Television is breaking its long established talent pipelines. “Network television was a strict dues-paying culture. Writers sweated it out for years on other people’s shows — earning arcane titles like ‘executive story editor’ and ‘supervising producer’ — before getting a shot at creating their own. But lately those rules are being rewritten. Networks are now clamoring for fresh voices that they otherwise would not have looked toward.”
Tag: 03.21.04
Added Value (Of Art)
How is the value of art determined? “Scholars, critics, researchers and historians all shape the value of art. You think you are pure, but you give an expertise and you are participating in the market. Your assessment of quality, authenticity or attribution makes you a player, like it or not. You go to graduate school and think about truth and beauty, but there’s this whole other world that affects the truth-and-beauty factor.”
Jamming With Saatchi
Charles Saatchi’s new show is jammed full of art. “An emporium is what it feels like – piled high, stacked deep. If one more work was tacked to one more inch of wood-panelled wall, the building would surely collapse. The central pantheon that guarantees the box office remains more or less intact: the shark, the dung, Myra and the bloody head, dead dad and the famously unmade bed. But all the other rooms, halls and corridors are jammed. By my count, there are more than a hundred new works on display, plus several more classics from Saatchi’s collection. You get three shows for the price of a ticket.”
A Grey Response To Black And White Laws
The public is getting increasingly irritated with Big Music’s attempts to tighten copyright. EMI’s recent move against Danger Mouse and the Grey Album “was a spectacular backfire in the war over what’s fair when the muse runs afoul of copyright law in the Digital Age. Technology is making it easier than ever to sample and rework recordings, and to the chagrin of entertainment companies and some artists who hold copyrights, the public is showing little sympathy for their efforts to control original works.”
MTT: Brilliant And Brash
Michael Tilson Thomas has made a career of doing the music he believes in. “I very much like the idea of the past, present and future being connected. Because I knew so many composers, hearing them sing their own music in their own voices had a huge influence on me. You learn so much about a person from hearing them sing. So I had to work backward with composers I never met, ones who died 200 years before I was born, to create a voice, a clear expressive point of view.”
Dark Times For Animators
“For decades, Southern California was the ultimate destination for self-described ‘animation geeks’ — kids who worked from homemade flip books and cel collecting to get there. But shifts in the industry — a growing appetite for computer-generated graphics and the chronic issue of outsourcing — have eliminated 1,000 jobs in the last three years. It’s a frustrating time for animators.
Our Culture Through A Wagner Filter
The English like their mythologies to work out, to resolve themselves. But Wagner doesn’t let you do that. “Bluntly, he’s a critical component of our culture. We are compelled to make sense of why Wagner deploys myth to prove our own moral uncertainties.”
Wanted – A Dead Body (Must Be Able To Act)
A London theatre is conducting an unusual casting call – for a dead body. “The consent of the donor of the body is being sought beforehand and the production team aim to treat the subject of death with absolute seriousness, challenging modern taboos about a condition that comes to everybody at some point. Called Dead: You Will Be, the play requires a dead body to ‘lie in state’ throughout the proceedings.”
ABT – Road To Recovery?
American Ballet Theatre’s artistic director Kevin McKenzie says ABT’s financial worries aren’t serious. He “insists any financial shortfall is strictly a routine cash-flow crunch. “We have no long-term debt. We do have an operating deficit of around $1 million, but that’s the same as it has been for several years. We don’t owe vendors; we raised more money last year than ever before, and it’s a far cry from when I took over. Then, you’d call, tell people you were with ABT and they’d hang up.”
Iraq As A Soap Opera
Iraq TV is getting its first post-American invasion soap opera. “During Saddam’s reign, show business was under tight state control and all actors were employed by a government ministry. Television and feature films were heavily censored. Since the fall of Saddam last year, independent film-makers have enjoyed unprecedented freedom. Ironically, as the plots of Love and War indicate, much of this new-found artistic energy is being used to criticise, subtly or not, the American and British forces who brought the freedom.”