Open Mics In April

The open mics have been catching on and we had a great crowd and lots of excellent music by a variety of local musicians, several from Palo Alto. They will be April 9th and 23rd from 5-8 (though I left after 9 last time) at Blue Chalk Cafe at 630 Ramona in downtown Palo Alto. Hope to see you there!

StreamCast Goes To Trial

So, this is good news. Grokster's codefendant in the Supreme Court case is now going to follow this through and provide the entertainment, legal and venture capital communities some security in this litigious world. I've felt all along they would win if one of these spineless P2P's would stand strong and I find Michael Weiss' hubris inspiring.

I mean, really, without the central servers and incriminating Sean Parker memos, Napster probably could have found the protection it needed under Sony. I wonder whether they will be able to get a jury trial for this. I don't know why Wilson would do it, unless he's very sympathetic. God, would I love to see RIAA in front of a jury. I'd love to do a documentary on this; the drama.

RIAA: But judge, how can we find a jury of people who haven't been sued by us? Without our wonderful DRM the world would be chaos, madness, goddamn it, we're talking Communism here!!

EFF: 75 Fucking years, does that mean anything to you? Happy Birthday is copyrighted for god's sake, I'm gonna have to pay Time Warner a million bucks if I sing it for you right now cause we're putting this all into a Michael Moore film.

From what I can tell, the labels were taking the approach they always do; go away and leave us your users and your brand and we won't flood you with discovery motions. Looks like Weiss may have been willing to do that except wanting, I don't know, maybe a job there for him and a few insiders? Then some new, meaner lawyers came in; lawyers who realized that there was a lot more money to be made if this went to trial.

Since RIAA is desperate, they were able to be persuaded to do an end run and go for a decision. But, what a gamble! If they lose, there will be no stopping the P2P's. The word will spread like wildfire and P2P traffic will increase exponentially, not just for music, for film too. It would eviscerate both industries. The labels are hoping this is exactly how the court will see it and will find some next step on liability.

If there's no smoking gun, some memo or email talking about what their users are doing, how will the court find liability? From the software itself? Well, Sony said you can't make that kind of jump. Then the Supreme Court said you can't find protection there if it looks like you are trying to contribute to infringement. But, what if you're not? Then you're back at square one, no liability. The Supreme Court never said you could use the system itself to infer liability, just that you couldn't find shelter there.

So, EFF and everybody and their brother are going to jump into this fray, bigtime. StreamCast is already $4M in the hole and will probably need help. Now I really do think we'll end up with a big bang when all these players start showing up to court. This is where the media usually jumps in, especially if there's a jury. So, stay tuned.

Spielberg Gets Real

The king of fantasy has just signed with Mark Burnett and Fox to do a reality TV show called "On The Lot" which will play like a cross between American Idol and The Apprentice. The idea came from the preeminent film director who is apparently quite a fan of Burnett and Survivor.

As I've said for years now, as the traditional barriers of entry into music recording and film production come down, those in charge of traditional channels will show increasing interest in the next wave of independent filmmakers. I know everyone thinks I'm crazy for making films as a rank beginner, but I know what most people don't; opportunities for gaining visibility and distribution are growing, and will continue to grow. In my film, about Silicon Valley, we see how companies like Google and Apple look for promising young directors. Well, apparently Dreamworks, and probably every studio, has the same idea.

The winner of On The Lot will be given a production deal with Dreamworks. After scouring the country for filmmakers, sixteen finalists will be brought to Hollywood and put into teams for making films in a short amount of time, sort of like CinemaSport. Like Apprentice, each group will choose a leader (director) and prepare a film, I guess in a week, on a particular subject, or perhaps in a particular genre. It will be an elimination game, like all the rest, with the losing team having to lose a member.

The films will be judged by a panel of experts and, of course, the American public, who will start the winner off with a fan base as big as the Idol winners get. Think of all the dough Kelly Clarkson, alone, has made for Simon Fuller and Fox. So, I look forward to this show. Not only do I plan to watch it, but, I'll be entering as well.

Fake News

I thought I was pretty cynical and jaded, but this surprised even me. It's certainly the first I've heard about this story, and became aware of it only through an email from one of the many internet freedom and public advocacy groups I belong to; Free Press (link at right).

Apparently, it is commonplace, at many, if not most, of the biggest stations in the country to pass off corporate sponsored videos (VNRs) as journalism. If you click on the link above you'll see a long list of stories that have actually been outed, but, it seems pretty obvious to me that this is a common and accepted practice at stations everywhere. It makes me wonder if there's any objective reporting left. Who can we trust to give us balanced information? Who can we turn to, as a society, to tell us what the corporations won't?

