The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Rule 5 Sunday: Pyjamarama

Posted on | July 21, 2013 | 27 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


As promised, I’m actually getting this post up on time. As usual, since some (many? most?) of the following links lead to NSFW material, I advise you to exercise restraint when you make with the clicking.


We begin this week with WyBlog, who reminds us that this is National Ice Cream Month. Mmm, creamy. Next up, it’s Blackmailers Don’t Shoot with Pretty Girls On A Thursday: Pinup Part Deux, Randy’s Roundtable with Stacy Keibler, Animal Magnetism’s Rule 5 Friday and Saturday Great Outdoors replacing the usual Gingermageddon. 90 Miles From Tyranny has Late Night Ladies and Hot Pick of the Late Night, Reaganite Republican notes Mariya Vialichka (Miss Belarus 2013), and the Rio Norte Line reminds us that while Jenny McCarthy may be dumber than a box of rocks, she’s still hot. Postaldog returns for a second week with Anri Sugihara, and First Street Journal reminds us that old Army saying, “If It Ain’t Raining, It Ain’t Training!”


EBL indulges in a cheap shot at Ann Althouse with some angling Rule 5. Also, Mary Lou Henner and Robin Meade.


A View From The Beach also likes him some ice cream; further, Post-Disney Deviance Syndrome, Songs Of Science, Lydia Loveless, Throw Me Maybe, Client 9’s Daddy Issues, Sex Sells Cars, and Sharknado Deniers.


Wine Women and Politics offers Saturday Cuties, Ladies In Red, More Summer Heat, Extra Spicey; also, Black And White Friday.


American Power serves up Kelly Brook, Marisa Miller and Malin Akerman, Theo’s Totty, Jodie Gasson, and Danielle Sharp.


At Soylent Siberia, it’s a Sunday Angel, a Generic Ginger, Monday Motivationer Jessi, Overnighty Cassandra, Tuesday Titillation Christine, Let Me Get My Flight Goggles, Humpday Hawtness Monica, Look! Up In The Sky! Fursday With Francesca, Evening Awesome Valera, Beavers Saving The Planet From Thermageddon, Corset Friday Freakout, and something golf-related. I think.


Proof Positive’s Friday Night Babe is Ali Sonoma; his vintage babe is Brenda Scott, and this week’s Sex In Advertising is all about lace – it’s not just for Granny!  Also, Girls of PETA XXXV and Agnieszka Radwanska in her birthday suit. Dustbury has Bess Myerson and Gabrielle Union, and at The Camp of the Saints, it’s Sara Stone. Three Beers Later serves up Whitney Duncan and Laura Bell Bundy.


The DaleyGator’s DaleyBabes this week are Erin Grindemyr, Saven Mi, Natasha Marley, Kai Langansan, Elle Patille, Amanda Hinchli, Mikie Hara, Joanna Krupa, Marisa Jara, Ashanti, Diane Sison, Maria Ozawa, Arisa Kuroki, Carol Seleme, Tamron Hall – sexiest woman on TV? Giorgia Palmas, Moyoko Sasami, Saya Tachibana, Sydney Bartlette, Yukie Kawamura, Fernanda Brandau, and Michelle Keegan. Also, Women That DO Understand Men, Random Hotness, and Why Does RS McCain Hate Hilary Duff?


Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline to submit links to the Rule 5 Wombat
mailbox for next week’s Rule 5 roundup is Saturday, July 27. Please note that Helen Thomas is not Rule 5, you sickos.


 

Category: Rule 5

How Soon Will This Madness Stop? And How Much of a Damn Should I Give?

