da Scriffles

When the pilgrims' ship, The Mayflower, dropped anchor in Plymouth, Massachusetts, (in what became the USA) in 1620 they didn't have immigration papers or identification or passports.

UCLA Film School professor, screenwriter Richard Walter,  tells a little story about how he needed a passport to teach in Nevada as proof of US citizenship. And an expired passport would not do for they had to be sure he hadn't renounced his citizenship. 

This is state of paranoia against illegal immigrants in Nevada - the laws put the onus upon employers to make sure they don't employ illegal immigrants.

(Kind of like trying to renew an expired Australian passport really - but really!)

Everyone in the audience laughs when he jokes about the uni's claim that they don't discriminate - "They treat everyone badly". Boom-boom.

"Art is the lie that makes us realise the truth" - he says, quoting Picasso. So when writing a screenplay, he advises, lie through your teeth!

Making films is not like painting pictures - you can't be discovered after you die you must be appreciated for the work you do while you live.

No point in making obscure films which don't make money & reach a lot of people. Shakespeare was a phenomenon in his own time - as was Sophocles. 

Interesting.

Walter wrote the first two drafts of American Graffiti for George Lucas but his name doesn't appear on the credits because of union / industry conventions. His friend "George", along with Steven Spielberg, may be the Sophocles and Shakespeare of our art & times.

Thanks to Star Wars, George has eclipsed Walter, a successful author and screenwriter as well as honoured educator with tenure at UCLA, but Walter makes another good point.

He asks: "Isn't it enough to be privileged to lead an artistic life?"

UCLA graduates have won or been nominated for Oscars for the past three years - Sideways, Milk, Benjamin Button.

Spielberg has hired UCLA graduates to write 10 projects including Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones 2&3, and War of the Worlds.

"So much arts education is about tearing down & negative criticism," he says. "We are affirming, encouraging, healing. It's a miracle to be involved in creative expression.

"It's so unique to the species. We should rejoice and celebrate and not tear down. We put the safety of the artist first."

When it comes to teaching comedy they get the likes of Neil (The Odd Couple) Simon. "That's like God himself to give a sermon on Sunday." (paraphrased)

Walters says stories spiritually nourish people, underpin culture and make the human race unique.

The tears you cry in a movie are no different to the tears you cry in real life - the grief, the laughter, the anger is real.

If you can make people feel then you successful - the difference between a successful writer and a failed writer apparently is time.

It takes time and discipline to write. Most people give up.

I think the question should be how much are you prepared to sacrifice? 

People complain about Hollywood but might it not be easier in Australia if we did have our own "Hollywood" - isn't it called an industry?

One more point Walters makes: American movies - every one of them (I'm sure he's exaggerating) - is sold overseas into markets all over the world.

Why? He thinks it's because they are made by immigrants who tell stories with universal themes which may on the face of it be American stories but tell us what it is to be human.

I had to laugh tho when I opened his book because the first thing I saw was his advice on creating characters: Do not write stereotypes.

Does anyone think that Australian films, media, TV are full of stereotypes? Packed to the Rafters even? Joke! ;) But really ... Walters also thinks that middle class values are antz pantz.

There you go.

When you cut open a piece of fruit, you discover something about its intrinsic nature. 

This is an article I wrote for a newsletter sent to financial planners - I'm publishing it here because the comments made in response might be of interest. I'm not identifying the authors of the comments.

His diagram resembled the image on the left. He asked people all over the world to rate their happiness on a scale of one to seven in a survey that also asked them what they rated more important in their lives: love or money. The happiest people rate love most important and money least important - destitute people rate friendship, family and community above money.

Funny that the shape of the diagram is like the shape of infinity with its ends missing. There's a message in this. The Brisbane Convention Centre is full of people searching for Happiness - at lunch time the restaurants and cafes and takeaways are packed with Happiness people. The sky is blue, the sun shines, the birds sing. And we spent the day in a hall talking about happiness.

On the bus home I looked out the window and watched fluffy, white, billowy clouds drift in slow motion across the top of Woolloongabba.  

The other thing the sticks out about everything that was said about being happy is the need to be mindful on a "three-time scale".

