Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 by Bill Swadley.

First published at The Huffington Post, July 13, 2010

On Saturday night I attended A Beatles Celebration at the Hollywood Bowl, and while this isn’t a review of the performance but rather of the attendees, I would be remiss not to say a word or two about the show itself.

Todd Rundgren was the big name associated with these three nights at the Bowl, but by far the night belonged to Betty LaVette and Rob Laufer. Not to belittle he who was once referred to as “Todd is God,” but even God would have to rehearse a significant amount were he to spend three nights at the Bowl with the LA Philharmonic for close to 70,000 people. Todd was very enthusiastic and when he sang softly that sweet old voice was still there, but overall his performance was sloppy. He can shred on the guitar with the best of them, and he did, I just wish he’d taken more time to work out some licks.

On the other extreme, Rob Laufer’s vocals and masterful guitar work was the first time in the show that the Beatles’ presence was truly felt on stage. In his loving performances of “Something” and “Across the Universe,” it was as if he were channeling all four lads at the same time. Todd brought Rob back during his set and the two guitar virtuosos laid “Let it Be” out for the brilliance that it is. There wasn’t a dry seat in the house.

The amazing blues singer Betty LaVette gave us awe-inspiring interpretations of “Blackbird” and “Here, There, & Everywhere” to the point where, except for the lyrics, the songs were literally unrecognizable as Beatles tunes. LaVette was the only performer without a strong Beatles influence in her life and career (in her intro to “Here, There, & Everywhere” she said the first time she’d heard the song, Frank Sinatra was singing it!) Even so, on her lips “Come Together” should become a blues standard. There’s no doubt that her astonishingly visceral rendition of that enigmatic song could have brought John and Paul to tears.

The entire show was backed wonderfully by the LA Phil and conductor Thomas Wilkins who was also an appropriate emcee. So it would have been a perfect evening of music and memories had it not been for the unbelievably rude and unconscious people in my immediate area.

I’ve attended over one hundred concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in all musical genres, and I’ve come to understand that there are generally three types of shows and three types of audiences at this one-of-a kind Los Angeles landmark.

The first concert/audience type is the classical. The music is Mozart, Vivaldi, Chopin, etc. and the patrons bring their wine and bread and cheese and sip and munch before the concert starts. Once the conductor strides out onto the stage, they put their picnics at their feet and, if they continue to partake, they do so quietly out of respect for both the music and their fellow concert-goers. I love these people.

Second are the rock/pop shows. Just like any concert at any venue, this audience drinks too much, makes incessant noise, sings with all the songs, and generally are out to have a good time. The music is usually very loud so you barely notice them. Everyone behaves as they’re expected to. I love the freedom of these shows so unless someone is literally throwing up in the row behind me, it’s anything goes.

Third are the in-betweens. “In-between” both in the nature of the concert and the people who attend them. The concerts are always “special” shows like A Beatles Celebration, where you get quiet ballads and heartfelt jazz in addition to loud rock, while in the audience you get the classical and the rock/pop audiences who know how to behave based on the particular song being performed. But there’s a third element. This third element is the people who probably have never been to the Bowl before and, maybe because of the bench seats or the beer, behave as if they’re at Dodger Stadium.

So during the first half of the show Saturday night, which was mostly quiet jazz and heartfelt ballads by Patti Austin, Rob Laufer, and Brian Stokes Mitchell, I had the couple to my immediate left across the aisle who just had to finish off an entire large bag of Tostitos before intermission and did so during every song, crunching and rustling the bag with every note.

Then I had the two young women behind me who couldn’t shut themselves up long enough to listen to one song all the way through. I always wonder about these sorts. What they could possibly have to say to each other that’s so important that they miss the reason they’re there in the first place?

But those who took the cake that night were the drunken family who not only talked and took pictures of each other during every song, but insisted on loudly mis-singing the lyrics completely off-key when no one else was. They were across the aisle and two rows up from me, and that’s what really got me about this particular group. They were surrounded by people who weren’t with them and as far as I could tell, not one person in close proximity to these idiots told them to STFU, behave themselves, and watch the show. An usher spoke to the group at one point, but it did no good. As soon as she went back to her post they started up again. What’s necessary in these situations is for the people sitting with the disturbers to teach them how to behave. But that never seems to happen. Not in LA, anyway.

The Hollywood Bowl is a fantastic venue. I have wonderfully fond memories there and will treasure them forever, but from now on it’s loud rock or strictly classical. No more in-betweens for me.

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Friday, March 26th, 2010 by Bill Swadley.

First published at Huffington Post on March 25, 2010

An article in the New York Times yesterday revealed that the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) is up in arms at the prospect that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission might approve the creation of a futures market that would deal in movie box office receipts.

I say, let ‘em try!

Futures markets have traditionally been reserved for raw goods. In futures trading sugar is a commodity that is traded through futures contracts, but not salt water taffy. Sugar is the raw ingredient, candy is the resultant product after manufacture. Same with oil. Crude oil futures are traded, not gasoline. Why is that? Mainly because there is an inherent standardization to a raw commodity, but also a question mark as to how much that commodity will bring once it’s brought to market. It’s that question mark that becomes the gain or loss for the futures trader. Once the raw commodity becomes its final product, price fluctuation is severely limited so there’s not much to bet on.

Perhaps this is what fooled the Einsteins at Cantor Fitzgerald and Veriana Networks (the two groups proposing the exchanges) to think that trading box office futures could work. The complete unpredictability of a film’s performance. But it’s an entirely different manner of unpredictability, and I wonder if they understand that.

To further disconnect this idea from true futures trading: while it’s true that the value of futures contracts fluctuates according to many factors depending on the commodity, there’s a best/worse case scenario that can be estimated as a basis, barring unforeseen events like a natural disaster, unexpected blight, economic crisis, etc. In any given contract period the trader calculates the risk involved going in and may gamble that a certain crop’s yield will do well or poorly based on what’s known about that commodity, interest rates, weather patterns, even political climate for less stable countries. The “gamble” is a calculated one.

Being a gambler and investor and having worked in entertainment finance for over 15 years, the last thing I would ever advise anyone to bet on or invest in is film box office grosses. Why? Oh, I don’t know, let’s ask renowned screenwriter/playwright/author William Goldman:

“Nobody knows anything.”

You said it, Bill.

Mr. Goldman’s statement, which has been quoted ad nauseum (including by me with great frequency) and attributed to all manner of people about pretty much anything that’s unpredictable in life, was in fact a statement about show business, Hollywood in particular, and the unlimited surprises (both good and bad) awaiting any individual or company venturing into the entertainment industry. Yes the rewards can be great, but they’re so sporadic and impossible to predict that even big movie studios often lose their nerve in the face of an expensive, potential flop.

Entertainment finance people spend untold hours and sleepless nights trying to figure out the monetary potential of any given film and the closest anyone in this business ever comes is to approximate a best-guess based on a virtual house-of-cards of assumptions. When something hits a mark we set or, thank the heavens, exceeds it, you never hear the words, “I told you so.” No, the wise man or woman who made that prediction is too busy worrying that the other 10-15 films in that year’s slate will miss the target. Like good ol’ Charlie Brown, one minute you’re the hero, the next you’re the goat.

Here’s the thing, people with a lot of money and/or people with access to a lot of money almost never have the slightest understanding of how the movie business works, especially from a finance point of view. But they almost always find out.

The hard way.

But go for it, boys, and don’t worry. As long as you hit that wire with the connecting hook at precisely 88mph the instant the lightning strikes the tower… everything will be fine.

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Thursday, December 10th, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

First published at The Huffington Post on December 9, 2009.

One of my closest friends, a brilliant, gifted, dedicated teacher at California State University, Los Angeles, was recently informed that because of budget cuts she is to be laid-off. In my conversations with her over the past few months (she knew this might be coming) something became very clear to me.  It would appear that “we the people” of California would rather take money out of the pockets of the most important and egregiously underpaid professionals in our society than pay a little more in taxes.

Teachers in California are being forced either off the payroll entirely or are being given so few classes to teach that they will need to find other work to supplement their already abysmal salaries. With unemployment in the Los Angeles area topping 10%, this is a sorry prospect for them indeed.

So rather than hit up the wealthiest Californians and most successful California businesses (like the oil companies) for a little extra dough they’d never miss, our representatives in Sacramento along with the Govenator are hacking furiously away at the public school system and other vital social services as if every well-off Californian has made it clear that they are unwilling to have their taxes increase by even the smallest amount.

I‘ve lived in California my entire life. I do well and don’t pay much state income tax (never have), yet I watch year-after-year as a supposedly liberal state congress led by a usually centrist governor fight and wrangle as they allow education and social services to suffer at the effect of budgetary deficiencies. Does anyone making more that a teacher’s salary in this state really think it’s fair for those worse-off than they are to carry the burden of our current economic downturn?  Obviously our lawmakers do, but they’re not representing me in this, that’s for certain.

This isn’t just about dollars and cents or teachers’ salaries, either. Along with cuts to education come  higher fees and fewer classes offered to students who can barely afford their current curriculum. It will cost them far more now and take a great deal more time to graduate. These people are the future wage-earners of the state. It doesn’t take an economist to tell you that the higher one’s level of education, the higher one’s earnings tend to be. It’s a no-brainer. People who earn more pay more in taxes and spend more in the economy. This is good for Caaleefoarneea, Arnold!

