines while providing an opportunity to secure wider distribution.

MORE ABOUT THE FESTIVAL
RIIFF is the largest festival in New England, and in 2007 alone, showcased 320 cinematic works submitted from over 70 countries, and 34 states in the United States. Attending the Festival were more than 230 filmmakers, producers, cast and crew.

In addition to Oscar qualification in the shorts category, RIIFF grants over $50,000 USD in cash and prizes to winning filmmakers. Past recipients and attendees include Julie Andrews, Zach Braff, Steve Buscemi, Bobby and Peter Farrelly, Ben Stiller, Richard Jenkins, Lloyd Kaufman, Joe Pantoliano, and Matt Dillon. Accepted filmmakers receive reduced rates on area hotels, inns and B&B’s, and also have the option to stay free of charge with community hosts.

Submit your film to RIIFF today to partake in one of the most significant festivals in the United States.

Buy Designer Laptops for a Good Cause May 19, 2008

gizmodo.com – PC Magazine has partnered with HP and a slew of designers to create nine “computerlicious” (one-of-a-kind) laptops for a charity auction. Available on eBay now (and currently up to about $100 a pop), 100% of the auctions’ proceeds will go to The National Cristina Foundation (they donate used PCs to schools and non-profits). If you’ve been looking for a good way to make your new laptop a tax deductible endeavor (or if you just really like Paul Frank), head on over to eBay and do some bidding. [eBay and PCMag]

Simulus Payment Schedule- everyone can find this helpful! May 19, 2008

Stimulus Payment Schedule for Tax Returns
Received and Processed by April 15

Direct Deposit Payments
If the last two digits of your Social Security number are:	Your economic stimulus payment deposit should be sent to your bank account by:
00 – 20	May 2
21 – 75	May 9
76 – 99	May 16
Paper Check
If the last two digits of your Social Security number are:	Your check should be in the mail by:
00 – 09	May 16
10 – 18	May 23
19 – 25	May 30
26 – 38	June 6
39 – 51	June 13
52 – 63	June 20
64 – 75	June 27
76 – 87	July 4
88 – 99	July 11

Trends in Entertainment May 16, 2008

Trends in Arts and Entertainment

Are jobs increasing within your industry? You can find out now! Each quarter, we collect and analyze business professional and corporate member information and report current job and candidate trends across a variety of industries. This information allows you to stay up-to-date on the very latest trends in your industry and make more informed career decisions. Located below are just a few employment trends in your specific area of interest from first quarter of 2008.

Top 10 positions Graphic Designer Designer Creative Writer Multi-Media Artist Illustrator Commercial Designer Animator Painter Editor Craft Artist

Politics May 14, 2008

NEW YORK – Hillary Rodham Clinton’s shellacking of Barack Obama in the West Virginia primary Tuesday may burnish her image as a champion of the economically disadvantaged and bolster her determination to campaign through the final contests. But it does little to alter the unforgiving political landscape she faces.

The former first lady’s lopsided victory in West Virginia had long been expected, given the demographic makeup of the state: It is 95 percent white, has no urban core and counts among its residents some of the poorest and least educated of any state. It also had just 28 delegates at stake.

Clinton has performed strongly among white working-class voters throughout the campaign in states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, while Obama has struggled to adapt his message of hope and change to address the economic anxieties those voters face. That, in turn, has allowed the former first lady to openly question Obama’s chances in a general election against Republican John McCain.

In her speech Tuesday night, Clinton was expected to make a direct pitch to superdelegates on the electability argument, hoping they would reconsider the two candidacies.

The Associated Press made its West Virginia call based on surveys of voters as they left the polls. Not surprisingly, even before voting was done, the Clinton campaign seized on the expected outcome there to suggest Obama is having trouble winning primaries in important swing states.

“Hillary has predicted victory against Sen. McCain in West Virginia based on the strength of her economic message,” the campaign said in a memo to reporters. “Given the attempts by our opponent and some in the media to declare this race over, any significant increase in voter turnout, coupled with a decisive Clinton victory, would send a strong message that Democrats remain excited and energized by Hillary’s candidacy.”

But none of that changes the central problem for Clinton: Since her loss in North Carolina and narrow victory in Indiana last Tuesday, the New York senator has been battling the growing realization that her once-formidable candidacy may have finally run out of steam.

Saddled with more than $20 million in debt and facing a near mathematical impossibility of catching Obama among pledged delegates and in the popular vote, Clinton has watched a steady stream of superdelegates migrate toward the Illinois senator despite his apparent problems winning key party constituencies.

Superdelegate Roy Romer, a former Colorado governor and Democratic National Committee chairman under President Clinton, announced his support for Obama on Tuesday.

While Romer acknowledged a “great personal friendship” with Hillary Clinton, he said he believed the time had come to move forward to the general election.

“As I watched the campaign unfold, I realized there was a different kind of winning possibility with Senator Obama,” Romer said. “I became convinced Senator Obama is the most electable of the two.”

Obama, flush with cash and running a robust campaign in the final primary states, has turned much of his focus to McCain and the general election contest. He was spending Tuesday night in Missouri, an important swing state, before flying to Michigan on Wednesday.

Clinton’s advisers say she is well aware of the daunting task she faces but wants to carry on, believing she owes it to her supporters and to the voters eager to participate in the remaining contests.

Clinton is favored to win Kentucky’s primary next Tuesday and Puerto Rico’s on June 1. She also wants to see the stalemate over disputed results in Michigan and Florida resolved, hopefully at a meeting of the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee May 31.

Steve Grossman, a former DNC chairman who is supporting Clinton, says she has more than earned the right to continue her fight to the finish.

“Hillary, who is absolutely mindful of the daunting nature of the math, feels an obligation to her supporters and a belief that her voters have to be major participants in the fall campaign for a Democrat to win,” Grossman said. “She’s determined not to break faith with those voters — not just women, but a lot of them are. It’s about fairness and respect for Hillary and her army of activists, fairness and respect for the voters who’ve yet to be counted.”

302 Writing Prompts May 14, 2008

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80
81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95

96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108
109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120

121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132
133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144

145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156
157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168

169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180
181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203
204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214

 

215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225
226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236

237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247
248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258

259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269
270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280

281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291
292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302

Opportunities for travel writers May 14, 2008

Part 1:
Opportunities for travel writers

Travel and writing go together like passports and visas. Most major newspapers have travel sections, dozens of magazines are devoted to travel, book publishers churn out guidebooks to destinations great and small, and books by authors like Paul Theroux and Peter Mayle have helped to breathe new life into the long-dormant travel narrative or “armchair travel” genre.

This doesn’t mean that travel writers are getting rich. (In fact, most aren’t.) But it does mean there’s a large audience for travel prose. You can reach that audience if you know your subject and can bring it to life through good writing.

Guidebooks

The guidebook market is tough to crack, simply because there already are too many guidebooks chasing after a finite number of buyers. However, opportunities do come up from time to time. A couple of years ago, for example, Rough Guides used its Web site to recruit writers for a U.S. guidebook series. And I was commissioned to write Buying Travel Services on the Internet, a book for McGraw-Hill largely because of my Europe for Visitors travel site.

Self-publishing can be a viable approach in tourist markets that aren’t large enough to interest the major national publishers. An entrepreneurial writer in a place like Washington’s San Juan Islands, the Black Hills of South Dakota, Northern Minnesota, or Nova Scotia might be able to earn a modest income from a privately published guidebook.

(CAUTION: Before trying this approach, analyze the size of your local tourist market and make sure you don’t already have competition. Also, you’ll need chutzpah and marketing skills to win distribution through local bookstores, visitors’ bureaus, and businesses frequented by tourists.)

Travel narrative

In the “armchair travel” genre, you need two things to succeed: an interesting topic and the ability to write a nonfiction book that reads much like a novel.

A destination that’s off the beaten path is more likely to interest an editor than yet another book about Paris or Tuscany. Still, a new angle on an old subject might work. An American’s lively account of two years as a chef’s apprentice in French restaurants might well find a publisher. Similarly, a three-month tour of Northern Italy on horseback could be intriguing to editors and readers.Travel Writing for
Pleasure and Profit
Continued from page 1

 

Magazines are a highly competitive market. The top magazines assign most articles to experienced travel writers, while smaller magazines don’t pay much and usually cover niches that you may not have the qualifications (or the interest) to write about.

Still, surprises do happen. Juli Van Zyverden, a librarian who produced a not-for-profit Web site called the Venice Italy Index until recently, was asked to write an article on Venice for a major airline magazine after an editor saw her Web pages.

Newspapers can be a good market for freelancers. The pay is usually low, but you can sometimes sell the same article to newspapers in different cities–unless you’re dealing with one of the growing number of newspaper chains that require freelancers to license all rights or, worse yet, insist on “work for hire” contracts that give copyright ownership to the newspaper.

As with most travel writing, you’ll have the best chance of selling an article to a newspaper if you’re writing about a destination that hasn’t received extensive coverage or that the newspaper’s own staff hasn’t visited. Again, a new angle on an old topic might work–e.g., a first-person account of visiting Paris with your dog and new baby.