Posted on | July 21, 2013 | 204 Comments

‘Civil rights’ or lynch-mob mentality? Poster at
St. Louis rally Saturday (via Gateway Pundit)

“It’s likely that Martin’s death . . . would never have crowded into the national consciousness had it not been for Martin’s family, its lawyers and an enterprising PR man.
“A pivotal, if little-known, figure in the Martin story’s development was Ryan Julison, an Orlando public relations executive . . .
“With the story fading, Julison began trying to revive interest in it, emphasizing a storyline of an unarmed teenager, a neighborhood watchman with a gun and the lack of an arrest.”
— Paul Farhi, “Trayvon Martin story found the media,” Washington Post, April 12, 2012

“Let’s be honest: The George Zimmerman trial is ‘news’ because it’s what TV producers have decided is news.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, July 13, 2013

There is other news I’d rather write about than the continued parade of idiotic What It Means remarks about Trayvon Martin, including those by the Idiot in Chief. I flash back to an early spring day — March 21, 2012 — when this useless public “debate” had just begun. On my way to Louisiana to cover the Republican primary where Rick Santorum’s victory would eventually crush what little hope remained in “Newt 2012,” I stopped by to visit with Ali Akbar over lunch at Cracker Barrel.

My mind was on the primary, but Ali wanted to talk about Trayvon and Zimmerman, subjects about which I knew little and cared less.

This is the important thing to understand. A newsman during the course of a long career writes about a lot of people he really doesn’t care anything about. Unlike a commentator, a working reporter — or a sports editor, or an assistant national editor, or any other of the titles appended as my job description over the years — doesn’t get to choose his assignments. You cover the school-board meeting or the parade or the blizzard or the basketball game because that’s your job, and if you don’t hit your deadline . . . Well, why do you think they call it a “deadline”?

One lives or dies in the news business by one’s ability to turn events into words in a hurry, and if some of the subjects of your assigned beat are more interesting or admirable than others, your sympathies or opinions are really irrelevant: Just hit that deadline. This is what “objectivity” really means: I don’t give a damn about these people.

Telling the story is your job. Deciding how the story ends is not.

If there were anything I could have done, as a journalist, to help Fairmount High win the state championship the year they had Richie Parker at point guard and Timmy Starr at forward, certainly I would have done it, if only because it’s more fun to report victory than defeat. But the sports writers in the press box don’t get to decide the outcomes of games, they just report the final score.

The distinction between what is and what should be, between reality and our own fond wishes, is something that a lot of people who write about politics don’t seem to make, knowing that politics is more subject to journalistic influence than is basketball. And the way this “political cheerleader” attitude got transposed onto the death of Trayvon Martin is basically what I talked about with Ali Akbar over lunch that spring day in 2012 at Cracker Barrel.

People had quickly chosen sides. Nearly all conservatives were of the opinion that Second Amendment rights were threatened by the left-wing protests being ginned up by Al Sharpton & Co., and conservatives were sick and tired of being lectured about racism, too.

Ali Akbar felt conservatives had chosen sides too quickly, without considering the extent to which George Zimmerman was at fault for the fatal encounter of Feb. 26, 2012, and Ali expressed his view that there ought to be more sympathy for Trayvon on the Right. So he was trying to draw me into a discussion of the details, which I resisted because it had nothing to do with the Louisiana Republican primary, and finally I said, “We don’t know what we don’t know.” Read more

Category: Crime, Fear. Loathing., Journalism, Media Bias, Racism

Some Creepy People Get Arrested, and Speaking of Brett Kimberlin …

Posted on | July 20, 2013 | 51 Comments

. . . John Hoge reports something interesting about how certain Web domains are hosted in the Netherlands:

Of course, using an off-shore ISP allows Team Kimberlin to avoid having the actual identity of the person or organization responsible for the domain being identified through a subpoena to the ISP.

The Netherlands, huh? That struck me as oddly interesting, because the Netherlands has kind of a reputation as an international pervert-magnet, and as for offshore Web hosting . . .

Deception and secrecy are essential to the kind of concealment necessary to criminal enterprises. Gosh, do we know anyone with a history of involvement in criminal enterprises?

“Brett C. Kimberlin schemed to elude justice with a series of bizarre plots designed to murder, maim and rob his enemies, create havoc . . . and discredit the chief government prosecutor.”
— Joe Gelarden, “Kimberlin case a maze of murder, deceit,” Indianapolis Star, Oct. 18, 1981

So now we find a number of Web sites that John Hoge says are associated with “Team Kimberlin,” operating in the secretive manner of a criminal enterprise with an ISP in the Netherlands. You might well ask, what other online activities are the Dutch infamous for?

