Author: Writer guy

A streetcar named Brando

Writer guy

Perhaps the most venerated actor of the last 50 years, Marlon Brando has left the building.

His career exploded in the early 50’s with work on The Wild One, A Streetcar Named Desire and Julius Caesar. Films like these marked the dawn of a new era in film, the era of stars insisting everything be done their way.

While many of his performances on screen were inspired at times, almost surreal, little credit is given to directors who coaxed these kind of results out of him.

His role as Don Vito Corleone in the Godfather was sheer genius, bordering on flawless. What was less than perfect was the exacting toll on the Francis Ford Coppola, who not only had to endure Brando not showing up for weeks at a time, but when the actor did deign to appear, he required more than a month of work to determine the right approach for the role. It was a tactic he reprised during Apocalypse Now.

His advancing age did little to soften his attitude. More recently, Brando starred in The Score. Referring to Frank Oz the director as Miss Piggy, he refused to appear on the set if Oz was present.

Betcha lots of people wish they could get away with that at work huh? Sorry boss, I’m not doing anything as long as you are around.

Come to think of it, maybe Brando was onto something…

Sisyphus

Writer guy

Here’s my thought for the day about writing. Once underway, the basic process resembles a giant boulder rolling down a steep hill. In other words, one page leads to two, two leads to three and so on. The longer the ball races down the hill, the faster it travels, the easier it is to write a coherent page on the first try. After all, objects in motion tend to stay in motion.

Now when the writing is going like that, the best approach is just to work with it. Trying to wrestle a rolling boulder back up a hill is well, rather like arguing with a skydiver in the midst of a free fall. Inertia justs wants to bring them back in for a landing.

But there’s a trade off, because there are precious few hills of infinite height, which means and some point the boulder must be “reloaded” and pushed back up the next hill for another trip down.

Thus the journey begins and ends, and begins again. And sometimes rolling with momentum is just as hard as trying to create it.

You’ve got mail

Writer guy

Tech guy had a busy day. Besides packing a bunch of Buddhapuss shirts, he installed the mailing list program. Some open source program called Dada.

For those who signed up for the mailing list, yes a periodic ( and hopefully relevant ) mail is coming your way sometime soon.

Tech guy: OK, so all you do is type up the message and click the button and away you go.
sam: It just fires off to everyone on the list?
Tech guy: Everyone gets it.
sam: Even me?
Tech guy: Even you.
sam: And this is all free?
Tech guy: Free.

Yep, sending mass emails is remarkably easy to do.