But for those who are in charge, raising taxes on the oil companies or the wealthiest businesses and  individuals in the state (and there are a great many of them) is entirely out of the question. Even though young teachers who have recently entered the teaching profession are losing their jobs. Even though Education graduates have no prospects whatsoever as they exit even the best universities with high honors. Even though everyone is in agreement that a well-educated populace has a positive effect on absolutely every aspect of the quality of life of a community.

Every state in the country is suffering along these lines. Many are much worse-off than California because they don’t have a ridiculously wealthy mother-lode of residents and companies to even consider tapping.   Schwarzenegger has the magic wand in his thick fingers that could readily alleviate all the financial woes the state currently faces.

The California Legislature needs to stop catering to the greedy, ivory tower residents that would put the likes of Meg Whitman in the governor’s mansion. They need to stop punishing the people at the bottom and in the middle with regressive tax schemes and unconscionable budget cuts by representing everyone in this state, not just their peers.

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Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 by admin.

Cenk Uyger makes a great case for the latter here:

The Irrefutable Stupidity of Sarah Palin 

x

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Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

I’ve long been a current-events junkie. This is an addiction that for many years was very easily and efficiently maintained by staying up on the news through a couple of reliable sources, such as  through the  online versions of The LA Times, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal as well as National Public Radio. My main areas of interest are world events, entertainment, business, and Washington politics, pretty much in that order.  I don’t watch cable news or local news, but, oddly enough, I know a great deal about what’s being reported on television, primarily because of online sites such as Media Matters, Think Progess, and The Huffington Post to name a few.

While this has given me a great deal more insight and understanding as to why so many people are ill-informed and/or misinformed, it has given me a rash as well.

In the old days I was blissfully unaware of the positions held by pseudo-journalistic personalities such as Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, Beck, and Scarborough, and I was also largely oblivious of those I might tend more to agree with like Olbermann, Maddow, Cooper, or Brown.  For me, getting my news fix had nothing to do with the people presenting the news except in terms of a particular reporter’s expertise (such as NPR’s Cokie Roberts reporting on the Supreme Court).

There was a time when if someone told me something crazy like they “don’t trust the United States Census”  I would have fallen slack-jawed and silent with no ability to comprehend how anyone could have come up with the strange idea that the US Census could be something to be feared. In this case in particular, the person’s census statistics haven’t changed in any significant way since the last census 10 years ago, so their answers on the current census would be largely the same. Even so, the Census had somehow become something to be feared. Now that my awareness has been expanded to include television news, I no longer wonder how a person gets such a harebrained idea, because after being indoctrinated in the ways of disinformational media the answer is obvious. “You read Drudge or watch Fox News on a regular basis, don’t you?”

So while I appreciate that I no longer wonder about such things, I find myself in a constant state of perturbation over the unbelievable level of intentionally misleading “news” with which people of limited intelligence are bombarded every day. So do I thank the aggregators and online watchdogs for keeping me informed about what the dark side is up to (known thine enemy and all that) or blame them for my inability to resist watching Glenn Beck’s “education” rally or Ann Coulter’s latest hate-strewn interview? Seriously, those  two make me want to hurl my PC through the window, but I can’t stop myself from watching them, and just as I start to calm down, them what would keep me informed heat up another spoon of the stuff for me to mainline.

I know I’m not alone in this. I can tell from the comment sections of those same infuriating posts that this is wearing many of us down. The irony is that even as  I complain about people like Beck and Coulter getting far too much airtime, positing that if they weren’t given so much attention they wouldn’t be able to sway the sheep so easily, online news outlets are giving them more attention, and I, in turn, am giving them MY attention. And it doesn’t stop there. I occasionally am so outraged that I forward the link to my friends and colleagues, giving those same people who should be ignored even more attention!

I understand that we must remain vigilant against intolerance, fear, hate, and prejudice. I am thankful that I know what the real “evildoers” look like and that I know what they have to say, however, I have long been aware of the Ku Klux Klan and I don’t need to see interminable video of their cross-burning  events to maintain that awareness. I further understand that it’s my responsibility to filter what I allow in to my perception on a daily basis, but when The Huffington Post chooses to put headlines like: “Commandant Beck Not Joking Anymore”  on the front page, I find it easier to  look away from a bad car crash on the highway.

I know there’s a great deal of interest in this sort of thing just judging from the sheer number of comments such a post will garner, but it bothers me that news sources I’m addicted to which I expect to maintain their poise and position above the fray, sometimes fall victim to sensationalizing a story with its headlines, or worse, running a piece merely because of its outrageousness (such as anything Rush Limbaugh has to say).

I’m not in any way suggesting content be eliminated, but just as in the old days of newsprint journalism, certain stories deserve Page 1 status and others belong just before the Sports Section. For legitimate news, this continues to be a better rule of thumb than the TV news mantra, “If it bleeds, it leads.”

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Thursday, November 12th, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

First published at The Huffington Post on November 12, 2009

In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell makes a compelling case for the notion that the “self-made man” is a rare exception at best, but more often than not, a complete myth. Nowhere is this more true than in Hollywood.

Several months ago I started working with a group of actors on what it takes to find consistent success in that vocation. The general principles apply to many chosen careers in the entertainment industry, but I wanted a challenge and seeing as how, in my mind anyway, acting is one of the most difficult professions to produce consistent results in, I felt that if any sort of road map could be developed it would be revelatory.

Anyone who wants to make it in the arts is confronted with an overwhelming number of “realities” (most of them harsh) that they must overcome in order to one day quit the Coffee Bean job and do their art full time. The first reality is this: No one, and I mean NO ONE, makes it all by themselves. This truth begins with the decision to pursue a career rife with roadblocks and remains so regardless of the level of success one achieves.

Like the old joke that the success of a musician is measured by his girlfriend’s take-home pay, short of getting someone else to cover the bills, anyone who wants to act must find a way to survive whilst knocking on doors that open only erratically. So most will need a “regular” job that allows enough flexibility to go on auditions during the day and attend classes and the occasional play in the evenings and on weekends. There are only a tiny handful of jobs that fit this description, so most soon find themselves the beneficiary of an understanding boss or helpful coworkers.

And so it begins. No lone gun ever traded shifts to make it to a last-minute Pop Tarts audition.

Once basic survival is covered with the help of those mentioned above, there’s the task of finding an agent and getting work. An actor can forward the ubiquitous headshot and resume to every agent, producer and casting person in town, but the likelihood that any of them will respond is slim-to-none unless someone else’s name is attached to their humble request for a meeting or audition. This is because the amount of blind requests these people get each week is so voluminous that the time it takes to sift through them all is just not available.

It’s all about filtering and it’s done all the time in many professions, but nowhere is filtering more pervasive than in Hollywood. Agents filter requests from new actors by requiring that they have certain types of credits, training and/or be referred by a current client. Likewise, producers and casting directors will often restrict audition submissions to actors with agents, sometimes only certain agents, or they may require that the actor be a member of the Screen Actor’s Guild. This is done to limit the number of submissions they receive from being in the thousands to being in the hundreds. Filtering as I’ve described is random and certainly unfair, but necessary lest the machine grind to a complete halt.

So in the beginning, before the actor’s name is a door-opener in and of itself, the game is less about who you are and more about who you know (which is the truth behind the old adage). So while it’s nice when an actor’s resume includes “University of Southern California” under Education, a note from esteemed USC alumnus, Will Ferrell will get everyone’s prompt attention.

This doesn’t mean that if one didn’t go to school with a famous comic actor or their father didn’t direct Apocalypse Now that there’s no hope. It also doesn’t mean that an actor needs to harass famous people all over the city for an introduction to the big time. This will likely only result in restraining orders. In fact, the process of being assisted by others in one’s career in this town is most effective and reliable with one’s peers. They’re the people who get together for a beer after work or class. The ones who are equally committed and driven to succeed. Those who might make it big one day and possibly become a “name” for you just as you will do for them if you get there first.

In my work I call it one’s “Personal/Professional Network,” but really they’re friends. More specifically, friends who happen to be pursuing a dream similar to one’s own. Remember that opportunities come not only from meeting people in the business and making professional connections as anyone pursing any worthwhile career does, but from developing deep, authentic friendships with like-minded individuals along the way.

Trace the path of any successful actor in Hollywood and it becomes clear very quickly that the many opportunities afforded to them came because someone they knew liked them enough to extend a hand. In turn, most of them reach back every now and then and give a lift to others who need a step up.

This is the way it’s always been, and how it will continue to be in Hollywood.

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Monday, October 5th, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

My whole life I wanted to know “the answer.”  Never mind that I didn’t understand the question.

What always gets me is how, just when I think I have a good idea about the workings of life-as-we-know-it and things are going along pretty smoothly, something grabs me by the collar and says, “You know nothing!”

This is one of those times.

I had a conversation with my mom a few weeks ago about that she’d likely be moving on from this phase of her life fairly soon.  At the time it struck me that the only real difference between her and the rest of us was that she had a little more information. She had been diagnosed with Stage-4 cancer. No one knows when that big event will occur, and we live with a blind trust that it won’t be anytime soon, and thereby live under the illusion that there is “plenty of time.” 

Writers, artists, philosophers, scientists, the faithful and atheists alike, have spent more time dwelling on the subject of mortality than any other except maybe love.  Many who have gone before us and those who come after will continue to ponder the mystery of life and death, and, as they always have, will come to the same conclusion. 