Your ability to do this - to put other sentient beings before your own self-interest (and not just your loved ones) - "is an expression of what you are within".

The Dalai Lama's French interpreter, Matthieu Ricard, is a French monk. The "three-time scale" means three different time periods: a moment (short-term), a lifetime, and eternity (the environment).

Research published by National Geographic in a 2005 cover story called What's In Your Mind shows that monks and people who have meditated on compassion and cultivate mindfulness actually have better control of their brainpower - training yourself to think of others is just like learning a new language or to play an instrument. It's brain training.

HOWEVER! (And this is why it's not something everyone does.) It takes effort, practice over many years and it will not make you rich. It will however make you happy. So make up your mind already! Do you want to be happy or do you want to be rich? You can't have it all - even if you are rich. And you can be in the pink without a dime.

The Dalai Lama was surprised when former Australian of the Year, Pat McGorry, told him that youth suicide rates in rural Australia are higher than in cities.

The discussion was about happiness, sadness, compassion, consciousness, reality until the Dalai Lama insisted that Pat, who had been sitting quietly on stage, take his turn to speak. He was the last speaker. 

Pat McGorry, was on stage in conversation with the Dalai Lama at the Happiness and Its Causes Conference - along with leading international scientific thinkers Dr Paul Ekman (via video link); Professor Marco Iacoboni (discovered mirror neurons); and Alan Wallace (consciousness expert).

And what Pat McGorry wanted answers to was how do you change society's attitude to mental disorders, how to you change people's minds in order to create a world where children with problems are caught in time to be treated so they grow out of their affliction like some kids grow out of asthma - he says this is possible if we try.

"It's an activist agenda," he told the Dalai Lama. "There's a lot of enemies because it's about changing the status quo and it's about reform. How do we present this to our enemies and change the way they think?" he asked.

And then he mentioned the high youth suicide rates in Australia . But what about on the farm? _ asked the Dalai Lama. And Pat McGorry told him that Australia's rural communities are in decay and towns are dying and there is no space for youth in cities or in country towns - that's what  Headspace is about. McGorry is a Headspace director. The Dalai Lama recommended a more friendly, less self-centred, more warm-hearted society.

There must not be too many things that surprise the Dalai Lama - what do you think?

"I am not a specialist," he said. "Our existing education system is very much materialistic. We must introduce education for warm-heartedness."

It must be universal so this process of teaching warm-heartedness can not be through meditation or prayer or religion - it must be secular.

"There's no adequate information about warm-heartedness. We consider this a religious matter. You have to think seriously about that.

"We all have the same potential for warm-heartedness but we need to nurture these things: basic human qualities, good qualities."

Matisse: Drawing Room - more than an afternoon gallery stroll

"Old Masters" - do people call the Impressionists-Expressionists-Surrealists old masters?

The phrase probably belongs to Rebrandts and Renaissance artists but the reason I think of Matisse as an old master is not because of his place in art history or his age or his talent.

The first time I saw photographs of Matisse I was dumbfounded by his appearance - he didn't look like a radical artist that he was. He revolutionized the use of colour and line, composition and shape. He was a man of beautiful vision. But he looked like a banker. I guess he was a banker of ideas.

This realisation gave me heart because I realized then that artists do not have to be "extraordinary" - their work is extraordinary. They may be ordinary people but they see the world differently.

What I find interesting in this exhibition is Matisse's use of charcoal - rather than pencil. Every artist is born to work in particular mediums. I find his simple line work in pencil a little wonky but when he picks up charcoal it all comes to life. Pencil is so starkly unforgiving. Of course, Matisse's pencil drawings are elegant but his charcoals showcase his talent - see the nudes.

We all walk around with a bucket over our heads to hide ourselves from the world and to keep the world out. But sometimes we peep when a writer or an artist says: "Look, look at this!" I have developed a theory that some of the people society labels as crazy-mad actually see the world as it is - they just can't close their minds.

I stood in front of Matisse's large canvas of a woman lying with a bull and thought: "What would his friends (who weren't artists) have thought of this?"

Artists throw away the bucket. It is not possible to walk around with a completely open mind. But if you never peep then there is no "innovative thinking" no real "progress" no real "appreciation" - no wonderment.

