Category Archives: Actors

Actors, Awards

Reflecting On Oscar

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Unlike anywhere else in the world, Oscar weekend has the greatest impact in Los Angeles. Aside from traffic closures and the heartbreak and envy of Oscar parties to the uninvited, Oscar weekend provides the creative community with a weekend of self-reflection, profound anxiety and (dashed?) hopes for the future. The dream of so many here is that they too will be thanking the Academy for their own Oscar someday.

Mindful that so many may be inspired after the Academy Awards to take a different approach, the following post, originally published here and now here offers some guidance.

[Ed. note: Added the following on 2/26/15]

Actors, Agents, Career, Lawyers, Notable, Representatives, The Culture

Phoning It In

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"This Phone Is Tapped" courtesy of sparktography

Actors, Celebrities, Internet, Social Media

Twitter Impersonator

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"Mr And Mrs. Vader" courtesy of Cayusa

As with the Internet, cyber-squatters are hording the names of celebrities and other well-known people on Twitter. Some are even going so far as to pose as fictional characters like Don Draper from Mad Men.

If you’re an actor, be sure to register your name on Twitter while it’s still available (if it’s not too late already).

In this age of self-branding and the rising reliance on the Internet by the public at large, the famous and the famous to be need to maintain control of their names especially on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

Twitter’s policy is to shut down fake Twitterers, most notably an ersatz Christoper Walken. However, there are exceptions to Twitter’s practices.

As reported in The Hollywood Reporter and elsewhere, CNN recently had to pay to recover the Twitter name “CNNbrk.” Let’s not even think about the attorneys’ fees.

Do not pass Go. Get your Twitter name now for free or pay later! [Thanks to Stephen Strauss for the heads-up on this one!]

Actors, Celebrities, Licensing, Rights

Lennon Reloaded

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The “One Laptop per Child” Foundation released a television commercial on Christmas Day of John Lennon – almost 30 years after his assassination – pitching viewers to buy laptops for poor children.

The Foundation produced the spot using digital technology; creating an ersatz version of Lennon saying “I tried to do it through my music, but now you can do it in a very different way. You can give a child a laptop and more than imagine, you can change the world.”

Variations on the technology have been around for years. Michael Crichton predicted the advent of the technology in “Looker” in 1981. In 1995, I cited Crichton’s work when I wrote about the use of digital technology to reanimate deceased celebrities in new works – and the possible legal complications – here.

Although the ethical and business dilemmas of using digital automatons instead of real actors are still in flux, the legal issues remain the same. The commercial exploitation of dead celebrities requires the consent of the celebrity’s estate. In this case, Yoko Ono, Lennon’s widow approved the spot.

When I wrote my article in 1995, the infinite possibility of the internet was largely unknown to the public. Our understanding of its potential now combined with advances in digital reanimation technology will only bring these issues to the forefront.

You can find out more about One Laptop Per Child’s donation program here.