Coming Soon: Skye's TV Series Writing Workshop

Why I Don't Write Film/TV Critiques or Reviews

So why don’t you write film and TV critiques, Skye?  You’ve sold screenplays. You’ve sold TV scripts.  You’ve written documentaries and even a safe sex video game.

You teach writing for narrative film and TV series. You used to be a full time journalist and still write opinion pieces for various newspapers.   

You clearly have a journalistic voice, an audience, and newspaper friends in high and low places.

How can you stay silent on films such as Skyfall when the world is talking about the effects of media violence on viewers?  Why won’t you speak up on the subject of Django Unchained and the status of African Americans in this country?

And when it comes to the military, one would think you’d have reasoned opinions.  You lived in a military city for several years.  You learned how to parachute from retired Vietnam Vets .  And you know what it takes to produce a series like Homeland or a film like Zero Dark Thirty.

Does your tongue need to be unchained?

For me, the reason is simple.  It may not fit in with our new world view in which everyone feels free to be a pundit on every subject under the sun and some not.

But, for me, there are ethical lines that I do not cross.

Years ago, I interviewed Ben Affleck for a Boston Globe feature article I wrote on Greenlight.  Now, I was pitching and writing scripts at the time.  But, interviewing Ben as a journalist meant that I could not approach him as a screenwriter.

What if I had and he had purchased a script of mine?  A Boston Globe reader might complain that I only wrote the article to get in good with him and his partner. 

I honestly think Promised Land is the most overlooked film when it comes to the Oscars, Golden Globes, SAG awards.  But, if I wrote the whys and wherefores in a column, the administrators of those guilds or the producers of winning films might claim that I was biased.   

Not only had I interviewed Ben.  I once had a friendly exchange with Matt about Good Will Hunting on a balcony of a Hollywood hotel.  I grew up in Boston. And OMG, I once had a lengthy exchange about novel writing with Dennis Lehane and am part of the search for his lost dog Tessa.

There are all sorts of biases one can throw against me.

Just last week, I attended a conference on media images. Several people  immediately asked if I was writing an article on what the speakers said about particular films and their negative images.

No, No, and No. 

I’m a producer-writer-professor.   So, I teach and practice what I preach.

Yes, I believe that I can be objective if I were to write film critiques.  And if I did that for a living, I would take the proper safeguards to protect the media I wrote for from ever being accused of biases.

But, for now, I don’t cross the lines.  Producers and companies that I’m pitching my pilots and screenplays to should not have to worry that if they reject me, that I’m going to write a blistering article about their next production. 

I should not have to wonder whether a producer is meeting me because he or she truly liked my work or liked what I said about theirs.

There was a published article by me about the film The Help.  But, it was not a critique.  It was simply an opinion piece about the pride I felt in seeing a film about a person who reflected my mom, my aunts, and a generation of women who raised me.

Sometimes it does seem as if this is a user and abuser world.  “Friends” Facebook you to get to other Facebook friends that they really want to contact.

I’ve even been interviewed for jobs because one of my references is the famed filmmaker Charles Burnett and the potential employers really wanted an excuse to talk to Charles one-on-one.

But, I don’t have to buy into it.  And I’m not unique in that aspect. 

Hollywood has its problems.  Entertainment has its pitfalls.  But, there are some really great humanistic people in the world of entertainment.  I would not have achieved all that I had without them.

After I became a member of the WGA, I met Helen and Al Levitt.  They were in their elder years, but still on their feet and still fighting for the rights of writers.  In case their names don't ring a bell, they were two of many who stood up against McCarthyism...had to write under fake names to survive, and lost out on many rewards they deserved careers in the bloodbath.  

Helen ran a free writers workshop out of her home for minorities.  I, the late Daryl Nickens and Moesha creators Sara Finney and Vida Spears came out of that workshop.