When international police teams revealed [in March 2011] what they described as the biggest online pedophile network uncovered so far, the numbers were staggering: 670 suspects, 230 rescued children and 184 arrests across 30 countries. . . .
Details of the ring came out Wednesday when Amir Ish-Hurwitz, a 37-year-old Dutch resident whom investigators identified as the founder and owner of the boylover.net Internet forum, was jailed by a court in The Hague. . . .

Readers may recall that this was the network that included gay pedophiles Peter Truong and Mark Newton. It was an international network, but the founder and owner of the forum was based in the Netherlands, because Dutch law permits the kind of secret Web hosting on which such a criminal enterprise depended.

The Netherlands actually has a rather notorious history in this regard that predates the Internet, mainly because of the Dutch pedophile journal Paidika, whose editors and contributors included a number of Dutch academics. The second issue of Paidika included an article entitled, “The Dutch Paedophile Emancipation Movement,” which makes for quite creepy reading. This is relevant background:

Theo Sandfort, a Dutch academic and member of Paidika‘s editorial board . . . contributed an article entitled “Constructive Questions Regarding Paedophilia” to the third issue of the journal in 1988, contributed another article (“The World is Bursting with Adults, so I’m always Glad to See a Little Girl”) to the eighth issue in 1992, and published a two-part article (“The Sexual Experiences of Children”) in consecutive issues of Paidika in 1993 and ’94.
For several years, Professor Sandfort wrote about almost nothing else. He is author of the 2001 book Childhood Sexuality and co-edited the 1990 book Male Intergenerational Intimacy with fellow Paidika contributor Edward Brongersma, [a Dutch lawyer and politician] who was convicted for having sex with a 16-year-old boy. Readers will perhaps not be surprised to learn that Sandfort is now on the faculty of Columbia University.

 So . . . the Netherlands. Strange to say, despite their country’s status as an international pervert-magnet, the Dutch haven’t actually legalized sex with children, as the pedophile pornographer (and Paidika contributor) Lawrence Stanley discovered:

In 1998, a Dutch court convicted Stanley in absentia for sexual abuse of three children ages 7 to 10. . . . He faces a three-year prison sentence if he returns to the Netherlands.

This helped explain why in 2002 Stanley was arrested in Brazil, which does not have an extradition treaty with the Netherlands.

So . . . the Netherlands. That certainly struck me as an interesting place for “Team Kimberlin” to do its secret Web hosting.

“A drug-dealing colleague had memories of conversations with Kimberlin that struck him as odd: ‘We’d see a girl, who was pubescent or prepubescent, and Brett would get this smile and say, “Hey, what do you think? Isn’t she great?” It made me very uncomfortable.’ Another recalled Kimberlin introducing Jessica as ‘my girlfriend,’ and if irony was intended, it was too subtle to register. To a coworker . . . Sandi confided that Kimberlin was ‘grooming Jessica to be his wife.'”
— Mark Singer, Citizen K: The Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin, Page 78

“Oh, give me a break,” one imagines Kimberlin’s defenders saying, “that was decades ago — the 1970s — certainly it is grossly unfair to resurrect such ancient history.” Yes, and after Brett Kimberlin was released from federal prison, in 1996 when he was 41 years old, what do we read about his first rock music album?

Not all the songs on his album … have political overtones … others, like “Waiting to Meet” and “Teen Dream” (both about having sex with teenage girls) are lacking in subtlety and tend to make one squirm. But this is exactly what Kimberlin wants.
“I say things a lot of people are afraid to say. Yeah, ‘Teen Dream’ is about f–king a teenage girl. Every guy who’s seen a good-looking teenage girl has thought about it. I’m talking about that lecherous quality that every man, though he won’t act on it, has.”

