If Hellyeah were a girl, you probably wouldn't bring her home to meet your parents anytime soon.



The Heavy Metal band, led by Pantera and Damage Plan veteran drummer Vinnie Paul (Abbott), would probably drink too much at dinner; throw up on that nice new, white couch; start trashing the furniture and breaking your Mom's Hummels; then, cap off the evening by breaking into Dad's gun rack.

That's the image I got anyway from their recent performance at Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut, which was as animated and energetic as could possibly be. Unstoppable. (Humor aside, Vinnie and the band are nothing like the above imagined scenario.)

Of course, "Big Vin" as he's sometimes referred to, is also the older brother of the late "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott, Pantera' and Damageplan' guitarist. Having been through the most shocking thing a person might go through, Vinnie Paul has recreated himself and the band he and his brother had envisioned.



This Backstage Pass column however, will not be going into any of those horrible events, only covering the show, Vinnie Paul's and Hellyeah's history. (Disclosure: I've been writing a screenplay telling Dimebag's story, "Cemetery Gates: The Fast Life & Short Times of Dimebag Darrell" for the last eight years.)



THE PERFORMERS


Hellyeah is perhaps not the last stop on Vinnie Paul's and Dimebag's musical journey but certainly a major part of the trip. The Abbott brothers grew up in a Texas household with a Country music songwriter, producer and musician father. Beginning with Pantera in 1981 and riding that through a cathartic road to break-up; second stop was Damage Plan from 2003 to 2004. 2006 brought a rebirth of interest and a chance meeting and then continuing conversation between the lead singer of one heavy metal band and the guitarist of another.

Regardless of its genesis, Hellyeah seems to me a very important development in the life of Vinnie Paul both for musical and for healing purposes.

THE MUSICIANS

Vinnie Paul, Drums


Like all drummers, Vinnie Paul lays the back-beat foundation for his band. But unlike the vast majority of drummers, Paul seems to put a real personal imprint on Hellyeah's music. His drumming style and crowd adoration is more similar to an 'out-front' singing drummer such as Don Henley or Phil Collins--though he is obviously nothing like those two musically.

Chad Gray, Vocals


Gray was a co-founder and lead vocalist of heavy metal band, Mudvayne and during a chance encounter with Tom Maxwell of Nothingface, on the 2001 "Tattoo the Earth" tour with Mudvayne, Nothingface, Slayer, Slipknot and Sevendust, hatched the idea that birthed Hellyeah. Though not as smooth, Gray has a voice in range and strength like Chris Cornell.

Tom Maxwell, Guitar


According to previous reports, Maxwell and Gray met and became quick friends on a Nothingface/Mudvayne tour and a conversation started between the two leading eventually to the formation of Hellyeah. From Baltimore originally, Maxwell still lives in Maryland with his family.

Kyle Sanders, Bass Guitar, Vocals

A former member of Bloodsimple from 2002 to 2008, Kyle Sanders is one of the most active stage-men I've ever seen. Just getting a decent photo of him that isn't blurred is a challenge. He makes Angus Young look like a statue. It was on tour with Bloodsimple, opening up at Ozzfest and for Disturbed, Avenged Sevenfold, Alice in Chains, Korn, Metallica and Hellyeah, that Sanders presumably got to know Hellyeah and later, became part of the band.

Christian Brady, Guitar, Vocals

A Las Vegas native, Brady was in Magna-Fi and after the band's appearance at OzzFest in 2004, his star was rising. The newest Hellyeah member, Brady joined up in mid 2014.

THE INSTRUMENTS



Christian Brady's Z Series Dean guitar


Brady on tour recently with his new Dean USA Custom, double-neck GS
Photo Credit: Unknown




Tom Maxwell endorses Dean Guitars and they made the "MaxHell" Soltero guitar especially for him



Both Hellyeah' guitarists are Dean endorsers, which makes sense, following as they are in the footsteps of one of the most popular Dean' guitarists, Dimebag Darrell.


Photo Credit: Unknown



















THE VENUE
Mohegan Sun is one of the two largest casinos in the America. In rural Uncasville, Connecticut, Mohegan Sun's massive hotel, arena and multiple casinos rise out of a forest and are perched on a picturesque lake.


Photo Credit: Mohegan Sun

Mohegan Sun has more than 30 restaurants including everything from Todd English's Tuscany, Michael Jordan's Steakhouse, Bobby Flay's Bar Americain and Vallo Italian restaurant to Johnny Rockets, Frank Pepe's Pizza and Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Retail stores include Tiffany's, Brookstone, bareMinerals, Coach, Trailblazers, Sunglasses USA, Swarovski and Tommy Bahama.

Offering a full hair salon and 25,000 square foot spa, Elemis, with indoor pool and outdoor terrace that turns into a nightclub in the summer, Glo.


Photo Credit: Mohegan Sun

It's a great place to get away; see a show; have some fine food, drink and gamble.




The Mohegan Sun Casino' Wolf Den is a great 'small' venue to get up close to your favorite bands
Photo Credit: Mohegan Sun

THE ARTIST COMMENTARY
Vinnie Paul and I sat in the dressing room at Mohegan Sun's Wolf Den.

"Hellyeah!" Paul said in a throaty yell to start off our chat.



Q: I saw some of your influences in drummers ... Peter Criss of Kiss, huh?

Paul: "Yeah man, you know as simple and as plain as he was, Criss was very influential on my drumming. His was the first band that I fell in love with, it was to me a metal band that was larger than life, obviously. The "Demon" and the "Catman." One of the first things I ever learned on drums was the 'God of Thunder' drum solo."



"It was that simple. You didn't have to be that technically advanced to learn it but it was so cool and everything Peter Criss ever played was almost as memorable as a guitar lead. It made you want to play air guitar except to drums. All that stuff was very memorable and made me want to play drums."

"We got the pleasure of being on Kiss' final reunion tour, I believe it was 1998 in South America. We did Buenos Aires, three sold-out nights in Mexico City and then we flew from Mexico City to Santiago, Chile with them and it was my birthday. And they were in first class while we were in business class. And about halfway through the flight, all four of them came back and sang 'Happy Birthday' to me, in four-part harmony, I felt like a 14-year old kid again, I just shrunk in my chair literally laughing and crying at the same time. I was like 'Wow, Kiss is back here singing to me.' They gave me the brand new 'Kissstory' book autographed by all of them, and then they had a autographed drum-head with all their pics taped around it. I still have that hanging up in my house. That's my 'Rock 'n Roll moment.' If anybody ever asked my what mine was, that's be it: having Kiss sing to me on my birthday."

