2AMt:
Over nearly twenty years of striving, struggling and occasionally
thriving in the theatre, I have honed my strategic approach to
rejection. If it’s a biggie, I give myself 48 hours to pout, weep,
question my fundamental decency as a human being and eat raw cookie
dough with a large spoon, but then I have to get on with it.
WSJ.com:
Tony Kushner can't make a living writing for the stage. America's most
prominent playwright confessed in an interview published in Time Out New
York earlier this year that "Angels in America" doesn't pay the rent:
"I make my living now as a screenwriter! Which I'm surprised and
horrified to find myself saying, but I don't think I can support myself
as a playwright at this point. I don't think anybody does." So far as I
know, Mr. Kushner is right. I don't know of any American playwrights who
earn the bulk of their living writing plays. Many of the older ones
teach, while a growing number of younger ones write for series
television. Itamar Moses, for instance, has written for "Boardwalk
Empire" and "Men of a Certain Age," which isn't stopping him from
turning out stage plays (his latest effort, "Completeness," just closed
Off Broadway).
Popular Woodworking Magazine:
The Consumer Products Safety Commission will meet on October 5, 2011 to
decide whether or not to continue with an "Advance Notice of Proposed
Rulemaking" to address table saw blade contact injuries. If the
commission decides to proceed, the next step will be to accept comments
from the public on this issue. Comments will be accepted online or by
mail.
The New Yorker:
I’ve been a surgeon for eight years. For the past couple of them, my
performance in the operating room has reached a plateau. I’d like to
think it’s a good thing—I’ve arrived at my professional peak. But mainly
it seems as if I’ve just stopped getting better.
During the first
two or three years in practice, your skills seem to improve almost
daily. It’s not about hand-eye coördination—you have that down halfway
through your residency. As one of my professors once explained, doing
surgery is no more physically difficult than writing in cursive.
Surgical mastery is about familiarity and judgment. You learn the
problems that can occur during a particular procedure or with a
particular condition, and you learn how to either prevent or respond to
those problems.
Below the Line:
From King Kong on the Empire State Building to Marilyn Monroe on the
subway grate, New York will always attract filmmakers. From the green
Pontiac Steve McQueen chased off the 19th floor of Marina Towers in The
Hunter, to the baby carriage Brian DePalma pushed down the steps of
Union Station in The Untouchables, filmmakers will always gravitate to
Chicago.
But Louisiana?
When Louisiana became the first state to
pass entertainment industry tax incentives in 2002, no one could have
known that in less than a decade the state would be the third most
popular film and television location in the U.S. Indeed, Louisiana has a
chance to log a record 150 filming applications this year and to see
local film and TV in-state spending for the first time top $1 billion.
