I told you!!!!

Dammit, I went and killed Michelangelo Antinioni. Fuck me, fuck me!

Soderbergh and Fincher, watch your backs! There be falling pianos in the sky!

Maybe Tom Snyder counts, and the fates will stop at three. Tom, the intellectual conversationalist, whose pretty pictures floated over the air throughout my life.

I was talking recently with a friend about why I don't consider myself a writer, and when I read Snyder's lovely obit in Variety, I realized why: I'm not. I'm a conversationalist. All I do is type up the exact conversation going on in my head. How is that writing? It can't be. If someone were in the room with me, I'd just be saying it out loud instead of to my Toshiba.

Razor Sharp

Here's a movie that was making good use of Comic-con. Good for them.

I revisited "The Limey" and "Fight Club" yesterday and still adore them, if you haven't seen.

The Monster we sleep with

Joss Whedon was at Comic-con, and no I didn't get to meet him.

Next to David Milch, Bergman (RIP), Wilder, and Chris Claremont, Joss is of course one of the genius storytellers of the last century. I don't say this lightly, given as I believe storytelling is the sacred job of shamans, and that it and indoor plumbing are what separate us from apes.

Joss has dedicated his Hollywood career and his philanthropy to understanding and empowering females, and has my utter respect. Many of you probably never watched "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", but it's apt that college courses exist to dissect the mythology and messages of the series.

The most beloved and excrutiating season is Two, wherein the arc is the fallout of Buffy succumbing to the physical charms of her supposed soul mate Angel, the vampire. Obviously, the rudimentary conflict of their relationship is built into their monikers: Buffy the Vampire Slayer loves Angel the Vampire.



But Joss doesn't settle for cheap fears. He goes for the primal-seated horror, and turns the season into every woman's worst nightmare: that the loving, infatuated man you fall asleep with post-coitus turns into the covertly hostile, indifferent, afraid-of-commitment freak show women wake up to.

Joss is a Samurai Master, so he of course takes this storyline to the negation of the negation: Angel has transformed back into the evil Angelus because of the perfect moment of orgasm while in love, and is now bent on killing Buffy's family and friends in front of her for giving him human emotion.

Powerful stuff.

It was written ten years ago. Yet it's even more relevant now that I'm in my thirties, competing for men my age with nineteen-year-olds who learned sex-ed by watching internet porn and model their dating behavior on Paris Hilton.

Does one give it away for the price of dinner like our slutty little sisters, knowing full well we will never hear from the man again? Or do we say good night chastely, and drive home to our goody drawer filled with Rabbits, Magic Wands, lube to plug into another night of solitary love, knowing he won't call because we're too much work?

Both choices suck, and are all that's on the dating buffet. The only other choice is to give up personal identity to one of the overbearing suitors bent on caging with motherhood, and that...that is not an option. Especially not when it comes from a space of owning instead of partnership. Men in their 30s might be afraid of love, but women in their 30s are legitimately afraid of slavery.

The dream of equal partnership equally desired? Well...who the fuck do you know who has that?

Talking with girlfriends my age, we lament many things. Chief among them is that now that we are phsycially insatiable, it's almost impossible to find a man our age who actually wants to have sex. Worse, once you find one and lower your standards to hoping to have sex with them on a regular basis without any kind of male-petrifying emotion involved, men would rather conquer once and move on to the next bimbo. Especially in southern California, the drive to experience new outweighs a sure thing.

While that's satisying biologically to them, it's physically torturous to women because a one-night-stand realeases a hormone in our brains punishing us with extreme depression for violating the more advantageous biological strategy of mating with someone who gives a shit about us and won't discard us after sex. The depression level is so severe that positive memories from the night are erased, and even Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey can't make the harsh punishment for the brief pleasure worth it.

Brief is really the key, because no matter how good the sex was in the moment, that moment was in the past. Once you start me up, I'll never stop. So while a man wakes up with his biochemistry satisfied by the romance leading to sex the previous night, mission accomplished, the woman wakes up ready to cum again with the person who gave her an orgasm. Getting kicked out of bed without breakfast does not unfortunately trigger that craved orgasm.

Perhaps if women are to evolve and survive, they will have to learn to orgasm from rejection.

The only logical conclusion to the above is that it's better to be celibate. No highs followed by stronger lows, just an even-keel middle ground as a sexless but productive member of society.


Get the feeling Mother Nature abhors women?

A girlfriend asked me recently if understanding biochemistry and Evolutionary Psychology as predetermined destiny helped me any in dealing with the hormones that cause depression after a fun one night stand.


Nope. Not at all.


FAN TRANSCRIPT of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Cut to Angelus's apartment. Buffy opens the door. She walks over to the bed and sees it's been made. One of his shirts is laid out on it. She goes over to the bed and reaches for the shirt. Behind her Angelus steps over to a statue, picks up a necklace hanging from it and puts it on. Buffy turns, sees him.

