Explicit Bias
May 29, 2018: The day Starbucks closed its stores for implicit racial bias training; Roseanne Barr made a racist tweet; ABC, in reaction, canceled her show; CNN held a live feed of a […]
May 29, 2018: The day Starbucks closed its stores for implicit racial bias training; Roseanne Barr made a racist tweet; ABC, in reaction, canceled her show; CNN held a live feed of a […]
To My Students: I will not carry a gun because the classroom is a sacred space because a gun means danger, not safety because a weapon in class conveys hierarchy […]
1. Gun-owners are more likely to vote Republican than ever before. Source: Social Science Quarterly, quoted in Newsweek. 2. Americans with less education are more likely to vote Republican; Americans with more […]
I was never a big Matt Lauer fan, but I love T.S. Eliot. Often I have told friends, “Eat the peach.” Problem is Eliot also wrote: On the Rialto once. […]
Originally published in Cultural Weekly on August 30, 2017 My first job in any creative pursuit was in IATSE Local 44. IATSE is the labor union that governs below-the-line people who work […]
Last Tuesday, when the lights rose, vigorous applause heralded a milestone for our documentary A Plastic Ocean – because this was a milestone audience. We were screening at the United […]
Originally published in Cultural Weekly on January 18, 2017. Park City has a change in the weather this year. For the first time in along time there will be snow, […]
Originally published in Cultural Weekly on January 4, 2017. Movies are going gangbusters, and one studio—Disney—achieved a record-breaking $7 billion global box office last year. What could possibly go wrong? […]
Originally posted in Cultural Weekly on November 23, 2016. Dear Mr. President-elect, I’d like to explain something about the theatre, because you seem to misunderstand what theatre is all about. […]
A week in Finland is a change in filmmaking perspective.
Originally published in Cultural Weekly on September 7, 2016. Thirty years ago, when we were young and beautiful, we were part of Los Angeles’s theatre revolution. At its heart was […]
Originally published in Cultural Weekly on September 5, 2016. I read just about every book that analyzes the entertainment business, both because it’s the business I’m in and I love […]
Physically removed from us in their multi-billion dollar lairs, the rich take on the aspect of gods. In Alex Garland’s film Ex Machina, Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is helicoptered across wilderness […]
Originally published in Cultural Weekly on June 29, 2016. David Cay Johnston is the best investigative reporter I know. I first became aware of his work at the LA Times […]
As I frequently cross between business, art and academic worlds, I notice one major advantage for people in academia—the sabbatical. For professors seeking tenure, the promise of a period, from months to […]
Tips for Assembling and Using a Personal Committee to its Full Potential As your work takes you to new places, there are more reasons than ever to gather early feedback. […]
Few people have made the as much impact in such a short career as Elon Musk, arguably among the greatest business people and inventors of our time. What makes him […]
As individuals with a desire to bring new things into the world, you get a lot of “how to” messages. Creative people tend to struggle with a bit of a […]
Originally published in Cultural Weekly on April 13, 2016 Last month, I wrote about the make-believe economics of the movie industry that people use to convince themselves to cast actors who […]
Amanda Palmer is a performance artist, dramatist, singer and songwriter who has built a remarkably loyal following. They love her punk-cabaret music as performed solo, with the Dresden Dolls, and in various […]
Trump is the symptom. We are the cure.
