When I was 19 I asked myself what I wanted as an actor. What was I searching for? Would acting make me happy? What would be my personal journey? I also made a concerted effort to have minimal financial responsibilities, so that I would be free of the burden of taking an acting role that I didn't fully believe in. I didn't want to prostitute my emotions for the sake of my own ego.

That meant sacrificing certain elements of what other people expected of me -- agents, etc -- to make sure that I kept my integrity. I discovered through acting that I came to understand things about myself I never knew and to understand people or human nature and how what we do affects other people.

Two years ago Jim Sheridan sent me the screenplay for In America and asked me to play the part of Sarah, the mother in the film. Jim's (and Kirsten and Naomi Sheridan's) screenplay was beautifully written, reading like an amazing book that haunts you. In America is autobiographical on certain levels so the role of Sarah was incredibly challenging as I was concerned about playing someone who is still very much alive and based on Jim's own wife. I didn't want to disrespect her by assuming I knew her and therefore misrepresenting her.

Many interviewers often ask me, "What was it like to play this?" or, "How did you approach this role?" Every role is different and requires a different process of preparation. I don't want any of my performances to become premeditated to a point where it's about power - you are then not serving the story. To serve a story and therefore an audience, I think, you have to give yourself to them. You have to go, "Here it is, take what you will" and then it belongs to somebody else, the most important thing, the audience.

I didn't want to approach the role of Sarah knowing that it would necessarily be in the voice of Fran, Jim's wife. Yes, it was his family's life story; however, I wanted to approach the role from an innocent sense, the way I would any other script. I didn't want to feel a responsibility inherent in performing their life's story, or being tied to the accuracy of it, I needed to have total freedom. I wanted to serve the project and perform through faith and instinct - the very qualities I felt from the script when I first read it.

What is unique about Jim is the way that he encourages exploration - and that made In America all the more inspiring for me. Jim stamps emotional blueprints on you, almost like a film negative. Enhance, encourage, and then as a team you come up with something new. I enjoy working with directors who go through every moment with an actor. For a director to be able to fine-tune an actor's performance is possibly similar to a conductor or composer working with an orchestra.

When I first arrived in New York City, I had an innocence about possibility, my connection to the people, the buildings, the supposed 'American Dream'. I feel you have a personal responsibility to try to keep that alive within yourself. I think it's very hard and an ongoing effort. But my personal connection and understanding with the Sheridan's story of In America made playing the part of Sarah and working with Jim and all the cast and crew all the more memorable for me.

--Samantha Morton on In America

 
"It was the best of times, it was the whompingest of times..." --Recess: All Growed Down

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"There is much to be said for the constructive contribution of suffering to creative and spiritual life; suffering can temper the soul." --Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

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On having thick skin

"Early on in my career, while at my first job at a large ad agency, my boss, the creative director - - who believed he was the Obi Wan Kenobi of universal creativity - - actually threw pages of my work across his desk at me and bellowed: "You call this good writing?"

A heartbeat later, I threw the pages back at him and said: "Yes, I do." I believe it was simply a primal push/push-back reaction on my part but it seemed to work. Obi laughed and said, "Good. I was testing you. You'll make it in this business, you have a thick skin."

And, boy, did I need it working under the rule of that guy. A year or two later, when Obi was out of town on a photo shoot, a rush project came in and landed on my desk.
I developed a couple of campaign concepts but, in the agency's hierachy, all work had to be shown and approved by Obi before it went to the art department and later
presented to the client.

But wait - - Obi was delayed in getting back. I not only had to work up a campaign concept and direct the artist in execution (something Obi always did), I had to sell it to the client myself.

Knees shaking, I made my presentation. The client loved it. The Account Manager loved it because the client loved it. And the agency's CEO loved it because with all the love in the room, he knew he could charge the client up the kazoo for these ads. But I digress.

By the time Obi got back, the ad campaign was halfway to publication. He summoned me to his throne room - - I mean, his office - - and, as I walked down the hall, I had a brief moment where I thought I might actually get a pat on the back from him.

Silly me. Obi went ballistic.

"This is horrible! If I had been here, the client would have never seen this. I hate this kind of artsy fartsy stuff. I hate these headlines. I would never write anything like this. No. Never. I'm very upset, get out."

I simply shrugged and left because, after a couple years under Obi's rule, my skin was really thick. But the moral of this story is yet to come. Several months later, the agency was selecting ad campaigns to enter in the Addy Award competitions. The CEO ordered Obi to enter mine - - the one he hated. Obi argued with him, "That work is not up to par." CEO said, "I like it. Enter it."

Not only did my artsy-fartsy ad campaign win the local award, it went on to win a regional award. And, when the client opened a new location, he specifically requested me to develop even more ads in the same conceptual vein.
In short, Obi was out-voted.

This experience taught me something very important-- one negative opinion means nothing, you have to run your work by several people to get a realistic idea of its merits or failings. And when critics react emotionally, (i.e. "I hate this.") the subtext often means, "You don't write like me so this must be bad writing."

I say, welcome the malicious reviews, they serve a purpose, they're helping you develop the thick skin of a writer. It's something you'll need in the film industry which, I hear, is even more brutal than the adverising industry. "

Susan Castellano

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"There have been many studies of elite performers--international violinists, chess grand masters, professional ice-skaters, mathematicians, and so forth--and the biggest difference researchers find between them and lesser performers is the cumulative amount of deliberate practice they've had. Indeed, the most important talent may be the talent for practice itself."

"The psychologist Paul Meehl, in his classic 1954 treatise, Clinical Versus Statistical Prediction, described a study of Illinois parolees that compared estimates given by prison psychiatrists that a convict would violate parole with estimates derived from a rudimentary formula that weighed such factors as age, number of previous offenses, and type of crime. Despite the formula's crudeness, it predicted the occurrence of parole violations far more accurately than the psychiatrists did. In recent articles, Meehl and the social scientists David Faust and Robyn Dawes have reviewed more than a hundred studies comparing computers or statistical formulas with human judgment in predicting everything from the likelihood that a company will go bankrupt to the life expectancy of liver-disease patients. In virtually all cases, statistical thinking equaled or surpassed human judgment."

"The first documented postmortem examination in the New Word was done for religious reasons... It was performed on July 19, 1533, on the island of Espanola (now the Dominican Republic), upon conjoined female twins connected at the lower chest, to determine if they had one soul or two. The twins had been born alive, and a priest had baptized them as two separate souls. A disagreement subsequently ensued about whether he was right to have done so, and when the "double monster" died at eight days of age an autopsy was ordered to settle the issue. A surgeon, one Johan Camacho, found two virtually complete sets of internal organs, and it was decided that two souls had lived and died."

--Complications by Atul Gawande (A surgeon's notes on an imperfect science)

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By Cindy Rinaldi

Hollywood has produced 25 of Cynthia Whitcomb’s screenplays. She has sold more than 70 scripts. A sampling from her prolific body of work includes “Buffalo Girls” (Anjelica Huston, Melanie Griffith), “Selma, Lord, Selma” (Wonderful World of Disney with Mackenzie Astin, Jurnee Smollett, Clifton Powell) and “Guilty Until Proven Innocent” (Martin Sheen, Brendan Fraser). She has been honored with countless awards and prestigious nominations including the Emmy Award, Edgar Allan Poe Award, Humanitas Award, Paul Selvin Award (WGA) and Cable Ace Award. Her personal story about breaking in both confirms and defies conventional advice.

Q: How did you get your first job as a screenwriter?

A: I had gone to film school at UCLA. I was starting to write frantically. I wrote ten screenplays – feature scripts – before I sold anything. I sent them out to twelve people each. All ten were rejected. I had placed in a writing contest. Agents would actually read me, because I could say I had placed in this writing contest.

My tenth script – still nobody wanted it – but by the tenth one, my writing was actually getting good. It was a good script. It got rejected by everyone. Then I saw a film by Tony Bill, called “Hearts of the West,” which wasn’t a very good script. But it was the same period, same genre and I was really furious that no one would give me a deal, but here was this other script that got made. The guy that produced it was named Tony Bill – he also produced “The Sting.” I figured if he loved that [“Hearts of the West”], he’d probably love my script.

So I called the Producer’s Guild, found his address and drove up there. I was living in Long Beach at the time, sleeping on my parents’ couch, starving and writing. I didn’t realize that everyone goes to lunch in Hollywood from 12:30 – 2:30. So I walked into empty offices – cute offices – but nobody was around. Finally, I wandered back to the kitchen. There was a guy there cleaning up – just a kid. So, I said, “Can I leave my script here?” He goes, “Sure, just leave it anywhere.”

So I just left my script. Six days later, I woke up and my car was stolen. My Volkswagen, I had no insurance, it was my original car, which I’d had since I graduated high school. Six hours later, Tony Bill called. He said, “I loved your script. I want to meet you.”

I had to borrow my mom’s car; had to borrow enough money to buy clothes I could wear to a meeting and go back to Venice. He said he couldn’t make the movie, because he was losing money on “Hearts of the West.”

The script was an adventure about the World Series being fixed in 1919. He said it was very expensive to film something [set] in 1919, because it was hard to get cars and stuff. So, he hired me to write another script. He had a novel and he hired me to dapt it. It got me my agent. It got me into the Writers Guild; it got me my first job. He told everyone that he knew that he had found a good writer. So, by the time I finished working for him, I had another job.

I turned in my last draft to him on a Friday, and by Monday I was working for 20th Century Fox, writing a movie for them. Except for one slow year, I’ve been doing this for a living full-time ever since.

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All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.

