(this interview originally appeared on AEI Online) InZide: Can you give a little background on yourself and how you arrived at where you are today? VW: Let me see, double literature major at NYU. I…
Category: Representation
👓 Consulting | Victoria Wisdom
When I began teaching screenwriting a few years ago, I found that I was being rushed at the end of classes by writers eager to have their scripts read. As some of the classes had large numbers of s…
👓 Hackers Are Stealing Influencer Instagram Accounts By Promising Lucrative Brand Deals | The Atlantic
In the Wild West of “influencer” marketing, there are few protections and plenty of easy marks.
It’s not mentioned here, but the fact that there are businesses built around the idea of “link in bio” means that Instagram really isn’t innovating on their platform.
Is Instagram really so deaf to the needs of their userbase?
👓 Agent, Auburn native subject of Wall Street Journal feature | Auburn Citizen
Matt DelPiano is used to being a step removed from stardom, but a Sept. 24 story in The Wall Street Journal finds him front and center.
👓 David Boies Pleads Not Guilty | New York Times
The superlawyer in such cases as Bush v. Gore and the fight for gay marriage rights makes no apologies for representing Harvey Weinstein and Theranos with zeal.
👓 Why Le’Veon Bell Might Make More Money If He Ends His Holdout Now | Five Thirty Eight
Last weekend, Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell sat out the first game of the regular season rather than play under the NFL franchise tag. Slated to earn $14.5 million in guaranteed money in 2018, Bell loses out on $855,529 each week he fails to report. The franchise tag would make Bell the third highest paid running back in the NFL this season — but only if he actually plays. Around the league, there is a wide range of speculation on how long Bell’s holdout will last. ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports that his sources believe Bell could be back by the end of September, while others note his holdout could conceivably last through Week 10.
👓 Jodie Whittaker demanded equal pay to Peter Capaldi for Doctor Who | The Independent
'Equal pay is a notion that should be supported!'
👓 Defending Trump, Roseanne Wants Her Show to Be ‘Realistic’ | The New York Times
Roseanne Barr said she was not an “apologist” for Mr. Trump but wanted the reboot of her sitcom to address the strong divide in the country.
🎧 ‘The Daily’: Sexual Harassment’s Toll on Careers | New York Times
In a case that highlights the economic consequences of sexual harassment and retaliation, Ashley Judd is suing Harvey Weinstein for the damage he did to her career after she rebuffed his advances.
And in the second part of the episode, three women who pioneered the language of consent reflect on being far ahead of their time on the politics of sex.
On today’s episode:
• Jodi Kantor, one of the investigative reporters at The New York Times who broke the story about the raft of sexual harassment accusations against Mr. Weinstein, discusses the implications of a new lawsuit.
• We hear from Juliet Brown, Christelle Evans and Bethany Saltman, who helped to establish an affirmative consent policy for sex at Antioch College in 1990.
Background reading:
• Ms. Judd filed a lawsuit on Monday accusing Mr. Weinstein of harming her career by spreading lies about her after she rejected his sexual requests. Her claim is corroborated by the director Peter Jackson, who revealed last year that Mr. Weinstein had warned him not to hire the actress for his “Lord of the Rings” franchise.
• Antioch College students developed a sexual consent policy in the 1990s. It was mocked by much of the rest of the world. Since then, campuses across the country have caught up, and a new generation of Antioch students is pushing the conversation further.
• A Times video journalist recalls being asked to sign a verbal consent form during a visit to Antioch College in 2004, long before the language of sexual consent had entered the mainstream.
Having gone to college in the 90’s myself I also remember the Antioch College agreements. Though they may have gone a bit too far, it’s obvious they were generally right in re-balancing the power in relationships as well as being well ahead of their times.
👓 What’s An Inclusion Rider? Here’s The Story Behind Frances McDormand’s Closing Words | NPR
"I have two words to leave with you tonight," the actress told the audience after winning her Oscar: "inclusion rider." But she didn't define those words onstage — so, here's a helpful primer. Simply put: It's a stipulation that actors and actresses can ask (or demand) to have inserted into their contracts, which would require a certain level of diversity among a film's cast and crew. For instance, an A-list actor negotiating to join a film could use the inclusion rider to insist that "tertiary speaking characters should match the gender distribution of the setting for the film, as long as it's sensible for the plot," Stacy L. Smith explained in a 2014 column that introduced the idea in The Hollywood Reporter.
👓 APA Agent Tyler Grasham Fired From Agency Following Sexual Assault Allegations | Deadline Hollywood
Updated 3:22 PM: Tyler Grasham has now been fired from APA. “Tyler Grasham has been terminated, effective immediately,” said a spokesman for the agency. The move comes as one of those who alleged he had been sexually assaulted said earlier today he was going to filed a police report with the LAPD this afternoon and he says he has. Lucas Ozarowski, a 27-year-old film and TV editor, says he also was assaulted by Grasham after Blaise Godbe Lipman first spoke up on Facebook talking about what he faced from the agent while seeking representation 10 years ago as a child actor.
👓 Matt Damon, Russell Crowe Reportedly Helped Kill a 2004 Harvey Weinstein Article | Vulture
The Wrap editor Sharon Waxman trades accusations with top Times editors, says Weinstein pressured celebrity friends to help kill the story.
