Mediaboss Marketing

There a lot of shows that call themselves groundbreaking, but the 13 episodes of Blood Drivereally will test the barriers of speed, tone, and language.

While many shows that would tout themselves as groundbreaking might take that role seriously, Blood Drive takes itself ridiculously. This is part of what makes it so different. Sure, the series from Syfy and Universal Cable Productions takes on such weighty subjects as fracking, corporate greed and police brutality, but it never gets heavy enough to slow the pace, gasps or laughs.

Den of Geek spoke with the driving forces behind Blood Drive before the checkered flag drops. Lead actors Christina Ochoa, Colin Cunningham, and Alan Ritchson parked themselves long enough to discuss characters, themes, and production notes. But they all did it with the enthusiastic giggles of artists given a chance to go full throttle.

They were given the keys to this monstrous machine by the shows creator and writer James Roland, who was getting coffee on shows like Mad Men and Weeds before this, and showrunner John Hlavin, best known for writing the screenplay for Underworld Awakening and episodes of The Shield. Between gales of laughter, heres what they told us.

Den of Geek: Ill be asking this to everyone: How many times did you have to take the driving test before you passed?

James Roland: It was actually who we had to kill. John had me kill somebody.

Did Syfy give you any shit about language? The first episode is called The Fucking Cop and theres one episode called The Fucking Dead. Was there a problem with that? Because when we turn on cable and hit the info button, we see these things.

James: They were cool about it

John Hlavin: That one in particular, because the title we knew we would be on DVRs, we were somewhat concerned but, honestly, Syfy from a content standpoint, really gave us quite a bit of rope. Wouldnt you say, James?

James: Yeah, we talked about it at first, saying uh oh, what are you going to do? It was like real far out. But once they started seeing the cuts and they started getting into it, I remember at one point S&P said something like give us a couple weeks, we need to wrap our heads around this. I think of all the battles they had to fight, that became the one they didnt even have to worry about. So they were pretty great about it. I think were going to be the first, on their network at least, show that doesnt bleep fuck. Thats what I heard, I dont have that confirmed. So, yeah, it was kind of a free-for-all with the language. It was great.

I can bleep out the unconfirmed bit later. So there werent intense production note sessions like the ones between Slink and Heart Enterprises?

James: Theres a lot of fun stuff with that. Almost everything Slink says, I think youre referring specifically to episode three?

Yes.

James: Almost everything thats on those note calls is our twisted variation on actual notes calls. All the stuff with the executives throughout the show, its all based in truth. But also totally focused through our crazy lens.

I love the way you play with censorship. You use visual puns. My favorite is the cops erections. How much leeway are you really giving him?

John: First off, can we just say, please put that in your article, that you have stated that that is your favorite part. The thing is, it made the show feel more salacious than it was. There were times we were covering up things that actually, probably, could have been okay, and there were times we did it to get around things. There were times we were gonna do things that we ended up not doing, but we were having a lot of fun with pulling that ride on that bar, playing with censors. We were very lucky, in this regard, at Syfy and UCP. They were really supportive of the vision of what the show was and how it evolved as we moved forward into a kind of a commentary on what its like to make a television show. They were really gracious about it.

Also, to James point, we were very aware of the fact when they were giving us notes that there was an excellent chance those notes were going to wind up in some form or another coming out of Slinks mouth in a critical, critical way.

James: Later on Slink starts really interacting more with the executives at Heart. We were originally spoofing, giving these Easter Egg references to our executives and we had trouble clearing those names. Then we just said, what are we hiding the salami for? Lets just call them the names of our executives. Then it be became, not to give away too many spoilers, but a lot of those executives dont make it. We were afraid how they would take it. Like, oh my god, are we crossing a line, killing off our executives? And they loved it and then it became a request. They started asking can so and so get in the show? Can you kill this person? They loved it.

Okay, I want to work at Heart Enterprises. What should I put on my resume?

