The END IS NEAR

(Pastor Sam ascends the pulpit)

Brothers...sisters...I come to you with a message-ah. 

I have witnessed a revelation from the lawd-ah.

The Angel Gabriel came down to me as I walked through a field, and the Angel took me above the field and he said-ah:

"REPENT SINNER! THE END IS NIGH! GAWD WILL SEND A DISEASE TO CLEANSE-AH THE POPULATION! AND THAT DISEASE-AH IS THE SWINE FLU! PREPARE-AH FOR THE END OF DAYS!"

And Gabriel brought me back down to the field, and I walked home, and I got down on my knees-ah, and prayed to the lawd-ah, and the lawd said-ah, SAM (For the lord loveth italics): Go to Bethany and tell the people the truth-ah. Tell them the swine flu is the end-ah, the end of civilzation-ah. Only the chosen will escape-ah. Neither Jew or Gentile will be spared-ah. They will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. I have told the networks to broadcast fear on the television-ah, twenty-four seven, to striketh fear in the hearts of the people, so they may turn to the lawd-ah for their salvation.

And I said to the lawd: Can you give me some proof that swine flu is more deadly than, say, regular flu?

And the LAWD said: If there wasn't proof, my child, would the tv networks broadcast such fear day in and day out, hyping the matter out of proportion-ah?

And I said: Yes.

And the LAWD said, all right, so we elected an intelligent black guy, everyone's bored and we need ratings. You got a problem with that?

And I said, so this isn't Captain Trips? 

And the lawd sayeth: Oh, you mean the virus from the Stand?

And I said that's right.

And the lawd saidst: That was a pretty good book. 

And I said: Did you see the movie?

And the lawd sayed: I DID see the movie. Wasn't Gary Sinise awesome?

And I said: Yeah, but what's he done lately.

And the lawd saysd: Isn't he on one of the CSIs?

And I said: I don't know, I got tired of that show after the Tarantino episode.

And the lawd sed: Yeah, it's kind of run it's course. 

People Who Should Be Beaten With Shovels (Part One)

Dan Brown: Ever since I threw Angels & Demons across the room in disgust at the poor writing and awful, awful foreshadowing, I've been suspicious of this guy. Now he has Tom Hanks playing his superhero symbologist (a cardboard actor playing a cardboard character with a fictitional profession), and a new book that probably out-Grishams Grisham in terms of stale plotting and faceless bogeyman villains. At least Ludlum told a decent story. This guy is Tom Clancy without the schematics, Judith Krantz without a sex drive.

Donnie from New Kids - Mark Wahlberg had one great performance in him--The Departed. His brother doesn't even have that much. Donnie was part of a shitty circus act adored by cretins twenty years ago, a group so talentless and phony they made the Spice Girls look like Neil Young and Crazy Horse. Now he's got a tv show with Jeremy Piven and a reunion tour. Forget the swine flu, worry about the douche chills.

Vin Diesel - The script for a Vin Diesel movie is just the words "VRRROOOOOM" and "BA-CHEWW" alternating for 120 pages. Years ago he made a shitty movie called Fast and Furious. Now he's done it again. How fucking dumb are people? 

Green Day - It's time to realize that punk music was never good. It was a shill from day one, and "pop-punk" is a redunancy. Forty years ago Malcomn McClaren put a boy band in tattered denim and leather and gave the world the Sex Pistols. I won't say it's been downhill from there--it's just been exactly the same. All punk bands sound equally bad. Green Day suck, but their claim to fame is that they play sucky ballads, which get them on the adult contemporary stations. As Josh might say, I'd have the "Time of my Life" if I could curb-stomp the face of the lead singer of Green Day into the "boulevard of broken dreams." 

Avril Lavigne - And on the subject of unlistenable music, aren't we done with this creature yet? In Staples they now have a cardboard display of her hawking cameras. What a fucking rebellious youngster. Another gollum who's branched out from sucky punk to sucky ballads. 

Chris Brown and Rianna - Let them get back together. A few dropkicks to the spine didn't hurt Tina Turner's career.