Buffy: Angel! (runs to him)

Angelus: Hey!

Buffy: Oh!

Angelus: Hey.

She kisses him and they hug.

Buffy: Oh, my God! I was so worried!

Angelus: I didn't mean to frighten you.

Buffy: Where did you go?

Angelus: Been around.

Buffy: Ohhh. Oh, my God! (hugs him again) I was freaking out! You just disappeared.

Angelus: What? I took off. (goes to his bed for the shirt)

Buffy: (confused) But you didn't say anything. You just left.

Angelus: (pulls on the shirt) Yeah. Like I really wanted to stick around after that.

Buffy: What?

Angelus: You got a lot to learn about men, kiddo. Although I guess you proved that last night.

Buffy: What are you saying?

Angelus: Let's not make an issue out of it, okay? (goes for his coat)In fact, let's not talk about it at all. (pulls it on) It happened.

Buffy: I, I don't understand. Was it m-me? (meekly) Was I not good?

Angelus: (laughs) You were great. Really. (snidely) I thought you were a pro.

Buffy: How can you say this to me?

Angelus: Lighten up. It was a good time. It doesn't mean like we have to make a big deal.

Buffy: It *is* a big deal!

Angelus: It's what? Bells ringing, fireworks, a dulcet choir of pretty little birdies? (laughs) Come on, Buffy. It's not like I've never been there before.

He reaches his hand up to her face and she jerks back.

Buffy: Don't touch me.

Angelus: (shakes his finger at her) I should've known you wouldn't be able to handle it. (starts to go)

Buffy: Angel! (he stops and faces her) (teary-eyed) I love you.

Angelus: (points coolly at her) Love you, too. (turns away)
I'll call you.

RIP

Of course I just bought eight of his screenplays last week.

I'm the kiss of death to my idols, truly. Just wait, Jodorowsky's going next, because I've been using my Terminator-like movie disecting powers on his work, too. By which logic, we will also soon be hearing that Billy Wilder has reanimated. Look out world, I'm destroying auteurs. Stop me before I kill again.

Apologies

Sorry I've been withholding lately...if there's anyone out there still reading, I'm going to give this confessional blog thingie another shot. Gets confusing because some people don't want me to blog about them, I really can't blog about work, and I chased off the spec-screenwriters last year when they were rude to my cancer caregiver crowd, so that leaves what to talk about? Not sure.

Just finished an emotionally difficult/fulfilling script on Wednesday (been working on it for a year and a half, so that feels gooood), then went to Comic-con. Had an awesome weekend. Saw my brother and sister-in-law and some confriends. Charles Yoakum and I had several successful meetings with our target publishers who are interested in the Pistoleras graphic novel. Got through the first gate...yea!

Really enjoyed being at Geek Prom as a seller instead of a buyer this year. Charles and I swore last year we weren't coming back until we were pros with a property, and we did it. So that's really something. And he got to meet Valerie D'Orazio, and I left without buying more original art, so that's all good. That the trip cost more than we'll make on the book...not good, but the reality of the comic industry. Got some great life advice relayed to me from our mutual good friend Todd, who has been worried about me since I disappeared off the planet a month ago in my writing spell. So from now on when I'm writing strong, I need to put an autoresponder letting people know I'm writing and that if they hear back from me it's completely by accident. Good advice. Witty with a hint of bitterness and longterm knowledge of me, but you get the gist. Thanks Todd, and sorry!

Also met some new cool friends over the weekend, some from LA at the Eisner Awards (congrats guys!) and one from San Diego who also does powerful activism work for underdogs; very brave and effective, flying around the world and to DC to change policies. Had a perceptive phone conversation with a best girlfriend on the short trip home from San Diego where we solved all our personal issues and negotiated world peace. Then a lovely talkfest/dinner with my cosmic twin Sarah. Sarah's continuing to do amazing, world-changing activism, work on her documentary, and is up for several professional screenwriting jobs that have powerful themes and issues. Kudos to Sarah! Though somehow everytime we get together we manage to make each other cry over our dead moms. I guess that's good. Yeah, that's good, right Sarah?

In general, I'm feeling really good. I like my life. A lot. I love that I have two fantastic girlfriends who told me they loved me on the same day that I came home from my celebration of all things male at Dorkapalooza. One of my favorite things about my life is that I'm blessed with great male and female friends.

Have any of you been watching "Confessions of a Matchmaker?" My sister turned me on to it, and I find it so sweet. I think if anyone gets down on humans hurting each other, they should watch this show and the way everyone just wants love. The soft-hearted, hard-edge matchmaker is spot-on at laying down boundaries and helping people become better and happier and more self-aware. If the personal is politicial, then she's doing some powerful gender work there in Buffalo New York.