James: The fact that you want to work there alone is almost enough to get you in.

John: Yeah, you probably better talk to your bosses about that.

James: Well, we talked a lot about that. We actually had an ethos for Heart Enterprises, to put a method behind the madness. Cos its so easy to just have a Machiavellian villain, you see this in comic book movies, you think, why are they going about things this way, when it would be more convenient for the sake of plot. We really talked about how, because they are so evil, they dont care if they have a faulty product. If their iPhones blow up and kill ninety people, they say great. Like the same way they did with the Joker from The Dark Knight, where he works for Chaos and goes about things that might actually destroy him just because he has that methodology. Thats what were talking about with Heart. Its about the amount of chaos. Its the collateral damage that makes the company what it is.

At one point we talked about an intern seeing that first day at Heart Enterprises and what it takes to get in. But they literally, youll find this out a little later in the show, they actually do recruit psychos. They talk about their hiring practices. Some of that will be in the show in later episodes.

Will they be working on their dental plan?

James: Exactly. Theyll have to have a good one to keep up.

You mention that Slink is a Machiavellian character, or is he the ultimate company man?

James: Youll have to find out. In the first couple episode one of the things that was fun was putting such a powerful character. Hes a god to the racers. But whos the god to the god? Whos the step above that? We had a lot of fun with that. Whenever you see Slink at Heart Enterprises you get to see people that actually have more power than him, and what thats like. It actually makes him more of a dimensional character, too, than just the standard villain.

John: A lot of what we realized after we cast Colin and started to watch him work that there was a lot more to play in that character. A lot of credit goes to Colin as well for really finding who he was and letting us play with it once we realized that his voice was so specific. He did a truly amazing job bringing that guy to life. Theres a lot of ways he could have gone with that character and he went a way we didnt see coming even though James had written very interesting ideas, he found layers that made him more interesting than we had even thought of. So, many kudos to Colin for that.

Have you ever grossed yourself out with an effect you thought up yourself?

[Evil laughter] James: I wanted really badly, but we couldnt afford it, to make a perfect human rubber filled with strawberry jam to feed into the engine so we could see the whole thing from start to finish. But even what we ended up with was pretty horrible, a man getting his head chewed up. What the show did to Christopher in that chamber, I think in episode 4.

John: Episode 4 was our point of no return.

James: That wasnt an effect but, James Roday directed that episode, some of that was hard to watch.

Yeah, some of the stuff they were throwing up against the walls...

John: Kudos, by the way, to both those actors. They just showed up and fucking grabbed these parts and got inside of them, James was on set the entire time in Cape Town. We were always blown away here in LA, wed get the dailies and there just wasnt a bad performance. Everybody really embraced their roles and James Roday did a great job in bringing them out and capturing them. We were really, from the very first set of dailies, we heard from UCP that day, and Syfy, and they said Holy shit. I dont think they expected it to be as good as we thought could be. And then it was actually better than we all expected.

I love how you go from monster-of-the-week episodes, to changing styles from one style of grindhouse to the next. How did you come up with those dynamics?

James: That was almost an accident. When I pitched the premise to my manager, before it was even written, I phrased it as a grindhouse TV show, Road Trip Through a Grindhouse World, and he lit up and said write that, write that. I had the premise before that but never thought of it in that way. Then it naturally leaned into, if youre going to have a road trip, you might as well have a story of the week. It seemed very natural.

Grindhouse isnt a cinematic movement or genre. It was specifically a place that played exploitation films. Its endless the amount of styles and artistry that was going into that, good or bad. It was a really fertile ground to pick from. So how do we control that? Each week they just drive into a different movie. That seemed to click with everybody. It helped them wrap their heads around the world that we created.

The next challenge was how to fuck people up, especially on a lower budget. Kudos to the crew down there, and our directors, David Straiton really helped form the whole world. David directed four of the 13 episodes. But he was also down there every day as an executive producer and he really worked to form not only the look of the show, but how we went about shooting it, and how we went about creating a different look and a different vibe for each episode.