-James Thurber, writer and cartoonist (1894-1961)


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Richard Krevolin is an award winning author of 16 screenplays, 12 stage plays, and three published books. Two of his screenplays, both adapted from his own stage plays, are now in development: "King Levine" and "Lawrence of Suburbia."

Q: Would you share some experiences about breaking into Hollywood?

A: Hollywood is a funny place in that there are no rules; there is no single way to break through. I've had students at USC that I was convinced were going to break through and they haven't. And others that I didn't think would make it, that have. n terms of my own career, I've been at it for sixteen years now, have had some deals that have gone well, have had some hat have gone poorly. I don't really believe in the big break syndrome. I think everyone is a 20-year overnight success. You get certain openings, but just because things are going well today doesn't mean anyone is going to hire you tomorrow, so it's a onstant battle. I've been with big agents and small agents, big managers and little managers. And I am constantly trying to roduce new material and see what comes of it.

I've learned a few things that might be valuable to others along the way. I love collaborating. I've written with a number of partners. It's wonderful because it eases the loneliness and isolation of writing, but the mistake I've made is working with different partners over the years. As a result, I cannot use any of those scripts as writing samples. People can say, "Maybe the other guy was the genius." If you write with a partner, you'll be seen as a team and you have to stay together as a team.

The other thing is that I get bored easily. So, I've written a lot of romantic comedies, and then an action comedy, and a thriller and a small character driven script. That's been great for me as a writer, but not good for me in terms of my career, because Hollywood is a place of pigeonholes. So, I always urge my students to find what genre they like and be prepared to spend the next ten or twenty years working in that genre, because people are going to want to sign someone and say, "Oh, she's great ith romantic comedies." And they're going to be able to get her work doing romantic comedies and every time there's a romantic comedy, they know to go to her.

Most people really end up getting pigeon-holed. And if you are conscious of that, I would then think that as a writer, you would develop a body of work that is consistently in a certain genre. Every agent that I've ever met has said, "Oh that's great. What else do you have?" So they would want to see two or three screenplays and those should probably all be consistently in one genre.

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From ARNE GARBORG'S Weary Men

(Delirium.)
Why are murderers punished? An absurd idea. A state is about to burst from overpopulation--but if a good-natured fellow comes along and helps that state get rid of a few individuals, the above-mentioned state grabs the fellow and chops off his head. Not very intelligent.

(Seven beatitudes.)
Blessed are the poor: for if only they had a million...
Blessed are the oppressed: for if only the revolution came...
Blessed are the disappointed in love: for if only they could embrace that one and only...
Blessed are the drunken: for if only they could restrain themselves for just one year...
Blessed are the sick: for if only they became well again...
Blessed, blessed are all who suffer loss and pain: for they still possess the illusion of happiness.


"I feel no pity for those who complain. Their suffering cannot be very deep, as long as they can still bother to try and find words for it."

"Well, patriotism, you know, is in reality nothing but self-love raised to a higher power. We are so precious to ourselves that we value everything we come in contact with in any way whatever, be it nothing more than the places where we live, or even those places that just have some judicial or administrative connection with them."

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Frank Pierson, writer/director and presently president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences delivered the 2003 commencement speech at USC Film School. Mr. Pierson is a past president of the WGA.
It's well worth reading!

excerpt:
"To the studios today, the art of film and TV is a byproduct of their main business, a side effect, and, like most side effects, more likely to be a noxious nuisance than a benefit."

Full text:
http://www-cntv.usc.edu/resources/news/news-speech.php

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Recommended reading:

The Good Earth by Nobel Prize winning author Pearl S. Buck
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
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Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.
-Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

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'I'll Quit,' Vows Gallo After Brown Bunny Boos

Friday May 23 10:11 AM ET

U.S. director Vincent Gallo is so hurt by the scathing reaction to his film "The Brown Bunny" that he has vowed to make it his last.

"I'll never make another movie again. I mean it," Gallo told Reuters, after his road movie had a disastrous reception at the Cannes film festival and he was booed at a press conference.

"Being booed at was not much fun. It's really not very nice that people are so nasty. I'm very disappointed," he said early on Friday at the star-studded amfAR AIDS fund-raiser.

Gallo, going through what he says is the worst week in his life, has also apologized to those who financed the film.

"It is a disaster of a film and it was a waste of time. I apologize to the financiers, but it was never my intention to make a pretentious film, a self-indulgent film, a useless film, an unengaging film," he said.

Critics guffawed openly at the screening of "The Brown Bunny," which Gallo wrote, directed, produced and starred in, and groaned at the highly graphic oral sex scene at the end.

Many found the long driving scenes interminable and monotonous and the symbolic use of a toy rabbit plain just silly.

Screen International has ranked the film the worst of the 20 films competing for this year's Palme d'Or.

"Vincent Gallo's monumental folly has already become a defining moment in Cannes history. Awestruck future generations will ask: 'Were you there the night they screened The Brown Bunny?"' one of the magazine's critics wrote Friday. A clearly depressed Gallo said he had hardly been able to face his friends since Cannes critics, bored by what they say is a miserable harvest of films, started laying into his movie.

"If my film is not comprehensible to people then I have failed in my purpose. I am disappointed that once again, what I like is unpopular. I can only apologize to the people who feel they have wasted their time," he said.

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"There is a problem with writers. If what a writer wrote was published and sold many, many copies, the writer thought he was great. If what a writer wrote was published and sold a medium number of copies, the writer thought he was great. If what a writer wrote was published and sold very few copies, the writer thought he was great. If what the writer wrote never was published and he didn't have the money to publish it himself, then he though he was truly great. The truth, however, was that there was very little greatness. It was almost nonexistent, invisible. But you could be sure that the worst writers had the most confidence, the least self-doubt.

--Charles Bukowski, Women

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Here's an article outlining a Middle East peace plan that "should" guarantee a Palestinian state by 2005. The US will lead the process. You can link to the article here or read the entire post below.

Middle East roadmap

The following text has been placed in the House of Commons library by the Foreign Office. This is a draft, which officials say will be "topped and tailed" - but not substanially altered - within the next two weeks.

The following is a performance-based and goal driven roadmap with clear phases, timelines, target dates and benchmarks aiming at progress through reciprocal steps by the two parties in the political, security, economic, humanitarian and institution-building fields, under the auspices of the Quartet.

The destination is a final and comprehensive settlement of the Israel-Palestinian conflict by 2005, as presented in President Bush's speech of 24 June, and welcomed by the EU, Russia, and the UN in the 16 July and 17 September Quartet Ministerial statements.

A two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will only be achieved through an end to violence and terrorism, when the Palestinian people have a leadership acting decisively against terror and willing able to build a practising democracy based on tolerance and liberty, and through Israel's readiness to do what is necessary for a democratic Palestinian state to be established, and a clear, unambiguous acceptance by both parties of the goal of a negotiated settlement as described below.

The Quartet will assist and facilitate implementation of the plan, starting in Phase I, including direct discussions between the parties as required.

The plan establishes a realistic timeline for implementation. However, as a performance-based plan, progress will require and depend upon the good faith efforts of the parties, and their compliance with each of the obligations outlined below. Should the parties perform their obligations rapidly, progress within and through the phases may come sooner than indicated in the plan. Non-compliance with obligations will impede progress.

A settlement, negotiated between the parties, will result in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbors.

The settlement will resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict and end the occupation that began in 1967, based on the foundations on the Madrid Conference, the principle of land for peace, UNSCRs 242, 338 and 1397, agreements previously reached by the parties, and the initiative of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah – endorsed by the Beirut Arab League Summit – calling for acceptance of Israel as a neighbor living in peace and security, in the context of a comprehensive settlement.

This initiative is a vital element of international efforts to promote a comprehensive peace on all tracks, including the Syrian-Israeli and Lebanese-Israeli tracks.

The Quartet will meet regularly at senior levels to evaluate the parties' performance on implementation of the plan. In each phase, the parties are expected to perform their obligations in parallel, unless otherwise indicated.

PHASE I: ENDING TERROR AND VIOLENCE, NORMALIZING PALESTINIAN LIFE AND BUILDING PALESTINIAN INSTITUTIONS

PRESENT TO MAY 2003

In Phase I, the Palestinians immediately undertake an unconditional cessation of violence according to the steps outlined below; such action should be accompanied by supportive measures undertaken by Israel.

• Palestinians and Israelis resume security cooperation based on the Tenet work plan to end violence, terrorism, and incitement through restructured and effective Palestinian security services. Palestinian undertake comprehensive political reform in preparation for statehood, including drafting a Palestinian constitution, and free, fair and open elections upon the basis of those measures.

• Israel takes all necessary steps to help normalize Palestinian life. Israel withdraws from Palestinian areas occupied from September 28, 2000 and the two sides restore the status quo that existed at that time, as security performance and cooperation progress.

• Israel also freezes all settlement activity, consistent with the Mitchell report.

• At the outset of Phase I, the Palestinian leadership issues unequivocal statement reiterating Israel's right to exist in peace and security and calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire to end armed activity and all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere. All official Palestinian institutions end incitement against Israel.

• Israeli leadership issues unequivocal statement affirming its commitments to the two-state vision of an independent, viable, sovereign Palestinian state living in peace and security alongside Israel, as expressed by President Bush, and calling for an immediate end to violence against Palestinians everywhere. All official Israeli institutions end incitement against Palestinians.

SECURITY

• Palestinians declare an unequivocal end to violence and terrorism and undertake visible efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning violent attacks on Israelis anywhere.

