Taking jobs away

Taking jobs away

One of the topics our little group discuss over Sunday breakfasts at the Figtree restaurant on the beach in Venice, is the subject of jobs. Not necessarily for us but for the country.

Having grown up across from Detroit and with lots of relatives in Detroit, I know all too well how hard hit Detroit is, their unemployment rate is around 15% while the reality is closer to 35% if you discount the suburbs.

I've always said that many jobs have simply disappeared, never to return no matter who's President.

Take my book, Emperor, it took 2 people to get it published. There was one formatting expert who will cost me around $150 and a graphic artist who has cost me $250. She did the front and back covers I posted a week ago.

And that's it.

My director friend Malcom has a background in publishing and graphics and he figured that I just took jobs away from around 20 people. Now this would be pre-computer era. All those people, typesetters, readers and more.

So 18 jobs have disappeared. Never to come back.

And how about this; I'm doing a favor for a friend in a week or two. She has written books on directors and wants to interview a handful of older actors who worked with the director in question.

Since my background is camerawork, mostly film but lots of still photography also, I said I could help her out. I would film the interviews and then edit them into whatever she needed.

Here's who was left out:

An assistant cameraperson
A soundperson
A lighting person
The processing lab
The counterperson at the lab
An editor
A colorist
An effects person (titles, fades, dissolves, etc.)

How's that. 8 jobs lost.

I can do all of those jobs now with digital cameras (I will rent one for about $150/day) as well as a wireless microphone ($35/day), a reflector and maybe a light ($50), tape/memory card ($50) and lunch.

When I finish, I will take the video to my iMac where I  have Final Cut Pro, used by many feature and TV editors who prefer it to Avid, the industry standard. I learned FCP when I had comp courses at UCLA when I taught screenwriting extension classes.

In short, I can do it all.

Of course, the argument is; is this a good thing? If you're an editor looking for work, it probably isn't. Or a cameraperson.

And of course, there's the often repeated saying; "the good news is that everyone can make a movie, the bad news is that everyone can make a movie".

If this is what's going on in the film business, if I can literally make a movie for free, what does it speak for every job in the country.

Fresh & Easy, a British food store has locations in L.A. and they don't have cashiers at all, it's all scanners. Ralph's has 6 scanners in Sherman Oaks. Robots are making cars and work more efficiently and better than humans.

Where are these jobs Republicans are claiming to have if they're elected? Trickle down does not work as we've seen, and they're mostly delusional. Or just lying.  A politician lying?

The American worker hit his/her peak in 1973, meaning that was the moment when the average worker made the most money, say when a dollar was worth a dollar. It went downhill from then.

And American industry peaked in 1979. That was when America had it's highest level of industry, everyone was working. And that went downhill steadily too. A lot of experts say that industry is no longer driving America, now it's consumers.

Neither of these ever came back, there were spikes now and then but as of 2010 it was 65 cents.

So how can consumers drive the economy if there's so much unemployment (average is just around 9% but doesn't include those who stopped looking, and that's more like 15%)?

I think that as population increased, there are simply more people who can buy things. Go by Fashion Square here in Sherman  Oaks, yesterday there was a half a block of traffic going into the Mall and Macy's in particular.

Go figure? Who are these people? While unemployment is high, I can only think that there are enough people (and sales) that they continue to drive the economy.

And of course, I told you often that of the alleged 10,000 writers in WGA that only 1500 or so are actually working.

So don't complain to me.

And there's always "The Singularity". You know, when computers take over completely. Just like Terminator.

My oldest student

I met Morrie Ludwig when he took a screenwriting class I taught at UCLA extension back around 2003-04. My classes were online rather than classroom and I found this method far better than giving a lecture and then having a student read some of their pages in a 2-hour frame.

While it meant more work, which ultimately was the reason I left after nearly 3 years as it began to interfere with my projects and at $180 week hardly covered the hours I spent.  One of the differences between classroom and online was that online I was always available to the students, 24/7 as they say. Classroom instructors interacted with their students 2 hours a week.

I spent a lot of time talking to students through email almost every day and had the habit of writing a lot of notes and comments, which I would post on my course page. Students would also post their work for me and for other students to comment on. I still feel this method is much better than classroom in spite of the workload.