Q: One of the things I keep coming across, is your and Dime's love for Kiss. Like playing their songs in your basement growing up. You really idolized them, didn't you?

A: "Loved 'em, man. They were super, super influential and their music will always be part of my life. You know people say, 'Music is a soundtrack to your life,' well them, Van Halen, Judas Priest and Black Sabbath, those are the four that did it for me. Especially the Van Halen brothers. There's so much similarity between them and me and my brother. I always thought of Pantera as the heavy metal version of Van Halen."

Q: That's a great point; God, I never thought of you and Dime as Alex and Eddie.

A: "You know, we all started on drums and then I got better than my brother on drums and I wouldn't let him play them anymore and the same thing happened with Alex and Eddie. I met Eddie for the first time in 2004 when they were doing the reunion tour with Sammy, right before what had to happen to my brother in December, and we'd never met before. We had those four bands we'd always wanted to open up for and we'd done Kiss; we'd done the reunion tour with Sabbath in 1999; we'd done Judas Priest in 1990, the "Painkiller" tour in Europe--our first tour ever--what a way to get broke-in. But we never managed to play with Van Halen. You know, and we had never met any of 'em. So I get a call when I'm out to dinner one night and I get a call from my manager and he's sayin' 'Eddie Van Halen is in the club and want's to meet you.' My first thought was 'are you sure?' Well they are playing in town this weekend. He says, "No, it IS Eddie Van Halen and he wants to meet you.' So I get my driver and we drive back down to my club (Paul owns "The Clubhouse" in Dallas, Texas) and sure enough, he was sittin' there by his self, drinking a bottle of wine. He gives me a big hug and we started talking and maybe five minutes into the conversation, Eddie says to me, 'This is crazy. We've been talking for five minutes and I feel like I know you a lifetime. We have so much in common, man.' I said 'would you mind getting on the phone with my brother?' He said, 'No man, I seen that cat in Guitar World a bunch of times. I wanna talk to this dude.' So I put them on the phone together and they talked for about 45 minutes. So we had a show that weekend in Boston, and we flew out to the show. When we got back, Van Halen was playing in Lubbock and we flew out there. He sent a limo out to pick us up from the airport, brought us to the venue, brought us right downstairs with them, took us to see the sound-check, offered us catering, I mean it was like a dream."

Q: Did you call your brother Dime or Darryl?

A: "Yeah, Dime."

Q: What did Dime say about his phone conversation with Eddie?

A: "It's kind of ironic but I remember the exact words he said to me--I'll never forget it--when we were flying back home from Lubbock on the plane that night. Dime said to me, 'You know what man, if this plane were to go down right now and kill us all, I'd be happy. I got to meet the guy who made me want to play guitar.' And dude, he was just like a kid, so excited. Very, very inspired. They were in the backstage room and Eddie would play a lick and hand Dime the guitar, and Dime would go 'Wow, I'm playing Eddie Van Halen's fucking guitar!' It was some really great moments."

Q: The first time I met you was at the soundboard of a Nickelback concert in Frisco, Texas. They did that song about Dime, "Side of a Bullet." What did you think of that?

A: "It was cool for them to honor him."

"It was really strange that as we progressed from a little bitty band to being a bigger band, we always told ourselves that we wanted to keep our feet planted in Texas. We never wanted to move to LA or New York or develop that 'Hollywood attitude.' I still to this day, if I have to go to New York or LA, I do what I have to do, and then I get the fuck outta town on the red-eye as fast as I can go. It's just not my place, you know? I have my home in Dallas and a house in Las Vegas, which I love. I spend about half my time there, half my time in Dallas and the rest of my time on the road."

Q: Kids? Family?

A: "Nope, I never married or had any kids. That's why I love music so much. I've been in love with it my whole life. I know what it takes to do this and you really have to give everything you've got. So many people, you know, try and do it with a wife and kids and it just ends up wrecked, there's some people who've pulled it off but I've always known to do this you have to be that dedicated to it."

"But back to the story, a lot of Metal bands' fans are jaded, you know, they want nothing but the heaviest of the heavy and Nickelback's a great band, man. We became friends with them and no matter who we played with we treated them with respect. Whether it be Nickelback or Limp Bizkit or bands that were different than us but you can still appreciate them."

Q: So what's going on with Hellyeah?

A: "We've got a new CD that came out last year, it's the best we've ever had. It's called 'Blood for Blood' and had a #9 single from it. First time we've been in the Top Ten as a band. We spent most of last year supporting other bands and this year we're doing more headlining ourselves this year. Things are really happening for us now."

"We got this tour which wraps up in about a week and have about three weeks off. Then we start back up on another leg of radio shows, a lot of shows with Godsmack and a lot of headline shows. And that goes to the end of May when we go straight to Europe and do all the big festivals, like Download, Wacken, Graspop, etc. We're really looking forward to a great summer."

Q: Is there any kind of Dime Foundation or charity he loved?

A: "You know, I always tell people if their fans and want to make a donation, he was a fan of 'Little Kids Rock.' They get instruments and give them to the kids who need them in schools, that normally wouldn't have them."

Q: Any thing else you want to say to your fans?

A: "Just that I'm excited about the way things are going and thanks for the love. Thanks for all your support and we'll see somewhere this year on tour with Hellyeah."

One other thing Vinnie mentioned was that "there's something big coming out about this summer for a big tour we're doing." That turned out to be the Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival where Hellyeah will be headlining with Slayer for 26 dates across America.

THE SETLIST


THE AUDIENCE
A Hellyeah' crowd is not a docile thing. Not in the least.



Getting there early and staying late is one hallmark of Hellyeah fans. Another would be a kind of mosh-pit aggression when the band is playing. They percolate. They froth. And they seethe.


A band and fans in motion--seething together as one


A post-seethe Hellyeah' fan

THE SHOW


Opening up with the eponymous "Hellyeah," the band didn't waste a bit of time and neither did the crowd.















Always a commanding presence behind the kit, Vinnie exhorts his crowd to roar.





When the band kicked into the opening, ballad-like riffs of "Moth," the crowd settled a bit but that didn't last long.







"Band of Brothers" whipped the drinking and gambling headbangers into a frenzy with Vinnie's manic drumming and Chad's insane vocals.



And the dreadlocks of Kyle Sanders were always in motion.