The Hogans - Who knew that Suburban Commando would turn out to be the high point for the Hulkster? His son put someone in a coma, his daughter wants to be a singer (I want to fuck the Kim Basinger from My Stepmother is Alien--that don't mean it's gonna happen), his ex-wife is dating a guy younger than her son, and Hulk is dating a girl who looks exactly like his daughter. Way to put the big boot and leg drop to your dignity. I mean, I was crushed when I found out that 'Train, say your prayers and eat your vitamins" meant "ingest massive amounts of human growth hormone and anabolic steroids," but fucking a standin for your daughter? UGGGGHHHHH. Andre the Giant outclassed you in every way, my friend.

Octo-Mom - A Walk-in uterus is not a selling feature, nor is it compensatory for being devoid of personality. And meanwhile, in some places gays can't adopt. That makes sense.

Al Franken - Needs a punch in the face.

Rush Limbaugh - Needs a punch in the face and AIDS.

Larry King - A punch in the face might turn him into dust, so I'll let him off with a stern warning. Don't rap with Snoop Dogg again, and stop telling every actor that comes on your awful show that the movie he or she is hawking is a classic. It isn't. 

Shia Lebouf - The nadir of the Indiana Jones franchise was this twerp swinging from a vine with monkeys.  Spielberg and Michael Bay love this guy. Isn't that warning enough? 

Fred Phelps and the entire 'God Hates Fags' Coalition - They're so eager to quote Leviticus, but how about a little Matthew? "Judge not lest ye be judged." Or M 6:16--"But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." Or Sam 69: "Kansas is a shithole, stayeth there and keepeth thy piehole shut."

The blonde swarthy guy from Canada's Top Model: Not every woman has to look like Macaulay Culkin. Just saying. A little meat and a few curves are not a bad thing. 

Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palaniuk, Douglas Coupland - Favoured writers of an illiterate generation. I don't actually hate any of them, but it's fun to watch people whose careers are totally based on being PROVOCATIVE and EDGY squirm when that fades. The Fight Club guy has written several books that look like bad parodies of Fight Club, which was half decent but no more intellectual than The Matrix. Oooh, Tyler and Jack are the same person! Cardboard plus cardboard equals cardboard. Douglas Coupland's books look they're written by the edgiest corporate accountant you can imagine. In some cases, losing your edge can be a good thing: once people stopped being offended by South Park, the show got really good. On the other hand, all these writers started out writing really violent books, and now have to keep churning out the same shit, or else find another trick to disguise the fact that they ain't that good. You know it's over when you resort to postmodernist tricks (making themselves the main characters, "questioning the nature of fictional reality" and all that horeshit). Tell a fucking story. 

Jesus, I didn't expect to still be at this. More to come.

He tries to write 1,000 words a day. Commenting on the rigidity of his routine, Chabon said, "There have been plenty of self-destructive rebel-angel novelists over the years, but writing is about getting your work done and getting your work done every day. If you want to write novels, they take a long time, and they're big, and they have a lot of words in them....[T]he best environment, at least for me, is a very stable, structured kind of life."

Michael Chabon. 

The Gay Al Sharpton

What a horrible, horrible person Perez Hilton is. 

He asks Miss California her position on gay marriage, which is out of line for a beauty pageant, considering the other contestants got the 'What do you think about global warming' kind of questions, but OK. And the girl answers him honestly. She believes marriage is between a man and a woman. Not my position, but she's entitled to her opinion, and she said it very politely. It's the same answer Obama and Biden gave.

So Hilton gives her a fail and Miss California--so stunningly beautiful she should have been a shoe-in--loses. And this asshole, this petty, z-list, man-boobed zilch, goes on Larry King and talks about how pageant winners should "represent everyone." Which means, "She didn't agree with me so I axed her."

Why does it have to be like that? The banning of gay marriage is a lost cause. Prop 8 will inevitably be overturned. But you're not winning any converts to your way of thinking by politicizing a fucking beauty pageant and using your power to remove people who don't agree with you. 

The thing is, Perez Hilton isn't advocating for gay rights. He's using gay rights to propel himself into the limelight. He's an untalented, stupid, shallow, awful little hobbit who, realizing that no one gives a shit about him, tries to attach himself to a noble cause in a desperate plea for attention. 

In this he's similar to Al Sharpton, who's always ready to repress freedom of expression in the name of political correctness. Sharpton campaigned for the firing of Don Imus, who called the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy headed hoes." As if this is a stunning civil rights victory on Sharpton's part. Imus is a radio DJ who made an unfunny joke about the ugliness of a basketball team, and paid with his job, so Sharpton could buy himself a few minutes on CNN by feigning outrage. 