Eventually the workload became too much, especially after one semester where I had 15 completed screenplays anywhere from 70 to 130 pages in length. As I tended to give initial notes of anywhere from 4 to 8 pages, it took me a full week to write those notes and taking entire days. It just wasn't worth it anymore.

But back to Morrie. 

He first emailed me that he was having trouble with the online application. It wouldn't accept his birthdate. I wasn't sure what he meant but was surprised to find out the reason.

Morrie was born in 1912 and the computerized application refused to acknowledge the date.

He was 91 years old.

We exchanged emails several times during the first week of the course and then I found out something else about Morrie. He was born in Manitoba within about a hundred and fifty miles from where I was born.

Both of us left Manitoba at the age of 12 as well. I moved with my family to Southern Ontario and Morrie left for San Francisco. Our emails began to talk about our lives, me in my early 50's and he at 91. I found out his wife had passed away and he had always wanted to write a screenplay so he took my course.

Morrie had already written a screenplay on his own, a golf story. And it was pretty good. My course was about writing a new screenplay and he was ready. As the months passed, Morrie moved to Los Angeles to be with some family as he was alone up north. That's when we decided to meet.

I chose the perfect restaurant, Musso and Frank's, which opened in 1919. Known for the movie stars, writers and other celebrities over the years, the restaurant still hangs on to it's traditions and going there is stepping back into history.

We hit it off perfectly, each told stories about our upbringing and started a friendship that would carry on for 3 years. He took one more class and then decided that was enough but by then he moved to a senior development where he bought a very nice 2-bedroom home overlooking an open green space.

I would drive to Palm Desert every two months or so and we would make dinner for his brother and his wife as well as his 75-year old niece who begged him not to reveal her age to her 70-year old former bandleader.

For me it was a time of listening to stories about big bands, adventures and old friends as I sat and listened. Morrie had maculer degeneration in his eyes but he could still fire off a handful of golfballs to within a few feet of the hole from 20 feet away. "It's the feel, not the eyes", he would tell me.

And he wasn't above flirting with a lovely barmaid in Palm Springs, or any woman for that matter. And as I was by far the youngest person around, I got a lot of attention from the ladies in their 80's and 90's. One even showed me her nude painting done when she was thirty.

On one of my trips to my home town in Manitoba, I took a side trip to where Murray grew up to the age of 12. It was an empty field and a stone monument stood near the gravel road.  No cars passed and only a few cows watched me for a moment or two.

This was Bender Hamlet where he was born. It was founded in 1906 and a small group of Jewish settlers attempted to work the land. Unfortunately the land was very poor and rocky and they struggled until many left for Winnipeg. There was no real indication that anyone had every lived there now, just the wind and the 
rushing sound of poplar tree leaves.

Morrie had funded the plaque back in the 1970's and it still stood there in perfect condition.  I had taken a Sears catalog I found and took a handful of popular leaves as well as some prairie flowers and pressed them in the thick catalog.

Months after I gave the leaves and flowers to Morrie and tears began to fall. He hugged me and said "thank-you". Poplar trees are in the aspen family and their leaves have a distinctive sound that anyone who grew up on the prairies immediately recognized.  It may sound kind of dorky, but it's real.


Later my brother visited Morrie with his family and Morrie again was the gracious host. He even had an "affair" with a lovely woman in her 70's, which he described to me in detail.

As things happen, I went home to Canada for Christmas and when I returned and called Morrie, his phone number was gone. He had passed away at the age of 93, peacefully in his sleep.

A few years later, I visited Bender Hamlet again and walked the empty fields while the popular leaves shimmered and sparkled and remembered my friend. A car drove off the road and onto the field, it was a young couple and not knowing I knew who put the plaque up, told me the story that people heard, about a man who paid for the plaque because he was born there. They thought he was famous, because he came from California and they liked that he was born around here.

Then they drove off and left me alone, only the cows watched.

 As we get older, things that didn't mean much when we were young seem to matter more now and the passing of friends and even the sound of leaves seem to be more important than they used to be. I miss Morrie but have a treasure of stories to remember.

