Lazy Sunday # 503: Fake News

According to several media reports, "Fake News" is the most hated phrase of 2017. Mostly, I would presume, by members of the media.

I'm not exactly sure when I started ingesting news reports with a grain of salt. But it might've been near the start of my acting career, when a play I was in garnered a less than glowing review from a prestigious newspaper. I asked the show's director if there might be some truth in what the critic had written.

His response was along the lines of -- "Kid, I don't believe what they put on the front page. Why should I take anything in the entertainment section seriously?".

It might've been the first time I considered that journalists might not be telling me the truth.

And after decades of seeing films and TV shows I was involved in depicted as something they weren't, misquoted, flat out lied about and spun to favor competition that bought more ad space, I can tell you that in my experience news is often fake.

What's more, if you spend any time in the company of journalists and get enough drinks into them, many will freely admit to tales they've completely made up. Sometimes they're those speculative headlined pieces based on suspicion rather than fact and intended to do little more than pull in a few more readers or viewers.

Sometimes, they're floating fictional balloons to try to get somebody upset enough to confirm or deny whatever they can't nail down on their own.

And sometimes, like everyone of us, they simply misinterpret what they've seen with their own eyes.

Any cop will tell you how unreliable eye-witnesses can be. People witnessing the same bank robbery will claim there were anywhere from one to five robbers, dressed in suits or camo gear, armed or unarmed and from a variety of races.

It's apparently just the way the human brain works. In stressful situations, we not only take in what our senses are telling us, but are simultaneously spinning through some internal card file of possible options, outcomes and explanations while constructing a story of what happened should we be required to explain it to someone.

In other words, pretty much every anecdote in our personal story file is, from its inception, a turd we're already polishing to make it more dramatic or funnier or show ourselves in a different light.

To be clear, everything we see or read has already been coated with a small patina of "fake".

How else do you explain the inhabitants of Canadian filmmaker Jay Cheel's documentary "Twisted", which explores events that either did or did not take place at the St Catherine's Can-View Drive-In in 1996?

Some of what follows is fake -- but what?

Enjoy Your Sunday...


TWISTED from Jay Cheel on Vimeo.

Lazy Sunday # 502: Out For Delivery

When I was a kid, everything Christmas was delivered to your door. We lived in the middle of nowhere Saskatchewan, far from stores and those city sidewalks where silver bells rang on every corner and shoppers rushed home clutching their packages.

A couple of months before the big day, the Sears and Eaton's Christmas catalogues arrived and everybody took turns leafing through the super-colorful pages and circling what they wanted in the hope that Santa or somebody else in the family would take notice and order it for you.

My dad worked as a station agent for the CPR back then and as Christmas got closer the freight shed was stacked higher and higher with cardboard cartons containing somebody's Christmas. Make that everybody in town's Christmas.

Bulky grey canvas bags stamped "Royal Mail Canada" piled up there as well, along with whatever boxes rolled in on the Greyhound or Saskatchewan Transport bus.

But those packages contained more than just Christmas presents. There were frail wooden crates of Mandarin oranges direct from Japan, heavy as a brick fruit cakes and burlap wrapped wheels of cheese, not to mention metal barrels of beer and wooden boxes ringed with steel strapping that held wine and other spirits.

One Christmas, a St. Bernard puppy arrived on the baggage car and stayed with us for a few days until the road to his new farm home could be plowed after a blizzard.

But we weren't completely backwoods and pioneer-timey. We had television and saw all the big Christmas specials with Bob Hope or Perry Como as well as the Christmas parades from far flung metropolises.

There were Christmas movies too. Not a lot. But you could count on "It's a Wonderful Life" and Alistair Sim's Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol" making at least one appearance.

We're back to Christmas arriving in packages nowadays. Some days, I've seen as many as six trucks parked on my street as drivers in brown or blue or whatever they slept in last night hustle parcels to doorsteps.

My own place was so busy one morning, the dog gave up the "Danger, Intruder!" bark-fest intended to strike fear into couriers and just pretended she didn't hear the doorbell.

We've got Christmas movies up the ying-yang too. Sometimes 4 or 5 a night. Most of them feature stars you've never heard of or thought were long dead basically beating you over the head with the sentiments of the season while doing their best to get you reaching for a Kleenex.

In the end, the overwrought repetitiveness tends to numb viewers (or me at least) to the true message of Christmas.

Much of that has been remedied by filmmaker Ethan Milner, who turned his gaze to the return of the delivered Christmas and crafted a terrific short film entitled "Out for Delivery".

Please take a half hour break from the holiday as its envisioned by Hallmark and Lifetime to watch a terrific little movie that shows what the day is really about.

Merry Christmas from The Legion.

And Enjoy Your Sunday...

Out For Delivery | Short Film from Shades Mountain Baptist Church on Vimeo.

Lazy Sunday # 501: Earth Vs The Flying Saucers

When I was about 7 or 8 I went to see a movie that marked me for -- if not Life, the balance of my childhood. It was called "Earth Vs The Flying Saucers" and if you've ever stayed up past midnight, I'm sure you've seen it.

It's trashy and stupid and wholly representative of what passed for movie science fiction in the 1950's.

Six or seven years later, middle of Summer in Saskatchewan, I was flopped on my parents couch watching it again, wondering what exactly had freaked me out. And then something totally freaky in the real world happened...

An RCAF jet came screaming over our suburban house rocketing for downtown. A minute later, another one almost tore the shingles off our roof as it tore after it.

I ran outside to see what was going on to find a couple of my friends looking pale and shaky and asking, "Did you see it?"

They didn't mean the jets. They were talking about what the jets were chasing -- a UFO which had apparently streaked across the prairie skies a couple of minutes earlier. Somewhere in the North end of the city, the air raid sirens that had been stuck up around town around the time of Cuban Missile Crisis went off.

This frozen shiver went through me. And then the siren cut out. False alarm.

But my friends had seen something. A lot of people had. Including the pilots of those jets. But by next morning there was nothing on the radio beyond an apology from the nearby air force base over a "low flying training exercise".

I've always wanted to believe in UFOs. But more often than not their sightings get blamed on swamp gas, weather balloons and too much Tequila.