Songs “about having sex with teenage girls,” did you say? Songs “lacking in subtlety” that “tend to make one squirm,” you say? There’s nothing remotely suspicious — certainly no indication of a persistent tendency — when a 41-year-old paroled convict writes songs like that. It’s not as if Kimberlin then went out and married a girl 27 years younger than him, right? What’s that you say?

Tetyana Kimberlin, 32, sought a domestic protective order [July 9] saying her husband had “been going by my work and telling my employer I am going to be arrested,” and that Kimberlin, 59, “had me arrested before on false charges.” . . .
“He told me if I will try to take my kids with me he will hurt me and I will see what will happen to me,” Kimberlin’s Russian-born wife wrote in her petition for a protection order, a case that was heard Tuesday in Silver Spring, Maryland. “He tells my 14-year-old about his plans about me and what he is going to do with me.” . . .

So . . . the Netherlands. It’s probably just a coincidence that somebody on “Team Kimberlin” knows about the secrecy that Dutch law affords to Internet hosting in the Netherlands. But it’s surprising what you find if you Google for news about the Netherlands:

As part of its attempt to combat a growing trend of online sexual exploitation, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency announced on Monday that 255 suspected child predators had been arrested during a nearly five-week sting operation.
Operation iGuardian, as it was called, was run as a part of the agency’s larger Operation Predator and sought to identify and arrest those who allegedly “own, trade and produce” child pornography in the United States and its territories. So far in 2013, the agency has arrested 1,674 people for this type of crime, and more than 10,000 in the last decade.
Authorities also identified and rescued 61 alleged victims in the United States, Canada, Indonesia and the Netherlands . . .

Yeah, some creepy people get arrested, like the headline said. And you might be shocked what some people say about Brett Kimberlin.

Or maybe not.

 

UPDATE: You discover odd things while researching Dutch pedophiles. Edward Brongersma was a 39-year-old member of the Dutch parliament in 1950 when he caught having sex with a 16-year-old boy and subsequently became quite a notorious crusader for legalizing sex with boys. The search for biographical information about him led me to the case of a Canadian man, Robin Sharpe, who cited two books by Brongersma (Loving Boys and Male Intergenerational Intimacy) as evidence in his own trial for child pornography.

Sharpe’s legal problems began in 1995 when, at age 62, he was arrested for possession of more than 500 explicit photographs of boys, and was also charged with distributing pornographic writings of his own: “My erotic, often sadomasochisticly themed boy stories titled BOYABUSE: Flogging, Fun and Fortitude … were the principal material evidence against me.”

Believe it or not, Sharpe somehow managed a successful appeal of that conviction, but was subsequently arrested again, this time on sexual assault charges. It had been discovered that some of the photos in Sharp’s pornographic collection depicted a boy whom Sharpe had abused years earlier, from 1979 to 1982, when Sharpe was in his 40s and the boy was ages 11-14. You may wish to read Sharpe’s account of one of his hearings, which includes this:

[A constable who testified for the prosecution] was out to discredit Brongersma by any means.
This upset me, I became quite emotional and had to wipe away my tears. Edward Brongersma was a friend. He had died only a few months earlier. I encountered him first in print, quoted in some book I was reading, and later I bought his Loving Boys study, a major purchase for me at almost a hundred dollars. In 1991 I began corresponding with Dr. Brongersma through the Brongersma Foundation as I had heard they archived boylove material. Not many people liked my more bizarre stuff anyway . . . Brongersma liked my “atrocious” stories and we found we had certain interests in common including Filipino culture. . . . We wrote back and forth at least monthly for years. . . . I hope some day to publish his letters. I had kept him informed of my case.

Well, there you go, eh? Sharpe was utterly shameless about his peculiar interests, and seemed to view himself as horribly oppressed by anyone who thought there was anything wrong with it. And the conclusion of Sharpe’s account is weirdly amusing:

On the last [day of this court session] a friend of many years whom I had met in his teens was the only spectator there at the end. It was late, after 7:30, we went out for falafels on the Granville Mall and then walked down to a coffee house in “Little Amsterdam” by Victory Square to play backgammon and smoke a joint. I really needed it.