You can see a very short video of Morrie by going to Materials and clicking on "Morrie".

The French Thing

So almost back to that part of Canada for awhile, snow and cold. I'm sorry to have doing some work on my script on another who wants to make it, but that's another movie.

Right now I'm pushing into a lot of information for the screenplay called Chase, I mentioned that now and then. The first is part of the screenplay is about a man driving in L.A. and spots a young girl being taken into a van. It seems to be easy but it's not, and not what he thinks it is nor what the girl was.

I mentioned it sometime that it's now called the French name though. It's called La Poursuite. Same thing. I also let the director/writer come in with me for it. I'm still in it and have first name on the credits.

I got a little bit of money to start and we're hoping to finish it next year -- that is 2020.

The movie is in reality a car chase but it turns out to be a lot of different things. My story led the man into the Mojave Desert in my beautiful desert hills but it is going to be different. A big different.

Like the French mountains.

Yes, my movie will be made in the French mountains but it's still the same story.

But for now I have to deal with things like money. The thing is, if I stay in France on the job I will lose a fair amount of money. And that's because Europe has the Euro. What does it mean?

Like this, they paid me as a basic big of money just in case the movie falls apart. And movies do fall apart. But my movie is so far going along within the principals, being me and the director and the money people looking for money.

So here's the problem. I got $2000 for a small basic. The big money comes in when the major people come into it and are ready to make the movie. And what happens is that basic will hold for awhile.
But there's another thing; that $2000 arrived at my bank and left with $3000.

Where did that come from?

From Europe. The European money takes a lot of money from writers or cameramen or anyone on the set and/or part of the movie.

Where does it come?

That $2000 basic gives me an extra piece of money in $3000. And that's if I stay in Canada. Europe has really horrible taxes and so that's if I stay in Canada I get more money than the people there working don't.

So don't you think it's not fair? Don't you want to be on the set?

A long time I learned that nobody on the sets don't really know or care me. One writer said once that you're just someone who is an annoyance and hangs around with the food people. I learned that once and kept it that way.

So it's not going to be bad for me, in fact I will get a lot more than the original.

Right now I'm signing more papers for me being not in Europe. I can go to Paris next year.

So I'm sorry to be so long to deal with this and some other ideas.

Teaching

I'm considering teaching screenwriting again on line. I've done it before as you can see above and have enjoyed it teaching UCLA in Los Angeles. Also, I have a book on screenwriting which you can learn page by page. You can also see the book.

The sheet above is hard to put on due to the real size, sorry to do it too small.

Here's a page or so of what I wrote.

1-Liner response

First of all, I have to say the some of the ideas presented this class are some of the most interesting and challenging ideas I’ve seen for a long time. I am anxiously looking forward to their development.

 What you strive for in this business, is to come up with something recognizable, yet fresh and different. There are only a handful of stories in this world, constantly retold. What makes a tired story fresh – that’s hard to say but easy to see afterwards. What made The Graduate different from all the college teen movies before it, what made the Godfather different from the Cagney/Edward G. Robinson movies, what made The Unforgiven different from True Grit.

 The studios want something they recognize, thus the genres… a suspense thriller will always get attention, it gets an audience. Basic Instinct was no different than tons of “noir” stories, but they pushed up the sex and cast it with Douglas and Stone and it worked. This is what you have to do and it isn’t necessarily a compromise either. This goes for art movies as well, Merchant & Ivory created a demand for British period pieces, but mostly because they cast and made them well, with great scripts that related to today.

 One of the problems I see so much today are writers who are reasonably good, but who write clichés. They lack originality. Some of these writers sell their work, but it’s because they have connections and/or are in the “club”. I can almost sell an action adventure story without even thinking about what I’m writing, I can send you a script I wrote for a director friend that literally has no idea, just a series of clichéd scenes, and the damn thing is going into production, albeit for a low budget of $500,000.

 But I wrote it in 2 weeks, start to finish, almost as a joke. But I have those connections and they know what they’ll get in a Makichuk script is something that they can cast and film and will have reasonably interesting characters.  And someone watching it can say, “I can write something as good as that”, and they can. But they won’t be able to sell it without connections and a reputation. 

