Work
Don't Sell Your Soul For a Chair
Wed/May/2009 07:00 AM
I wrote an essay years ago recounting my experience working for one of Seattle’s corporate behemoths. The title of the piece: “I Was Prisoner 1125250.” Officially, I was a “partner,” but when you’re identified by a number, like something out of ‘Joe Versus the Volcano,’ then let’s face it, you’re a prisoner.
Like most corporate jobs, the greater your labor, the lower your compensation, and subsequently, the lower the quality of your workspace, and even more specifically, the lower the height of your walls. If I stood up, at my desk, the walls of my particular fattening pen would have come up to about mid-thigh. My chair was a grubby grey plastic number, with a hard foam seat, little room for adjustment, and a back that barely grazed the bottom of my shoulder blades. In comparison, the bigwigs on the floor, who dwelled in 8 foot high micro-suites, and spent their days playing solitaire and debating the ideal time to microwave their Healthy Choice frozen dinners, were given the sort of woven, mesh, synthetic polymer chairs that business wienies only dream about.
In short, work life was one big measuring contest.
In my opinion, the ultimate goal is not to compare what you have – especially the most measly of perks – to what someone a few rungs up the ladder has. I didn’t care if my walls were short and my chair was garbage, I just resented that that was the way things were tallied. A big chair and high walls meant higher pay and a lower chance of having to fill out a “permission slip” if you wanted to take a long weekend away with your wife.
Cut to five years later. After placing an order with Amazon, I was offered a year’s subscription to the magazine Fast Company. Thinking this might offer some interesting reading as I worked on my own small business and telecommuting work, I gave it a shot. The first issue arrived this week, with a cover that promised to unveil the most creative people in business. The first guy was from Apple (laying the groundwork for future absences?), not a promising sign. The following pages were filled with the folks Claude Rains summed up as “the usual suspects.” Not good. I flipped ahead a few pages, and again had the feeling that I wasn’t really reading about the most creative business minds of our time, but rather the folks most caught up in the corporate measuring contest.
Then came the killer. A two page spread of the greatest, the most desired, the more enticing business perk any creative business genius could ask for. The designer desk chair.
I closed up the magazine and popped it in the recycling bin.
I make a living writing and editing. To do that, you have to sit in a chair for a fair amount of time. But here’s the thing, the ultimate goal should be freedom. Freedom to move around the country as they say. If you’re so caught up worrying about you chair you’re sort of missing the point. Don’t all the phone company and wireless ads always show the guy working from a beach chair in Maui? That’s the goal, right? That chair probably cost 12 bucks!
It’s not about the chair people! It’s not about the chair! It’s about getting out of the chair, or better yet, working in the cheapest chair you can find. Or maybe a hammock.
Like most corporate jobs, the greater your labor, the lower your compensation, and subsequently, the lower the quality of your workspace, and even more specifically, the lower the height of your walls. If I stood up, at my desk, the walls of my particular fattening pen would have come up to about mid-thigh. My chair was a grubby grey plastic number, with a hard foam seat, little room for adjustment, and a back that barely grazed the bottom of my shoulder blades. In comparison, the bigwigs on the floor, who dwelled in 8 foot high micro-suites, and spent their days playing solitaire and debating the ideal time to microwave their Healthy Choice frozen dinners, were given the sort of woven, mesh, synthetic polymer chairs that business wienies only dream about.
In short, work life was one big measuring contest.
In my opinion, the ultimate goal is not to compare what you have – especially the most measly of perks – to what someone a few rungs up the ladder has. I didn’t care if my walls were short and my chair was garbage, I just resented that that was the way things were tallied. A big chair and high walls meant higher pay and a lower chance of having to fill out a “permission slip” if you wanted to take a long weekend away with your wife.
Cut to five years later. After placing an order with Amazon, I was offered a year’s subscription to the magazine Fast Company. Thinking this might offer some interesting reading as I worked on my own small business and telecommuting work, I gave it a shot. The first issue arrived this week, with a cover that promised to unveil the most creative people in business. The first guy was from Apple (laying the groundwork for future absences?), not a promising sign. The following pages were filled with the folks Claude Rains summed up as “the usual suspects.” Not good. I flipped ahead a few pages, and again had the feeling that I wasn’t really reading about the most creative business minds of our time, but rather the folks most caught up in the corporate measuring contest.
Then came the killer. A two page spread of the greatest, the most desired, the more enticing business perk any creative business genius could ask for. The designer desk chair.
I closed up the magazine and popped it in the recycling bin.
I make a living writing and editing. To do that, you have to sit in a chair for a fair amount of time. But here’s the thing, the ultimate goal should be freedom. Freedom to move around the country as they say. If you’re so caught up worrying about you chair you’re sort of missing the point. Don’t all the phone company and wireless ads always show the guy working from a beach chair in Maui? That’s the goal, right? That chair probably cost 12 bucks!
It’s not about the chair people! It’s not about the chair! It’s about getting out of the chair, or better yet, working in the cheapest chair you can find. Or maybe a hammock.
Art, Life, Work, & Gray Hair
Wed/Apr/2009 04:58 PM
There's something reassuring about biographies, particularly autobiographies written by folks who started with nothing. I'm sure this is true for any field, but when you're trying to make it in any sort of creative business, be it film, publishing, performing, or any of the fine arts, it's nice to know that others have stood in your shoes and taken their first awkward steps in the world, only to stumble and realize that we're all born with two left feet (either that or someone with a fat wallet just tied our laces together and sprinted on ahead). Steve Martin's 2007 memoir, "Born Standing Up," is just that kind of book. Martin is a true Renaissance man. Banjo player. Comic. Writer. Actor. He's worn many hat's, some I'd prefer he hadn't (Clouseau? Really?) , but this is the first time I've ever heard him speak about how he got started. It was not a smooth trip up the ladder to success, and he shares the painful, quite candid details of how he found his way, his missteps, and his insights as he carved out his own little niche in the world. Martin is interested in movies, art, architecture, music, and film, and as someone who loves all those things, and started going gray at age 12, there are secrets to be gleaned by seeing the world from Martin's point of view. I highly recommend this book.
Buy the Hardcover - Buy the Paperback - Buy the Kindle - Buy The Audiobook
Can ya feel it?
Thu/Feb/2009 05:00 PM
A funny thing has been happening lately. Despite making my living online. Despite having a Kindle, which I really do dig. I've been finding myself turning to hard copies of books, magazines, and newspapers more than ever before. I've been getting up in the morning, doing my writing, then heading downstairs to drink coffee and read the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. I go back to work for a few hours, then take a break and head over to the gym, where I either listen to music, or more often crack open a magazine (Men's Health, Wired, Fast Company, Sunset, Architectural Digest, or Seattle Metropolitan) while I exercise. I don't know what's causing this, but I'm curious to know if other folks are having the same experience. There's just something nice about not having to worry about technical details or gizmo operation. My Kindle had to be replaced in December after it suddenly stopped, working, that may be part of it, but I think more than anything I just prefer to hold something that both tells a story, and has it own unique weight, texture, and even smell. Anyway, no really useful tidbits in this update, just a personal observation. One last comment. The paper used for the hardcover edition of The Audacity of Hope has a sort of honeycomb texture that is just incredible. Go grab a copy, you'll see!
We'll always have San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Fri/Jan/2009 02:13 PM
As the nation shivers under a blanket of cold, many people are packing their bags and heading south, hoping to soak up some rays in Florida or the Caribbean. Others, particularly those decimated by free-falling stock prices and 401k’s, may feel a vacation is out of the question this year. For them, we have a suggestion: San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
San Miguel, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is famous for its mild climate, colonial architecture and cobblestone streets. It's four hours south of Mexico City and 1-l/2 hours from Leon Airport, which is served by American, Continental and Aeromexico Airlines. Located in the state of Guanajuato, in central Mexico, the town has an elevation of 7,000 feet and sits on a flat plain ringed by mountains.
In addition to boasting warm, sunny days and cool nights, San Miguel benefits from a large population of American and Canadian expatriates. They make up a veritable army of volunteers, who support local charities by organizing a full schedule of daily activities ranging from concerts, lectures ,and house/town tours to yoga, pilates, life drawing, and meditation classes.
The town has a wide range of accommodations, ranging from b&bs costing less than $50 a night to 5-star hotels in the high $200s. For longer stays, rentals such as a two- bedroom, two-bath apartment with courtyard can run as low as $1,500 a month.
Foodies, too, have an array of choices, at prices well below those in the US. Here are some suggestions: On a clear night, book a table on the rooftop patio of La Posadita restaurant (heaters are stationed nearby to remove the chill) and sample the enchiladas verdes with a glass of red wine, while enjoying an unparalleled view of the soaring towers of San Miguel’s most famous landmark, the 17th century Parroquia church. The total cost? 140 pesos, or roughly $10. The exchange rate is about 14 pesos to the dollar, but most restaurants require payment in pesos.