"Drink, Drank, Drunk" took the feisty crowd to new levels of combat.









Before leaving the stage prior to an encore, Hellyeah did one of my favorite songs, that Hellyeah purists may not necessarily love. "Alcohaulin' Ass" was done to near perfection. "Pour another drink in my glass ... " condenses the general feeling in the Hellyeah crowd and me that night.








Those are Kyle Sanders' dreadlocks behind Tom Maxwell



After that killer "Alcohaulin' Ass," Hellyeah took a break before coming back for a two-song encore of "You Wouldn't Know" and "Cowboy Way."



Chad Gray's trademark screams didn't leave the audiences' ears until sometime the next morning.





And Vinnie Paul was like a proud parent after going through hell getting their kid to graduation. He must have felt very good indeed.



All Photo Credits are Bill Robinson except as otherwise noted

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The third season of the thrilling one-hour drama series Graceland, returns Thursday, June 25 at 10/9c on USA Network. To tide you over though, I received some juicy tidbits regarding what's next for the show during recent on-set interviews with the cast. And if you haven't seen this addictive series yet, you can now catch up on the first two seasons on Netflix finally.



Season three of Graceland resumes after the deadly attack on Mike (Aaron Tveit), which left his fate hanging in the balance, along with anxious fans. Paul Briggs (Daniel Sunjata) gets coerced into a high-risk operation, while his pregnant counterpart Charlie (Vanessa Ferlito) is on a mission to find the person who nearly killed her.

Audiences will be glad to hear that season three plot-lines bring it back to the house, with the Malibu hideout "Graceland" once again at the center for the undercover FBI, DEA and ICE agents.

Actor Brandon Jay McLaren who plays Dale Jakes revealed that the dynamic of the house will be forever changed this season.

"Season one was the least crazy, if what happens is meant to happen, season three will be nuts!" said McLaren. "Not necessarily dark, but surprises, like people will do things that are surprising and cause someone to say, 'that's crazy!'"

Season 3 Secrets Revealed (minor spoilers):

• Mike's name is still appearing on the chore wheel at least, and it has been said that he'll be back in some capacity though. However, Aaron was not filming that day.



• Unresolved plot lines and characters from the previous season will be dealt with again like Sid knowing their identities, as well as Carlitos and Lucia's drama.



• There will also be an overarching Armenian mafia case with mobster Ari Adamian, portrayed by Entourage alum Rhys Coiro.



• "The tape" is still out there and falls into someone else's hands yet again and comes back in a big way. Side note: how are there even still people left with tape decks to play the thing? lol



• "Everyone in the house has atonement to do, has sins that they have to atone for," says Daniel Sunjata (Briggs). "Karma and chickens that come home to roost, quite literally as there were chickens in the last scene we did."



• More of Charlie's backstory will be revealed. Sadly though, as of episode 5, there hasn't been a sauce night yet.



• Charlie is still pregnant, but it doesn't slow down her character at all and Briggs is not happy about that.



• Jakes still handles the role of cleanup and helps both Johnny (Manny Montana) and Charlie this season though.



• Girl power. Paige (Serinda Swan) and Charlie will have their first one-on-one scenes together.



• Lots of blood will be spilled this season, including Paige getting shot.



• Actress Lucy Liu has been tapped to direct an upcoming episode on the third season, she's also been a fan of the series since its launch.

For more photos from the set tour and cast interviews, please visit my blog.

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It is a daring film. Director László Nemes took the true context of the Sonderkommando -- the group of Jewish prisoners forced to assist the Nazis in extermination practices at Auschwitz -- and invented a fictional story of one of its members, to create a subjective perspective of the unspeakable horror that is the Holocaust.

As the young new Hungarian director, descendent of Holocaust victims, told me: "The aim was to take the Holocaust out of the history books and bring it to the present. Mine is a generation that doesn't know much about anything now. It is a disconnected generation."



The story Nemes invents: that of Saul Auslander, a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando, who when he sees a boy being murdered (apparently his son) becomes determined, and then obsessed, to give the boy a religious burial. Saul is so determined to honor this boy that not only does he take extraordinary risks to hide the cadaver--and to find a Rabbi to read the Kaddish mourning prayer-- but his mission becomes more important for him than helping the Sonderkommando plan a rebellion (the parallel story), which leads to a climatic dramatic clash. "You care more about the dead than the living!" cries one Sondercommando with fury.

The strength of Son of Saul lies in its nervous immediacy. The director uses startling techniques to make us experience the madness of the camp viscerally. The first shot is out-of-focus, from the perspective of Saul who is trudging towards his work as a Sondercommando to collect the cadavers from the gas chamber. We hear the loud sounds of feet pounding, the desperate screams from the chamber, the guards barking orders. We are right there in the chaos, the horror, as the Sondercommando slump cadavers over their shoulders and come close to the frame, near us. The shallow-focus technique is used throughout the film, so we are constantly "glimpsing" traces of the horror in a fog, and hearing screams, just as the prisoners would. The aim is to disturb us with an acute sense of panic and incomprehensibility, at every instant.

However, I found the out-of-focus technique itself disturbing. I found it disturbing because it makes horror "titillating". Our eyes strain to see what is blurry, and there is quite enough in focus at the edges of the frame to see it all anyway: the child being suffocated by a man's hand, the bodies being taken to the ovens, the huge dusty grey piles of human ash. The director explained to me that he deliberately "only suggested" the horror, as he "did not want the viewer to be in the horror, because it is not understandable." Yet anyone who sees this film and thinks the horror is only "suggested" must be numb to graphic images of corpses being desiccated, humans screaming as they are pitched into ditches and shot. Another questionable directorial choice to titillate: the majority of the corpses we "glimpse" are young women. We spy pretty young perky breasts as the cadavers go by. Never once an older woman. The Hollywood criteria on attractive women's bodies touches even Auschwitz.

The majority of Cannes critics were wowed by this film, claiming that its extraordinary new film techniques were enough to warrant giving it a major prize [it won the Grand Prix]. For me, however, these experimental techniques were the reason I disliked it. While contemplating the Shoah, I do not want to be distracted by the ever-obvious creative hand of the filmmaker. In Son of Saul, the director's artistry is more present than Auschwitz. I prefer quieter Holocaust films--like Andre Singer's recent masterpiece Night Will Fall and of course Claude Lanzmann's Shoah-- which deliberately let the subject speak for itself, in silences. In these films, the directors make their cinematographic choices as unobtrusive as possible, limiting the camerawork to pans on grassy fields which allow the viewer to imagine that which cannot be represented, or to careful suggestive cuts. They take a respectful distance from their subject, given its enormity and the inability to ever do it justice. We are not jerked around by a fake narrative that contains what it tells.