But the stories continue and with the arrival of YouTube, entire channels of UFO footage have become available. Sometimes the witnesses are airline pilots or people who seem eminently grounded and respectable. Most often, however, they look like the guys you see getting arrested on "Cops" and the spaceships bear an uncanny resemblance to Christmas lights and pie plates.

Then yesterday, the New York Times published a story about a couple of Navy pilots who'd encountered "something unexplainable" off the coast of San Diego in 2004. It's one the Pentagon itself has been investigating for the last 13 years and has finally decided to make public.

Now, I don't know if this is the final step in preparing us for the official verification that aliens have arrived or just another unexplained mystery. What I know for sure is the video of the event is a lot more plausible than anything else I've seen so far.

Enjoy Your Sunday...

LAZY SUNDAY # 500: Curiosity Stream

In 1961, Newton Minow, President John F. Kennedy's Chair of the American Federal Communications Commission (the much feared and vaunted FCC) had this to say about one of the major industries he regulated...

"When television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland".

The vast wasteland he described is often looked upon now as one of the early "Golden Ages" of television. Many of the shows of that time still run on channels such as MeTV, sell as DVD packages or remain available worldwide on their own YouTube channels.

What's more, the formats and genres they popularized are the same ones we use today -- in another "Golden Age of Television" -- and are found in much of the material produced solely to be streamed instead of viewed on a traditional television.

Newton Minow practically begged the TV industry to produce intelligent, thought-provoking programming. His entreaty did not fall on deaf ears -- screenwriter Sherwood Schwartz immortalized him when he dubbed the boat on his pilot for "Gilligan's Island" the S.S. Minnow.

And those searching for intelligent programming are still giving up on finding it on television. When I went to university none of my professors even owned a television set and the same is true for the handful of them I know today.

But now you don't need to own a television to find intellectually challenging fare. Streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime offer a lot of great documentary programming. And now there's a streaming entity offering nothing but that kind of content for $3 a month.

Curiosity Stream offers hundreds of hours of high-end documentary content on all sorts of subjects and in all manner of disciplines. It's available on any device on which you want to consume it -- phones, tablets, laptops, desktops or even your television if its connected to a Roku or Apple TV box.

It's one more example of the kind of challenges being faced by specialty TV channels, the industry version of the brick-and-mortar retailer. Why pay three or four times those $3 for a documentary or educational channel packaged with some other channels you have no interest in?

Curiosity Stream may or may not be of interest to you. But it's certainly worth sampling for free for seven days while you decide. You can check the service out here. What follows is a sample of what you'll find.

Enjoy Your Sunday...

LAZY SUNDAY # 499: THE POLAROID JOB

I've always found those pictures people take this time of year of their pets with Santa Claus were somewhat cute but mostly stupid. I mean, any picture of an animal being coddled or cuddled is heart-warming. But they don't know Santa anymore than what Christmas is. The whole process is forced and fake. And it gives people the impression you oughta have better things to do with your free time.

But this week I got a nice note from my local pet store offering me the chance to support them as well as raise money for a group who trains compassion dogs to assist people with medical issues -- and you end up with a picture of your pet with Santa Claus. One of those win-win all round deals.

And in my case I've also got a pooch who refuses to have her picture taken, so I've hardly got any photographs of her. That's because whenever a camera points in her direction, she immediately shies away, like a canine version of those ancient tribes who believed capturing their image was a way for the photographer to steal their soul.

Nobody's been able to explain why she does this. My own theory is that -- back in the kennel, puppies had their pictures taken all the time -- and disappeared to their new home soon after. So if she wants to maintain the cushy, treat-laden and daily dog park visiting life she has, best not to let anybody have a picture of how cute you are.

Of course I should've listened to my gut because nothing went well. The room was packed with dogs all far more fun than sitting quietly for Santa. And when she wasn't ducking and weaving to avoid the camera, she was trying to escape Santa's many helpers as they offered squeaky toys and snackables to draw her attention where it was required.

It'll be a couple of days before I see the finished product, but I'm not holding out much hope.

Although the experience got me wondering about what draws people to this line of work. And that drew me to a video by Mike Plante about the time his family thought they'd get rich by taking "The Polaroid Job".

Enjoy Your Sunday...

The Polaroid Job from The New York Times - Video on Vimeo.

Lazy Sunday # 498: People City

Every city changes. They rise and fall. Evolve with the times and the tides of the people who roll in and out of them.

Toronto when I was growing up was "The Big Smoke", some place far away where my beloved Maple Leafs played and my dad went once a year for a business conference.

It sounded big and busy but it didn't hold any special attraction.

That changed in 1971 when I got an Actor's Equity Card and Toronto was the place where Canada made most of its television and all of the country's theatres went to look for casts for their plays.

I'd been there for a half a day when I was six and a couple of hours between planes a decade later. I didn't know anybody. Didn't have a clue what it was like.

I fell in love with the place immediately. Mostly because of the people I got to know.

But all cities change. And over time my affection for Toronto changed too. Like all failed marriages, it wasn't any one thing. And not really any blame that could be laid on either side. We just grew apart. Embraced different values. Had different goals. Revised ideas of what would make us happy.

I still love the Leafs. Still read one or two of her newspapers everyday to see how she's doing.

But there's no going back.

And yet, there was a time -- a golden time when it seemed like the perfect place -- a people city.

You can feel the mood of that time perfectly in filmmaker Ed Conroy's documentary of Toronto's "lost anthem" -- the song many of us heard as we switched off the tube and shuffled off to bed. A song that anyone who was there understood implicitly.

Enjoy Your Sunday...

People City: Toronto's Lost Anthem (2017) from Retrontario on Vimeo.

Lazy Sunday # 497: AC/DC

Rock icons are most often shooting stars, burning bright and flaming out quickly. Some endure, of course, their music shifting to fit or influence the eternal ebb and flow of trends and tastes. Few, if any, ride out a full half century doing the same damn thing.

Malcolm Young of AC/DC was one of the latter. He started out rocking hard and never stopped. Overshadowed by the lead guitar of his showy brother and gravel voiced lead singers, hardly anybody who followed the band knew that the guy in the background was the one who wrote all the songs -- and all the infectious riffs.

