VicariousE 2017-08-10 03:59:05 (Updated 2017-08-10 15:13:32)

Used to be a time when newspapers were all we had, and since the eastern European hit man in question died soon after he fell out of the helicopter, it was a free (intellectual) property for a screenwriter to compose and market.

Can tell you this though, there's no money in it for newspapers to go back and transcribe old news from microfiche to digital print. Believe me, growing up with 1980's TV was so bad, I looked forward to reading our crappy local paper, for obscure news abroad. I even asked my relatives and they said it was a minor blip on the Cali TV news, then gone. It was a quick spectacle on the new helicopter traffic cam, some info from the local paper, a few follow ups, then... he died, end of story.

Even then, you wouldn't believe how many nuggets of reality got overlooked, take this for a modern example... http://wehotimes.com/sex-politics-meth-death-west-hollywood/

LA is much better at living crazy, than writing crazy films.

Bonus: 2 examples of expired copyrighted books being turned into cartoons. The first is based on a translated series of stories from China, just before Wells got popular (my teacher noted there was no copyright at all). The second is based on a book... with a lengthy title, that ended with "Liberty's Kids", a post-Revolutionary salad bar of stories, written by a few guys and a woman under an alias.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0386993/?ref_=nv_sr_5
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0337550/?ref_=nv_sr_1

VicariousE 2017-08-11 00:11:48

I'm 44 y/o and what happened (and read) as a child is still memorable, but the linear (exact year, month) kinda becomes a blur, gets non-linear. Accuracy diminishes over time.. early to mid 1980's maybe as late as 1986, I started HS in '87.... sucks man, can only guess this mini rampage happened between 78-87.

Michael Mann Miami Vice, Police Story (IDK, the one set in 50's Vegas) and the others you listed were the jewels in the shit pile. Guess for most ppl my age, the sit-coms and ever growing PC culture, and the usual mix of bad premises and bad direction/casting preeeety much was the norm not the exception. Tried following Dallas (barf), Smurfs (blue barf, but no choice, def for kids, not much for YA viewing)

If broadcast was so good, why did we lunge towards cable TV? Not just for Skin-e-max and HBO soft core, but independent and hollywood movies. Network broadcast was funding a winner of the day, and the rest of the productions got a meager slice, and they did not want to pay the older production companies for quality content, so they schlocked together what their ad and consumer research ppl told them, what sells.

As someone, who in later years, worked for (established) consumer research, can say without a doubt, it was crap. Small samplings and misleading questions can produce shit content... but who cares? Expense account lunches all around!!1 The rich have always thrown good gold to bronze hearted soothsayers, for a glimpse through the keyhole of success (and stockholder opium, post processed for political correctness).

VicariousE 2017-08-11 08:05:34

Oh on that BBS thing? Not surprised homie, kinda picks up where I left off with my response to Zero256: the questions to the sheep were a little extreme, I rarely answered in the extremes, just yea, nah. Had a nice spread of questions, just dunno... psycho-linguistics have gotten rly refined lately, gives me an ever bigger headache.

Speaking of which, wow, the best site I've never heard of: http://statement-analysis.blogspot.com/
Teh fuggin waaaat?!!1 So good, I bookmarked it to my News/Weather folder, as he picks apart public statements, let the body of words hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor.
Deals with what police do daily: cut the shit, get to the truth of a statement. Reading his analysis on Christie's bridgegate and beach vaca is gonna be my treat after dinner tonight.....

VicariousE 2017-08-13 13:58:00

I liked Good Times over the Jeffersons... All in the Family, sorta, a new Carol Burnett show episode would be better. The Muppet Show got iffy towards the end of its run, same w/ Dukes of Hazzard. My Pop was a Polish Archie Bunker, so... that was like a reality TV show for my Ma and I to watch, Pop grudgingly watched as well.

Cheers, fine, loved it (sometimes you could taste the ink of the script thru the performances: some recycled subjects), not so much with the chick they bought in later, but still palatable. MASH was my go-to, along w/ Star Trek:TOS, first season or two of MASH and ST:TNG were cringy to watch, but got immensely better, as time and cast got the flow down.

Never heard of anime back then, just cheapie Hanna-Barbera, Rankin Bass, the usual MGM/Warner stuffs, what little was imported was the inking and such from south korea or japan (after their prices got too high)

Gonna make a new newspost soon, some vids and pics.
I got a buddy my same age in the Philippines, just did a music video for no budget, fucking loved it, flawless and simple. He used 3 different lenses on a remote cam, I'm so rusty anymore, didn't even notice.