This is why Queensland's art galleries are so, so important. Children stake a claim in this place by sticking their dots in the spotty room, by building art from trash to hang in the gallery, by engineering white lego structures, drawing, designing patterns on computers... They own the gallery as a space of wonderment. Free wonderment! Wonderment should be free. Fly, fly, fly and be free... spots on the ceiling... spots on the piano... giggles... with dad... with mum... with friends.

The Gallery of Modern Art may only be five years old but it extends the Queensland Art Gallery's extraordinary efforts to lay the foundations for a Matisse to rise in Brisbane. Who knows what lights switch on in the brains of all those beautiful youngsters who place a dot in the spotty room or stroll through the Pip & Pop Show. Thank God for small wonders!

If you have an open mind, you might even stop in The Drawing Room, sit down at an easel, pick up a pencil and put yourself in the shoes of a banker of ideas.

Here are my entries in the competition to win a trip to Paris - you enter a random draw by emailing your entry on the tablets provided.

I often feel like a character out of a Jane Austen novel - rarely the heroine these days.

I know my character flaws and over the years I have tried very hard to be the "good", do the "right". If I were a character in a Charles Dickens' novel I would be the one who never got away with anything and was always required to "be good".

My belief is that life is not about actual "right". It's not about actual "good" because these are relative - you can be right all the time if you hang out with people who think like you do. You can all be wrong together. Just think of the climate change debate. Just look at the political reporting about the Labor leadership and Prime Ministership of Julia Gillard.

All the fuss over who said and who did what to whom boils down to nothing but hot air. I guess if you want to be remembered do something worthwhile, say something worthwhile. 

Do you think that Alexander The Great should be considered "great" just because he conquered the "known" world? Maybe. But it didn't last long - well, he died so he didn't have time to do anything, so I guess he's great. Does anyone know what benefits flowed from this "great" acheivement? So he used elephants! But he did add to the sum total of knowledge at the time and probably opened up new trade routes. You probably can find Greek pottery in India thanks to Alexander. Many a mere ordinary mouse appears to think themselves an Alexander these days.

I fear that today we don't examine this idea of "worthwhile" too much unless it applies to us personally. I won't be around when the Torres Strait Islands sink beneath the waves and the stars go black so I don't care. How many times have I heard a similar refrain? 

For some people, worthwhile is bringing up a family, for others it is cooking food for others, or teaching. It's all cool and awesome in my book. It's "great"! 

Maybe worthwhile is as simple as peace of mind, the ability to turn the other cheek and show compassion. That's not easy. The ABC recently screened a series by Jimmy McGovern called The Accused - you should catch it if you can. It is crazy amazing and awesome!

There's a norm and you've got to find it and conform otherwise ... I think this is the part in the Bible which refers to "the meek". The meek shall inherit the Earth, not the powerful, because it takes immense (great) strength to be meek.

Try not exploding over dinner with someone you have known forever who obviously has an axe to grind but does not say a word in order to apply the pressure - there's Dickensian bile.

If you manage to show compassion, or do something worthwhile,  six out of 10 times (that is a passing mark) people still tend to only count the four times you didn't turn the other cheek. Fat people must walk the plank along with old people, poor people, people of different races ... the list could go on depending on who you meet. 

Legislate all you like to stamp out discrimination but the Dickensian Truth of Humanity and the Darwinian Theories will prevail. 

Sydney University's Professor Paul Griffiths spoke at last year's Happiness Conference in Brisbane about Darwin's theory of Group Selection - he tried to explain how altruism flourishes in society.

Google this topic and all you get are academic/scientific abstracts - no wonder this kind of thinking does not pass into general knowledge. I can't think that a busy teacher would have time to read this stuff in a world saturated with information.

Prof Griffiths told the 2011 conference that Darwin's theory of Group Selection had been discredited but was again gaining credibility. A successful society co-operates. FACT.

So even though it appears that selfishness prevails in our society there are enough altruistic individuals in our midst to dissipate the selfishness. As altruism flourishes in one group, individuals break away to move to another group to seed the process again. Eventually, selfish groups should become extinct because they fail. See Libya, Syria... despotic regimes. 

The more I blog, the more I write, the more I am in awe of great writers like Charles Dickens who build the truth of the world in words. If I could have dinner with anyone alive or dead it would be Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin.

