The Elvis of Cyber Law - Lawrence Lessig

So Lawrence Lessig, the Elvis of CyberLaw, Professor of Law at Standford, author of Free Culture, gets onto Dead Beat.

"No offense. I too mourn the passing of Jack Valenti, but get with it you blogger and user of the internet (or abuser as Vanenti would tell you) he was a bit of a radical. Now, here's the thing you've got to remember. You've got to see this. This is the point. (And Jack Valenti misses this.) Here's the point: Never has it been more controlled ever. Take the addition, the changes, the copyrights turn, take the changes to copyrights scope, put it against the background of an extraordinarily concentrated structure of media, and you produce the fact that never in our history have fewer people controlled more of the evolution of our culture. Never.

Enter the Internet. Every act is a copy, which means all of these unregulated uses disappear. Presumptively, everything you do on your machine on the network is a regulated use. And now it forces us into this tiny little category of arguing about, "What about the fair uses? What about the fair uses?" I will say the word: To hell with the fair uses. What about the unregulated uses we had of culture before this massive expansion of control? Now, unregulated uses disappear, we argue about fair use, and they find a way to remove fair use, right?"

"Whoh, Lessig, you're shouting."

"Goddamn right!"

Hudson's Oscar Acceptance Speech

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I'm sorry. This moment is so much bigger than me.

This moment is for Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, Old Shep. It's for the dogs that stand beside me, Air Bud, Balto, Beethoven. And it's for every nameless, faceless dog of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened. Thank you. I'm so honored. I'm so honored. And I thank the Academy for choosing me to be the vessel for which His blessing might flow. Thank you.
I want to thank my manager, Dead Beat. He's been with me for eight long months and you fought every fight and you've loved me when I've been up, but more importantly you've loved me when I've been down. You have been a manager, a friend, and the only father I've ever known. Really. And I love you very much.
I want to thank my mom who's given me the strength to fight every single day, to be who I want to be and given me the courage to dream, that this dream might be happening and possible for me. I love you, Mom, so much, even though you gave up on me. Thank you. My wife, the bitch next door, who is just a joy of my life, and India, my unknown daugther, thank you for giving me peace because only with the peace that you've brought me have I been allowed to go to places that I never even knew I could go. Thank you. I love you and India with all my heart.
I want to thank everybody for believing in me. Our director is a genius. You're a genius. This moviemaking experience was magical for me because of you. You believed in me; you trusted me and you gently guided me to very scary places. I thank you. I want to thank Benjii. I could have never figured out who the heck this lady was without you. I love you. Thank you. I want to thank our producer. Thank you for giving me this chance, for believing that I could do it. And now tonight I have this. Thank you.I want to thank my agents. Thank you for never kicking me out and sending me somewhere else. Thank you. I, I, I, who else? I have so many people that I know I need to thank. My lawyers -- Okay, wait a minute. I got to take...seventy-four years here!! Ok. I got to take this time! I got to thank my lawyer, for making this deal. I need to thank lastly and not leastly, I have to thank Spike Lee because you must thank Spike Lee. Oprah Winfrey for being the best role model any dog can have. And thank you to Warren Beatty - you would seduce any dog they say. Thank you so much for being my mentors and believing in me.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Tasting the Sweet Smell of Success - Hudson and Homer Hit the Oscars

So Hudson comes in with this Hangdog expression.

“Where’ve you been?” I ask. He didn’t come in when called last night.

“On the town with Horace.”

“Hudson and Horace!” Dead Beat cannot think of a worse combination.

“Where?”

“Oscar parties. Marty Scorsese, Vanity Fair, you know.”

“No, I don’t know Hudson. Dead Beat has never been to the Oscars, Dead Beat has never even been to an Oscar party, Dead Beat has never really been to a party in fact, Dead Beat….”

“Leave it out Dad! You got nominated for an Irish Blog Award, didn’t you?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“It’s like I was saying to Marty at the party….”

“Marty at the party, Hudson?”

“Yeah, Scorsie. I was telling Scorsie….”

“Martin Scorsese?”

“To you, Dead Beat, to you…. Anyway there Horace and I are, gridlocked, Gwyneth, Tom, Nicole, Leonardo, Cate, Kate, you know how it is?”

“No, I don’t.”

“So streets in a two-block circumference of Morton's were closed off by police, there are three fire engines in attendance since stars tend to flout the no-smoking laws….”

“You didn’t Hudson?”

“One cigar, Dad, maybe two, three at the most. Anyway Madonna is hitching up her skirt and placing a wine glass between her thighs, Dame Helen Mirren is missing, probably sitting in the toilet, staring at her Oscar and talking to it….”
“Get to the point, Hudson.”