• Rebuilt and refocused Palestinian Authority security apparatus begins sustained, targeted, and effective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror and dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure. This includes commencing confiscation of illegal weapons and consolidation of security authority, free of association with terror and corruption.

• GOI takes no actions undermining trust, including deportations, attack on civilians; confiscation and/or demolition of Palestinian homes and property, as a punitive measure or to facilitate Israeli construction; destruction of Palestinian institutions and infrastructure; and other measures specified in the Tenet Work Plan.

• Relying on existing mechanisms and on-the-ground resources, Quartet representatives begin informal monitoring and consult with the parties on establishment of a formal monitoring mechanism and its implementation.

• Implementation, as previously agreed, of U.S. rebuilding, training and resumed security cooperation plan in collaboration with outside oversight board (U.S. – Egypt – Jordan). Quartet support for efforts to achieve a lasting, comprehensive cease-fire.

• All Palestinian security organizations are consolidated into three services reporting to an empowered Interior Minister.

• Restructured/retained Palestinian security forces and IDF counterparts progressively resume security cooperation and other undertakings in implementation of the Tenet work plan, including regular senior-level meetings, with the participation of U.S. security officials.

• Arab states cut off public and private funding and all other forms of support for groups supporting and engaging in violence and terror.

• All donors providing budgetary support for the Palestinians channel these funds through the Palestinian Ministry of Finance's Single Treasury Account.

• As comprehensive security performance moves forward, IDF withdraws progressively from areas occupied since September 28, 2000 and the two sides restore the status quo that existed prior to September 28, 2000. Palestinian security forces redeploy to areas vacated by IDF.

PALESTINIAN INSTITUTION-BUILDING

• Immediate action on credible process to produce draft constitution for Palestinian statehood. As rapidly as possible, constitutional committee circulates draft Palestinian constitution, based on strong parliamentary democracy and cabinet with empowered prime minister, for public comment/debate. Constitutional building proposes draft document for submission after elections for approval by appropriate Palestinian institutions.

• Appointment of interim prime minister or cabinet with empowered executive authority/decision-making body.

• GOI fully facilitates travel of Palestinian officials for PLC and Cabinet sessions, internationally supervised security retraining, electoral and other reform activity, and other supportive measures related to the reform efforts.

• Continued appointment of Palestinian ministers empowered to undertake fundamental reform. Completion of further steps to achieve genuine separation of powers, including any necessary Palestinian legal reforms for this purpose.

• Establishment of independent Palestinian election commission. PLC reviews and revises elections law.

• Palestinian performance on judicial, administrative and economic benchmarks, as established by the International Task Force on Palestinian Reform.

• As early as possible, and based upon the above measures and in the context of open debate and transparent candidate selection/electoral campaign based on a free, multiparty process, Palestinians hold free, open, and fair elections.

• GOI facilitates Task Force election assistance, registration of voters, movement of candidates and voting officials. Support for NGOs involved in the election process.

• GOI reopens Palestinian Chamber of Commerce and other closed Palestinian institutions in East Jerusalem based on a commitment that these institutions operate strictly in accordance with prior agreements between the parties.

HUMANITARIAN RESPONSE

• Israel takes measures to improve the humanitarian situation. Israel and Palestinians implement in full all recommendations of the Bertini report to improve humanitarian conditions, lifting curfews, and easing restrictions on movement of persons and goods, and allowing full, safe, and unfettered access of international and humanitarian personnel.

• AHLC reviews the humanitarian situation and prospects for economic development in the West Bank and Gaza and launches a major donor assistance effort, including to the reform effort.

• GOI and PA continue revenue clearance process and transfer of funds, including areas, in accordance with agreed, transparent monitoring mechanism.

CIVIL SOCIETY

• Continued donor support, including increased funding through PVOs/NGOs, for people to people programmes, private sector development and civil society initiatives.

SETTLEMENTS

• GOI immediately dismantles settlement outposts erected since March 2001.

• Consistent with the Mitchell Report, GOI freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).

PHASE II: TRANSITION

JUNE 2003 – DECEMBER 2003

In the second phase, efforts are focused on the option of creating an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders and attributes of sovereignty, based on the new constitution, as a way-station to a permanent status settlement.

As has been noted, this goal can be achieved when the Palestinian people have a leadership acting decisively against terror, willing and able to build a practising democracy based on tolerance and liberty. With such a leadership, reformed civil institutions and security structures, the Palestinians will have the active support of the Quartet and the broader international community in establishing an independent, viable, state.

Progress into Phase II will be based upon the consensus judgment of the Quartet of whether conditions are appropriate to proceed, taking into account performance of both parties.

Furthering and sustaining efforts to normalize Palestinian lives and build Palestinian institutions, Phase II starts after Palestinian elections and ends with possible creation of an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders in 2003.

Its primary goals are continued comprehensive security performance and effective security cooperation, continued normalization of Palestinian life and institution-building, further building on and sustaining of the goals outlined in Phase I, ratification of a democratic Palestinian constitution, formal establishment of office of prime minister, consolidation of political reform, and the creation of a Palestinian state with provisional borders.

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

• Convened by the Quartet, in consultation with the parties, immediately after the successful conclusion of Palestinian elections, to support Palestinian economic recovery and launch a process leading to establishment of an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders.

• Such a meeting would be inclusive, based on the goal of a comprehensive Middle East peace (including between Israel and Syria, and Israel and Lebanon), and based on the principles described in the preamble to this document.

• Arab states restore pre-intifada links to Israel (trade offices, etc.).

• Revival of multilateral engagement on issues including regional water resources, environment, economic development, refugees and arms control issues.

• New constitution for democratic, independent Palestinian state is finalized and approved by appropriate Palestinian institutions. Further elections, if required, should follow approval of the new constitution.

• Empowered reform cabinet with office of prime minister formally established, consistent with draft constitution.

• Continued comprehensive security performance, including effective security cooperation on the bases laid out in Phase I.

• Creation of an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders through a process of Israeli-Palestinian engagement. Launched by the international conference. As part of this process, implementation of prior agreements, to enhance maximum territorial contiguity, including further action on settlements in conjunction with establishment of a Palestinian state with provisional borders.

• Enhanced international role in monitoring transition, with the active, sustained, and operational support of the Quartet.

• Quartet members promote international recognition of Palestinian state, including possible UN membership.

PHASE III: PERMANENT STATUS AGREEMENT AND END OF THE ISRAELI – PALESTINIAN CONFLICT

2004 – 2005

Progress into Phase III, based on consensus judgment of Quartet, and taking into account actions of both parties and Quartet monitoring.

Phase III objectives are consolidation of reform and stabilization of Palestinian institutions, sustained, effective Palestinian security performance, and Israeli-Palestinian negotiations aimed at a permanent status agreement in 2005.

SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

• Convened by Quartet, in consultation with the parties, at beginning of 2004 to endorse agreement reached on an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders and formally to launch a process with the active, sustained, and operational support of the Quartet, leading to a final, permanent status resolution in 2005, including on borders, Jerusalem, refugees, settlements and to support progress toward a comprehensive Middle East settlement between Israel and Lebanon and Israel and Syria, to be achieved as soon as possible.

• Continued comprehensive, effective progress on the reform agenda laid out by the TaskForce in preparation for final status agreement.

• Continued sustained and effective security performance and sustained, effective security cooperation on the basis laid out in Phase I.

• International efforts to facilitate reform and stabilize Palestinian institutions and the Palestinian economic, in preparation for final status agreement.

• Parties reach final and comprehensive permanent status agreement that ends the Israel – Palestinian conflict in 2005, through a settlement negotiated between the parties based on UNSCR 242, 338, and 1397, that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and includes an agreed, just, fair, and realistic solution to the refugee issue, and a negotiated resolution on the status of Jerusalem that takes into account the political and religious concerns of both sides, and protects the religious interests of Jews, Christians, and Muslims worldwide, and fulfills the vision of two states, Israel and sovereign, independent, democratic and viable Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security.

• Arab state acceptance of full normal relations with Israel and security for all the states of the region in the context of a compressive Arab-Israeli peace.

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Some interesting short stories in The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol. Namely: the infamous Diary of a Madman, as well as, The Nose, The Portrait, and The Overcoat.

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Hollywood: Rest in Peace
by Stephen Simon

(Stephen Simon (Deutsch) has produced such films as SOMEWHERE IN TIME, BILL AND TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, ALL THE RIGHT MOVES, and WHAT DREAMS MAY COME. He has been the President of three major production companies where he oversaw the production of such films as SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT and THE GOODBYE GIRL. He is the author of the new book THE FORCE IS WITH YOU: MYSTICAL MOVIE MESSAGES THAT INSPIRE OUR LIVES, is the founder of www.Mysticalmovies.com, and writes a monthly movie column entitled The Movie Mystic that appears in almost 30 publications worldwide. Stephen is a sought-after international speaker and is considered the leading spokesman for the recognition of Spiritual Cinema as a separate genre.)

Financing films in Hollywood has changed forever, primarily due to the corporate takeover of every single significant film distributor. Corporate thinking has replaced entrepreneurial passion. Right-brained people are being asked to make left-brain decisions and vice-versa. The average Hollywood film costs almost $85 million to produce and market, and that’s what basically gets produced: “average” films.

The laws of entropy have infiltrated the studio culture. The financial model no longer works and those in power know it. While the studio publicity machines trumpeted the biggest grossing summer on record for 2002, the studio accountants were telling their bosses that the financial bottom-line was a whole different story. In August of 2002, after that “record” summer, almost all of the parent company stocks of all the studios were selling at their 52 week lows.