We were also in a place, I think a lot of shows tell their crews and tell their guest directors, we want your thumb print to be on this show, but they dont really mean it. For us, it was totally the case. I saw a lot of wide-eyed directors down there filled with excitement and fear. They were given the reins artistically. In episode 5 there was a whole set that was built that defies gravity. It switches gravitational pull into different directions. None of that was scripted. The director in that episode worked with the production designer to create this whole concept. He took a scene that was a pretty straightforward scene and turned it into this little miracle, an awesome moment. I dont think theres a lot of shows that give their directors or their department heads creative freedom like that. It just let people off the hook. Our costume designer, Danielle Knox, and our production designer, Andrew Orlando, come from this grindhousy kind of world. They love those kinds of movies so they just pulled it off fast. They really leaned into the challenge of making a 45-minute movie of a different genre every week and god knows how they managed to pull it off.

James: Yes, we talked about Videodrome in the writers room. We talked a lot about Cronenberg. We really described the world as if Roger Corman and David Cronenberg helped god create the world. Because Roger Corman is a visionary in a lot of ways. He gets knocked down a lot because of the quality of his pictures, but a lot of them are better than people give him credit for. I just saw The Man With the X-Ray Eyes at a little festival and its the damnedest film. Even though some of its pretty dated and the low budget.

But then you take Cronenberg who lived in this world of schlocky, weird shit, man, but theres an intelligence to it. No matter how silly it got theres always a gravity that would kind of surprise you, or an imagery that would unsettle you and was very striking. And that was, especially in the side of the world that Christopher [Thomas Dominique] and Aki [Marama Corlett] and Heart Enterprises have, we talked about Cronenberg quite a bit.

I spoke with Corman for the newest Death Race reboot, and he saw it as a social commentary, so Im wondering: The Scar is caused by fracking, is this ultimately ecologically conscious grindhouse?

John: Truthfully, not really as much as you think. I mean were always in the room, certainly thinking about the world at large, but we werent necessarily trying to make an allegory. The number one rule for us was entertain, and if there was a chance to have a little fun with satire, we would lean into that direction. Certainly in the world that James created where gas is extraordinarily expensive, you see that water is being fought over. We never thinking of it as a future dystopia, we were always framed it as a stark vision of 1999.

The fracking thing, at the time of the writing, it was kind of on the decline. It may increase again under the new administration. But we heard all the horror stories of what could happen with fracking. It made a great place to indicate that to be so dependent on these fossil fuels is inherently evil because eventually theyll be gone and then what will happen?

James: The scar also is something that evolved for us.

John: So we put those together. The stuff coming out of the Scar went beyond oil. For the basis of that need to destroy something so you can live for a time in greater comfort, the stuff coming out of the scar was perfect. Its just pure evil. Its selfishness and greed and all those things. Theres nothing altruistic about it. It takes you to your worst place.

James: The concept of fracking, which just personifies the way we treat the world, were hurdling through space on this thing we call our home and were cracking it and breaking it and sucking it dry. I understand why we need oil for stuff like that. Im not crazy, but from the other perspective, its like, what the fuck are we doing? So when we struck upon that idea, even calling it the Scar was intentional. We have to face the fact that weve permanently hurt ourselves. All of that stuff was intentional, but Johns right. Ultimately, theres not much we can do about this, so lets have fun with it.

I also saw commentary in small details, like how the cops make their quotas in teeth. Did that come from living in LA?

James: Yeah, all that stuff, like the cameras being judge, jury and executioner, was from how everyone thought mounted cameras have been shown statistically to make everything better. All the interactions between policemen and civilians go smoother because everyones being watched and everyones on their best behavior. But that could so easily shift, because if one side controls where that data goes, then who is actually watching and who is supervising? We tried to pull all of those things. Things that are actually going on in our world and try and twist it and make it as terrible as possible.

