Month: July 2014
Continuing my safari among the creative young people of the millennial generation: In today’s conversation with Jeff Simon, I ask Jeff what brought him from Chicago to L.A., how he got started in the movie business, what networking is like today among twentysomethings in Tinseltown, and what he learned working for eighteen months with Tom Cruise and Doug Liman on the sci-fi film, Edge of Tomorrow. Jeff talks about his own career arc and how and why he began to “think bigger” about his aspirations for himself, artistically as well as commercially. (The transcript of today’s video is below. This…
Read MoreWhy am I writing this blog? Why are you reading it? It’s not a bad idea to pause once in a while and ask questions like these. The blog started about five years ago. It has evolved through a number of iterations. I’ve written in this space about what interests me, but I’ve also taken cues from comments and responses from readers and tried to dig deeper into issues that seemed to strike a chord. What are we talking about on this blog? What’s our theme? What are we trying to get at, you and I? I’m going to take…
Read MoreI promised last Wednesday that we would be presenting several new video series on the blog. Here’s the first one, starting today. (There’s a transcript below the video, in case you’d rather read than watch.) This series is me interviewing Jeff Simon, our blog’s 28-year-old tech guru, about the new web series he is developing called Camp Abercorn. I’ve been wanting to do this for years—sit down with the young millennial generation and ask about their creative process. Do they think differently from Old School guys like me? How does their tech-savviness help them? What do they want? What are…
Read MoreWould you have said no to Elvis Presley? Imagine Elvis calling you back in the day. He loves a song you’ve written, wants to record it—and even invites you down to the recording session. You’re excited and start telling your friends the news—and then (and this is a big AND THEN), a few days before the session, Colonel Tom Parker (a.k.a. Elvis’ manager) calls you up and says: “Now, you do know that Elvis is recordin’ your song. And you do know that Elvis don’t record anything that he don’t publish or at least get half the publishin’ on.” Would…
Read MoreA few changes coming to this blog in the next couple of months: 1. Jeff Simon, our version of Steve Jobs, has been reconfiguring the site to make it more video-friendly. We’ll have a new look soon (or as soon as Jeff can whip it together.) The plan is to do a lot more video posts and even video series. Jeff is also redesigning the look of the site to work better on mobile devices. I hate the term “content.” But, what the hell, here is some of the (I can’t say the word) we’ve got coming up: 1. I’m…
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