Er, ah, yeah... I wasn't the redundant one! The nerve of him!!
Unfortuantely, there's the whole timestamp issue.
In any case, I'm glad you like "Quality is Job 36." I'm thinking of having it tatooed on my forehead. Better yet, perhaps I should get a chloroform soaked rag and hide in the shadows in the executive parking lot. Now, that would be one amusing police report and mug shot for The Smoking Gun
As I recall the show Ally McBeal used this as a plot point in the pilot. The partners wanted a unisex bathroom in order to incerease communication/camaraderie/etc in the firm. While a lot of the stuff on the show (especially towards the end of its run) was weak, I thought they milked that concept pretty well.
On an anniversarry show of 60 Minutes Harry reasoner commented to the effect that he pitched most of his stories to producer Don Hewitt by cornering him in the bathroom. They then had Ed Bradley and some of the other male correspondents say the same thing, indicating "everyone knows that's how you pitch a story to Don." Then they told Lesley Stahl this during her interview and she commented something like "Damn! No wonder I can't get anything on the air around here!"
You know, I should probably read the other posts to see that someone else posted the same thing.
Before anyone burns a "redundant" mod point against my karma, though, would they consider the "sincerest form of flattery" argument first? Please? Pretty please??
Reminds me of the Dilbert where the pointy haired boss is talking about the latest study from HQ:
PHB: We've been saying that our people are our most important asset for years, but our recent inventory shows that's not true.
Dilbert: Really? Where do we rank?
PHB: 17th.
Dilbert: 17th!?
PHB: Yes. Just below carbon paper.
Man, it almost makes you wish they'd just come out and say the truth:
"People are our 17th most important asset"
"Quality is job 36!"
"Turning a quarterly profit at our company's long term expense - that's what we're all about.'
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the earlier Discworld effort. the animated Soul Music. Does 7 episodes at 25 minutes each count as "full length"? It was fun, although I'm afraid my imagination skewed a few things a little differently (Death playing electric guitar looked a lot cooler in my mind's eye).
In perusing IMDB, I found that there's also Wyrd Sisters and Welcome to Discworld. Haven't seen either, although the later is supposed to be on my Soul Music DVD.
Not directly involving the iPod, but this week's I Cringely has a discussion of how the new Mac Mini may be a move by Apple to get into the movie distribution business, trying to repeat with video the success they've had with the iPod for audio. He has some interesting speculation on synergy from Pixar (which Jobs also controls) and Sony ("...you don't get the head of Sony at your event just to sell camcorders"). Well worth a read.
You make good points about the ST universe, but as you yourself said "they won't (improve) because of Hollywood nepotism." It's a matter of Paramount doing the implementation, not possibilities still available in the ST universe. Ending the thing for now and then reviving it after Berman has (fingers crossed, fingers crossed!) gone onto greener pastures would allow them to focus their energy. Despite everything we/.ers might whine about Paramount, they have shown a capability for turning out good ST stories in the past. They just need to give themselves breathing space (and the right mindset - a very big "if") to do it again.
I think you're more optimistic than I, but I'll keep my fingers crossed. The reason I'm replying, though, is your comment:
a race over an alien landscape with chasing aliens firing lasers... just as easily done with horses and six-shooters
Two thoughts, both reasonably OT:
Firefly pretty much did this and produced some great storytelling. I don't think Wheadon's world in FF has enough scope to compare to ST (heck, how many could support 10 movies and 5 series), but still great.
I believe Roddenberry originally pitched ST as "Wagon Train in Space."
This is hardly a new observation, but Paramount should give Trek a rest for a while. While it's easy to pick at Berman & Braga, the simple fact is that the Trek universe is suffering from production fatigue. When there's been too much put out there at a constant rate it's inevitable that quality will drop.
Instead of dragging out ideas that were rejected for TNG, DS9, and Voyager (and we all know of more than a few stinkers that made it there anyways), they should just stop making the stuff for a while. Give the fans a chance to hunger again. Then, perhaps in 2009 or so, crank up the machine and have at it again.