“There is no point, Dad. These are the Oscars we are talking about. I was down at the grand Beverly Hills Hotel when a stream of expensively-wrapped packages arrived culminating in a planet-sized floral bouquet, vast enough for its aroma to linger after it had been dispatched upstairs. "What is that amazing smell?," Horace asked the receptionist. "It's the smell of success, the sweet smell of success." I have made it, Dad, Hudson has tasted the sweet smell of success.”

Comedy and the Absurd - The Vaudeville of Writing

People sometimes bemoan the hapless form of the Marx Brothers in film - essentially they were bring a stage/vaudeville form to cinema. Clearly adaptations need to occur. The Brothers were hugely sucessful on stage. The attempt was to replicate this as much as possible for film. This was in the 'early' days of film remember.

Dead Beat is completely forgiving. Like Groucho he couldn't really stand the harp either. But like Groucho he understands that you need to give the audience time to allow their laughter to subside before the next onslaught. Highs and Lows - does this not sound like form to you?

Anyway Dead Beat is much more interested in the form of their comedy. This is where the goodies for us writers are kept.

This is the thing to remember: Comedy has form and structure.

Comedies have type characters. They begin in comic situations that develop in unconventional ways. In the case of the Marx Brothers the unconventional becomes 'wild', 'chaotic'. And we laugh.

Why?

Well there are three types of comedy: Farce, Romantic, and Satire.

The Marx Brothers are clearly in the former cagagory. Here we encounter zaniness, slapstick humour, hilarious improbability. The fantastic, the absurd, the ridiculous. Wild coincidences, twists and complications. Confusion abounds. Deception, mimicry, disguise and mistaken identity.

This latter point is of great interest to Dead Beat: Mistaken identity. Comedy questions identity, our identity just as great writers do in their works. Although it deals in stereotypes it uses these types to force us to recognise the absurd within us - the absurdity of life. Comedy is subversive and to be feared by the powerful.

Ignore its possibilities in your writing at your peril.

Dead Beat Gets Two Thumbs Up from Roger Ebert

"Two Thumbs Up, Dead Beat."
"Roger Ebert?"
"Sure."
"Why are you phoning, don't you have a movie to watch or something?"
"It's The Marx Brothers. You've been writing about them. Two Thumbs Up."
"They were good, weren't they? I mean very good. Anarchic, chaotic, but not without form."
"Dead Beat, they were the instrument that translated what was once essentially a Jewish style of humor into the dominant note of American comedy. Although they were not taken as seriously, they were as surrealist as Dali, as shocking as Stravinsky, as verbally outrageous as Gertrude Stein, as alienated as Kafka."
"Yeah, Roger, that's what I was saying. Two Thumbs Up."

The Brothers Marx and Other Literary Giants

Okay Dead Beat has been getting very serious (see previous posts) - time to lighten up - and Dead Beat's true belief - you want to know anything about writing, don't look to The Brothers Karamazov but look instead to the Brothers Marx.

The Infamous Swordfish Scene from Horse Feathers.




Bouncer: Hey, Baravelli!
Baravelli: Whadaya want?
Bouncer: Watch the door for a few minutes. And don't let anyone in without the password.
Baravelli: Alright, what is it?
Bouncer: "Swordfish" is the password, d'ya understand?
Baravelli: Okay, I got it.
Bouncer: Well, what is it?
Baravelli: Password.
Bouncer: Swordfish! Swordfish!
Baravelli: Alrighta! Swordfisha! Swordfish!
Bouncer: Aahh...
Baravelli: Piazza mosco santa rumbolla fatcha duzzi patsi!
There's a knock at the door. Baravelli opens the peephole.
Baravelli: Who are you?
Wagstaff: I'm fine, thanks. Who are you?
Baravelli: I'm fine too, but you can't come in unless you give the password.
Wagstaff: Well, what is the password?
Baravelli: Oh no, you gotta tell me! (pause) Hey, I tell you what I do...I give you three guesses...It's the name of a fish...
Wagstaff: Is it Mary?
Baravelli: Ha, ha! Atsa no fish!
Wagstaff: She isn't? Well, she drinks like one. Let me see...Is it sturgeon?Baravelli: Hey, you're crazy! A sturgeon, he's a doctor cuts you open whena you sick. Now I give you one more chance.
Wagstaff: I got it! Haddock!
Baravelli: Atsa funny, I gotta haddock too.
Wagstaff: What do you take for a haddock?
Baravelli: Well now, sometimes I take aspirin, sometimes I take a calomel.
Wagstaff: Say, I'd walk a mile for a calomel.
Baravelli: You mean chocolate calomel. I like that too, but you no guess it. (Slams door. Wagstaff knocks again. Baravelli opens the peephole again.)
Hey, whatsa matta? You no understand English? You can't come in here unless you say swordfish! Now, I give you one more guess.
Wagstaff: (thinking) Swordfish...swordfish...I think I got it! Is it swordfish?