Canadians: Almost as Bad as the Dutch!

 

Category: Crime, Netherlands, The Kimberlin Files

Is There A ‘George Brotherman’, A ‘Chocolate Klansman’?

Posted on | July 20, 2013 | 27 Comments

by Smitty

What an excellent essay. I could not have said it better myself, both in terms of content quality, and I would be nailed to the wall as a three-alarm raaaaacist for laying the truth down like this:

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Category: Racism

An Entirely Random Observation About Etiquette and Dead Jew-Haters

Posted on | July 20, 2013 | 82 Comments

There are occasions when good taste requires that polite people say absolutely nothing about the latest news. Just in case such an occasion should ever occur (he says, in an entirely random and coincidental way), you should be prepared. It is important never to say the name of the recently deceased Jew-hating liberal hag, because that would not be polite. So I must sharply admonish Jeff Dunetz, who seems to have forgotten the requirements of decorum and propriety, and who also posted this memorably tasteless video:

 

One should always be polite and respectful, and never mention the name of evil Jew-hating liberal bitches who rot in Hell.


 

Category: Liberals

FMJRA 2.0: As Falls Wichita…

Posted on | July 20, 2013 | 15 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Mega-Dittos, @RushLimbaugh! Credit Where Credit Is Due and More Questions

Verdict in Florida, Violence in Oakland, Insanity in Media, Ignorance Everywhere

Miami-Dade Schools Could Have Saved Trayvon Martin’s Life by Arresting Him

‘The Greater Good’: Heretical Facts vs. the Myth of St. Trayvon of the Blessed Hoodie

Just Another Law-Abiding Citizen of Beautiful Downtown Realville

Rule 5 Monday

Can Anyone Verify These Disturbing Allegations About Trayvon’s Family?

Maniac Rights? “Democracy Now” Whitewashes Barrett Brown’s Crimes

‘Protest,’ Riots, To-may-to, To-mah-to

Kook City, USA: Awaiting Verdict, Maybe Riots, as #Zimmerman Jury Deliberates

L.A. Times Columnist @RobinAbcarian Watches CNN, Tells You How She Feels

FMJRA 2.0: Low Sun

Hmmm. #Zimmerman Jury Asks For Clarification On Manslaughter?

#Zimmerman ACQUITTED: Not Guilty UPDATE: #Trayvon in ‘Amerikkka’?

#Zimmerman Coda: @dminor85

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.15.13

“Sometimes When We Torch” #ALSharptonHitSongs H/T @N_Fatale

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.16.13

When You’re Doubled Over In Agony, Your Guts Are ‘Sploding And #ObamaCare Has Broken Our Medical System, Watch This

Inspired by MSNBC

#ZimmermanTipLine He Fronted ‘Blue Oyster Culture Club’ On Their ‘Do You Really Want To Hurt Me, Godzilla?’ Tour

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.17.13

Representin’ Ewok and the Signifyin’ Jive

Politician of Unknown Partisan Affiliation Is a Notorious Serial Sexual Harasser

Angela Corey Should Be Fired, Disbarred, Imprisoned and Sued Into Bankruptcy

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.18.13

Brett Kimberlin’s Enemies List Expands to Include His Estranged Wife: ‘She’s Nuts!’

Former Disney Child Starlet News

Deranged Cyberstalker Bill Schmalfeldt Continues His Obsessive Cyberstalking

‘One Takes Fun Where One Finds It’

LIVE AT FIVENINE: 07.19.2013

And Then, Inexplicably, the Villain Decides to Deliver an Arrogant Lecture …

Also, You’re Not Cynical Enough

Kudos to 90 Miles From Tyranny, who reached 1 million hits this week by conscientiously applying these classic rules.

Top linkers this week:

  1. Rick’s Crazed World (29, some the hard way)
  2. Zion’s Trumpet (11)
  3. DaleyGator (8)
  4. Regular Right Guy (5)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Links for next week’s FMJRA are due next Friday, July 26.