Another way to get in touch fast with humanity is to watch this amazing video made with all the love and joy of children...who just happen to be "hardened" criminals in a jail in the Philippines. See if you can open your hearts and enjoy life and all our ongoing rehabilitation with them:


I just got the weirdest urge for a V-8. I always wonder if that's a fishie from Mom, because that was her drink when I was a kid, and I never liked them until after she died. Now it's my most reliable vegetable source. Of course, my cupboards are bare at the moment...Time for bed. Sleep well, bloggers.

Fade In Magazine

What a great Monday!

Out of thousands of entries, I've placed SECOND in the Action Category of FADE IN MAGAZINE'S 11th Annual Screenplay Contest (Click the bottom link that says "2006 Winners" to see the 12 screenplays. I'm one of three women out of fourteen writers, which is even cooler since I'm in Action).

It's a big deal. I'll be in an upcoming issue of their magazine, there will be an announcement in Variety and Hollywood Reporter, and even more importantly...Fade In is good about helping their winners get meetings around town. Their winners get work.

The plan for PISTOLERAS is to get back Fade In's notes, do another polish, then go talk to some nice Hollywood producers. If it isn't sold to someone we like be Fall, Heidi and I will go make it ourselves with my Red camera.

Also today, got the news that A-list action director Paul W. S. Anderson (Alien Vs. Predator, Resident Evil) is giving us a blurb for PISTOLERAS!

And...CONVENTIONEERS was just released on DVD (The amazing, Indy Spirit Award winning film I was an Associate Producer on). Go rent it from Netflix or Blockbuster, or better yet...BUY it on Amazon!

Champagne time!

Chicks With Flicks

Here's an Amazing Article by SuperProducer Lynda Obst on how there are too many Katherines in Hollywood and not enough Spencers. Personally, I'm looking for a Thin Man and a dog named Asta.

Weekend in review

After a particularly crappy Thursday being abused by actors, had a wonderful Friday with my producing partner Heidi and friend/fellow director Leslie Lello checking out a buddy's
comedy show. Troy Conrad does an amazing job ripping his religous upbringing to shreds, and commenting on current political issues, all while wearing a robe and ridiculous wig. I highly recommend checking out his Comedy Jesus Show, either live on tour, in this month's Hustler magazine, or get a glimpse of the comedy through short movies on his website.



Troy played the protagonist in my Diva's Inc. reading last December. We're looking forward to casting him in our upcoming movies so that you can see the supermagic he's already broughten.



So after the comedy show (which included free alcohol!), Heidi and Leslie and I ended up next door at Tokyo Delves (putting the Ho in Noho!). Still one of my favorite places on Earth, even if the 20-something crowd doesn't seem to know they're supposed to dance on the tables (it's okay...I did it for them, and had a hot waiter worshipping my ass for my troubles). Tokyo Delves has been the site of many a b-day party of mine. Perhaps someday I'll post a Delves retrospective, but for now look at the header above...the pic of the Fies family frolicking is from our favorite sushi bar cum Club Med.

Saturday brought my best friend Valencia and her sweet boyfriend Mike into town. After having way too much fun giggling with Valencia and running around my newish apartment showing her my pretty things, we went to the Grove/Farmers Market to get some more pretty things. Ah, there's nothing like hanging with a friend from high school. So effortless and fulfilling. Then we went to Manhattan Beach for a great party with great new people, that we frequently exited to go girl talk in the guest bedroom.

Sunday morning was the Pistoleras girls' graduation from Impact Safety Training, which was so moving and inspiring. Great to be in the audience and to hear the crowd's laughter and support of seeing women actually fight for their lives. Can't wait to get these techniques into the mainstream through movies. I was a proud Mama Bear.


Then it was back to the Farmer's Market for brunch with new friends from the party. And the evening ended perfectly: The Cinespia screening at Hollywood Forever Cemetary with Leslie, Troy, and his awesome wife Liz (who got her MA today...congrats!). We saw Holy Mountain, which is just now back in print. It's amazing; rent it through Netflix!

Deep thoughts without Jack Handy

When the heart grieves over what it has lost, the spirit rejoices over what it has left.-Sufi epigram

For Sopranos viewers...

Feeling betrayed, yet again, by a tv show you've invested years in? Here is the best of the "Director's Cuts" floating around YouTube. Number 3 being the one that nicely sums up how all us Twin Peaks/X-Files/Lost/Sopranos viewers now feel...



Still upset? Read Salon.

I say god daaaaam!

Rescue Me was on fire last night. Freaking love this TV renaissance. This is more exciting than living in Dickens's time. And series creator Peter Tolan now places right below David Lynch as Best Director Cameo. Sooooo great. But they better drop that boring insurance scam plot and get back to Tommy talking to dead people.

What did you guys think of The Shield finale? I thought it was tooooo much pipe-laying. I wanted more sex, violence, tension, shit hitting the fan...give me something more than the promise of the final showdown with Vic and Shane! The Dutch moment was sweet, but everytime I look at him I see him killing that kitty. How could the show just move on from that? I don't like it when writers adapt that angle of The Sopranos and X-Files...more unrewarded details, just like life. Too much for my head.

