EnterPrysirr

My apologies for not publishing some of the accomplishments over the past few months. As we come to the close of 2012, I want to bring us all current. If I have left anyone out, please forgive me, contact me, and I will gladly add you to the list. COngratulations to all of you for putting in a determined year and for maintaining the conviction of your beliefs. It is my pleasure to work with you.

LUCAS KERR has recently signed with Untitled Management. He is also writing, singing, and producing his own music.

TASSO FELDMAN has completed his first season at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and is currently on tour giving performance seminars to schools. He has been invited back for a second season with OSF.

VALERIE AZLYNN has booked two films over the past few months during hiatus from her show SULLIVAN & SON. The first was, “Little Rascals,” playing the part of MISS CRABTREE. The second project will film in January called, “Remember Sunday,” playing the part of JOLENE KING. She will also be returning for her second season as MELANIE, in “SULLIVAN & SON,” sometime in February.

DANIEL DITOMASSO has booked his first pilot as a series regular. He is playing the part of KILLIAN GARDINER in “WITCHES OF EAST END.”

TIFFANY HINES has booked another Episode of “BONES,” reprising her role as MICHELLE WELTON.

NICO EVERS-SWINDELL has booked a role in the Independent Feature film, “PARKLAND.” He has also recently joined forces with The Gersh Agency.

In darker times, many of you have expressed the feeling of “giving up,” “leaving the business,” “be done with it already,” “enough is enough.” I ask you to watch this video and see what one high school athlete did when she was confronted with this. As we have spoken of, there is great power in completing any challenge. Satisfy yourself and you will have done your best. Follow through and finish it! I look forward to your thoughts. Thank you to Jimmy Brighton for passing this along to me.

Geof

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=8387911

This article was sent to me by one of the crew. It is hard to absorb what we know AFTER the fact, when we are lead to believe what is the truth. I welcome your thoughts.

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3

Richard: We step out on stage and try to show them something – enormous, unimaginable – for good or ill. And if they catch a sight of themselves in us, we’ve done our job. We hold the mirror up. Nothing more.

Thank you Max for bringing this article forward. We were discussing the changes that are coming into our industry as NetFlix and Amazon enter into developing original programming. Watch what happens over the next few years!

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/08/24/bachelorette-video-on-demand-indie-cinema/

This article is not posted to encourage any of you to immediately populate the world. But for those of you who have had children, been children, or are thinking of having children, I found this article very insightful and interesting. There is a “coaching” aspect to the relationship that was also appealing to me (surprise). I look forward to any of your thoughts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opinion/sunday/raising-successful-children.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1344351671-I9ASW2dfZZ1eTshyQz3sgQ

Patton Oswalt wrote this and delivered it as part of his keynote address at Montreal’s Just For Laughs 2012.

 

Dear gatekeepers in broadcast and cable executive offices, focus groups, record labels, development departments, agencies and management companies:

Last month I turned in a script for a pilot I co-wrote with Phil Rosenthal who has had a share of luck and success I can only dream of. Thanks for the notes you gave me on the pilot script. I’m not going to be implementing any of them.

And no, I’m not going to call you “the enemy” or “the man.” I have zero right to say that based on the breaks I’ve gotten from you over the years. If I tried to strike a Che Guevara pose, you would be correct in pointing out that the dramatic underlighting on my face was being reflected up from my swimming pool.

I am as much to blame for my uneasiness and realization of late that I’m part of the problem, that I’m half asleep and more than half complacent.

And I’m still not going to implement your notes. And I’m quoting Phil Rosenthal on this, but he said after we read your notes – and I’m quoting him verbatim – “We’re living in a post-Louie world, and these notes are from a pre-According to Jim world.”

I just read a letter to my fellow comedians telling them what I’m about to tell you, but in a different way. Here it is.

You guys need to stop thinking like gatekeepers. You need to do it for the sake of your own survival.

Because all of us comedians after watching Louis CK revolutionize sitcoms and comedy recordings and live tours. And listening to “WTF With Marc Maron” and “Comedy Bang! Bang!” and watching the growth of the UCB Theatre on two coasts and seeing careers being made on Twitter and Youtube.