To find magazine and newspaper markets for your work, see Writer’s Market (published by Writer’s Digest Books and available in most public libraries).

Advertising and corporate work

Somebody has to write the travel literature that fuels demand for airline seats, hotel rooms, tour packages, and other services of the travel trade.

Corporate incentive travel is another growing market. When your local insurance company is sending its top 200 agents to Hawaii or Hong Kong, it needs someone to write a brochure that makes the destination enticing to agents and their spouses.

If you can tap into these markets, you can expect to earn anywhere from $20 or $25 an hour for low-budget work to $75 an hour and up for major corporate assignments. To find such work, assemble a portfolio of your clippings. Then show it, with your résumé, to potential buyers such as advertising agencies, art studios, corporate marketing-communications departments, and your local Convention & Visitors’ Bureau. (Don’t worry if you don’t have printed samples–instead, read the “Web sites” section on page 3.)Travel Writing for
Pleasure and Profit

The Web is a hotbed of travel writing, both paid and noncommercial.

Commercial sites fall into two categories:

Sites that recycle content from traditional print media. Guidebook sites like Lonely Planet and magazine sites like Travel Holiday fall under this heading.

Sites that buy or develop original content. Microsoft Expedia, Travelocity, and other e-commerce sites develop material in-house or hire freelancers, although some use content from third-party sites. Travel “content sites” (similar to online magazines) may use freelancers or contractors to create travel material.

Non-commercial Web sites don’t supply folding money, but they can showcase your work and–if you’re lucky–lead to paying assignments.

For example, you might put together your own travel guide to a favorite destination. (My profitable Europe and Venice travel sites grew out of The Baby Boomer’s Venice, which I created as part of a review of FrontPage 1.1 for Boardwatch Magazine in 1996.) Or you could write a travelogue, possibly illustrated by your vacation photos or sketches.

Many large Web sites offer free hosting of user Web pages, but be careful–some insist on displaying annoying pop-up ads with every page.

If you’re writing a travelogue, another possibility is to submit it to a travelogue site like Travelpod, Rec.Travel Library, and TrainWeb Rail Travelogues

 

 

 

 

Writers’ Confrences May 12, 2008

This is a list of worldwide conferences for writers of all genres.

 Canada

• Shuswap International Writers’ Festival – Salmon Arm, British Columbia
• Surrey International Writers’ Conference – Surrey, British Columbia

United States

• Algonkian Writer Conferences – Arizona, California, Massachusetts, Virginia
• Art of the Wild Writers’ Conference – Olympic Valley, California
• |Authors of the Flathead conference Kalispell, Montana
• Book Passage Children’s Writers & Illustrators Conference:: Corte Madera, California:: [[1]]
• Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference:: Corte Madera, California:: [[2]]
• Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference:: Corte Madera, California:: [[3]]
• Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference – Middlebury, Vermont
• Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference – Colrain, Massachusetts
• Colorado Christian Writers Conference – Estes Park, Colorado
• The Frost Place Poetry Conferences – Franconia, New Hampshire
• Georgia Writers SpringFest Conference Kennesaw, Georgia
• Jackson Hole Writers Conference – Jackson Hole, Wyoming
• Key West Literary Seminar – Key West, Florida
• NYC Pitch and Shop Writers Conference – New York, New York
• Pikes Peak Writers Conference – Colorado Springs, Colorado
• Santa Fe Writers Conference – Santa Fe, New Mexico
• Sewanee Writers’ Conference – Sewanee, Tennessee
• Southampton Writers Conference – Southampton, New York
• Southern California Writers’ Conference
• Southern Women Writer’s Conference – Berry College, Rome, Georgia
• Squaw Valley Writer’s Conference – Olympic Valley, California
• Women Writers Conference – Lexington, Kentucky: Kentucky Women Writers Conference, Lexington, Kentucky, September 11–13, 2008.
• WordSmitten Writing Conference:: St. Petersburg, Florida:: [[4]]
• Writers in Paradise – St. Petersburg, Florida [[5]]

screenwriting competition May 12, 2008

LAST CALL FOR ENTRIES FOR THE WRITERS PLACE SCREENWRITING COMPETITION

Final Deadline: May 15, 2008

Full-Length Script, Single Entry (not more than 130pp) $65
Full-Length Script, Multiple Entry (not more than 2 scripts) $105
Teleplay/Short, Single Entry (not more than 40pp) $45
Teleplay/Short, Multiple Entry (not more than 2 scripts) $75

Finalists announced on June 1, 2008
Winners announced on July 1, 2008

See our screenplay contest page located at
http://thewritersplace.org/screenplay_contest.shtml.

GOOD LUCK AND KEEP WRITING!

James E. Fischer / Paula C. Brancato
www.thewritersplace.org

Script Coverage May 12, 2008

If you ever considered getting professional screenplay coverage…

Here’s why you should choose Scriptapalooza Script Coverage.
We are considered the best coverage service in the industry by
agents, managers, producers and screenwriters.

Your complete script is analyzed – from page 1 to the last page!
We do coverage on screenplays and novels too…

www.scriptcoverage.com

A writer can’t afford NOT to have his script professionally
analyzed and critiqued prior to submitting it to the
industry for two major reasons: Industry Response and
Script/Writer Development.

INDUSTRY RESPONSE: Getting industry feedback and
industry impression of your work without getting a
“pass” is essential. No matter what the submission
channels it goes through in the industry, it will be
covered by a reader. Prior to going out to the industry
with your script, you want to make sure you are putting
forward the best version of your script possible.
This script is your calling card, your writing sample. It
will get into doors before you do and you want to make
sure it creates opportunities for you.

SCRIPT AND WRITER DEVELOPMENT: The priceless feedback
a professional reader can give the writer as it relates to
their script cannot be found in any screenwriting book.
You may know the basics, but how to apply your story
within that framework is the difference between an
attention grabbing script and one that misses the mark
entirely and is passed over. For a writer setting out to
have a long-term writing career it isn’t just about the one
big sale, although that is part of it. It is about being a
fantastic writer and having longevity in the professional
screenwriting world. In order to continue improving, not
only the script, but the writer as well, having your script
get coverage is one of the best steps towards both goals.

We are offering:

Regular Coverage – $175

Development Coverage – $250

www.scriptcoverage.com

LA ACTOR DEBUT OPPROTUNITY May 12, 2008

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with your basic info

Attach headshot as .jpg or .pdf
any size under 2 MB is OK

Call 323-461-4700 for more info
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Deadline is Tomorrow
May 13th, for the First Issue,
the debut issue of L.A. ACTOR
35,000 Circulation in Los Angeles – Full Page Color: $575
Headshot Special: $99 – w/ this email: FREE
Call 323-461-4700 or email webmaster@laactor.net

festival updates May 8, 2008

This week, 11 new festivals are ready and waiting for your submissions,
joining dozens of opportunities already open and some that are set to
expire in the next few days. Check them out, and submit your film or
screenplay before it’s too late!

JUST A SAMPLING:
- Festival du nouveau cinema (CANADA)
- Napa Sonoma Wine Country Film Festival
- American Black Film Festival
- Action/Cut Short Film Competition
- International Documentary Association Awards
- DocuWeek Theatrical Documentary Showcase
- Independent Television Festival

AND SOME LGBT OPPS:
- Austin Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival
- Reeling: The Chicago Lesbian & Gay International Film Festival
- Clip (Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival)

Read on for more fests and competitions, and submit, submit, submit!

WABEES A BIG HIT AT NASHVILLE
Withoutabox filmmakers weren’t singing any sad country tunes at 39th
Annual NASHVILLE FILM FESTIVAL this year because they managed to nab
more
than 70% of the honors!

WABees won a wide variety of awards that ranged from the Reel Current
Award,  presented by Al Gore, to the Golden Opportunity Award For Best
College Student Short, sponsored by Vanderbilt University. Triple
kudos
to Barry Simmons’ SONS OF LWALA, which earned an impressive three
awards – the Audience Award For Best Narrative Feature, the Tennessee
Independent Spirit Award for the Best Feature-Length Film Directed By
a
Tennessee Resident, and the NPT (Nashville Public Television) Human
Spirit
Award.

Congrats to all of the big winners, and everyone who was accepted to
this prestigious event. Missed the deadline for 2008? Submit your film
next year, to be part of the 40th Nashville Film Festival in 2009!