There's times I miss producing, like, when there was good money involved, and I could throw more at the sets and cast, than post-producing on Avid in a video sweet at 170$ an hour :| I miss the old economy more than I do producing though...

VicariousE 2017-08-14 02:31:00

A lot of old time things are becoming endangered in the Information Age.

I had a friend who bought a local video rental place before the bottom totally dropped out, and the previous owners had sacked a good fifth of the most sought after titles (and deleted their entries from the database). After the store closed, I was given a majority of the surviving VHS's, and all the stored slipcovers, both flattened and the styrofoam filled/clear packaged/numbered display cases.

Spent most of the winter matching up tapes to cases, took up a rather large room to do it. Guessing I have around 400 or more 20th century movies. Some of them were really well recorded, and on a 6 head VHS player, would be pretty damn close to DVD quality on playback.

I doubt it, but you might like a flick called, "Be Kind, Rewind" set in urban NJ, has it's moments... Kinda prefer "The Station Agent", as a modern in-NJ-flick... that small dude from GoT had his big break in that flick, also got to snog Michelle Williams

VicariousE 2017-08-20 12:42:00

You mean 'Be Kinda, Rewind'? Guess it's not so funny, but it impressed me so little at the time, I tagged it GIGO... let into go to the incinerator in the 'memory warehouse' (Dreamcatcher).

Ooh so you like Clerks eh? I softened my view of that fat ill dressed geeklord of the barely adequate... fellow producer interviewed him a few times last century, and while a good deal of water has run under all our bridges since then... OK we traded some cryptic texts, think we're on the same warped wavelength. He's out here on vacation, hasn't changed much in 17 years, I'll make him speak after lunch this Thursday woofwoofwoof (Kelly's Heroes)

VicariousE 2017-08-21 03:34:48

Smith and I more or less started working on our first movies at the same time, only he had family to borrow cash from, and student film stock, college drama students/family. I had a crappy VHS camera and a decent script, not much else, was to be a proof of concept thing I could market around.

Only so much you can do as an independent producer and director, gotta go in as strong as possible AND with extra cast/stand ins, because Murphy's Law reigns :p

VicariousE 2017-08-28 02:37:11

Oh, sry. Didn't make lunch or dinner with him before he went into the city (lower Manhattan) w/ his family for their final 3 days on the east coast.

I've got a copy of Tusk, gonna have to watch it sooner or later.

VicariousE 2017-09-01 09:13:15

Puh I've gotten so lazy, haven't even done VA stuffs. I keep letting the outside semi-feral cats keep me in the house, and my mic and laptop are in the outside garage, which I can only use at night, thanks to the ever breeding suburbanites infesting my childhood homeland.

If I was under 30, didn't have a book and record collection, I'd be defecting from Murica too.
But yeah, look into it seriously, not every country's the same, but the States are going to have a lil revolution soon, that much is obvious. Not a people's civil war, but a fat-cats war, with us citizens in the middle. Doubt it will last long. Also doubt it will resolve anything other than keeping the citizenry under heel.

VicariousE 2017-09-03 08:43:10

We all got baggage, and the older you get, the more of it you got.

Might be worth 'getting out while you're young', depends on how much you can save by moving, and it's hard to know that before you left. Most of the time folks will travel to find a good job (one where you can get raise, after you become indispensable), then scramble to find a cheap flop.

The hardest trick, to me, is walking out the front door, masquerading as an extrovert, but it's the only way to kick things down the road, as it were....

VicariousE 2017-09-09 08:14:51

Once you can get your heart wrapped around something that earns you a bit of coin, you'll do fine.
Best jobs I had, never needed to set my alarm clock.

VicariousE 2017-09-23 03:13:28

Youre right the grass aint greener anywhere, but when the costs of owning parts of the landscape increase, it becomes a money issue, aesthetics be damned, sadly

VicariousE 2017-09-27 11:45:45

Feel like crap, only so much hell raising I can do any more lol, still trying to avert my gaze to the horizon, and not the crap (bills, health, mindless drones) I have to tip toe around once I walk outside my door.

VicariousE 2017-09-29 23:03:43

._. Well hello to you Brandon, I do miss your company. It's funny but there's very few women who clean for a living I'd like to be around, but guys who clean? Best sort, right next to farmers as far as good company. Sure hope some positive things have been happening in your universe. Heard about the property tax increase ._.