This is long, but worth reading.

FRANK PIERSON’S COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS TO THE 2003 USC FILM SCHOOL GRADUATES

Frank Pierson is a writer/director. He is presently president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and formerly the president of the Writers Guild of America, West. He has directed a Star is Born, Citizen Cohn, Conspiracy, and most recently the critically acclaimed Soldier’s Girl which is playing on Showtime. His writing credits include Cat Ballou, Cool Hand Luke and the Oscar winning Dog Day Afternoon.

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I’ve been around a long time. As I look out at all of you graduating today, I think back to my graduations. All the kids in my graduating class from elementary school are dead.

All the people in my junior high school graduation are dead.

All the people in my high school graduation are dead.

The people I graduated from college with are all mostly dead.

Are you all feeling okay?

You will soon be the Hollywood of tomorrow, and I’m here to give you a little taste of the past. And my sense of the future you face.

Hollywood was once a small company town, where everybody knew everybody, and if you dropped your pants at a party or punched a reporter or danced with a prostitute in the parking lot, it wasn’t on Entertainment Tonight-tonight. It was even hard to get arrested. Every studio had a publicity department which paid the Los Angeles cops to stay away from show business people. The police didn’t arrest movie people. They drove them home.

We all went down to the film factories every day-at Warner Brothers even actors, directors and writers punched a time clock until the mid forties. We ate in the studio commissary, where the writers’ table was preferred seating because the jokes were better there. If the New York writers were in town, slumming, sneering at the movies and cashing big fat paychecks you found yourself sitting next to Dorothy Parker or F. Scott Fitzgerald. You could wander off to a sound stage and watch John Huston or Willy Wyler shooting a scene with Bogart or Hepburn or Peck. No security. We all knew each other.

It was up close, and personal.
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Season three of 24 picks up TWO AND A HALF YEARS after the end of season two. Why that’s enough time for them to replace Palmer’s damaged bits with cybernetic implants, and obviously the storyline will have him cutting a swath of destruction across Los Angeles as he hunts down those who did this to him. Jack will have to hunt him down and stop him. Just wait and see.

Complain about them as I might, the fact that Pitchfork is on hiatus until August 1 makes me all anxious. I will have to find more music news sources to fill up my mornings.

Nude As The News offers up some reviews on the Uncle Tupelo reissues.

My four-and-a-half day weekend starts NOW.

Uh, any ideas what I should do?

np – American Analog Set / From Our Living Room To Yours

Yet another contender for festivals I wanna go to but in all likelihood won’t… Austin City Limits. Check out that lineup. Buck nutty.

Happy birthday to both the Claytron-ator and Miss Lone Tree. They have the same birthday! That’s so cute.

np – Pavement / Westing (By Musket And Sextant)

It’s not too forward to declare tonight’s American Analog Set show the biggest surprise of the year. I’d always considered myself no more than a casual fan – I had a couple albums and played them when the mood struck, but I had missed them live a couple times already and wasn’t terribly upset about it. Well we can ratchet up the fan-boy quotient a few more notches. AmAnSet live lay down some unbelievably tight and catchy grooves – even the indie kid will dance. Their hour-long set was so well-received by the crowd that the stunned band had no choice but to come back for a one-song encore, apparently not something they ever do.

Further proof that Toronto loves the AmAnSet was found in the feeding frenzy that ensued when the band brought their merchandise out for sale – like locusts, we bought out all of their t-shirts and copies of the new album, Promise Of Love, in no time flat (yours truly getting the second last copy, Miss Askew getting the last. Hordes more fans not as quick on the draw had to settle for copies of their older albums, and I don’t doubt that most of those would have been gone before all was said and done. To say that they were utterly stunned by the enthusiasm of the crowd would be a grand understatement. I think it’s safe to say that AmAnSet will be coming back to Toronto sooner rather than later, and they’ll be bringing much more swag. I will post pictures from the show soon.

UPDATE: Photos are now up – see them here.

Marty Crandall of The Shins is a lucky man. His girlfriend Elyse is a finalist on UPN’s America’s Next Top Model show.

Finding used copies of the still-a-fortnight-away-from-being-released new Postal Service The District Sleeps Alone Tonight EP (can you expect to see the cover of The Flaming Lips’ “Suddenly Everything Has Changed” soon? Magic 8-ball says ‘probably’) and the Future Bible Heroes’ Eternal Youth makes me happy. Finally getting my Benjamin Gibbard & Andrew Kenny album in the mail also helped. AmAnSet show tonight! It’s sold out, I’m very surprised by that. I have underestimated their popularity in these parts.

You know you have too many CDs when… I just discovered I own a copy of The Magnetic Fields’ Holiday. I had no idea. I don’t remember buying this. Oh wait, it was Boxing Day last year. That’s right. But still, I had completely forgotten. Sheesh.

Artwork on the Postal Service EPs is done by art team Kozyndan. Their stuff is terrific, go look.

An excellently scathing article about the lack of cajones in the US media during the Iraq War.

np – Benjamin Gibbard & Andrew Kenny / Home : Vol 5