Tonight the Auburn Tigers will play the Oregon Ducks for the National Championship in College Football. I’ve not looked forward to a game more since the undefeated New England Patriots played the New York Giants in the Superbowl. Still grieving that America didn’t get to see a perfect season by those Patriots. Regardless, it’s promising to be a good game tonight. Both programs are fielding incredible, fast-moving teams, so even if the score gets lopsided, you shouldn’t turn this game off. Either team can score three or four touchdowns in the fourth quarter alone. I love the Auburn tigers. I love the tradition, the fans, the commitment to excellence, and all season I’ve loved to watch Cam Newton play. But as the season went on, and Auburn came back against Alabama, I hung my head. One of my favorite teams in all of college football would have to play my very favorite team, the Oregon Ducks. I couldn’t even watch Cam get the Heisman. It was time to protect my heart. It was time to name the enemy, and the enemy was holding a thirty-pound trophy (I was secretly hoping he’d sprain an elbow lifting it). It’s been a long [...]
Discovered Doug Burr last year sometime and was surprised to hear he worked at a Home Depot or something down in Texas. I doubt that was still true at the time I heard it and is even less true now I am sure. Remarkable talent. Enjoy Doug Burr:
I am going to try to keep the Monday through Friday blog info-mercial free, and keep the plugs to Saturday. That said, I’ve got a lot of stuff going on right now and would love for you to know more about all of it. Here’s what’s coming up in 2011: 1. The Storyline Conference. If you attend one conference this year, come see us in Portland. The Storyline Conference was a smash hit last year and this year we are going to make it even better. The conference was inspiring to hundreds, and this year it will be inspiring to you. Register you and your cool friends here. Storyline Conference from shieldsfilms.com on Vimeo. 2. The Paperback to A Million Miles in a Thousand Years comes out next month. If you’ve been wanting to read it but don’t want to spend the hard-back dough, you’ve got your shot in a couple weeks. Buy one or a case or a truck load! They’re on the cheap, baby! 3. Blue Like Jazz the movie will hit theaters this fall. We are still a long way off, and we will certainly ramp up promotion leading up to the release, but stay tuned to [...]
I follow several writers on twitter and noticed one of them consistently tweets about television. Every night the writer tweets about some reality show they are watching or repeats a line from a sit com. I’d not think much of it except the writer I am thinking of is exceptionally talented and I wondered to myself if this weren’t a brain as able as Flannery O’Connor or Ernest Hemmingway, sitting on the couch, destined to release book after book of half-developed ideas. In other words, I wondered if this writer weren’t great soil being used to plant “just okay” seed. I wondered this while I was sitting on the couch, watching television. It was enough to make me stand up and turn the thing off. No culture in history has been more distracted. If you are wondering why there are no more C.S. Lewis’ in the world, no more stories as good as Tolkien’s, no cathedrals as great as the gothic’s, no music as moving as Pachelbel’s, it may be because the writers of these books, the tellers of these stories, the architects of these buildings and the composers of these symphonies are sitting on their couches watching television. I [...]
Before shooting Blue Like Jazz (hoping to release it in the fall of this year) we watched hours and hours of auditions. There are four major parts in the film, and many more minor roles. For each role, hundreds may have inquired, and dozens or more sat down to film a reading. I admit the process was fun. Steve would send me his final list with links to the auditions, and I would chime in on the actors that best fit the parts. And I learned something invaluable about life while doing so. I learned that life is about finding the right role for you, and that being “rejected” for a part often has little to do with talent. I don’t remember seeing a single audition in which the actor or actress wasn’t exceptionally talented. When we get rejected, either in a relationship or for a job or anything else, we can’t take it personally. Life is about roles. A person may reject you in a relationship for a reason that makes no sense to you. They may find you attractive and fun to be with, but the fact you just wouldn’t fit in their life may have more to [...]