Looking for a great dinner and a chance to tango or watch others tango? Head to La Fragua, down the street from La Posadita, and get there by 8 p.m., when the dancers start to fill the floor. The food – skirt steak with guacamole and poblano peppers is one specialty – is delicious and the dancing continues non-stop until the wee hours.
A place highly touted for Italian food and an outstanding combo of acoustic guitar, violin, bass, and bongo drums is Bella Italia. Some say the food is overrated, but the combo, often accompanied by Johnny Carson sidekick Doc Severinson, is spectacular. Dinner, tip and cover charge run about $23.
For mouth-watering pastries, cappuccino, or out-of-this-world hot chocolate, try Petit Four, down the street from Bellas Artes, an 18th century convent that now houses a prestigious art school and a lovely courtyard with a café and fountains. Another famous art school and exhibition space is the Institute Allende, which was founded in 1950 and became popular when World War II veterans found that their GI Bill benefits went farther in Mexico than in the U.S. The Instituto also has a beautiful interior courtyard with café.
For sketching or people watching, go the Jardin, which we consider the hot spot of San Miguel. Located across the street from the Parroquia, it's the main square of the town and attracts everyone - expats who come to buy a cup of coffee and a morning paper, violinists and mariachis who stand around and play for pay, families who arrive on Sundays after church and spend the day there, and couples who dance to bands playing in the central gazebo. The action continues well into the night, as vendors sell hot corn with cream cheese and chile to an endless stream of hungry customers.
While San Miguel is not for everyone -- the New York Times recently described it as “Berkeley for retired people” - it's safe, the people are friendly, and it offers a diversity of cultural activities, all within walking distance. A few miles and maybe a 40-peso taxi ride away, outdoor enthusiasts can enjoy hiking and horseback riding, golf, swimming, and soaking in world-famous hot springs.
For our money, the highlight of a vacation in San Miguel is the opportunity to interact with the Mexican people in a setting little changed since its founding nearly 500 years ago. Just remember to bring a fleece (or one of our Toasty clothing items!), for the evenings can get cool.
San Miguel, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is famous for its mild climate, colonial architecture and cobblestone streets. It's four hours south of Mexico City and 1-l/2 hours from Leon Airport, which is served by American, Continental and Aeromexico Airlines. Located in the state of Guanajuato, in central Mexico, the town has an elevation of 7,000 feet and sits on a flat plain ringed by mountains.
In addition to boasting warm, sunny days and cool nights, San Miguel benefits from a large population of American and Canadian expatriates. They make up a veritable army of volunteers, who support local charities by organizing a full schedule of daily activities ranging from concerts, lectures ,and house/town tours to yoga, pilates, life drawing, and meditation classes.
The town has a wide range of accommodations, ranging from b&bs costing less than $50 a night to 5-star hotels in the high $200s. For longer stays, rentals such as a two- bedroom, two-bath apartment with courtyard can run as low as $1,500 a month.
Foodies, too, have an array of choices, at prices well below those in the US. Here are some suggestions: On a clear night, book a table on the rooftop patio of La Posadita restaurant (heaters are stationed nearby to remove the chill) and sample the enchiladas verdes with a glass of red wine, while enjoying an unparalleled view of the soaring towers of San Miguel’s most famous landmark, the 17th century Parroquia church. The total cost? 140 pesos, or roughly $10. The exchange rate is about 14 pesos to the dollar, but most restaurants require payment in pesos.
Looking for a great dinner and a chance to tango or watch others tango? Head to La Fragua, down the street from La Posadita, and get there by 8 p.m., when the dancers start to fill the floor. The food – skirt steak with guacamole and poblano peppers is one specialty – is delicious and the dancing continues non-stop until the wee hours.
A place highly touted for Italian food and an outstanding combo of acoustic guitar, violin, bass, and bongo drums is Bella Italia. Some say the food is overrated, but the combo, often accompanied by Johnny Carson sidekick Doc Severinson, is spectacular. Dinner, tip and cover charge run about $23.
For mouth-watering pastries, cappuccino, or out-of-this-world hot chocolate, try Petit Four, down the street from Bellas Artes, an 18th century convent that now houses a prestigious art school and a lovely courtyard with a café and fountains. Another famous art school and exhibition space is the Institute Allende, which was founded in 1950 and became popular when World War II veterans found that their GI Bill benefits went farther in Mexico than in the U.S. The Instituto also has a beautiful interior courtyard with café.
For sketching or people watching, go the Jardin, which we consider the hot spot of San Miguel. Located across the street from the Parroquia, it's the main square of the town and attracts everyone - expats who come to buy a cup of coffee and a morning paper, violinists and mariachis who stand around and play for pay, families who arrive on Sundays after church and spend the day there, and couples who dance to bands playing in the central gazebo. The action continues well into the night, as vendors sell hot corn with cream cheese and chile to an endless stream of hungry customers.
While San Miguel is not for everyone -- the New York Times recently described it as “Berkeley for retired people” - it's safe, the people are friendly, and it offers a diversity of cultural activities, all within walking distance. A few miles and maybe a 40-peso taxi ride away, outdoor enthusiasts can enjoy hiking and horseback riding, golf, swimming, and soaking in world-famous hot springs.
For our money, the highlight of a vacation in San Miguel is the opportunity to interact with the Mexican people in a setting little changed since its founding nearly 500 years ago. Just remember to bring a fleece (or one of our Toasty clothing items!), for the evenings can get cool.
Looking for purpose? Watch TV.
Thu/Jan/2009 01:30 PM
Books and television are both forms of communication and entertainment, yet books always get the better rap. Why? I dunno, but I think Dancing With The Stars might have something to do with it. That, or Paula Abdul.
Based on this line of thinking, one might feel compelled to peruse the self-help section at your local bookstore, especially at the start of a fresh new year. So how can I recommend watching TV as a way to find your life's purpose? Well for starters, there are shows like Charlie Rose. Programs that while less than groundbreaking in their execution, harness the power of the medium at its purest form.
Then of course, there are shows that take the format, sand it down, buff it, turn it on its ear, and present it for the world to see anew. I'm talking about a show like The West Wing.
Last September, in the midst of a historically exciting Presidential election, I ordered a copy of the show's first season and proceeded to watch it straight through within a matter of days. For a political junkie, and a professional writer, the show presented fascinating material and a challenge to step up the substance of my own work. Based simply on the subject matter, the inner workings of a White House that truly cares about the effects their daily activities have on the American people (during the final days of the Bush Administration, this seems like pure fantasy!), the show grabbed me and pulled me in. But on a different level, just getting to know the characters, each written and developed as a three dimensional, full bodied, flesh and blood individual, The West Wing managed to sink it's claws into me in a way few dramatic programs have managed to do before. This is a show about political movers and shakers, but more than that, it's a program about professionals, compulsive over-achievers, who feel utterly compelled to rip out their hearts and toss them in the furnace to fuel the great good. These are the folks we all wanted to grow up and become. Well, except perhaps with more well-rounded interests. But then, that's a whole other challenge. Tunnel vision seems to breed success in type A personalities, but those same folks often find it hard to develop the personal aspects of their lives. The folks in Jed Bartlet's White House are casebook studies of accomplished individuals with lives that tip the scales in one direction or another. Ironically, in this case, the guy with the top of the masthead position, the President himself, is the one who really seems to have found the closest semblance of balance between his personal and professional lives. Perhaps that's why the People elected him! But I digress...
The writing is impeccable. Dialogue comes fast and furious, but it hits all the right notes. With more than half of the series' seven year run helmed by Aaron Sorkin (Of A Few Good Men, and The American President fame), there are few episodes or even exchanges that don't ring true. This is steady cam, soliloquy heaven for the actor's actor, and everyone from Martin Sheen, to John Spencer, to Bradley Whitford brings their A-game.
From a technical filmmaking perspective, the set design, the filming, the editing, it's all first rate. Grade A. In 2001 the trailer for Hannibal renewed my love of film (the movie itself was another story), in 2008 this show made me yearn to write and shoot some truly high quality television. In watching a special one hour episode of Charlie Rose (you knew I'd come back to him, right?) in which he-of-the-paperclip-cuff links spoke with most of the show's cast about what they felt set the show apart, one word came up again and again: Heart.
The West Wing, more than anything, is about HEART. Martin Sheen's iconic President Bartlet does everything with heart. When he succeeds, it's because he made the decisions from his heart. When he fails, that failure hits him in the chest like a ten-ton truck. I believe the hearts of Sorkin, Sheen, and frequent director Thomas Schlamme are evident in every frame and syllable.
The West Wing is about folks with purpose,and the purpose of the show, in my opinion, is to instill the need for personal commitment in everything we, the viewers do. From a writing perspective, it's pushed me to give the story of my next project just a bit more heart as well.
Whether you work in writing, film, television, politics, public service, or a field totally unrelated to any of those areas, I urge you to check out The West Wing's complete series, and see if it doesn't inspire you to go after those projects you've always sat at the bar mulling over, or evaluate if what you do from day to day leaves you feeling fulfilled, or wishing you could take a moment, look around, and start anew.