But, as long as there's a buck to be bled out of the franchise, they'll probably instead just keep cranking out crap. That's a truism in our vertically integrated Hollywood these days. Heck,/.ers might like to pick on them, but the fact is that you don't even need B & B to ruin it anymore...
There is a great old war story I heard which supposedly took place in France. While I think it was in the RISKs newsletter, I'm not entirely sure where I heard it so you should take it with a grain of salt...
The story begins in punchcard days at one of the major mainframe companies (UNIVAC or IBM). A new release of software was shipped from the U.S. to France in the form of a large deck of punched cards. Upon arrival, the deck is loaded on the reader and the whole thing crashes. A second deck is shipped to the eagerly awaiting customer (remember, this was before overnight shipping) and the mainframe crashes again, but in an entirely different manner. The customer is frantic so it is decided (possibly after a few more iterations) to send an employee to babysit the delivery.
All goes well until the deck hits Customs. It turns out that Paris had recently declared punchcard decks to be a bulk commodity (until then, there'd been no category to descibe them). This category includes things like shipments of grain, goose down, or reams of blank paper. Standard procedure calls for taking a small sample from each shipment and filing it away just in case there's a later question about the quality or identity of the goods.
This means that the customs inspector would examine the card deck, verify it was what the manifest claimed it was, and then take two or three cards at random from the stack and carefully file them with the appropriate paperwork. Basically, they were removing 80 characters at a time from each release in random chunks.
In the end the procedure was fixed. Presumably, though, the missing cards are still sitting in an archive somewhere in Paris, stapled to yellowing customs forms.
I have a well thumbed copy of Data Structures and Algorithms by Aho (the "a" in UNIX "awk," by the way), Ullman, and Hopcroft that I used for an algorithm class many moons ago. During the course, I spent a lot of time poking around the index looking for various things. I noticed the indexes' entry for "Recursive Procedure" includes the page number of the entry itself (see it here).
A good point. Playing Devil's Advocate, though, take a look at the five year picture. When you look at how bad SCO tanked when the tech bubble collapsed, one might argue that McBride & company did the right thing by litigating and managed to recover so much value from the company (giving you a window of about June '01 to May '03 for coming out ahead).
Of course, the chart shows that as screwed as anyone who bought after May '03 might be, it's nothing to those who bought in in early '00 (the IPO? That's what the chart implies).
What's stunning is that you can even look at the pummelling the market took after 9/11 and the drops in all three indices look like just little dips next to SCO's spiral over five years. Ick!
I have to wonder what kind of assets they have for a vulture capitalist to sell off (other than their "rights" to *NIX). Surely nothing close to their capitalization, but I still have to wonder.
Wow. When I saw your chart, I was about to make a smarmy remark about "sure it's higher, but it had nothing to do with SCO, it just followed the market". Then I compared SCO with the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P. You were dead on. Absolutely dead on.
I love numbers. You can look at them any way you want and make up nearly any story you want to go with them. While some posters are talking about "only a 7%" drop in SCO shares and say this is nothing, you can look at another number and become tingly with delight at a 99% drop in SCO's licensing revenues, from $10.3M 20034Q to $120,000 this 4Q (Forbes story with ads here).
This was the big contibuting factor in a total revenue drop of about 60% (and resulting stock drop).
Naturally, the truth is somewhere in between. This is bad news for SCO's strategies. That does not mean McBride won't be able to convince his minders to hold the course and continue with litigation. Strictly speaking, at this moment, they're still convinced. Neverhteless, it's obviously a bumpy road ahead for them.
So, don't throw a victory party yet, but I think we're all entitled to spend a few minutes smirking.
Excellent point. I'm sure the Tolkein estate saw a similar phenomenon, although they've always been *very* savvy, as evidenced by their actions against TSR's D&D and their own RPG licencee Iron Crown Enterprises (for those who don't know the tale, they basically forced ICE into recievership by demanding a specific royalty payment when the movies began production, allowing them to rebid the RPG licence [not that I can blame them - ICE probably couldn't represent them the way they needed after the movie]. I have a friend who actually had the oportunity to buy ICE out in the auction, but got outbid)
In lieu of having any mod points, just let me say I like your comment. Civil but pointed. Once her site recovers from the slashdotting it's taking right now, you ought to put that question in an EMAIL for her. She seems like a reasonable sort - I wouldn't be the slightest surprised if she answered it on her site.