Learning what’s really important in life doesn’t come easy. For most of us it takes not much less than the mental equivalent of being hit over the head with a 2×4.  The realization comes differently for anyone who makes it:  The birth of a child, the death of a parent, catastrophic life-altering events, euphoric experiences that expand the spirit, any experience that raises our awareness to a new level. 

I’m not sure how she got there, but my mom was one of the lucky ones who understood and it’s so simple:  Surround yourself with love and laughter.  That’s the wisdom great thinkers have spent lifetimes uncovering that was second nature to her. In terms of love, I think she would agree with the statement, “Spend as much time as you can in the company of your loved ones.”

When she knew her time was limited, she didn’t run out and book a cruise or schedule a whirlwind trip across the continents. She told us that all she wanted to do was be in her home visiting with everyone. We all thought we had many months in which to do this, and while we would gladly have taken many more years, the little time we were given was put to good use in fulfilling that desire for her and us.

During that time, just like it always had been in my family, we didn’t sit around having serious discussions about sad inevitabilities. Nope.  We laughed and laughed. As hardily and frequently as possible.  Even the day mom left us the love and laughter continued to flow. My sister, Julie, said something that day which moved everyone and is a perfect demonstration of what I’m talking about. She said, “Oh my God! They dropped her. She’s on the sidewalk!”

Yes, it moved everyone. Into hysterics. My sister wasn’t playing a cruel prank on us. She really thought the guys from the mortuary had dropped my mom as they were taking her down the stairs. They hadn’t, not even close, but you can imagine the images that popped into the minds of those of us who weren’t standing at the window as my sister was.

This is how it’s always been in my family.  Not far behind tears of tragedy follow the healing powers of laughter.  My mom’s dad, our Popa, is to this day the funniest person I have ever known. My dad didn’t have the great gift for humor that my grandfather possessed, but he could tell a good joke and was a comic’s fantasy. He laughed so hard and loud and long that at times it could get embarrassing. Especially if you were 14… Or my mom…

Mom had a keen sense of humor (how could she not being raised by Pop?) but she was also very classy and had a strong sense of decorum. As a result, her laugh was very subtle, especially in contrast to my dad. Getting her to laugh out loud was a major accomplishment. If you could get her to do so in public you were deserving of a medal. 

During the weeks following her diagnosis, kids, grandkids, and one seriously cute great-grandchild, literally enveloped her with their unwavering devotion and humor. As she started to drift from us she was comforted by the simple act of holding a hand and feeling the love conduct electrically between us. During this time, even when she was fading and could  barely speak, she’d get a big smile on her face every time the conversation turned to a funny old remembrance or a quick-witted pun.

Everyone who comes into our lives bears with them a lesson for us.  Often the most profound of these lessons are borne by those with the simplest outlook on life. My mom didn’t need to fill her days with activities and distractions that only serve to “busy” our lives rather than enrich them. No, by filling her days with love and laughter, and teaching that lesson to us throughout her life, she not only gave of them freely, but they came back to her immeasurably.

In our pretense that life goes on forever, even though we’re faced every day with the reality that exactly the opposite is true, we allow ourselves to waste a great deal of time.  That’s why we must continually remind ourselves what’s really important. What my mom knew. Her  wisdom about life is a part of us. That wisdom is a gift to us for having been lucky enough to share this small space of time with her. 

My mother, Shirlee Swadley, died Saturday at age 84 from lung cancer. She didn’t suffer, didn’t linger, had no regrets, was surrounded by love, and laughed with us ‘til the end.

Posted in Family, Blogroll | 1 Comment »

Friday, October 2nd, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

Facebook is a good way to find people with whom you’ve unintentionally lost touch (if there is such a unintentionally losing touch) and keeping track of people with whom you’d rather not lose touch.  It’s also fun to look at photos of people on the other side of the world, their kids you’ve never met, the friends that aren’t you, etc. Some take a particular sick pleasure in seeing exes who haven’t aged well. The problem with Facebook is that the people who swear by it think it’s much more than this, like a good way to communicate with your friends. Here’s why it’s nothing of the kind.

Let’s say you’re an active Facebook user who has 100 “friends.” Of those 100 friends, lets assume a generous 10% of them check Facebook once a day or more. Further, let’s say that another very generous 40% of them check at least once each week without fail. On the other side, lets assume that 30% check irregularly, maybe once every two weeks or so, another 20% once a month, and 10% never return after creating their account. (I would assume  that last 10% is more like 30%, but we’re being generous here with presumed Facebook participation. Your results may vary.)

Okay, now let’s say you’re in the top 10% of people who visit daily or more and you decide you want to let all your friends know about something really important, like you’re being evicted and if all your friends sent you $25 each you could forestall the sheriff one more month. In the old days, you would have made some phone calls or written an e-mail making your request (people with more money, you meet for lunch), with confidence that your request has been heard and (probably) ignored by all. But this isn’t the old days. Now you just throw a post up on Facebook with the delusion that all your friends will read it right away and come to the rescue or not.

Using my generous participation percentages, you’ve just reached about 10 of your 100 friends immediately, 40 more within a week, and the rest eventually or not at all. Eviction is imminent.

The problem with Facebook is that it gives one the illusion that anyone is listening other than the other fanatics like you who spend their days surfing the web and posting ad nauseum on Facebook, which is nothing close to all the people you’d like to be in touch with on a regular basis.  Aside from the emergency scenario above, if one treats Facebook as their primary means of staying in touch, then a whole boatload of people are potentially neglected. People who would like to be included, but aren’t because they don’t have the time and/or inclination to participate on Facebook.

I don’t know if this will happen, but it seems to me that at some point a critical mass of Facebook members will realize that most people aren’t listening and Facebook will be replaced by whatever time-suck is next in line that convincingly gives the illusion of interpersonal connection.

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Friday, August 21st, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

Today is the day of the big preview of Jim Cameron’s new film, Avatar . I was fortunate to get an early look at a special fifteen minute preview this morning and was completely blown away (in the interest of full disclosure, I work for the company responsible, 20th Century Fox).

I can’t say much because it really left me speechless, and words would fail miserably anyway. For Baby Boomers like me, think of the first time you saw Star Wars in the theater. Now multiply that experience by 1,000. That’s what seeing short bursts of Avatar felt like to me.  (For everyone else, maybe how you felt watching three other Cameron films: Terminator 2, Aliens, and Titanic.)

Whatever your frame of reference, I predict that the movies will never be the same again after Avatar hits the screens.

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Friday, August 21st, 2009 by admin.

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Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

First published at the Huffington Post on June 22, 2009.

Working for a major studio and having friends at other studios, it’s hard to ignore the doom and gloom talk that pervades this business when the topic turns to feature films.

“Why would anyone go to the theater when they have HD at home?”

“Movies have to be bigger than home theaters to get them to pay the ticket price.”

“It’s all about 3D!”

I shake my head and laugh to myself. Am I the only one who’s been paying attention to the last 50 years of film history? First television was going to kill the movies. Then it was color television that would be the end of feature films. Then people were going to stop buying tickets because of cable, then the VCR, the laserdisc, the DVD… and now… beware! HD is going to kill the feature the film!

And the only way to save it is big, loud , and, something new, 3D!

Oh, wait, but there’s this movie that just opened two weeks ago. A comedy that’s already raked in $153 million in the US alone. You don’t have to wear glasses and nothing explodes (unless you count the bellows of laughter from the audience).

The Hangover may be the funniest movie I’ve ever seen and I can tell you that Warner Brothers doesn’t need to spend another dime on marketing or advertising if they don’t want to, because an extremely high percentage of those 15 million or so people who have already seen it will tell there friends, coworkers, and family, “You must see The Hangover!” Now. Not when it’s on HBO or Netflix has it. Now!

So are all those execs at the studios wrong? Can they get away with not spending hundreds of millions of dollars on every theatrical release from now on? Well yes and no. They must spend that kind of dough on production and marketing if they’re going to continue to make crap (and even so, crap in 3D is still crap).

The Hangover is ridiculously successful for one reason and one reason only. It’s a good movie in every sense of the word. And I’ll bet there were plenty of executives, producers, and development people who turned it down or were certain it was destined for failure (and, in case you were wondering those are the people in the theater who are crying whilst everyone else is in hysterics).

The brilliant William Goldman’s assertion about show business that “nobody knows anything” is still true to this day. It’s both the frustration accompanying trying to work in this business and the hope that, as it always has, anything can happen.

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Monday, June 22nd, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

I’m one of those people who hasn’t had to worry about health care for the past 25 years or more. I’ve always worked for companies that provided decent health insurance, and as monthly costs and out-of-pocket increased, my salary did as well. I continue to have no worries.

This is true for me. Now, put those words in the mouth of every pundit and elected official speaking-out these days against healthcare reform. Of course they’re against it. They don’t need it and don’t care about those who do. Many of the politicians with the loudest voices railing against sweeping reforms are in the pockets of the insurance industry  to boot, so their vested interest in the status quo has no limit.

I live in California and have my entire life. I make a good living and don’t pay much state income tax (never have).  I watch year-after-year as a supposedly liberal state congress led by a usually conservative governor allow education and social services to suffer at the effect of budgetary deficiencies.

But raising taxes on the oil companies or the wealthiest individuals in the state (and there are a great many of them here) is entirely out of the question. Even though young teachers who have recently entered the teaching profession are losing their jobs. Even though education graduates have no prospects whatsoever as they exit even the best universities with high honors. Even though everyone is in agreement that a well-educated populace has a positive effect on absolutely every aspect of the quality of life of a community.