Of course, here I knowingly enter -- with trepidation-- the longstanding and unresolved debate of what aesthetics are appropriate to dealing with the Shoah, a debate that began with Theodoro Adorno's famous statement "No Poetry after Auschwitz" (1951), and continues to this day, taken up with varied nuance by thinkers such as Saul Friedlander, Annette Insdorf, Casey Haskins and Jean-Francois Lyotard. Among these thinkers, there is no consensus on what aesthetics are "appropriate" (or even how to frame the question): it is just my personal verdict that the choices in Nemes' film are not.

To side-track back to a minor point: Nemes' film did not even seem that "new" for me, as it did for many of my impressed colleagues. In fact, when the film began, I had déjà-vu. I had seen some of these scenes already, in a relatively unknown film The Grey Zone (2001) by actor-director Tim Blake Nelson. Nelson's film also is about the Sonderkommando rebellion at Auschwitz, based upon the archival text, Voices from Beneath the Ashes, the same text Nemes used as source material. Nelson also made the original choice (at the time) to film the camp from the Sonderkommandos' perspective; in both films, we hear the Sonderkommandos whispering to each other and see them walk jerkily about the rooms, close to the frame. In both films, the gas chamber "undressing" room is filmed with a muted color palate, intense close-ups, and loud sounds. Both films have a smothering scene in the first minutes, and a subsequent plot-line about hiding a body under a bunk.

I asked the director if he knew The Grey Zone, which relatively few people have seen, given its low distribution.

"Yes," Nemes said at once, blushing. "But mine is an Anti-Grey Zone! Imagine, in The Grey Zone, the inmates spoke in English. Also Nelson's film shows too much, relying on constant emotional upheaval that is theatrical [....] We used a restrained strategy to tell very little. When you are not limited, cinema can take you to over-expression and spectacle."

Yet Nelson's film, which shows the gas chamber rooms graphically, without a shallow-focus lens teasing the viewer, is far less theatrical, in my view, than Nemes' artificial rendering. Rather, The Grey Zone disturbs with its careful attempt at realism. As the Holocaust film scholar Aaron Kerner writes: "Nelson attempts to treat the industrialization of death as dramatized fact as opposed to spectacle, de-emphasizing the fetishistic and sadistic viewing position with a matter-of-fact shooting strategy".

In fact, while Nemes told me his aim was to reduce spectacle, I would counter that the reason Nemes' film wowed critics is precisely because it is spectacular.

Now I will admit that my repulsion to the aesthetics of Nemes' film--and my alienation from the spectacular effect---might have been tempered if I had actually been taken by the story. Here lay the crucial problem of Son of Saul for me. I did not believe in Saul. I did not think the actor-poet Geza Rohrig managed to capture (or could possibly capture) the unimaginable mental state of an Auschwitz concentration camp prisoner. The actor's haunted eyes--which the camera focuses on for the duration of the film--were not sufficient. I could not believe in this man nor in his mission. I lost all credibility in Saul's bond with his son, a son who remains a cadaver, with no identity.

The film leaves it vague who the mother of this child is, and whether the man ever even knew this boy. The choice to leave these vital details undefined may be deliberate (making the "son" a metaphor), but I suspected that these background factors had just not been developed in the script. Indeed when I asked both the director and his co-screenwriter to explain to me who the mother was, they both blurted out two different answers. And as Saul loses credibility, so does his mission: the sacred meaning of a burial deflates to absurdity -- it becomes a matter of grabbing Rabbis out of the firing line -- which does a disservice, in my view, to the religious impulse. It is unclear what beliefs are motivating Saul, or whether he has any; and when I asked the director directly what Saul's relationship to religion was, he noted that time was up for our interview.

The need to honor a murdered son with a religious ceremony, in the context of a world where humanity and dignity are gone, is a beautiful premise. But once one does not believe in Saul, the story becomes a gimmick -- and verges on the obscene -- whatever the filmmaker's well-meaning intention.

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"How many of you have experienced violence?"

We waited as the room full of well-educated, well-to-do teenagers looked down and shuffled their feet. They had traveled from their school to the U.S. Embassy in Trinidad to take part in a focus group and workshop about gender based violence.

Our partner, Population Services International (PSI), a global health organization, has been working in the Caribbean for 10 years. During that time, it has launched a successful campaign to raise awareness and help prevent the spread of HIV.

Just a day earlier, we visited an HIV youth outreach program at the local YMCA in Port-of-Spain, where we met a dynamic woman named Kimberly. Kimberly spoke about how she's loved being a peer educator for the past five years and how her friend had recommended she become involved with PSI.

Then she burst into tears.

The friend -- also a PSI peer educator -- was killed two years ago, a victim of intimate partner violence. Two years later, the scars were still healing on Kimberly's heart. Who knows how many young people would have been touched had her friend lived.

In the Caribbean between 14 percent and 53 percent of women report experiencing violence at the hands of an intimate partner. Globally, one in three women will experience violence in their lifetime. And more women will be killed or disabled by gender-based violence than those affected by cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war combined.

We waited for the teens in the focus group to answer our question. "How many of you have experienced violence?" After a prolonged pause, every teenager raised his/her hand.



This came as no surprise to us, especially Indrani, a native of Trinidad and survivor of gender-based violence. It's what motivated us to partner with PSI to help launch a gender based violence prevention campaign in Trinidad called #MakeItStop.


#MakeItStop will do three critical things:

1. Increase awareness of the resources that are available for girls and women experiencing violence, like 800-SAVE in Trinidad and 1-800-787-3224 here in the U.S.


2. It will bring together existing violence prevention organizations and provide them with the resources they need to reach more survivors.


3. Finally, the program will spark a dialogue among Trinidad's youth about what it means to be masculine or feminine and how we can respect each other.

After all, let's be clear about one thing: this is not a girls and women's issue. This is an issue that affects all of us and the only way we will succeed is by including boys and men in our conversation about how to end gender-based violence. Gender-based violence is a silent epidemic that has male victims, too.

At the end of our focus group, a 15-year-old boy shared how he didn't feel safe appearing vulnerable. He wanted to, but the pressure to be a "man" was great. He left us with this: "I'm not sure we can tackle this in my generation, but maybe my kids can."