Malcolm Young's greatest talent was being able to touch something primal inside us and bring both it and those who heard it to life.

AC/DC wasn't a pretty band. It wasn't politically correct or a darling of the critics. But it knew its audience and gave them what they wanted, outselling more highly regarded artists by the tens of millions.

Their 1980 album "Back in Black" sold 50 million copies worldwide, making it the top selling record of any band -- as in -- any -- band.

Much of the credit for that goes to Malcolm Young, who died this week after a long battle with dementia.

As an example of their incredible longevity and appeal, I offer the following song as an example.

"Highway to Hell" was first recorded in 1979. The concert in the video took place thirty years later in 2009. When did you last see 100,000 people rocking out to a song written before they were born.

I have a feeling Malcolm Young's magic will touch their children as well. And their children as well. Like the man said, "Rock n' Roll will never die".

Enjoy Your Sunday.

Lazy Sunday # 496: The Monster Factory

Spoiler alert -- Professional Wrestling is fake. What happens in the wrestling ring isn't real.

Wanna know something else?

Acting is fake. What happens on movie and TV screens isn't real either.

And yet...

Those engaged in staging the latter always seem to dismiss and look down on those who wrestler for a living.

I've always wondered why.

Back in the mists of time, as both streams of entertainment evolved, they each trotted colorful wagons from town to town to find an audience and eke out an existence. Sometimes they even shared the bill and taught each other their skills.

What happened? If you ask me, one got respectable. The other  -- not so much.

Today there are no government grants to train or develop wrestlers, nor to export the culture of wrestling or expand its markets around the world. There are no respected performance spaces built by patrons or responsible city councils. No festival circuits. No seemingly endless awards seasons.

And yet -- wrestlers endure. And prosper at levels that dwarf the money earned in Canada's currently super-heated film and television production centers.

Without ever needing a tax credit to keep them going.

One of my current projects involves wrestling. And this week I set out to find somebody who could train actors to wrestle --and maybe find a couple of wrestlers who could act.

The search took me to rougher parts of town and into worlds where a red carpet just means somebody bled pretty good.

There's a lot in that world that deserves respect. Here's a taste courtesy of filmmaker Tucker Bliss.

Enjoy Your Sunday...
Monster Factory from Tucker Bliss on Vimeo.

Lazy Sunday # 495: Monsoon IV

I grew up in some of the drier places in Canada. The Alberta Badlands. The Great Sandhills of Saskatchewan. I often quip that I was 12 years old before I saw water that wasn't in a glass. And that's not too far a stretch from the truth.

And somewhere around age 12, we moved closer to water. I learned to swim and toyed with the idea of becoming a Marine Biologist despite having not yet seen an ocean. I often quip that I made the University of Saskatchewan swim team because there were few in the student body who could swim. And that's not too far a stretch from the truth either.

The major bonus of coming from dry land is that you look on rain as a kind of natural wonder. It's rare and at times spectacular, such as those Summer nights when it arrives wrapped in lightning and thunder.

Where I live now, it rains a lot. As in pretty much six solid months of the year. So everybody around me bitches about the wet or the lack of sunshine. And I do too sometimes. But mostly I still wonder at water that falls from the sky.

The following is from an American filmmaker named Mike Olbinski who, to my mind, shares my affinity with what goes on in the skies above that can only come from living in a very dry place.

I hope his work is as magical for you -- no matter where you live.

Enjoy Your Sunday.

Monsoon IV (4K) from Mike Olbinski on Vimeo.

Lazy Sunday # 494: Jasper

I was a kid the first time I visited Jasper National Park in Alberta. And I spent most of my time looking for the cartoon bear (pictured above), who was supposed to live there.

Jasper was a regular in Maclean's magazine and several weekly color comic sections at the time and had spawned a massive line of trinkets and toys as cartoon characters are wont to do these days, but was quite unusual for Canadian icons back then. 

A couple of years after that first visit of mine, Jasper was inducted as the Park's official mascot and a statue was erected to him. It still stands today, even though most who are photographed hugging it probably have no idea it's more than just a bear. 

I'm not sure if that's a bad thing, as it may mean those who visit what is, in my opinion, the most beautiful National Park in the country actually spend more time taking in the natural beauty.

There are still a couple of months left in the Canada 150 celebration which comes with free admission to all our parks. And if you haven't availed yourself of that fabulous freebie -- well, what's been keeping you.

If you can get to Jasper, great. If not -- here's a taste of what's waiting for those who do.

Enjoy Your Sunday.

 

Lazy Sunday # 493: The Days The Music Died

Gord Downie's death this week turned into a national outpouring of grief. We all remembered our favorite "Tragically Hip" song or how'd we'd caught them in a bar one night before they were famous. Every newscast and talk show discussed the local landmarks, arcane hockey moments, regional turns of phrase and national traits mentioned in their lyrics.

For a while there it felt like no politician, athlete or kid on the street was without profound thoughts on the Legacy the music would engender and the change in our collective consciousness that would evolve as a result. 

It made me wonder how much of this was genuine -- given that less than 10% of the country had ever purchased one of the Hip's albums. And far fewer when you consider that the core of any fan base owns all of their favorite band's output.

Not that there's anything shabby about selling just over 5 million copies of anything. And God knows there were Summers and camp grounds where the tunes from their 14 albums were everywhere.

But given that Shania Twain has already sold more than 8 times as many copies of one album  ("Come On Over") alone, how overwrought is this nation going to become when her turn to shake off this mortal coil rolls around? 

"Bobcaygeon" might choke me up personally whenever I hear it. But millions more were/are just as moved by "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under".

Or are the wakes we hold for our pop stars more media generated than genuine? 

Yeah, I know it hurts to lose someone who influenced your formative years. But trust me, I was around when Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison died -- and none of them ever made the front page of any newspaper I picked up or garnered more than a moment of the nightly news.

The tragedies of their passings didn't dominate the zeitgeist and the word "legacy" never crossed anybody's mind beyond hoping people would be a little more careful about what drugs they took.