Christina Orchoas great uncle is a Nobel prize-winning biochemist. Were you tempted to go to him for the science behind running a car on human blood?

James: We dont need to go to him. We can go to her, man. Shes one of the smartest people Ive ever met. She had some fun with that. She runs in very elite scientific circles. At least elite by my standards. At some point she actually did have somebody working on whether it was possible, and the answer is no. We always knew that. There is going to be a certain amount of people who watch the show who go its impossible for cars to run on human blood. But its impossible for a person to turn into a wolf and run around during the full moon too. Monsters have always been metaphors and these cars, theyre just the monsters of the show, in many ways. But she totally went down that road too and had a lot of fun with it.

Which character best represents you on the show?

James: John you go first.

John: Oh my god. I guess, probably as the showrunner, when you see Slink arguing with executives or putting up with whatever he puts up with, when we were in the room, those things we discussed. But honestly, all these things came out of Rolands insane head. You wouldnt know that from meeting James, hes the nicest guy in the world, but theres some dark shit up there.

James: My wife always likes to say that I split myself in half and one half was Arthur and the other half was Slink, which is weird. I think Arthur kinds of clings to his morality and his demanding of rules and that chaos shouldnt be going on. Even in the face of impossible odds. Our show is a David and Goliath story and theres no fucking way Goliath would have lost. Lets face it. Its a myth for a reason. I basically took that part of my personality and put it into a body I will never have and that would be Arthur. And all of the writers and key creators of the show are connected with Slink in that kind of way because everybody is scared of this thing that they create. That this thing they put all this work into is going to go out there and everyones going to tear it apart and shit on it or not like it. Try to make it their own. Every artists feels that way when theyre creating something.

So Slink was a way to live out those dark desires. We see that in the first trailer, you try to give me notes and Im going to throw a knife in your chest. It sounds creepy to say, but its wish fulfillment. Im friends with all our executives, we have a great working relationship. Its not to say that that obviously is all hyperbole and ridiculousness. But when you like somebody and they hesitate and go, ah, but lets talk about things I dont like, that always sucks. Theres no way that doesnt suck. It makes sense that writers and creators really connect with Slink.

Is there really much difference between making a show like this and working on Shield or Madmen?

John: Well theres a huge budgetary difference. For my part, Im not sure now, the Blood Drive experience was very different. Because every time you have an idea, we have great writers on this show and we would sit in a room together and, normally, when youre writing a show, someone will say oh this is a crazy idea, we could never use this. That was always the idea on Blood Drive we would end up using. There was no boundary to what we could do, as long as we hung on to the narrative of the story, we had a lot of freedom.

The downside to that is, if the canvass is too big, you can end up being a little sloppy. I think we guarded against that by making sure we never did quote unquote gags or went to an easy gag. We always tried to keep it connected to our world. I would say and I dont think this is hyperbole there is nothing like Blood Drive on the air, at least not to my knowledge. And I cant even remember a time when it was. Its sort of a one-hour action-drama with a lot of comedy but its also inside of a genre that for some reason, I dont think even Netflix has a comparison, there nothing that does grindhouse. And James will tell you that when we were premiering this thing at the Egyptian he made the point that was really smart. When youre making a show for this little money its not grindhouse, it forces to you have to make grindhouse decisions. We didnt have the money to shoot certain things so we had to figure it out the way they had to figure it out in the 70s and the 80s, when they didnt have the money.

If you freeze screen the first episode youll see that theres a guy driving early on. It was fairly obviously a male driver with a wig and a goatee, not Christina. And we were going back and forth on what to do and James emailed us and said, hey if this is grindhouse we leave it. You just have to defend your buddy. Like other shows Ive worked on, in terms of another show Im running now, youd would always fix it. You would worry that these little details would ruin the experience but on Blood Drive those little details actually enhance the experience.