We're going to prove he's wrong.

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Do you ever find yourself unable to make a decision? Vacillating between two, three or even more choices?

The choices seem momentous. Or, maybe they aren't huge, but you know that each choice has consequences. Each choice we make takes us down a road, or further down the road that we are on, and you want to make sure it's the right road!

So, we vacillate back and forth, weighing the options and the risks associated with each one, playing out the possible effects, unable to make up our minds. Eventually life takes over and we find ourselves on a road of some kind, going somewhere.

I'm here to tell you that the most risky choice is not making one.

Seriously. Not choosing is choosing.

What's that, again?

Not choosing is a choice, although we don't usually think of it that way or treat it that way.

The fallacy is that by not making a choice, we think we are keeping our options open. We think of this state of being as having power, because we are withholding our commitment. We think we can bestow our commitment on some choice in the future.

Let's dig a bit deeper into this. In the natural order of being, certainty trumps uncertainty, commitment and intention trump limbo.

As human beings, we crave commitment and certainty. We need to know the sun is going to rise in the morning, or we can't get out of bed, to bring this down to brass tacks.

So, in the absence of you making a choice, let's be clear that a choice gets made.

What happens is that we allow others' commitments, intentions and priorities to fill the void left by our own lack of commitment, priority and choice.

By not choosing, we allow others' priorities to become your own. When you have a choice vacuum, it will get filled by others who have made choices.

So what do you do when you can't seem to make up your mind?

First, give yourself a set amount of time. Give yourself two hours or two day or until the end of the week to make a choice. The scale and urgency of the choice will dictate how much time you should contemplate it.

Second, solicit input and advice, but do it carefully. Not everyone is a good person to discuss your choices. You need supportive confidantes who will also tell you the truth, not what you want to hear.

You also don't need 10 opinions. Two or three is a good number. You don't need to be more overwhelmed because so many people are weighing in.

Third, make sure you are comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges. You might want to write down a pro and con list for each option so that you can see it in front of you in black and white. Once you do this, the choice might become obvious.

Fourth, when you reach your deadline, make the best choice you can with the options and information you've got. Commit to your choice and get into action.

Fifth, refrain from second-guessing yourself until you've given your choice a chance. If you're constantly second-guessing, you aren't really committing to your choice.

If you find that you can't seem to stop second-guessing yourself, then use the old time trick. Give yourself a date at which time you'll assess and then get back into action. The assessment date shouldn't be too soon or too far out. But if you aren't sure, then just set a date, and, again, get into action.

Sixth... be empowered! It's your life. You are the dog, not the tail. Have your life instead of your life having you. You will make mistakes and the "wrong" choice sometimes, but you will have made it. There is power and freedom in this, so embrace it!

Here's to all your great choices...



Shawn Tolleson is a career coach working with screenwriters and other entertainment industry professionals. She gives you the practical tools you need to accomplish your dream career. Check out blogs, videos, classes and more at www.entertainmentcareerstrategy.com!

© Shawn Tolleson, Strategy Coaching, Inc. 2015

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In the 1970s, Bob Newhart found himself literally in the middle of a revolution. He did not look the type. In his "button-down" appearance and deadpan delivery and demeanor, he resembled what he was before he embarked on his standup comedy career; an accountant. But "The Bob Newhart Show," which debuted in 1972 and would run for six seasons, was in the vanguard of a new era in which television got real.

That's the title of the first episode in CNN's new eight-part-documentary series, "The Seventies," which premieres Thur. June 11 at 9 p.m. ET. "Television Gets Real" is a clip-rich episode featuring new interviews with Newhart, Tom Hanks (who served as "The Seventies'" co-executive producer with Gary Goetzman and Mark Herzog), Valerie Harper, John Amos, Norman Lear, Robert Klein and critics Tom Shales and David Bianculli.

In its second year on the air, "The Bob Newhart Show" was an integral part of arguably television's Best. Programming. Block. Ever; CBS' Saturday night lineup of "All in the Family," "M*A*S*H," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "The Bob Newhart Show," and "The Carol Burnett Show."

"The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "The Bob Newhart Show" cleansed the palate from the envelope-pushing "All in the Family" and "M*A*S*H." Neither show pointedly delved into the social and political issues of the day, which is one of the reasons both seem to have aged better than other more topical counterparts.

"We were different," Newhart said in a phone interview. "We certainly weren't 'All in the Family.' Mary and I and Carol Burnett were more traditionally funny. If the whole night had been shows taking on issues, I don't think it would have worked. Our shows were a necessary balance."

Newhart was no stranger to television. He was a mainstay of variety and talk shows such as "The Ed Sullivan Show" and "The Tonight Show" (he guest-hosted almost 90 times). Following the breakout success of his first comedy album, "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart" in 1960, he was tapped to host an eponymous variety show that lasted one season, but did win an Emmy Award and the Peabody.

One and done suited Newhart fine. "I probably never should have done it," he laughed. "I wasn't seasoned enough. I did a monologue every week, but at the time we did about 39 shows and I felt I couldn't maintain the quality I had achieved on the record album. That had been like a dam that suddenly burst and all this material came out. And they put me in sketches, which I wasn't very good it. So I made a point of watching good people work to see what you had to do to be good. Plus, I wanted to get back to the standup world. I felt much safer there."

He did some series work, an "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" episode; an episode of the Buck Henry series "Captain Nice." And then MTM Enterprises, the producers of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," came calling.

By this point, the times may have been a'changin', but prime time television was still most associated with escapism and rural-based comedies such as "The Beverly Hillbillies," "Green Acres," and "Petticoat Junction," all on CBS. Executive Robert Wood executed a so-called "Rural Purge" that opened the door for Bob, Mary, Archie Bunker and Hawkeye.

Newhart was all in. "The fact that it was MTM suggested it would be different," Newhart said. "Also, I had been on the road for 12 years and the road is not that romantic. It's a lot of hotel rooms and travel and missing luggage. As far as a home life is concerned, you're gone. When I was offered a sitcom, it was like, 'You mean I can have a normal life?'

"The Bob Newhart Show" was set in Chicago, Newhart's hometown. "Mary had taken Minneapolis and Andy Griffith had North Carolina," he joked. "I know Chicago. I understand Chicago." Newhart portrayed psychologist Bob Hartley, husband to Emily (Suzanne Pleshette). At Newhart's insistence, there would be no kids.