You are not my father

Click to appreciate the genius. Your Freudian mileage may vary:



Finally, an appropriate father's day gift for the majority of children on this planet! You know, the 75% living in a single-parent home below the poverty level...

And a funnier take on the gift/covert hostility award.

Thriller Night

A friend of mine is writing a thriller and is looking for screenwriting info, which got me all happy...Thrillers are my absolute fav to write and to view. And apparently they're very hard to do, because most are crap. So since it's on my brain, here's my favs. They're all flypaper movies for me. Even though I own them all, I'll stop and watch any of them if I'm flipping the channel.

Notorious
Unbreakable
Alien
Seven
The Silence of the Lambs
Witness
No Way Out
The Shining
The Wicker Man
Rosemary's Baby
The Big Easy
Gaslight
Blue Steel
Blue Velvet
Misery

Some are hybrids with horror or crime, but I'm not in the mood to argue screenwriting genre definitions, since no one can agree anyway and the people who are loudest about it all have a book to sell. I just know when I'm in the mood for a smart, scary mystery that grips me from start to finish and gives me a rush, these are what I watch.

Decent recent ones:

Tape
Hard Candy

And if you've seen all the above and want more:

Apt Pupil
The Seventh Sign
Heavenly Creatures

Plastic Surgery

The Ten Worst Celebrity Boob Jobs

Apropos

Weird. Just got this email from my friends Sianna and Fed. I had forgotten they were making this video for her pretty song. Check out their great work:



Pretty typical coincidence in my life. But isn't it great? Pass the link on!

Question of the Night

Have you ever dated anyone who has killed anyone? I'm specifically thinking of military service, though I suppose the issue applies to reformed criminals, too. Did it queer you out, or did you not think about it?

Measure of a Man

Every man has three characters:
that which he shows,
that which he has,
and that which he thinks he has.

-Alphonse Karr

Perfect

Posted here without permission, obviously:

AMANDA GUINZBURG
Split Scene

Every time Rosie O’Donnell would walk on stage during The View’s opening, she made a gesture of feigned shock that there were all these people wildly applauding for her. She would turn her hands upwards and furrow her brow in exaggerated confusion and then as she’d continue out towards the table (trailed by the other consistently waving co-hosts), her open Irish face would break into a bright wide smile. She was, it seemed from the very start, saying to everyone who watched: I am going to take you with me now, into the land of bright lights, quick touch-ups and major league pretend.

But doing that while still following the rest of the rules of network television proved ultimately an impossible balancing act for a woman who has remarkably balanced a great deal. Or rather a task whose compromises, not just of time away from her beloved family (a family, it can safely be said, she made a natural part of morning conversation despite the fact that it is unconventional by traditional — and it would seem now, in large part thanks to her — almost archaic standards) but of her fiercely held moral standards of what is right and what is real.

Television has taken almost every ounce of reality away from the very genre so named. We are all supposed to be in on the joke now — that everything we see is edited and manipulated to serve some larger narrative. To wit: the debauched kids on MTV’s Real World: The Moon! (Not really, but they’re seriously running out of places to house these drunken whores), the wrecked and weeping women riding away mascara-streaked in limousines after being dumped by the latest Bachelor, or the ever available desperados of afternoon talk shows. Jerry Springer is still perhaps the most extreme, and even he now has his own meta-show, The Springer Hustle where we see that guests are so heavily prepped by producers they’re actually told at what point to physically attack their cheating spouse (when the lie detector or DNA test comes back positive) or racist neighbor (when he or she inevitably and often gleefully uses the “n” word)

For Rosie what is real is synonymous with the truth and the truth is as precious a commodity as it is rare, at least in the realm of show business. On her heavily trafficked website, she often writes about things like feeding geese, befriending squirrels, baby birds hatching in a corner of her roof, her wife’s conservative family, her children’s small triumphs and the ordinary people she encounters’ various struggles to survive. She puts her money where her mouth is and consistently gives it away, threatening to fire her financial advisors should she ever wind up on a Richest Celeb list. But she’s also fully recognized and taken advantage of the national audience she regained by joining The View this year, speaking out and devoting whole hours to issues like depression, autism, and the devastating illnesses now ravaging the 9/11 first responders.

Then there is The War. Rosie has relentlessly, with unmistakable rage and palpable grief refused, despite Barbara Walter’s awkward discomfort with it, to stop speaking out about this criminal administration and the Iraq War it made up, dressed up, and sold to our nation. “WAKE UP, AMERICA!” Rosie has, for years now, commanded from within the sometimes-confusing typographical trenches of her blog. Despite the fact that the media’s manipulations drove her from the very show she reinvented, Rosie’s fights with Elisabeth Hasselbeck did nothing if they did not wake us up. They were riveting in their rawness and to the extent one side of them ever seemed prepped, Rosie made no attempt to hide her disgust with such executively borne machinations.