Still -- like a lot of you I'm sure -- in my sadness, I ventured onto YouTube to re-watch a few of my "Tragically Hip" favorites. And you know how, when you do that, YouTube comes up with a list of other clips you might want to see...?

That list included the one I'm attaching below because a couple of things struck me watching it.

1. Every single star participating in it has passed on. Each of them giants in the industry. 

And...

2. This kind of thing used to turn up on television with regularity -- unprompted by anyone's impending mortality or the need to opine on their context in the grand scheme of things.

Perhaps the innocence of "entertainment" being the point of entertainment is one more thing that we've lost.

Enjoy Your Sunday...

Lazy Sunday # 492: Walk Off The Earth

The following video was done in a single take -- after six solid days of rehearsal.

Here's Burlington, Ontario band "Walk Off The Earth" proving the reality that we all need to forego
the option to "fix it in post".

Far better to fix it in Prep.

Enjoy Your Sunday...

Lazy Sunday # 491: The Fire's Out

After the worst forest fire season in recorded history, which scorched an area of British Columbia four times the size of Vancouver and the rest of our urban mainland, the flames are out.

Crews that came from across Canada and all over the world to fight the wildfires are going home. Some leave quietly. Others make you wish they'd stay forever. Not just because of their courage and commitment. But because they hold onto something we've lost.

Remember when people used to sing at work? 

And I'm not talking about chain gangs but that sense of community and communal labor that caused all kinds of people to get together in song. 

As a kid, I remember railroad crews busting out a tune to set the rhythm of their hammers or some cowboy bringing out his guitar at a campfire after the branding was done.

When you took your car to a garage, there was always a radio blasting back in the repair bays and one or two of the mechanics joining in.

Every police force and fire department had a choir or a band or both. Geez, even coal miners sang between coughing fits as they hacked up a lung.

But people don't even turn on a radio at work anymore. Workplaces have become these quiet hives, where even the crappy muzak in the elevator is being replaced by tiny TVs offering stock quotes and snippets from CNN.

And those who do their jobs to tunes do it with earbuds, seldom to experience the delight of a shared song.

When did work become all about work and lose the joy that made working with other people worthwhile?

What follows is a Samoan Crew of Firefighters leaving the woods after killing a wildfire. They're hot and tired. Bruised and sore from the back-breaking labor.

But they've got a song in their hearts.

This is special.

Enjoy Your Sunday.

Lazy Sunday # 490: Editing as Punctuation

I've always held that it is a storytelling power of three that makes cinema what it is. Those three story tellers are the writer, the director and the editor.

The writer creates the original story on paper. The director lifts it from the page so it can be retold in the physical world. And finally, the editor uses the captured images and sound to re-tell the story in cinematic form.

No good film story can be realized if one of the three storytellers is missing.

Without a good script, the director's skills can still achieve a level of sound and fury, but the result inevitably signifies nothing. And no matter how well the writer and director have told their tales, without the storytelling skills of an editor, the audience won't be taken on the intended journey.

Whether those story tellers are embodied in one person or many doesn't matter. The story still needs to be told three times to make a movie.

Now -- everybody thinks they can write and those with healthy egos are certain they can direct. But editing is a more mysterious craft to most, practiced in darkened rooms by people who seldom speak about what illusions they can concoct.

One of the easiest ways to understand what editors do is to look at their work through the eyes of a writer and one of the skills writers rely on -- punctuation.

The image above is the first half of one of the most famous cuts in cinema history.

Or is it just a comma...

Enjoy Your Sunday.

Editing as Punctuation in Film from Max Tohline on Vimeo.

Lazy Sunday # 489: The Good Time Girls

There used to be a T-shirt popular among people who worked on movies (probably still is) that read "What I really want to do is direct". Like the movie set memes that now populate social media, it reflected the reality that a lot of people who wrote, produced, acted or crewed films actually didn't want to be a small cog in the big mechanism of film creation. They wanted to run the thing.

As I writer and producer, I can't count the number of scripts that were dropped on my desk by actors, grips, stuntmen and extras, almost all of them hoping a sale would vault them out of the position they held into a credit closer to the beginning of the picture -- with virtually all of them silently hoping a script credit would get them one step closer to their true holy grail -- directing.

I've often thought that when the desire to direct arises in people with a regular crew job, it comes from working under a director who isn't that good at what they do. Like those scripts I mentioned, I also can't count the number of times I've seen a director struggling to make his or her day when everybody surrounding them knows exactly what the next shot should be.

That said, it's still rare when the desire to run the show comes from someone who's not only exceptional at their niche within the production community but is much sought after by the very best directors out there.

Courtney Hoffman was the Costumer on "Magic Mike", "The Hateful Eight" and "Baby Driver". A year ago, she availed herself at an opportunity offered by Production entity Refinery29 to create a short film as part of their "Shatterbox Anthology" effort to find emerging female directing talent.

She created a film entitled "The Good Time Girls" and shopped it around. The result impressed a lot of people, including Steven Spielberg, who just hired Ms. Hoffman to direct a feature called "Ruthless" for Amblin Entertainment.

Which seems to prove that if you really want to direct the best path to that goal is to just go out and direct something.

Maybe it's really that simple.

Enjoy Your Sunday.

Lazy Sunday # 488: Hurricane Shapiro

You don't know who to trust these days, do you?

Actually, nobody's ever really known who to trust. At one point in my life I spent a lot of time shadowing cops -- cops who relied on confidential informants to do their jobs. Most of these CI's were scumbags, low-lifes, petty or major criminals. A few were even lawyers. Actually, more than a few. That attorney-client privilege thing isn't held in the high esteem you might expect.

I learned that when one of them dropped a little information on a police officer, the cop made a mental note of it and went on with his day.

"Hey, didn't he say some guy was getting whacked this afternoon?".

"Yeah. We'll see..."

No urgency. No way of verifying what was offered. It was just -- information. Perhaps ill-informed. Perhaps intended to settle a grudge.

If said cop then got the same information from CI #2, he might take out his notebook and make a note. But there was still no indication he was acting on what he'd heard.

But if CI #3 showed up with the same news. Then it was time to spring into action.