The mentally ill live a life of horror on the streets because the state no longer provides mental health facilities for them. They and the homeless whose ranks increase daily are left to the good graces of the private NGO’s who have seen their own revenues decline in the face of the current crisis.

Every state in the country is suffering along these lines. Many are much worse-off than California because they don’t have a ridiculously wealthy mother-lode of residents to even consider tapping.   But people like me and those running things in the state capitals and Washington haven’t felt any of this pain directly. We’re insulated and only see and feel what is demanded by our respective consciences.

We have our health insurance. If the public schools start to suck again the way they did in the past, we’ll put our kids in the private schools, just as we have before. We might give a little more to the Midnight Mission or make a contribution to our local school, but there is absolutely no substitute for political will.

And the conservative clowns on the right like Beck,  Hannity, and Limbaugh, along with the myopic  cynical, conservatives in politics like Schwarzenegger, Michael Steele, Olympia Snowe, and all the other usual suspects we come to know and despise, continue to decry any effort at taking  responsibility for those less fortunate. They call it socialism. Warn that we’ll be “like Canada or England” (I have friends who live in both countries, and, as shocking as it may seem, none of them are plotting their escape to the USA for some strange reason…)

Screw socialism, whatever happened to plain old human decency? I’m for that. Call it socialism or call it Bob for all I care.  I want everyone to feel the same sense of security I do about healthcare. I can pay a little more in taxes to keep the bright, young, teachers in my kids’ classrooms.  Let’s stop listening to those who have a not-so-hidden agenda in these matters and do what’s right for a change.

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Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 by admin.

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Friday, April 24th, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

As the horrific Bush Administration torture strategy continues to unravel and reveal, and I listen to the talking heads splitting hairs about what is and what isn’t torture and/or whether torture was justified and/or “yielded results,” I can’t help but hearken-back to the endless days I spent listening to the Clinton impeachment hearings as the strident and self-righteous Henry Hyde repeated, ad –nauseam, that the president must be impeached for perjury and other “high crimes” because, above all else, WE MUST UPHOLD THE RULE OF LAW!

Remember that? Remember the crime for which Clinton was impeached? Perjury. Bill Clinton was only the second president in US history to be impeached and it was for a crime completely unrelated to the office he held. The Republican-led House of Representatives tried to throw Clinton out of office for lying about having sex with Monica Lewinsky. That was it. No one was tortured, no wars were started needlessly , no one died. Even so, the entire country was put on hold while the right-wing played-out its righteous indignation. And let’s not forget the Starr investigation.

Now here we are, 10 years later, and  Bush, Cheney, et al have managed to escape Washington with nary an official accusation of any kind  leveled against them. We all knew that during the 8-years of Bush rule the Executive Branch was riding roughshod over human rights and the constitution. It’s no longer a question of whether they acted in accordance with the law. The memos and reports just now surfacing show that they not only side-stepped the law but intentionally diverted it. No one in this country, not even certain Fox News “journalists” can deny that they authorized the widespread use of torture on detainees at various U.S. run prison facilities around the world.

Is that enough or must we get Bush in a courtroom charged with littering and catch him lying about whether the gum wrapper was Juicy Fruit or Double Mint?

Bush, Cheney, Rice, Ashcroft, Gonzalez, Rumsfeld, and anyone else in the Bush Administration involved in the promotion and authorization of torture must be held accountable. There needs to be a full investigation. Charges need to be filed. Public trials need to be held. We need to redeem ourselves for ourselves, for our children, and in the eyes of the world as a nation that believes in its own principles.

Henry Hyde has passed-on,  so I’ll say it for him: WE MUST UPHOLD THE RULE OF LAW.

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Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 by admin.

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Thursday, April 16th, 2009 by admin.

Quite a few brilliant analytical articles appeared on Huffington Post in the aftermath of yesterday’s teabagging by the reality-challenged right-wingnut brigade. Here are a few:

Sharing Tea Bags with Right Wing Extremists by Bob Cesca

One of the very bizarre accusations overheard at the tea bag protests Wednesday was that President Obama is somehow a “fascist.” At the same time, and often in the same protest, he was also accused of being a “communist.” Of course it’s ideologically impossible to be both, in the same way it’s impossible to be both informed and a FOX & Friends host, but then again I’m expecting too much logic and message coherence from people who spent all of Wednesday protesting against socialism and wealth redistribution while gathered in publicly funded — dare I say “socialized” — parks and town squares. Click to continue…

The Five Strands of Conservatism: Why the GOP is Unravelling by Drew Westen

In one sense, it isn’t hard to see why the Republican Party seems to be coming apart at the seams. When you get caught gutting the regulations that had kept us for 70 years from another stock market crash like the crash of 1929 and another collapse of the banking system like the one that occurred during the Great Depression, and when your policies throw millions of people out of their homes, jobs, retirement, and doctors’ offices, the next bottle of elixir you sell is not likely to fly off the shelf, especially if it’s the same whine in a new deCantor. Click to continue…

Reporting from the Tea Bagger Hate-Fest in Sacramento by Joseph A. Palermo

The hatred was palpable today on the State Capitol’s steps. Hatred for taxes, hatred for government, hatred for state workers, hatred for teachers, hatred for Democrats, and hatred for all of the straw men that leap from the imaginations of talk radio jocks. But the most hated figure of all at today’s “Tea Bag” anti-tax rally in Sacramento was President Barack Obama. Click to continue…

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Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

Back in the heat of the election last year, TV and online reporters forayed courageously into crowds of Palin/McCain supporters to  interview them about why they loved the Republican ticket and hated Obama. Never very clear about either, these sign-wielding, slogan-spewing, demonstrators rarely had more to say than the misinformed and/or disinformational talking-points issued by Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and the GOP leadership.

Today, teabaggers out in fairly meaningless numbers all over the country stand in impotent protest against a president who only took office a few months ago about problems in our economy that have been brewing  for 10+ years. As far as I can tell, these are the same people who blindly supported Sarah Palin last fall because she said the “right” words and all the anchors at Fox News all had a crush on her.

Never mind that the unfortunate term “teabagging” could have easily been avoided had anyone at Fox News or in leadership of the conservative groups hosting the so-called tea parties held even a 5th grade knowledge of the Boston Tea Party.

Like when it occurred.

In 1773.

Over 125 years BEFORE the tea bag was invented.

Remember American History class? Remember your classmates who didn’t do the homework, slept in class, doodled, traded notes, etc., and barely passed with a C? This is for them:

Now class. As I said, there were no tea bags back then. The tea at Boston Harbor was thrown into the water by British colonists from chests commonly used for tea exportation. That’s right,British colonists, not United States citizens. Why? Because the American Revolution was just being birthed and wouldn’t come to fruition for several years.  The colonists responsible for the Boston Tea Party were protesting taxes levied by their sovereign, King George III, without the consideration of colonial legislatures. That’s what set them off. Taxation without representation.  Is any of this ringing a bell? Oh, I forgot, you were asleep.

So, is there any significance to be drawn from a parallel between the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773 and the Washington Teabagging of April 15, 2009? Let’s see…

1773 -  Dictatorial monarch in desperate attempt to raise revenue  levies taxes on remote colonies only to elicit a profound outcry from said colonies. Monarchy greatly concerned, but steadfast.
2009 - Democratically elected president in cooperation with representative legislature cuts taxes for 95% of all citizens only to elicit a profound outcry from those who stand to benefit. Federal government puzzled.

1773 - Protest motivated primarily by taxation without representation and the iron-fisted rule of a monarchy and ocean away.
2009 - Protestors mostly unclear why they’re protesting except that it has something to do with socialism and maybe fascism, but not sure how.

1773 - Some protestors disguise themselves as Indians to deflect potential legal repercussions from themselves onto an oppressed minority.
2009 - Some protestors dress as Indians because they don’t understand the bigotry behind the original motivation for the  Indian garb worn by some Boston Tea Party participants.

1773 – Colonial leaders know the gravity of their situation and understand that their actions will likely be met with serious consequences.
2009 – Any real impact or important message is lost in the snickering of pretty much everyone because of the use of the term “teabagging.”

1773 - Word of the protest and the monarchy’s extreme reaction gets out in a few weeks to other colonies and the American Revolution is under way.
2009 - Minute-by-minute coverage of the non-event fills the airwaves, cable news, and the Internet for endless hours.  Almost everyone loses interest by the close of the day.

It might have been much more effective to mirror a different tea party to draw attention to the current situation.

Wonderland – Alice sits, uninvited, at a tea table after a long and tiring adventure only to find it occupied by three psychotic characters. She attempts to apply logic to the insane jabbering of the Mad Hatter and the March Hare. Gives up. Leaves.
2009 – Obama brings to the table exactly what he promised during an extremely long and tiresome election only to find it dominated by the same jabbering, psychotic characters who opposed his presidency on unclear grounds all along. He tries to use logic to reason with the loudest opposing voices…

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Friday, March 6th, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

Remember the movie, The Matrix? Remember how everyone had been tricked into thinking they were living real life when it was really only a computer simulation of a made-up reality? Remember how the only threat to this fantastical, non-existence was the people who were outside the matrix?

It’s starting to appear to me that what we’re witnessing in the meltdown of Wall Street and the collapse of the financial well-being of the U.S. is like a whole bunch of people getting flushed out of the matrix at once, looking around doe-eyed at the destruction around them, wiping the muck off themselves, and wondering, “What the hell was that?!”

