Friday July 9, 2010
FROM: the Desk of Marco Mannone / Executive Editor @ Forth Magazine
TO: the Desk of Richard Verrier / Los Angeles Times
RE: “Screenwriters Find Work is Dwindling” (July 3rd article)
Richard,
Just read your sharp piece “Screenwriters Find Work is Dwindling”. Shedding light on this topic is like pushing a vampire into the sun… Executives and Greedheads around this town tend to burst into flames when they’re told they should Respect their writers. After nearly a decade of sheer desperation, 2010 has proven the most lucrative year for me yet as a paid, working screenwriter here in L.A. The catch is, my checking account is still running on fumes and I might have to siphon gas from some fat-cat’s Lexus in order to drive my car off Mulholland Dr.
by Carolyn Blais
With the anniversary of the birth of our nation this past weekend, it is the perfect time for Americans to pause and reflect on what those early days as a country must have been like when there were no such things as the iPhone, or the internet, or even the automobile. A world void of technology may be scary to some; I mean how would we communicate and get around from one place to the other? Well, unlike many Americans including Angelenos who harbor a strong dependence on the beloved motor vehicle, a large number of Parisians have captured a piece of a simpler time and place by using bicycles as the primary mode of transportation. Even in this advanced day and age, the French have found a very basic way to master transportation that is healthier not only for the human race, but the environment. Not only that, but they manage to make riding bikes look sexy at the same time! Read the whole story »
by Elizabeth Manson
Remember when you were a kid and you would draw on the sidewalk with colorful sidewalk chalk? Well, your childish doodles got nothing on this. Read the whole story »
Listen to the Audio: Creation Myth
Never was the land together,
cohesive, an uninterrupted mass
of soil, rock, sand, grass
all bound in a harmonious package, leather
spread-eagled in one faultless piece.
Always were places disparate.
Sky unbroken, but land split
and ponded, rivered. Water reached
out from every fissure, issuing
lacklessly. The ground’s appendages
multiplied, fresh edges
made into shores and ocean chewing
into them eagerly. In the beginning,
this wasn’t a big problem for
people. They swam well, explored
by boat. At length, the constant crossing
of distances somehow seeped
into their bodies, their cores. They’d say,
“It can’t have always been this way,”
and dream of land gathered up in a heap. Read the whole story »
by Carolyn Blais
Los Angeles was chockablock with art openings all over town Saturday night and I had my mind set on attending at least two of them before the night was through. Thankfully I made it across town to both, dodging traffic on the 10 with the help of my human navigator and date, Tim as well as my electronic navigator Garmin, or “Lady Gar Gar” as Tim likes to call it. Read the whole story »
Marco Mannone
