Category Archives: Arts & Humanities

Arts & Humanities

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#WGAStrong: Why Readers Should Care About the Writers Strike

#WGAStrong: Why Readers Should Care About the Writers Strike

By Susie Dumond Aug 8, 2023

On Thursday, short of a surprising announcement, the Writers Guild of America’s strike will reach its 100th day. That’s over three months that screenwriters have spent picketing the major studios for fair pay, improved working conditions, regulations on use of artificial intelligence (AI), and more.

The writer’s strike, combined with the SAG-AFTRA actors strike, has brought the vast majority of TV and film projects to a halt. “Who cares?” I hear some of you curmudgeonly readers saying. “I don’t need TV and movies. I’ve got books.” Actually, there’s more at stake in this strike than when fall TV shows will return. Below is a guide to the strike for book lovers, including why it might impact publishing and authors, and information on how to support the striking writers.

The Basics of the WGA Strike

After weeks of unfruitful negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) on the Minimum Basic Agreement for writers, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) declared a strike on May 2, 2023. WGA members and non-members are instructed to cease any and all writing projects with member studios of the AMPTP, including powerhouse producers like Sony, Universal, Paramount, Disney, and Warner Bros., as well as any other studios that participate in the Minimum Basic Agreement.

As the strike approaches the 100-day mark, no clear progress has been made on finding agreeable terms. Representatives of the WGA negotiating committee met with AMPTP president Carol Lombardini on Friday, August 4, in a confidential sidebar to discuss resuming negotiations. Before the meeting even occurred, however, the WGA sent a message to its members about the AMPTP’s “calculated misinformation” about the meeting.

Source: https://bookriot.com/why-readers-should-care-about-the-writers-strike/

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Food & Drink, Love & Relationships, Memories & History

How Plants Helped Colette Satisfy an Insatiable Desire

Damon Young on Colette’s Life in the Garden

By Damon Young, April 13, 2020

How Plants Helped Colette Satisfy an Insatiable Desire

Source: https://lithub.com/how-plants-helped-colette-satisfy-an-insatiable-desire/

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Film & Movies, Television, Times They Are A-Changing

Hollywood was built on the work of underappreciated writers. Just ask Chandler, Faulkner and Fitzgerald

By Stacy Perman, Staff Writer  May 8, 2023 5 AM PT

(Jim Cooke / Los Angeles Times; photo via Getty Images)

In 1945, barely two years into Raymond Chandler’s career as a screenwriter, the man whose hard-boiled fiction did much to make film noir into an art form had already wearied of the town and its treatment of writers.“Hollywood is a showman’s paradise. But showmen make nothing; they exploit what someone else has made,” he wrote in an acerbic essay published in the Atlantic.

In barbed zinger after zinger, the man who gave us private investigator Philip Marlowe described Hollywood as a cauldron of “egos,” “credit stealing” and “self-promotion” where scribes were ruthlessly neglected, marginalized and stripped of respect; toiling at the mercy of producers, some of whom, he wrote, had “the artistic integrity of slot machines and the manners of a floorwalker with delusions of grandeur.”

Editor’s Note: Read more, see link below for original item…

Source: Hollywood was built on unappreciated and undervalued writers – Los Angeles Times

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Memories & History, Science & Health

Philip K. Dick predicted ChatGPT and its grim ramifications

Dick’s novel “The Penultimate Truth” already showed us how AI that writes according to prompt can be corrupted

By David Gill, Published June 10, 2023 10:59AM (EDT)

Robotic hand pressing a key on a laptop (Getty Images/Guillaume)

Philip K. Dick had some strange ideas about the future. In his 40-plus novels and 121 short stories, the science fiction author imagined everything from “mood organs” which allow users to dial up an emotional state including “the desire to watch TV, no matter what’s on” to pay-per-use doors that refuse entrance or exit without sufficient coinage.

Characters in Dick’s mind-bending novel “Ubik” (published in 1969 and set in 1992) include a psionic talent scout named G.G. Ashwood, who wears “natty birch-bark pantaloons, hemp-rope belt, peekaboo see-through top and train engineer’s tall hat” and a taxi driver wearing “fuchsia pedal pushers, pink yak fur slippers, a snakeskin sleeveless blouse, and a ribbon in his waist-length dyed white hair.”

Source: https://www.salon.com/2023/06/10/philip-k-dick-predicted-chatgpt/

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Libraries, Politics

Salman Rushdie says ‘attack on books’ in Florida ‘has never been more dangerous’

By Melissa Alonso and Jackson Grigsby, CNN, Published 3:51 AM EDT, Fri May 19, 2023

Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for PEN America
Honoree Salman Rushdie speaks on stage at the 2023 PEN America Literary Gala at American Museum of Natural History on May 18, 2023 in New York City.

Less than a year after an attempt on his life, author Salman Rushdie made a rare public appearance at an awards ceremony Thursday to warn of the dangers of banning books and of related movements in the US to roll back freedoms of expression.

“The attack on books, the attack on teaching, the attack on libraries, in – how can I put this – Florida, has never been more dangerous, never been more important to fight,” he said.

Rushdie spoke at the PEN America Gala in New York City, praising the literary and free speech advocacy group for its latest efforts to block politicians and local officials seeking to ban literature concerning race and gender identity.

PEN America, along with book publisher Penguin Random House and several parents and authors, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday challenging Florida’s Escambia County school district’s removal of certain books on race and LGBTQ issues from school libraries.

Source: Salman Rushdie says ‘attack on books’ in Florida ‘has never been more dangerous’ | CNN

Arts & Humanities, Current Affairs, Film & Movies, Libraries, Memories & History

From the National Film Registry: “Easy Rider” (1969)

Posted by: Cary O’Dell, May 17, 2023

“Easy Rider” (1969)

Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, drugs, hippies, the open road, protests, long–hair, nonconformity, backlash.

“Easy Rider” picked up the beat of the 1960s at the end of that turbulent decade. It also fueled a developing urge to make personal films that could be done on budgets low enough to deal with subjects of little or no interest to conventional Hollywood.

The French New Wave already had its influence, and now it was the turn of American filmmakers. True, a major Hollywood company, Columbia, released “Easy Rider,” but the deal was struck only after the independent venture had been completed.

Independent filmmakers in succeeding decades owe a debt to “Easy Rider” as one of several 1960s films that inspired others to work outside the mainstream.

Source: From the National Film Registry: “Easy Rider” (1969) | Now See Hear!