Based on this line of thinking, one might feel compelled to peruse the self-help section at your local bookstore, especially at the start of a fresh new year. So how can I recommend watching TV as a way to find your life's purpose? Well for starters, there are shows like Charlie Rose. Programs that while less than groundbreaking in their execution, harness the power of the medium at its purest form.
Then of course, there are shows that take the format, sand it down, buff it, turn it on its ear, and present it for the world to see anew. I'm talking about a show like The West Wing.
Last September, in the midst of a historically exciting Presidential election, I ordered a copy of the show's first season and proceeded to watch it straight through within a matter of days. For a political junkie, and a professional writer, the show presented fascinating material and a challenge to step up the substance of my own work. Based simply on the subject matter, the inner workings of a White House that truly cares about the effects their daily activities have on the American people (during the final days of the Bush Administration, this seems like pure fantasy!), the show grabbed me and pulled me in. But on a different level, just getting to know the characters, each written and developed as a three dimensional, full bodied, flesh and blood individual, The West Wing managed to sink it's claws into me in a way few dramatic programs have managed to do before. This is a show about political movers and shakers, but more than that, it's a program about professionals, compulsive over-achievers, who feel utterly compelled to rip out their hearts and toss them in the furnace to fuel the great good. These are the folks we all wanted to grow up and become. Well, except perhaps with more well-rounded interests. But then, that's a whole other challenge. Tunnel vision seems to breed success in type A personalities, but those same folks often find it hard to develop the personal aspects of their lives. The folks in Jed Bartlet's White House are casebook studies of accomplished individuals with lives that tip the scales in one direction or another. Ironically, in this case, the guy with the top of the masthead position, the President himself, is the one who really seems to have found the closest semblance of balance between his personal and professional lives. Perhaps that's why the People elected him! But I digress...
The writing is impeccable. Dialogue comes fast and furious, but it hits all the right notes. With more than half of the series' seven year run helmed by Aaron Sorkin (Of A Few Good Men, and The American President fame), there are few episodes or even exchanges that don't ring true. This is steady cam, soliloquy heaven for the actor's actor, and everyone from Martin Sheen, to John Spencer, to Bradley Whitford brings their A-game.
From a technical filmmaking perspective, the set design, the filming, the editing, it's all first rate. Grade A. In 2001 the trailer for Hannibal renewed my love of film (the movie itself was another story), in 2008 this show made me yearn to write and shoot some truly high quality television. In watching a special one hour episode of Charlie Rose (you knew I'd come back to him, right?) in which he-of-the-paperclip-cuff links spoke with most of the show's cast about what they felt set the show apart, one word came up again and again: Heart.
The West Wing, more than anything, is about HEART. Martin Sheen's iconic President Bartlet does everything with heart. When he succeeds, it's because he made the decisions from his heart. When he fails, that failure hits him in the chest like a ten-ton truck. I believe the hearts of Sorkin, Sheen, and frequent director Thomas Schlamme are evident in every frame and syllable.
The West Wing is about folks with purpose,and the purpose of the show, in my opinion, is to instill the need for personal commitment in everything we, the viewers do. From a writing perspective, it's pushed me to give the story of my next project just a bit more heart as well.
Whether you work in writing, film, television, politics, public service, or a field totally unrelated to any of those areas, I urge you to check out The West Wing's complete series, and see if it doesn't inspire you to go after those projects you've always sat at the bar mulling over, or evaluate if what you do from day to day leaves you feeling fulfilled, or wishing you could take a moment, look around, and start anew.
Back to Basics: Calvin and Hobbes
Sat/Dec/2008 02:00 PM
Wow, the last few months have been sort of intense, haven't they? Between news of bank collapses, rescue plans, foreclosures, business failures, and day by day recaps of economic calamity, it's understandable if we're all getting wound a little tight. For anyone working in the financial fields, this can't be fun, but even creative professionals are feeling the pinch. It's hard to keep your imagination simmering when everything you're hearing suggests that the time to panic is now! Well, if ever there was a time to get back to basics, get in touch with your imagination, and unwind for the holidays, it is now.
In other words, it's time to catch up with Calvin and Hobbes.
I've had the complete set of Bill Watterson's collected works since I was in high school, but when I moved out west after college I couldn't quite fit all of the collection in my car. Three years ago I got The Complete Calvin and Hobbes for a birthday gift, but it wasn't until last month that I finally started making my way through them. These comics are just as great today as they were ten and twenty years ago. Somehow, Bill Watterson managed to capture something truly universal about childhood, no matter where or when you were raised. For me, the wooded forests of Calvin's hometown are quite different than the canyons of New Mexico (though those are kinda close to the fantastic planets visited by Spaceman Spiff), but his adventures, his thoughts, and his observation all trigger continuing feelings of deja vu.
I thought November was the perfect time to catch up with Calvin and his tiger buddy as they kicked their way through the Autumn leaves, but now that Christmas is on the way, I'm finding that their sledding adventures are triggering just as many holiday season memories. The strip still packs all the humor, philosophy, and imagination that I remember. If you want to get back to being a kid (and who doesn't at Christmas) I can't suggest these enough. Buy a copy for your kids, your loved ones, and yourself. It's sure to take you back, and before you know it, you'll be cooking up your own answer to Calvin's transmogrifier!
In other words, it's time to catch up with Calvin and Hobbes.
I've had the complete set of Bill Watterson's collected works since I was in high school, but when I moved out west after college I couldn't quite fit all of the collection in my car. Three years ago I got The Complete Calvin and Hobbes for a birthday gift, but it wasn't until last month that I finally started making my way through them. These comics are just as great today as they were ten and twenty years ago. Somehow, Bill Watterson managed to capture something truly universal about childhood, no matter where or when you were raised. For me, the wooded forests of Calvin's hometown are quite different than the canyons of New Mexico (though those are kinda close to the fantastic planets visited by Spaceman Spiff), but his adventures, his thoughts, and his observation all trigger continuing feelings of deja vu.
I thought November was the perfect time to catch up with Calvin and his tiger buddy as they kicked their way through the Autumn leaves, but now that Christmas is on the way, I'm finding that their sledding adventures are triggering just as many holiday season memories. The strip still packs all the humor, philosophy, and imagination that I remember. If you want to get back to being a kid (and who doesn't at Christmas) I can't suggest these enough. Buy a copy for your kids, your loved ones, and yourself. It's sure to take you back, and before you know it, you'll be cooking up your own answer to Calvin's transmogrifier!
Has John Hughes Left The Building?
Wed/Dec/2008 03:00 PM
Has John Hughes Left The Building?
The Vanishing Act of America’s 80’s Teen Titan and 90’s Kid Com Kingpin.
By Mike Attebery
Contrary to popular belief, the studio system of film production did not die out in the 1950’s. Well before Harvey Weinstein and Miramax began launching fleets of carefully calibrated award machines in the early 90’s, using a seeming stable of contract players, including: Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin Smith, and Quentin Tarantino, a self-professed Hollywood outsider and former ad man in the Chicago suburbs entered the scene. Using the tricks of Madison Avenue, John Hughes taught Hollywood some new twists on its old routines, while grinding out a series of highly successful films in a short, prolific period of time. In the process, he not only created an entertainment empire, but discovered some of the industry’s favorite and youngest new stars, and placed them in many of the defining films of the 1980’s. If Miramax and the independent film movement shaped the cinema of the last decade, John Hughes and the shopping mall crowd unquestionably dominated the silver screen of the Reagan years.
Hollywood is about product. Product and money. Quality is beside the point; theres a game plan for everything. If a film is a solid, top-quality production, the studio pulls out all the stops: a blizzard of TV ads, movie trailers, glossy magazine spreads, and a prime spot in the summer or fall season, with an eye towards audiences, awards, and money. If a film’s chances seem less promising, but it retains a clear audience: twice the TV ads, twice the trailers, the star’s face on popcorn buckets, and glossier, sexier print ads. It’s all about image and closing the deal -- pure advertising -- and what better man to oil the Hollywood machine with fresh, marketable product than a transplant from the ad world, who himself entered the game with a resume and portfolio fashioned from smoke and mirrors? Like Ferris Bueller, Hughes had a magic touch and a salesman’s way with words that eventually got him a position with a Chicago agency, despite his lack of a college degree, or any experience in the field.
From there, just as in his movies, circumstances began working in his favor: first, a contact with National Lampoon, then a freelance job as one of the magazine’s editors, then, upon the release of Animal House, one of numerous Hollywood development deals forged with anyone possessing a Lampoon credit. After a few early lessons on getting burned in showbiz, Hughes started in on one of the industry’s legendary winning streaks, frequently accomplished by breaking the rules of conventional success. Early Hughes productions were often saddled with a midwinter release date, widely viewed as the dumping ground for low-grade films with less than hopeful box office forecasts, but as a Midwestern suburbanite, Hughes saw the bleak stretch from Christmas to Spring Break as the perfect time to bring out a film aimed at the high school crowd, who he felt saw joy and sorrow as “equally pleasant.” It worked, and within a year of the releases of Mr. Mom and Vacation, Hughes began writing and directing his own films. His goal was simple: to shoot as many films as possible in the shortest amount of time, working with relatively small budgets, and positioning each to grow his audience at each stage of release. This business plan, combined with the repeated use of an ever growing gallery of young actors, including: Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, and John Candy, only increased the similarities between the studio practices of the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s, and Hughes’ own suburban Chicago movie machine. One look at the closing credits for 1988’s She’s Having a Baby reveals the scope of the Hughes production bonanza. As the credits roll, one star after another stands front and center, often in their costume for another Hughes production, and gives their suggestion for the new baby’s name. When comparing the number of actors and the years over which each individual’s Hughes collaboration was released, the sheer number of films in production and already in release is astounding.