👓 Manchester by the Sea Director Defends Casey Affleck | Pacific Standard
The director of Manchester by the Sea called a piece written by a college junior “a tangle of illogic, misinformation and flat-out slander.”
How to Steal a Million
Then, just a bit later in the film:
In Memoriam: Millard Kaufman, WWII Veteran and Front for Dalton Trumbo
n Veterans Day this year, which lands very near the release of the film Trumbo starring Bryan Cranston, I thought I’d take a moment to remember my old friend and mentor Millard Kaufman.
Millard not only fought for us in the war, but when he came back home he helped to defend our right to free speech and our ability to pursue happiness in a very fundamental way in his career as a screenwriter. I often hear friends in the entertainment industry say, “This isn’t brain surgery, we’re not saving lives, here.” but in a great sense Millard was doing that in small steps throughout his career. Millard Kaufman enlisted in the Marines in 1942, served on Guadalcanal, landed at Guam with the 1st Marine Brigade (Provisional) where he wrote an article for the Marine Corps Gazette about the battle, then participated in the Battle of Okinawa with the 6th Marine Division.
I met Millard 20 years ago in 1995 on a trip to Los Angeles with Matt Gross while we were ostensibly programming the 1995 Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium entitled “Framing Society: A Century of Cinema” which coincided with the 100th anniversary of film. Dr. John Irwin, the long-time head of the Writing Seminars Department at Johns Hopkins, had provided us with a long distance introduction as Millard was a Hopkins alum from the class of ’39. So we met him at his home in the Hollywood Hills looking out over a forested sanctuary. Over our first simple tuna fish sandwich lunch, we began a friendship that spanned the next decade and a half.
Most may remember Millard Kaufman, if at all, as the co-creator of the cartoon character Mr. Magoo, who he based on his uncle, while many others will know his Academy Award nominated films Take the High Ground (1953) or Bad Day at Black Rock (1955). I’ll always remember him for his charm, his wry wit, his ability to swear comfortably in any company, and his sense of fairness.
Apparently Hollywood itself has glossed over his contribution to helping to maintain Dalton Trumbo’s writing career in the recent release of Trumbo (2015), in which he isn’t mentioned (or portrayed on screen). [I’ll note here that I haven’t yet seen the movie, and may boycott it for the slight.] It is here in which Kaufman’s strong internal moral compass pressured him to help ensure Trumbo’s freedom of speech and, in part, his writing career. In short, the House Un-American Activities Committee’s (HUAC) pressured Trumbo which resulted in Trumbo’s being blacklisted in Hollywood and effectively destroying his writing career.
Trumbo and Kaufman shared the same agent at the time, George Willner. One day, relatively early in Kaufman’s career, Willner approached him to see if he would be willing to put his name on the script Gun Crazy that would turn into the 1950 film-noir crime classic to allow it to get made. As Millard told me many times, “I didn’t have much sense then, but at least I had sense enough to say, ‘Let me talk it over with Laurie’ [his wife].” “But we discussed it and we believed it was rotten that a man couldn’t write under his own name,” Kaufman told Daily Variety in 1992. That same year Kaufman, a board member of WGAw, officially requested that the Writers Guild take his name off the credits and replace it with Dalton Trumbo’s name. Kaufman’s fronting for Trumbo helped allow the film to get made, and Trumbo’s career to continue on, even if in the dark. As a board member of the Writer’s Guild Millard helped to restore credits to many writers of the blacklist era who were similarly slighted as a result of their politics at the time. It’s a travesty, that a film gets made highlighting this exact period in Trumbo’s life, but Millard’s small contribution to it has been all but forgotten. Fortunately there are enough who do remember to tell the story.
When I think of Millard and his various contributions, my favorite is always that he wrote the stunning script for Bad Day at Black Rock (MGM, 1955), a superb Western suspense film starring Spencer Tracy as a one-armed veteran facing mysterious enemies in a small desert town. The film shows how post-World War II America could be be both horrifyingly racist and cowardly, but it also showed a way out through Tracy’s character which always reminds me of Millard’s high-mindedness. It was such a great film, I was personally honored to screen it on November 3, 1995, as the premiere film in Shriver Hall after we had mounted a year-long renovation of the film equipment, screen, and sound system. The day before we were all honored to have Millard speak on “Censorship in Film” as part of the Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium.
For those who never had the chance to meet him, I’m including a short 3 minute video of several clips of him talking about a variety of topics. The Millard portrayed here is the no-holds barred man I’ll always remember. Thanks for fighting for all of us, Millard!
For those looking for more information about Millard Kaufman, I’ll include the following articles:
- Millard Kaufman: The 90-year-old boy novelist: McSweeney’s remembers the boisterous fiction writer, World War II soldier and co-creator of “Mr. Magoo”
- Mr. Magoo Creator Millard Kaufman on Being a First-Time Novelist at 90
- LA Times Obituary: Millard Kaufman, 92, dies; Oscar-nominated screenwriter
- NYTimes obituary: Millard Kaufman, 92, a Creator of Mr. Magoo, Dies