I feel like one of these cops every time I watch the news these days. I'm never sure how much trust to have in what I'm hearing. So I tend to look for other sources. If it turns up in three or more places that don't share the same ideology or political agenda, I'll go along with it. Otherwise -- we'll see...

Last week, as Hurricane Irma bore down on Florida, CNN was wall to wall with the doom and gloom of a storm more dangerous than the planet had ever seen -- one that would level several American cities and then cut to anchors standing in the rain as approaching breezes tousled their hair.

Either CNN anchors are suddenly a dime a dozen and ten feet tall and bulletproof -- or maybe Irma had blown it's load in the Caribbean.

But that doesn't sell ads for Cialis, does it?

And this goes on all over the place. One week, Donald Trump is worse than Hitler. And the next, the very people who've called him unhinged and a Fascist are sitting down to have dinner with him. And the media who've promulgated those opinions are suddenly using terms like "eminently presidential".

Am I the only one who feels I'm being played?

Meanwhile, as Hurricane Irma threatened one coast, another storm dubbed Shapiro was threatening to bring death and destruction to Berkeley, California.

At least that's what CNN and a lot of people on Facebook wanted me to believe.

For those not paying attention, Ben Shapiro, a Fascist, White-Supremacist, was booked to speak at UC Berkeley, the birth place of the free speech movement, and after failing to prevent his appearance, the college and city had required Shapiro to spend more than $600,000 to make sure the students attending his speech did not come to harm.

For those who've truly been paying attention, Ben Shapiro is about as far from a Fascist, White Supremacist as you can get. He's actually an Orthodox Jew married to a Moroccan woman with whom he's had two kids.

He's also, according to the Anti-Defamation League, been the target of more anti-Semitic attacks than anyone else on social media. Attacks that came from both the Left and the Right.

He's also written a couple of books about how the media participates in the creation of our current culture of fear. Something, you'd suspect people in the media do not take kindly to.

So, he's labelled with the worst things you can call people these days as vast numbers on social media parrot the terms and demand he be silenced.

But Shapiro went ahead and spoke -- and nothing happened.

Oh, a few hot heads got arrested and some people who heard him might've had their opinion changed. But the culture of fear took the real hit because it turned out the guy isn't somebody to fear.

You can find Shapiro's entire speech here, including a half hour of engaging with people who disagree with him. Engagement that is intelligent and respectful and honest on all sides, proving that people can hold differing views without demonizing one another or pedaling falsehoods.

Below is a small snippet that will hopefully start some of you questioning the sources from which you get your news. Maybe it's time for you too to seek some additional sources.

And -- Enjoy Your Sunday...

THE RED BANDANA

In remembrance of 9/11...

LAZY SUNDAY # 487: GONE COUNTRY

A lot of people have trouble understanding my love of Country music. It just doesn't fit with the understated sophistication and intellectual acumen which are my trademarks. Which not only reveals how little they know me, but Country music as well.

There's as much depth and variety to Country as any other musical genre and maybe more than some. You just gotta find that part of the pasture with the grass that appeals to you. Trouble is, given the picture of Country folk that's always been a mainstay of the media (particularly Hollywood) most people don't bother to give it much of a listen.

I like to think I came to it honestly. My formative years were spent in rural Saskatchewan, where it was everywhere, with the same guys in pick-ups listening to Hank Snow and Marty Robbins were just as likely to pick up records by Perry Como and the Mills Brothers. 

It was just there. Another song on the only radio station you could get.

Later on, I lived in LA when "The Eagles" were taking flight, among other Country influenced artists like "Linda Ronstadt", "Kris Kristopherson","Poco", "Little Feat", "Loggins & Messina" or "The New Riders of the Purple Sage". And trust me, when your only alternatives were Disco or some lounge singer ruining "The Doobie Brothers", listening to those guys was way better.

More often, Country songs are stories, as the old Nashville radio adage goes -- "Listen long enough and somebody sings your life". But sometimes, it's just fun too.

Friday we lost two giants in the world of Country. Don Williams and Troy Gentry.

Williams (top photo) was in his late 70's. Long retired from a career that saw him top the charts 17 times and have much of his song writing covered by other top selling artists.

Gentry died when I helicopter ferrying him to a concert in New Jersey crashed. His Duo "Montgomery Gentry" formed in the 1990's with singing partner Eddie Montgomery also had a couple of decades of hits and Country Music Awards.

Each, in their own way, represented those two sides of Country music, the stories and the fun. 

If you enjoyed their artistry as much as I did, here's a sample of each. If you weren't a fan, have a listen to what you missed.

And -- Enjoy Your Sunday...

LAZY SUNDAY # 486: RETURNING THE FAVOR

I got an amazing reaction this week on a Washington Post article I posted about the response of the so-called "Cajun Navy" to the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in Houston.

You can read the entire article here. But basically it was about a bunch of responsible, resilient and resourceful people doing what any decent person does for their neighbors.

Most of the feedback I got was positive.

But in these divided times, I also got reactions from those who refer to themselves as progressive, or as some call them, "Social Justice Warriors" pointing out the Cajun Navy is made up of Southerners who fought in unjust foreign wars, wear a police uniform, probably don't like Gays, Muslims or Black people and doubtless voted for that douchebag Trump.

We've apparently come so far or are so far gone that people simply helping people is suspect and apparently you actually can tell a book by its cover.

Some of that can be explained by our political divisions. But I think much of it devolves to a divide between rural and urban, where the skills of one aren't appreciated by the other, as well as an additional schism between those who seek higher education and those who do not.

A champion of the latter group is Mike Rowe, a TV Host who gained fame with a series entitled "Dirty Jobs" where he got hired to do all those jobs most people just won't do.

That led him to developing a foundation to increase the number of people being trained to do skilled jobs. Jobs like being a plumber or electrician or house painter in a world that reveres rap artists, athletes and hedge fund managers while espousing the essential need for everybody to attain a college degree.

A few months ago, Mike was awarded the first "TV series" that would be produced and distributed by Facebook. That series is called "Returning the Favor" and its one of the most uplifting things I've seen in a long while.

I can't post the first episode of "Returning the Favor" here because it's still a Facebook exclusive. But if you're on Facebook, you can access it here.