By 1986, the steamroller was under way, and with the help of director Howard Deutch, a John Hughes film began rolling out every six months, carefully timed to coincide with the VHS release of the previous theatrical title. Home video, still a relatively new, somewhat untapped resource, became for Hughes an invaluable tool in keeping his name and productions continually on viewers’ minds. More importantly, it played a key role in making his characters a part of audiences’ lives. With the release of each film, a new phenomenon seemed to be developing; the characters were not only striking a chord with fans, they were also becoming people audiences wished to hang out with on a regular basis. Through theater showings and repeated appearances on video, characters like Clark Griswold, Andie, Ducky, Del Griffith, and Jefferson ‘Jake’ Edward Briggs became members of an ever broadening circle of friends, and a comforting group of individuals that maturing audiences felt they could turn to for comic relief, advice, and support. Many high school outsiders came to view The Breakfast Club as a manifesto for their own experiences, related to the sting of unrequited love in Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful, then found comfort in the rocky transition to adulthood undergone by the newlyweds in She’s Having a Baby.
From 1985 through 1989, Hughes films came out twice a year, like clockwork, and it is this period that saw the release of his signature films, among them: The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Pretty In Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Some Kind of Wonderful, Planes, Trains & Automobiles, She’s Having a Baby, The Great Outdoors, Uncle Buck, and Christmas Vacation. It is also this collection of films that saw the development of Hughes’ defining themes and concerns, most notably: the struggles between the classes, the experiences of society’s outsiders, the clash between youth and adult expectations, the struggle against absurd outside forces, and the dynamics of family life. In the process, Hughes employed a series of recurring character types that often possessed some autobiographical element from his own life. These included brash, charismatic young men; scatterbrained eccentric odd balls; jilted lovers; shy, neglected outsiders; bumbling, but successful parents; and militant, self important authority figures.
By 1987. Hughes began shifting his attention towards more adult film material, beginning with Planes, Trains & Automobiles, and continuing with She’s Having a Baby, which stands as his most autobiographical film, despite his efforts to disguise similarities between Kevin Bacon’s character Jefferson ‘Jake’ Edward Briggs and himself. Aside from Jake‘s dropping out a graduate school in New Mexico, as opposed to Hughes’ own brief undergraduate stint at the University of Arizona, the similarities are striking, right up to Jake’s appearance in Plane’s, Train & Automobiles on a New York City business trip for his advertising firm which is remarkably similar to the trips Hughes’ himself took for six years until he left advertising to join the Lampoon. In retrospect, these later projects have enjoyed the same appeal and fondness with audiences as the teenage films, but at the time of their release they showed a marked change in box office draw, to the point that the studios began urging Hughes to write something that once again had greater commercial appeal. After Uncle Buck, his next film would not only mark his first collaboration with a new director, but also bring an end to the developing themes of the past seven years.
Home Alone was released on November 16, 1990 and quickly went on to gross more than half a billion dollars worldwide, making it the most successful theatrical release that year. Its director, Chris Columbus, had made his debut three years earlier with Adventures In Babysitting, a family comedy set in Chicago, whose storyline and characters could just as easily have been penned by Hughes himself. The idea for Home Alone came about during the filming of scenes with Macaulay Culkin for Uncle Buck, and Hughes, who frequently completed scripts in two-day writing sprees, quickly completed the first draft, bragging that he wrote the last 40 pages in just eight hours. The success of this common childhood fantasy would catapult Culkin, Columbus, and Hughes into the Hollywood stratosphere, and it would be years before any of them would come back to earth. Though a marked departure in terms of story and theme, the script is arguably the strongest, most well structured of Hughes writing efforts to that point, a fact that would ultimately set up his downfall as he went on to repackage and pilfer the script endlessy for the better part of the next decade.
By 1992, Hughes’ work was becoming alarmingly repetitive. Aside from the charming 1991 film Curly Sue, productions with the Hughes Entertainment logo were beginning to show far too many similarities to one another, and most notably to Home Alone. Hughes releases were beginning to resemble repackaged goods whose false labels were slowly peeling away from the cans. Career Opportunities was a clear attempt to recapture the magic of Ferris Bueller by casting Matthew Broderick’s Freshman co-star Frank Whaley in the lead, and sprinkling the script with elements all too reminiscent of Home Alone, including the inexplicable appearance of bumbling crooks in the films last ten minutes, and a series of gags seemingly dropped from Kevin McAllister’s home, directly into a midwest Target store.. The film tanked, as did Dutch and Curly Sue, Hughes’ final directorial effort. In 1992 came Home Alone 2: Lost In New York, an entirely implausible, scene-for-scene remake of the original film, which went on to make $280 million. This same year came the release of Beethoven, written by Hughes under the name Edmond Dantes, in homage to the character in The Count of Monte Cristo. By the end of1997, Hughes had written a series of films that marked a clear departure from his signature themes, and his audience for the past decade had shifted. Instead of aiming for audiences in high school or just embarking on life after college, Hughes began chasing the children’s audience for its box-office money. It is hard to believe that the writer and director of The Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off could really have put much of his heart into the scripts for such films as Home Alone 2, Beethoven, Baby’s Day Out, Dennis the Menace Miracle On 34th Street, 101 Dalmatians, Home Alone 3 and most tellingly, Flubber.
For all appearances, the man who had ended his most famous short story by shooting Walt Disney in the leg, seemed to have become a puppet for the Walt Disney Studios, endlessly rewriting the same script for whichever company would ante up with the biggest check. Perhaps it is telling that the name under which Hughes began to ghostwrite such movies as the Beethoven series is that of a literary character who used a lost fortune to perpetrate a massive fraud for the purpose of revenge. Did Hughes feel that his audience had left him, or did he simply abandon them? Was he always just in it for the money? It would be several more years before anything new appeared from the Hughes film canon to argue otherwise.
In 1998, audiences in three Chicago area theaters were given little more than a week to see for themselves what had been on John Hughes’ mind for the better part of a decade, and the results would be quite familiar, if distinctly darker than they had remembered. With the very limited release of Reach The Rock, Hughes returned to small town America, more specifically to Shermer, Illinois, the fictional setting of virtually all of his earlier films, where white, middle class teenagers from large, two story brick houses staged teenaged rebellions as they tried to discover and define themselves. That their acts of rebellion were often largely benign, 1950’s style revolts were beside the point, the thrill in the films was the fun of leaving detention, skipping school on the first day of spring, or fighting against logic for the chance at true love. Shermer is a town where the fine details of daily life are what really count. More than 11 years after Steve Martin’s Neil Page had safely arrived home for Thanksgiving dinner, Hughes brought audiences back to Shermer for one hot summer night and the conclusion of another high school drama. The themes and the characters were again familiar, but the story was refreshingly different from anything he had written over the past decade, and the mood of the piece was strikingly somber. In a final attempt to escape small town life, Robin Fleming, a Shermer ‘townie’ four years out of high school, gets himself arrested and thrown in the local sheriff’s office. He then proceeds to taunt the police chief and sneak out of his cell, carrying out a series of elaborate pranks involving properties owned by his ex-girlfriend’s father. As Robin’s plan to lure his ex back to him becomes clear, the big questions of the 80’s Hughes film begin to play out again, and the audience is once more immersed in a story of the rich vs. the poor, and each individual’s struggle to define himself. Though Reach the Rock is an imperfect, slow-paced film, it is a shame that Universal, the studio producing it, did not make a greater effort to help the film find an audience, or more precisely, to help the film reclaim the Hughes audience that had so long ago given up on seeing any more of the films they enjoyed growing up with.
Since 1998, Hughes has only written two scripts, one entitled Just Visiting, an unsuccessful remake of a French time -traveling comedy, and the other the cookie cutter Jennifer Lopez vehicle Maid In Manhattan, tellingly written under the Edmond Dantes moniker. In that same period of time, filmdom has been blessed with Beethoven’s 3rd, Beethoven’s 4th, Home Alone 4, and Beethoven’s 5th, which for all purposes were not necessarily produced under Hughes’ watchful eye, but with nothing of real substance or credit to his name on the horizon, leave little to fight off the sour taste his career is beginning to leave in the mouths of fans everywhere.