C'mon, you have something against the lady? All she want to do is get some help in getting some cash out of the Earthsea Financial Ministry to reliable people over here in the States. What could possibly be wrong with that? (*GRIN*)
In addition to her site and Slate, she has put up a more detailed chronology at the Agony column called "Earthsea in Clorox". While the second half is a reiteration of the Slate essay, I provide the first half here to prevent slashdotting:
1. Background: my (non)involvement with this production. For people
who wonder why I sold out to Halmi, or let
them change the story -- you may find some answers here.
The producers
(not yet including Robert Halmi Sr.) approached us with a reasonable
offer. My dramatic agency at that time was William
Morris. The contract of course gave me only the standard status of consultant --
which means exactly what the producers want it to mean, almost always
little or nothing. The agency could not improve this clause. But
the purchasers talked as if they genuinely meant to respect the books
and to ask for my input when planning the film.
As I had scripted the first two books myself, with Michael Powell,
years ago, and also worked with another scriptwriter to plan his
script of the first book, I was in a position to be useful to them.
I knew some of the difficulties in carrying this story over to film.
And some of the possibilities that could be fulfilled, too, the things
a movie can do that a novel can't. It was an exciting prospect.
They were talking at that time of a large-scale theater movie, although
the possibility of a TV miniseries was mentioned. They said that
they had already secured Philippa Boyen (who scripted The Lord
of the Rings) as principal scriptwriter, and reported that she was eager
to work on an Earthsea film. As the script was, to me, all-important,
her presence was the key factor in my decision to sell them the option
to the film rights.
Time went by. By the time they got backing from the Sci Fi Channel
for a miniseries -- and Robert Halmi Sr. had come aboard -- they
had lost Boyen.
That was a blow. But I had just seen Mr Halmi's miniseries Dreamkeeper with its stunning Native American cast, so I said to them in a phone
conversation, hey, maybe Mr Halmi will cast some of those great actors
in Earthsea! -- Oh, no, I was told -- Mr Halmi had found those people
impossible to work with.
Well, I said, you do realise that almost
everybody in Earthsea is 'those
people,' or anyhow not white?
I don't remember what their answer to that was -- it may have used
that wonderful weasel word colorblind -- but it wasn't
reassuring, because I do remember saying to my husband, oh, gee,
I bet they're going to have a honky Ged. . .
This was in the spring of 2004. They moved very fast then, because
if they didn't get into production, they would lose their rights
to the property. Early in this period they contacted me in a friendly
fashion, and I responded in kind; I asked if they'd like to have
a list of name pronunciations; and I said that although I knew well
that a film must differ greatly from a book, I hoped they were making
no unnecessary changes in the plot or to the characters -- a dangerous
thing to do, since the books have been known to millions of people
for over 30 years. To this they replied that the TV audience is much
larger, and entirely different, and changes to a book's story and
characters were of no importance to them.
They then sent me several versions of the script -- and told me that
shooting had already begun. In other words, I had been absolutely
cut out of the process.
I withdrew my offered pronunciation guide (so Ogion, which rhymes
with bogy-on, is Oh-jee-on in the film.) Having looked
over the script, I realised they had no understanding of what the
two books are about, and no interest in finding out. All they intended
was to use the name Earthsea, and some of the scenes from
the books, in a generic MacMagic movie with a meaningless plot based
on sex
and violence. (And fai
When I was in high school, I wrote a humorous essay in a creative writing class. The assignment was something like 'tell a story about you doing a task in a step by step manner." I responded with a (thankfully fictional) tale of me trying to bake a cake and winding up setting the kitchen on fire.
The teacher liked it so much, she had me type it up and she put included it on the midterm as a sample work for the other students to pick apart. I was an incredibly sloppy student and typing the thing up seemed like a horrible burden, but the idea that I'd ace the test was enough to motivate me. After all, I wrote the dang thing, didn't I?