But I “earned” that position by writing some really good scripts, most of which still haven’t been made and may never be made, so it’s really a two-edged sword, I can write things that can sell, but still have problems making my best scripts.

But I’m not alone in that, everyone in this town has trouble trying to make what they want, with the exception of a few at the top, and even they have problems with projects close to their heart. Robert Duval had to finance The Apostle with his own money. I had a meeting at Dustin Hoffman’s company last year where they talked about a project Hoffman wanted to make for very little money but no studio in town would do it.

I am making my comments available to all of you at the same time, and would like you to read all of the comments rather than just your own (naturally I’m assuming you’ll do it anyways).  As I mentioned, some of you have far more experience in screenwriting than others, but I can balance my comments to all of you at whatever level you’re at.

 And remember that the choice is yours, these are only my comments. I want you to take into consideration all that the others have mentioned in the forums and make your own decisions.  And remember, you can talk about the ideas with me, but you need to start working on the one-page outline this week.

So that's a little bit of on-line teaching.

Might send you a few more bits and piece

So that's when you can't lose your boss.

So again, you have to keep those payroll people and the bosses remembering that they have to pay you. Of course my screenplay was read a bunch of times around town but until it hit Hallmark where it was dumped into a pile for three years.

I think I mentioned it before, but just for the newbies. A woman who knew some people at Hallmark (notice "friend/friends) rooted into a bunch of scripts and somehow she liked the script and that she could make it.

And yes, she optioned it. Of course you never know that anything ever goes through the optioning. I waited for a month or so and gave up. I think June or so. 

Then, if you read the story this last week, I never knew that the screenplay was read and seen without anyone telling me anything. If my director friend didn't come into contact with the producer I really would have never known I had a fully packed with Writer's Guild of Canada.

Nobody believed me.

Then, as you read (it has a date of the screenplay) nobody knew I existed. 

So then, I called WGC of course and they were all ready to do what WGC does. And if you read, it took just over 2 weeks to settle. Actually not settle, it was mine. Read it again if you haven't in the last week.

I went through all types of people who pass everything to someone else. There was a problem because I lived in L.A. and was it WGA or WGC. 

Finally, it all came to the end. I got a phone call from a woman with a rusty voice like she had been at this company more than the company itself. I immediately thought that she was the one.

She was, working probably when the company opened. She knew everything right now and there. She knew her stuff. It was Friday and she and her hoarse voice said simply;

"You'll have it Monday."

And guess what;  She did.

And by the way, wanna know who bought the screenplay?

She liked the young girl in the Christmas movie because the young girl reminds her of her daughter.

All for Christmas

Well, sorry for being so long. Transferring from XP to much faster with other things that make me crazy  with computers. 

And Christmas also comes to that nice season where everything is pure and nice.

Well, almost nice.

Well, some of you might have read my pre- Christmas story of which I'll tell you how to write a Christmas story in June and how it was never paid. My Christmas Story was written early around 2010. I had a few people who liked it but haven't made any deals. The script went to Hallmark and they kept it as far as I knew. 

Then a lovely lady found the screenplay amongst the other Christmas stories and she loved it. Well, sort of, she loved the lovely girl in the lovely screenplay. So it was taken for consideration. 

The screenplay was possibly going to get made. I didn't really think it would have been made so I wasn't really hopeful. Several months passed by and nothing happened. 

Until ---

A friend of mine was in Toronto for the film festival and happened to meet a producer friend of his who had several Christmas movies from Hallmark. So my friend knew I had a script somewhere around Christmas and asked him if my story was one of his?

The producer said that it was made.

So, now, what did my friend mention to me in L.A. that my Christmas movie was not only filmed and it's being sold here.

And I did not know it was made.

Then I had to talk with the producer and other people and took two weeks to finally get paid. There it took several people who were struggling to figure out why I wasn't paid.

I actually have a good piece of work explaining how I got my money. I'm trying to find that piece of work and bring it out again.

Found it.

Go to:  Monday, April 17 2017
 (Where you can see how my screenplay payment took all of 2 wks.)