FIND YOUR OWN PATH TO SUCCESS…ON THE BOARDS!
The Withoutabox Messageboards are a great way to research your film’s
best path for success in the festival circuit…from Nashville to
Norway
and everywhere in between.
http://www.withoutabox.com/boards

___________________________________________________________________________

WELCOME BACK TO OLD FRIENDS:

International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival, Phoenix, AZ
May 22, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4417

Arpa International Film Festival, Los Angeles, CA
June 16, 2008 – Regular Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1442

Brilliant Light International Film Festival of Los Angeles, Los
Angeles, CA
June 20, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5088

Festival du nouveau cinema, Montreal, CANADA
June 30, 2008 – Regular Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6099

Sacramento International Film Festival, Sacramento, CA
June 30, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3816

Santa Fe Film Festival, Santa Fe, NM
July 5, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3811

Myrtle Beach International Film Festival, Myrtle Beach, SC
July 11, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4212

Anchorage International Film Festival, Anchorage, AK
July 15, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/2621

East Lansing Film Festival, East Lansing, MI
October 1, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1168

AND WELCOME TO THESE BRAND NEW PARTNERS:

Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival & Lecture Series, New
York,
NY
May 19, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6401

American Black Film Festival, New York, NY
June 3, 2008 – Regular Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1006

___________________________________________________________________________

LAST CHANCE EXTENDED DEADLINES – EXCLUSIVE TO WITHOUTABOX:

Blue Plum Animation Festival, Johnson City, TN
MAY 07, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5856

DFW Indie Club Gong Show, Dallas, TX
MAY 09, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4896

Bayou City Inspirational Film Festival, Houston, TX
MAY 10, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6415

DC Shorts Film Festival, Washington, DC
MAY 10, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4374

HDFEST, New York, NY
MAY 12, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5780

Milwaukee International Film Festival, Milwaukee, WI
MAY 13, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $20
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3789

Bronx Independent Film Festival, Bronx, NY
MAY 15, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5024

NYC PictureStart Film Festival, New York, NY
MAY 15, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3999

Woods Hole Film Festival, Woods Hole, MA
MAY 15, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1230

Gaia Film Festival, Boulder, CO
MAY 16, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
Upgraded projects save $15
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4235
________________________________________

THESE BIG DEADLINES APPROACHING FAST:

HATCH Audiovisual Arts Festival, Bozeman, MT
MAY 08, 2008 – Regular Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3986

International Documentary Association Awards (IDA), Los Angeles, CA
MAY 08, 2008 – Regular Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3320

New Hampshire Film Festival, Portsmouth, NH
MAY 08, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3777

ACE Film Festival, New York, NY
MAY 09, 2008 – Late Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5776

Central Florida Film Festival, Orlando, FL
MAY 09, 2008 – Regular Deadline
Upgraded projects save $10
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5633

DocuWeek Theatrical Documentary Showcase, Los Angeles, CA
MAY 09, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1176

New Orleans Film Festival, New Orleans, LA
MAY 09, 2008 – Late Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1271

Wyoming Short Film Contest, Cheyenne, WY
MAY 09, 2008 – WAB Extended Deadline
NO ENTRY FEE.
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6771

Detroit Windsor International Film Festival, Detroit, MI
MAY 10, 2008 – Late Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6091

Boulder Adventure Film Festival, Boulder, CO
MAY 11, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4787

FirstGlance Feature and Short Screenplay Competition, Los Angeles, CA
MAY 11, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4311

Washougal International Film Festival, Washougal, WA
MAY 12, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6905

Reeling: The Chicago Lesbian & Gay International Film Festival,
Chicago, IL
MAY 13, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
NO ENTRY FEE
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1082

Clip (Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival), Tampa, FL
MAY 14, 2008 – Regular Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1372

Dances With Films, West Hollywood, CA
MAY 14, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5932

Action/Cut Short Film Competition, Studio City, CA
MAY 15, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3902

Austin Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival, Austin, TX
MAY 15, 2008 – Regular Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5832

California International Animation Festival, Modesto, CA
MAY 15, 2008 – Late Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4693

Chicago International REEL Shorts Festival, Chicago, IL
MAY 15, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3925

Chicago Underground Film Festival, Chicago, IL
MAY 15, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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DC Labor FilmFest, Washington, DC
MAY 15, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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KIDS FIRST! Film Festival, Santa Fe, NM
MAY 15, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Mill Valley Film Festival, Mill Valley, CA
MAY 15, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Moondance International Film Festival, Boulder, CO
MAY 15, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Moving Stories Short Film Festival, Toronto, CANADA
MAY 15, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6660

Napa Sonoma Wine Country Film Festival (formerly Wine Country Film
Festival), Glen Ellen, CA
MAY 15, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1421

NewFilmmakers, New York, NY
MAY 15, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4533

Newburyport Documentary Film Festival, Newburyport, MA
MAY 15, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3960

Ojai Film Festival, Ojai, CA
MAY 15, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1267

Red Bank International Film Festival, Red Bank, NJ
MAY 15, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4914

Rhode Island International Film Festival (RIFF), Newport, RI
MAY 15, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/1402

Rome International Film Festival, Rome, GA
MAY 15, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3360

Route 66 Film Festival, Springfield, IL
MAY 15, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6128

San Diego International Children’s Film Festival, San Diego, CA
MAY 15, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4209

Small Town Film Festival, Chatham, CANADA
MAY 15, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4905

URBIS ANIMAX, Christchurch, NEW ZEALAND
MAY 15, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5566

VISIONFEST, New York, NY
MAY 15, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3907

West Hollywood International Film Festival, West Hollywood, CA
MAY 15, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6850

Writers Place Screenwriting Competition, Pensacola, FL
MAY 15, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4564

Colorado Environmental Film Festival, Golden, CO
MAY 16, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/5513

Dragon*Con Independent Short Film Festival, Atlanta, GA
MAY 16, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3380

Eugene International Film Festival, Eugene, OR
MAY 16, 2008 – Late Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4794

Film Series at Cine Gear Expo, Los Angeles, CA
MAY 16, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6900

Global Peace Film Festival, Orlando, FL
MAY 16, 2008 – Regular Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/3941

Harvest Moon Film Festival, Muncie, IN
MAY 16, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6346

HollyShorts Film Festival, Hollywood, CA
MAY 16, 2008 – Late Deadline
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Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4655

Independent Television Festival, Los Angeles, CA
MAY 16, 2008 – Regular Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4557

La Femme Film Festival, Beverly Hills, CA
MAY 16, 2008 – Earlybird Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4060

Montclair International Film Festival, Montclair, NJ
MAY 16, 2008 – Late Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4585

Planet Ant Film and Video Festival, Hamtramck, MI
MAY 16, 2008 – Late Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4306

Roxbury Film Festival, Roxbury, MA
MAY 16, 2008 – Late Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/4488

The 7th annual Forecastle Festival, Louisville, KY
MAY 16, 2008 – Regular Deadline
Upgraded projects save $5
Watch List: http://www.withoutabox.com/watch/6543

Simple Writing Tricks for Easy Reading May 7, 2008

Writing Tricks That makes your screenplay easier to read…

o        SOUND EFFECTS… Sound effects are written in ALL CAPS but sometimes there’s confusion between what constitutes a sound effect and what constitutes dialog. For instance: Does Shelly scream or SCREAM? Does the dog bark or BARK? One simple way to remember the answer is to ask your self if the source of the sound is ON-SCREEN.  If Shelly is on-screen when she screams, then it would not be capitalized. If she SCREAMS from another room, then it would be capitalized. If the dog is on-screen when it barks, then you wouldn’t capitalize it. However, if the dog BARKS outside, then you would. Get it?

 

o        O.S. – V.O. – O.C. … These terms sometimes confuse the writer. O.S stands for off-screen or out-of shot and is used in FEATURE FILM writing when the speaking character is talking but from another room or area of the set that’s not seen in the current shot. V.O. stands for voice-over. Characters in the scene usually can’t hear the dialog because it’s said mainly for the audience’s benefit. It’s often used when someone is reflecting (to us) about the past, or when a character is reading a letter (we may hear whoever wrote the letter reading it to us aloud). O.C. stands for off-camera and is used in the same circumstance as O.S. except only for television.

 

o        PHONE CONVERSATIONS… These can be a real pain.  When you cut back and forth between  two locations with scene headings,  the flow of the story is interrupted. One great way to get around this is to set up the first scene and when you cut to the second location, you’ll set this up too. As soon as you’ve written your brief descript of the location, you’ll want to add (INTERCUT PHONE SEQUENCE). Then carry on the conversation as you normally would if both characters were talking face to face. When the conversation is over, the character your left describing will dictate which location finishes out the scene. Get it?

 

o        TRAVELING SHOTS WITH CARS AND DIALOG… Use INT/EXT in your scene heading. For instance your scene heading may look like this: INT/EXT  CAR/ROAD – DAY  then write your description including outside happenings and inside dialog.

 

o        FOREIGN LANGUAGES… when you’re using a foreign language that you don’t know, simply add just prior to the dialog in narrative something like this: (She speaks ITALIAN, subtitled). Of course, you’ll use whatever is appropriate for your situation.

 

o        WHEN A CHARACTER SINGS A SONG… Under the character name in dialog you’ll want to “direct” the actor by adding (singing). Then when you place the song lyrics in the dialog, USE ALL CAPS and break the lines, if possible, where they break in the lyrics.

