Archives: July 2010

This is the ultimate gig for all of you movie buffs out there. Redbox, home of the sweet $1 rental, is looking for a senior vice president of content acquisition to take the lead in acquiring physical media and assist the digital team in licensing content. If you’re up on movie studio trends, you’re already one step ahead.

The ideal candidate should be adept at working in a fast-paced environment, juggling multiple projects and dealing with tight deadlines. You’ll be providing counsel on deal execution and making decisions on mass DVD purchases, so if you like to have a lot on your plate, this is the place for you.

Redbox is looking for a motivated self-starter, who is passionate about film. You’ll be acting as the company rep when it comes to meeting with studio partners, so you should also be outgoing and ready to learn the ins and outs of the biz. If this sounds good to you, apply here.

RELATED: Attend Mediabistro Career Circus on August 4 in New York City to find out where the jobs are, develop a career plan and engage with media peers and leaders.

As for your follow up questions: no this is not a joke. And yes, yes, it’s a real movie that employed real people who worked really long and hard to make a movie that’s a parody of punchline. Or parity of a punchline? We can’t decide. Anyway, we have some quips that have to be retired now that this movie has been made. RIP bon mots.

As you’ve undoubtedly heard, the talk of the journalism world this past week has been WikiLeaks’ release of tens of thousands of classified documents relating to the Afghan war. Some have heralded the release as the next nail in the coffin of major newspapers. But the reality is more complicated than that, and more optimistic as far as newspapers are concerned. After all, WikiLeaks brought the New York Times, Der Spiegel and The Guardian in on their scoop for a reason.

Neon Tommy editor-in-chief Callie Schweitzer spoke with media critic and NYU professor Jay Rosen about the leak’s significance and about how print news and online newsbreakers like WikiLeaks are learning to work together, rather than compete for alpha dog status.

Part of the reason I think they went for these newspapers is because they’d made a discovery about this profession. Even if a great story was lying there in a published cache of documents, journalists won’t pluck it, produce it and run it because it’s already public. Part of what [WikiLeaks] were doing was learning from that.

The other part was in order to sift through 100,000+ documents and reports and extract what’s important and make news out of it, you actually need a lot of knowledge. There’s no reason to believe that knowledge lies within WikiLeaks, which is a small organization.

Another reason was it probably gets more attention this way because instead of [the mainstream media] choosing to ignore it as they might if it wasn’t their story, you have three of the biggest news organizations in the world trumpeting their own coverage because it’s in some ways theirs.

We may need to have a word with Paul Provenza‘s marketing team. His new book Satiristas! is out now…as opposed to right before the holiday season. It’s an epic book of interviews with epic comedians and the perfect Hanukkah and/or Thanksgiving gift for all your depressed relatives. Boxing Day, anyone? Provenza, director of the film about comics’ dirty little secret inside joke The Aristocrats joins photographer and co-author Dan Dion and interviews nearly 100 “comedians, contrarians, raconteurs and vulgarians.” The likes of Drew Carey, George Carlin, Vernon Chatman, Cheech & Chong, Margaret Cho, Stephen Colbert, Billy Connolly and Troy Conrad and everyone else in between. It’s an encyclopedia (that’s a paper wikipedia out there for all you tweens) of funny/angst.

Buy a copy here.

New Roman Polanski rape allegations have come to light after a woman contacted the LA County DA’s office about a 1974 incident that happened when she was 21-years-old.

RadarOnline has the story:

Edith Michelle Vogelhut, a former model also known as Shelli Paul, told authorities Polanski “handcuffed” her at actor Jack Nicholson‘s Hollywood house where he was staying, then sodomized her repeatedly, before he passed out.

Vogelhut’s description eerily resembles the 1977 incident where Polanski gave champagne and Quaalude’s to 13-year-old Samantha Geimer and raped her in Nicholson’s hot tub.

Vogelhut’s attorney, Michael Griffith, told RadarOnline, “I’m not planning on filing a civil lawsuit against Mr. Polanski as I think the statute of limitations has expired. (However) I’m in contact with the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office regarding the criminal case.”

H/T LA Observed

Larusso’s back!

That’s right, Ralph Macchio actually has a new movie coming out that looks pretty good, and he was down at Comic-Con promoting it. He spoke to the San Diego CityBeat about his upcoming role as a “goomba” in the new vampire flick Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead.

“When I read it, I thought that I was kind of off for the role as it was written. He was described as goomba-like. I thought they should go to one of the wise-guy, hit-men types. But I met with Jordan, the director, and we started bouncing around ideas. He explained the vision of the film to me, and he was a good listener and open to collaboration. At that point, I thought it would be fun to play this guy and come on board to support the project. And it shot in New York, my hometown.”

Wait, the nicest guy on the planet is playing a goomba Italian tough guy? That Funny-or-Die “Wax On, F*ck Off” video actually worked.

Here’s how we know things have gotten out of control in the wake of the Breitbart/Sherrod story: America Online’s original content is pleading with the country to slow down the news cycle.

Walter Shapiro makes his case:

Every second, we are mentally assaulted by hyperbolic cable TV “breaking news” alerts, data bursts and Twitter trivia. Meaning and context disappear amid the bite-sized news nuggets. In the world of politics, every new poll, TV ad and opposition-research press release is treated as a game changer on par with Newt Gingrich handing down the Contract With America from Mount Sinai. If everything is equally important, then simultaneously everything is equally unimportant.

Whole case is here.

H/T Romenesko

We just got this email from freelance blogger Oscar Raymundo, claiming he too is owed a bunch of money by Advocate parent company “Here Media.”

“Here Media owes me $1,260, which is like a million bucks to a 24-year-old.”

The email included a link to his blog, where he posts invoices for more than 30 blog items he says he was never paid for, writing for Gay.com.

I’m still calling a certain “Dustin” at Here Media headquarters on Wilkshire Boulevard to try and get my money. I started calling once every couple weeks, but I’m down to my last starving-writer patience. And will begin ring-a-ding-a-ling-ing this guy every day. Like my crush sophomore year of college who never called me back and thought I was his stalker…

Pay the man already, Dustin.

Previously on FBLA:

Hey, doing the right thing gets some attention after all. Bell city councilman Lorenzo Velez was just named one of CNN’s “Intriguing People” for talking his colleagues into forgoing their wildly overinflated salaries.

The Bell, California, city councilman has successfully led an effort to persuade his colleagues — including Mayor Oscar Hernandez — to reduce their controversial salaries, and in the case of Hernandez, apologize.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Velez, who was appointed — not elected — to his position last summer, spent the weekend lobbying colleagues to adjust their salaries from $96,000 to his salary of $8,000.

Upon apologizing, Hernandez said he will work the remainder of his term for free. Three other administrators, who collectively were being paid about $1.6 million, have resigned. An investigation is pending.

Velez’s successful crusade for propriety may have been aided by the fact that California Attorney General Jerry Brown just subpoenaed hundreds of documents from Bell, and may be considering launching a criminal investigation into city officials’ bloated salaries.