Some of them wish they could climb back into the goo and go back to sleep. Others are looking at their barren stock portfolios or bankrupt employers and wishing they’d seen it coming. Still others, who haven’t yet been touched by the success of The One in destroying that which held us prisoners of illusion, wait in fear that they might be next.

The matrix is consumerism… Make that rampant consumerism. Rampant consumerism fueled by a financial system and national mindset that encourages everyone to live in a house they can’t afford, drive a car they can barely pay for each month, eat in restaurants that in the old days were only frequented by wealthy jet-setters, buy big-ticket electronics and appliances… we all know the story.

Part of the philosophy behind the TARP at the end of Bush and the stimulus passed at the start of Obama is to “get the banks to start lending again.” Usually the context of this objective, especially in selling it to Congress and the people, is so that businesses can continue to run, which makes sense. Many businesses need some sort of credit instrument in place to be able to keep things functioning without interruption due to cash flow considerations. I get that.

But behind the veil of helping-out businesses is the real reason we want to get the banks lending again. So that we can go back to our irresponsible consumerism-based economy. That’s right, climb back up the tube, into the tepid, viscous liquid so that we can continue pretending that our economic house of cards is made of brick and mortar, not thin cardboard. We want to be virgins again.

Well, America, you can’t untake the red pill and this genie’s not going back into the bottle. Doing so would be tantamount to sticking our heads back into the sand and believing it’s not all going to come crashing down once more when the current bandaids break free.

We’ve crossed an eye-opening threshold, and I would love to see what the real world of mass financial responsibility looks like. As with anything, the unknown can be dark, scary, and foreboding, but transforming the economic basis of this country from wealth-as-illusion to wealth as a function of real value, created by and for the people, can only be a giant step in the right direction.

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Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

There’s a lot of talk right now about liberals and Democrats giving porn-king lookalike, Rush Limbaugh, too much attention and far too much airtime, and thereby, affording him undeserved credibility.

I disagree.

For one thing, how do we know Rush isn’t a hard-core, left-wing, liberal, mole whose mission it is to lead his Dittoheads over the cliff of their own fear-based ideology, lemming-like into irrelevant oblivion? Judging from the firestorm of modern-day Peters, denying Rush in the more moderate ranks of the Republican Party, one would think that he’s not acting in the best interest of his party, but to the great benefit of the Democrats. If this is the case, then Rush needs the support of those who would see Obama succeed, not their disregard.

Okay, maybe not, but I’m one of those people who believes that if you give crazy a megaphone, everyone will eventually come to realize that it’s just crazy talking his crazy talk again. So if the Rush-effect is already taking a toll on the right, Dems and liberals shining a spotlight on the strident words and regressive ideas of Limbaugh and his conservative cohorts can only be beneficial to any group from right-of-center to the far left.

With the exception of the Republican Party itself, of course.

In the same way fiscal conservatives cringed with every new hundred-billion squandered during the Bush years,  so moderate Republicans are mortified by the extremist rhetoric voiced by the loudest (albeit not the wisest) orators of their party.

The GOP is already having trouble trying to find their footing in the ever-darkening shadow of the Bush years and the emergence of Limbaugh as their mouthpiece isn’t helping. Other “entertainers,” like Hannity and Coulter, who likely perceive that Limbaugh is gaining some sort of positive traction, are engaging in a sort of conservative onupsmanship, driving the center mad in the process. Let’s face it, identifying only the most extreme on the right as “real” conservatives, contrary to their myopic viewpoint, leaves out a lot of Republicans and most Independents.

If the mainstream of the Republican party can’t find a common ground with these people, it will splinter, and in that splintering, lose any leverage it might have in the federal government now and in the future. Once that leverage is gone, the party will eventually slip from irrelevance to nonexistence. This is not an unprecedented event in US history. If it happened to the Whigs it can happen to the GOP. The Whig Party fractured on the slavery question and never recovered. “The Republican Party,” the history books may one day say, “fractured on the issue of conservatism and never recovered.”

Once the Republican Party either ceases to exist or is so marginalized that it carries no influence in the country, a viable third party will arise. Or maybe two. Or three. One of them might be a party of megaphone-toting crazies led by Rush himself, screaming at the top of their lungs that everyone is out of step except them. We’ll just shake our heads and smile benevolently.

It’s just the crazy talking.

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Friday, February 27th, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

Well, it now seems that the careless lack of proper vetting due diligence on the part of John McCain when he impulsively chose Sarah Palin as his running mate last year may not have been an isolated incident of Republican bad judgment. Either that, or the people who convinced McCain that Palin would have a positive impact on the ticket are the same misguided, cynical, ideologues who convinced the GOP leadership that Piyush “Bobby” Jindal was their rising star.

It now seems that, just as Palin’s anatomy must have been the major factor in McCain’s choice, Jindal’s skin hue is all it takes to be dubbed, “Future of the Party,” by the old, rich, white guys who are currently facing-down irrelevance with sheer terror.

Everyone agrees that the speech was badly delivered, and the charitable on both sides of the aisle concur that he had a “tough hand to play” and a “hard act to follow,” but now it turns out that, aside from casting misinformed aspersions on volcanic science, JINDAL’S A BIG FAT LIER!

From TPM Muckraker:

Jindal Admits Katrina Story Was False

“Remember that story Bobby Jindal told in his big speech Tuesday night — about how during Katrina, he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a local sheriff who was battling government red tape to try to rescue stranded victims?

Turns out it wasn’t actually, you know, true.” [Read the whole story.]

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Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

I’ve been reading this morning all a the comments all over the media about Piyush “Bobby” Jindal’s address to the nation last night following President Obama’s speech to Congress.

Poor Piyush. Poor Republicans.

From Chris Matthew’s heartfelt, “Oh God,” to the Kenneth-the-page comparisons, it just doesn’t get much worse. I’m just waiting now for the “media bias” recriminations to start echoing from the halls of Fox News and whatever cave from which Rush Limbaugh broadcasts, because, obviously, the liberal media is now going to tear down “Bobby” the way they did Sarah Palin during the election.

When Bush junior first took the presidency, my personal, self-consolation was that, after being embarrassed in the eyes of the rest of the world for the next 4 years, we would never have to endure another Republican in the White House. When the man had another 4 years handed to him, that dream was shattered and replaced with a deep, unyielding cynicism about this country and politics in general.

Last night I watched the first 10 minutes of Jindal’s speech, and rather than becoming incensed at the usual Republic rhetoric (as I expected to), I yawned and changed channels. I didn’t even take an extra moment to ridicule the man. I just moved on.

This may be the best the GOP can do for now. Maybe forever. If so, not only might we never have to endure another Republican in the White House, we may never have to endure Republicans-as-we-know-them in general ever again except and an irrelevant, extremist, fringe group.

The dream is alive.

Those of us on the left and in the center must never become complacent as we watch the Republican Party’s full-bore sprint towards the precipice of terminal irrelevancy, on the other hand, we really don’t need to do much of anything at this point to help push the back wheels off the cliff. They’re doing just fine without our help. At least not while Jindal and Palin are their best hope for the future and they continue to pay homage to their so-called base of ideological extremists rather than trying to find a way to be an agent of positive change in their own right.

[Jinal/Kenneth morph via THE DAILY WHAT]

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Thursday, November 20th, 2008 by Bill Swadley.

First published in The Huffington Post on November 20, 2008

One of the side effects of the rise of Obama and accompanying Obamamania is the newly pervasive use of the word, ‘look’ to start any sentence, regardless of the contextual irrelevance of that word to the rest of the statement. Its frequent misuse by the man who gets more public face-time than any other human on the planet has created a verbal pandemic such that I now hear it everywhere all the time. In the hallways at work. All over the news and media be it radio, TV, online, or shouted by the town crier. I hear it at formal PTA fundraisers and at the AYSO referee’s dinner. People who never thought to in the past start many a sentence with ‘look’ these days and whether they’re saying, “Look, you’re really making me angry,” or, “Look, I wanted guacamole on my burger!” it has become an unconscious, embarrassing, annoyance.

In the age before Obama, starting a sentence with this word was reserved for bad film and television. It’s a very common occurrence in low budget entertainment and often happens when an inattentive director allows it to be slipped-in by a weak actor at the start of a line of dialogue, even though that word is not in the original script. Yes, sometimes a screen or television writer will use the word, ‘look’ to begin a line, but unless he or she is a bad writer, it will be in the context of a command as, “Look at the puppy,” or “Look away before you turn to stone!” So now you know that when you’re watching any form of scripted entertainment and the actor says something like, “Look, I’m sorry, I thought your sister was you.” Nine-out-of-ten times the “look” was thrown in by the actor and left there by the director (the writer isn’t on the set, he’s at home getting drunk because of what they’re doing to his masterpiece).

Mr. President-elect Obama begins almost every unprepared sentence with “Look…” On the other hand, you won’t hear it in his eloquent, rousing, passionate, speeches mainly because he’s a fine writer and the speech was written and rewritten a dozen times or more. So why does it pop up during interviews and at press conferences? Originally it was probably a trick to give himself a half-second more to think about the question he was just asked. He may have developed it intentionally or unintentionally in high-school debate or at Harvard Law or even later during his first run for public office. But however Mr. Obama first came to use this word as often as he does is irrelevant because now it’s really nothing more than a personal bad habit of speech.