"I didn't want to be that TV dad," he said. "I didn't want to be that father who is not very bright, but the family loves him and in the final scene, the family is hugging him but they're looking at the camera, like, 'What are we going to do about him?'"

Making his character a psychologist was a masterstroke. It dovetailed with his standup persona as a listener and reactor in his classic phone routines. "(When it was suggested), I said that psychiatrists really deal with more severely-disturbed people. Personally, my own strange comedy preferences would have enjoyed getting humor from that, but I didn't think it was viable (for television)."

"The Bob Newhart Show" did not want to set the world on fire and it succeeded brilliantly. As with "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" it was a character-based comedy that boasted a peerless ensemble and smart, pitch-perfect writing. "That's a formula I stumbled on," he joked. "Get great writing and a great cast and take all the credit yourself."



And yet, Newhart thought the show, which was getting Emmy nominations and "Super Bowl numbers" in the ratings, thought that it was living in the shadow of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" ("And for good reason," he laughed). In the show's fifth season, he approached Robert Wood about moving the show. "I felt we were doing good stuff that wasn't getting as recognized," he said. "Bob Wood said to leave it alone; that it worked where it was. It wasn't until syndication and we didn't follow Mary that the show was really recognized as being good on its own."

It was Newhart's decision to end the show after six seasons. "We might have had another year left in it," he said, "but I had seen shows that had stayed on too long and it damaged the brand."

Today, at 85, the brand is still in demand. He won his first acting Emmy in 2013 for his role as Professor Proton on "The Big Bang Theory," While his character was killed off, he said, there has been talk he could appear as a Yoda-like figment of Sheldon's imagination to help him in times of trouble.

He plays about 20 dates a year at which fans of a certain age are compelled to tell him what "The Bob Newhart Show" means to them. "That's one of the great things about being on television, and I run into it more and more," he reflected. "You're part of people's lives. A man will come up and say that he and his dad watched the show together on Saturday night and they have this look in their eye, like, 'What a wonderful time it was.'"

Which makes the notion of retiring seem ludicrous. "As long as I am able to," he said of performing. "It's a new experience every time. And why stop making people laugh? I can't understand that--'I'm tired of making people laugh; I don't want to hear it anymore.'"

And that made him laugh.

A version of this story originally appeared on millionairecorner.com

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The NJ4: Venice Brown, Terrain Dandridge, Patreese Johnson and Renata Hill

The initial overwhelmingly positive reaction to "newborn" Caitlyn Jenner was a worldwide watershed moment to be sure.

But Out in the Night, a POV documentary airing June 22nd on PBS, reminds us that countless others in the LGBTQ/gender non-conforming communities still face discrimination daily.

The documentary opens with a police radio call describing "officers fighting with gangs...with Bloods and Crips."

The assailants are identified as "five female blacks" who, according to an "anonymous unverified" account may have stabbed a male victim. Subsequent media sound bites allege said victim was stabbed by a "pack of lesbians," who attacked him "just because he was a straight man."

The four alleged "assailants" tell a very different story in the film.

According to Renata Hill, she and friends Terrain Dandridge, Patreese Johnson and Venice Brown headed for New York to "to have fun, look at girls, be gay."

"We thought we wouldn't have any problems," she adds. "We could be ourselves."

She was wrong.

Their night on the town took a dangerous turn when a young man, Dwayne Buckle, took a liking to one of the four. In his court testimony, read by an actor in the film, Buckle said, "They looked feminine. One was slightly pretty. So I said, 'Hi' to her."

But Johnson remembers him saying, "Lemme get some o' that," a statement she took as a playful request for a sip of soda.

Wrong again.

"He said, 'I don't want that,'" Johnson recalls. "He pointed at my lower area and said, 'I want that.'"

When Johnson laughed and told him, "Mister, I'm gay," she alleges that the man spat and threw his cigarette, yelling, "Dyke bitches! You lesbian bitches! I'll f--k you straight!"

Hill says she and her friends began to walk away, backwards, realizing, "He was coming for us. That was clear as day."

Surveillance camera video proves that he came for them with a vengeance, ripping a handful of dreads from Brown's scalp and even pinning Hill down on the ground with his arm. A group of male bystanders finally intervened, wrestling Buckle roughly to the ground and berating him for fighting with women.

Despite that damning video evidence, the four women were arrested and charged with criminal possession of a weapon in the 4th degree with intent to use, assault in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree, gang assault in the 1st and 2nd degree, and attempted murder.

And the media went into a feeding frenzy.



One of many lurid, fear-mongering headlines

Fox News said the attack was part of a crime wave instigated by lesbian gangs called "Gays Taking Over" and "Dykes Taking Over" who were attacking and raping young girls in Philadelphia and Tennessee. On camera, New York Post reporter Laura Italiano proudly declares she still stands by her description of the women as a "seething, Sapphic, septet from Newark, New Jersey."

"I don't think it was a stretch to say they were out for blood," Italiano insists.

The jury agreed. All four women were convicted. Three were sentenced to 8 years in prison. Johnson received 11 years for stabbing Buckle with a small knife. The wound was not life threatening.

Director/producer blair dorosh-walther--she prefers lowercase--believes the "NJ4" case is yet another example of prejudice and discrimination in the American legal and law enforcement systems.


Director blair dorosh-walther--she prefers lowercase--on set

"There is so much that still needs to happen," she explained in an email exchange. "Unfortunately, I don't think it is just a matter of changing a few laws or fixing particular parts of the criminal legal system or putting cameras on police. I think the entire system of law enforcement and the legal system need to be destroyed and reconstructed. The system is just too rooted in prejudices with no oversight. I think it is unwise to try and crawl out of a racist system inch by inch."

dorosh-walther also had harsh words for the media.

"I believe the media vilified them because of their intersectional identities," she said. "When I spoke with Laura Italiano, the New York Post journalist who is interviewed in Out in the Night, she repeatedly referred to the women as 'tough.' What makes these women 'tough?' That they are Black? Because they look like Black men? Because they physically fought back? Because they do not dress like you? What is it exactly that makes them 'tough?'"

And though this story unfolded in 2006, dorosh-walther isn't so sure our attitudes toward racial "minorities" and those who identify as LGBTQ or non-gender conforming have changed as much as we like to think.

