We're in the post-Christmas, pre-New Year's news black hole, so it's time to start looking back on 2006 and trying to figure it out.
Call it the war on terror, a war against Islamofascism or a war between modernity and tribalism, we seem to have all but forgotten the struggle we finally had to acknowledge we were in on 9/11. Look no further than the Associated Press' top 10 stories of 2006, which leads off with the war in Iraq and finishes with Darfur (poor Al Gore's Global Warming crisis was only No. 11). I'd name the absence of that struggle from the list my top story of the year. What's it going to take for us to pay attention again, losing a whole city? Also not on the list, but something that deserves top-10 placement, is the YouTube phenomenon. This is the year we'll look back on and realize it's when the fundamental relationship between content providers and content consumers changed forever.
I haven't even seen any ballots for top state news stories, but the takeover of the House by Democrats is the story we'll still be talking about next year. With both houses controlled by Republicans, Gov. Daniels was able to get much of his activist agenda through in his first two years. His last two will be a slightly different story.
Locally, I'd make it a toss-up between the downtown stadium, which was already on the list of possibles before it even became an actual proposal, and the county's smoking ban. Both will continue to make news far into 2007. I'd probably lean toward the stadium because there are more long-range implications.
But what do journalists know? Here are bunch of YOUR top-10 searches through Yahoo for the year. Your top overall search was for Britney Spears. Your top two news searches were for the deaths of Steve Irwin and Anna Nicole's son; Iraq came in at No. 3.
And a few more lists:
The top 10 words of the year, led off by "truthiness."
The top 10 baby names of 2006, led by Aiden and Emma.
The top 10 albums of the year, chosen by a Billboard panel of critics. Bob Dylan had the No. 1 spot.
The American Film Institute's choice for the 10 best films of the year.
Consumer affairs lists the top 10 scams of the year, led with, of course, the fake lottery scam.
Top 10 funniest political quotes of the year. And the winner is . . . John Kerry: “If you make the most of (education), you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.”
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After moving from USC Cinema into the mailroom at Universal, a few of us young "turks" got together and made a feature-length film -- in Super8mm, with syncronized sound, sound effects, and a music track. It was a hit among the hard-to-please L.A. crowd.
We screened it, in Universal's own feature film screening rooms, for studio heads like Thom Mount and Verna Fields (of JAWS fame) as well as directors like John Landis (Animal House, Blues Brothers).
>"The nonprofit AFI, based in Hollywood, >was formed in 1967 with funds from the
>National Endowment for the Arts, the Motion
>Picture Association of America and the Ford
>Foundation. It is dedicated to ... the
>education of future filmmakers."
After seeing our feature film (on which I was a producer and the director of photography), Verna Fields invited us to lunch in the Universal commissary, and asked the director and me if we would like to attend the AFI (American Film Institute).
She certainly had the clout to put us there, but our reaction, after a few years in the Universal mailroom, was both practical AND foolhardy -- We said, "We're already working at a major movie studio and we've made our first feature film; why would we want to go back to film school?"
I still think the question makes all kinds of sense. In the film business, schooling is of limited importance. I used to sit on sound stages, watching veteran film crews filming motion pictures and episodes of television shows, and the consensus was summed up by one camera operator who said, "You can have a PHD in camera and still not get a job in this business."
As a writer, I worked when somebody offered me money to write a script. I was paid excellent money to write a videogame for Hasbro Electronics, for example. But I never wrote what they call "spec" scripts, meaning scripts written on pure speculation that they might be bought eventually. I also wrote material on an independent film script for "union minimum," but the producers couldn't decide if they wanted a hero or a heroine. It makes a difference.
I assisted a longtime buddy, Ed Neumeier, while he created ROBOCOP, and later on his script drafts for Sylvester Stallone (a screenplay from The Executioner books), a script for William Friedken (director of SORCERER 1977, a very profane fellow on the telephone), and simultaneously, another script for ROBOCOP II. A writer's strike nixed all the work on these, a particular annoyance for Mike Medavoy at Orion Pictures in the matter of a RoboCop sequel, but I was able to complete two drafts of the ROBOCOP videogame for Hasbro during this period as I was not a union writer).
My advice is this: If you want to call yourself a filmmaker, just make films and keep making them. Filmmakers make films; they don't just talk about their upcoming sagas.
If you want to be a writer, keep this in mind: Writers write. If you are a writer, you don't need anyone's permission to put your best work on paper. Just go ahead and write.
If you are not writing or making films, you can't call yourself either a writer or a filmmaker. Don't wait for permission, or a job in the industry. Just buy some raw media, learn something about the language of film, and go to it.
As a USC Cinema, and Universal Studios, and Walt Disney Company veteran myself from 1972 to 1990, I'd like to do a local workshop on the language of film/media some day; I don't know anyone who needs this kind of seminar, yet. Maybe this will help.