Our careers don’t hinge on somebody in a plush office deciding to aim a little luck in our direction. There are no gates. They’re gone. The model for success as a comedian in the ’70s and ’80s? That was middle school. Remember, they’d hand you a worksheet, fill in the blanks on the worksheet, hand it in, you’ll get your little points.

And that doesn’t prepare you for college. College is the 21st century. Show up if you want to, there’s an essay, there’s a paper, and there’s a final. And you decide how well you do on them, and that’s it. And then after you’re done with that, you get even more autonomy whether you want it or not because you’re an adult now.

Comedians are getting more and more comfortable with the idea that if we’re not successful, it’s not because we haven’t gotten our foot in the door, or nobody’s given us a hand up. We can do that ourselves now. Every single day we can do more and more without you and depend on you less and less.

If we work with you in the future, it’s going to be because we like your product and your choices and your commitment to pushing boundaries and ability to protect the new and difficult.

Here’s the deal, and I think it’s a really good one.

I want you, all of the gatekeepers, to become fans. I want you to become true enthusiasts like me. I want you to become thrill-seekers. I want you to be as excited as I was when I first saw Maria Bamford’s stand-up, or attended The Paul F. Tompkins show, or listened to Sklarbro Country….

I want you to be as charged with hope as I am that we’re looking at the most top-heavy with talent young wave of comedians that this industry have ever had at any time in its history.

And since this new generation was born into post-modern anything, they are wilder and more fearless than anything you’ve ever dealt with. But remind yourselves: Youth isn’t king. Content is king. Lena Dunham’s 26-year-old voice is just as vital as Louis CK’s 42-year-old voice which is just as vital as Eddie Pepitone’s 50-something voice.

Age doesn’t matter anymore. It’s all about what you have to say and what you’re going to say. Please throw the old fucking model away.

Just the tiny sampling at this amazing festival…. I’m excited to not be the funniest person in the room. It makes me work harder and try to be better at what I do. So be as excited and grateful as I am.

And if in the opportunities you give me, you try to cram all this wildness and risk-taking back in to the crappy mimeographic worksheet form of middle school, we’re just going to walk away. We’re not going to work together. No harm no foul. We can just walk away.

You know why we can do that now? Because of these. (Oswalt holds up an iPhone)

In my hand right now I’m holding more filmmaking technology than Orsen Welles had when he filmed Citizen Kane.

I’m holding almost the same amount of cinematography, post-editing, sound editing, and broadcast capabilities as you have at your tv network.

In a couple of years it’s going to be fucking equal. I see what’s fucking coming. This isn’t a threat, this is an offer. We like to create. We’re the ones who love to make shit all the time. You’re the ones who like to discover it and patronize it support it and nurture it and broadcast it. Just get out of our way when we do it.

If you get out of our way and we fuckin’ get out and fall on our face, we won’t blame you like we did in the past. Because we won’t have taken any of your notes, so it’ll truly be on us.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the stuff uploaded to Youtube. There are sitcoms now on the internet, some of them are brilliant, some of them are “meh,” some of them fuckin suck. At about the same ratio that things are brilliant and “meh” and suck on your network.

If you think that we’re somehow going to turn on you later if what we do falls on its face, and blame you because we can’t take criticism? Let me tell you one thing: We have gone through years of open mics to get where we need to get. Criticism is nothing to us, and comment threads are fucking electrons.

Signed,

Patton Oswalt

Michael Phelps was interviewed recently and had this to say about his athletic role model, Michael Jordan:

“I think one of the coolest things that I loved about him was it didn’t matter what he had going on off the court or if he was sick or this, that,” said Phelps. “He never used an excuse. He came out every single night on the court and did what he had to do to get his job done. That’s what champions do. It doesn’t matter what else is going on when you walk in to your arena, whatever you excel at, you’re there to take care of the job that you have to do.”

We have a job to do, regardless of the outcome.

I want to thank Rachel Wittman for sending this article my way. I find it an interesting perspective on life, time, and how we choose to live it.