CATCHING UP
My primary activity this summer is to complete the manuscript for the 3rd revised edition of Acting for Animators. Routledge in London is my new publisher and will be releasing the book in both hard and soft cover. Writing has been keeping me so busy that I did not get the June Newsletter out, and I apologize for that. We'll get back on a predictable schedule in the fall.
SCREEN ACTORS GUILD AND AFTRA MERGER?
Both unions are still moving forward, toward a long-overdue merger. I still say you should not hold your breath because this thing could fall out of bed yet. These two unions have been like the
Hatfields and McCoys for a long time. They have been close to merger a number of times in the past and couldn't make it happen.
BOSTON MED TELEVISION SHOW
Television is chock full of truly awful reality shows, but have you seen a show on ABC-TV called Boston Med? It is extremely well produced, and I would give a nickel to know how the director manages to keep the non-actor doctors and nurses behaving so un-self consciously on camera. The drama is real, and the outcome of each episode is often surprising. Very impressive. Check it out.
HOOKS CHICAGO ACTING WORKSHOP ON SUMMER BREAK
We will resume the Thursday night workshop on September 9th, and I am starting to accumulate names of people who intend to be there. If that includes you, please drop me a line at edhooks@edhooks.com. The workshop meets 7-10:30pm at The Acting Studio, 10 West Hubbard St., Suite 2E, in the Chicago Loop. It is an ongoing scene study workshop, and the tuition is $135 per four-week month. It is free to audit once, and you can begin the class at any time. It is mixed levels, but at a professional standard. I presume that people who study with me would like to be paid to act. Even if that is not a person's goal, that is the mark I try to reach.
ACTING FOR ANIMATORS WORKSHOP SCHEDULE
Fall 2010 India (dates to be announced)
Feb 2011 Animex, Teesside England
CRAFT NOTES
Strange Times
Actor Laurence Fishburne’s 19-year-old daughter, Montana, has announced that she plans to release a pornographic tape starring herself so that she can follow in the footsteps of Kim Kardashian. What is someone like me supposed to make of that? I realize I am a little bit outside of Ms. Kardashian’s target audience, but still. A porno as a conceptual career move?
Okay, so Montana wants to be like Kim Kardashian. I looked up Kim Kardashian’s website, and it informed me that she is a star and that she is on that television reality show that I don’t watch. Actually, I did watch it for about fifteen minutes once and couldn’t figure out what it was about. Bruce Jenner, the former Olympic swimming champion, was standing around in a kitchen a lot, and it looked to me like he has had a very bad face lift.
There is nothing on Ms. Kardashian’s website asserting that she possesses any particular talent. She doesn't play the piano or anything. She owns a clothing store in Calabasas, California, but that isn’t really a talent. But yet, it says she is a star. Since Montana mentioned Kim Kardashian’s sex tape, I went ahead and Googled “Kim Kardashian sex tape” and, sure enough, there were 2,680,000 links. Evidently she appeared in a sex tape a couple of years ago with a gentleman named Ray J. (No last name).
Then I Googled “Kim Kardashian yearly income” and discovered that Forbes magazine says she is worth $10 million. That information shot my eyebrows up. $10 million? What on earth did she do to make that much money? It doesn’t say. She just has her fingers in a lot of different pots. There is a make-up line with her name on it but, speaking purely as a male observer, it looks to me like Kardashian wears too much makeup.
Here is the bottom line as I understand it. Montana Fishburne, whose godfather is Martin Sheen, by the way, wants to be rich and famous and, in order to pursue that dream, she is releasing a sex tape next month. Maybe she’s right. I Googled “Montana Fishburne biography”. She doesn’t have a biography yet, but she is on IMDB, and it says that her popularity is up 64 percent in the last week because she said she is releasing a sex tape.
We are living in strange times. Kim Kardashian is evidently famous because … well, just because. And she is rich because ... I don't know why. Hold the phone. I’m going to Google “famous”. Okay, I checked several on-line dictionaries, and they all say about the same thing: “Celebrated in fame or public report; renowned; much talked of; distinguished in story; -- used in either a good or a bad sense.” I suppose this is an example of the “bad sense” because it takes a porno to get there.
Until next month ...
Be safe!