Serious-minded, substantive, challenging adult films are now released only in November and December to qualify for Academy Awards. For example, look at 2002. While art-house and foreign films are, certainly, released on a more regular basis throughout the year, the only really substantive Hollywood films released for the first 9 months of the year were UNFAITHFUL AND ROAD TO PERDITION. Fortunately, the winter brought such wonderful films as THE HOURS, FAR FROM HEAVEN, ANTWONE FISHER, BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, ADAPATATION, ABOUT SCHMIDT, and several more

What we know as “Hollywood” has become an industry that is almost single-mindedly focused on major movie-star vehicles, action films, high-concept “franchises”, and mass audience comedies…and Hollywood does a great job making those films. Personally, I loved films like SPIDERMAN and, as a viewer, I look forward to the summer “blockbusters” as much as anyone…..but, to quote an old cliché---“Is that all there is?”

No, it’s not.
Isn’t there another way?
There certainly is.

For tens millions of people in the world today, there is a deep search for the meaning of life. Spiritual Cinema (to be distinguished from Religious Cinema) has been around forever (IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE could be considered the grandfather of the genre) but it has remained beneath the radar of the traditional industry. Why? As an answer to that question, I’m including here the Introduction to my book:

“If you build it, they will come.”

Field of Dreams

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Donations from Corporations
by Carole Dean

Carole Dean pioneered the tape and short end film business in Hollywood taking a $20 bill and turning it into an $50,000,000 a year company, created Studio Film & Tape, produced and hosted her own successful cable show, HealthStyles, (interviewing the biggest names in the industry such as Dr. Deepak Chopra, Dr. Weil, Dr. Caroline Myss) and is also a published writer. For the last 10 years she has been raising goods and services as donations for filmmakers to create documentary and short films that are “unique and make a contribution to society” Carole produced over 100 shows on cable. Interviewed and referred to as ‘the most efficient and organized producer’, and “best cable producer” by Century Cable. The Dean family has been in the film industry for 4 generations.(Rick Dean, her son, has acted in over 30 Roger Corman films)

I have a confession to make. When I was running Studio Film I used to hide in a corner office so filmmakers couldn’t find me. Of course my wonderful dad, who was powerless to a filmmaker’s passionate pitch, would give me up every single time!

Small businesses and corporations are tiny untapped goldmines for independent filmmakers. Local businesses and corporations always have managers (or dads) who are very accessible and easy to talk to. Be it my dad, or one of my employees, someone was always knocking on my door in the middle of the day with some filmmaker’s proposal. Usually it was only a one-page proposal, which was a blessing since business seemed to grind to a halt whenever this occurred. Customers could be lined up at the counter but it didn’t matter. Everyone in the office got wrapped up in the drama that was unfolding. You could practically hear the drum roll in the background. Would she say yes or no? Looking back now I realize this was probably a conspiracy since everyone knew the buck stopped with me. People everywhere (yes, even people in Hollywood) want to be part of a film.

When I scanned these proposals I would look for the following things:

*The story synopsis, hopefully brief and to the point.
*Why the filmmaker was making the film.
*Exactly what the filmmaker needed and why.
*Who would benefit from the film?
*What the filmmaker was willing to do for me (an end credit, product placement, etc.).
*How much the donation would mean to the filmmaker.
*For product placement, what they needed and how long they needed it.
*Remember, business managers are busy so show ‘em the facts ma’am, just the facts.

If you have a fiscal sponsor make sure to put this information on all of your proposals. Your tax-deductible status will go a long way when looking for donations. Customize your proposal for each individual business you approach. When you make it personal the recipient is going to feel special. You chose this business over their competitor because of their wonderful service, their fantastic employees, or their great reputation.

Start by making a list of all the stores and restaurants near your location. Visit the managers of these business with your one-page customized proposal in your hand and the best smile you can muster. Don’t forget to dress the part. Wear a Kodak Film cap and have a Maxell bag slung around your shoulder. Make sure they see you and think Spielberg.

Be considerate to all of the employees. Sometimes you have to leave your proposal with them. If they are anything like the wonderful people who worked with me at Studio Film, once they get caught up in your enthusiasm they will beg their manager to become involved in your film. Remember, the employees are your support team. Mention how much your crew enjoys their pizza, or how impressed you were the last time they did some copy work for you. Talk about your film and give your pitch as though you are asking for a $10,000.00 grant.

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=================================================================
1. WBW Interview: Jeremy Bell from Foursight Entertainment
=================================================================
by Samantha Plotkin

Foursight Entertainment has been very successful since it was started in 1999. Jeremy Bell and the other founders of Foursight Entertainment (Michael Lasker and George Heller) started their management company while they were all still students at the USC Film School. Recently, everything came full circle when they sold THE SPY NEXT DOOR to Dimension, since the screenwriter, Joe Ballarini, was a classmate of theirs at USC and their first writing client. They have placed clients with almost every major agency.

Q: How did Foursight get started?

A: We were at USC film school together and saw all these talented filmmakers doing all this great work and we decided we need to elp “break” their careers. It kind of spawned from seeing Josh Schwartz sell his script and get a two-picture deal while he was still in the Filmic Writing Program. That was about a year before we started our company.

People who were in college could sell their scripts and be working before they graduate. We wanted to be the guys that help these filmmakers do that. That’s how we all came together, and right away we started finding talented writers and directors.

Joe Ballarini was our first writing client. It took two and a half years to “break” him. Actually, we had already gone out with two scripts and a pitch of Joe’s. We were successful in certain respects, by getting him meetings around town, but nothing was set up.

Q: How many scripts did Joe Ballarini write before you sold “The Spy Next Door?”

A: “The Spy Next Door” might have been the thirteenth script he had written, but it was the third script of his that went out. It goes to show that for a writer, sometimes it can take that many scripts before you can perfect your art. Joe would write a script, finish it, then go on to the next one.

Joe kept plugging away and kept writing. When he finished “The Spy Next Door,” and when we set it up, it was extremely gratifying because we had been through the heartache of not selling his scripts a couple of times. That just goes to show you got to keep writing because your number will be called if you have the talent.

Q: What was the development process like for “The Spy Next Door?”

A: It was constant re-writes. Joe was developing it with a producer named, Russell Hollander. It took a lot of meetings, outlines, and re-writes until the script was ready to go out on the town.

When the script was ready, we submitted the script all over town and there was a bidding war. Dimension ended up making an offer
with Mutual Films and Karz Entertainment producing.

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Joe Carnahan - Narc
Feb 11, 2003 Author: Rita Cook

Joe Carnahan faced numerous challenges filming his latest movie Narc, starring Jason Patric and Ray Liotta. In Los Angeles, Narc billboard signs are everywhere and the movie's release around the country is set for mid-January. Carnahan is a likable guy with a pleasing phone manner so it was easy to see why Splendid Pictures wanted to work with him and why Paramount eventually took the film under their distribution fold.

script: You wrote and directed Narc. Tell me about some of the challenges you faced?
Joe Carnahan - There were numerous challenges. It was an incredibly difficult script to write and it took me almost a year to write it. So that was one thing. It was an emotionally-taxing experience and then the actual shooting of it was kind of a trip through hell. We had financial problems that plagued the shoot and everyday we were having more difficulty. We didn't have money, couldn't afford film, couldn't do this and couldn't do that. So that was a real arduous journey, but in between it was just the actual getting it into people's hands. In between the problems we were having from the writing to the actual shooting of it, I had a two to three-year process when nobody wanted to make the film.

script: The film is great. The opening scene where Jason Patric is running is an incredible scene.
JC - I had never seen a foot chase accurately depicted and what it is like to really run, sprint, a long distance and what that does to you. I thought I just really want this to be a continuous kind of sequence, a continuous run and we would do it in such a way that there is a touchstone for this particular type of filmmaking. You look at the reality show like Cops and the viewer is used to following officers into it - you know what I mean? It is kind of rough and tumble, but at the same time we wanted to be very cinematic about it and not just be a simple kind of herky jerky handheld, we wanted to capture what that was like. We did a series of runs in the dead of winter in Toronto and a situation came up where I had to throw out all the camera set-ups, I think I had 12 other camera set-ups to shoot. What I really wanted to do, and I think what I was inspired by was the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan. I loved that you never got any further up that beach than Tom Hank's platoon and I thought there was something really brilliant in that. You are really establishing who your protagonists are and you are going to stay with them through thick and thin and that is kind of the philosophy I adapted in the shooting of that sequence. You are never going to get any closer to that junkie than Jason does and at the same time he is doing something and it is kind of cause and effect - action - reaction type of relationship. As the audience is processing the fact that this junkie has grabbed this little girl - Jason's character begins to fire and make the decision in that moment that this guy intends to kill her and it is not going to be some standoff. I think it is just the fact that we didn't cheat it and the violence of it is so harsh and quick and real that that is what kind of sucks people in. And I did not want to treat violence on the whole of this film as kind of an almost burlesque manner like Hollywood does, which is a drawn-out, poetic, overly-stylized kind of treatment of something.

script: The film is dark, why did you decide to do that?
JC - A lot of it was discussions I had with the DP. There was something about Alex's style that I really liked. He moved the camera around and after I met with him I realized he is a good guy. This guy fled Russia in the mid-70s when it was the Russia we all know and love. He just understood inherently cold and industrial and hard. A lot of what you see in the flashbacks and the opening sequence is shot on reversal stock and then cross-processed as regular negative film. So you get that great kind of de-saturated look. And what is great is that if it is cold it plays very cold and if it is hot it plays extremely hot. So, we wanted to run that kind of gamut between really hot and really cold. Alex and I kept asking what would be the natural light source in any given room that we were in because those were all practical sets. We moved from that idea that there is a window here and there is sunlight coming through so don't correct for that and let it blow out. We exposed for the interior and got this really naturalistic, almost documentary-like, look. We made sure we were timing it and we wanted it darker or we wanted it denser and to have this kind of high contrast so we were conscious of that throughout the shooting of the film.