The past eight years may have numbed us to all manner of grammatical butchery and other crimes of speech emanating from the highest office in the world, but those days are soon to be over and it’s time for the madness to stop. To that end, I now add another rallying cry to the cacophony of rallying cries trumpeting Barack Obama into the White House in January: “Don’t start sentences with ‘look’ unless you mean it!”

All of us, man, woman, child, Republican, Democrat, Lieberman, must take a stand against the insidious, improper use of this word. If we start now right at the top, we will hopefully, over time, see real change. Don’t let our new president spend eight years like friendless W. who had nary a man to set him straight on the proper pronunciation of ‘nuclear’. It’s like that old saying, “Only your friends will tell you when you have spinach in your teeth.” You’re Barack’s friend, right? Tell him yourself, why don’t you? And get that leafy-green out of your own bicuspid while you’re at it!

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Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 by admin.

Joel Pett/Lexington Herald-Leader 11/10/08

Rex Babin/Sacramento Bee 11/10/08

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Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 by Bill Swadley.

Imagine for a moment that initiatives in several states in the recent election prohibited interracial marriage and would ultimately result in the unions of interracial couples invalid. Outrage from every corner of the map would be swift and vehement.  How do otherwise fair-minded, rational people convince themselves, not only that they have an interest in depriving another group of their rights, but that it’s the right thing to do?

Tradition: Since the beginning of time, white-marries-white, black-marries-black, and so on. That’s the way it’s always been and that’s how it should stay.

Religion: God does not want people who are not of the same skin color to marry. It’s a sin and my church will be compelled to marry people of different races unless it’s illegal.

Morality: My personal morality code says that it is wrong for people of different races to get married, therefore, even though it has no direct impact on my life, I cannot allow something to exist that is contrary to my belief system.

Children: I don’t want my kids’ teachers telling them that interracial marriage is acceptable because they might marry someone from a different ethnic background when they grow up.

Discomfort: Just the thought of two people from different races getting married and having children makes my skin crawl.

Apathy: It has nothing to do with me so what do I care? I just won’t decide either way on this issue and stay out of it.

In the context of interracial marriage, these rationalizations and justifications seem absurd and backwards and based in ignorance and bigotry. It wasn’t all that long ago, however, that people of the same ilk as those against same-sex marriage (and probably some of the same people!) were having these very discussions with regard to laws that declared  interracial marriage illegal. We’ve come a long way. Or have we?

What made the difference in finally getting all those outrageously discriminatory interracial marriage laws off the books wasn’t solely the activism of the people at the direct affect of these laws, interracial couples, but the involvement of those who had no vested interest in the issue except for a strong sense of equality and justice.

On one hand I am ashamed and embarrassed that my group, straight people, continue to vote against allowing people of the same sex to marry (or, as in California, vote to strip fellow citizens of that right).  On the other hand, I am just as dumbfounded as any gay person by the bald-faced bigotry demonstrated by the people of  this “land of the free” who continue to allow fear, ignorance and prejudice to override their ability to do the right thing.

In the Age of Obama there can’t possibly be more straight people against equal rights for all than there are on my side of the fence. I have to believe that the problem here is more one of apathy than anything else and that’s why I now call upon my fellow straights to step-up. Start paying attention to issues of this sort, especially when a small group manages to manipulate large blocks of voters into believing that they must discriminate against others for their own well-being and that of their children. Don’t shut down your radar when the word “gay” appears because it’s not part of your reality. Don’t think that “they” can handle “their own” issues alone. They can’t, they need our help, so pay attention and make your voice heard.

The same-sex marriage issue isn’t going away. Right-wing Christians and Evangelicals often cited two issues during the presidential campaign for why they would vote for McCain (and, by extension, George Bush twice). Those two issues were abortion and gay marriage. So if you think this isn’t your issue, think back over the last 8 years, then think again.

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Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 by Bill Swadley.

The jubilance expressed in this picture might lead one to think that this is a group of avid Obama supporters for whom hope is indeed still alive.  But it’s not. This is a photograph from Wednesday morning’s LA Times of Proposition 8 supporters last night upon hearing that their measure passed.

Proposition 8 is the California initiative that is 14 words in length: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

The fact that half the citizens in a state like California can’t overcome bigotry, fear, and ignorance in the name of equality shows that the fight for fairness and “justice for all” in this country is only just starting with the election of Barak Obama and his mandate for hope and change.

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Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 by Bill Swadley.

I’m tired of hearing every other Sarah Palin fanatic compare her in terms of experience to Barack Obama. It seems a so obviously contrived and absurd tactic that even the blindly faithful should be able to see through it at a glance. Bottom-line, there’s as much comparison between the careers of Obama and Palin as there is between that of Ted Kennedy and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Experience isn’t limited to any one particular aspect of a person’s life such as, in this case, time spent in public office and the responsibilities of one particular job over another. Experience includes personal history, educational background, and basic intelligence.

Education-wise, Obama has a law degree. Not just any law degree, mind you, Harvard Law. Call it elitist if you will, but any Joe-Undergrad student with an eye on law school can tell you that anyone who gets into Harvard is bloody smart and make no mistake about it. Whilst at Harvard Obama gained notoriety as editor of the Harvard Law Review and was later elected president of the Law Review, yep, you guessed it, first black man to do so.
He wrote a book, he practiced law, he made a difference working with community organizations (as referred to mockingly by former NYC mayor and drag queen Rudolf Giuliani at the Republican National Convention). He was elected to the US Senate. He wrote another book. The list of his accomplishments are stunningly and endlessly impressive.

Obama’s political career officially began in 1997 in Illinois when he was elected to represent the state’s 13th District and its 800,000 residents. Illinois subsequently elected him to the US Senate in 2004. This year he was ranked as the 11th most powerful senator by Congress.org.

Sarah Palin? She graduated high school in Wasilla, Alaska then made a valiant effort to cram college in around her demanding beauty pageant schedule, finally earning her bachelor’s degree in communications on a Miss Congeniality scholarship 5 years later. That’s it on education.

After college Sarah was a part-time sports reporter and had other part-time jobs including working for her secessionist husband in-between giving birth to lots of Palins. Her political career started when she served on the Wasilla City Council from 1992 to 1996 at which time she was elected mayor of the same town of about 6,000 people. Palin termed-out as mayor in 2002 and ran unsuccessfully for a few state offices in Alaska until being appointed by the governor to the Alaska energy commission in 2003. She resigned from this post less than a year later on ethics principles. Subsequently, she worked for convicted felon Ted Stevens for 2 years and by all accounts had no ethics issues with that job. In 2007 Palin took up residence… well, at home, mostly, but she was officially allowed to sleep at the governor’s mansion in Juneau as Alaska’s governor.

All told, Palin’s experience as an elected official amounts to about 4.5 years so even by a strict time definition, Obama has 5.5 years on her. Add to that the disparity in population (yes, it’s absurd to compare Wasilla’s 6000 people to the Illinois 13th District’s 800,000, but how about to the entire state of Alaska at 700,000?)

But forget about quantity. It’s really all about quality. Presumably Palin’s been trying her best, but there really seems little focus or much intention to her haphazard political career. Obama hasn’t just been trying, he’s been doing, and doing a lot. An overachiever to be certain, he shoots for the moon and hits the stars so, frankly, a comparison between the two is really unfair.

Then why do her supporters keep making the claim that these two are on a par experience-wise? It makes little sense and I’m sure the outcry from Palinheads would be loud and fierce were anyone from the Obama camp to even attempt an apples-to-apples analysis with any seriousness. Keeping it vague, as they have, makes the weak talking-point they’re looking for. Unfortunately for them, even a broad-strokes examination reveals Obama as a man of rich experience, high intelligence and great substance while just a little peeling-back reveals Palin’s intellect, background, and political career to be the hollow onion that it is.

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Thursday, October 9th, 2008 by Bill Swadley.

The guys in the white hats aka “the good guys,” live by a code that cannot be violated. Barack Obama represents a hero to many in this country right now, and though he repeatedly has denied desiring such beatification, favoring a we’re-all-gonna-do-this-together mantra, it may be his mantle to wear whether he likes it or not. In that, he will be required to accept a great deal of responsibility and, to the frustration of his take-off-the-gloves supporters, continue to demonstrate restraint in the face of  the most egregious attacks I’ve seen in a presidential election since the Bush camp went after McCain in 2000.

In the story-telling game we learn early-on that there are some very reliable structures inherent in the art that allow the writer to construct the basic characters and storyline, the bones of the story if you will, early in the process and with little effort. For example, to use a couple of extremely popular Good versus Evil films by way of illustration (yes, I could reference Aristotle and Shakespeare, but not today) we find the protagonist (Batman/Luke) and antagonist (The Joker/Darth Vader), aka, the Hero and the Villain.

Much storytelling throughout time has stuck to this very basic structure. It continues today and will outlive the Ages. George Lucas has been criticized for the simplicity of the original Star Wars as nothing more than a standard Greek classic in space. To his credit, Lucas knew his Jung and executed Campbell’s hero-myth brilliantly. Thirty-three years later, the Nolan Brothers and David Goyer have been lauded by fans and critics alike for taking that same basic story and twisting it into something new and thrilling: This year’s outrageously successful, The Dark Knight.