Dead Beat F##king Gets It From Al Pacino

So Pacino gets back to Dead Beat:

"Hey, you? You a Communist or something? How would you like it they tell you all the time what to think, what to do, you wanna be like a sheep, like everybody else. Baa baa? Puta!

You want a stoolie on every block? You wanna work eight hours a day and you never own nothing? I ate octopus three times a day, f##king octopus is coming out my ears, f##kin' Russian shoes are eating through my feet.

Whaddaya want? You want me to go where you say I go. Hey, I'm no little wh##e, I'm no stinking thief! I'm Al Pacino and I want my f##king 'Human Rights'. If I want to visit Oscar Wilde's f##king bedroom, I'll visit Oscar Wilde's f##king bedroom. I don't have to do what you or anyone else f##king says.

Okay?"

Okay, Al, Pal. I get it. Dead Beat f##ing gets it.

Leeches and Jars of Mustard

Altman as you know made the film Short Cuts - based loosely on some of Ray Carver's short stories.

Well Dead Beat who used to hunt and fish quite a bit with Ray Carver and Carver's old buddy Richard Ford, asked him one time while warming up a leech in his mouth:

"So Way temm me abow the stawting point fow yaw stowies."

"What's that Dead Beat?" Ray asks pulling in a big one.

Dead Beat takes the leech from his mouth, checks to see it is now wiggling just fine and puts it on his hook.

"So Ray, tell me about the starting point for your stories."

"Well Dead Beat, I never start with an idea. I always see something. I start with an image, a cigarette being put out in a jar of mustard, for instance, or the remains, the wreckage of a dinner left on the table. Pop cans in the fireplace, that sort of thing. And a feeling goes with that. And that feeling seems to transport me back to that particular time and place, and the ambiance of the time. But it is the image, and the emotion that goes with that image – that's what's important."

"How about a leech in someone's mouth?"

"That's good, Dead Beat. Now where did I leave my notebook?"

Dead Beat's Open Letter to Al Pacino

Al, Baby,

seems you were spotted around my old Alma Mater Trinity College Dublin yesterday to check out Oscar Wilde's old rooms. Now, Al, I know you have developed a passion for Wilde and are planning a documentary about the Irish writer's work. I know you appeared as King Herod in Wilde's 'Salome' on Broadway, but Al, hooh hah!

Did you think to be shown to Dead Beat's old seat of study in the 1916 Reading Room or his place at the back of the lecture hall in the Engineering Building?

Did you not want to see the many steps of the Pavillion Bar dear Dead Beat took a tumble down one rowdy Friday night?

* * * *

Al, you are like me, we refuse to be fools, to be puppets dancing on a string pulled by other men. I hoped the time for veils and dancing and heads on plates was over. That was my misfortune. That was your misfortune. I was hunted on the streets of Cavan when I was twelve years old because of who my father wasn't. I had no choice.

Believe in a family, Al. Can you believe in your country? Those Pezzonovante of the State who decide what we shall do with our lives? Who declare wars they wish us to fight in to protect what they own. Do you put your fate in the hands of men whose only talent is that they tricked a bloc of people to vote for them? Al, in five years the Dead Beat and Pacino family can be completely legitimate. Very difficult things have to happen to make that possible. I can't do them anymore, but you can, if you choose to.

Next time, Al, go see where I threw up in the toilets.

And hey, Al, read my book.

Blocking the Audiences View - Robert Altman

"Here's another thing..."

"Altman?"

"Audiences: I am not going to do their work for them. I like audiences to crane their necks."

Listen to him: make your audience lean forward and look more closely - block their view for crying out loud.

The Great Art of Blundering - Robert Altman

Dead Beat heard a voice from beyond the grave -

"Altman is that you?"

"Someone just called me an expert, Dead Beat."

"And aren't you?"

"I am not an expert. That is someone else's job. If I were expert, the approach would be all wrong. It would be from the inside. I am a blunderer. I usually don't know what I am going into at the start. I go into the fog and trust something will be there."

Blunder on Robert - the fog has been lifted.

And so Dead Beat would urge you in your writing to become blunderers - go into the fog and trust something will be there.

An Entree to the Human Condition: Robert Altman Remembered

Dead Beat wants to know why they are all dying on him right now (See Intellectual Freedom Fighters) -

They don't come much bigger than Robert Altman however. Any writer worth their salt know how much they have to learn from his film work. More on this anon. But for now Dead Beat just wants you to remember one of the great independent filmakers of our time.

In his own words from his honourary Oscar acceptance speech:

"No other filmmaker has gotten a better shake than I have. I'm very fortunate in my career. I've never had to direct a film I didn't choose or develop. My love for filmmaking has given me an entree to the world and to the human condition."

Robert, it has give us all an entree to the world and to the human condition.

Thank you.