As I meet people from all walks of life, I often encounter those pursuing a profession with plans to change tack someday. Usually the idea is to establish herself well […]
Does creativity seem to be a fleeting mood? Is finding ways to be creative proving elusive?Sometimes I wish I could bottle it for the next stretch when I require its powers but […]
Originally published in Cultural Weekly on March 2, 2016. Chris Rock got it right when he called out Hollywood on Sunday night’s Oscarcast: “Is Hollywood racist? You’re damn right Hollywood’s racist. […]
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize Neil deGrasse Tyson’s unique talents. His baritone voice is virtually the sound of modern physics, so accustomed we’ve grown to his narration […]
When considering how innovation stacks up, it can be difficult to gauge who has the most lasting impact in real time. When we go back in time, it’s easier to read innovation […]
Originally published in Cultural Weekly on February 3, 2016 “What are you working on?” people always ask me. For the past three years, I have been telling my friends about […]
Over Indulgence May Not Be the Path to the Best Work In an attempt to attract talent and drive innovation, today’s leaders often give seemingly endless perks to creatives. But as Eric […]
Originally published in Cultural Weekly on January 27, 2016. The early deals have not been paltry and neither has the snow. Tempting, blanketed and idle, ski runs seemed to peer […]
Do you procrastinate, or are you more likely to complete an assignment early? While it’s clear that procrastination cuts into productivity, in Adam Grant’s Op-Ed “Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate” […]
For the myriad filmmakers descending on Park City this week we have good news and bad.
There’s a lot of advice available about productivity, but the idea of switching projects has been one of the most useful for me lately. This year, I find myself in […]
Is structural theory a necessary evil in storytelling? In his article “All Stories Are the Same” for The Atlantic, John Yorke notes that a great number popular stories share a […]
Developing Creativity In the Today’s Digital Age Creativity can be developed in more ways than one. A life as an artist was once essentially an academic career path, in which […]
There’s no better way to feel fresh and awakened than to shed what’s old and familiar. For this reason, some writers take on writing–and publishing–in a second language. In her piece “Writing in […]
UK Turner Prize Awarded to Architecture Collective Assemble The Turner award, a major UK art price, has been awarded to Assemble, a collective known for its architecture and community improvement projects. […]
On December 9, 2015, I did a seminar for the filmmakers whose movies have been accepted to Slamdance 2016. This seminar will be useful for all filmmakers getting ready for […]
Recently Amy Keyishian (@madfoot) wrote “Art and Tech Have a Really Cool Baby at a San Francisco Museum” for re/code. In it, she covers a recent digital media exhibit in San […]
Akram Raslan was a Syrian political cartoonist. As Asher Kohn (follow him on Twitter @AJKhn) writes in his Slate Roads & Kingdoms piece “Drawn in Blood“, his voice was silenced by […]
“Why Companies Need Novelists” is a fascinating piece by Michael Grothaus about an unusual title appearing in select corporations–that of CSO, or Chief Storytelling Officer. The poster boy chosen for this curiosity […]
As Steve Kolowich reports in his The Chronicle of Higher Education article “Amazon Offers Up Research Money for ‘Crazy’ Ideas That Just Might Work”, tech and retail industry leader Amazon recently announced a […]
In her Atlantic article “Why the Literary World Shouldn’t Romanticize Rejection”, Kavita Das skewers the idea with a multi-pronged argument. Too often, it’s difficult to be heard in the literary world, especially if […]
What does it take to pick the next big trendsetter out of a crowd? How can these cultural leaders be developed? These are the problems Jason Mayden, former top Nike designer, is working on […]
I never went to film school. Instead, my career, like all careers, followed a path that seems coherent only in retrospect. Early on, when I found myself supervising movies as […]
Here’s a Sunroof Proposal When Lego rejects Ai Weiwei, something is amiss. The iconic Danish company has rejected the dissident Chinese artist’s request to purchase a bulk order of Legos, and […]
Can someone effectively produce work with a focus on a passion? I can attest that it can be done. How do you strike the right balance–so that you have the […]
In his article “You can learn to be creative, if you’re willing to embarrass yourself” for Quartz, James Clear begins with this premise: Our understanding of groundbreaking ideas is often […]