When test day rolled around, though, she asked things about "what technique is the author using to suspend disbelief?" and "which passages are used to build foreboding for the ending?" In the end I was lucky to pass the thing by the skin of my teeth.
I won't pretend to be their equals, but I have to admit I vaguely know how Tolkien and Le Guin felt.
When I sold the rights to Earthsea a few years ago, my contract gave me the standard status of "consultant"--which means whatever the producers want it to mean, almost always little or nothing.
While it's obvious she's been treated shabbily, she's too much of a pro to sue. Threats of litagation won't force Hollywood to do a better job. Only ratings (and perhaps letters to the network and producers indicating viewers were disappointed) will.
From this and other stories of bad adaptations, it's obvious that Hollywood feels they're doing authors a favor by producing their works. And, as much as the purist in my soul screams at it, they're absolutely right. It's likely Le Guin will see more royalties for a miniseries that fades into obscurity in two weeks than over the thrity plus years of the print editions. It says a lot about her character that she at least tried to have her agents fight the good fight.
Actually, the comments at her site seem more concerned about the reduction of her ying/yang concepts to believers vs. unbelievers, ripe for a Crusade. As to her plot being "gang raped" (great word choice, BTW), she's a pro. As she states, "I've tried very hard to keep from saying anything at all about this
production, being well aware that movies must differ in many ways
from the books they're based on..."
Her opinions on race are long standing. I heard her blurb about "readers of color who told me that the Earthsea books were the only books in the genre that they felt included in" years ago. It's something she really feels strongly about.
Oddly, I heard that blurb when I was reading Left Hand of Darkness and I thought she was talking only about Earthsea. For the life of me, I hadn't realized that the characters in Hand weren't white.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortuantely, there's the whole timestamp issue.
In any case, I'm glad you like "Quality is Job 36." I'm thinking of having it tatooed on my forehead. Better yet, perhaps I should get a chloroform soaked rag and hide in the shadows in the executive parking lot. Now, that would be one amusing police report and mug shot for The Smoking Gun
Two bits:
Before anyone burns a "redundant" mod point against my karma, though, would they consider the "sincerest form of flattery" argument first? Please? Pretty please??
Didn't think so...
PHB: We've been saying that our people are our most important asset for years, but our recent inventory shows that's not true.
Dilbert: Really? Where do we rank?
PHB: 17th.
Dilbert: 17th!?
PHB: Yes. Just below carbon paper.
Man, it almost makes you wish they'd just come out and say the truth:
In perusing IMDB, I found that there's also Wyrd Sisters and Welcome to Discworld. Haven't seen either, although the later is supposed to be on my Soul Music DVD.
Not directly involving the iPod, but this week's I Cringely has a discussion of how the new Mac Mini may be a move by Apple to get into the movie distribution business, trying to repeat with video the success they've had with the iPod for audio. He has some interesting speculation on synergy from Pixar (which Jobs also controls) and Sony ("...you don't get the head of Sony at your event just to sell camcorders"). Well worth a read.
You make good points about the ST universe, but as you yourself said "they won't (improve) because of Hollywood nepotism." It's a matter of Paramount doing the implementation, not possibilities still available in the ST universe. Ending the thing for now and then reviving it after Berman has (fingers crossed, fingers crossed!) gone onto greener pastures would allow them to focus their energy. Despite everything we /.ers might whine about Paramount, they have shown a capability for turning out good ST stories in the past. They just need to give themselves breathing space (and the right mindset - a very big "if") to do it again.
I think you're more optimistic than I, but I'll keep my fingers crossed. The reason I'm replying, though, is your comment:
a race over an alien landscape with chasing aliens firing lasers... just as easily done with horses and six-shooters
Two thoughts, both reasonably OT:
Instead of dragging out ideas that were rejected for TNG, DS9, and Voyager (and we all know of more than a few stinkers that made it there anyways), they should just stop making the stuff for a while. Give the fans a chance to hunger again. Then, perhaps in 2009 or so, crank up the machine and have at it again.