There are so many other writers with hearts that cannot be dampened.  Craig Wright. Charles Burnett.  Kevin Droney.  Robert Townsend.  Bob Eisele.  Dennis Leoni. Neema Barnett. Coleman Luck. Carleton Eastlake.  The late T.S. Cook, whose film The China Syndrome deserves a second look in light of the fracking controversy.  People who I don't have time to name, people who stay true to similar beliefs and passed them onto me through mentorship, friendships and casual conversation.

Their characters count.  At least it did for me.

So, I choose to follow in their footsteps and maintain my humanistic and professional values, knowing that what I do choose to present of myself in the worlds of journalism and entertainment is more than enough.

Not Just Another Acronym

Took another step in my goal of being the best damn writer-producer-professor prepared for a disaster.

Already had CERT training on both coasts, CPR training in three states, a Connecticut gun safety training certificate, and a California Dept. of Justice Handgun Safety Certificate.

Today, I received my card for the OSHA General Industry Safety and Health training I took a few weeks ago.

Now, I can rescue you, disarm your weapon, bring you back to life, and make sure the building we seek refuge in won't kill us.

So, there!!!

How many black sci fi chicks do you know who can do all that?

Unwrapping The Candidates

http://fayobserver.com/articles/2012/12/21/1225357?sac=fo.opinion

The Fayetteville Observer  Published: 09:24 PM, Thu Dec 20, 2012

Unwrapping The Candidates

It's rare for anyone to leave a Christmas present unopened. Yet that's exactly what happened Tuesday. 

Twice.

Fayetteville City Manager Ted Voorhees presented two widely publicized opportunities to meet, question and converse with the two police chief finalists. But fewer than 100 people came to the meetings. That meant most Fayettevilleans missed two wonderful pre-Christmas gifts.

Malik Aziz, 44, a deputy police chief from Dallas, Texas, and Harold Medlock, 55, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg deputy chief.

I was a little skeptical about the timing. How much can one learn in an hour? It would take 15 minutes just for Voorhees and City Council folk to make speeches.

I was wrong. Voorhees spoke for two minutes. No politicians spoke. Audience members asked direct, short questions. Without hesitation, Aziz and Medlock answered every question tossed at them - even irrelevant inquiries about their personal lives (more about that later).

Their experience

Both deputy chiefs hold impressive histories of law enforcement covering several decades. Both are strong believers in community policing, with proof of participation on the tip of their tongues. Both have a can-do background and a we-can spirit.

Who am I to make such claims? I've been here just a few years. I'm still learning local politics. But I do know cops. I have relatives in law enforcement in Boston. I was a crime reporter for many years. And I worked crime scenes, mostly murders, with police officers when I was a member of the Los Angeles Police Department Crisis Response Team.

The team is a unique community policing organization, born of a need for someone who was not part of the crime-solving police unit to be on the scenes of murders, drive-bys or fatal accidents for the living victims. The CRT was made easier by the fact that we were volunteers, we had day jobs, and most violent crime happened at night - when we were all on call.

I've stood for hours in the street with a mom while police inside investigated how her son lost a game of Russian roulette. I've sat with officers as they worked unpaid double shifts because three children saw their mother slain in front of their eyes and, if we didn't find a relative by dawn, the kids would be split up and put in child-protective services. I once worked a dreadful scene in which two vans of high school graduates on their way to a party accidentally parked on a street owned by a notorious gang. Before the celebrants could exit the vehicles, seven were slaughtered.

Team members comfort, call relatives, cuddle infants, provide information, escort living victims through morgues to identify bodies. Once, we even helped hose down a walkway so the mother of a deceased youth would not have to step over blood going back into her home. We never knew what we would be asked to do. We never denied a request.

Fayetteville is so much smaller than Los Angeles that it may not need its own Crisis Response Team. But, community policing can be attuned to the particularities of any city. And these two men seemed knowledgeable and more than capable about how to achieve that, with, they stressed, the input and support of - you, guessed it, the community.