Category: FMJRA Award

Also, You’re Not Cynical Enough

Posted on | July 19, 2013 | 21 Comments

The two most important questions in any contract are:

  1. What’s in it for me?
    and
  2. What’s in it for them?

Caveat emptor. Honesty is the best policy, but you have the right to remain silent. In other words, if somebody offers you a deal and you don’t like the offer, just walk away. You don’t owe them an explanation of why you rejected their offer. “No thanks, I’ll look elsewhere.”

In any negotiated contract, the other guy is always trying to maximize his profit opportunity, trying to get you to sell too low or buy too high. He knows at the outset of the negotiation what is his minimum price to sell (or maximum price to buy), and the question that you have to ask yourself is, “Can I get a better price elsewhere?”

Wages are prices, and your job is always a contracted purchase: You will exchange X amount of labor for Y amount of money.

If you don’t like your job, just quit — no harm, no foul — and seek employment elsewhere. Nobody can force you to be underpaid or mistreated, unless you’re a crack whore with a sadistic pimp, and yet  many people don’t think of their jobs as market transactions.

They do not understand that their labor, their knowledge, their experience and skills are commodities for which there is a demand, so that they can always shop around for the best deal. Instead, people buy into the leftist idea of “workers’ rights” and, rather than just quitting a job they’re unhappy with and looking for a better job, they become disgruntled and start thinking in terms of revenge.

The counterfactual unreality of “worker rights” is to blame, for example, in all lawsuits alleging workplace discrimination. Hey, if you’re working someplace where unfairness and mistreatment are commonplace, just quit and find a job you like better. And if your boss asks you why you’re quitting, you can explain it to him — or not. Remember, you have the right to remain silent. Maybe you can privately explain to your friends (if they ask) that your former boss is a jerk and the company routinely mistreats its employees, but that’s your call.

There are some organizations and individuals I respect, and some I don’t. It’s a free country. Nobody can force me to work for assholes.

Anyway, my sarcastic Twitter response to the Leadership Institute’s Director of Digital Communications Abigail Alger might be wrongly interpreted, if I didn’t explain it. LI is an excellent organization and Abby is a wonderful person, and it is not their fault that (a) I just happened to see that Tweet, and (b) the solicitation of “advice on Twitter to your fellow activists” hit me the wrong way.

Could I explain why it hit me the wrong way? Sure I could, but I have the right to remain silent, and if you make a habit of offering advice for free, nobody’s ever going to pay you for it.

Looking down the staff roster at LI, I see many familiar names, including Josiah Ryan, Gabriella Hoffman and Danielle Saul, and I’m sure they’re just really grateful that I’ve name-checked them here, while Abby’s wondering, “What the hell’s his problem?”

Ask me at a happy hour in Arlington sometime. You’re buying.

 

Category: How This Here Internet Thingy Works, R.S. McCain School of Journalism

And Then, Inexplicably, the Villain Decides to Deliver an Arrogant Lecture …

Posted on | July 19, 2013 | 70 Comments

. . . a lecture just long enough to allow the seemingly doomed underdog hero to reach his 9-mm pistol and blast that son of bitch. Hero says sarcastic tough-guy line. Hero is embraced by vulnerable female lead amid wreckage. Roll credits over pop-music theme.

At some point, intelligent people grow up and get tired of seeing that same childishly simplistic action-hero movie over and over. But there is always a fresh crop of 13-old-boys in the multiplex theater too dumb to wonder why the Arrogant Villain always has a British accent, or why the Underdog Hero always has a Loyal Black Sidekick, and so forth.

Cinematic fantasy has a didactic function and the “lessons” that pop culture teaches impressionable young minds are mostly wrong.

Real life isn’t like the movies, and one of the things that Hollywood hero fantasies do best is to teach young people that they are inadequate and their own ordinary lives are so tedious and insignificant as to be essentially without meaning or purpose.

Your life is not exciting. You are not muscular and handsome. You are not combating evil and injustice. You are a loser and nobody likes you.