 

o        MONTAGE OF SHOTS… these scenes are very brief, usually do not include any dialog, and usually center around a common theme. For instance, your characters may be spending their time shopping at the mall. You want to show them with each other purchasing various items at a couple different stores but you don’t want to set up each experience as an entirely different scene. For instance:

 

BEGIN SHOPPING MALL MONTAGE. DEPARTMENT STORE COSMETIC COUNTER. Shelly’s makeup is done by a professional. Her mother’s next. FINE DRESS SHOP. Pearl waits for Shelly outside the dressing room. Shelly appears in a gorgeous Chanel gown.  MALL. Pearl and Shelly hurry toward the jewelry shop. They laugh as they struggle with bags bursting with purchases.

    Then proceed to your next scene heading. between

 

 

heading.

Sample Submission Agreement May 7, 2008

**************this is a sample agreement and you should consult legal councel before signing any documents******************

 

Date:

Title of Material Submitted:

 

Producer

Studio/Production Company

Address

City, State Zip

 

Dear (producer’s name – or company name):

I am today submitting for possible use by you my material described as follows:

Title:____________________  Form of Material:____________________

Brief summary of Theme or Plot:__________________________________

___________________________________________________________

Such submission is made pursuant and subject to the following terms and conditions:

1. I understand that because of your position in the entertainment industry you receive numerous unsolicited submissions of ideas, formats, recordings, presentations, stories, suggestions and the like which may be similar to those developed by you, your partners, associates, your employees or to those otherwise available to you.  I further understand that you have adopted the policy with respect to unsolicited submissions of material, or refusing to accept, consider or review such material unless the person submitting such material has signed an agreement in form substantially the same as this. I specifically acknowledge that you would refuse to accept, consider or otherwise review the Material in the absence of my acceptance of each and all provisions of this agreement.  It is understood that no confidential relationship is established by my submitting the Material to you hereunder.  I shall retain all rights to submit this or similar material to persons other than you except as may be otherwise set forth and made a part hereof.
2. In consideration of my execution of this agreement and of the submission concurrently herewith, you agree to cause the Material to be reviewed.
3. I have retained at least one copy or duplicate of the Material submitted to you concurrently herewith.  You will make a reasonable effort to return the Material to me on my request, or otherwise make it available for my pickup.  However, you shall not be responsible to me, financially or otherwise, for any inadvertent loss of, or damage or destruction to the Material.  I understand that your returning the Material to me shall not terminate or affect any rights or obligations under this agreement.
4. I agree that you have no obligations to me with respect to the Material except as in this agreement set forth, and that no other obligations exist or shall be deemed to exist.  I further acknowledge that at this time you have no intent to compensate me in any way and I have no expectation of receiving any compensation.  However, you agree that, except as provided in Paragraph 5 below, you will not use the Material unless you and I hereafter mutually agree upon terms which are made a part hereof.
5. If the Material or any elements thereof submitted by me is not new, unique, concrete, or novel and/or is in the public domain and/or does not constitute protectable property and/or is not original with me, I agree that you have the right to use such elements without any obligation to me whatsoever.  Without limiting the foregoing, I claim rights in the title of the Material only as regards its use in connection with the Material.
6. In the event any litigation should be instituted under or pursuant to any provision of this agreement or otherwise with respect to the material, the unsuccessful party shall bear all costs and expenses incurred by the successful party.  This agreement shall be construed and interpreted pursuant to the laws of the State of California.  Any award favorable to me shall be limited to a monetary award which shall either (a) bear a reasonable relationship to monies normally paid by you for similar material or elements, or (b) be an amount equal to fair market value therefore, whichever amount the Court shall deem appropriate in the circumstances.  Said award in either event shall be measured by monies normally paid by you for similar material or elements or fair market value as of the date of this agreement.
7. I hereby warrant and represent that: (a) the Material was created and is solely owned by me and no other person, firm or corporation has any right, title or interest therein or thereto; (b) I have full right to submit same to you upon all the terms and conditions stated herein; and (c) the description of the Material as herein specified contains all the elements thereof.  I will forever indemnify you from any and all claims, loss or liability (including reasonable attorney’s fees) that may be asserted against you or incurred by you at any time in connection with the material or any use thereof and arising from any breach of these warranties.
8. Either party to this agreement may assign or license its rights hereunder, but such assignment or license shall not relieve such party of its obligation hereunder.  If more than one party signs this agreement as to the submitting party, then reference to “I” or “me” throughout this agreement shall apply to each such party, jointly and severally. Should any provision or part of any provision be void or unenforceable, such provision or part thereof shall be deemed omitted and this agreement with such provision or part thereof omitted shall remain in full force and effect.

   Very truly yours,

   SUBMITTING PARTY (S)
   ___________________________
           (Signature)
   ___________________________
           (Print name and company)
   ___________________________
           (Address)
   ___________________________
           (Phone)          (Fax)

   ___________________________
           (Signature)
   ___________________________
           (Print name and company)
   ___________________________
           (Address)
   ___________________________
           (Phone)           (Fax)                                                  Accepted and agreed:
                                                                                             Producer/Company Name
                                                                                             By:__________________
                                                                                             Date:_________________

 

Sample Writers Collaboration Agreement May 7, 2008

***************This is a sample contract. You should seek legal councel before signing any documents**************  

WRITERS’ COLLABORATION AGREEMENT

 

This AGREEMENT made at _____________________, California, by and between ____________________ and ____________________, hereafter sometimes referred to as the “Parties”.

The Parties are about to write in collaboration an (original story) (treatment) (screenplay) (other) ___________, hereinafter referred to as the “Work”, and are desirous of establishing all their rights and obligations in and to said Work.

Now, therefore, in consideration of the execution of the Agreement, and the undertakings of the Parties as hereinafter set forth, it is agreed as follows:

1. The Parties shall collaborate in the writing of the Work and upon completion thereof shall be the joint owners of the Work (or shall own the Work in the following percentages: _________________________).
   
2. Upon completion of the Work it shall be registered with the Writers Guild of America, West, Inc. as the joint work of the Parties.  If the Work shall be in form such as to quality it for copyright, it shall be registered for such copyright in the name of both Parties, and each Party hereby designates the other as his attorney-in-fact to register such Work with the United States Copyright Office.
   
3. It is contemplated that the Work will be completed by not later than ________, 19___, provided, however, that failure to complete the Work by such date shall not be construed as a breach of said AGREEMENT on part of either Party hereto.
   
4. If, prior to the completion of the Work, either Party shall voluntarily withdraw from the collaboration (which withdrawal must be confirmed in writing), then the other Party shall have the right to complete the work alone, or in conjunction with another collaborator or collaborators, and in such event the percentage of ownership, as set forth hereinabove in Paragraph 1, shall be revised by a written amendment hereto.
   
5. If, prior to completion of the Work, there shall be a dispute of any kind with respect to the Work, then the Parties may terminate said Agreement by an instrument in writing, which shall be filed with the Writers Guild of America, West, Inc.
   
6. Any contract for the sale or other disposition of the Work, where the Work has been completed by the Parties in accordance herewith, shall require that the writing credit be given to the authors in the following manner: __________________________.
   
7. Neither Party shall sell, or otherwise voluntarily dispose of the Work, or their share therein, without the prior written consent of the other, which consent, however, cannot be unreasonably withheld.
   
8. It is further acknowledged and agreed that ______________ shall be the exclusive agent of the Parties for the purpose of sale or other disposition of the Work or any rights therein, until such agent is terminated by the Parties, or ceases to represent the Work for any reason. Such agent shall have a six-month period in which to sell or otherwise dispose of the Work and the commission for the sale or other disposition of the Work shall be 10 percent (10%).
   
9. Any and all expenses of any kind whatsoever which shall be incurred by either or both of the Parties in connection with the writing, registration, or sale or other disposition of the Work shall be prorated in accordance with the respective percentage share of each of the Parties hereto, as set forth hereinabove in Paragraph 1.
   
10. All money or other consideration whatsoever derived from the sale or other disposition of the Work shall be applied as follows:

         (a) In payment of commissions, if any,
         (b) In payment of any expenses or reimbursement of either Party for expenses paid in             connection with the Work,
         (c) to the Parties in proportion of their ownership.

11. It is further understood and agreed that, for the purposes of said Agreement, the Parties shall share hereunder, unless otherwise stated herein, the proceeds from the sale or any and all other disposition of the Work and the rights and licenses therein and with respect thereto, including but not limited to the following:

         (a) Motion picture rights
         (b) Sequel rights
         (c) Remake rights
         (d) Television film rights
         (e) Television live rights
         (f) Stage rights
         (g) Radio rights
         (h) Book and other media publication rights
    

12. Should the Work be sold or otherwise disposed of and, as an incident thereto, the Parties – or either of them – be employed to revise the Work or write another media presentation thereof, the total compensation provided for in  such employment agreement shall be shared by the Parties hereto in the same proportion as their ownership as set forth hereinabove in Paragraph 1.  If either Party is requested to be involved in such revision but shall be unavailable for collaborating therein (which unavailability shall be evidenced by a written confirmation thereof, signed by such unavailable Party), then the Party who is available shall be permitted to do such revision and shall be entitled to the full amount of compensation in connection therewith.
    