Miss California wasn't rude or insensitive in her answer. She stated an honest opinion, something shocking for a pageant contestant. And for that she was disqualified so Perez Hilton could be on Larry King. What a fucking douchebag. 

Nothing hurts the fight against intolerance like the suppression of opposing beliefs, and nothing pisses me off more than liberal paternalism masquerading as political correctness. It's not politically incorrect to respectfully disagree.  

The 'marriage is a man-woman thing' is what the majority of Americans believe. Does that mean it's right? No. But pro-gay marriage-ers can't change that by suppressing the right of the majority to their opinion, any more than civil rights will be advanced by firing a politically-moderate disc jockey with a bad sense of humour.  

I like conflict, and I respect people who argue for what they believe in without compromising others' right to express themselves. I'd rather argue with someone who's passionate in their disgareement than spend time surrounded by likeminded morons. I don't trust my own opinions to leave them unchallenged. 

Consensus is bullshit. Stop trying to camouflage censorship as political correctness. Stand up for divergent opinions.  Let every voice be heard and  let people make up their own minds. And for the love of God keep Perez Hilton off television. 

PLAYBOY: Godfather I and II are at the top of most lists of great American films. What's the problem with The Godfather Part III?
PACINO: You know what the problem with that film is? The real problem? Nobody wants to see Michael have retribution and feel guilty. That's not who he is. In the other scripts, in Michael's mind he is avenging his family and saving them. Michael never thinks of himself as a gangster—not as a child, not while he is one and not afterward. That is not the image he has of himself. He's not a part of the GoodFellas thing. Michael has this code; he lives by something that makes audiences respond. But once he goes away from that and starts crying over coffins, making confessions and feeling remorse, it isn't right. I applaud Francis Coppola for trying to get to that, but Michael is so frozen in that image. There is in him a deep feeling of having betrayed his mother by killing his brother. That was a mistake. And we are ruled by these mistakes in life as time goes on. He was wrong. Like inScarface when Tony kills Manny—that is wrong, and he pays for it. And in his way, Michael pays for it. 

Pacino hits it on the head. Also, Andy Garcia?

Naturally every person desires to work according to his abilities in this world, but it follows from this that he wishes to develop his abilities in a particular direction, namely, in that which is best suited to him as an individual. But which is that? Here I am confronted with a big question mark.

Here I stand like Hercules--not at a crossroads--no, but at a multitude of roads, and therefore it is all the harder to choose the right one.

 Perhaps it is my misfortune in life that I am interested in far too many things rather than definitely in any one thing. My interests are not at all subordinated to one but are all coordinate.

Kierkegaard, Journals.

Ditto.

"The Obama Deception" Deception...Deception?

I rag on my brother for his conspiracy theories all the time. But I thought I'd watch part of Alex Jones's new video, The Obama Deception, up on Youtube, just to separate me from the "sheeple" who won't see the truth, man. I haven't finished watching it yet, perhaps because the only 'experts' Jones has produced are KRS-One, Jesse "The Body" Ventura and Willie Nelson. What, Charlie Sheen was busy?

 The point Jones makes is that, instead of bringing change, Obama is yet another puppet president, an avatar of a group intent on making money through globalization, deregulation, and keeping Whitey on top. This ties in with wiping out the indians, the sinking of the Lusitania, the Gulf of Tonkin, and of course 9/11. 

One of the talking heads in the movie called JFK "The last true president" and claimed that he was murdered because he refused to do the bidding of the Anglo/Corporate/Globalists. That seems like complete bullshit to me. I'm not generally a fan of Noam Chomsky, but he wrote a short book called Rethinking Camelot that explained how the myth of the anti-war Kennedy was grafted onto his legacy retroactively after Vietnam became a debacle. Am I countering one conspiracy nut with another conspiray nut? Maybe. I've always preferred James Ellroy's Kennedy theory, a "business-dispute killing" by the Mob over the Bay of Pigs. 

The movie claims that the Gulf of Tonkin was fabricated, which is actually plasusible. An American boat was torpedoed by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin, and it was later revealed that the Americans possibly made that up. Robert McNamara's books state that he honestly didn't know whether it was true or not--maybe he did and maybe he didn't, and if he did, god damn him. (For an authentically great documentary, rent The Fog of War, which is McNamara's look back at his years as Secretary of Defense.)