Watching too much crap like that — whether at the movies, on DVD or on TV — tends to deform the mind and warp the personality of young people too inexperienced and ignorant to understand that they are consuming a product whose producers are deliberately manipulating their perceptions, based on a canny assessment of their prejudices and psychological insecurities. Peter Suderman pulls back the curtain on the process to reveal the hidden mechanism:

If you’ve gone to the movies recently, you may have felt a strangely familiar feeling: You’ve seen this movie before. Not this exact movie, but some of these exact story beats: the hero dressed down by his mentor in the first 15 minutes (Star Trek Into Darkness, Battleship); the villain who gets caught on purpose (The Dark Knight, The Avengers, Skyfall, Star Trek Into Darkness); the moment of hopelessness and disarray a half-hour before the movie ends (Olympus Has Fallen, Oblivion, 21 Jump Street, Fast & Furious 6).
It’s not déjà vu. Summer movies are often described as formulaic. But what few people know is that there is actually a formula — one that lays out, on a page-by-page basis, exactly what should happen when in a screenplay. It’s as if a mad scientist has discovered a secret process for making a perfect, or at least perfectly conventional, summer blockbuster.
The formula didn’t come from a mad scientist. Instead it came from a screenplay guidebook, Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need. In the book, author Blake Snyder, a successful spec screenwriter who became an influential screenplay guru, preaches a variant on the basic three-act structure that has dominated blockbuster filmmaking since the late 1970s.
When Snyder published his book in 2005, it was as if an explosion ripped through Hollywood. The book offered something previous screenplay guru tomes didn’t. Instead of a broad overview of how a screen story fits together, his book broke down the three-act structure into a detailed “beat sheet”: 15 key story “beats” — pivotal events that have to happen — and then gave each of those beats a name and a screenplay page number. Given that each page of a screenplay is expected to equal a minute of film, this makes Snyder’s guide essentially a minute-to-minute movie formula. . . .

Read the whole thing and understand this: The secret to not being manipulated is knowing that people are trying to manipulate you.

 

 

UPDATE: Y’know, I often include these Amazon book recommendations at the end of blog posts not merely because I get a small commission on each sale, but because a blog post is scarcely sufficient to explain some of the underlying ideas behind what I’m writing about. Notice that one of the recommendations is the 2004 book Andrew Breitbart co-wrote with Mark Ebner, Hollywood Interrupted, a scathing examination of the corrosive impact of celebrity culture. Andrew and I used to argue occasionally about which was the worse cesspool full of dishonest amoral selfish backstabbers, D.C. or Hollywood.

To-may-to,  or to-mah-to? But because Andrew Breitbart actually knew Bill Maher, he always won the argument.

There is no worse human being on the planet than Bill Maher.

Charles Manson is not a worse human being than Bill Maher.

Also recommended is Neil Postman’s brilliant 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death. Postman was a man of the Left who hated Ronald Reagan and capitalism, not necessarily in that order. But his insights about the nature of television as a medium are essential. Postman was a disciple of Marshall McLuhan, who famously said, “The medium is the message,” and if you don’t know what that means — how the inherent nature of television exercises an influence distinct from its content — you really need to read that book. And you might also want to read the 2003 obituary of Neil Postman in the U.K. Guardian. Just sayin’ . . .

Finally, there is High Concept, about the sordid life of a Hollywood “success” story, Don Simpson:

[T]he short, insanely foolish life of producer Don Simpson (Flashdance, Top Gun, Bad Boys) stands as a larger indictment of Hollywood, and it’s hard to argue with him. For one thing, Simpson helped create Tom Cruise, Richard Gere, Will Smith, and Eddie Murphy, and his loud, high-concept, low-IQ school of filmmaking helped launch Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mel Gibson, and Bruce Willis to new heights (or depths).

Here’s a little clue: The price of Don Simpson’s drug habit was once estimated in excess of a half-million dollars a year. This was just “business expenses.” And did I mention the hookers?

Most people simply cannot imagine what kind of twisted freaks produce the entertainment they see on TV and in movies.

These depraved weirdos are not your moral superiors — unless you’re Bill Maher, in which case everyone is your moral superior.

 

Category: Culture, Movies
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