James: Well, on those other shows, I was grabbing coffee. But all of that rings true. That was the challenge and the hurdle we faced every week in the writers room was how crazy can we get? Great. We always said lets use the crazy a safety net never as a crutch, because if we fail on a scene its gonna be weird enough with tension to be enjoyable, but you never want to depend on that. you want to try and build up a character-driven scene in the middle of an action sequence just like any other show.

Stunt driving, is it any easier now than it was in the seventies because of the effects they didnt have then?

John: Roland, go ahead.

James: One of the things that saved us was being able to do all the car stuff on a sound stage, but also we knew, even on Madmen. I loved Madmen, and there werent many shows that looked as good as Madmen, and yet when they did driving, and it was green-screen driving you could very much tell that it was green-screen driving. It was the best green screen driving on TV, but it was still green screen driving. We went the other way. We actually used rear projection for the driving and used a videogame engine to generate the exteriors. We could alter the angles of the sun. We could alter everything in that environment around those cars at a reasonable price because we also blew it out and did these cool silver things. So it didnt have to be 100 percent photorealistic David Straiton and our EVP Huroan LEay came up with this amazing way to kind of shoot through glass and these weird filters to give this really cool effect to the inside of the car. That saved our ass.

In the seventies, theyd be shooting this thing for real. With a guy in the back seat with a mounted camera or it you would have to make a process trailer, which takes forever. So, yeah, I think that definitely saved our ass and modern technology saved our ass. We always said that it would. We look at 16 millimeter film through this nostalgic lens and it certainly looks beautiful, but if Corman had a digital camera they would have grabbed it in an instant. As long as the aesthetic was okay, and they didnt care about aesthetic to a certain degree but ultimately it was how do we get this done. We couldnt have made this show if we didnt have modern technology.

I have a sense that the 10 million is a bait and switch. Im afraid to ask, but is the Blood Drive a larger audition that theyre on?

John: Its gonna take you to a place where, we felt when we got to the end of this thing, there were some surprises for us. James came in with a five-year plan for the show and at the end of the season we always get to a more interesting place if it sticks to James original vision. After this whole thing has made its run, lets get on the phone again and talk about it.

Do you remember your first cars?

John: Mine was a 1988 honda Civic. 1980.

James: Better than mine, I dont know year but I had a 3 cylindar Geo Metro, I didnt even know it was possible. It was basically a golf cart.

John: James was in such a daze when he got back from Cape Town, cos he had just gotten a new car that had been in a car in a garage for six months that, the first time you drove it, didnt you crash it?

James: Yeah, I pulled out to the end of the driveway. Looked left, looked right and pulled right in front of somebody, It was a pretty fitting welcome home to America after leaving to film car insanity.

I take it that neither of you were big drag racers.

John: Theres not much drag racing in Clevland, Ohio.

James: I think the reason why we focused on Classic American Cars as much as possible is the artistry, I love them. The Camero is a gorgeous piece of art. Its incredible. Weve gotten away from that, to a certain degree. But also somebody asked me, one of the writers, you must be really into cars and stuff. I said, well, I wrote a show where cars literally destroy the world and then turn into monsters. Car culture is a two headed beast. I love vehicles as much as any other red-blooded American but theres a price for that. The pride that we put into these things literally emit poisons as you drive them., Were seeing the long-term ramifications of that. That was always the metaphor: a beautiful red Camero and when you open the hood, theres something dark underneath.

Blood Drivepremieres on Syfy on June 14th.

View original post here:
Blood Drive Creator Talks Grindhouse, Censorship, Cop Erections - Den of Geek US

Riding public transport armed with a wobbly TV-shaped cardboard frame and loud voices, a group of youngVenezuelanactivists have found a novel way to transmitnews, in a country where space has shrunk for stories about hardship and protests.

Traditional media have become more cautious in covering Venezuela's political crisis, and half the population have limited or no access to the internet.

So in early May, Claudia Lizardo, a 29-year-old creative director, decided to spread the word about what was happening in her country in a very direct manner.

