In the "Which Lie Did I Tell?..." department

[dianeduane]

...That being, of course, the title of William Goldman's second book about the trials and tribulations of working as a writer in Hollywood. But today, the video below (courtesy of United Hollywood) puts the title in a whole different light.

Let's be clear: writers are professional liars. And the first lesson I learned in this business was the importance of keeping those lies (in a screenplay, or a novel, or a comic, or a computer game...) in order, organized, and noncontradictory.

Plainly Big Media (as we must now call them, the Producers' Guild having gingerly started to put some distance between itself and the Huge Media Companies: you can just see the producers lifting their garments up to avoid the muck as they tiptoe away...) ...anyway, Big Media are not real good at keeping their lies straight at the moment. Specifically, the one about how the Internet is Too New for them to know if it's possible to make any money off it...and of course they therefore can't promise to give us any of it. They tell us that across the bargaining table, doubtless fighting to keep their faces straight. And then they go on TV and do... this.

I mean, really. (exasperated sigh)

...There's another fun video under the cut, here, too.) "Studio Execs Protest Unfairness of Striking Writers." ("We're the aggrieved parties here! We're under threat! I could lose two of my five homes!")

(Oh, BTW, YW.net users: Sorry for the brief interruption in service. A bounced-credit-card-charge message from our forum provider got missed. The Forums should be back online within the next 24 hours. YoungWizards.com is unaffected.)

Comments

[yrena.livejournal.com]

I think my brain died a little at that second video. I'm hoping that he's really a hired actor working for the strikers.

[naraht.livejournal.com]

That was Frank Conniff, a WGA member, and former cast member of MST3k

[naraht.livejournal.com]

http://imdb.com/name/nm0175239/

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Oh, TV's Frank, how far have you fallen! *weeps*

[spatch]

Weep ye not for puir wee Frank. He's re-joining Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, Josh Weinstein (the original Tom Servo and sidekick to Dr. Forrester) and Mary Jo Pehl for a new MST3K-like project called Cinematic Titanic.

They're currently working on a live movie-riffing show which will first be performed for Lucasfilm/ILM employees in December and that Lucasfilm had to grant these guys the rights to subsequently distribute the show to the public so speculation's rampant on exactly what they'll be handling (Joel won't say what it is, but mentions "...it makes 'Manos the Hands of Fate' look like 'Santa Claus Conquers the Martians' in a car wreck with 'Eegah!' with notes of peach." ... Hmm. Star Wars Christmas Special, perhaps?)

The show will afterwards be released to the fans.

(The other MST3K crowd are doing similar projects; Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett record their own commentary tracks to films as well as put together a riff package for films they can get the rights to, and Jim Mallon, well, I think he's doing something with the bots.)

[naraht.livejournal.com]

Nelson's project being http://www.rifftrax.com

The new bot stuff on mst3k.com not so hot though v_v

[yrena.livejournal.com]

I was (kinda) right! SCORE.

Learn something new every day. Thanks!

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

I think it should have been a clue that his "name" is "Moe Gaulle" (Mogul)!

"We shafted them on that, we double crossed them on that, and then they acted all huffy..." :-)

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, those would be the reasons I said I was hoping he was. Believe it or not, during my very short tenure as a child model *snort* I've met people that would actually act like that, not to mention I've seen weirder things that were actually true, so I was taking my doubts with a grain of salt.

[neuvieme-verite.livejournal.com]

Let's be clear: writers are professional liars.

Okay, THANK YOU. I have told my friends that for YEARS, and they're all like "oh that's terrible, that's not true, that's a horrible way to think of it..." blahblahblah. But thank you for saying it! I feel vindicated now! :)

[tysolna]

OK, this is totally random and off topic, but I thought you might appreciate it. I have a Second Life avatar, which is currently and probably for some weird technical reason stuck in a place called Glasscastle.
I hope I can get out without meeting myself.