script: How many scripts have you sold and produced?
JC - Up until Narc I had done my own film which is Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane and I had sold a cheeseball script years earlier as well as doing some work for friends. I live up North in Sacramento so it was really difficult and I don't have the same inroads ...

script: Talking about your craft - what tools do you use when you begin to write a script?
JC - I begin with a basic scene or I will start with an idea or a premise. Depending on how I feel about it and if I think it is going to entail a lot of work then I will do a fairly elaborate outline. Other than that I really begin with just writing the first scene, the scene that I will enjoy the most. I am a sucker for the big beginning. How do we start this film? I like to write in that manner and not have too much of it thought out it advance. I like to see where the journey will take me.

script: What was the difference between writing the script and then coming to the table to direct it?
JC - I think the difference was that I wanted to write it in a much more linear fashion because I thought to fragment it and to do the things that I really intended to do with it would have put too many people off. I already thought that it was going to be a tough sale given the level of violence and this particular genre and I was ensured by many that television had thoroughly eroded theatrical possibilities for a film like this. I kept it fairly straightforward and only when we got into the actual shooting did I kind of start to mix it up. Then going into the editing room, that is where I really made it the film that I intended it to be.

script: You did a good job of developing the characters. What do you think is the key to strong character development?
JC - The key for me was to make it as real as possible and to relate it as much as you possible can to your own experiences and your own life. I feel like you are always going to have good luck if you do that. Start to resemble caricatures of people you have seen in movies and you are in bad shape. I really tried to keep it a journey like of him being a cop and getting drawn back in that world. This is not unlike my journey in Hollywood where I am being called upon to spend a great deal of time away from home and it can be hard on a family.

script: What advice do you have for screenwriters that are just getting started?
JC - I would say decide very early on if you want to write for somebody else or if you want to write your own movies and direct your own films because that is going to help refine and by virtue define your focus. This decision will make it something tangible and something that you know as you are bleeding into your scripts and sweating into them and toiling away. You know at the end of the day you are going to be the one charged with interpreting that. I felt it made all the difference knowing that I was going to be the one who was charged with bringing this thing to life. I think that is the key. You have to decide are you going to be someone who writes for others and be content with that and bust your ass or are you going to direct your own stuff? As much as I love writing, I love directing and editing equally.

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Just finished:
Naked by David Sedaris
Ava's man by Rick Bragg, the pulitzer prize winning author of All Over but the Shoutin'


Currently reading:
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

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(Ten Faux Pas of Screenwriting Contestants)

by Elizabeth A. Stevens

Having just read a towering stack of screenplays for a widely-known screenwriting contest, the common sins and faux pas of aspiring pro screenwriters are painfully fresh in my mind. Many writers nationwide - regardless of the core genius, universality, uniqueness, social relevance, horror, poignancy, hilarity, cinematic brilliance or action-abundance of their scripts - shoot themselves in the foot by forgetting or ignoring key points in screenwriting. Next time you submit a script to a contest (or to a producer) ensure, make sure and be sure that your work reflects these ten nonnegotiable criteria.

1. PRESENTATION COUNTS

Do not think that the sheer brilliance of your idea will overcome the need to submit a clean, proofread script. If you believe that readers will find the gem of your genius amid sloppy writing, stick to playing the lottery where your odds of success are much better.

Submit your script securely bound by two brads, and without heavy cover stock or plastic binding. You lose points by standing out with flashy or inappropriate packaging; strive instead to look like a seasoned pro. Make sure that grammar, punctuation and spelling are correct. You lose many points if readers get a headache trying to fathom your work. Use proper screenplay formatting, per “Elements of Style for Screenwriters” by Paul Argentini.

2. SET THE STAGE

Be sure to start your script with the era noted in the first slugline. You lose a reader’s attention if they must puzzle over whether your story is set in the future, present or sometime in the past.

In your opening slugline, note the country and region in which the story takes place. If your script unfolds in a specific city, be sure to include this in slug lines. If you fail to include this information, the reader will A) assume that the story takes place in the United States and, B) assume that the city it’s set in is irrelevant to the tale. The opening slugline, “EXT. CHICO’S MOTHER’S BACKYARD - DAY” leaves a reader in the dark.

3. BE TERSE

Write your script in terse screenplay style. Condense your narrative into short, strong sentences. If a novel is a stew, a screenplay is a reduced broth. Keep dialogue pointed and sharp.

4. DESCRIBE THE PLAYERS

Quickly and effectively describe characters as you introduce them. Give an age (or age range) for lead and supporting players. Sketch characters’ physical description so that readers have something to imagine and build upon.

5. GIVE YOUR LEAD CHARACTER AN ARC

Make sure that the script conveys your main character’s internal and external needs, and show those needs being struggled toward and met in your script.

6. USE ACTIVE VOICE IN NARRATIVE

Write narrative in an active, present voice. A script is a blueprint of action; make your narrative action-oriented.

“The store is packed with rowdy customers, waiting in line as Mamie works the cash register. Grace, in her red rayon uniform, is helping patrons find holiday gifts. Ellie is in an open area, near the cash register. She wears a large white apron and wraps packages on a work table.”

This narrative can easily be condensed and strengthened to:

“Mamie works the cash register as rowdy customers wait in line. Grace, in a red rayon uniform, helps patrons find holiday gifts, and apron-clad Ellie wraps packages on a work table nearby.”

7. USE DEVICES SPARINGLY

Keep devices such as voice-over and flashbacks to a bare minimum, since they interrupt the flow of your script and pull readers out of the ongoing story.

8. BE SPARINGLY VISUAL

Write your narrative from a visual viewpoint, but do not become novelesque. If a scene occurs at sunset, say so but don’t wax eloquent about the ombred sky and the engorged sun sliding into oblivion. When it is key to the scene, note camera information but do not load your script with directorial cues.

9. KEEP DIALOGUE RELEVANT

Severely limit dialogue that doesn’t either forward the story line or provide insight into characters. For example, trim scenes of greetings or good-byes to the minimum required to convey an arrival or departure.

10. GET OBJECTIVE FEEDBACK

Before you submit your script, give it to a handful of trustworthy people for commentary. Then pay attention to their comments and suggestions. Don’t let your own intimate knowledge of all details in your story - the “forest for the trees” syndrome - blind you to the fact that you’ve omitted key information that readers need in order to understand the tale.

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Fernando Meirelles
City of God

Interviewed by Tom Dawson
updated 31st December 2002

How hard was it to adapt such a sprawling novel for the screen?

It was a big challenge. The book is about 600 pages and there are 250 characters but it has no real structure - it's very episodic. The author Paulo Lins, who was raised in the City of God slums, presents a character and you follow him for 20 pages. When he dies, you start following somebody else, and that carries on right until the end.

We decided to split the film into three parts, each different from the other. In the first part the romantic criminals come in and there's a warm atmosphere. In the second they have moved onto drug dealing, and the camera movements are free and relaxed. Towards the end, war breaks out between the dealers and the images are chaotic and out of focus.

Was it difficult to direct so many young non-professionals?

No, it was easy to work with them because they were so enthusiastic about doing the film. They liked being respected and for people to listen to them and to applaud them. We auditioned 2000 kids from poor areas and chose 200. We spent six months working on improvising scenes. They ended up creating about 70% of the dialogue. They were so keen that they used to arrive at work an hour before shooting started.

How was "City of God" received in Brazil given its controversial subject-matter?

It was a huge success in Brazil and attracted 3.4 million spectators. It was more popular than "Star Wars" and "Minority Report". It moved from the cultural pages to the political pages - one of the presidential candidates asked to see the film and talked about it in a speech. So teenage drug-dealing became an issue in the campaign.

How did you approach the violence that is an important aspect of the film?

I think the violence in the film is totally different to what you see in American movies from people like Tarantino. I tried to avoid graphic violence: we have only three sequences involving blood and in the rape sequence you don't see the rape. Even in the gang-war scene at the end, I had a voice-over talking about something else to distract the viewer. I used music throughout the film to create a distance from the action.

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One of the most captivating films on the big screen right now is City of God. Read a brief review.

City of God

Bursting with love, hate, violence and life, this breathtaking Brazilian epic based on photographer Paulo Lin’s upbringing in the Rio de Janeiro ghetto creates sympathy for its young characters, robbed of innocence in an endless cycle of violence and drugs, while remaining honest to the pain and poverty of the streets. Director Fernando Meirelles spins an intensely visceral experience that registers well with the corrupt minds of his characters and their seedy environment. Each image singes your consciousness and refuses to dissipate. ( Opens Jan. 17, 2003.)

by Piet Levy

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=================================================================
1. WBW Interview: Interview with Jeff Arch, by Samantha Plotkin
=================================================================
Jeff Arch, the Academy-nominated screenwriter of “Sleepless in Seattle,” took some time out of his insanely busy schedule to tell us how a brilliant script can get you into Hollywood.

Q: What made you decide to make the “big” move to Los Angeles?

A: I grew up on Hollywood movies and that’s what I wanted to make. In my early twenties, I came out to L.A., trying to be a writer. For four years I wrote pretty much the same movie over and over until it finally got optioned.

