Month: April 2007

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said there are no second acts in American lives. I disagree. I would say just the opposite, that American lives are almost fully made up of second acts. I don’t know if it is the times

Is film dead? That is the question. I had lunch the other day with a former student. And when he is not being a tennis official, he works often in the Chicago film business. He told me that in the

My cell phone died on Saturday. Actually it only half died. I can talk into and can be heard, but I can’t hear the person I am talking with. My last conversation went something like this, “Can you hear me?

I am happy to report that the student who asked me if I had any women in my class has written a nice script and will be shooting a short film in late summer. (She subscribes to the good, fast,

The enemy of good is better. It is worse when a “creative committee” is involved. More to the point, trying to make an already good thing better often ruins the original. See New Coke, Rocky II and Cher as examples.

“Good, fast, cheap pick two,” is our unofficial motto. (Our official motto is “It must be 5 o’clock somewhere, let’s have a drink.”) I am constantly surprised by how many people do not understand this simple concept. It is a

The only real job I ever had was at The Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago. Between 1987 and 1989 I was one of about a dozen people who helped get the museum off the ground and up and running.

As filmmakers we have had the opportunity to shoot a lot of fascinating projects, meet a lot of interesting people and go places where the general public just doesn’t have access. Michael Jordan drove Jim around Chicago for a Chevy

This is a Ida Lupino. She was an actress, but more importantly she was one of the first women to write, direct and produce Hollywood films. She also directed lots of episodic television (Daniel Boone, Route 66, and others). She