Originally published in Cultural Weekly on October 21, 2015. Love lost and inspiration found hover like the angel of death over Kansas City Choir Boy, an intricate one-hour operetta with […]
Originally published in Cultural Weekly on October 14, 2015. Carrie The Musical is an invigorating revival of a show that succeeds because of its newfound intimacy. Staged in an immersive […]
You’re up. It’s your turn to present, and the success of weeks or more of work rely on the outcome of this meeting. Do you fire up your Prezi and […]
The Creativity Paradox: the creative work that brings us together is made by people who are often isolated and lonely. Movies, TV shows, theatre, dance, visual art, music, books, news […]
Disruptive creativity often takes the contrarian course. That’s the take-away from the publishing industry, as Boris Kachka reports in this story from Vulture – click here to read. This little (nonprofit) […]
On flights between appearances, a first-person narrative can be a refreshing way to learn about a new perspective. After reading Megan Garber’s review of Mindy Kaling’s new memoir Why Not […]
What is it like to experience live classical music for the first time? From the Slate.com Future Tense blog, Lily Hay Newman reports on this mashup of classical music and […]
Benefiting From a Behavior-Driving Application What if playing around can lead to positive behaviors that can reduce environmental risks, such as reducing the drop out rate for first generation college […]
Originally published in Cultural Weekly on September 2, 2015. TIFF (the Toronto International Film Festival) is my very favorite of all film festivals. The studios use TIFF as a launch-pad […]
Originally published in Cultural Weekly on June 3, 2015. In Deaf West Theatre’s production of Spring Awakening at The Wallis, you can understand the actors who sign the songs better […]
Mad Max Fury Road is a great movie, and not just because it holds you riveted and breathless for two hours. It’s great because director George Miller took outside-the-box chances, […]
Originally published in Cultural Weekly on April 22, 2015. Congratulations! You just finished your movie, which puts you at the edge of the winner’s circle—lots of people start movies and […]
“Dumb money” is a phrase you used to hear a lot in Hollywood circles. It refers to investors who don’t understand how the movie game is played, and then get […]
Originally published in Cultural Weekly on April 15, 2015. The opening night program of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion showcased four pieces from the repertory, […]
The Academy Awards go to.. independent cinema
Most editions of Shakespeare’s plays are exactly what you’d expect. Not this one.
Originally published in Cultural Weekly on January 21, 2015 Inside Track for Independent Filmmakers, my new book that gives step-by-step instructions for filmmakers to get their movies made and seen, […]
Independent films achieved the lion’s share of Academy Award nominations. The Oscars will be awarded on Sunday, February 22. This year, the numbers are truly remarkable, and show the amazing […]
$4.6 Billion Invested in Indies; Nearly All Festival Films Get Distribution Congratulations Sundance filmmakers! You have a 4 in 5 chance of getting a distribution deal. That’s one key finding […]
By Adam Leipzig, Entertainment Media Partners, and Jeremy Kay, Screen International The red carpet and rosé, movies and movie stars, buying and selling, prix and paparazzi. The world is watching. How does the Cannes Film Festival showcase […]
A funny thing happened on the way to traditional media’s complete dumbing-down of the American mind: Thomas Piketty’s gigantic, massively researched treatise Capital in the Twenty-First Century has climbed to the top […]
Why does some creative culture spread, while other creative culture arrives dead? Why, for example, are people prowling the streets of Bristol, England, right now hoping to discover Banksy’s next […]
For us in the movie business, a day can seem like a year. We rise early and work late, ricocheting from crisis to calm to crisis as we scan information […]
Vegas is less than 500 miles away from Park City, and as I got in my car, back in January, after a week at the Consumer Electronics Show, I knew […]
With an annual production budget that exceeds $3 billion, independent movies rival the major studios’ spend on filmmaking, even as indies vastly outstrip the studios in sheer volume. That’s a […]
“Don’t Become as Obsolete as the Sears Catalogue” Of the business lessons you may apply in 2014, here’s the most important: You are media company. What kind of company did […]
Success Isn’t Accidental A movie has an extraordinary value proposition: If you give us 30 seconds of your attention, which is the average length of a television commercial, we will […]
In leadership, just because you have the power, does not mean you should use it. And even when you don’t have the power, sometimes you must act as though you […]