But, as long as there's a buck to be bled out of the franchise, they'll probably instead just keep cranking out crap. That's a truism in our vertically integrated Hollywood these days. Heck, /.ers might like to pick on them, but the fact is that you don't even need B & B to ruin it anymore...
The story begins in punchcard days at one of the major mainframe companies (UNIVAC or IBM). A new release of software was shipped from the U.S. to France in the form of a large deck of punched cards. Upon arrival, the deck is loaded on the reader and the whole thing crashes. A second deck is shipped to the eagerly awaiting customer (remember, this was before overnight shipping) and the mainframe crashes again, but in an entirely different manner. The customer is frantic so it is decided (possibly after a few more iterations) to send an employee to babysit the delivery.
All goes well until the deck hits Customs. It turns out that Paris had recently declared punchcard decks to be a bulk commodity (until then, there'd been no category to descibe them). This category includes things like shipments of grain, goose down, or reams of blank paper. Standard procedure calls for taking a small sample from each shipment and filing it away just in case there's a later question about the quality or identity of the goods.
This means that the customs inspector would examine the card deck, verify it was what the manifest claimed it was, and then take two or three cards at random from the stack and carefully file them with the appropriate paperwork. Basically, they were removing 80 characters at a time from each release in random chunks.
In the end the procedure was fixed. Presumably, though, the missing cards are still sitting in an archive somewhere in Paris, stapled to yellowing customs forms.
The best jokes are always the subtle ones.
Does anyone else find it ironic that NPR has posted a digital stream of this story about the analog tape industry?
Of course, the chart shows that as screwed as anyone who bought after May '03 might be, it's nothing to those who bought in in early '00 (the IPO? That's what the chart implies). What's stunning is that you can even look at the pummelling the market took after 9/11 and the drops in all three indices look like just little dips next to SCO's spiral over five years. Ick!
I have to wonder what kind of assets they have for a vulture capitalist to sell off (other than their "rights" to *NIX). Surely nothing close to their capitalization, but I still have to wonder.
Kudos on a good observation.
Naturally, the truth is somewhere in between. This is bad news for SCO's strategies. That does not mean McBride won't be able to convince his minders to hold the course and continue with litigation. Strictly speaking, at this moment, they're still convinced. Neverhteless, it's obviously a bumpy road ahead for them.
So, don't throw a victory party yet, but I think we're all entitled to spend a few minutes smirking.
...the terrorists have already won.
Excellent point. I'm sure the Tolkein estate saw a similar phenomenon, although they've always been *very* savvy, as evidenced by their actions against TSR's D&D and their own RPG licencee Iron Crown Enterprises (for those who don't know the tale, they basically forced ICE into recievership by demanding a specific royalty payment when the movies began production, allowing them to rebid the RPG licence [not that I can blame them - ICE probably couldn't represent them the way they needed after the movie]. I have a friend who actually had the oportunity to buy ICE out in the auction, but got outbid)
This was before you got that writing gig on The Simpsons and made Bart do it on that one episode, right? (*GRIN*)
In lieu of having any mod points, just let me say I like your comment. Civil but pointed. Once her site recovers from the slashdotting it's taking right now, you ought to put that question in an EMAIL for her. She seems like a reasonable sort - I wouldn't be the slightest surprised if she answered it on her site.
C'mon, you have something against the lady? All she want to do is get some help in getting some cash out of the Earthsea Financial Ministry to reliable people over here in the States. What could possibly be wrong with that? (*GRIN*)
In addition to her site and Slate, she has put up a more detailed chronology at the Agony column called "Earthsea in Clorox". While the second half is a reiteration of the Slate essay, I provide the first half here to prevent slashdotting:
1. Background: my (non)involvement with this production.
For people who wonder why I sold out to Halmi, or let them change the story -- you may find some answers here.
The producers (not yet including Robert Halmi Sr.) approached us with a reasonable offer. My dramatic agency at that time was William Morris. The contract of course gave me only the standard status of consultant -- which means exactly what the producers want it to mean, almost always little or nothing. The agency could not improve this clause. But the purchasers talked as if they genuinely meant to respect the books and to ask for my input when planning the film.