I got married and moved back east, for what I thought was going to be a year, and it turned out to be thirteen years. Eight years in to that thirteen years, I wrote, “Sleepless.” For the next four years I wrote like crazy in Virginia and started to make more and more trips out here (L.A.). I thought, ‘This is crazy I want to live out here and I don’t want to be in airplanes anymore.’

Q: What did you do in the meantime, before “Sleepless” sold?

A: I wrote a play, that got produced off-broadway. It was one of the shows that opened and closed in a week. As a writer, I learned tons of stuff. As a person trying to do business in New York, I learned more than I wanted to learn.

I learned some lessons from the play, which was not to give up, but try coming after it at a different direction. And the direction was from the inside out. The phone wasn’t ringing (when people flop, the phone does not ring), so I dove into the personal stuff.

I started building myself from the inside out. I learned that I was doing fine as a writer, but the stuff that was holding me back was stuff from the inside and I had to learn how to get rid of that. It wasn’t anything that school or graduate school or seminars were going to take care of -- no matter what I put in my brain, my heart was sending the wrong messages.

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Confronting Empire
Arundhati Roy

I've been asked to speak about "How to confront Empire?" It's a huge question, and I have no easy answers.

When we speak of confronting "Empire," we need to identify what "Empire" means. Does it mean the U.S. Government (and its European satellites), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and multinational corporations? Or is it something more than that?

In many countries, Empire has sprouted other subsidiary heads, some dangerous byproducts - nationalism, religious bigotry, fascism and, of course terrorism. All these march arm in arm with the project of corporate globalization.

Let me illustrate what I mean. India - the world's biggest democracy -is currently at the forefront of the corporate globalization project.
Its "market" of one billion people is being prized open by the WTO. Corporatization and Privatization are being welcomed by the Government and the Indian elite.

It is not a coincidence that the Prime Minister, the Home Minister, the Disinvestment Minister - the men who signed the deal with Enron in India, the men who are selling the country's infrastructure to corporate multinationals, the men who want to privatize water, electricity, oil, coal, steel, health, education and telecommunication - are all members or admirers of the RSS. The RSS is a right wing, ultra-nationalist Hindu guild which has openly admired Hitler and his methods.

The dismantling of democracy is proceeding with the speed and efficiency of a Structural Adjustment Program. While the project of corporate globalization rips through people's lives in India, massive privatization, and labor "reforms" are pushing people off their land and out of their jobs. Hundreds of impoverished farmers are committing suicide by consuming pesticide. Reports of starvation deaths are coming in from all over the country.

While the elite journeys to its imaginary destination somewhere near the top of the world, the dispossessed are spiraling downwards into crime and chaos. This climate of frustration and national disillusionment is the perfect breeding ground, history tells us, for fascism.

The two arms of the Indian Government have evolved the perfect pincer action. While one arm is busy selling India off in chunks, the other, to divert attention, is orchestrating a howling, baying chorus of Hindu nationalism and religious fascism. It is conducting nuclear tests, rewriting history books, burning churches, and demolishing mosques. Censorship, surveillance, the suspension of civil liberties and human rights, the definition of who is an Indian citizen and who is not, particularly with regard to religious minorities, is becoming common practice now.


Last March, in the state of Gujarat, two thousand Muslims were butchered in a State-sponsored pogrom. Muslim women were specially targeted. They were stripped, and gang-raped, before being burned alive. Arsonists burned and looted shops, homes, textiles mills, and mosques.


More than a hundred and fifty thousand Muslims have been driven from their homes. The economic base of the Muslim community has been devastated.

While Gujarat burned, the Indian Prime Minister was on MTV promoting his new poems. In January this year, the Government that orchestrated the killing was voted back into office with a comfortable majority. Nobody has been punished for the genocide. Narendra Modi, architect of the pogrom, proud member of the RSS, has embarked on his second term as the Chief Minister of Gujarat. If he were Saddam Hussein, of course each atrocity would have been on CNN. But since he's not - and since the Indian "market" is open to global investors - the massacre is not even an embarrassing inconvenience.

There are more than one hundred million Muslims in India. A time bomb is ticking in our ancient land.

All this to say that it is a myth that the free market breaks down national barriers. The free market does not threaten national
sovereignty, it undermines democracy.

As the disparity between the rich and the poor grows, the fight to corner resources is intensifying. To push through their "sweetheart
deals," to corporatize the crops we grow, the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the dreams we dream, corporate globalization needs an international confederation of loyal, corrupt, authoritarian governments in poorer countries to push through unpopular reforms and quell the mutinies.

Corporate Globalization - or shall we call it by its name? - Imperialism - needs a press that pretends to be free. It needs courts that pretend to dispense justice.

Meanwhile, the countries of the North harden their borders and stockpile weapons of mass destruction. After all they have to make sure that it's only money, goods, patents and services that are globalized. Not the free movement of people. Not a respect for human rights. Not international treaties on racial discrimination or chemical and nuclear weapons or greenhouse gas emissions or climate change, or - god forbid - justice.

So this - all this - is "empire." This loyal confederation, this obscene accumulation of power, this greatly increased distance between those who make the decisions and those who have to suffer them. Our fight, our goal, our vision of Another World must be to eliminate that distance.

So how do we resist "Empire"?

The good news is that we're not doing too badly. There have been major victories. Here in Latin America you have had so many - in Bolivia, you have Cochabamba. In Peru, there was the uprising in Arequipa, In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez is holding on, despite the U.S. government's best efforts.

And the world's gaze is on the people of Argentina, who are trying to refashion a country from the ashes of the havoc wrought by the IMF.

In India the movement against corporate globalization is gathering momentum and is poised to become the only real political force to
counter religious fascism.

As for corporate globalization's glittering ambassadors - Enron, Bechtel, WorldCom, Arthur Anderson - where were they last year, and
where are they now?

And of course here in Brazil we must ask ...who was the president last year, and who is it now?

Still ... many of us have dark moments of hopelessness and despair. We know that under the spreading canopy of the War Against Terrorism, the men in suits are hard at work.

While bombs rain down on us, and cruise missiles skid across the skies, we know that contracts are being signed, patents are being registered, oil pipelines are being laid, natural resources are being plundered, water is being privatized, and George Bush is planning to go to war against Iraq.

If we look at this conflict as a straightforward eye-ball to eye-ball confrontation between "Empire" and those of us who are resisting it, it
might seem that we are losing.

But there is another way of looking at it. We, all of us gathered here, have, each in our own way, laid siege to "Empire."

We may not have stopped it in its tracks - yet - but we have stripped it down. We have made it drop its mask. We have forced it into the open. It now stands before us on the world's stage in all it's brutish, iniquitous nakedness.

Empire may well go to war, but it's out in the open now - too ugly to behold its own reflection. Too ugly even to rally its own people. It
won't be long before the majority of American people become our allies.

Only a few days ago in Washington, a quarter of a million people marched against the war on Iraq. Each month, the protest is gathering momentum.

Before September 11th 2001 America had a secret history. Secret especially from its own people. But now America's secrets are history, and its history is public knowledge. It's street talk.

Today, we know that every argument that is being used to escalate the war against Iraq is a lie. The most ludicrous of them being the U.S. Government's deep commitment to bring democracy to Iraq.

Killing people to save them from dictatorship or ideological corruption is, of course, an old U.S. government sport. Here in Latin America, you know that better than most.

Nobody doubts that Saddam Hussein is a ruthless dictator, a murderer (whose worst excesses were supported by the governments of the United States and Great Britain). There's no doubt that Iraqis would be better off without him.

But, then, the whole world would be better off without a certain Mr. Bush. In fact, he is far more dangerous than Saddam Hussein.
So, should we bomb Bush out of the White House?

It's more than clear that Bush is determined to go to war against Iraq, regardless of the facts - and regardless of international public
opinion. In its recruitment drive for allies, The United States is prepared to invent facts.

The charade with weapons inspectors is the U.S. government's offensive, insulting concession to some twisted form of international etiquette. It's like leaving the "doggie door" open for last minute "allies" or maybe the United Nations to crawl through.

But for all intents and purposes, the New War against Iraq has begun.

What can we do?

We can hone our memory, we can learn from our history. We can continue to build public opinion until it becomes a deafening roar.

We can turn the war on Iraq into a fishbowl of the U.S. government's excesses.

We can expose George Bush and Tony Blair - and their allies - for the cowardly baby killers, water poisoners, and pusillanimous long-distance bombers that they are.

We can re-invent civil disobedience in a million different ways. In other words, we can come up with a million ways of becoming a collective pain in the ass.

When George Bush says "you're either with us, or you are with the terrorists" we can say "No thank you." We can let him know that the people of the world do not need to choose between a Malevolent Mickey Mouse and the Mad Mullahs.

Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness - and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe.

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling - their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their
weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

-Arundhati Roy

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Note: look into David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews With Hideous Men.

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"A man... fights only when he hopes, when he has a vision of order, when he feels strongly there is some connection between the earth on which he walks and himself." --V. S. Naipaul, The Mimic Men

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From the New York Times

For 'The Hours,' an Elation Mixed With Doubt
By MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM

It seemed at one moment I was sitting at my desk wondering if anyone would want to read "The Hours," my unorthodox novel in which Virginia Woolf was a prominent character, and the next I was on a set outside London, being asked by an assistant director if I'd like to stick around and see Nicole Kidman in her Virginia Woolf nose.
Like any sensible person, I said yes.

