5 comments about How to Make it in Hollywood.

1. I bought this book for my cousin who wants to start out in the movie business. I bought this book for him so he can get a good idea who's who in the industry. The resources are a little out dated, but the valuable info is timeless.



2. If you are serious about a career in the entertainment industry, this book is more valuable than a college education. I can honestly say that this book gives you all of the advice you need to be successful in almost any given field. More importantly it doesn't sugarcoat anything. If this business isn't right for you, you'll know by about 40 pages in. My one complaint, and it is a small one, is that some of the information is a little dated. Specifically the sections on CGI and the internet. As far as the rest of the fields go, the information still applies today. Buy this book. Read it cover to cover. Do what the author says, and you will have a career in Hollywood. I cannot recommend this enough.



3. Linda Buzzell gives an excellent account of how to make it in Hollywood. Any person reading this book can learn a lot if they choose to follow their dreams into moviemaking and acting. This book definitely was helpful in getting my last movie, The S.I.N., distributed. And, it will be helpful as I put together my new radio show, The Indie Film Hour, on World Talk Radio. Thanks Linda. www.vdefilms.com



4. 
   This book was required reading for an exploratory class I was taking on Entertainment Technology Careers. It proved to teach me a lot more than just that, it gives you insightful and helpful tips as well as the exercises within the chapters that assist you in finding out what it is that you really want to do and where your motivation comes from. I think it is an invaluable book for not only people seeking work in the entrainment field but for people who aren't really sure which way to go about it or which end they'd like to be in.



5. A great book for anyone in the entertainment industry, not just the film industry; covers in depth topics such as how to network and how to handle rejection, and how many attempts one can expect to make before securing a position in the industry. Also great advice on entertainment resume writing; I'm already looking forward to the next edition!

4 comments about Costume Designer's Handbook: A Complete Guide for Amateur and Professional Costume Designers.

1. This book unfortunately was not what I wanted. However, this book is extremely detailed, and for somebody who is interested in stage or theatre costumes, very helpful in pointing the steps required to design the types of costumes for specific productions.
   
   I wanted a book to help me create costumes ie more of a pattern book.
   
   Amazon very difficult to deal with if not in Amercia



2. I bought this book because of the ratings and was disappointed. Yes it does give chronological information on planning and basics on drawing and a lot of info on working therater designs and with others. Great, but not what I needed. It also has a great reference section for doing the research you need to do but, I already had most of this info from other sources. I have a history and arts background and i needed inspiration. It did give me an inspiration to reorganize my art supplies!Don't waste your money if you are not theater oriented. AND I do mean theater.



3. I'd been assisting designers for quite some time, even designed some of my own shows, without an education in costume design. I have lots of great experience but I'm sure nothing can compete with a costume design education (mine is in fashion design), which I'd like to pursue when I have the time. I'm so glad I found out about this book! Every aspect of the process you need to know about is in here. It is essential! I can't believe I survived as long as I did without it.



4. This is a great resource for the design process. I especially use these guidelines for analysis of a play and characters whenever I design a show. A must have for anyone interested in designing shows!!

3 comments about Pat Green's Dance Halls & Dreamers.

1. Outstanding photography is half the fun of reading this book; the other half comes from the words of the musicians who have played in these ten legendary Texas dance halls, and the owners who tend them. There is something unforgettable about each of these places.
   
   The Cabaret in Bandera has a hump in the dance floor. According to the owner, the hump is "kind of like a speed bump at the Indy 500." The dancers use it to turn themselves around, and newcomers trip over it. At the Coupland Inn and Dancehall it's the upstairs Bed & Breakfast, dressed like an old-time bordello, that makes the place unique.
   
   At Luckenbach, it's the song, of course, and the laid-back attitude of the people who frequent the matchstick buildings that comprise the town. Gruene Hall, Texas' Oldest Dancehall, was a hay barn in the middle of a ghost town when it's owner found it and restored it in the 1970s. The roll call of acts that have played there reads like the Country Music Hall of Fame. Just a piece up the road from Gruene is lesser-known Saengerhalle, which lays claim to being haunted. Holes in the dance floor there are covered by old hammered-down Texas license plates.
   
   Stubbs Bar-B-Q in Austin attracts a little bit different crowd, a little louder, a little more rocking. The barbecue is pretty good, too. And then there's Billy Bob's Texas, the World's Largest Honky Tonk, with it's wall of shellacked autographed burger buns, and its hallway of hand prints, like an upright version of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.
   