As I had scripted the first two books myself, with Michael Powell, years ago, and also worked with another scriptwriter to plan his script of the first book, I was in a position to be useful to them. I knew some of the difficulties in carrying this story over to film. And some of the possibilities that could be fulfilled, too, the things a movie can do that a novel can't. It was an exciting prospect.
They were talking at that time of a large-scale theater movie, although the possibility of a TV miniseries was mentioned. They said that they had already secured Philippa Boyen (who scripted The Lord of the Rings) as principal scriptwriter, and reported that she was eager to work on an Earthsea film. As the script was, to me, all-important, her presence was the key factor in my decision to sell them the option to the film rights.
Time went by. By the time they got backing from the Sci Fi Channel for a miniseries -- and Robert Halmi Sr. had come aboard -- they had lost Boyen.
That was a blow. But I had just seen Mr Halmi's miniseries Dreamkeeper with its stunning Native American cast, so I said to them in a phone conversation, hey, maybe Mr Halmi will cast some of those great actors in Earthsea! -- Oh, no, I was told -- Mr Halmi had found those people impossible to work with.
Well, I said, you do realise that almost everybody in Earthsea is 'those people,' or anyhow not white?
I don't remember what their answer to that was -- it may have used that wonderful weasel word colorblind -- but it wasn't reassuring, because I do remember saying to my husband, oh, gee, I bet they're going to have a honky Ged. . .
This was in the spring of 2004. They moved very fast then, because if they didn't get into production, they would lose their rights to the property. Early in this period they contacted me in a friendly fashion, and I responded in kind; I asked if they'd like to have a list of name pronunciations; and I said that although I knew well that a film must differ greatly from a book, I hoped they were making no unnecessary changes in the plot or to the characters -- a dangerous thing to do, since the books have been known to millions of people for over 30 years. To this they replied that the TV audience is much larger, and entirely different, and changes to a book's story and characters were of no importance to them.
They then sent me several versions of the script -- and told me that shooting had already begun. In other words, I had been absolutely cut out of the process.
I withdrew my offered pronunciation guide (so Ogion, which rhymes with bogy-on, is Oh-jee-on in the film.) Having looked over the script, I realised they had no understanding of what the two books are about, and no interest in finding out. All they intended was to use the name Earthsea, and some of the scenes from the books, in a generic MacMagic movie with a meaningless plot based on sex and violence. (And fai
The teacher liked it so much, she had me type it up and she put included it on the midterm as a sample work for the other students to pick apart. I was an incredibly sloppy student and typing the thing up seemed like a horrible burden, but the idea that I'd ace the test was enough to motivate me. After all, I wrote the dang thing, didn't I?
When test day rolled around, though, she asked things about "what technique is the author using to suspend disbelief?" and "which passages are used to build foreboding for the ending?" In the end I was lucky to pass the thing by the skin of my teeth.
I won't pretend to be their equals, but I have to admit I vaguely know how Tolkien and Le Guin felt.
In her Slate piece, she states:
When I sold the rights to Earthsea a few years ago, my contract gave me the standard status of "consultant"--which means whatever the producers want it to mean, almost always little or nothing.
While it's obvious she's been treated shabbily, she's too much of a pro to sue. Threats of litagation won't force Hollywood to do a better job. Only ratings (and perhaps letters to the network and producers indicating viewers were disappointed) will.
From this and other stories of bad adaptations, it's obvious that Hollywood feels they're doing authors a favor by producing their works. And, as much as the purist in my soul screams at it, they're absolutely right. It's likely Le Guin will see more royalties for a miniseries that fades into obscurity in two weeks than over the thrity plus years of the print editions. It says a lot about her character that she at least tried to have her agents fight the good fight.
Her opinions on race are long standing. I heard her blurb about "readers of color who told me that the Earthsea books were the only books in the genre that they felt included in" years ago. It's something she really feels strongly about.
Oddly, I heard that blurb when I was reading Left Hand of Darkness and I thought she was talking only about Earthsea. For the life of me, I hadn't realized that the characters in Hand weren't white.
Oh,yeah, also insert the standard "I submitted this story Tuesday" rant here, too.