The big question is whether Hughes ever had his heart in his work in the first place, or whether, coming from an advertising background and the cynical writing offices of National Lampoon, he was simply interested in lining his bank account, locking up his retirement, and padding his own ass. From 1983 to 1990, Hughes wrote some of the funniest, most insightful family and teenage comedies ever produced in Hollywood, and audiences clearly connected with the man and his work. Yet by the mid-80’s it was clear that Hughes had hit a rut. While he still had the ability to entertain and relate to the members of his audience, his recipes were growing thin. He recovered with the production of Planes, Train & Automobiles and She’s Having a Baby, and reached his pinnacle as an accomplished writer of family fare with Home Alone, but aside from one entertaining if manipulative film with Curly Sue, and a fine return to form with Reach the Rock, Hughes has done little to cement his reputation with his audience. His better films were always the more personal ones, the stories one could imagine Jake Briggs typing late into the night. He clearly had a connection with the teenagers growing up in the 80’s, one that continued with his transition towards adult fare and the trials of growing up in She’s Having a Baby, but from then on out he dropped the ball, abandoning the very people who made him a success. The members of The Breakfast Club complained that people saw them in “the simplest terms, the most convenient definitions.” Perhaps John Hughes also began seeing his characters this way, or even worse, as simple dollars and cents, and because of this he lost his connection, and his voice.
Since 1992, his box office has steadily decreased. Perhaps his fans found refuge in the works of another director, or found comfort in television shows like Friends, which in many ways picked up where Hughes left off in tracking the experiences of young adulthood. But now that Friends has taken its last bow, audiences are again ready to find a voice for their generation. Whether or not Hughes was ever writing in the pursuit of truth, or just for personal gain, the facts are simple, if he can find it in himself to again remember the experiences of young adulthood, he may reclaim his audience. At the very least, there's money to be made in it.
The Vanishing Act of America’s 80’s Teen Titan and 90’s Kid Com Kingpin.
By Mike Attebery
Contrary to popular belief, the studio system of film production did not die out in the 1950’s. Well before Harvey Weinstein and Miramax began launching fleets of carefully calibrated award machines in the early 90’s, using a seeming stable of contract players, including: Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin Smith, and Quentin Tarantino, a self-professed Hollywood outsider and former ad man in the Chicago suburbs entered the scene. Using the tricks of Madison Avenue, John Hughes taught Hollywood some new twists on its old routines, while grinding out a series of highly successful films in a short, prolific period of time. In the process, he not only created an entertainment empire, but discovered some of the industry’s favorite and youngest new stars, and placed them in many of the defining films of the 1980’s. If Miramax and the independent film movement shaped the cinema of the last decade, John Hughes and the shopping mall crowd unquestionably dominated the silver screen of the Reagan years.
Hollywood is about product. Product and money. Quality is beside the point; theres a game plan for everything. If a film is a solid, top-quality production, the studio pulls out all the stops: a blizzard of TV ads, movie trailers, glossy magazine spreads, and a prime spot in the summer or fall season, with an eye towards audiences, awards, and money. If a film’s chances seem less promising, but it retains a clear audience: twice the TV ads, twice the trailers, the star’s face on popcorn buckets, and glossier, sexier print ads. It’s all about image and closing the deal -- pure advertising -- and what better man to oil the Hollywood machine with fresh, marketable product than a transplant from the ad world, who himself entered the game with a resume and portfolio fashioned from smoke and mirrors? Like Ferris Bueller, Hughes had a magic touch and a salesman’s way with words that eventually got him a position with a Chicago agency, despite his lack of a college degree, or any experience in the field.
From there, just as in his movies, circumstances began working in his favor: first, a contact with National Lampoon, then a freelance job as one of the magazine’s editors, then, upon the release of Animal House, one of numerous Hollywood development deals forged with anyone possessing a Lampoon credit. After a few early lessons on getting burned in showbiz, Hughes started in on one of the industry’s legendary winning streaks, frequently accomplished by breaking the rules of conventional success. Early Hughes productions were often saddled with a midwinter release date, widely viewed as the dumping ground for low-grade films with less than hopeful box office forecasts, but as a Midwestern suburbanite, Hughes saw the bleak stretch from Christmas to Spring Break as the perfect time to bring out a film aimed at the high school crowd, who he felt saw joy and sorrow as “equally pleasant.” It worked, and within a year of the releases of Mr. Mom and Vacation, Hughes began writing and directing his own films. His goal was simple: to shoot as many films as possible in the shortest amount of time, working with relatively small budgets, and positioning each to grow his audience at each stage of release. This business plan, combined with the repeated use of an ever growing gallery of young actors, including: Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, and John Candy, only increased the similarities between the studio practices of the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s, and Hughes’ own suburban Chicago movie machine. One look at the closing credits for 1988’s She’s Having a Baby reveals the scope of the Hughes production bonanza. As the credits roll, one star after another stands front and center, often in their costume for another Hughes production, and gives their suggestion for the new baby’s name. When comparing the number of actors and the years over which each individual’s Hughes collaboration was released, the sheer number of films in production and already in release is astounding.
By 1986, the steamroller was under way, and with the help of director Howard Deutch, a John Hughes film began rolling out every six months, carefully timed to coincide with the VHS release of the previous theatrical title. Home video, still a relatively new, somewhat untapped resource, became for Hughes an invaluable tool in keeping his name and productions continually on viewers’ minds. More importantly, it played a key role in making his characters a part of audiences’ lives. With the release of each film, a new phenomenon seemed to be developing; the characters were not only striking a chord with fans, they were also becoming people audiences wished to hang out with on a regular basis. Through theater showings and repeated appearances on video, characters like Clark Griswold, Andie, Ducky, Del Griffith, and Jefferson ‘Jake’ Edward Briggs became members of an ever broadening circle of friends, and a comforting group of individuals that maturing audiences felt they could turn to for comic relief, advice, and support. Many high school outsiders came to view The Breakfast Club as a manifesto for their own experiences, related to the sting of unrequited love in Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful, then found comfort in the rocky transition to adulthood undergone by the newlyweds in She’s Having a Baby.
From 1985 through 1989, Hughes films came out twice a year, like clockwork, and it is this period that saw the release of his signature films, among them: The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Pretty In Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Some Kind of Wonderful, Planes, Trains & Automobiles, She’s Having a Baby, The Great Outdoors, Uncle Buck, and Christmas Vacation. It is also this collection of films that saw the development of Hughes’ defining themes and concerns, most notably: the struggles between the classes, the experiences of society’s outsiders, the clash between youth and adult expectations, the struggle against absurd outside forces, and the dynamics of family life. In the process, Hughes employed a series of recurring character types that often possessed some autobiographical element from his own life. These included brash, charismatic young men; scatterbrained eccentric odd balls; jilted lovers; shy, neglected outsiders; bumbling, but successful parents; and militant, self important authority figures.
By 1987. Hughes began shifting his attention towards more adult film material, beginning with Planes, Trains & Automobiles, and continuing with She’s Having a Baby, which stands as his most autobiographical film, despite his efforts to disguise similarities between Kevin Bacon’s character Jefferson ‘Jake’ Edward Briggs and himself. Aside from Jake‘s dropping out a graduate school in New Mexico, as opposed to Hughes’ own brief undergraduate stint at the University of Arizona, the similarities are striking, right up to Jake’s appearance in Plane’s, Train & Automobiles on a New York City business trip for his advertising firm which is remarkably similar to the trips Hughes’ himself took for six years until he left advertising to join the Lampoon. In retrospect, these later projects have enjoyed the same appeal and fondness with audiences as the teenage films, but at the time of their release they showed a marked change in box office draw, to the point that the studios began urging Hughes to write something that once again had greater commercial appeal. After Uncle Buck, his next film would not only mark his first collaboration with a new director, but also bring an end to the developing themes of the past seven years.
Home Alone was released on November 16, 1990 and quickly went on to gross more than half a billion dollars worldwide, making it the most successful theatrical release that year. Its director, Chris Columbus, had made his debut three years earlier with Adventures In Babysitting, a family comedy set in Chicago, whose storyline and characters could just as easily have been penned by Hughes himself. The idea for Home Alone came about during the filming of scenes with Macaulay Culkin for Uncle Buck, and Hughes, who frequently completed scripts in two-day writing sprees, quickly completed the first draft, bragging that he wrote the last 40 pages in just eight hours. The success of this common childhood fantasy would catapult Culkin, Columbus, and Hughes into the Hollywood stratosphere, and it would be years before any of them would come back to earth. Though a marked departure in terms of story and theme, the script is arguably the strongest, most well structured of Hughes writing efforts to that point, a fact that would ultimately set up his downfall as he went on to repackage and pilfer the script endlessy for the better part of the next decade.