What I hate about conspiracy theories in general is that they posit a clean, tidy world where everything one wants to implement is easily done. As if an entire force of Dallas police officers--most of whom were Irish--could sit on evidence relating to a second gunman in JFK's assassination.  As if people could plant charges in Tower Seven with no one finding out anything and no one willing to talk about it afterwards. As if Bush, a president who could fuck up a cup of coffee, could mastermind anything. is it possible that Tonkin was a deliberate fabrication? Yes. Is it also possible that shit happens in war that is hard to process, signals get confused, and reality isn't always objective? Yes.  All we know is it didn't go down the offical way, and that's what Jones runs with. 

And more insulting is the "secret knowledge" thing. A new president receives briefings upon taking office so he'll know everything he needs to know. For the Jonesians, that means someone else is running the show. But then, isn't there a less-spooky answer for everything conspiracy theorists think?

As with most theories, the most acceptable part of them is not the evidence they have, but the thrust behind it, the knowledge that things aren't how they should be, that control rests in the hands of people who shouldn't have it. Those are feeling I share. But doesn't that say something about how the human mind works to process tragedy and events beyond its comprehension, rather than support the conclusion that Obama is an agent of the New World Order?

Make up your own mind. 

TRUTH FACT NUMBER ONE: Henry Kissinger gave Obama his first job. THINK ABOUT THAT, MAN!

TRUTH FACT NUMBER TWO: Rahm Emmanuel stated that you "can't let a crisis go to waste." VAGUELY THREATENING-SOUNDING! YER BLOWING MY MIND, MAN!

TRUTH FACT NUMBER THREE: The Bilderberg Group...that's just scary. Man.

Adapted for the spleen

Some books lend themselves to adaptations. Or perhaps certain directors just have a gift for translating the written word to the screen. Whatever the case may be, most good and  great films--from The Godfather to the Shawshank Redemption to Iron Man to Yojimbo--started their lives in literary format.

Some adaptations work better than others. John Huston's version of Moby-Dick garnered mixed reviews, while John Ford's Grapes of Wrath has nearly eclipsed the novel, to where it's hard to picture anyone but Henry Fonda as Tom Joad. Coppola turned both Heart of Darkness and The Godfather into stellar films. In the why-bother category, Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia did nothing for a pretty great novel.

For me, occasionally a book comes along where, as good as the film version could be, I just don't need or want to see it. That's the case with the generally well-received film version of The Sun Also Rises, starring Tyrone Power and Ava Gardner. It looks like a fine 1950s Hollywood movie, albeit with all of Hemingway's prurience drained from it thanks to the Hays Code. But the book is perfect, and I don't care about any interpretation the film could bring to it. I don't want to see Tyrone Power in a scarf pretending to enjoy a bullfight. I know what the character of Jake Barnes looks like, it's not that, and there's nothing to be added. Nuff said.

Similarly, but worse, Michael Chabon's debut novel The Mysteries of Pittsburgh has been adapted for the screen starring Peter Sarsgaard and Sienna Miller. No thanks. Chabon is one of the great prose writers, and his first two books Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys are amazing reads. 

Wonder Boys was made into a damn fine movie with Robert Downey Jr and Tobey McGuire, and I had high hopes for Pittsburgh. But since A) It boasts the only film cast whose thespianic ability would rise with the addition of Vin Diesel or Fifty Cent and B) It's scored a 38 on Metacritic, I'm'a gonna pass on it. Maybe it will be good, but no, it won't be good. No chance.

A great adaptation was the Coens' version of Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men. They're working on Chabon's latest novel, Yiddish Policeman's Union, which looks good. McCarthy's Oprah-lauded novel The Road comes out later this year, directed by John Hillcoat of The Proposition fame (should that be The Proposition obscurity?). It should be great. But McCarthy's magnum opus Blood Meridian is also on the blocks, and depending on what happens with that, it could be added to the Must Not See list.

 (The Mysteries of Pittsburgh...more like Mysteries of Shittsburgh. Why take two great characters, a  biker/mob collector/alcoholic and a flamboyantly gay housesitter who pretends to be wealthy, and turn them into a biker/mob collector/alcoholic/gay/repressed/wealth-faking/ pile of crap? Who still looks like a radio DJ from the late fifties. Give it for the Wolfman!)

 (The Sun Also Rises...Not on my watch it don't.  The guy on the right is what Neville from Harry Potter will grow up to look like--Durr, I can clap now? And Ava Gardner is pretty enough, but why is she dressed like a schoolmarm?)