What I can post is a video Mike also did this past week after somebody made the mistake of calling him a "White Supremacist" online. It's from Fox News, so those of you who feel you're somehow dirtying your hands by doing that can find a print version of Mike's response here.

Either way, d+o yourself a favor and reach across these seemingly unbridgeable divides by watching "Returning the Favor" on Facebook. At the very least it'll encourage them to spend more of their ad money on content.

And -- Enjoy Your Sunday...

LAZY SUNDAY # 485: LUVVIE

The actor, Vincent Price, was also an accomplished painter. Atop the favorites of his own work was a canvas depicting a beautiful garden awash in sunlight and filled with thousands of beautiful flowers. The garden is seen from inside a darkened room where a man stands in the shadows, his hand hovering expectantly over a telephone. The painting is titled -- "The Actor".

It's the perfect representation of how much of life an actor sacrifices for their art.

I was a professional actor for 15 years before I transitioned to writing and producing. I worked a lot in the trade and became relatively well known. So, after the switch, people frequently asked if I missed it.

Well, to some extent I did. But more often I felt that my new efforts were creating work for a lot of actors instead of just one.

And there were a lot of things I didn't miss. The constant waiting for something to happen or somebody to make a decision. The endless casting calls, occasionally to audition for people without a clue about either the craft or how to create a marketable product by harnessing it. The constant financial insecurity that didn't allow for any rest between gigs. Continually dealing with those who thought the characters you played were who you were in real life.

All of that is captured perfectly in a short film entitled "Luvvie" by Canadian actress, writer and director Annie Briggs.

Captured as well is the love of the work that gives most actors the desire to keep going no matter the disappointments, no matter the odds, no matter the hardships.

If you want to know what an actor's life is really like -- this is it.

Enjoy Your Sunday...

LUVVIE from Annie Briggs on Vimeo.

Lazy Sunday # 484: DIEPPE UNCOVERED

Somebody once said, "The only reason truth is stranger than fiction is because fiction has to make sense".

We all spend a lot of time trying to make sense of something. And a lot of times we fail because we're so busy applying logic or science that we don't look any deeper.

So imagine my surprise on learning that a mystery I've been trying to figure out for a long time would be solved by a guy I wrote about last week -- Ian Fleming.

Let me begin 75 years ago this week, August 19, 1942 when Canadian soldiers raided the Nazi held French port of Dieppe. The attack was a military disaster resulting in more than half of the invading force being killed or captured.

I don't remember learning about the battle in school, maybe because some school supervisor thought the story would be too painful in a place where many of the lost men had once lived.

But later in life I was cast in a musical about the raid entitled "Gravediggers of 1942" written by well known Canadian playwright Tom Hendry. Now, you might think a musical about a military disaster would be in bad taste. But such shows as "Oh, What A Lovely War" were much admired at the time and this was our version.

But all of the cast spent their free time in rehearsal reading books about the raid where the prevailing opinion was that it was badly planned by the British generals in charge and that the Canadian troops were merely canon fodder sacrificed to learn how not to conduct an invasion.

The show was a huge hit and I can't count the number of times I met an audience member who'd lost a member of their family and was as obsessed as I was on discovering why such a tragedy had been allowed to happen.

A couple of years later, I revisited Dieppe again on stage by way of Peter Colley's "The War Show" where the first act climax depicted the slaughter on the beaches. Often the curtain dropped not to applause but to silence and the sound of someone weeping.

One night, during the intermission, there was a knock on the Green Room door. Being the only actor who wasn't in the middle of a cigarette, I answered it. A huge, muscular man in his late 50's filled the doorway with tears streaming down his face. He reached out and dropped several crumpled 10's and 20's into my hand. "I lost a lot of good friends at Dieppe," he said, "Have a drink to 'em on me."

He started away, then turned back. "And Bless you all for remembering. It means a lot."

That lack of remembering seemed to be the official stance at the time. Part of it might've been the feeling that perhaps our boys let the side down. Maybe it was because we didn't want to be impolite and accuse the Brits of using us.

Whatever the reason, you knew the whole conversation was being avoided. And because of it, thousands of men who had survived the battle were abandoned, forever to wonder how an event that had so negatively impacted their lives had been allowed to happen in the first place.

Only a handful of those men are alive as the 75th anniversary of the battle is marked, all in their 90's now and perhaps past understanding of why their sacrifice had been needed.

A couple of years ago, the mystery of Dieppe was finally solved. For it turns out, the raid was a cover, almost a diversion to distract from the real mission. One which might have shortened World War Two by months, if not years, had it succeeded. A mission planned and commanded by a young naval intelligence officer by the name of -- Ian Fleming, the man who would one day create James Bond.

The truth is a tale only a writer of fiction could concoct, perhaps knowing that said truth needed to be couched in an official story that would not make sense. 

What it doesn't explain is why a generation of warriors couldn't have had their burden of regret recrimination and guilt lifted after WW2 was over. Perhaps that's the real mystery of Dieppe.

Learn the true story of Dieppe below and please catch the full version if you can...

And -- Enjoy Your Sunday...

LAZY SUNDAY # 483: SPY VS SPY

On a hot, prairie afternoon in 1962, I was introduced to the world of espionage.

"Dr. No" was screening at Regina's classiest theatre, The Capitol. I'd never heard of Sean Connery or the film let alone the book from which it was adapted and knew nothing of a genre that would come to have a profound effect on my life.

"Dr. No" absolutely blew me away. After the movie, I stood staring at the lobby cards in the poster windows outside, enervated, reliving the scenes depicted. I then shot down the street to the nearest bookstore to buy a copy of the novel that the credits had indicated was written by some guy named Ian Fleming.

To my surprise, there was a whole shelf of Ian Fleming's Bond books. By Christmas, I'd read all of them. Maybe too young to fully understand all the finer points and certainly the sexy parts. But in addition to opening my eyes to an exciting adventure genre head and shoulders above Tarzan and Treasure Island, I suddenly started paying closer attention to the news, the cold war and the hotter one taking shape in Viet Nam.

James Bond had led me to wanting to know more about how the world really worked.