Did their homework

A sign of how quickly the two would respond quickly became evident. At the noon meeting, two of us voiced concerns about violence at one of the local universities. Somehow, in between a packed afternoon and before the 5 p.m. meeting, Aziz and Medlock had driven to and around the university, doing a quick exploration of how difficult or easy it was to gain entry.

In Wednesday's paper, reporter Andrew Barksdale gave a pretty detailed account of the two candidates' backgrounds and their answers to questions. I understand he will be writing more about these two personable, intelligent, oftentimes humorous men.

One local columnist did criticize Aziz for being more "reserved" than Medlock when answering a question from Councilman Keith Bates about their personal lives and his family life. Medlock said he had a wife of 30 years, Gloria. Aziz mentioned a 15-year-old daughter and a 20-year-old son without providing their names or much detail.

In this new Internet age, in which privacy is violated with a keystroke, what the columnist criticized as reserved, I took as a protective reticence against providing any information about his teenage daughter. One can assume Aziz has arrested one or two bad guys in his 20 years with the Dallas police. Should he be criticized for not wanting to spell out her name, school, future goals, etc., in the news media?

The Bates question itself seemed inappropriate. Does not having children mean that Medlock would not appreciate family values? Does not discussing your children in an Internet world, where sexual predators lie in wait behind computer screens, imply that Aziz doesn't have family values?

To me, one of the signs that either man will be great at the job is the relationship that developed during the brief time they spent together on Tuesday. The noon meeting was the first time they had spoken together and were hearing each other's opinions. By the 5 p.m. meeting, they were using each other's first names, complimenting each other, and remarking about the similarity in their approaches. They generously laughed at each other's punchlines, even though they had heard them at noon.

The problem now? Which gift to return. "Aziz & Medlock" may sound like the newest TNT cop drama duo. But, unfortunately, we don't get to keep both of them.

Skye Dent is is a member of the Observer's Community Advisory Board, which meets regularly with the editorial board to discuss local issues and contributes op-ed columns. She has worked as a newspaper reporter, a screenwriter and a journalism professor.

 

Do Newspaper Presidential Endorsements Count?

Do Newspaper Presidential Endorsement Count?

By Skye Dent

Newspapers.  Popular opinion would have you believe they‘re on their way to extinction.  If you’re under 30, you don’t read em.  30 to 60?  You’re working so many jobs, where’s the time?.  60 and up, your Social Security Check won’t stretch that far.

Yes, media literary has been incorporated into many middle school standards.  But, by the end of high school, many of these students are  I-Card carrying members of The Text Generation, a parallel universe where nouns and punctuation are as optional as bras were in the Sixties.

So, if Americans are not reading newspapers, do they even care about those more thoughtful pieces about Presidential candidates that include both information, provide opinions, and suggest who you should vote for in ways that range from pungent to provocative.

You know what I’m talking about.  Editorials endorsements.   

In recent weeks leading up to this week’s election, you’ve seen them on commercials, one-sheets advertisements,  fliers invading your mailbox like pesky mosquitoes.

We can tell by TV commercial ads that the candidate who got the particular endorsement thinks his voters are swayed more by celebrities than journalists.  The commercial starts.  Surging towards you is something akin to the intro legend to every Star Wars movie.   “Tampa Bay Times endorses President Obama.  Steady economic  progress. Sure-footed foreign policy.”  “The Orlando Sentinel backs Governor Romney.  Able, Tested Leader.”  

Clearly, the campaigns of both President Barack Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney believe that newspaper political endorsements count. 

Even if you don’t read the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, The Raleigh News and Observer, the Des Moine Register or the Fayetteville Observer, you know who they endorsed.

Well, kinda sorta.  Actually, the Fayetteville Observer(founded in 1816) historically gives opinions on issues, but not candidates.  On  any level.   Coming 13 years ago from a paper that did make endorsements, The Cape Cod Times, the FayOb’s editorial chief Tim White said he saw no reason to change history.