We have "news stories" promoting wonder drugs that are taken verbatim from footage provided by the very drug companies manufacturing the stuff we put into our bodies. Drugs are obviously the most disturbing examples, but this issue applies from everything to consumer products promoted by shills to electronics suggestions offered up by manufacturers.

These pieces are portrayed on traditional news shows in major markets, with reporters seeming to have researched and written the stories themselves, when they are actually using video footage lifted wholesale from the corporate suppliers trying to sell product. Here in the Bay Area, KPIX reporter Thuy Vu did a three minute piece singing the praises of the drug Exubera lifting half of it from a Pfizer video without any type of disclosure. In fact, the warnings about adverse effects that were contained in the original VNR due to legal requirements were actually omitted from the newscast. I mean, how pathetic is it that the ads are a better source of information than our news stories?

WCBS in New York, the CBS-owned station with the third largest market in the country, ran a story on chondroitin sulfate without mentioning that every shot, fact and soundbite was taken directly from a VNR from Leiner Health Products, which distributes the product. They put their own narrative and logos on the story to make it look like legitimate, objective reporting yet failed to mention that the New England Journal of Medicine story referred to in the piece actually said the drug was ineffective.

Free Press and the Center For Media and Democracy are holding a press event in Washington today to release a groundbreaking report of this activity, which is illegal. They caught 77 local stations, 80% of which were owned by major media conglomerates. It will be interesting to follow this story... into the ground, where it will surely be buried and never reported on (although the NY Times ran the story today). My guess is that this practice in endemic and unless Elliot Spitzer decides to get interested, my readers will be among the few who now must take a jaundiced eye to almost everything they see on TV because truly, there is no real independent voice in mainstream media today. Save for a few websites and organizations, almost every "fact" we see out there today probably emanated from some conglomerate selling something.

And, maybe that's fine for some dress or sofa we think is pretty, but what about the food and drugs we put into our bodies? We are more drugged out than ever but our overall health is worse than ever, almost every disease out there is becoming more prevalent, not less, so we need to take more drugs... hmmm... what a coincidence. The cost of healthcare has a huge impact on our society. Life expectancy is going down, not up. Half of all Americans are overweight, a third are obese. How long are people going to take this? How drugged and blind can we be? Maybe PT Barnum was right, you can't fool all the people all the time, but if you can fool 99%, and you can, you can make a lot of money doing so.

Derailed

As this film pulled me in, first with sex, then with suspense, I kept thinking, damn, why can't I get my plots this tight. You really have to hand it to writers who can pull you along like this, as thrillers often do. It's the oldest plot in the book; what happens when you find yourself in a bed of lies? Again, this film uses two of the most frequent, the affair, and embezzlement. Our "protagonist", Clive Owen, is doing both, and this prevents him from seeking help when victimized by a very, very bad man, who works in a group of con artists.

He runs into the too good to be true Jennifer Aniston on a train and becomes, yes, derailed. Everything goes off track once lured. How many times have we seen this? Fatal Attraction and Crimes and Misdemeanors both go deep into the extended life of becoming embedded in living a lie. Clive is still the good guy, despite the affair, because he's so devoted to helping his daughter and has been dealt an unfairly harsh hand. We cheer for him when he kills all the bad guys in the big climax. Hope I'm not giving away any surprises here, but don't the bad guys get it in every film, or at least every big budget, standard Hollywood film, which is exactly what this is.

It's the right formula, two hot stars, a great script, action, violence, blood. Blood is very big now, so big in fact, that I haven't been too into reviewing films lately. The History of Violence wasn't bad but what really are you supposed to say about it? Nice prosthetics there, good blood spurt? Oh, I know I should get real philosophical about why we are so drawn to violence, why so many wars (testosterone). I even took a class once on the philosophy of war (yes, this was the same professor who had the class in Carlos Casteneda, let's not go there). But frankly, I'm much more interested in sex, and since that sells just as well, albeit in different markets, may as well focus on that.

Apparently, this all started a few years ago when a few execs followed some guys into the men's room to get the sort of real focus group experience and the word was all about blood, blood, blood and more blood. If you go to the movies, they'll be redder, I guarantee it. They took all the cute daughter homey scenes out of this one to get more gore in. Now, my teenage son just loves this, he wants us to go and get some prosthetics for our next film and I have to admit, putting fake blood in condoms does sound fun, but no, even if it brings in twice the viewers, it's so cheap and manipulative. Now, I didn't mind encouraging my actors to be more sexual, but that wasn't just to make it more marketable, it's because to me, sex between consenting adults is basically a beautiful thing and violence is about pain.

So, I would like to see Hollywood rely less on violence to move story or at least make it less graphic. They won't do that. There are too many people who need that shock to engage in the film. So, if you like violence, check out this DVD and History of Violence, which has cooler behind the scenes features. They're brutal but, both tight, well-acted stories.