I have, over the last year and a half, had the distinctly surreal experience of seeing "The Hours" turned into a movie involving many of the most brilliant actors alive. The cast is dizzying: Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Ed Harris, Toni Collette, Claire Danes, Jeff Daniels, Stephen Dillane, Allison Janney, John C. Reilly, Miranda Richardson and, briefly, as a clerk in a flower shop, the great Eileen Atkins, whose portrayal of Virginia Woolf in the play "Vita and Virginia" helped shape my own sense of how to write about Woolf.

Like any large experience, it has been heady and strange and more than a little upsetting. Before the movie deal was made, people sometimes asked me what actors I imagined playing my characters, and the only response I could offer was this: I have such a cogent image of these people that they'd have to play themselves. I can't picture them on any terms other than their own. Who, after all, would play your mother in the film version of her life? Your mother would have to do it. No one else is remotely like her.

So it was with a mix of elation and uncertainty that I greeted the news that the three main characters in "The Hours," the movie, would be played by Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore. I had no doubts about these women's abilities but wondered if they'd be too thoroughly themselves, no matter how accomplished their performances.

"The Hours," the book and the film, is about three women alive at different times during the 20th century, all linked by Woolf's immortal novel of 1925, "Mrs. Dalloway." "Mrs. Dalloway," along with Joyce's "Ulysses," changed the novel forever by insisting that any day in anyone's life is the stuff of literature; that the whole human story is contained in every day of every life more or less the way the blueprint for an entire organism is present in every strand of its DNA. Woolf's novel takes place in one day, during which Clarissa Dalloway, a 52-year-old London society hostess, shops, sees the man she might have married but did not, takes a nap, and gives a rather dull party. However, because it is an ordinary day in the life of an ordinary person as rendered by a genius, by the book's end we understand that Mrs. Dalloway not only stands with the heroes of world literature but, by extension, that every one of us might stand so, if only a brilliant writer would look at us with sufficient depth and penetration.

"The Hours" (which was Woolf's original title for "Mrs. Dalloway") involves three days in the lives of three women. There's a modern-day Clarissa, played in the movie by Meryl Streep, who closely resembles Mrs. Dalloway but is free of some of the social strictures that bound Woolf's Clarissa. There's Laura Brown, a wife and mother at the end of World War II, played by Julianne Moore, who is reading "Mrs. Dalloway" and finding herself in its pages. And there is an imagined day in the life of Virginia Woolf herself, played by Nicole Kidman, when she began writing "Mrs. Dalloway" — when she, more than half suspecting she was merely an eccentric and marginal talent, set down the opening lines of a book that will be read as long as books exist.

My early fears about how the people of my book might be diluted by a movie version were allayed by Ms. Kidman's willingness to wear a wig and a prosthetic nose to play Woolf. I went to the English set, where a crumbling country mansion was standing in for the suburban house in which Woolf lived when she wrote "Mrs. Dalloway." I met Ms. Kidman, talked to her briefly about Woolf, and was asked if I'd like to see her in the Nose, which was the first I'd heard about Ms. Kidman appearing in any nose other than her own. She was escorted to the make-up room, from which she emerged an hour later as another person entirely. Not only was her face unrecognizable, but her stance had changed. She held her head more sternly; she set her shoulders slightly forward, as if trying to conceal the fact that she expected, at any moment, a blow from behind.

I learned, from each actor, that the process of transformation is as elusive and idiosyncratic as is the creation of characters in fiction. Ms. Kidman told me that although she did enormous preparation — she read all of Woolf, learned to mimic her handwriting, and had of course that remarkable patrician beak — what brought her to Woolf's essence was learning to roll her own cigarettes, as Woolf had done, combined with a modest white handkerchief Ann Roth, the costume designer, had put in the pocket of her dress. Somehow these two minor elements, the cowboyish cigarettes and the wan little hankie, produced the friction from which she could begin.

Julianne Moore prefers to do as little preparation as possible, and doesn't like to rehearse. She works intuitively; she simply knows what to do when she gets there. She and I did talk briefly about the genesis of Laura Brown, her character, before she did her scenes. I told her how I'd found, when I wrote the book, that Laura was the most difficult character to summon, in part because, of the three women, she was the one who veered most dangerously close to stereotype. We have seen the unhappy 50's housewife many, many times, and although Laura was in no way stereotypical to me, I couldn't seem to get her right. She came fully alive the day I decided to think of her as an artist; as someone as relentlessly driven to create perfection as was Woolf herself. Laura's medium was modest and transitory. She wanted to keep a house so clean that nothing could ever go wrong within its walls; she wanted to bake for her husband's birthday a cake as magnificent (as immortal) as the cakes in magazines. When I thought of her in those terms, and understood that she was every bit as entitled to her ecstasies and sorrows as was Woolf, she became a person.

When Meryl Streep and I met on the set in New York (I can be glimpsed in the movie, and had two lines with Ms. Streep that were cut from the final version, for which I will never forgive the filmmakers), she wanted to know what kind of music Clarissa listened to. Classic jazz, I told her, like Miles Davis and John Coltrane, and some of the lush Europeans, like Strauss and Schubert, especially Schubert's lieder. She, clearly knowledgeable, asked me which recordings of the Schubert lieder Clarissa would prefer, and I responded with what I believe to have been the most dignified possible look of mute incomprehension.

As I watched the women do their work, and when I saw the finished movie, I understood that what you lose in turning fiction into film — the ability to enter your characters' minds, and to scan their pasts for keys to their futures — can be compensated for by actors. You lose interiority. You gain Ms. Streep's ability to separate an egg with a furious precision that communicates more about Clarissa's history and present state of mind than several pages of prose might do. You gain Ms. Moore's face when she looks at her son with an agonizing mix of adoration and terror, knowing she will harm him no matter what she does.

Actors, too, if they're this good, can introduce details you can't convey on paper, if only because by writing them down you'd render them too obvious. Actors have the incidental at their disposal. Ms. Streep's Clarissa is stunningly complex, in part because she creates a whole person out of movements, expressions and inflections. When she says to Louis (Mr. Daniels), an old friend who's dropped in unexpectedly, "But I never see you," the line has a sing-song quality. It rises steadily to the word "see," then drops to the "you." It is offhand and girlish, venomous, haggard. And when she finally begins to lose her desperate composure there's a moment — a half-moment, you miss it if you blink — when she literally loses her balance, tips over to the left, and immediately rights herself. If there's a way to do things like that on paper, I haven't found it.

PROMINENT, too, among the movie's many satisfactions is Ms. Kidman's facility for conveying Woolf's immense charm and her unsettled mind with equal perfection. Woolf is often depicted as the dark lady of English letters, a spectral figure who glowers at us from the shady realm where genius and insanity meet. She did in fact suffer fits of profound depression, and she did end her life at 59, by putting a stone in the pocket of her coat and walking into a river. She also, however, wrote more directly and exquisitely than any writer I could name about the pure, simple joy of being alive. That's why I love her so. No one could have been better acquainted with the dangers and demons of the world, and yet part of what she left us were novels that speak, on nearly every page, to the delirious, all but overwhelming pleasures of living. Her love of life was hard-won, and utterly unsentimental. It survived her despair. Hers is an optimism we can trust.

I was thrilled, then, to see how thoroughly Ms. Kidman knew that, and how apparently effortlessly she managed to create a Woolf who was difficult, thorny and frighteningly fragile but was, at the same time, always the most compelling person in the room, funny and incisive, a woman so fiercely engaged by life that she's all but bursting from her contact with it.

And so I find myself in an enviable if slightly embarrassing position as one of the only living American novelist happy about his experience with Hollywood. These actors are not who I imagined when I wrote the book, but I feel as if they are reincarnations of people I've known intimately. It's as if people dear to me had died, and I find myself meeting them afterward, in other bodies, and simply knowing, from their gestures and their eyes, from some ineluctable familiarity, that these are they, returned.

There is this, too. My mother died a year ago last October, fairly suddenly, from cancer. I was with her in Los Angeles. She is not Laura Brown, Laura Brown is Laura Brown and my mother was my mother, but one uses what one knows. I worked some of my mother's qualities into Laura's character, and was guided by a certain sense of my mother's essence as I wrote the novel. As my mother began to seriously decline, I called Scott Rudin, the producer of "The Hours," and told him I didn't think my mother would get to see the finished film but I'd like to be able to show her something, anything. Scott arranged for a messenger to come to my parents' house from the Paramount studios with 20 minutes' worth of scenes on videotape. I found myself sitting on the sofa we'd had since I was an adolescent, holding the hand of my mother who would die within two weeks, and watching Julianne Moore play someone like my mother, someone who could not have existed if my mother hadn't existed. It was as if my mother were being reincarnated while she was still alive. It's no wonder we love the movies as much as we do.


Michael Cunningham's 1998 novel, "The Hours," won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

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...On The State of American Directors today...

THE YEAR IN MOVIES
A Coming of Age for the Next Generation
By A. O. SCOTT


To look back over the best movies of any year is at once to indulge in some fond, short-term nostalgia and also to engage in some tentative prophecy.

The critic's top-10 list is both a summing up of preferences and an attempt to intuit — even, with all due modesty, to influence — which films will still be talked about in years to come. This year the quality was such that I would not be too sorry to be proven wrong. At least 10 more wonderful movies — perhaps twice that many — lurk not so much beneath my list as alongside it, as though in a parallel universe.

And so I'm reluctant to summarize a year that still seems so strange and splendid; I'd rather relive it, to encounter once more the enchantment of seeing "Talk to Her" or "The Fast Runner" for the first time or the amazement of finding "Punch-Drunk Love" and "The Pianist" respectively more intoxicating and more overpowering on second viewings. But two related developments seem worth noting. Or perhaps it is just one development: the simultaneous flowering of a middle and a senior generation of world-class filmmakers.