On what O’Donnell has since called Nuclear Wednesday, Hasselbeck made an analogy about a deadline for pulling out of the war and a timed football pass. Nothing could have articulated more clearly what Rosie seemed to find so anathema about this woman’s politics and ultimately her personal comportment. While Elisabeth appeared to almost relish the supposed gamesmanship of their political throw downs — going off to do sound bytes for the nightly “entertainment” show after Wednesday’s meltdown and assuring the public she wasn’t “mad” and that they would most definitely remain friends, they wore Rosie O’Donnell so far down you could literally see it in her eyes. They grew distant long before that eventual (and perhaps inevitable) dénouement.

Rosie said it was the split screen that was the final nail in her View coffin. It makes sense. The split screen implied that these feelings and ideas Rosie holds so dear and was trying, so very hard it seemed, to communicate to Elisabeth (but also to anyone who had ever twisted her words to serve their personal agenda) about truth and justice and loyalty and humanity could be turned into an empty gesture of celluloid commercialism: Selling Rosie as the worst and most dishonest caricature of herself, one side of a two dimensional screen. Kind of like what the government has done to our nation. Every day veracity is under siege in America as the current administration tries to warp what’s actually happening while the vast majority of our mainstream media remains complicit with their systematic airbrushing of the bloody facts.

We who compulsively tuned into the video blog she began a few weeks ago with her quirky long time producer-cum-mustache artist and giant-turkey-wing-eating hair stylist saw that Rosie was clearly far more at ease back stage, behind closed doors with a face naked of all concealers, singing along to Amy Winehouse or Tina Turner and answering some of the thousands of questions she gets daily than she ever would be out on that carefully orchestrated studio set.

I am confident, however, that Rosie will return. Not to The View, but to the unmatched power that is television. She’ll don the necessary war paint and head out under the hot white lights and blinking audience signs. She may act more or less surprised that people still love her, despite and because of her rage. The fact is this: A steadfast quest to reveal what is really real requires Rosie stay out here, on the front lines of truth.

Grrgh

I'm so upset about the whole Rosie thing going on. I really shouldn't even by typing about it. Lots of love and light to Rosie for having the cajones to take on an institution of lies through its own media source. Of course it couldn't last, and the punishment was brutal. So classy of her to leave and not make a statement. Watched the View today for the last time. What a pack of lies.

I can't wait until technology and the audience reach the point where she can have her own real show online, and say whatever she feels. For now, I'll watch Jahero reruns on Rosie.com.



Purchase

Happy 30th

Blowing Wind

The highlight of the American Idol finale should not be me yelling (at the screen)at the bloated, leathered Bette Midler "Don't do it!" as she goes for the high "fly" note.

What a career killer. I can hear the pink bragade calling Vegas to refund their tickets as I type...

Float My Boat

Now how did Disney manage this publicity stunt?



Richest Shipwreck Treasure

As if the kids weren't already wetting their inner child jammies over seeing Depp as Jack again.

Mutant Swingers From Mars

From my friend Bill Cunningham at www.D2DVD.Blogspot.com:

http://headbangersblog.com/2007/05/10/movies-for-metalheads-sex-machine-white-slave-collection-swamp-zombies-a-secret-handshake-ghost/

Thank you all for taking a look at the link and please spread the word about Christopher Sharpe's cool little flick that's winning the hearts and minds of pulp moviegoers across the globe. I am proud to represent this movie (distributed worldwide by Anthem Pictures) as well as the upcoming scifi-horror-comedy MUTANT SWINGER FROM MARS featuring Jack White (of The White Stripes in his first movie role).

MUTANT SWINGER FROM MARS is writer-director Mike Kallio's love letter to Ed Wood, swing music and cinema cheese. You can watch the trailer on YouTube .

All rights to MSFM are currently available.

Girth and Nudity: A Pictorial Mission

The New York Times
By ABBY ELLIN
Published: May 13, 2007


BEFORE we begin, let’s get one thing out of the way: Yes, Leonard Nimoy is more than happy to do it — the Vulcan salute, the gesture that launched a thousand spaceships. He does so easily, effortlessly: palm outward, fingers extended, the index and middle finger smashed together, the ring finger and pinky touching, the thumb sticking out on its own.

ROLE MODELS Leonard Nimoy’s “Full Body Project” features nude obese women.
“People ask me all the time,” Mr. Nimoy said, carrying saucers of coffee and tea into his art-filled living room off Central Park West. He placed them next to galleys of his forthcoming photography book, which sat near a copy of “Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West,” by Margaret R. Miles, and a folder of news clippings on obesity.

“You see what I have here, about the health guidelines for models?” he asked, pointing a long, tapered finger toward the file.

The basso profundo voice was unmistakable, his words occasionally clipped with his native Boston accent. “They now have to have at least a certain weight to qualify,” Mr. Nimoy added. He looked pleased. This is a subject that speaks to him.