13. If either Party hereto shall be employed in any capacity other than in connection with the rewriting or revision of the Work (e.g., as an Associate Producer), then the other Party shall not be entitled to either any compensation or credit in connection therewith.
14. If either Party hereto shall desire to use the Work, or any right therein or with respect thereto, in any venture in which such Party shall have a financial interest, whether direct or indirect, the Party desiring to do so shall notify the other Party of the fact and shall afford such other Party the opportunity to participate in the venture or in the proportion of such other Party’s interest in the Work.  If such other Party shall be unwilling or unable to participate in such venture, such other Party shall have no further right of participation, or to any compensation arising therefrom, other than their proportionate share in the sale or other disposition of the Work to such a venture at it’s fair market value which, in  the absence of mutual agreement of the Parties, shall be determined by arbitration in accordance with the regulations of the Writers Guild of America, West, Inc.
    
15. Said AGREEMENTS shall be executed in sufficient number of copies so that one fully executed copy may, and shall, be delivered to each Party and the Writers Guild of America, West, Inc.  If any disputes shall arise concerning the interpretation or application of said Agreement, or the rights or liabilities of the Parties arising hereunder, such disputes shall be submitted to the Writers Guild of America, West, Inc.  For arbitration in accordance with the arbitration procedures of the Guild, and the determination of the Guild arbitration committee as to all such matters shall be conclusive and binding upon the Parties.

    Dated _____ day of _____________, 19___.

    ________________________                ________________________
      Type name / sign above                              Type name / sign above
    

Top fellowships and contests May 7, 2008

******These are some top fellowships and such. They have old dates on them so research and find out new deadlines**********

NICHOLL FELLOWSHIP – DEADLINE:  MAY 1, 2006

Academy Foundation
Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting
1313 N. Vine Street
Hollywood, CA  90028-8107

This is the most prestigious there is.  Competition is keen – you can count on at le

ast 4,000 submissions.  Up to five fellowships are awarded each year, in the amount of $30,000 each.  If you’re fortunate enough to be selected, you will be expected to complete at least one feature-film screenplay during the fellowship year. You may not have earned money or other consideration as a screenwriter for theatrical films or television, or for the sale of, or sale of an option to, any original story, treatment, screenplay or teleplay for more than $5,000.  Also, your screenplay can not be sold or optioned prior to submission or during judging. Applicants may not have received a screenwriting fellowship or prize that includes a “first look” clause, an option or any other quid pro quo involving the writer’s work. Entry fee: $30  (if your entry is postmarked on or before April 1 — the entry fee is $20)

 

 

CHESTERFIELD FILM PROJECT – DEADLINE:  ON HIATUS

The Chesterfield Film Company
Writer’s Film Project
1158 26th Street, PMB 544
Santa Monica, CA 90403
(213) 683-3977

This prestigious program was originated by Chesterfield at Steven Spielberg´s Amblin Entertainment and Universal Studios, however, now it’s sponsored by Paramount.  You may submit screenplay(s), novels, short stories and plays.  Those selected receive: $20,000 annual stipend/internship program. If you have any questions about this competition, check out their website or e-mail them at Info@chesterfield-co.com .   Entry fee: $39.50 

 

 

WALT DISNEY STUDIOS & ABC ENTERTAINMENT FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM – DEADLINE:  June 23, 2006

Writing Fellowship Program
Walt Disney Studios & ABC Entertainment
500 S. Buena Vista St.
Burbank, CA 91251-1735
(818) 560-6894

Disney selects up to eight writers to work full-time developing their craft at The Walt Disney Studios and at ABC Entertainment.   They offer Fellowships in the feature film and television areas.   No previous experience is necessary, but you will be required to provide writing samples, as well as your biography or resume.   Fellows receive a flat weekly salary of $961.54 ($50,000 annualized).  The application period for the Program is May 1st through June 23rd.  

Entry Fee: No application fee.  Make sure you get your program letter agreement notarized.
For more detailed information about the program or to receive an application, candidates should call the hotline at (818) 560-6894 or visit the Web site at www.abctalentdevelopment.com.

 

SUNDANCE SCREENWRITERS’ LAB -  DEADLINE: May 1, 2006

Sundance Institute
225 Santa Monica Blvd., 8th Floor
Santa Monica, CA  90401
(310) 394-4662

Founded by Robert Redford in 1981, the Sundance Film Festival has quickly become one of the most prestigious of the independent film festivals in the world. It is THE SHOWCASE for American Independent Cinema. Their Feature Film Program includes the January Screenwriters Lab, the June Filmmakers Lab, and June Screenwriters Lab. There is one application for the Feature Film Program. With this application you will be considered for all of the programs.

The first 5 pages of your script are required, along with cover letter, resume/bio, synopsis of the script and an application.  Application Fee: $30

 

NICKELODEONWRITING FELLOWSHIP -  DEADLINE: February 28, 2006

Nickelodeon Writing Fellowship
231 West Olive Avenue
Burbank, CA 91502
(818) 736-3663

Nickelodeon is offering writing fellowships in live action and animated television to culturally and ethnically diverse, new writers.  Participants will have hands-on experience writing spec scripts and pitching story ideas.  The focus of the program is to broaden Nickelodeon’s outreach efforts and provides a salaried position for up to one year.  The ’06 – ’07 cycle is tentatively scheduled to begin in October 2006.  The next submission cycle runs from January 2 – February 28, 2006. Information via email: info.writing@nick.com 

 

FOX SEARCHLAB -  DEADLINE: ON HIATUS

Fox Searchlab Submissions
Attn: Susan O’ Leary
10201 W. Pico Blvd.
Building 667, Ste. #5
Los Angeles, CA 90035
310-369-5423

For those screenwriters interested in branching into directing, this program’s for you.  If selected, the lab provides
a small production budget and use of equipment that will allow you to create a short film as an audition piece. 
You’ll be required to submit a cover letter and work sample (short, reel, script, resume) that indicates your directorial talent.
No entry fee and No deadlines.  Be prepared to wait approximately 4 months for a response to your submission, though.

 

SCRIPTAPALOOZA -  DEADLINE: APRIL 14, 2006

SCRIPTAPALOOZA
7775 Sunset Blvd, PMB #200
Hollywood, CA 90046

First prize is $10,000 and screenwriting software for the 3 winners, 10 runners up and all finalists.  All thirteen winners will be considered by Scriptapalooza’s outstanding participants which include AMG, Samuel Goldwyn Films, Film Colony, Evolution, Phoenix Pictures and many more.  Sponsors include Screenplay Systems, The Writer’s Store, Hollywood.com, and WGAw.  For further information or an application please visit www.scriptapalooza.com or call 323.654.5809.

Entry Fee for early deadline of January 5th: $40

Entry Fee for final deadline of April 14th: $50

 

ASA/GOTHAM WRITER’S WORKSHOP - DEADLINE: October 31

American Screenwriters Association/Gotham Writer’s Workshop
1841 Broadway Suite 809
New York, NY 10023 , NY 10023
877-974-8377 (voice)

$5,000 cash to the winner and another $4,250 among the other four finalists; promotion of the winning screenplays to 6,500 producers, agents and managers; full script consultations by Hollywood gurus for finalists, a trip to Hollywood to meet with Development Execs, and more.  

Entry Fee: $50 ASA Member / $60 Non-member

 

SCR(I)PT MAGAZINE’S OPEN DOOR CONTEST – DEADLINE: June 1, 2006

Scr(i)pt Magazine
5638 Sweet Air Road
Baldwin, MD 21013
410-592-3466

The winner will receive consideration for representation from Benderspink PLUS screenwriting software provided by Final Draft, a $200 gift certificate from The Writers Store, a Gift Certificate to any Action/Cut Filmmaking Seminar ($350 Value), a two-year membership to Script P.I.M.P.’s Writer’s Database and a copy of Dr. Format Answers Your Questions. Also provided by InkTip.com for second and third place winners: an e-mail announcement sent to approximately 6,500 industry professionals, placement of your winning script on their password-protected web site and a logline for your winning screenplay in their publication. Second and third-place winners also receive a copy of Dr. Format Answers Your Questions, screenwriting software provided by Final Draft. Also, So You Wanna Sell A Script will provide the top-three winners with Total Script Express & Query Editing Service, one year free listing in their Script Marketplace, and placement in one issue of the Hollywood Bugle.  Entry Fee:  $45

 

FINAL DRAFT’S BIG BREAK- DEADLINE: June 1, 2006 (regular), June 15, 2006 (late)

FINAL DRAFT, INC.
16000 Venture Blvd., Suite 800
Encino, CA  91436
818-995-8995

The first-prize winner receives $10,000, round-trip airfare to Los Angeles, 3 nights hotel accommodations meetings with studio executives and agents.  Second-prize winner receives $3,000.  Third-prize winner receives $1,000. Entry Fee:  $50

The top ten winners receive the following:
A) The screenplay will be submitted to a major Hollywood literary agent.
B) Final Draft software
C) A one year subscription to Creative Screenwriting Magazine and Script Magazine
D) A $50 Gift Card from The Writers Store
E) The Hollywood Creative Directory Producers Guide 

 

AMERICAN ZOETROPE SCREENWRITING COMPETITION - DEADLINE: August 1, 2006 (early), September 1, 2006 (final)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                American Zoetrope Screenplay Contest
916 Kearny Street
San Francisco, CA 94133
415-788-7500 (voice) 415-989-7910 (fax)

$5000 Grand Prize. The top ten screenplays will be considered for film option and development by
American Zoetrope, and considered for representation by ICM, UTA, Paradigm and The Firm. Created by
Francis Coppola.  Entry Fee: $40 (early entry fee: $30)

Adding Valuable Links May 6, 2008

Today I added 2 valuable liks for writers associations to become part of if interested. They are now in our links section.