Subscribe to Newsweek from $1 per week

Realizing that other passengers on thebusesshe travels on were ill-informed about subjects she considers important, Lizardo and four friends began boarding the vehicles and readingnews bulletins, their faces framed by a mockup of a TV screen.

Despite participating in protests against President Nicolas Maduro's government, Lizardo's team says the goal of the project dubbed "BusTV" is to produce fact-basednewscasts toreachpeople tired of the high-pitched biases in other media.

"We want this to survive, that's why we have a respectful approach that doesn't look for confrontation with anybody," said Laura Castillo, one of the team "broadcasting" twice a week onbuses.

Members of the team must not wear political slogans on their clothes, respond to comments from their audience, or attribute blame to either side for the violence that has so far killed 68 people in the protests since April.

Focusing on routes that wind through the poorest neighborhoods in Caracas, Lizardo's crew talk about the protests and shortages but also report Maduro's views, along with sports successes and recipes for meals that can be made with cheap, available ingredients.

"The reaction is overwhelmingly positive," Lizardo said before one such ride. "For a long time in Venezuela, we have not had exposure to simple, honest information."

Members of an artistic group perform a "TV news show" on a public transportation bus in Caracas, Venezuela, June 10, 2017. The cutout reads "The Bus TV". Ivan Alvarado/Reuters

The model, which harks back to the "town-criers" roots ofnews broadcasts, is a world away from 21st century digital social media, but its directness may have struck a chord in Venezuela.

Another group ofjournalistshas replicated the initiative in the states of Carabobo and Anzoategui, in the center and east of the country, and BusTV, as Lizardo's group is known, says groups in other regions are planning to follow their lead.

"It is a way of opening people's eyes," said Rosalba Paredes, 66, a housewife listening to the BusTV crew in Caracas.

According to a study by media freedom group Instituto Prensa y Sociedad, between 2005 and 2015 more than 100 media organizations were taken off the air or censured in Venezuela.

The government says all the sanctions against the media have been because of violations to media regulation rules such as those prohibiting the incorrect use of violent images.

And private media have a history of hostility towards the ruling "Chavista" movement, including open support for a short-lived 2002 coup against Maduro's predecessor Hugo Chavez.

"Clearly, the government has the upper hand in communication, it has the power, money and capacity to inform," added Castillo, 41. "(BusTV) is a microscopic activity, but everything big starts tiny."

See the original post:
Bus TV is Venezuelan Journalists' New Weapon Against Media Censorship - Newsweek

After a drive to the Berkeley Carteret, Collin and Deanna get settled in before the dinner and dancing start. Deanna Carraher, who has Down Syndrome and is going to her Freehold Twp. prom with Collin Bitsko, a former football and lacrosse standout who now plays lacrosse in college. (Photo: Peter Ackerman)Buy Photo

It's been hot hot hot this week, so here aresome of the hottest trending school stories around the Jersey Shore.

Censorship of a pro-Trump T-shirt?

The lesson in Wall High School is that if you don't like a political statement in a student's yearbook photo, don't Photoshop it away. Now a teacher is suspended and school administrators are seeking answers.

Don't miss this story, which went viral on Monday after news organizations across the nation picked it up and ran with it.

A prom story for a girl with Down syndrome

Freehold Township senior Deanna Carraher has Down syndrome and needed a prom date. Collin Bitsko is a lacrosse star who fulfilled her wishes. For theinclusive millennial generation, their pairing is natural.

"People now are willing to go the extra mile to make everyone feel included, and thats great," said a friend of Deanna's.

A Trenton intervention

The state Assembly passed a bill that wouldgive the Monmouth County superintendent of schools the power to make the Colts Neck school district, rather than the Tinton Falls schooldistrict, responsible for educating about 60 children of military familieswho live at Earle.

Tinton Falls Board of Education President Peter Karavites said the currentarrangement no longer works because their schools have become overcrowded while Colts Neck's have not.