Some days it just seems like everything I write on my blog is bullshit. I don't know if that's the onset of despair or just a fair appraisal, but I feel like I'm the shittiest blogger--in many ways I think the tumblr blog I had was better suited to my temperament. I don't know.

April 29th the second issue of "inter/tidal" comes out. That's SFU's academic journal. I have an article in there on Nietzsche and Cormac McCarthy, apparently.  I still can't believe it-- I'm not basting myself in false modesty, I just wanted another crack at revising it. Oh well. It's still fucking cool.

David Mills, a tv writer who's worked on NYPD Blue (he wrote the episode where Sipowicz uses the word nigger), Homicide, the Wire, and David Simon's upcoming show Treme, wrote a post on themes in tv shows. On the importance of theme:

Theme operates at a submerged level in storytelling. You don’t need to be aware of David Milch’s thematic intent to be entertained or moved by an episode of “NYPD Blue.” But it’s in there. And the experience of the story, I believe, is richer for that.

Mills's rundown:

NYPD Blue: 'How we, the public, want the police to break the rules in order to keep us safe.'

Deadwood: 'the evolution of law, or how society moves from chaos to order.'

The Wire: 'the inevitable defeat of the individual by the institution which he serves.'

Kingpin (Mills's short-lived drug series, not the Randy Quaid movie): 'the dual nature of man.'

ER & Homicide: didn't have themes.

and Treme: 'The human impulse to rise after being knocked down.'

Talking about theme sounds pompous. Mills says a couple times in the post that it 'sounds like such horseshit.' But it does have an effect on the show, no matter how subtle. Homicide and NYPD Blue are both brilliant, but NYPD Blue is more unified thematically, wheras Homicide, still a brilliant show, was less consistently brilliant.

I think the people who really ruined theme-talk are film directors. Those assholes are so eager to take credit for the work of their entire team that they come up with bullshit reasons why the film 'explores' their pet theme. Even my favourite directors sound like assholes when they talk theme--I remember Curtis Hanson saying how L.A. Confidential 'explored one of the themes I come back to in my work, the difference between appearance and reality.' Well, okay, some things look different than they are. So what? 

Theme to me seems the province of the writer, in whatever medium. Paddy Chayefsky and Paul Schrader had more to do with the themes of Network and Taxi Driver (respectively) than Sidney Lumet and Martin Scorsese  [I anticipate a lengthy response by Josh on how I'm wrong]. Theme is an intangible, and nothing is worse than an adaptation of a book that misses the point of a book.* I believe L.A. Confidential did have a theme, but I think it comes from Ellroy rather than Curtis Hanson, though Hanson and Brian Helgeland wrote the screenplay.. 

In television, writer-producers tend to create shows with themes, as opposed to director-producers or producer-producers, who create shows about limping smart alecky doctors and endlessly repetitive crime scene investigations. Those shows can be entertaining, but they are unified by formula rather than theme. 

Books, of course, are a medium where theme really shines forth. That doesn't mean literary themes have to be subtle--think of 'Young Goodman Brown' and similar allegories. But novels, like long-running HBO series, have a broader span of time in which theme can play out. 

*Some argue that film adaptations stand apart from their sources, and therefore can and should have different themes. I say that's not entirely true--art and adaptations exist in a web of signification, to steal a phrase from the postmodernists--everything connected to a work informs that work. Apocalypse Now informs Heart of Darkness and vice versa; there are closer adaptations of Conrad's novel, but none that better captured Conrad's theme. I don't think that sharing a theme with a source work makes a filmmaker less original, but substituting your own theme certainly doesn't make you more creative or the adaptation itself more worthwhile.

So yesterday I got my Class Five. And to celebrate, I went to Chapters. Not that I needed an excuse to go buy books--I usually just need money. But yesterday I had neither and I still went. So fuck you, rational determinism.

The compulsive act is so bad that, not only did I spend money I didn't have, I bought way way way overpriced books. You know the ones that say, "U.S. 5.99, Canada 12.99?" 

But the important thing is, I now have my own copies of Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death and Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus. And a driver's license that allows me to drink a lot and still get behind the wheel. Sleep tight, Canada.

Ahab and the Yosts

Finished Moby-Dick and finished John From Cincinnati. Now I'm kind of depressed, because whatever I pick next probably isn't going to be on the same level.