He knows that he is an unlikely champion for the size-acceptance movement; body image is a topic he never really thought about before. But for the last eight years, Mr. Nimoy, who is 76 and an established photographer, has been snapping pictures of plus-size women in all their naked glory.

He has a show of photographs of obese women on view at the R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton, Mass., through June; a larger show at the gallery is scheduled to coincide with the November publication of his book on the subject, “The Full Body Project,” from Five Ties Publishing. The Louis Stern Fine Arts gallery in Los Angeles and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston have acquired a few images from the project. A few hang at the Bonni Benrubi Gallery in New York. (Their explicitness prevents the images from being reprinted here.)

These women are not hiding beneath muumuus or waving from the bottom of the Grand Canyon à la Carnie Wilson in early Wilson Phillips videos. They are fleshy and proud, celebrating their girth, reveling in it. It is, Mr. Nimoy says, a direct response to the pressure women face to conform to a Size 2.

“The average American woman, according to articles I’ve read, weighs 25 percent more than the models who are showing the clothes they are being sold,” Mr. Nimoy said, his breathing slightly labored by allergies and a mild case of emphysema. “So, most women will not be able to look like those models. But they’re being presented with clothes, cosmetics, surgery, diet pills, diet programs, therapy, with the idea that they can aspire to look like those people. It’s a big, big industry. Billions of dollars. And the cruelest part of it is that these women are being told, ‘You don’t look right.’ ”

Mr. Nimoy, who divides his time among homes in New York and Los Angeles and on Lake Tahoe, in California, admits that before he began this project, it had never occurred to him that beauty might be culture driven, that a fat body in Africa is treated quite differently from one in the United States. “In some cultures their weight is a sign of affluence: their husbands can afford to feed them well,” he noted.

His enlightenment came about eight years ago, when he had been showing pictures from his Shekhina series — sensual, provocative images of naked women in religious Jewish wear — at a lecture in Nevada. Afterward, a 250-pound woman approached him and asked if he wanted to take pictures of her, a different body type. He agreed, and she came to the studio at his Tahoe house. She arrived with all sorts of clothes and props, “as if she were playing a farmer’s wife in a butter commercial,” he said.

His wife, Susan, who was assisting him, said, “No, we want to shoot nude.” So the model removed her clothing and lay down on the table. At first Mr. Nimoy was very nervous, he said.

“The nudity wasn’t the problem,” he said, “but I’d never worked with that kind of a figure before. I didn’t quite know how to treat her. I didn’t want to do her some kind of injustice. I was concerned that I would present this person within the envelope of an art form.”

But soon he relaxed into it, lulled by the clicking of the camera and the woman’s comfort with her body. He placed some of the shots in various exhibitions, and they invariably garnered the most attention. “People always wanted to know: ‘Who is she? How did you come to shoot her? Why? Where? What was it all about?’ ”

He decided to pursue the subject further and was led to Heather MacAllister, the founder and artistic director of Big Burlesque and the Fat Bottom Revue, a troupe of plus-size female performers in San Francisco. Ms. MacAllister died in February of ovarian cancer, but something she said to Mr. Nimoy in one of their first meetings struck a chord. “ ‘Any time a fat person gets on a stage to perform and is not the butt of a joke — that’s a political statement,’ ” he recalled. “I thought that was profound.”

Initially, he was interested in replicating Herb Ritts’s popular image of a group of nude supermodels clustered together on the floor, and a Helmut Newton diptych of women clothed and then unclothed in the identical pose. Ms. MacAllister and some of her friends agreed to be his subjects. He then posed the women to simulate Matisse’s “Dance” and Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase.”

The responses have ranged from joy to horror. One formerly obese woman said the photos terrified her; she said they recalled a picture she kept in her wallet as a reminder of her former self. Other women have thanked Richard Michelson, the Northampton gallery owner, for displaying the images, and even asked if Mr. Nimoy wanted to photograph them.

“I am actually amazed at how little negative reaction there has been,” said Mr. Michelson. “I attribute this in part to the gallery setting, and the fact that Northampton, Massachusetts, is perhaps the most liberal city in the most liberal state in the nation.”

“We do overhear some reductive ‘Is Nimoy into fat chicks’ comments when the gallery room is first entered,” he continued, “but in fact the fun nature of the work and the quality seem to shut people up by the time they leave. I’ve had a few crank e-mails with snide remarks, but not a one from gallery visitors.”

The Big Fat Blog, a Web site devoted to fat acceptance, wrote about Mr. Nimoy’s photographs in 2005. A woman calling herself Nellicat wrote in response: “I’m 5’5" and weigh between 130 and 135. But I don’t feel as comfortable in my own skin as I should. I look at those women strutting, posing, laughing, and I feel real envy towards them. There they are, posing for a man (!) knowing that the whole world will be able to see them naked (!!) and they are LOVING it. Oh, to be that free! To be that comfortable and beautiful in your body — I truly envy them.”