   John T. Floore's Country Store in Helotes is where Willie Nelson got his start, and continues to return for his July 4th Picnics. The 6,000-square-foot, puke green building "has all the ambiance of a bomb shelter." A collage of oddball signs adorn the exterior entrance. Inside, hats and boots left by customers, ropes and saddles and anything else that can dangle, hang from the ceiling over the dance floor.
   
   The Sons of Hermann Hall in Dallas is remembered for having the "load-in from hell," a steep stairway outside the building up which roadies and musicians must carry their equipment to the second floor stage. An amplifier or two has taken a fatal tumble down the near-vertical flight of metal stairs. But so far nobody has died.
   
   And then there's Schroeder Hall -- it's the Second Oldest Dance Hall in Texas, built in 1890. "To get there, drive to the middle of nowhere ... and take a left." Pat Green says, "You have got to want to get to Schroeder Hall." Everybody from Merle Haggard to the Marshall Tucker Band to Willie has played here. The trademark gold and silver tassels are on display in one of the photographs, the strings of lights in another, as is the after-dance, bottle-littered floor.
   
   As I read this book and lingered over the pictures, I realized that I had personally been to all but three of the ten featured dance halls. And when I closed the last page, I had the urge to pull on my boots, jump in my car and make the drive to visit those last three.



2. This book is a great look into the life of Texas country music. The book is very pleasing to eye with great photos and the stories are entertaining. I've loved Texas country music for years and was glad to add this book to my collection. It makes a great coffee table book and is very high quality. Worth every penny!



3. I loved the pictures and the stories that the musicians told. I am a huge Texas Country music fan and this was a very good book depicting those artists.

4 comments about The Caucasian Chalk Circle.

1. One of the master communist playwright Bertolt Brecht's strengths as an artist was the ability to set up a moral dilemma and work it out to a conclusion, not always a satisfactory one, by play's end. This is unusual in a seemingly orthodox follower of the old Stalinist' socialist realist' cultural program. This work nevertheless permitted Brecht to address an age-old question about the nature of property ownership, extending it from its natural and historic setting in land and chattels to the question of personal human ownership.
   
   The question posed here is whether a child abandoned by its natural mother then found and raised by another women should go to the former or that latter. Nice dilemma, right? But Brecht, as seem in Mother Courage and other parables, is not above cutting right to the bone on moral questions. What makes this work a cut above some of Brecht's more didactic plays is the way that he weaves the parable about the odd resolution of an ancient Chinese property dispute and places that `wisdom' in context of a then current dispute between two Soviet-era communes.
   
   In the ancient dispute the judge who is called upon to render judgment, using the circle as a medium to resolve the dispute, seems to be Solomonic but is really a buffoon. This is pure Brechtian irony. This says as much about Brecht attitude toward property as it does about the old time Chinese justice system. The question of property rights as presented by Brecht and their value as a societal glue is also something the reader or viewer of this play should think about as well.



2. My son's theatre department is putting on this play. My son tried out for a part. He made the first cut, got all excited and wanted the play. However, he did not make the second cut. I believe he is returning the book. Thanks so much
   Sandy Rodie



3. Brecht's "The Caucasian Chalk Circle," written in self-imposed exile towards the end of World War II, is a story within a play, in which a bard, or singer, interrupts a group of Caucasian farmers arguing over ownership of land that has been ravaged by Nazi tanks and entertains them with a relevant tale of yore. In a city called Grusinia, the Governor is executed in a coup and his wife flees for her life, abandoning their baby son Michael, who is picked up by a humble kitchen maid named Grusha. Having recently betrothed herself to a soldier named Simon who is away on duty, she sets out on a cross-country journey with the infant to get help from her brother, a farmer in a distant village.
   
   Lavrenti, her brother, suggests she get married immediately to avoid suspicion that the baby is hers out of wedlock, and the most available candidate is a local wretched peasant. After living with this man for a couple of years, Grusha is apprehended by soldiers who have come to take young Michael, the sole heir of the deposed Governor's estate, back to Grusinia. The case of Michael's custody, contested by the Governor's wife against Grusha, is brought to trial, where the judge, a drunk named Azdak whose unofficial appointment to this position is a farce, decrees that the boy will be placed inside a circle drawn with chalk on the courtroom floor, and that the woman who is able to pull him out of the circle is the real mother. (Study the judge's exact words when you read this.)
   
   Although the story is of medieval Chinese origin, Brecht's play is a sort of refashioning of the Biblical anecdote about Solomon and expands the idea by supplying a whole backstory to the women's argument. Solomon's judgment is accepted because his wisdom is universally considered to be impeccable, but what of a man like Azdak who functions on whim more than on wisdom? The ending is subtly brilliant in the sense that the outcome of the contest is subject to semantic debate (whether you think the judgment is fair or logical or contradictory depends on how closely you read the judge's words), but also in the question of irony or sincerity in the suggestion that true justice will be conferred by nature rather than by man.