 

Happy Writing

Independent Writer Caucus May 5, 2008

The Independent Writers Caucus (IWC) 

 

Independent Writers Caucus Members:

• Shall receive all Guild mailings and communications, including Written By or like publications, the WGA Membership Manual and its periodic updates
• Shall receive invitations to IWC-related events
• May serve on Independent Writers Caucus committees or certain other WGAW committees as designated by the Board of Directors
• May use the Guild’s Script Registration Service at a reduced rate
• May join the Guild’s Film Society subject to availability
• May become members of the Inter-Guild Federal Credit Union or its successor subject to the discretion of that entity’s governing body
• May be entitled to participate, if otherwise eligible, in any employment access program administered by the Guild’s Employment Access Department
• May be eligible for participation in the WGA self-pay health insurance plan WritersCare. The program is administered through The Entertainment Industry Group Insurance Trust (TEGIT). Call (323) 782-4713 for additional information regarding the health plan.

 

 

Independent Film Writers Steering Committee Chairman: Howard A. Rodman Members: Bill Condon, Tony Drazan, Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal, Stanley Isaacs, Ed Solomon, Jill Sprecher, Karen Sprecher, Mary Sweeney and Tyger Williams

Who Is Eligible To Join?

 

All applicants must be residents of the United States and must have fulfilled at least one of the four following eligibility criteria* within a five-year period from the date the application is received at the WGAW offices. In addition, the Writer’s full-length narrative screenplay must be submitted with the IWC application, along with a $75 annual service fee. The service fee is waived for WGAW Members in good standing.

• The Writer’s feature-length narrative screenplay has been produced under a WGA Low Budget Agreement (for films budgeted at $1.2 million and below).
• The Writer’s feature-length narrative screenplay was produced and the film premiered at a film industry recognized domestic film festival. (If your film was exhibited at an international film festival, please contact WGAW Independent Film for more information.)
• The Writer’s feature-length narrative screenplay was completed in connection with a highly regarded and/or accredited domestic screenwriting program offered at an educational institution or film industry organization and, in addition, the Writer completed the screenwriting program requirements.
• The Writer’s feature length narrative screenplay was nominated for and/or won a highly regarded screenwriting award. Note: Screenwriting “contests” are also subject to review and individual approval by the WGAW Independent Film Writers Steering Committee.

*Please note: All IWC applications are subject to the review and approval of the WGAW Independent Film Writers Steering Committee. In some cases, more than one eligibility criterion or combination of eligibility criteria must be fulfilled. When applying, the Writer is encouraged to submit ALL eligibility criteria information that apply.

DOWNLOAD THE IWC APPLICATION FORM (112kb .pdf)

Book Deals May 2, 2008

Book Deals

Stuff White People Like and I Can Has Cheezburger have been topping our Blogs of the Day charts for some time. Now the New York Times reports that both of those blogs have received book deals. “Stuff” apparently got a $300k advance. The books based on their blogs are due out this Fall. Congratulations to both of them!

(PS: This is not an April Fools joke)

A touch of Philosophy May 2, 2008

This  offers helpful information for students of the Western philosophical tradition. The elements you will find on this site include:

The Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names.

A survey of the History of Western Philosophy.

A Timeline for the intellectual figures discussed here.

Detailed discussion of several major Philosophers

Summary treatment of the elementary principles of Logic

A generic Study Guide for students of philosophy.

Links to other philosophy Sites on the Internet.

 

Writing a good children’s book May 2, 2008

What Makes a Children’s Book?

The key element to any good children’s book is the story – it’s is the single most important thing. No child is going to read a book that doesn’t have a bold, fast-moving story with a clear course of action that comes to a satisfactory conclusion without too many dangling ends. Any mystery has to be solved; any goals should be achieved; and most characters have to be given what they deserve. You cannot start to write a book for children unless you have in your head at least the sketch of such a story.

Many people think there is a great deal of difference between a book for children and one for adults, but in reality, there isn’t much between them. Relax, and in particular, stop thinking, ‘1 am now writing for children,’ because this will clog your works like nothing else. The main difference, believe it or not, is that adults are much lazier readers. They will need a lot of padding to their stories and to be constantly reminded of the plot. Children, being on the whole much slower readers (and also being used to the fact that they don’t know everything), will readily take in what you write, so you only need tell them something once.

If you don’t believe this, compare any book for adults with one for children – you will find that the story-to-length ratio will be in favour of the book for children, and there will be three times the action in the same number of pages. Personally, I find this a great freedom – freedom to tell the story without constantly having to worry in case the readers haven’t caught up.

A lesser difference is that adults seem to feel that there is some special virtue in being bored. They will put up with huge amounts of social documentary, glum thoughts, preaching and artistic description, whereas children will not tolerate these things for more than half a page at most. Whatever you do when you write for children, don’t be boring. In fact, writing for children is a licence to enjoy yourself.

Another difference that worries a lot of people is whether or not children’s books should contain overt sexual acts. This is a very adult worry, and I’m not sure most children care. They know about this stuff, but it is not usually their chief concern. The main consideration here is that most children’s publishers would turn your story down if it gets too sexy, although the kind ones might suggest you try the adult market instead.

---

Choosing Your Story

Everyone is different, and this means that you need to write in your own, unique way. A large part of writing is discovering how you, personally, need to do it. For this, you have to start with what interests you most. If you find you prefer factual, everyday things, you would be advised to think of adventure stories first, and see what your particular take is on these. There is huge scope here, and an enthusiasm for cars, guns, computers or even just gadgets will get you a long way. Children love expertise, and they also love horror, so if you too like being frightened, then ghosts, demons, vampires and green slime are for you.

This brings us to witches, wizards and magic generally which, at the moment, are highly popular; but let me enter a caution here: it is advisable not to imitate any of these too closely, because it can get very boring. You would not credit how many imitations of, say Tolkien, there are nor how closely and drearily they all resemble one another. On the other hand, if you have a really new take on a school for wizards, or feel that the best way to start writing is to collect a set of characters in an imaginary country and send them on a wholly new sort of quest, then why not? As long as what you are doing truly interests you.

The most important thing is to enjoy what you are writing. If you find you are toiling along, getting increasingly bored, then stop. Try some other kind of story. One that fails to interest you is certainly not going to grab other people.

---

Plots and Puzzles

You may now be saying, ‘This is all very well, but what should I put in my story?’ Whatever you chose has to give children an experience they could get no other way. And it has to give hope – that is to say, if your desire is to give a detailed account of bullying, or drug addiction, or parental abuse, fine, but it does no good just to do that. Children in these situations know all about them, better than you probably do, and will find such narratives boring, while children who don’t know are going to find them either glum or repulsive. You have to show someone handling these situations or, better, overcoming them.

What every writer starting out needs to understand is that the human brain is programmed to solve problems. We are programmed to like studying puzzles, then to try for solutions. The best plot for a children’s book follows this framework, and the best setting for this framework is one that distances a child from her or his problems, so that they become puzzles that the child can turn this way and that, and follow with the author to the solution. Do that, and you have made a blueprint for living. And the best blueprints are usually some form of fantasy. About two-thirds of children do prefer fantasy. And once you are writing fantasy, you are free to introduce every kind of folktale and myth.

The virtue of folktales is that they break down into smaller elements very well, so that you can add them to your story in tiny scraps, knowing that children will respond to them and that this will add a depth to your narrative, or you can retell the entire tale and flesh it out with your own inventions. An excellent example of this is Robin McKinley’s sumptuous Beauty, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. Such stories are timeless, as they are the ideal way of distancing a problem, and they are retold and remembered precisely because they are all blueprints of the way our minds work.

Finally, it does no harm to be extreme, to give hope, to let your imagination rip. Of course life disappoints, often you never get more than halfway to your ambition, but it is very unimaginative to discourage children from aiming as high as they can. It is better to show someone aiming at the moon and only getting halfway than to show them trying to climb to the roof and only getting to the bathroom.