Though most people think of performers as naturally more unabashed than the rest of us, Ms. MacAllister said it is sometimes difficult for them, too. “We get scared and struggle w/self-acceptance and self-love just like you,” she posted on the blog at the time. “Just want you to know that ‘freedom is not free’; the freedom you see us enjoying is the result of constant hard work and eternal vigilance against the ‘tyranny of slenderness.’ ”

Mr. Nimoy was born in Boston to Russian Jews; he speaks and reads Yiddish. He began acting at 8, but his big break came at 17, when he was cast as Ralphie in a Boston production of Clifford Odets’s “Awake and Sing.” In 1966, he landed a gig on a little television show called “Star Trek,” which ran for only three seasons but would resonate for decades. He spent two seasons on “Mission Impossible” and in 1971 went to U.C.L.A. to study photography. He didn’t graduate, but he has a master’s in education and an honorary doctorate from Antioch College. He hasn’t acted since 1990, choosing to devote himself to art collecting, voiceover work and various philanthropic endeavors, including an artists’ foundation he and his wife run.

Most people know him as Mr. Spock, the terminally rational Vulcan with the famous hand signal. (The signal, which he said was his design, is actually rooted in Judaism. It represents the Hebrew letter “shin,” the first letter in the word Shaddai, which means God.)

In 2002, he published a book of photographs entitled “The Shekhina Project.” Shekhina is the feminine aspect of God; the photographs are sensual, erotic images of women draped in phylacteries, religious garments typically worn by Jewish males. The pictures were very controversial within the Jewish community: some people objected to the nudity, while others were offended by women in traditionally male garb. On the latter point, Mr. Nimoy said that he was not the first to put forth the idea. “There are historical writings of famous Jewish women, daughters of rabbis, who have done that,” he said.

He expects his second book to provoke an equally strong reaction, though he hopes the audience will gain a new perspective on the issue and learn something.

As for whether people will think he has a fetish, he said he can’t help that. “I just have no way of dealing with that,” he said with a laugh. “People will think what they’re going to think. I understand that.”

And what of his own attitude toward fat women?

“I do think they’re beautiful,” he said. “They’re full-bodied, full-blooded human beings.”

He doesn’t necessarily find them sexually attractive. “But I do think they’re beautiful.”

Blooker Award!

Congratulations to Brian for another cool award for Mom's Cancer!

http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/2007/05/16/moms-cancer-wins-blooker/#respond

Don't forget

This Saturday is Free Comic Day! Take yourself and/or a kid to your local store...

Hey Cinderella

Ah, we heart Carlos Carrasco.

Just working on beefing up a scene of his in "Pistoleras," and felt the urge to share some work of his from the cult hit "Blood in, Blood Out." Don't worry boys, it cuts out right before he demands some chun chun. Popeye is one scary mofo.

"Vehemently opposed to the corrupt and oppressive Empire"

Multiple Geekogasms.

First of all, look at Tony Stark's threads. They cast Robert Downey Jr., then Stan Winston designs this shell. Rock it hard, boys. High, high hopes for Iron Man.

Next up, you ask? Oh, nothing big. Just rumors from Scully about a FREAKING X-FILES MOVIE. Oh. My. God. Miss Gillian, do not tease us bards who have waited to sing of this day. The Fox lawsuit has settled, last I heard, so Carter and Co, gear up! Yes, we know you were right about the government conspiracies, bees dying and all of it, all along. Now let's see what Carter has to say about Bush.

Third, Sideshow Collectibles is rocking us again with a lovely Princess Leia in battle mode. I really really really like their description of her. Sometimes when I wonder how the eff I am who/what I am, I need a reminder...

Fourth, in the REBEL ALLIANCE zone...Rage Against the Machine's reunion performance at Coachella was Earth-shattering. We need them. We need them come to us now at the turn of the tide...

All kinds of wrongness

For your enjoyment. We love it anyway.


The disturbment quotient is upped if you've seen "Death Proof."

Overheard

Nurse Sis loves this site. There were some gems today.

Someone tell Superman...

Kryptonite has been found on Earth...

The new Joker

Hmmmnnn...I hate to agree with Aint it Cool talkbackers, but he does look like a weird cross between Ichi the Killer and The Crow, when what he should look like is the Joker. The Joker came first, dammit, and he's only the most revered comic villain ever. It's hard to get better than a brilliant sociopath who's unpredictable and completely dedicated to bringing Batman's hypocrisy down.

I'm curious what my nineteen-year-old nieces would say, though. I bet they'll like it, growing up on Heath Ledger movies and with Emo in fashion. Guess they're the real market, and that us codgers are never going to see The Killing Joke onscreen.



UPDATE: It's a fake.

Wow, it's probably not going to be that far off, though. I like Heath Ledger as an actor in other projects, but I don't get the idea of casting someone so humorless and pretty model boy.