4. It's popular now-a-days to call communism "out of touch" and socialism "out of style." Brecht's question, then: Who should own anything? Should possession be nine-tenths of the law? Or should the laws of ownership remain an open-ended affair? -- could be called a foregone conclusion.

   Woe to the foregone conclusion, then. Its trial date is ever on the way.

   Laughably, the Helms-Burton bill, recently signed into law by Pres. Bill Clinton, is a giggle back to Brecht's discussion. And a silly one. One should think that were the United States to be in the business of giving back land "once stolen," that the Navajo, Sioux, Chippewa, et. al. would be first in line.

   Not so!

   Apparently, Cuba's land belongs not to its current owners, but to its capitalists of 40 years hence. Oh, silliness. Oh, amusement.

   So ask Brecht's question, then, not as a socialist, a communist or a red. Ask it as a human being. To whom does anything belong? What is belonging? What is ownership? Who owns anything? When - and why - does ownership occasionally turn on its own head?

5 comments about The Mercy Seat.

1. Leave it to Neil Labute to provide a view of September 11th that has little to do with waving flags and stalwart heroes. On the contrary, his tale deals with people too self-absorbed and cowardly to act in any way other than that which satisfies their own immediate desires. They realize they are in the middle of a national tragedy, and they want to be brave and selfless, but it's not in them. This is a situation that probably occured all over this country in the days following the attacks, but of course was never reported. Deception and adultery don't make good press in a time when we're all supposed to be united and courageous. LaBute shows us the truth, ugly though it is. A worthy read.



2. ...of course, with plenty of LaBute's sometimes heavy-handed misanthropy. I originally began reading LaBute's plays after seeing Bash, and while I'll say that that one is better (everyone should read it!), I'll say that Mercy Seat is second only to that play for honest-to-god squirm-in-your-seat disgust at humanity's...human-ness.
   
   Here in America, the gimme-gimme capital of the world, it's easy to pretend you don't see the poor, the sick, and the war-ravaged (especially since they're across the ocean). Then on Tuesday, September 11th, 2001 America got a huge wake-up call--we were the war-ravaged for once. The Mercy Seat, set on Wedensday, September 12th, is a multi-layered examination of just how deep our image of concern for fellow man really went in those troubled days. According to Neil LaBute, not very far.
   
   LaBute's play is the story of Abby Prescott and Ben Harcourt, two self-absorbed New Yorkers--that is, they were a day ago, before "9-11". Did the tragedy that befell their coworkers, friends, and family change their attitude? Not at all. In fact, their selfishness is what saved their lives; if Ben hadn't been cheating on his wife, they would have actually been at work like he told his wife.
   
   With brutal honesty and the kind of cruel, biting wit, LaBute shapes the morning of September 12th and asks the sort of questions many Americans pretend they don't think about: If something doesn't affect you personally, does it affect you? Are your loved ones really more important than yourself? If you could, would you erase everything for the chance to try again--do it "right"--no wife, kids, responsibility?



3. I'm fascinated by arguing and the dynamics of arguments. The part I liked best about Labute's "Your Friends and Neighbors" was the arguing between Ben Stiller and Catherine Keener. That argument only lasted for about five minutes, so the fact that Mercy Seat is an hour-long argument is treat for someone like me.
   
   This play has only two characters, and it is extremely fascinating and extremely complex. Ben Harcourt is Labute's typical Aaron Eckhart character. But I think that Abby Prescott's character type is new for Labute. She's a very smart, and seemingly genuine and nice woman.
   
   Labute says in the introduction that this is his first play solely about relationships. He does an excellent job. My only recommendation is to skip Labute's introduction to the play until you've read it through once. It's an extremely cool intro, but I feel that it gives away too much of the plot.



4. Labute has once again proved to be one of the great authors of the 20th/21st century. His style allows one to grab into characters, not only because of their actions, but because they are one of our own. These people remind of us us. Of ourselves. We see things we do not like, but must understand. The Mercy Seat is just the latest example of an amazing work, but one of the great American authors around today.