If only Charles Dickens were alive to provide the commentary on our rapidly transforming world today! Recognizing a Dickensian moment is possible but putting it down on paper with panache - that's something else.

Define "good", "worthwhile", "great", "awesome". Define "right". Then take your self-interest out of the equation and redefine it. Who says there is nothing left to explore?

To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking. - Johann von Goethe

Defamation Tute: JR 212

My old uni notes (20 years old)

* Unlawful to publish defamatory matter unless it is protected, justified or excused by law.

Need proof of:

• publication

• it was defamatory matter

• no defences - protected, justification or excuse

"Liar" "Cheat" "Thief" "Coward" "Murderer"

I found a suitcase of old uni notes in the garage all dusty but readable.

The last time I did a "Law for Journalists" course - around 2002-2003 I think - the law had not changed. High Distinction too.

All the amateur publishers - for that's what most everyone is on the web in these days of social media - don't know anything about all this. That' why the mainstream publishers cry in their soup at night because there's nothing better than the thrill of pushing that envelop to the edge. A lot of what is published these days anywhere is careening down a chasm.

And the law - on paper hasn't changed - all the cases still stand. But you wouldn't think so watching what's been happening in our society with the Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and his crew calling the Prime Minister Julia Gillard a liar all the time, for example.

Interesting really. As if people in real life don't have to compromise, as if circumstances don't change, as if you don't change with the circumstances.

Reading these old notes I realised that I hadn't changed with the circumstances because the stuff of these notes is still what I believe. And reading my old Ancient History tute papers I see that politics hasn't changed at all either.

Tutorial No 5: The Alkmeonidai and Marathon: What was the significance of the signal at Marathon in the context of Athenian politics in the early 5th Century BC?

A record made by Herodotus of a shield signal to the Persian invading fleet of Darius was made probably by members of a pro-Persian force - possibly a respected Athenian family, the Alkmeonids. Lot of possibles there. No defamation laws. No defences.

Recorded in stone. Were the Alkmeonids defamed? They apparently did not believe that Athens could beat the Persians so they wanted to be on the winning side. Does all this sound familar at all?

I think that Arts students and generalists - as opposed to engineers, librarians and specialists - do get a better "education". Pity we don't rule the world. ;)

How many centuries did the human race work to fly by flapping before we realised that you don't have to flap to fly?

If you watch a bird fly then you notice that it also glides long distances without flapping.

One day someone asked himself: "Why? How does a bird do this?"

Curiosity led to an explanation and he found out ... we joined the birds and promptly forgot "why".

International educator, Larry Johnson, launched the first Horizon Report on Australian education in Brisbane in May.

He gave a highly entertaining and enlightened talk on what needs to change to integrate the education system into the 21st century. Johnson works with governments and educators all over the world.

His company, the New Media Consortium, is a non-profit group that explores the use of new media and technology.

He has a unique, global perspective and his experience of tech started with building radios with his dad to taking video calls from his two-year-old granddaughter today.

So what does he think effective education is? 

You need to make their jaws drop in awe. Effective education makes kids jaws drop. In India, he knows a teacher who runs a mobile science van. Kids do hands-on activities, such as making a plastic bottle shoot a paperball.

The teacher shows them how "pressure" inside the bottle shoots the ball of paper at them and explains that the same pressure gets planes off the ground. 

Johnson has adopted this teacher's mission to build curiosity in children. To this mission Johnson adds the need to teach mutual respect, and the ability to collaborate. But curiosity is at the top of the list of non-negotiables.

The lesson for people doing the "strategic thinking" to design an effective education system for the 21st Century here is this:

It's not about building a better 20th century, or a better 19th, or 18th - it's about the 21st century.

"What are we focused on?" he asks. "Our strategic thinking is based on a world that no longer exists," he said.

To paraphrase him, "Are we looking to the cold, dark past or into the light of dawn of a new future?"

Sometimes, he said, in order to see the rainbow you just need to change your perspective. Just look out the window, he said.

"The net is like air for children today." His two-year-old grandaughter calls him via video phone and learned her way around an iPad in the twinkle of an eye.

"Facetime Grandpa!"