It's just all wrong, unless they make him monstrous with the makeup. Even then, I feel like that brooding, dour, emo spirit is going to shine through the latex. I mean, can you picture Heath Ledger hysterically laughing? Hysterically crying with a daisy in one hand and a Longfellow poem in the other, but laughing with psychotic glee as he rapes and paralyzes your daughter??? Or would you still invite him over for dinner afterwards. His hair is only a little green after all, and he still has those wounded Heathcliff puppy dog eyes...

The two things The Joker absolutely can't be are likeable and hot.

I'm so confused...

Pop that champagne

Congrats to Brian for another well-deserved two (count 'em, two!!!) Eisner nominations for Mom's Cancer. Very cool. Even if the categories sound made up. :)

Really, God?

Could we call a moratorium on you killing people I love, and me finding out about it way after the fact?

I'm just ruined over this.



The only good thing at all about reading his obits was at least CNN thought to interview Gore Vidal instead of K-Fed or some other public cypher.


"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center."

"The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal."

"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward."
– Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

Will Ferrell Movie Plot Generator

Totally worth a click.

Huckabees

I assume you've seen this, but just in case, here's Hollywood:

Green-eyed bunny rabbits

You guys know that every year, I have a movie or two that make me ill wishing I'd been a part of it. Last fall it was "Special", last year it was "Brick", the year before "Thumbsucker" and "Mean Creak". And before that it was "All the Real Girls".

I distinctly remember these experiences. They leave that bitter taste of failure in my mouth, where I recognize brilliance and regret it almost could have come from me. My indie price range, a distinctive voice, some truth I gel with...and I shift around in my theatre seat, cursing myself. Same reason I don't want to go to the ballet again. FAILURE.


Okay, so this is getting pathetic...now I'm down to a MOMENT I envy...



Today I saw "Blades of Glory". I haven't laughed that hard in a theatre since I saw "There's Something About Mary." I had a hell of a good time. Until they played Queen's "Flash Gordon" theme.

God dammit Baby Jesus, why on your birthday? Flash Gordon was the first album I ever bought, and as GENIUS as it was to have it be the final couples routine for "Blades of Glory", I wish I'd been the filmmaker who got to use it first...

Please, please stop

So I'm having a lovely Easter brunch/movie day with a gfriend of mine who's going into production on a million dollar film she's directing. And she wants to cast this amazing older actress from the 80s-90s (NONE of your business who. Really.). But she CAN'T because the poor lady has had some bad plastic surgery.

And I'm thinking, after seeing the amazing au naturale Julie Christie last night in "Away From Her"...are women still their worst enemy?

I mean, everyone says there are no good roles for women over forty, and they HAVE to keep up with the Joneses by having plastic surgery but...this is not the first time I've heard this story. I have other gfriends desperate to cast the icons from their youth, but they have to actually schedule a meeting to see what Frankenstein creature is going to walk in.

Question of the Day

If people think of me as Catwoman, is it wrong for me to date a European man nicknamed Thor? Or can those two worlds collide? You know, the Asgardian God of the Marvel Universe, and D.C,'s lawless, uncatchable trickster.

Love her even more

Geeks will rule the world

Look how purtyMary from 24 is in the new Geek Monthly issue:

Humble Apologies

I'm knee-deep in moving boxes, and stressed out of my gourd.

I like my new place, but tossing out my deceased family's things yet again is painful. Urgh. I keep thinking about the Japanese, and how they honor the memory of their ancestors WITHOUT holding onto material things...lighten the load, lighten the load...

Then there's the little matter that I'm moving out of the last place I shared with both mom and Calliope (my cat who taught me about Fishies...) And that my new place doesn't even allow dogs to visit, so I'm losing Hero, too...(Nurse Sis will have full custody).

More pain! Grrrr...argh!

The REAL Secret

Best tip ever. I'm one of those gals who's tried evvvery diet and exercise program. And I have NEVER seen results like this. Tae Bo and/or the Atkins diet were close, but felt like EFFORT.

But Pilates...this is a lifetime change.

Here's the scoop. I've been doing Mari Winsor's DVD tapes 5 days a week for 3 weeks. I feel like a completely different person. Dropped a size. And this week, three friends gasped, called me skinny, and asked me what I was doing. It actually works, my back feels BETTER, and I don't notice the time passing while I'm doing it.

Here's the skinny:

Started on February 26th. Did the 2001 Beginning 20 minute tape, five days a week.
Second week: alternated daily between Beginning and Advanced tapes (2001 sereies). Advance tape is 50 minutes.
Third week: Ditto.

My friend/producing partner Heidi started doing Pilates in a gym five months ago...she's now down to her dream weight and only does two 20 minute workouts, twice a week at home to maintain.

Tapestry

Wil Wheaton has published his personal Tapestry story on his blog. (That's the number one fan favorite episode of ST:TNG (Star Trek: The Next Generation).)

Enjoy! Wil Wheaton's Tapestry

Putting on the geek cape today, aren't I?

Peace