"It is great that Caitlyn Jenner has received such a warm welcome," she said. "Likewise Laverne Cox, who is also an activist and fights for trans civil rights constantly. My fear in lionizing individual people or even a law is that people who are not directly affected think the fight for equality or civil rights are over."

As for the four women whose stories inspired Out in the Night, dorosh-walther hopes viewers will, "honor their unapologetic defense of who they are."

"They were a pocket of resistance, both that night and in the courtroom when they plead [sic] not guilty," she asserted. "They were facing 25 years, so a not-guilty plea was incredibly difficult and holds the courts accountable. They should be honored for the resistance, resilience and perseverance."

Photo credit: Images of dorosh-walther and the "NJ4", Lyric Cabral. New York Post headline, author screenshot.

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Which is the more technologically advanced civilization--the Federation of Star Trek or the Galactic Republic of Star Wars?: originally appeared on Quora: The best answer to any question. Ask a question, get a great answer. Learn from experts and access insider knowledge. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.



Answer by Todd Gardiner

Let's compare the two, side-by-side.

Transportation

We have hyper engines that go through hyperspace compared to warp drives that travel through normal space at FTL speeds. Technical data books indicate that the speeds and range of hyper drives are greater, however.

We have also repulsor craft that hover over the ground in the Empire, but not much is shown of Federation ground transport, although anti-grav units are used to move heavy objects. But the Federation has one edge: teleportation.

I'm going to consider them even here, based on having different advantages.

Energy Generation

Both empires seem to be able to produce unlimited power for their needs. The amount directed to any one use might be limited, but fuel seems to be endless. While the exact fuel for the Empire is unclear, it seems to be on-par with the Federation's antimatter engines (although often at much larger scales, e.g. The Death Star). Another tie.

Communication

Both spacefaring civilizations have FTL communication that is not instantaneous at long distances. There are language translators that work in real time in the Federation, but these might just be for explorers. Citizens of the Empire seem to prefer being polyglot, but protocol droids are available for translation. Slight edge to the Federation here. (+1/2)

Manufacturing

The Federation is able to use replicators to nearly instantly produce food, durable goods and tools. Apparently it cannot produce all elements and molecules, perhaps needed a "base supply" of matter to convert into finished items, rather than just converting energy into matter directly. But holodecks have shown that it can instantly produce and break down the matter it works with.

The Empire, especially on the frontier, depends on trade. The movement of rare resources and finished goods is the center of their economy, indicating that they have no similar manufacturing capability. Plus one for the Federation.

Construction

Both civilizations build large spaceships in orbit. While the Federation can produce starbases which are large cities, the Empire makes Star Destroyers and was able to produce two Death Stars (one in secret). It seems that Empire construction methods are superior. Plus one for the Empire.

Military

Ground troops for both civilizations make use of hand-held energy weapons, some of which are powerful enough to vaporize their target, although the later are not commonly used (too few shots?) Neither seem to use personal energy shields.

Vehicles similarly use weapons the scale-up with the size of the vehicle, although vehicles are large enough that they can supply the energy needed to maintain shields that defend against energy weapons. The extremely large size of Empire ships mean large shields, thus fighters are more heavily used to penetrate the shields physically and then deliver weapons attacks. But the two seem to be on-par technologically here and I don't see one side having an advantage over the other, should they fight each other with the same mass of ships or number of ground troops with air support.

Medical Technology

Severe injuries that do not result in brain death seem to be reparable. For some reason the Federation seems to be plagued with hundreds of rare and hard to identify diseases on its border (more often across it, perhaps). But they are able to treat them with a minimum of fatalities.

The Empire has a greater use of cybernetics (Repli-Limb Prosthetic Replacements), although it is unclear if this is cultural or if they lack some sort of limb regeneration technology that the Federation might be using off camera. On the other hand, Gordi did have cybernetic sight...

Both are also known to use cloning technology (in secret) and to genetically modify members for specialty purposes (again, rarely).

Lack of firm details here results in another tie.

Robotics and Computing

The Empire has a love of creating seemingly sentient robots to function as servants. The Federation has produced many robots, but does not tend to use them alongside human crews. Use in construction and other off-camera activities seems to be the primary use.

But then, the two sentient robots (Data and Lore) are afforded full human rights (and criminal responsibility for their actions), possibly unlike in the Empire. Certainly the difficulty in production is not rewarded by an economic return of gaining a specialized servant.

The Federation does seem to prefer using semi-sentient computers for their starships, however. There is no sign that The Empire does this with their ships. In fact, you often need a droid to interface with the ship computer.

In the end, a small advantage to the Empire (+1/2)

[Update: the new Star Trek movie has an apparently robotic crewman on the bridge of the Enterprise. Perhaps they are ret-conning to incorporate "droids".]

Field Manipulation

Both empires have mastered the control of projected fields, artificial gravity, ship integrity fields and so on. Shield generators are standard gear for starships and can be placed in ground installations. Some cloaking technology exists for both, as does projecting holograms.

Another tie.

"Social" Technology

Although this is not being considered here, I would like to point out that the smaller Federation has made use of social institutions which are more "advanced" than the Empire. The Federation is a non-discriminating, post-scarcity economy which no longer uses money and is interested in the betterment of all of its citizens equally. The Empire exists as a feudal state (or Republic, before and after the rise of the Empire) with slavery common, an unequal sharing of resources, and a culture that accepts bounty hunters and smugglers, at least on the fringes of civilization.

Final Result: A tie.

The Federation has transporters, personal translators, holodecks and replicators.

The Empire has droids, faster/further warp drive travel, massive construction projects, energy generation that scales linearly with its construction projects, and cybernetics.

Also keep in mind that the Empire is much, much larger. It spans the entire galaxy. There are civilizations in the Federation's galaxy whose technology dwarfs both the Federation and the Empire.


More questions on Quora:

• Movies: Which is better and why: Star Wars or Star Trek?
• Who Will Win?: Star Trek vs. Star Wars ships: Who wins?
• Hypothetical Wars: In an all-out war, which star fleet would win, Star Trek or Star Wars?