"We need to build a world as it needs to be for them, that's a very different thing to the world we wish it was for us."

And there's more to this looking at things differently business. What is the network?

Is it the 1.3 billion mobile phones sold every year? Is it the html browsers?

Like do you really think that "The Network" is the National Broadband Network, or the five cables under the oceans that connect Australia to the world? (Singapore has 22 by the way)

"The network is us." He didn't realise this point until his 27-year-old son, who teaches high school in Korea, told him. The network is not cables and computers and phones - it's us, people, we are the network.

There were 6 billion active mobile phones in the world in 2011 - 76 percent have html browser - 96percent have basic browsers - but that's not the network that came into play to make an Arab Spring. The government actually turned that network off in Egypt and the "actual" network kept going - you can't switch it off.

Sometimes you just need to be looking out the window to see the rainbow.

Johnson showed a map of the world taken from space and all the lights show where electricity burns. Then he flashed up the same map showing all the geographical mobile phone connections - guess which one burns brighter?

The reach of the mobile network is BIGGER than the electric grid.

The "network" was radio when he was kid. He made radios with his dad - that was high-tech in the 1950s - FDR fireside chats. His father explained how radio waves bounce around the world so they can listen to the Casius Clay fight in Paris in the wee hours of the morning.

Then television came along. They watched the top-rating show on a Wednesday night The Beverly Hill Billies.

Marshall McLuhan warned - "The network is changing us."

And in 1963, the most trusted man on television, Walter Cronkite, rocked the country with the announcement that the president had been shot in Dallas.

"The entire country stopped for three days in a profound collective mourning," he said.

"We didn't really know what it was that we were experiencing."

So he decided to study computer science to explore the network.

Some practical points that need some thought to factor into "stategic thinking":

• Today people expect to be able to work, learn and socialize where ever-whenever
• Only five cables connect Australia to the rest of the world - Singapore has 22 communication cables 
• the internet is no longer about the Gigabytes anymore it's about mobile
• it's about The Cloud stupid
• openness is the new value - it's not a trend.
• 80 percent of our lives is not spent in school - so how important do you think "informal" education is?

Has your mouth dropped? Because mine did as I listened to the man.

And then he ended it with Benny E King's Stand By Me and he stood silent on stage. He put himself through uni playing jazz and he's a photographer who gets up early to photograph dawn.

Seems to me that he's building a picture of the dawn of the 21st Century here. Will you stand by him?

I have never given reality TV the time of day - it allows the mainstream media to endorse bad behaviour for entertainment and ratings.

The "Mockingjay's" campaign against "Twitter trolls" has a real Hunger Games feel about it.

Suddenly, it's not ok to brush bullying, selfish, competitive behaviour aside as a joke?

Everyone knows that bullying was around long before Twitter.

Just ask the kids from the Sydney high school who had their faces plastered all over the front page of the Mockingjay for being dunces of the nation.

No one asks to be bullied.

And the best thing to hope for now is that ALL media outlets and public figures come to understand the effects of bullying and promote awareness of the nature of bullying.

As the Entertainment, TV & Arts writer for the Courier-Mail in the 1990s, I saw the transition of entertainment culture to reality TV. Decay does not happen overnight.

I have come to terms with the creeping uneasiness I felt over "cultural" developments of Australia in the early 2000s.

For many Australians, the "children overboard" was among the bully-boy tactics that sparked personal crisis of national identity.

The bad behaviour that is played out today on city streets, in suburban malls, and in social media is not a product of Twitter or Facebook.

Rather it is evidence of 18-wheelers moving in convoy. "Time is up for Twitter."

So now everyone on Twitter are trolls? 

This is jolly evidence of the Australian culture in play. It's not just business models and media platforms in flux.

As the former host of the ABC's Media Watch program, Richard Ackland, observes in the Sydney Morning Herald there has been a dumbing down.

Our politicians once knew how to cleverly parry with words. 

The problem of substance and style goes beyond politicians.

Go bushwalking in the Toohey Forest and you might, if you are listening, hear the tweeting of a little blue finch.

It's almost drowned out by the rumble of major arterial highways. The problem is bigger than Twitter.

At the heart of this problem is a lack of respect.