By 1992, Hughes’ work was becoming alarmingly repetitive. Aside from the charming 1991 film Curly Sue, productions with the Hughes Entertainment logo were beginning to show far too many similarities to one another, and most notably to Home Alone. Hughes releases were beginning to resemble repackaged goods whose false labels were slowly peeling away from the cans. Career Opportunities was a clear attempt to recapture the magic of Ferris Bueller by casting Matthew Broderick’s Freshman co-star Frank Whaley in the lead, and sprinkling the script with elements all too reminiscent of Home Alone, including the inexplicable appearance of bumbling crooks in the films last ten minutes, and a series of gags seemingly dropped from Kevin McAllister’s home, directly into a midwest Target store.. The film tanked, as did Dutch and Curly Sue, Hughes’ final directorial effort. In 1992 came Home Alone 2: Lost In New York, an entirely implausible, scene-for-scene remake of the original film, which went on to make $280 million. This same year came the release of Beethoven, written by Hughes under the name Edmond Dantes, in homage to the character in The Count of Monte Cristo. By the end of1997, Hughes had written a series of films that marked a clear departure from his signature themes, and his audience for the past decade had shifted. Instead of aiming for audiences in high school or just embarking on life after college, Hughes began chasing the children’s audience for its box-office money. It is hard to believe that the writer and director of The Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off could really have put much of his heart into the scripts for such films as Home Alone 2, Beethoven, Baby’s Day Out, Dennis the Menace Miracle On 34th Street, 101 Dalmatians, Home Alone 3 and most tellingly, Flubber.
For all appearances, the man who had ended his most famous short story by shooting Walt Disney in the leg, seemed to have become a puppet for the Walt Disney Studios, endlessly rewriting the same script for whichever company would ante up with the biggest check. Perhaps it is telling that the name under which Hughes began to ghostwrite such movies as the Beethoven series is that of a literary character who used a lost fortune to perpetrate a massive fraud for the purpose of revenge. Did Hughes feel that his audience had left him, or did he simply abandon them? Was he always just in it for the money? It would be several more years before anything new appeared from the Hughes film canon to argue otherwise.
In 1998, audiences in three Chicago area theaters were given little more than a week to see for themselves what had been on John Hughes’ mind for the better part of a decade, and the results would be quite familiar, if distinctly darker than they had remembered. With the very limited release of Reach The Rock, Hughes returned to small town America, more specifically to Shermer, Illinois, the fictional setting of virtually all of his earlier films, where white, middle class teenagers from large, two story brick houses staged teenaged rebellions as they tried to discover and define themselves. That their acts of rebellion were often largely benign, 1950’s style revolts were beside the point, the thrill in the films was the fun of leaving detention, skipping school on the first day of spring, or fighting against logic for the chance at true love. Shermer is a town where the fine details of daily life are what really count. More than 11 years after Steve Martin’s Neil Page had safely arrived home for Thanksgiving dinner, Hughes brought audiences back to Shermer for one hot summer night and the conclusion of another high school drama. The themes and the characters were again familiar, but the story was refreshingly different from anything he had written over the past decade, and the mood of the piece was strikingly somber. In a final attempt to escape small town life, Robin Fleming, a Shermer ‘townie’ four years out of high school, gets himself arrested and thrown in the local sheriff’s office. He then proceeds to taunt the police chief and sneak out of his cell, carrying out a series of elaborate pranks involving properties owned by his ex-girlfriend’s father. As Robin’s plan to lure his ex back to him becomes clear, the big questions of the 80’s Hughes film begin to play out again, and the audience is once more immersed in a story of the rich vs. the poor, and each individual’s struggle to define himself. Though Reach the Rock is an imperfect, slow-paced film, it is a shame that Universal, the studio producing it, did not make a greater effort to help the film find an audience, or more precisely, to help the film reclaim the Hughes audience that had so long ago given up on seeing any more of the films they enjoyed growing up with.
Since 1998, Hughes has only written two scripts, one entitled Just Visiting, an unsuccessful remake of a French time -traveling comedy, and the other the cookie cutter Jennifer Lopez vehicle Maid In Manhattan, tellingly written under the Edmond Dantes moniker. In that same period of time, filmdom has been blessed with Beethoven’s 3rd, Beethoven’s 4th, Home Alone 4, and Beethoven’s 5th, which for all purposes were not necessarily produced under Hughes’ watchful eye, but with nothing of real substance or credit to his name on the horizon, leave little to fight off the sour taste his career is beginning to leave in the mouths of fans everywhere.
The big question is whether Hughes ever had his heart in his work in the first place, or whether, coming from an advertising background and the cynical writing offices of National Lampoon, he was simply interested in lining his bank account, locking up his retirement, and padding his own ass. From 1983 to 1990, Hughes wrote some of the funniest, most insightful family and teenage comedies ever produced in Hollywood, and audiences clearly connected with the man and his work. Yet by the mid-80’s it was clear that Hughes had hit a rut. While he still had the ability to entertain and relate to the members of his audience, his recipes were growing thin. He recovered with the production of Planes, Train & Automobiles and She’s Having a Baby, and reached his pinnacle as an accomplished writer of family fare with Home Alone, but aside from one entertaining if manipulative film with Curly Sue, and a fine return to form with Reach the Rock, Hughes has done little to cement his reputation with his audience. His better films were always the more personal ones, the stories one could imagine Jake Briggs typing late into the night. He clearly had a connection with the teenagers growing up in the 80’s, one that continued with his transition towards adult fare and the trials of growing up in She’s Having a Baby, but from then on out he dropped the ball, abandoning the very people who made him a success. The members of The Breakfast Club complained that people saw them in “the simplest terms, the most convenient definitions.” Perhaps John Hughes also began seeing his characters this way, or even worse, as simple dollars and cents, and because of this he lost his connection, and his voice.
Since 1992, his box office has steadily decreased. Perhaps his fans found refuge in the works of another director, or found comfort in television shows like Friends, which in many ways picked up where Hughes left off in tracking the experiences of young adulthood. But now that Friends has taken its last bow, audiences are again ready to find a voice for their generation. Whether or not Hughes was ever writing in the pursuit of truth, or just for personal gain, the facts are simple, if he can find it in himself to again remember the experiences of young adulthood, he may reclaim his audience. At the very least, there's money to be made in it.
The Pixar Story
Tue/Dec/2008 06:30 AM
They say a lot of businesses start out in peoples' garages during economic downturns. Needless to say, the back of my brain has been cooking lately with ideas for the next big thing.
The most famous of the 70s garage success stories is hands down that of Steve Jobs and Apple Computer. Since plenty has already been written about the mercurial mastermind behind the iPhone (and every exciting computer development for the last decade), I'm gonna do my best to avoid adding to the rubble of Steve P. Jobs hero worship, but I will point out the fact that he also played a leading role in the history of yet another business and creative success story, one that basically started in George Lucas' garage (depending on how you want to look at it).
If a copy of Pixar's latest home video release, Wall•E, is sitting on your table, either the DVD or the Blu-ray, then you're good to go. If you don't have it yet, then do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. Got it? OK, good, now skip the movie and jump to the supplements. See the feature documentary The Pixar Story by Leslie Iwerks? That's what you want to watch first. For anyone who has ever aspired to work in the creative fields, only to find themselves seemingly shut out by the powers that be, this is the story you want to know more about. This 88 minute documentary covers the history of Pixar animation, from its time as a fledgling unit of George Lucas' Lucas Film Ltd. / Industrial Light and Magic, to its period as a refuge for animation apprentices banished by the flailing Walt Disney Animation Studios of the early 1980s, this film gives us an inside glimpse at the men behind the magic that's been lighting up movies screens since Thanksgiving weekend 1995 when John Lasseter and company finally fulfilled their dreams of releasing a feature length computer animated film, and most importantly, fulfilled their dream while giving us a film with heart.
In creative endeavors, there's a fine line between stubborn and principled, determined and bullheaded. The story of Pixar's beginnings and negotiated groundwork with Disney is a perfect example of how to get it just right, and how to stick to your guns for all the right reasons. After all, there must be something to be learned from the guys who brought us Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The incredibles, Ratatouille, and Wall•E
The most famous of the 70s garage success stories is hands down that of Steve Jobs and Apple Computer. Since plenty has already been written about the mercurial mastermind behind the iPhone (and every exciting computer development for the last decade), I'm gonna do my best to avoid adding to the rubble of Steve P. Jobs hero worship, but I will point out the fact that he also played a leading role in the history of yet another business and creative success story, one that basically started in George Lucas' garage (depending on how you want to look at it).
If a copy of Pixar's latest home video release, Wall•E, is sitting on your table, either the DVD or the Blu-ray, then you're good to go. If you don't have it yet, then do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. Got it? OK, good, now skip the movie and jump to the supplements. See the feature documentary The Pixar Story by Leslie Iwerks? That's what you want to watch first. For anyone who has ever aspired to work in the creative fields, only to find themselves seemingly shut out by the powers that be, this is the story you want to know more about. This 88 minute documentary covers the history of Pixar animation, from its time as a fledgling unit of George Lucas' Lucas Film Ltd. / Industrial Light and Magic, to its period as a refuge for animation apprentices banished by the flailing Walt Disney Animation Studios of the early 1980s, this film gives us an inside glimpse at the men behind the magic that's been lighting up movies screens since Thanksgiving weekend 1995 when John Lasseter and company finally fulfilled their dreams of releasing a feature length computer animated film, and most importantly, fulfilled their dream while giving us a film with heart.