"Blackface" photo creates stir in Brick

A middle school student covered his face in athletic eye black during a celebration, and whileteachers did not react, one parent did.

"I dont think he knew what he was doing," said Brick momAimee VanDuyne, who is white and has three children who are black.

The incident has spurred hard conversations about racism and racial sensitivity in the school district.

In other news:

APP business writer Michael Diamond tells us what we should have learned in college, but probably didn't.

Some Jersey Shore student writers won big at the APP Student Voices awards. "Student Voices is our opportunity to celebrate the academic achievements of young students," said Hollis R. Towns, Gannett New Jersey Regional Editor & Vice President/News. "We often celebrate sports and music but its rare that we invest as much as we should in academics, so Im extremely proud of this program."

State Sen. Jennifer Beck in an APP op-ed tells us to keep a close eye on school funding talks. "Over the next several weeks, a new plan for school funding will be debated in Trenton," she writes.

One lucky Toms River high school student won a car in the district's second annualDriven to Excellence program, a character-building effort. Here's how it works.

That's all for this week. Have a wonderful weekend.

Amanda Oglesby: 732-557-5701; aoglesby@GannettNJ.com

Read or Share this story: http://on.app.com/2sosOsA

Originally posted here:
School Scoop: Trump, censorship and race in schools - Asbury Park Press

Recently I had the opportunity to visit the Tri-Cities, and as a news reporter here in North Carolina, I thought I would "listen" to the scanner I use as the normal course of work I am engaged in. I was surprised when I had programmed the channels publicly available into my scanner corresponding to those "licensed" by the Federal Communications Commission to Sullivan County, Tennessee, and I heard NOTHING!

I saw emergency vehicles in the normal course of daily activities but heard NO calls from either a "dispatch" center or an individual vehicle. I saw an ambulance running emergency traffic, and I saw a Johnson City Police car stopped with another vehicle in an apparent traffic stop. On Friday, I spoke with an official at Washington County Emergency Services, who told me that he knew all local emergency communications in Sullivan County were "encrypted" or "blocked" which is overreach of local officials and bothers me as someone who lives by the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment including free speech!

I understand this newspaper published a news story about six months ago concerning this issue. Folks, this is plain censorship of the public airways! It should NOT be tolerated!

I am surprised at the folks who feel they can do this and somehow show their face to the public or work for better relations between the police and the public!

Sullivan County, you have a lot going for you. Don't continue to mess it up with overreach and excessive control of the "public" airways. Fix this censorship immediately!

The government belongs to ALL people, NOT a few employed by the government!

See more here:
LETTER: An unseen kind of censorship - Bristol Herald Courier (press release) (blog)

By Fred Mazelis 14 June 2017

The corporate and right-wing attacks on the production of Julius Caesar by the Public Theater, part of the annual free Shakespeare in the Park season in New York Citys Central Park, illustrate the danger of artistic censorship and more generally that of authoritarianism posed by the Trump administration.

Directed by Oskar Eustis, who is also the artistic director of the Public Theater, this Julius Caesaris staged with unmistakable allusions to the current occupant of the White House. Caesar (Gregg Henry) is portrayed as an egomaniac who needs constant adulation. This Caesar has a love of glitz, including a gold bathtub. He is dressed in a blue suit and has a shock of blond hair and the trademark Trump comb-over. His wife Calpurnia (Tina Benko) has a Slavic accent and the style and appearance of Melania Trump. His son Octavius (Robert Gilbert) is portrayed as a callow Jared Kushner-type figure.

The Trumpian depiction of Caesar, combined with a graphic, bloody scene of his assassination, has provoked outrage among Trumps ultra-right supporters. Breitbart News and the Fox and Friends television show have focused on it. Donald Trump, Jr. tweeted, I wonder how much of this art is funded by taxpayers.