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Creating Your World

The places where your all-important story happens are almost as important as the story itself. They bring atmosphere to the book, and every book should by rights develop its own individual atmosphere on page one, certainly before the end of chapter one. But there is this great catch: children find long descriptions totally boring – for instance, don’t ever start with a detailed description of a landscape or town.

You can get away with long descriptions later, if what you are describing is part of the narrative – if your protagonists are creeping along a corridor in a haunted castle, then you can go to town with cobwebs, carvings and corbels – but don’t ever foist on children a loving description of something that has nothing to do with the story. Write those for adults if you must, because they have learnt how to skip. A much better way is to visualise, see the place in your mind, as wholly and exactly as you can, as if you were standing in the place yourself, and then simply write the story that happens there.

The people in your book are even more important than the scenery, because they are the ones that make the story happen. It follows that they usually have to be fairly strong, dynamic characters, and some of them have to be people that children will follow willingly into the action. For this reason, it was thought at one time that the main characters always had to be children. This turns out not to be true (take a look at The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud, where the main character is a demon) as long as someone in the story is likeable, understandable or a loveable rogue and so on. Many characters in books for children are animals, and are much loved by children, but beware of making absurd random changes – such as Toad in The Wind in the Willows who is sometimes frog-size and sometimes human-size, which tends to destroy any feeling of the reality of the story. Children will notice this sort of thing.

Stories in which everyone is unpleasant are not usually liked, but as long as you have your sympathetic character, you can have any number of unpleasant baddies. Children like to have a good hate even more than adults do, and it helps if you yourself hate the baddie too. Understanding the baddies may seem politically correct but is not recommended. Children – rightly to my mind – regard this sort of milky tolerance with contempt.

The same technique that applies to scenery applies even more strongly to people. You need not waste time in describing them at length, but you must then know them exceedingly well. Before you start writing, you will need to know your characters so well that you can hear their voices – then what they say will come out right without you really trying – and see details that won’t get into the book, like the way they walk and what they habitually wear. This is where understanding your baddies comes in, and you have to know what they are really after, and why. You can ache with sympathy for your villain here and delicately comprehend exactly what childhood trauma caused her or him to be such a nasty piece of work, so long as you remember that she or he is really quite hateful.

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Getting Vocabulary Right

When considering what kind of language to use when writing for children, it is not at all necessary to limit yourself only to easily-understood words. After all, how else are children going to learn new words unless they read them?

On the other hand, almost anything worth saying can be said in short, simple words, and tends to make a greater impact if it is. The advice here is not to start your book with a string of unusual words which will be off-putting, but to include them by all means when the context makes it clear what the words mean. Enid Blyton was good at this. For instance, in The Castle of Adventure, she first makes it plain that it was impossible to get into the castle and then uses the word ‘impregnable’ to sum up the situation. My own experience is that most children love and savour colourful words, especially if these are introduced in passages that are already exciting, so that the words get swallowed along with the story.

However, you must remember that most children are slower readers than adults are. This does not mean that you need to write in short, jerky sentences, but it does mean that your sentences must be constructed so that readers will not lose their way in them. If you are in any doubt, read the sentence aloud. This will almost infallibly show you if it is right or wrong, because you will get in a muddle if it is wrong.

People needlessly worry about how long a children’s book should be. If your story is fascinating enough, children will read it whatever its length. (And it’s worth repeating here that if you are fascinated by your story, then so will the readers.) There is a current fashion for longer books, and none of these vast tomes seem to bother the readers. The only requirement is that a child should be able to lift the book.

The suggested readership age is something to let the publisher worry about. Most children read what grabs them, regardless, and your book will write itself regardless. For this reason it is best, if your protagonists are children, never actually to specify their actual ages. No one is more humiliated than the 12-year-old who eagerly follows the adventures of a strong character, only to find that this character is five years old.

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Common Pitfalls

The infallible way to find out if you have fallen into any common writing pitfalls is to notice, while you are reading the story back to yourself, all the places where you do a sort of inner squirm and then say to yourself, ‘Oh, I suppose that will do.’ It never will, so work on the problem until the squirm goes away.

Boring your readers is always something to watch for, and some of the common causes have already been mentioned above. Add to these any long exposition that is unbroken by action, including sections dealing with politics, extensive soul-searching by one or more characters, explicit sex, descriptions of the workings of machinery not necessary for the story, lectures on the rules of magic or astrology, and general ranting. But even worse is the loving re-creation of how it felt to be a child in, say, 1920 AD or 2000 BC. Unless this is demonstrated in narrative, it is just a history lesson.

Many people still believe that it is the duty of children’s writers to teach moral lessons, impart wisdom and inculcate civilised behaviour. And so it is – you probably wouldn’t want to do the opposite – but it is fatal to do it overtly. Children hate to feel got at, so build your message into the story and show readers what you mean, or, better still, let it just arise as you write.

Children also hate being talked-down to but, alas, they are very used to being patronised. One of the sure signs that you are talking down is when you find yourself referring to children or any part of them as ‘little’ – ‘tiny hands’ is a no-no. Besides, if you are writing for people of 12 or more, the chances are that they are larger than you. The same goes for telling readers that they, or any character, are ‘too young to understand’. This is plain insulting. A subtler form of patronisation is referring to yourself and the reader as ‘we’ (‘Come along, children, and we’ll all be fairies!’) or suggesting things like ‘we all love fairies’.

Fairies in themselves are too whimsical for today’s children (Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl books are a notable exception, but usually orcs are to be preferred), but whimsy is more generally to be found in writing that tries to imitate Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, where strange things ‘just happen’ without reason or explanation. Pink dinosaurs pop out of the fridge, twee little men sit on bedposts and sing silly songs, and scented rainbows wrap our little heroine in lilac toffee. Have these things, by all means, but only if there is a good reason in the story for them to occur. Above all, do not try to be ‘charming’.

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The Trouble with Clichés

It may sound extremely obvious, but make sure you don’t leave anything out, because every story has to have reasons for the things which happen in it. Disregard the fact that young children tell a story in great long chunks linked with ‘and… and… and…’ – this is simply a lack of practice in storytelling and not at all what children themselves want to read. You are going to have to put all the connections in, although it is surprisingly easy to forget and leave them out. I once taught a writing course in which one lady’s story had two lads suddenly arrested for no good reason.

‘Why is this?’ I asked.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘they broke into a factory and stole a lot of soft drinks.’

‘Then why didn’t you put this in the story?’

‘Did I have to?’

Watch out for lapses like this.

As with any form of creative writing, clichés are also to be avoided. There are all sorts, from the well known, ‘With one bound he was by her side,’ to, ‘Long ululating cries and a stench of evil emanated from the slavering horde.’ (For some reason vampires and demons attract clichés like nothing else.) Clichés are not only found in descriptive passages, but in the action as well, such as when our romantic heroine dislikes a tall dark stranger on sight and then marries him in chapter 30. The signs to watch for are when you find yourself slipping along too easily in rather colourful phrases (and the warning of your own inner squirm, of course), and the real trouble is that clichés make your book very ordinary.

To avoid this, whenever you find yourself possessed of a cliché, try taking the action right back behind the words that describe it and then live what you are trying to say: watch the lover’s movement, smell the breath of the slavering hordes, and then think what words really best describe it. There is no guarantee, however, that you will not simply arrive back at a cliché!

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Wrapping It Up

Concluding a book is not easy. It is often difficult to know just where to stop in the story. Opinions vary between an abrupt stop (‘Good-bye,’ said Jack) and a long coda in which you tie up all the ends and describe exactly what Jack (and Mary and Zuleika and Auntie May) did for the next twenty years. It is up to you to choose, with the proviso that you first make sure all the important facts are accounted for, like explaining why the villain did what he did, or making sure that Jack is not still buried alive in a mineshaft.

Above all, never get out of your difficulties by ending, ‘Then she woke up and it was all a dream.’ I know there are precedents for this, but children regard it as cheating. It spoils Alice, The Box of Delights and many a lesser book. Worse still is Rudyard Kipling in Puck of Pook’s Hill, who has his children bespelled to forget the entire story. It is almost as bad as ending up with your entire cast dead, which always strikes me as an extreme act of writer’s desperation.

One of the most important things to remember, however, is that you aren’t writing for children, as such, but for the next three generations of adults. This is why so many books for children featured on the BBC’s Big Read list. People read those marvellous books when they were small and they never forget them. If you get your book even ninety percent right, then the chances are it could be the marvellous, inventive, wise, and magical book that the baby just this minute being born will later read and find it has changed her or his life completely. You will have been responsible, and that is quite some thought.

Amadeus @ Palos Verdes’ Neighborhood Playhouse-Excellent performance May 2, 2008

“Majestic Mozart: Amadeus Shines in a Lavish Production…” Jim Farber, Daily Breeze  4.30.08

 

 

Now Extended through May 10!

 

 

A M A D E U S

BY PETER SHAFFER

  Directed by Brady Schwind

 

 

 

 

 

One of the most acclaimed productions of the 20th Century. The Neighborhood Playhouse is thrilled to open the 2008 Season with a rare Los Angeles production of this modern masterpiece, in a version rewritten since its original

Broadway and film successes.