Of course, I saw every Bond film, usually on the day it was released and might've been Connery's biggest fan. Then, in 1965, a new spy arrived on the scene -- Alec Leamus, personified by Richard Burton in John LeCarre's "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold".

Despite Burton's consummate skills as an actor, "Spy" troubled me. Leamus didn't seem to enjoy his job as much as Bond and he had this guy named Smiley hanging over him as that boss who never tells you the whole story. I picked up Le Carre's novel too, but honestly found it hard going, depicting I world far darker than I imagined could really exist and with not a lot of charming characters or lighter moments.

Luckily around the same time, a new actor and a new spy entered my life -- Michael Caine as Harry Palmer in Len Deighton's "The Ipcress File". I was about 16 by then and Harry Palmer matched me to a T. He was working class like I was, wore exactly the same glasses I wore. More important, he had a healthy mistrust of authority -- the same one I was developing.

Somehow, in an era prior to entertainment magazine shows and social media, I learned that the director of "The Ipcress File" was Canadian -- Sidney Furie. Fifteen or twenty years later, while still an actor, but trying to learn to write, I got to meet Furie and peppered him with questions -- which mostly came down to why it had been his only espionage film.

For me, so much of that movie had been perfect for the genre, the moving masters in the corridors of power, the film noir touches, the grit of real spycraft combined with lighter moments that kept the story personal and engaging.

I think I was looking for something resembling hope for the genre, for we met not long after I'd seen "Moonraker", a film so egregious I was certain the Bond franchise had run its course. Like that unforgettable sunny afternoon in front of the Capitol theatre, I stood in front of an equally classy theatre in an equally sunny Los Angeles -- only this time holding back tears and angry at what a character and world I loved had been allowed to become.

A short time later, My careers of writing and acting at a tipping point, I was hired as the story editor on a new CBS series entitled "Adderly". Adderly had been a minor character in a novel by American writer Elliot Baker. But he was unique enough that the TV powers that be decided he'd be worthy of a television series.

And so for two seasons he was, with those of us responsible for creating his adventures constantly pulled between the more popular cultural icon of espionage created by Ian Fleming and the more realistic version provided by John LeCarre. Oddly, or maybe because of my own bias, the compromise usually ended up being somewhere in the Harry Palmer ballpark.

But still, a half century after all these characters entered the culture, the debate about which of the key creators, Fleming or LeCarre, was better at story telling and creating the world of spies still continues. To be honest, the more mature me likes them both but for far different reasons.

Check out the confrontation that follows to make your own choice.

And -- Enjoy Your Sunday...

LAZY SUNDAY # 482: SMOKE ON THE WATER

The folks on Canada's West Coast have been watching the skies a lot more than usual lately. And it's not for the usual purpose of seeing if there's some blue among the rain clouds.

Big chunks of British Columbia are on fire and have been for more than a month. Thousands of fire fighters have been deployed. Entire cities have been evacuated. Newscasts are full of shots of pick-up trucks fleeing flaming forests.

The Sun and the Moon are bright red from dawn to dusk. And smoke blankets everything...

Yesterday, I ventured off my island to watch my beloved Saskatchewan Roughriders get their gridiron asses handed to them by the BC Lions. And the taste of ashes that comes from such a colossal loss was this time quite literal on the boat ride home. 

But smoky skies suggests something else to a good number of us -- smoke it up some more!

Because this week also included Vancouver's "Celebration of Light" one of the world's largest fireworks competition. Saturday concluded the show with a spectacular presentation from Team Canada.

We like to think of it as fighting fire with fire.

Enjoy Your Sunday.

LAZY SUNDAY # 481: ZYGOTE

Okay, so I'm burnt, dehydrated and beyond tired -- recovering from one dead solid perfect day. Which means I don't have much left -- except this...

For all this talk about the old way of doing things dying, there's also a ton of new ways being born. New ways of telling stories. New ways of getting those stories around. Less dependence on gatekeepers and grand bureaucratic plans. More reliance of getting back to what really matters -- telling the story.

One of those newish things is Neill Blomkamp's Oats Studios. Here's one of the first offerings. No doubt there will be more...

Pass the Aloe and a beer and...

Enjoy Your Sunday.

LAZY SUNDAY # 480: THE COMING DISRUPTION

One of the odd realities of life is that those who are supposed to have a handle on what's coming usually don't. History is littered with great leaders who didn't really believe their enemies could defeat them, or the peasants would one day have had enough and rise up with their torches and pitchforks.

The whale oil industry didn't think much would come from the discovery of petroleum. Record executives didn't believe file sharing would be a challenge after they got rid of Napster and nobody in the film business believed a low budget movie about a war in space would revolutionize what kind of movies fill up the multiplex in Summer.

And now the Canadian TV industry and many of the Guilds employed therein are convinced we can continue making television as we have for the past couple of decades. No matter how many Cassandras at film markets and symposia for the last years have preached that "content is king", touted the future of streaming or implied there is no longer such a thing as a protected territory -- they thought they knew better.

They didn't recognize the disruptors as legitimate competitors or realize how quickly they could become too big to fail.

This week a new player arrived in Canada. Dazn -- which bills itself as the "Netflix of Sports", offers to stream to any and all of your devices for $20 a month the same all-inclusive NFL package Bell or Rogers will sell you for $50 -- while also providing you with pretty much as much other sports programming as you can fit into your day -- instead of endless panels of ex-athletes and poker.

Meanwhile, Netflix released numbers indicating that, despite the number of movie channels Shaw, Telus, Bell and Rogers are willing to package for you at ever increasing prices, 5 million more people in the last year have chosen to subscribe to their service instead.

The one thing you can be sure of in life is that change will come. Make that two things -- the pundits will not see it coming. And -- okay three things -- it'll all happen quicker than anybody thought.

For a complete explanation of how all that works -- so you can do your best to prepare yourself, spend a few minutes with Tony Seba, a guy who studies disruption.

And -- Enjoy Your Sunday.

LAZY SUNDAY # 479: LISTEN TO ME

For about a year I hosted a television show that included interviews. Neither of my co-hosts nor I had any experience doing that. We'd mostly been hired because we were perky and charming.