I finished the last 200 or so pages of Moby Dick yesterday. It's as challenging a book as I've read, and at times Melville's cetological comprehensiveness is aggravating. But it's readable, so long as you're partial to Shakespearean grandiloquence. I'm debating whether to check out the movie: John Huston is one of the great directors, and my girth-brother Orson Welles plays Father Mapple.

John from Cincinnati was great, and its last episode was much more satisfying than Deadwood's. In the season finale Bill Clark, the cop who worked with David Milch on NYPD Blue, has a cameo. He shows up with an injured poodle. That's just the kind of show it was, and we won't look upon its like again.  It was a profound show.

Art and the University

The day before yesterday my younger brother dropped a bomb on the family: he was tired of working a shitty low-paying job and wanted to make a change. He is obsessed with movies, and tired of merely writing about them, wants to go to film school 

While Vancouver boasts some of the most prestigious and costly film schools on the continent--VFS runs 50 grand a year--Josh wants to go to U. Winnipeg, because they offer a BA in film studies, and famed Canadian director (there's a title you don't hear often) Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg, Tales From the Gimli Hospital, Leprechaun VII: A Walk in the Irish Pain) teaches there. 

My response was something along the lines of, "Why don't you just dig a hole in your backyard, throw twenty grand in it, douse it with gasoline and burn it. Or buy a camera and make shitty indie films until you get good."

I should say, though, that my experience with art classes in school has not been good, and my response is coloured by that. I know people who love writing classes, film classes, etc. And I think that's great. There's a good argument for art school either way, and both bear examination.

On the positive, you're surrounded by people with the same interests as you. You get to work on what you want to (sometimes). You get feedback and criticism tailored to your work. In the case of film, you have access to expensive equipment. Best of all, if you can make a connection with a faculty member, you can apprentice with someone who really knows what he or she is doing. And what can be better than a nurturing environment like that?

To illustrate the negatives, I'll draw from my own experiences. So bear in mind this is all subjective. I'm not going to talk about money and time, because I don't think any education is a waste of either. It's just, in terms of getting to your goal, what is more expedient?

With few exceptions, the teachers I've had have not been so great. When dealing with people like that, who don't get you, don't get your work, your options are either to shut down your creative centre and give them what they want, or stand by your principles and fail. I've done both. Neither was much fun. The Defensive Art Student is the least likable stereotype on campus.

For film classes at least, there is a tendency towards making or writing a certain type of film, what I call the "Seven elderly ladies from different ethnicities who bond after their bus breaks down in the Canadian wilderness" film. That's fan-freaking-tastic if those are the films you want to make, but if you want to make James Woods movies or Vampyre films or westerns (or a James Woods vampire western), you're SOL. With writing classes there is more variety, but the same applies: get used to studying Richard Selzer's "The Knife."

As bad as the worst art teacher is, they're not as soul-sapping as the worst students. Arrogant, entitled, rude, they shut down any chance of an honest communication on art. Most of them are motivated by fear and insecurity, but their inability to acknowledge those same fears in other students ruins any class they participate in.  I was talking with Harry the other day about a certain poetaster whose superior attitude would just kidney-punch any tenuous hope of artistic honesty. It's appalling that people can reach the age of twenty without realizing that you can't build yourself up by knocking other people down.

Personally,  I've gone to school for English Literature, for reasons I still don't fully understand.  I love literature and want to work with it, and it's given me an excuse to read more challenging things than the Hardy Boys series. But it is only tangentially connected with writing fiction. So did I eschew CRWR classes because of fear and insecurity? I can't disprove that. I am very uncomfortable sharing my work with anyone. Its something I work on, but calling myself a writer still doesn't sit well with me. Apparently I now have a publishing credit, as well as a script filmed at the Knowledge Network, but I don't feel I'm there.

In summary, then, I don't think art school is good or bad. It just isn't for me, and I don't believe it's necessary. The artists I know and admire are the people who don't need someone else's permission to do what they want to do. They're the kind of people that in ten years will still be working on improving their craft. That self-discipline is by no means incompatible with the classroom, but it's not taught there, either. For Josh, U.W might be perfect. He's one of the most talented film reviewers I know, and if nothing else, film school might strengthen his grasp of the technical aspects of the art form he chooses to write about. And if not, all he's missed is the opportunity to watch a big pit full of dollar bills go up in flames.