 

with

 

Lois Bourgon, Jane Childerhose, Karin Frasier,  Michael Frasier, Michael Hovance*, James Larsen, Evan McNamara*, Jack Messenger, Bob Miller, Chris O’Connor, Bill Pence, Richard Perloff*, Afton Quast, Perry Shields,  Michael Tushaus*

 

*denotes member Actor’s Equity Association

 

 

 

Click Here for More Details!

May contests and awards May 2, 2008

May Short Story Contests and Awards

May brings a number of good opportunities, including the Eastern Washington University Press Spokane Prize for Short Fiction (May 15), the University of Georgia Press Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction (May 31), and a fun online contest hosted by the online zine Ramble Underground (May 15).Also, see articles on how to publish your short stories — and how to know if you’re even ready to publish.

To submit the names of contests and awards for the month that I may have missed, please email me at fictionwriting.guide@about.com.

Living as a poet May 2, 2008

How to Make a Living as Poet

Thinking about the looming tax deadline reminded me of Gary Mex Glazner’s book, How to Make a Living as Poet, in which he describes various ways he’s supported himself as a full-time poet, including convincing a hotel to create a poet-in-residence position, securing sponsorship to take poets across America and make a movie about it, and getting Pontiac to hire him to promote a new car. In How to Make a Living As a Poet, he reminds us to put our biggest asset — our creativity — to work in supporting ourselves.

a writer’s getaway May 2, 2008

Get Away to La Muse Artists’ and Writers’ Retreat

If you’re looking to get away to write in a beautiful setting, you couldn’t do better than La Muse Writers’ and Artists’ Retreat in southwest France. Rooms are available for rent or barter to writers and other artists who are serious about getting work done within a creative community. For more information about — and pictures of — this beautiful place, see the profile. (And if you have your own favorite retreat, please share below.)Photo courtesy of Kerry Eielson.

A counting exercise May 2, 2008

Counting: This Week’s Exercise

Thinking about tax time, I turned to the chapter on money in The Artist’s Way. At the end of the chapter, she advised artists to spend a week taking stock of where their money goes. So this week, record every nickel you spend in a small pocket notepad. Be thorough, without being judgmental. She writes, “It will teach you what you value in terms of your spending. Often our spending differs from our real values. We fritter away cash on things we don’t cherish and deny ourselves those things we do. For many of us, counting is a necessary prelude to learning creative luxury.”

Bathing Beauties May 2, 2008

Bathing Beauties

What is it makes bathing bodies so compelling?

Beside the natural urge toward procreation,

I mean. A certain beauty. Certainly that, though

that too often depends on the bather or bathers

in particular. Is it the vibrancy of health,

or perhaps the symmetry of the human form—

when it is symmetrical, anyway. What is it

that draws the eyes to the curves of hip,

dark ovals of the nipples, angular strength

of shoulder blades, knees, elbows, ankles . . .

Is it the astonishment of nudity,

perhaps a protective urge for a herd member

exposed and vulnerable? Or empathy

with the freedom of nakedness, longing

for the most natural state of being?

Inspiring Lecture May 2, 2008

Very Inspiring Lecture. Could change your life!

Google video – Professor Randy Pausch was on Oprah recently and gave is “Last Lecture” speech once more. I really recommend everyone to watch this. It could change your life. Here are some things I learned from it. But please watch the video at least.

- Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.

- When you’re doing a bad job and nobody points it out to you, that’s when they’ve given up on you. When somebody is gonna ride your for 2 hours, they’re doing that because they care to make you better.

- Brick walls are for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things.

- Have fun all the time. Have a sense of fun and wonder. That should never go away.

- Never underestimate the importance of having fun.

- Work and play well with others

- Tell the truth.

- Apologize (properly) – There are 3 parts: (1) I’m sorry, (2) It was my fault, (3) How do I make it right.

- Wait, and people will show their good side.

- Don’t complain, just work harder. Complaining and whining doesn’t solve the problem.

- You can choose to take your finite time and effort and you can spend it complainging or you can spend it playing the game hard, which is probably going to be more helpful to you in the long run.

Trade your old books for new ones May 2, 2008

Trade Your Old Books for New Ones

planetgreen.discovery.com – We’ve all got more books than we need. They’re popular gifts, and the good ones contain lots of useful information, so once we’ve got ‘em, they can be deceivingly difficult to get rid of. While programs like WorldCat are awfully useful for finding a book you don’t have, what do you do when you’ve got too many on your hands? With BookMooch, you can swap them out with other books you haven’t read and don’t need to buy.

Rent your books May 2, 2008

Rent Books at BookSwim

planetgreen.discovery.com – The simplest way to describe BookSwim? Think of it as Netflix for books. Choose from more than 185,000 hardback and paperback titles, including new releases and bestsellers, and BookSwim will ship them to you. You get to hang on to the books as long as you want, without the fear of incurring any late fees (or the wrath of a surly librarian). When you’re done, pop your finished reads back into the mailbox to get the next titles on your list. Bonus: Shipping is free both ways. The cost of your membership depends on the number of books you wish to rent at a time. Two books cost $14.99 per month, while three cost $19.99 per month (or $219.99 per year). For $23.99 per month (or $263.99 per year), you get to take out five books at once. BookSwim doesn’t put a cap on the number of shipments you’re allowed each month, so if you’re a speedy reader, this could be worth your while. And, If you fall in love with a particular title that isn’t rare or out-of-print, you’ll get the opportunity to purchase it.

Pantechnicon Reviewers Needed May 1, 2008

Reviewers wanted.

1 05 2008

Pantechnicon is looking for reviewers to cover genre (science fiction, fantasy and horror) books, magazines, podcasts, radio programmes, computer games or websites.

We need contributors who can offer at least two reviews per month of approximately 500 words a piece. We cannot offer remuneration at this time, and you will need to source most review materials yourself (although we do occasionally receive ARCs).

If you’re interested, please contact Editors@pantechnicon.net and tell us which you’d like to do. Similarly if you know someone who might like to do this, do let them know about us.

Environment May 1, 2008

45 Scientists Dump Global Warming Deniers in 24 Hours

Filed Under environment | Leave a Comment 

Image from wumai

environmentalgraffiti.com – Something phenomenal has happened in the last 24 hours. Our friends over at DeSmogBlog took it upon themselves to see what the scientists who are on the famed list of “500 scientists who don’t believe in global warming” actually think and as it turns out, many of them didn’t know they were on it.

Now, in the past, there’s already been plenty of fun to have with lists of global warming deniers–Sen. James Inhofe took a list of 400 to the Senate floor, not realizing that when he was fact-checked it would come out that he had enlisted 44 TV weathermen. However, this takes the cake. Why? Because the already-incredible result that DeSmogBlog has produced is only 24 hours old. This is only going to get worse for The Heartland Institute, who assembled the list, and now has to deal with quotes like these:

I am horrified to find my name on such a list. I have spent the last 20 years arguing the opposite.”

Dr. David Sugden. Professor of Geography, University of Edinburgh

I have NO doubts ..the recent changes in global climate ARE man-induced. I insist that you immediately remove my name from this list since I did not give you permission to put it there.”

Dr. Gregory Cutter, Professor, Department of Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Old Dominion University

I don’t believe any of my work can be used to support any of the statements listed in the article.”

Dr. Robert Whittaker, Professor of Biogeography, University of Oxford

Yeah. Game, set and match, to people that don’t think that global warming is a cover for the world socialist conspiracy. Stay tuned.

Siminar May 1, 2008

 

presents the

INSIDE STORY

About the book                                     SEMINAR                                       About Dara

 Read a review

 

LOS ANGELES              Click here to register             MAY 24 – 25

“Dara Marks covers everything a writer                                                         Ellen Sandler, Writer/Producer                                                            Everybody Loves Raymond – WHAT’S INSIDE THE INSIDE STORY SEMINAR?     Inside Story is a comprehensive two-day seminar that will take you into the depths of the writing process and teach you how to build a great screenplay from the inside out. Inside Story will not only help you achieve a deeper and more thorough understanding of your story’s core elements–plot, character and theme–but you will acquire a whole new set of tools to write scripts that will make movie executives stand up and pay attention-and theater audiences stand up and cheer!  Inside Story will make you a better writer by helping you get to the heart of what you’re really trying to say, which allows you to focus on expressing your unique creative vision. Most importantly, the Inside Story Seminar opens up a very powerful means of building a solid and compelling story structure based on the transformational arc of character. Inside story will enhance your writing abilities regardless of your level of experience:    Beginning writers will gain fundamental insights into the basic elements of story. Advanced writers will refresh their understanding of the writing process by learning  a more  insightful and meaningful approach. All writers will gain essential tools for building powerful, meaningful, and marketable screenplays. Register Here   “Inside Story is amazing. Before I could write, now I can fly!”   Raymond Singer – Screenwriter            Mulan, Iron Jawed Angels