So, the way the show worked was an actual, experienced journalist would conduct the interviews and I'd sit in front of a green screen on which the interview subject appeared looking for all the world like they were answering my questions via some remote or satellite hook-up.

Since that shot could quickly become boring, the interviews were intercut with close-ups of me listening intently, nodding, laughing at jokes, or whatever reaction was required.

Now, having been an actor for a decade or so by then, I'd learned the number one rule of playing a scene -- "Acting is reacting". Maintain the reality of paying attention to whoever you're talking to and you're pretty much home free.

Following that gig, I got called a lot to do interviews for real and always begged off because carrying on an informative as well as entertaining interview is a very special skill.

I wish I'd been aware back then of the skills NPR host Celeste Headlee shares in the video below. But I more ardently wish the people in my social media streams would listen to what she has to say.

As online debates get coarser, angrier and more insulting, with friends unable to talk civilly to friends (either their own or mine) without just pissing all over their opinions and listening barely, if at all, to what's being shared in return, learning how to talk to one another is becoming a lost art.

And we all need to get a handle on that.

Enjoy Your Sunday...

Lazy Sunday # 478: The Protectors

Everywhere you look these days, somebody seems to be releasing new content or new devices on which to experience Virtual Reality.

Now anybody from the owners of a PS4 to a cheap android phone with an onboard gyroscope can put themselves inside thousands of titles, from rollercoaster rides to special segments from films like the Canadian producer Minds Eye Entertainment's upcoming release "The Recall".

For me, story telling onscreen has always been about directing the viewer's attention in a particular direction, doling out what I want them to see instead of what they might notice from turning away to look around at what or who else might be in the playing space.

The economic restrictions placed on shooting a 360 degree environment also need to be considered. Where do you hide the crew and equipment? How much extra time and money does it cost to dress an entire room instead of the corner where most of the action takes place?

That's not to say entire VR dramas and comedies aren't on the horizon, I'm just suspecting that like 3D in the 1950's, it might be a passing fad until the surrounding technologies or our understanding of their potentials improve.

No doubt porn and horror will find a place. They always do. But I'm thinking that the real power of VR lies in news, sports and documentary.

News could have put you in the middle of the Hamburg G20 Riots this week to get a fuller perspective on that. Sports would have let me experience my beloved Saskatchewan Roughriders new stadium amid their rabid thousands known collectively as the "13th Man".

But for controlled story telling that fully takes you into a world, VR might really boost interest in documentaries the most.

Recently, Academy Award winning director Kathryn Bigelow put together a team of VR veterans and transported them to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to shoot a National Geographic doc on the 100 Rangers who protect elephants in Garamba National Park from ivory poachers.

It's an astonishing piece of work which should do a lot to help you understand our future as well as...

Enjoy your Sunday...

Lazy Sunday # 477: Let The Games Begin

Okay, I'm going to beat this "Television-is-dead" horse once last time. But the stick we're using this week has nothing to do with comedy or drama -- and everything to do with why most people subscribe to cable packages in the first place.

Much as we creative types want to believe we're the be and end all to televised entertainment, we're not. Yes, there's a lot of that on the tube and there are a ton of specialty channels that continue to regurgitate the hit shows from every era of television ad nauseum. Play your cards right and you can even catch the same episode of almost anything you once loved several times a night.

While the bent of many current services may lead you to believe that genres like bachelorettes, cooking contests, fishing for crabs and big rig crashes on busy highways have a shitload of followers, the truth is most people keep forking over money to cable companies for two things -- news and sports -- with the latter being the gold standard for raking in big ad buys and humongous audiences.

And while you've all heard of the ridiculous prices big brands will pay to be associated with the Superbowl, it's the money from sports in general that keeps many networks or their corporate overlords in the black -- and therefore capable of producing million dollar episodes of your favorite doctor - lawyer - whatever series.

Imagine what would become of neighborhood sports bars if there wasn't a 100 inch television on every wall and you might see what will happen to most television stations or the broadcast conglomerates they're part of if big league sports aren't on the menu.

And that day is not far off.

At the moment, Canada's various film and TV creative guilds are lobbying government to save the thousands of jobs the CRTC threatened by downgrading the required contribution of local cable companies to program funding.

Now ask yourself how much sense that makes, when jobs are rapidly disappearing among journalists in the news divisions and just about everybody who works in televised sports.

A couple of months ago, the leading Sports network South of the border laid off 300 behind the camera staffers. A month ago they cut loose 100 of the familiar faces who've graced the screen.

The reason for that is simple. ESPN's overall subscriptions are down 13% while the fees the professional leagues are demanding for access to their product continue to rise.

The economics are unsustainable. And they're about to get worse.

Beginning this fall, Amazon will be offering their Prime subscribers the National Football League's Thursday night games. Games that will also be carried (as they have for generations) by CBS and NBC. Except....

Due to the complete lack of interest in signing up for cable among young people in particular, the advertiser coveted 18-35 demographic will disproportionately be watching online. Meaning CBS and NBC will no longer be able to charge the ad rates that have up to now kept pace with the NFL's licensing fees.

To make matters worse, Facebook is experimenting with college basketball games and several other services are making pretty much any game anywhere available. There's a whole list of those places here.

And very soon, that will begin to impact the amount of money all the traditional networks have available to spend on prime time drama.

A few days ago "Hawaii Five-O" cast members Grace Park and Daniel Dae Kim departed the series because producers would not increase their salaries. And while some might spin that in a different direction like, say, racism -- it might just be simple economics.

First corners get cut. Then the number of new shows in development get cut. Then the number of series episodes or shows in general get cut.

Does that remind anybody of the last few years of Canadian TV?

Comedy and Drama do not exist in some kind of bubble, safe, separate and apart from the rest of the program schedule. Sports, News, Daytime Programming, Prime Time -- they all depend on each other. And when one becomes a sinkhole, the rest go down with it.

To quote an ESPN Sportscaster who in doing a baseball injury report, once appended the usual so-and-so is day to day by adding "But then, aren't we all". 

Instead of trying to save a few jobs in one segment of the industry, we better all start thinking about how we're going to continue to do the jobs we've all been trained for in the coming online world.

Television as we know it is gone. Let the Games begin...