“It’s not a written policy,” White says, “It’s something that’s been handed down generation to generation.” 

I researched the subject and found that  an exception was made for Zebulon Baird Vance, a former Confederate military officer in the Civil War who won the North Carolina gubernatorial election in 1862 running on a platform promoting individual rights and local self-government.

White was unfamiliar with Vance, simply saying “When the ownership of the company says no, we’ve never endorse, that’s good enough for me.”

“Given the fact that many newspapers are getting out of the endorsement business and most research shows that endorsements have less effectiveness than ever, I don’t see us getting into it at this time.”

White believes that the times have finally caught up with The Observer.  With so much media being thrown at citizens by TV, Cable, Radio, and The Internet, he believes that the impact and influence of a newspaper editorial is severely diminished and, in many cases unwanted.

“With so many people getting their information from the internet,” says White, “I don’t think it would matter even if we did endorse. I’m not sure how much of a positive force it would have on the election.”

Newspapers, say some, should print…news.  Let us make up our own minds.

Although Orage Quarles III, the publisher of the Raleigh News & Observer certainly wants every individual to decide for his or herself, his position on endorsements is totally opposite to that of White’s.

“Newspapers,” Quarles says, “ are really  well -suited to provide endorsements because we have the ability to vet candidates, the ability to do research.”

“And most of all,  we have the ability to sit down face-to-face with candidates and understand their point of views.  For these reasons,  when we make an endorsement, it’s based on our belief that this is the best candidate for the position.”

My opinion merges the two.  Yes, we are swamped by news and information from newspapers, other news sources, and the media.  Not only more, but at a faster pace.

At 8:20 a.m. last week, I dashed to get coffee from my local BP, hoping to get back in time for the 8:30 a.m. announcement of the jobs growth.

 I walked in the door at 8:31.  Already the announcement of the 171,000 October jobs gain was being  sliced, diced, and interpreted by a CNN batch of experts.

Never the less, In my mind, being barraged by news and information 24/7 is exactly the reason why we need newspaper editorial endorsements.  They’re written by people who are trained to write and analyze the news.  To editorial boards, media literary is an inherent way of life, not a required grade school class.

So what if the internet era has pitched newspaper circulation into steady declined in the last decade. Naysayers point out that from almost 47 million per day in 2004 to barely 40 million in 2011, according to the Newspaper Association of America.  I say circulation has gone down only by seven million in the last seven years.  Seven million people who do care about newspapers have to say.

Add that to the huge numbers of people who read newspaper articles taken for free and given away for free by internet aggregators like Google.  And families like mine (I buy the hard copy.  Give it to my mom when I’m finished.  She gives it to my uncle Frankie when she’s finished.  And by late afternoon, I can hear him reading sections out on the porch to anyone who wants to listen.  Call it the first internet.)

In addition, traditional newspapers who have faced their fears and explored the new technology have found ways to monetize the internet.

“Print readership may be going down, but digital readership is going up. “ Quarles says.  “And the combination of the two has resulted in our total readership being  at an all-time high.  That’s why we feel very comfortable with letting people know where we stand politically.”

But, even with that, we’re told readers won’t read the editorials.  The space could be used for something readers want.  Readers will put their money someplace else.  It’s a marketing decision.  Money is tight.

To which I say, if you’re going to make all of your journalism decision based on monetary goals, you’re in the wrong business.  Newspapers were given freedom of the press so as to “inform the public so that it may govern.”  The public.  That’s you.

We’ve already seen situations in which wrongs are hidden for decades because journalists did not have the resources or money to investigate.  If the news media starts abdicating its one First Amendment right drafted to protect our right to free speech, religion, petition and assembly, how long will it be before we lose all five.  

That’s my opinion.  I invite all of you to voice your opinion. 

But, still, according to Bloomberg News, the New York Times ‘ endorsement of President Obama last Sunday was the most clicked on item on the paper’s website, in spite of Hurricane Sandy.