5. Labute masterminded "In the Company of Men," "Your Friends and Neighbors," the absolutely brilliant, "The Shape of Things," now brings to the stage, "Mercy Seat". Set the day after September 11, "Mercy Seat" is the story of Ben Harcourt and Abby Prescott. Set in Abby's downtown apartment, the play explores their relationship and selfishness in light of a national tragedy. The ending, as any play from Labute--comes as a surprise, sadly, the climax is somewhat of a let down. I'm not going to give away the ending and I'm well aware of what the relationship is there to show/represent, but I think my biggest problem with, "Mercy Seat" was that I didn't care about that characters, through out the majority of the play there fighting or nagging at each other. It got to the point where I would rather them shut up, than reveal anything to progress the story. I like the idea behind "Mercy Seat," the thought that two people could be a couple of blocks away from this disaster and be so caught up in themselves... I just don't think it was executed as well as it could have been. In the end, we just don't care--there are bigger and better things going on outside that window and Ben and Abby...well, it seems like they're just there. If you've never read Labute, pick up a copy of "Shape of Things," you will NOT regret it. If you've never seen Labute, go out and rent, "In the Company of Men". If you LOVE Labute, go ahead with "Mercy Seat," it's not bad, it's still witty and clever, and the dialouge is just incredible--back and forth, back and forth, he really owns this relationship, but it's just not his best. This is character piece...

5 comments about How to Be a Working Comic: An Insider's Guide to a Career in Stand-Up Comedy (How to Be a Working).

1. I'm taking his one-day workshop so I bought the book to prepare for it-the book is very cool, down-to-earth, tells it like it is. It's more for 'intermediate' comedians who already have an idea about material but want to branch up and out to more than 'open mikes' or bringer shows.
   I recommend it to anyone who wants to make comedy a bigger part of their life.



2. I believe this is probabaly an obligatory book for any person aspiring to become a professional comic and/or writer. Personally I found it cumbersome and a tiring read.



3. It made me laugh, it made me cry...
   
   There are many books out there on the subject, but I've found this one to be the most concise and detailed one out there to date. Not only does it tell you what works and what doesn't in your pursuit to becoming a working comic, but it also brings you insight from some of the top working comedic minds of our generation.
   
   If you're looking to write comedy, great, they're many books out there on the subject, but this is not what this book intends to do. No, this one puts on a platter for you, what you need to (and what it takes) to make it in the business.
   
   If it works you use it; and if it doesn't you don't.
   
   I'm a working stand-up comic and I love this book, and use it. I've been fortunate to work with some really great individuals out there who all share with one another. Be it advice, tips and/or recommendations with the intent of helping you get better, while you help them get better.
   
   This book won't make you a great stand-up comic (you have to do that for yourself), but it will point you in the right direction, and provide you with a solid foundation on how to make it in the business, from headshots to resumes, and how and where to do what you do that makes others laugh.
   
   I give this book "FIVE BANANAS!"
   
   Keep smiling and laughing,
   
   Joey Z



4. Schwensen's business-like nature is sometimes annoying. He name-drops a lot and fawns over the genius of Carrot Top, offering as evidence of his creativity the fact that he makes money. But if you can supply the artistry, Schwensen definately knows the business. He has a lot of direct, useful information about how to market your act at all levels of competition, from novices to headliners.



5. This book deals exclusively with the business side of stand-up. It tells you what you need and what is important but only gives simple suggestions on how to achieve it. Also there is advice from comedieans at the end but none of the comedieans are headliners or big. Overall, this book is not for stand-up tips but basically a listing of what is needed to succeed in the business.

3 comments about The Zoo Story and The Sandbox..

1. Edward Albee's "The Zoo Story" analyzes the mind of the emotionally and physically afflicted man in search of direction, if you will, or at least an apt form of comfort. It is creatively set in one scene - one simple setting that, in a way, hints at the realism of the play and how such a situation should not be thought of as uncommon to man; for there are many emotionally and physically afflicted men in search of comfort, and, in the same simplicity of the development of this story, we, who are accountable for our human race, can provide an apt form of comfort that does not involve death, but rather life.



2. If you don't like him, you don't get him. Read it again.



3. These plays are highly thought provoking and flow very well. Both have odd plots that keep you interested. The obviously stronger of the two, The Zoo Story, combines comedy with drama in a very interesting way. Only four stars because reading the play does not substitute for seeing the play's production with all the interaction.

1 comments about Tuesdays with Morrie.

1. My 15 year old daughter gave me a list of books she wanted, this one on the list. I ordered not seeing that it was a version created for a play (He:..... She:.....). I don't recall the description identifying it as such however I might have overlooked it. I did go back and still didn't see this in the description - just a warning to be sure you know what you are ordering.

No comments about Bodas de sangre (Letras Hispanicas).

1 comments about Stages: Creative Ideas For Teaching Drama.

1. I used Stages to teach a 7th grade drama class. The variety of stage games got the class ready for each day's assignment. I found it to be very helpful.