In creative endeavors, there's a fine line between stubborn and principled, determined and bullheaded. The story of Pixar's beginnings and negotiated groundwork with Disney is a perfect example of how to get it just right, and how to stick to your guns for all the right reasons. After all, there must be something to be learned from the guys who brought us Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The incredibles, Ratatouille, and Wall•E
How to Kindle for Fun and Profit.
Sun/Nov/2008 01:00 PM
I recently took the plunge and purchased a Kindle. The reasons were two-fold, first, my novel was coming out as a Kindle title, and I needed to be sure the formatting was just right before I'd feel comfortable selling copies online. The other reason is that despite my initial reservations regarding this little gadget (I was a brick and mortar bookstore employee for 8 years), I was starting to get the feeling that the Kindle would never replace books, but it just might carve out a new category for readers, authors, and publishers. I think that's exactly what's happening, and now that Oprah has taken down her sword and knighted Jeff Bezos' "folly," the little-gadget-that-could-but-didn't-for-it's-first-year, is making some serious inroads (the wait time is 11 - 13 weeks as I write this).
I've read a number of titles already, some surprisingly fascinating (including Life's a Campaign and Hardball), some promising, but dull as dishwater (Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life), some inspiring, but dripping with snake oil (The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich), and some delivered in a supremely satisfying 30 seconds, despite being sold out at bookstores across the country (Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope). The experience has been book-like and not at the same time. I also have a number of thoughts on the physical design of the reader itself, all of which I'll be covering in a new Cryptic Bindings web magazine in the coming weeks, but at the moment, I just want to point out two ways in which the Kindle can be an invaluable tool for people who work in publishing.
First is the ability to publish your own books without risking any of your own money. Cryptic Bindings (the publisher of this site) just put out my first novel in November. Doing so cost the publisher many hundreds of dollars, including costs for editing, formatting, cover design, database registration, publishing expenses, distribution, and press releases. The Kindle edition of the book didn't cost Cryptic one penny. Sure, there were the expenses accrued in preparing the manuscript for publication, but this second avenue of release was as simple as preparing the digital files and submitting them through Amazon's digital text platform, where the price of the Kindle edition was set, and within days, the book was available as an electronic edition through the world's biggest online retailer. Depending on the subject of your book, and the the timeliness of its release, the inherent possibilities of such accessible and speedy distribution are mind-boggling.
Coming at the publishing world from another angle, the Kindle also makes for an interesting, and as yet little publicized tool for working your way through manuscripts and the slush-pile. Every Kindle comes with its own email address. By sending a Word or html manuscript file to your_email@kindle.com, you can convert this manuscript to a digital file which is then wirelessly transmitted to your reader, all for the cost of ten cents. Now young Joe Editor can enjoy his trip on the Long Island railroad while carrying only his MacBook Air and his Kindle, loaded up with a dozen manuscripts, rather than lugging roughly, say 3600 sheets of double-spaced paper back and forth from Manhattan to the North Shore. Pretty handy. Good for Joe. Good for his back. And doggone it, good for the environment.
As I said, my thoughts on the Kindle, as well as my reviews of the latest and hottest titles, will soon be available regularly at Digital Dust Jacket, but I've definitely found the Kindle to be an invaluable tool for someone working in writing and publishing. If you haven't done so yet, take the leap and give it a try!
I've read a number of titles already, some surprisingly fascinating (including Life's a Campaign and Hardball), some promising, but dull as dishwater (Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life), some inspiring, but dripping with snake oil (The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich), and some delivered in a supremely satisfying 30 seconds, despite being sold out at bookstores across the country (Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope). The experience has been book-like and not at the same time. I also have a number of thoughts on the physical design of the reader itself, all of which I'll be covering in a new Cryptic Bindings web magazine in the coming weeks, but at the moment, I just want to point out two ways in which the Kindle can be an invaluable tool for people who work in publishing.
First is the ability to publish your own books without risking any of your own money. Cryptic Bindings (the publisher of this site) just put out my first novel in November. Doing so cost the publisher many hundreds of dollars, including costs for editing, formatting, cover design, database registration, publishing expenses, distribution, and press releases. The Kindle edition of the book didn't cost Cryptic one penny. Sure, there were the expenses accrued in preparing the manuscript for publication, but this second avenue of release was as simple as preparing the digital files and submitting them through Amazon's digital text platform, where the price of the Kindle edition was set, and within days, the book was available as an electronic edition through the world's biggest online retailer. Depending on the subject of your book, and the the timeliness of its release, the inherent possibilities of such accessible and speedy distribution are mind-boggling.
Coming at the publishing world from another angle, the Kindle also makes for an interesting, and as yet little publicized tool for working your way through manuscripts and the slush-pile. Every Kindle comes with its own email address. By sending a Word or html manuscript file to your_email@kindle.com, you can convert this manuscript to a digital file which is then wirelessly transmitted to your reader, all for the cost of ten cents. Now young Joe Editor can enjoy his trip on the Long Island railroad while carrying only his MacBook Air and his Kindle, loaded up with a dozen manuscripts, rather than lugging roughly, say 3600 sheets of double-spaced paper back and forth from Manhattan to the North Shore. Pretty handy. Good for Joe. Good for his back. And doggone it, good for the environment.
As I said, my thoughts on the Kindle, as well as my reviews of the latest and hottest titles, will soon be available regularly at Digital Dust Jacket, but I've definitely found the Kindle to be an invaluable tool for someone working in writing and publishing. If you haven't done so yet, take the leap and give it a try!
Club 55 - St. Tropez
Sat/Aug/2008 07:00 AM
As we wind through the dog days of summer, and August starts rolling into fall (and man can you feel it in the evenings here in Seattle), take heart that somewhere in the world, celebrities and the globe-trotting elite are rubbing elbows on sandy beaches and sipping glasses of Rose over baskets of grilled bread. That's right, I'm talking about Club 55, the premier beach club and dining locale in Saint Tropez. Google the name or peruse Page Six any July or August day, and you're sure to see photos and read recaps of the hedonistic exploits occurring daily in this Mediterranean hotspot. I'll save the history for Wikipedia and the God Created Woman film fans, but 'nuff to say, this place earns every bit of it's world class reputation. From the previously mentioned grilled bread (can you tell I'm a fan) to the mesclun salad to the ever flowing Rose, everything here is tiptop, top notch, and utterly dependable. This is the place to see and be seen. Oh, and while you're watching, keep your eyes peeled for regulars like Jack Nicholson, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas, Bono, and of course, Electron Toast's idol: Richard Branson.
For your viewing pleasure, a video detailing a visit to Club 55.
For your viewing pleasure, a video detailing a visit to Club 55.
The Plaza Hotel Residences
Sat/Jun/2008 07:00 AM
So, back to the plan. The bi-coastal lifestyle To be honest, I’m not entirely sure Manhattan would be my first choice for east coast haunts, but man, unless I could find an opening in the Dakota building, my dream choice of an NYC address would have to be The Plaza. On Frasier, Niles’ dream was always to have a one word address which he finally obtained when he moved into... The Dakota (hmm...that was a convenient bookend, but wrong coast. His Dakota was in Seattle). Anyway, just imagin being able to tell your guests, “Mike Attebery. The Plaza.” That has got one sweeeet ring to it!
Now, you too can own a residence at The Plaza, either by purchasing your own condominium, or buying one of the ever trendy new condominium hotel suites. Entry prices start at $2.5 and $1.5 Million respectively, which frankly, doesn’t seem half bad! Be curious to see how many units at these price points are actually available, and where in the building they’re actually located (!) but thats another story.
Of course, if you just want to stay there for a weekend (a special weekend), there are still rooms available as of March 1, 2008, now that renovations are completed and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts (one of my faves) has taken over management of the property.
The Plaza Hotel Residences
Now, you too can own a residence at The Plaza, either by purchasing your own condominium, or buying one of the ever trendy new condominium hotel suites. Entry prices start at $2.5 and $1.5 Million respectively, which frankly, doesn’t seem half bad! Be curious to see how many units at these price points are actually available, and where in the building they’re actually located (!) but thats another story.
Of course, if you just want to stay there for a weekend (a special weekend), there are still rooms available as of March 1, 2008, now that renovations are completed and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts (one of my faves) has taken over management of the property.
The Plaza Hotel Residences
Tom Kundig - Seattle Architect
Mon/Jun/2008 07:00 AM
At one time, everyone at Electron Toast has felt torn between different locations and, frequently, alternate coasts. Then we settled on a simple solution. Instead of choosing just one locale, why not aim for a bicoastal lifestyle and enjoy the best of everything? Since we all have roots back east, but work frequently brings us out west, this made perfect sense.
Personally, while I l find New York exciting, there’s something about the Pacific Northwest, Seattle in particular, that just feels right. The first time I visited the area I was struck by the way nature and the elements seem so intwined with the character of the city itself. Driving through Seattle down I-5, you frequently pass under concrete overpasses that are literally draped with cascading vines that themselves grow out of planters from which evergreens shoot up towards the (frequently gray) skies.