I believe Obama is the hero in this play of passion we’re witnessing on the national stage right now. How do I know?  All one need do is observe the actions and apparent motivations of both sides. The Obama campaign has primarily stayed on its message of change and hope for the future. They have responded in-kind on occasion, but for the most part he has stuck with his working formula in the form of  rousing speeches of hope and vision for the future, and the job of reversing the crimes and missteps of the past eight years. As everyone knows by now, the negative ads playing loose with the truth and rabble-rousing speeches on the stump, especially from Palin, are largely the message from the McCain campaign. As Bush did 8 years ago, in the face of weak poll numbers and general deficit of new ideas for the nation’s problems, they have decided to tread on the dark road of character assassination.

Now please don’t misunderstand me here. In saying that Barack Obama is the hero I am not casting either John McCain or Sarah Palin as the villain. Neither of them are capable of true villainy. Especially not John McCain who has shown himself to be a true hero and not just in the Vietnam War. McCain was a man I admired throughout his congressional career. I always said John McCain was the GOP’s Bill Clinton. It takes talent to equally piss-off people on both sides of the aisle and still get things done. Both of these men were masters of walking the centrist tightrope and I applaud them for their courage and determination.

In fact, I believe that if the GOP had bestowed the nomination on McCain in 2000 instead of Bush, he would have beaten Al Gore handily. No recounts, no hanging chads, just a clean victory.  Remember, Al Gore was not the Oscar winning, Nobel laureate, righteous dude you see today. He was just ol’ “Lockbox Al” trying to put as much distance between himself and Bill Clinton’s sullied reputation as possible.

As for Palin, even though she’s no former hero like her running mate, she’s no villain either. Contrary to her current venom-spewing persona, she’s really nothing more than a dim-witted puppet who’s strings will be cut as soon as the landslide sends her back to her home office in the semi-frozen North. Though no villainess, Palin’s particular brand of hate-mongering is frightening in particular because it incites and brings forth the old “angry mob” mentality that can only lead to disaster if left unchecked. Palin’s words and crowd-firing theatrics, combined with no effort on the part of either her or McCain to temper the crowd’s overreaction, do constitute evil in action, but of the kind that is born of desperation on McCain’s part and ignorance, misguided self-promotion, and unforgivable irresponsibilty on Palin’s.

So where’s the villain? McCain, Palin and many who work side-by-side with them were seduced by the Dark Side just as was Anakin Skywalker. Just as the Joker tried to do to Batman. The GOP collectively,  in the guise of people like Carl Rove and Steve Schmidt (though I’m sure that behind even those two tools stands a creepy little guy in a black hooded robe or a psychotic sociopath in smeared clown white), in the unbalanced rantings of Fox News “journalists” like Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and now, Mike Huckabee, along with random right-wingers like The View’s Hasselbeck and Rush Limbaugh. But all the villainy doesn’t rest with their ilk. The rabid crowds of true-believers they stir up must accept their responsibility both for giving audience to fear-mongering and hate speech and for adding to hit with racial epithets and dissemination of disinformation.

Remember way back when Obama used the old saw “lipstick on a pig?”  The cries of outrage from the right were deafening even though the likelihood that he meant it as a slam against Palin was a pretty big stretch. Over the past few weeks the McCain camp has thrown everything plus the kitchen sink in negative campaigning at Obama. The villain can get away with things the hero can’t even consider. In this light, it would seem that  even his opponents see Obama as the hero of the piece.

In storytelling if the hero takes an action that is un-heroic and like that of his enemy, if he dissembles villainous, and/or, most importantly, proceeds against his own moral code of honor, he is instantly and for all time judged to be fatally flawed and no longer worthy to wear the white hat. Once this occurs, no matter his track record, his assets or attributes, he must, and he will, fall.

As the finish line fast approaches, it’s obvious that Obama beat them at their game by sticking to the high road and keeping his white hat out of the dirt.

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Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 by Bill Swadley.

First published in The Huffington Post on October 7, 2008

“I’m at Fox now.” That’s what I used to tell people when I first started working for my current employer, after a strategic move from the world of the small independent studio to mega-corporate entertainment where I now spend my 9-5’s. A colleague of mine, when I told him of the general consternation and dirty looks I was getting as a result of that statement, set me straight. “I tell people I work for 20th Century Fox. It’s much less inflammatory.”

He was right. Oddly enough, most people don’t make the connection between 20th Century Fox Filmed Entertainment (the company I work for) and Fox News, home of the likes of Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, neo-con true believers who use their positions at the cable-news outlet to further the cause of the far-right wing. (When I’m speaking to young people, I usually leave out the F-word altogether, and just say I work for the company that does the X-Men movies and The Simpsons.)

But now, after watching the vice-presidential debate and becoming even more terrified at the thought that this half-wit from Alaska could actually ascend to the presidency one day, I must come out of the closet. Everyone knows that Fox News is, to put it mildly, slanted right. Their producers and on-air personalities are culpable in their fiery promotion of the Bush agenda for the past eight years no matter how flawed. Since the current election cycle began they’ve been “spinning” what the McCain/Palin ticket really stands for (i.e. more of the same), often to the point of absurdity. (If you haven’t noticed the contrast of the anchors’ sunny demeanor when they mention the names of McCain or Palin versus the dark seriousness with which they utter the surname “Obama,” you aren’t paying attention.)

A while back you may recall that Ann Coulter called John Edwards a “faggot” in one of her speeches during the primaries. The negative reaction against this Medusa was (finally and about time) swift and condemning from just about every corner of the political and cultural landscape. Except for Fox News, that is, which as most know was one of Coulter’s primary delivery outlets for her hatred and bigotry at the time. Rather than condemning her use of the derogatory term, censuring her, and banning her from the channel, the producers at Fox News had Coulter on the air the next morning. No, not to apologize, but to defend herself!

I was so distraught that my company would actually give this harpy more air time after such bad behavior that I wrote a letter to one of the very high-up executives of the organization expressing my outrage. I received no response, but at least I felt that I had made my voice heard.

But now internal action just doesn’t seem enough. This Fox employee can hold his silence no longer. Call it a self-serving cleansing if you will, but I must speak. (The following are the views solely of my independent writer persona. I’ve composed this on my own time, and the following content in no way represents the views of my employer or anyone other than myself.)

Hear me now! Many employees, and we number in the thousands, who work for the entertainment arm of News Corporation, the parent company of pretty much all entertainment entities with “Fox” in its moniker, often feel embarrassed, ashamed, and angry at the blatant, one-sided, dis-informational tactics of the producers, staff, and on-air “talent” at Fox News. In their efforts to swing this election in favor of McCain, their usual crimes of unfair and unbalanced journalism have become startlingly egregious.

Fox News put together a “focus group” during the Biden/Palin debate. This obviously hand-picked group of “common voters,” touted to be 50-50 for the two tickets, was obviously screened, staged, coached, and almost entirely one-sided (the Palin side). I was not only outraged at yet another example of Fox News manipulating the perception of its viewers for the political benefit of the GOP, but that we, 20th Century Fox, home of American Idol & Fox Reality Channel, would be associated with such a lame-ass attempt at fake reality television. To top it all off, the focus group was sponsored by Budweiser! (In case you didn’t know, Cindy McCain’s day job is Chairwoman of an Anheuser-Busch distributorship in Arizona.) How can Fox News present such fabricated crap with a straight face? I honestly don’t know, and I don’t even know whom to ask.

Trust me in this, except for the above-mentioned Fox News staffers, most of us in the other subsidiaries of the company have no idea who these people are, where they work, how they get their marching orders, or how they sleep at night. I can only tell you that the Fox I work for is a fantastic company. We are treated with respect and generosity. We are afforded opportunities to expand our careers and promote social concerns. We are diverse and inclusive. We tolerate and are tolerated in all shapes, colors, religions, and sexual orientation. Our individual politics span the range of ultra-liberal, to hard-line conservative, and everything in-between. And we, all of News Corp, its subsidiaries, and employees are very very green.

On that last point, in the approximate six years total that I have been with this company, the only pressure outside of our job descriptions News Corp. has ever passed down to us is a demand that we participate as fully as possible in the fight against global warming. In the last two plus years, News Corp. has stood as a penultimate example of the difference businesses large and small can make by becoming more aware of, and responsible for, its carbon footprint. This alone is enough to make me proud to say that I am an employee of News Corp. and 20th Century Fox.

So it’s no wonder that many of us Murdoch’s minions watch with dismay and confusion the daily neo-conservative drumbeat emanating from the Fox News Channel. They don’t represent all of us. We’ve never gotten a memo telling us to be sure to vote Republican. We don’t get e-mails from Sean Hannity bragging about the latest Democrat he reduced to tears on his show. Bill O’Reilly doesn’t invite us to his book signings. We are completely out of the loop.

So the next time someone tells you, “I work for Fox,” cut them some slack. Fox News is an enigma even to us. We don’t get it any more than you do. It’s like that uncle in jail who nobody knows what he did to get there and is never spoken of even inside the family. We just pretend he’s out of town, and hope he doesn’t come to visit if he ever gets paroled.

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Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 by Bill Swadley.

In the language of economists, opportunity costs represent what is lost or what must be given up when a decision is made to spend money or focus resources in one area to the exclusion of another. A business, for example, might choose to invest capital on retooling its factory rather than purchasing new office furniture for its corporate headquarters based on many economic factors, usually which opportunity will have the greatest net impact to the bottom-line.  In the same way the federal government must decide how  limited annual revenues will be spent. Not with the end result to maximize profits as in the private sector, but to bring the greatest benefit to the country as a whole. The Bush Administration, in its decision to invade Iraq and maintain an occupying force there for the past 5 years, has spent  hundreds of billions of dollars, a figure that analysts predict will enter the trillions in the not so distant future.