One of the difficulties of being a young filmmaker must be when — or how — to stop being one. As the American indie wave of the 90's ebbed, it began to seem as if the insouciant energies of youth were ossifying into a state of permanent callowness. How many more comedies of commitment-phobia and urban anomie, how much more tongue-in-cheek, "ironic" brutality, would we have to endure? How many more breathless rediscoveries of the jump cut and the hand-held camera? When would the new generation overcome its hobbling sense of belatedness, of being perpetually in the shadows of the aging young lions of the old New Hollywood?

But then, in the last year or so, a cohort of directors and writers who had emerged with great (if sometimes unsung) promise over the last decade suddenly blossomed into maturity, without squandering the inventiveness that had been the source of their promise. Among the best movies of 2002 are a cluster of second, third and fourth features that, for all their differences, may herald the arrival of a new mainstream of ambitious, accessible filmmaking. A partial list would include Alexander Payne's "About Schmidt," Todd Haynes's "Far From Heaven," P. T. Anderson's "Punch-Drunk Love," Miguel Arteta's "Good Girl," Spike Jonze's "Adaptation" and Todd Solondz's "Storytelling."

These directors, all in their early 30's to mid 40's, share a generational trait of self-consciousness, but they seem to have overcome that smirky glibness that so often accompanies it. Their films are impressively, even dauntingly smart, but also, to a surprising degree, earnestly and deeply felt.

This is not only an American phenomenon; you find a similar fusion of intelligence and feeling in Mira Nair's "Monsoon Wedding" and Alfonso Cuáron's "Y Tu Mamá También." And this generation's master — its big brother or godfather — may well be Pedro Almodóvar, 51, who started out as a provocative rebel and whose latest film, "Talk to Her," was the best of the year.

But the old guard — who were themselves, of course, once members of the vanguard — has hardly faded away. Martin Scorsese released "Gangs of New York," his strongest film in a decade; Roman Polanski topped anything he has done in the last quarter century with "The Pianist"; and Steven Spielberg — putting out two of his best movies in a single year ("Minority Report" and "Catch Me if You Can") — continued to breathe new life into our battered faith in movies as the exemplary popular art form.

A few years ago, the centennial of cinema provoked elegies as well as celebration. Yes, the movies had a glorious past, but their future glory seemed to be in doubt. And now it has, astonishingly, arrived.

A New York Times article
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New York Times article on the state of indie films at Sundance

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 15 — Times are always tough in the indie world, and by all accounts they are particularly tough on the eve of this year's Sundance Film Festival, which opens Thursday night with a gala in Salt Lake City before moving up to Park City, Utah, for its remaining nine days.

Keith Gordon, whose latest film, "The Singing Detective," will be the opening night film in Park City, has yet to find a United States distributor for it. He wonders whether the film, based on Dennis Potter's groundbreaking British television mini-series from 1986, would generate anything like the bidding wars that have sometimes transformed Sundance into the buzz capital of the movie world.

"We decided that rather than shopping the movie around, we'd hold it back and really unveil it at Sundance," Mr. Gordon said. "Now, we'll see what happens."

Though Sundance continues to be the most important platform for American independent film and the one place where the entire indie world comes together to make deals and to take stock, there is a widespread sense that the market for independent film financing is depressed.

In interviews with more than a dozen filmmakers, producers and indie-film distributors in recent days, it became clear that the decline of the United States economy, the disappearance of much German financing and the near collapse of once-lucrative pay-television deals in Europe (and to a lesser extent in Asia) have forced filmmakers to seek new ways to finance and distribute their work.

Ed Solomon, a well-regarded screenwriter, whose first feature as a director, "Levity," will be featured at Thursday night's gala in Salt Lake City, described the six-year struggle to make the film, a drama about an ex-convict's uneasy return to society. "I went through that humiliating thing of calling friends of people who were related to people who had money," he said. "At one point, if the film hadn't happened, I'd have been forced to sell my house."

Even after Billy Bob Thornton agreed to play the lead role, and stars like Morgan Freeman and Holly Hunter joined the cast, it took Mr. Solomon another year to raise the cash. "In the end I had to be willing to make the movie for so little money that it was mathematically impossible for the financiers to lose their investment," he said. "That was the only way to get it done. And I wanted to get it done so badly that I was happy to do it."

Mr. Gordon did not have that kind of trouble with "Singing Detective." Though he had to shoot it on an extremely tight budget, by the time he came to the project, it was fully financed by Mel Gibson's production company, Icon, and had Robert Downey Jr. as its star and Mr. Gibson in a supporting role (as a bald, slouching, nearsighted psychiatrist).

But there is no question that filmmakers and stars are being forced to shoulder even more of the risk if they want to get their films made.

"It's a good thing for us," said John Schmidt, co-founder of ContentFilm, an indie production company. "It forces directors and producers to think more like entrepreneurs, to be creative about how they can shoot something at a certain budget and to attract stars willing to participate in the economics of the picture rather than taking their fees up front."

This has led some to explore new ways to finance and distribute independent films. Larry Meistrich, a founder of the defunct Shooting Gallery production company, has formed Film Movement, which mixes theatrical releases of its indie films in major cities, where they are likely to find an audience, with simultaneous DVD releases elsewhere. Civilian Pictures is considering an arrangement in which investors would buy stock in individual films much as they do in companies.

Geoffrey Gilmore, the festival's director, said he had heard the dire predictions from some that the money crunch would cause the number of films entered in the festival to dwindle. But thus far, he said, that has not happened. "We did have more entries arrive later than usual this year, partly, I think, because they didn't get their production money in time," Mr. Gilmore said. "There's no question that it's tough out there. But I think the result may be stronger movies. More of the films we're seeing are the products of a real personal passion rather than driven by commercial considerations."

In other words, when the dot-com and the pay-television millions were flowing in the 1990's, and filmmakers found it easier to raise cash, a lot of movies were inexpensive imitations of Hollywood genre pictures, intended to bring fledgling directors to the attention of the mainstream studios.

"We're not seeing many of those genre pictures anymore," Mr. Gilmore said. Tough times have weeded out all but the most passionate.

And despite the hard times, there is no shortage of aspiring filmmakers. The festival had 832 dramatic features submitted this year, Mr. Gilmore said, compared with 750 last year. Even more surprising, he said, the number of short films submitted jumped to 3,400 from 2,100 last year.

One result is that many more of the films are being shot with digital cameras, making them cheaper for a number of reasons, but mostly because there are no film costs. The number of digital dramatic features entered went to 537 from 440 last year, Mr. Gilmore said.

Predictions differ about how robust the acquisitions market will be at this year's festival. Last year Miramax jump-started the event by paying $5 million at the end of a brisk bidding war for the comedy "Tadpole," which went on to a disappointing theatrical release. In all, 26 films from last year's festival landed American distributors.

But this year many distribution executives — like Amir Malin, chief executive of Artisan Entertainment, and Jon Feltheimer of Lions Gate — say they see only a handful of movies at Sundance that interest them.

Bob Berney, president of Newmarket Films, said: "My sense regarding the market is that this doesn't seem to be a bidding war sort of year given the economics. But you never know."

Some of this talk is due to the annual stare-down that takes place between distributors and filmmakers in the days leading up to Sundance. Distributors always claim that the market is terrible, while filmmakers and their representatives claim a robust crop of potential money makers will be introduced and fought over.

John Sloss, one of the most active filmmaker representatives at Sundance, said he discounted the poor-mouthing from distributors who, after all, need films to distribute.

"If you look at the supply and demand, the demand is absolutely there," he said. "The last year was the most robust I can remember for specialized films. You would think that would translate very fluidly into more resources for financing, but so far there has been a sort of disconnect."

The issue, Mr. Malin said, is that for every indie hit there are dozens of films that barely register at the increasingly competitive art-house box office.

There will be 16 feature films in competition at this year's Sundance, from "The Cooler," with William M. Macy as an unlucky gambler, to "American Splendor," starring Paul Giamatti as a depressed comic-book author, and "Pieces of April," with Katie Holmes enduring the Thanksgiving dinner from hell.

Add to that 16 documentaries in competition, 26 world cinema offerings, a new section featuring 9 foreign documentaries and, out of competition, 17 features in the American Showcase series and 18 other premieres, and there will be plenty to fill up more than a dozen cinemas and makeshift screening rooms at the festival.

Mr. Gordon said that he was hoping to enjoy the experience and that he remained convinced that despite appearances independent film remains a potent force.

The arrival of a film like "Singing Detective" might indicate a lack of originality in the indie world. Are indie filmmakers now bowdlerizing foreign works much as American television networks and Hollywood studios have done? Not if you look below the surface.

Dennis Potter, who died in 1994, created this grimly comic story of a man plagued with debilitating psoriasis who escapes his torment by fantasizing about a film noir world in which he is a private eye. He also had the ideas to update the fantasy sequences from the florid 1940's to the grittier 50's and to transfer his detective from Britain to America.

"I'm just concentrating on the movie and letting the people at Icon worry about getting a U.S. distributor and the rest of it," Mr. Gordon said. "There's no question that this is a grim time for money in the independent film world. But I'm confident it's all going to work out."

At least one filmmaker, Larry Charles, has less to worry about going into Park City. His film, "Masked and Anonymous," with a cast including Bob Dylan, Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Jessica Lange and Penelope Cruz, was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics on Tuesday.

"Selling the movie has never been an issue for me," said Mr. Charles, probably best known for his work on "Curb Your Enthusiasm," the HBO comedy series. "Bob Dylan told me a long time ago, don't look at the short term when it comes to this movie."

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