The reaction was almost immediate. The Public Theater in fact receives most of its funding from giant corporate sponsors, not from public sources. A number of the most prominent funders issued statements disavowing the production, although none of them had uttered a word of complaint, through its weeks of previews, until the right-media campaign began.

Delta Airlines announced that the production does not reflect Delta Airlines values and that the artistic and creative direction crossed the line on standards of good taste. Bank of America, the lead corporate sponsor for the past 11 years, declared that the production had been designed to provoke and offend and, had this intention been made known to us, we would have decided not to sponsor.

American Express joined the chorus, explaining, We would like to clarify that our sponsorship of the Public Theater does not fund the production of Shakespeare in the Park, nor do we condone the interpretation of the Julius Caesar play.

As Deltas employees and passengers know full well, the airlines values have nothing to do with anything but the ruthless drive for profit. The company would prefer to stay off Trumps enemies list. The reactions of financial and corporate management are a direct reflection of the atmosphere being whipped up under this administration.

Even more ominous than the actions of the corporate sponsors was the reaction of the National Endowment for the Arts, the federal agency that funds arts institutions large and small around the US. Trumps budget proposes to eliminate funding for the NEA entirely. The agency issued a brief statement on its website two days ago stating, No taxpayer dollars support Shakespeare in the Parks production of Julius Caesar.

The implication could hardly be clearer. If Congress sees its way to continuing the funding of the NEA, the agencys leadership will ensure that nothing is done to offend the neo-fascistic billionaire in the White House.

As many critics and Shakespeare scholars have pointed out, Julius Caesar does not in fact present the assassination of the Roman tyrant in a favorable light. Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt explained that a major theme of the play was that the elimination of a dictator could bring an end to the very republic youre trying to save.

In a statement posted on its website, the Public Theater announced that it stands completely behind our production of JULIUS CAESAR. Our production of JULIUS CAESAR in no way advocates violence towards anyone. Shakespeare's play, and our production, make the opposite point: those who attempt to defend democracy by undemocratic means pay a terrible price and destroy the very thing they are fighting to save. For over 400 years, Shakespeares play has told this story and we are proud to be telling it again in Central Park.

This is hardly the first time that Julius Caesar and other Shakespearean tragedies and history plays have been presented in topical or contemporary guise. The famous 1937 production of Julius Caesar directed by the 22-year-old Orson Welles featured a Caesar modeled on Benito Mussolini. Shakespeare himself wrote plays that were unmistakable in their contemporary political references, although these were never expressed directly. Julius Caesar was written in the final years of the reign of Elizabeth I, and Shakespeares career was bound up with the social and political conflicts that would erupt several decades later in the English civil war.

James Shapiro in 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, as we have noted on the WSWS, draws a connection between intense political repression under the aging queen and the writing of Julius Caesar, about which he asserts, ironically in light of the present controversy, No play by Shakespeare explores censorship and silencing so deeply as the one he was writing during these months in 1599.

Topical interpretations such as the Public Theaters run the risk of obviousness, of course. Although there is a satirical element in the Central Park production, there is also something too easy and limited in the allusions to Trump.

Needless to say, however, the Public Theaters right-wing critics are not in the least concerned with the productions artistic qualities. The purpose of their campaign is intimidation, and such behavior has been directed not only at the theater. For Breitbart and similar sources, moreover, there is no contradiction between making free speech claims when protests against provocateurs like Milo Yiannopoulos occur, and then demanding clampdowns in the case of such events as the production of Julius Caesar.

The current controversy also calls attention to American capitalisms scandalous treatment of the arts. Public spending and subsidies, never generous, have been continuously cut and now face the threat of complete elimination. Over the last several decades theater, art, music and dance have become increasingly dependent upon the largesse of multimillionaire donors and corporate philanthropy. The Julius Caesar production shows how rapidly corporate donations can evaporate, and the implications of reliance on such sources of funding.

Follow this link:
Attempt at censorship in reaction to New York's Public Theater production of Julius Caesar - World Socialist Web Site