What are the opportunity costs of the war in Iraq? There are many ways to consider and answer this question. First and foremost it must be pointed-out that the money being “spent” on the war in Iraq is largely borrowed funds in that the US government operates at a current deficit of $9.3 trillion dollars, [1]  so when considering how and why the government spends it’s worth noting that the greatest opportunity cost of all is the cost of running the country at an extremely high deficit. This is true not only in terms of the cost to service such a debt, but in the cost of the general weakness a deficit economy encumbers on a country. Given the nation’s wealth, the US should easily be capable of not only operating under a balanced budget, but of being the country that makes loans to its weaker international counterparts, not the other way around. Clearly that’s far from the case at this point in history.

It is currently estimated that the war in Iraq runs at about $175-275 million per day, depending on the source cited and the metrics used to derive the daily cost. At the low end, that’s $63.9 billion per year, however, the current funding request for the war and war related expenditures is expected to hit $82 billion plus an additional $73 billion the Bush Administration is proposing in additional funding for FY08  bringing the total cost of the war in Iraq through FY08 to well over $600 billion. [2] According to the National Priorities Project, “Taxpayers in the United States will pay $155.5 billion for proposed Iraq War Spending for FY2008. For the same amount of money, the following could be provided: [3]

44,330,909 People with Health Care or
160,931,429 Homes with Renewable Electricity or
3,478,615 Public Safety Officers or
2,698,795 Music and Arts Teachers or
25,660,964 Scholarships for University Students or
15,637 New Elementary Schools or
1,209,236 Affordable Housing Units or
66,294,593 Children with Health Care or
21,332,592 Head Start Places for Children or
2,646,531 Elementary School Teachers or
2,336,286 Port Container Inspectors.

At the annual rate of $155.5 billion, the US could create a robust economy unrivaled worldwide. With such a direct infusion domestically, the revenues generated would pay for any debt incurred, bolster the dollar, balance the budget and create surpluses in short order. As it is, aside from the military industry, money spent on the Iraq war is leaving US shores never to return in any significantly beneficial way.

At a time of economic struggle and impending recession, money that currently escapes the US to be used overseas could provide real and long-lasting stimulus in the form of green technologies, infrastructure investment, global competitiveness, and community development, just to name a few. The missed opportunities represented by the war in Iraq are well-illustrated by examining a few key areas of the US economy and demonstrating how an influx of investment by the government could not only provide more security than the wars overseas, but shore-up our economy  for the future.

Security
The Office of Homeland Security recently celebrated its fifth anniversary. Analysts examining the goals and accomplishments of the new federal agency found, ironically enough, that the single most significant achievement of the agency was the creation of the agency itself (color coded alerts not withstanding). The invasion of Iraq was initially launched in the name of national security, but while we’ve spent billions in the Middle East battling a threat that never materialized, the physical borders between Canada and Mexico are no more secure, air travel safety is only slightly improved, the coasts and shipping ports have seen little significant attention, and Osama Bin Laden is still at large.
With the exception of Bin Laden, expenditures on actual homeland security, i.e. money spent within our borders, would enhance the domestic economy by creating new jobs in the security industry and foster improved security technologies that could be exported to other countries facing similar concerns. So even as the Bush Administration and other proponents of the war in Iraq point to security as the primary impetus for initiating and perpetuating the war in Iraq, and with 4,000 US Troops dead and tens of thousands wounded, not only are we less secure at home, but our military has been weakened and demoralized in the process, making us less capable of defending ourselves and our allies in the event of a military crisis at home or abroad.

Infrastructure
The construction and maintenance of roads, bridges, dams, public parks and buildings is a vital industry across the US and can have an immense impact on the economy given appropriate funding and management from a local to the national level. Economic stimulus opportunities and jobs in every strata of the economy from investment in government bonds to construction workers are created when a government is willing to focus resources on infrastructure.

Instead, however, state and local governments, without the financial resources or significant federal assistance to take action,  watch helplessly as their roads fall further into disrepair and bridges age precipitously. It is predicted that the Minneapolis bridge failure in August of 2007 will become an increasingly common story and concern in the future across the U.S. There is also concern that airports, tunnels, ports, and railroads will be increasingly affected by climate change in their vulnerability to extreme weather patterns and flooding, especially in the Gulf region where scenarios like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will become more and more commonplace. [4]

Climate Change/Green Technology
Global warming not only represents the most serious ecological crisis in history, it is also a golden opportunity for any country that can develop technologies to halt and ultimately reverse the effects of greenhouse gases to be sold worldwide. While the US has spent hundreds of billions of dollars fighting a war it should never have started, other technologically advanced countries have invested in the research and development necessary to avert the climate crisis and positioned themselves to lead the industry.
Cleantech Venture Network reports that North American venture capital investment in green technologies and businesses totaled a record $2.9 billion for 2006, representing a 78% increase over 2005.[6]   This isn’t unreasonable growth fueled by wild speculation and baseless valuation at the hands uninformed stock market newcomers a la the dot.com boom in the 90’s, this is the private sector’s savviest venture capitalists seeing a future that’s already here for new investment opportunities that promise high yields to those first-in.

In an effort to develop clean energy, Abu Dhabi has started to build what it says is “the world’s first zero-carbon, zero-waste car-free city,” investing $22 billion in the project. In addition, the government of Abu Dhabi has announced a $15 billion project to further develop green technologies over the next 5 years. In addition to the long-term benefits to the environment, Abu Dhabi and other equally motivated countries stand to gain economically in the potential export of the results of their investments to other cities worldwide. [5]

But as the U.S. government labors under misguided fear fighting a futile war that will only result, at best, in facilitating and perpetuating its addiction to oil. And as U.S. citizens pay crippling prices at the gas pump and watch their economy slide into recession,  growth-oriented countries and private investors look forward to a future that not only cares for the environment and reduces the effects of global warming, but that fosters a healthy industrial economy with high employment and robust growth.

Society at Large
Poverty, hunger, education, health care, child services, care for the elderly, the social security system, job training, veteran services and homelessness are just a few of the societal ills in need of far-reaching solutions that are cynically and often tragically ignored or slighted by politicians who act in “big picture” terms for “our protection.” In its rush to war the Bush Administration has spent hundreds of billions and ultimately trillions to fight phantoms overseas of their own creation for motives on which one can only speculate, but that clearly have little or nothing to do with the child who goes to bed hungry every night or the senior citizen who must sell his family home to pay for medicine or hospital fees not covered by Medicare.

In a wealthy country such as the United States, the idea is patently absurd that there is a scarcity of financial resources to provide for our security at home, to build, improve and maintain our infrastructure, to develop and produce the technologies required to solve the global warming crisis, and to create a social system that really does “promote the general welfare.”

If the U.S. can squander hundreds of millions each day on a war that will do little good for and potentially a great deal of harm to our national economy, surely it can redirect all or part of those same funds to promote change, institute fairness, revitalize economic growth and create a future for our county and the world that we will be proud to pass on  for the benefit of generations to come.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

FOOTNOTES
[1]  U.S. National Debt Clock
http://uspolitics.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=uspolitics&cdn=newsissues&tm=18&f=20&tt=2&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

[2] National Priorities Project - Budget Briefs
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget_briefs
[3] National Priorities Project – Federal Budget Trade-Offs
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/cms/tradeoffs?location_type=1&state=888&program=574&tradeoff_item_item=999&submit_tradeoffs=Get+Trade+Off

[4] Studies: Climate Change Threatens U.S. Roadways http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88116192

[5] BBC News: Work starts on Gulf ‘green city’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7237672.stm

[6] Detroit Business News
http://detroit.dbusinessnews.com/shownews.php?newsid=103252&type_news=latest

OTHER SOURCES
War at Any Price? - The Total Economic Costs of the War Beyond the Federal Budget
A Report by the Joint Economic Committee Majority Nov 2007
http://jec.senate.gov/Documents/Reports/11.13.07IraqEconomicCostsReport.pdf

Brookings Institute Iraq Index
http://www.brookings.edu/saban/iraq-index.aspx

Brookings Institute: America’s Infrastructure: Ramping Up or Crashing Down
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2008/01_infrastructure_katz_puentes/01_infrastructure_katz_puentes.pdf

iCasualties.org
http://icasualties.org/oif/default.aspx

The Nation: Threats Of War, Recession Going Ignored
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/18/opinion/main3728991.shtml

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Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 by Bill Swadley.

Bill Swadley is a writer and financial wizard living in Los Angeles who spends his days masquerading as Director of Finance for a major Hollywood studio.

Bill has spent the last 25 years working at every level in the entertainment industry from on-the-ground film crews when he was first starting out to his current executive position, before which he worked for a combined total of 10 years in entertainment finance. He has a degree in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is considered a Shakespeare aficionado.

Bill spends his weekdays crunching numbers while listening to NPR and making frequent forays into the blogesphere to make sure he is up-to-the-minute on breaking news. Other hobbies include economics and acquiring vast amounts of useless information. He is always proud to tell you that he predicted both the Dot-com bust and the current housing train-wreck years before they each occurred. He is overjoyed that the United States is once again on the road of righteousness and has never in his life been more proud to be an American than at this time.

Bill has written a dozen screenplays and saw his first play, North Beach, produced a few years back.  He wrote his Oscar acceptance speech when he was in his 20’s and still plans on delivering it one day.

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