Pretty cool.
In comparison, when you touch down at JFK and catch a cab into the city, New York can seem pretty damn dingy.
Then there’s the vibe of Seattle. Well, I’ll cut to the chase, the whole place in unique unto itself, and for me, it just seems right. Now that I’ve set down roots in Seattle, it’s been interesting to get a feel for the architecture and homes that seem to embody the feel of the area. I would never have thought modern home design could appeal to me as much as it does, but there’s something about basic, clean construction elements, when combined with a sense of place (think trees shooting up from concrete planters) that finds a natural balance, and the work of one architect in particular seems to grab my attention again and again.
Tom Kundig of Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects has his fingers on the pulse of something truly unique and inherently Northwest. As apparent in his project highlights on the firm’s website, Kundig has a masterful touch when it comes to blending simple wood, concrete, and steel craftmanship into natural settings. If I didn’t already have a place in the area, Kundig's first mixed use development would certainly stand out as something I’d be interested in. Ultimately, I’d love to have the guy design a stand alone residence for myself and my family. Looking through Kundig’s body of work can be mind boggling at times. I’ve just finished going through his book and found any number of ideas I’d like to incorporate into renovations of my own Seattle residence.
If you’re in the market for a more laid back lifestyle in an incredible city, and you’d like to explore some options for staking a claim on your own piece of the Emerald City, I’d certainly recommend exploring the 1111 Pike Street project. It looks like a way to enjoy the one of a kind, much sought after architectural style of a man whose work usually comes at a significantly higher price.
For a look at some of Kundig’s single family residential projects, I highly recommend his book: Tom Kundig: Houses.
I’m currently working my way through a retrospective of the collective works of the partners at Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects. In particular, it seems Jim Olson might have his own unique style, one which, at first glance, seems to lend his projects a warmer, more personal appeal that I also find quite appealing. I’ll report back to you once I’ve finished the second book: Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen.
Architecture like this is enough to make a person start collecting houses!
Personally, while I l find New York exciting, there’s something about the Pacific Northwest, Seattle in particular, that just feels right. The first time I visited the area I was struck by the way nature and the elements seem so intwined with the character of the city itself. Driving through Seattle down I-5, you frequently pass under concrete overpasses that are literally draped with cascading vines that themselves grow out of planters from which evergreens shoot up towards the (frequently gray) skies.
Pretty cool.
In comparison, when you touch down at JFK and catch a cab into the city, New York can seem pretty damn dingy.
Then there’s the vibe of Seattle. Well, I’ll cut to the chase, the whole place in unique unto itself, and for me, it just seems right. Now that I’ve set down roots in Seattle, it’s been interesting to get a feel for the architecture and homes that seem to embody the feel of the area. I would never have thought modern home design could appeal to me as much as it does, but there’s something about basic, clean construction elements, when combined with a sense of place (think trees shooting up from concrete planters) that finds a natural balance, and the work of one architect in particular seems to grab my attention again and again.
Tom Kundig of Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects has his fingers on the pulse of something truly unique and inherently Northwest. As apparent in his project highlights on the firm’s website, Kundig has a masterful touch when it comes to blending simple wood, concrete, and steel craftmanship into natural settings. If I didn’t already have a place in the area, Kundig's first mixed use development would certainly stand out as something I’d be interested in. Ultimately, I’d love to have the guy design a stand alone residence for myself and my family. Looking through Kundig’s body of work can be mind boggling at times. I’ve just finished going through his book and found any number of ideas I’d like to incorporate into renovations of my own Seattle residence.
If you’re in the market for a more laid back lifestyle in an incredible city, and you’d like to explore some options for staking a claim on your own piece of the Emerald City, I’d certainly recommend exploring the 1111 Pike Street project. It looks like a way to enjoy the one of a kind, much sought after architectural style of a man whose work usually comes at a significantly higher price.
For a look at some of Kundig’s single family residential projects, I highly recommend his book: Tom Kundig: Houses.
I’m currently working my way through a retrospective of the collective works of the partners at Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects. In particular, it seems Jim Olson might have his own unique style, one which, at first glance, seems to lend his projects a warmer, more personal appeal that I also find quite appealing. I’ll report back to you once I’ve finished the second book: Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen.
Architecture like this is enough to make a person start collecting houses!
You'll Never Get Rich Working For Your Boss
Mon/Jun/2008 06:30 AM
I've run across two books this summer that have instantly become my "go to gifts" for friends and family. The first was more of a lighthearted, but in my opinion, incredibly insightful work of fiction called The Art Of Racing In The Rain. The second book is a title I'm determined to give to everyone I know who shows signs of possessing an entrepreneurial spark. That book is Felix Dennis' How To Get Rich, which features one of the cheesiest titles imaginable, but which also provides some of the most insightful and reassuring advice I have run across in regards to starting one's own business. Since Dennis really has walked the walk when it comes to making billions in the publishing world, and since my own personal business interests lie in writing and publishing, the insights in his book often apply DIRECTLY to questions and concerns I have had in relation to my own business endeavors. Dennis' main point throughout is that to be rich, truly rich (not "comfortably poor" as he puts it) you have to take the risks and pursue your own endeavors. In the process, he eliminates many of the old (and ongoing) excuses I've heard coming from my own mouth and the mouths of my friends for year. Sure, there's a laundry list of reasons why EVERYTHING can fail, but if you think of things in terms of fun, like a game, whats the worst, the absolute worst that can happen, particularly if you have nothing to lose from the get go? Like I said, the title makes this sound like the work of a shifty flim flam man, but the advice, the stories, and the thinking, from cover to cover, struck so many chords with my own work philosphy, that I was completely won over, and encouraged in the personal projects I have been working on for the last yar. Do yourself a favor, pick up this book. Unless you're still looking for excuses for taking a risk and going for the glory, you'll be glad you did.
A Toast To Richard Branson: Aim For The Top
Mon/Jun/2008 06:00 AM
FORTUNE Magazine published a profile of Sir Richard Branson in October 2003 that has no doubt inspired countless entrepreneurs and businessmen ever since. The folks here at Electron Toast were no different. We’ve held on to our battered copy of that article (pilfered from the Starbucks Corporate gym) and revisited it frequently over last half decade.
So what is it about Branson that captures our imaginations? Well, just about everything. With an estimated net worth of $4 billion, a business empire encompassing more than 360 companies (including airlines, record labels, and space tourism) numerous world record setting adventure exploits, and most famously, his own ISLAND the man is living the life we all dreamed of as kids, and apparently having more fun than any billionaire alive. Compare a photo of Branson to one of similarly wealthy individuals, from Donald Trump to George Lucas, and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who seems to be having anywhere near as much fun.
Yes, Branson is a businessman, but more than anything, he’s the ultimate example of a risk taker living life on his own terms. As he’s so frequently quoted as saying, he doesn’t think of work as work and play as play “it’s all living.” We’d argue that when you’re hopscotching around the world, traveling on your own planes, and spending time on your very own island, you’re not just living, you’re thriving. And while our personal aspirations might lie in differing fields, there’s a creative energy in all of Branson’s ventures and self-promotion that strikes a similar creative chord deep within our toasty hearts. Sure, there are richer folks out there, but Branson is the one we want to emulate. If you aim high, you’re bound to hit something good. For a high school dropout who clearly eschews research and market studies (going instead with gut feelings and personal interests), Branson is the perfect example of following your passions and letting wealth and success catch up to you along the way.
In addition to the FORTUNE piece, other must read titles, dictated from Branson’s mouth to your ears include:
Bathroom reading: Screw It, Let's Do It
Poolside / plane reading: Losing My Virginity
So what is it about Branson that captures our imaginations? Well, just about everything. With an estimated net worth of $4 billion, a business empire encompassing more than 360 companies (including airlines, record labels, and space tourism) numerous world record setting adventure exploits, and most famously, his own ISLAND the man is living the life we all dreamed of as kids, and apparently having more fun than any billionaire alive. Compare a photo of Branson to one of similarly wealthy individuals, from Donald Trump to George Lucas, and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who seems to be having anywhere near as much fun.
Yes, Branson is a businessman, but more than anything, he’s the ultimate example of a risk taker living life on his own terms. As he’s so frequently quoted as saying, he doesn’t think of work as work and play as play “it’s all living.” We’d argue that when you’re hopscotching around the world, traveling on your own planes, and spending time on your very own island, you’re not just living, you’re thriving. And while our personal aspirations might lie in differing fields, there’s a creative energy in all of Branson’s ventures and self-promotion that strikes a similar creative chord deep within our toasty hearts. Sure, there are richer folks out there, but Branson is the one we want to emulate. If you aim high, you’re bound to hit something good. For a high school dropout who clearly eschews research and market studies (going instead with gut feelings and personal interests), Branson is the perfect example of following your passions and letting wealth and success catch up to you along the way.
In addition to the FORTUNE piece, other must read titles, dictated from Branson’s mouth to your ears include:
Bathroom reading: Screw It, Let's Do It
Poolside / plane reading: Losing My Virginity