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All films buffs have guilty pleasures. You know, those movies that high-minded cineastes love to turn their noses up at, especially critics for The New York Times, people with MFAs in some sort of film-related field, or just plain snobs who refuse to acknowledge anything released on celluloid that doesn't have English subtitles and at least one reference to death, either as a character or a metaphor (and oftentimes both). Patrick Swayze was the undisputed King of the Guilty Pleasure. From his screen debut in Skatetown, USA in 1979, to his final appearance on television's "The Beast" as a take-no-prisoners cop, Swayze was an unapologetic good ol' boy who happened to be a classically-trained dancer, student of martial arts and Eastern philosophy, and possessor of an IQ that was nothing to sneeze at. In fact, he closely resembled Dalton, his character in this writer's all-time guilty pleasure, Rowdy Herrington's Road House (1989), as a bar bouncer with a Master's in Philosophy from NYU, who could quote Confucius and snap necks in near-perfect synchronicity.

In June 2004, when I was asked by Venice Magazine to interview Swayze for his turn as pulp fiction icon Allan Quartermain in the Hallmark television production of "King Solomon's Mines," his star might have waned a bit since his mid-'80s heyday, but his stature as a reluctant pop cultural icon had only increased with each passing year, and his refusal to be anything but himself. Renowned for fighting against being typecast as a typical pretty-boy star/leading man, Swayze's rep indicated not only that he marched to the beat of his own drummer, but was also known for not suffering fools. That said, I didn't quite know what to expect when I went to meet Swayze at photographer Greg Gorman's studio for our sit-down. I'd met more than my share of egomaniacs and narcissists in my ten years of entertainment journalism, living embodiments of "never meet your idols." From the minute Patrick Swayze shook my hand, and for the next six hours we spent together, I was completely disarmed by his charm, honesty and just plain normalcy. After a half hour or so, I felt as though I was hanging out with a buddy from the old neighborhood (his Texas to my Arizona made us cultural cousins). Swayze was reflective, yet totally un-self-indulgent. He was engaging, but usually more interested in your opinion than expressing his own. He was close to the earth as a rancher and man who loved the outdoors, yet also a man of letters who could put most PhDs to shame with his knowledge of, from what I could tell, almost everything.

The only bad thing I can say about Patrick Swayze: goddamn, did he smoke a lot. Patrick must have gone through at least a pack and-a-half (a conservative estimate) of American Spirits during our talk. The only time he wasn't smoking was when we were eating a magnificent sushi dinner. The minute those chopsticks went down, a lit nail was back in his hand. I knew he'd gotten sober after an ongoing battle with the bottle, one that had claimed his father and sister, but cigarettes continued to be a demon he wrestled with. When I asked him about the irony of such a fine athlete destroying his lungs with tobacco smoke, he smiled gently, looked at the cigarette in his hand and said "Yeah, I know, but I'll beat this thing eventually. I've beaten worse, man." He had, and for a while, he nearly did: Swayze's self-described "peaceful warrior" attitude allowed him to survive nearly two years longer than doctors predicted he would, after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer eighteen months ago. He lost the battle on Monday, September 14, 2009. He was 57.

At the end of our talk, Swayze took my hand in his, and said "Alex, I'd really like you to stay in my life." Over the next few years, we shared some nice chats over the phone, a few emails, and almost worked together, when Patrick read the script for my AFI graduate thesis film, a Hollywood satire, and loved the part of an arrogant movie star. Scheduling conflicts dictated that collaboration was not to be, however, and eventually we lost touch, as people tend to do in Los Angeles. As Raymond Chandler wrote in The Long Goodbye, "To say goodbye is to die a little."

Goodbye, Patrick. Thank you for always staying down to Earth, even when Hollywood tried to cast you out among the stars.

PATRICK SWAYZE: PEACEFUL WARRIOR

Patrick Swayze has always been his own man. As early as 1979, when the former dancer and stage actor made his big screen debut in the roller disco opus Skatetown, USA, Swayze easily could have let himself be packaged into that year's teen idol. But despite his cover boy looks, Swayze refused to be pigeonholed as flavor-of-the-month, and persevered as a serious actor, until 1983, when Francis Ford Coppola cast him, along with a crew of other unknowns with names like Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez, and Matt Dillon in a little picture called The Outsiders. When he landed the lead in the hit miniseries "North & South" two years later, his stardom was solidified, and Patrick Swayze became another "overnight success," whose single night of paying dues lasted over a decade.

Patrick Wayne Swayze was born in Houston, Texas August 18, 1952 to Jesse Swayze, an engineer and former rancher, and Patsy Swayze, who would go on to become a world-renowned choreographer in her own right. Young Patrick was driven to be a success in everything he did, pushed by his mother in particular, excelling in sports, as well as music and dance. By then, Patsy Swayze had a thriving dance studio, with many attractive female students. One young lady, Lisa Niemi, caught Patrick's eye and the two were married in 1975. It continues to be one of the most enduring marriages in show business.

After studying with the Harkness and Joffrey Ballet Schools, Patrick went on to act in dozens of Broadway and off-Broadway shows, before making the trek out to Hollywood, where he and Lisa lived on "a jar of peanut butter and oranges from our tree in the backyard" for more years than the actor would probably care to admit, before finally wrangling a secure career as an actor at age 30. Other notable films in the '80s included Walter Hill's Uncommon Valor and John Milius' Red Dawn, but it was the year 1987 that truly solidified Patrick Swayze's star in the Hollywood lexicon.

Dirty Dancing was a small film that became a cultural phenomenon, and Patrick's turn as Catskills dance instructor Johnny Castle made young girls' hearts skip a beat and young men by the hundreds suddenly sign up for Arthur Murray classes. The film, which was made for a meager six million dollars, went on to gross over $170,000,000 worldwide. With his name now on the top of the A-list, Patrick went on to star in such films as Road House (1989), Next of Kin (1989), and another cultural phenomenon, Ghost (1990). The '90s also showcased Patrick in Katherine Bigelow's Point Break (1991), Roland Joffe's City of Joy (1992), and Three Wishes (1995). Recently, Patrick has lent his star power to such indie gems as Green Dragon (2001) and Donnie Darko (2001).

Patrick Swayze brings his bigger-than-life heroics to the small screen this month with the Hallmark Channel's production of King Solomon's Mines, based on H. Rider Haggard's legendary pulp novel, with Patrick starring as its iconic hero, Allan Quartermain. Credited as being the inspiration for Indiana Jones, as well as dozens of other pop culture heroes, Quartermain is a 19th century adventurer who travels to Africa in search of a missing archeologist, a man who holds the key to untold treasures, and power. Patrick is given fine support from Alison Doody, Roy Marsden, John Standing and Sidede Onyulo in this full-throttle adventure that is must-see viewing for the whole family. It premieres on the Hallmark Channel Saturday, June 12.

Patrick Swayze sat down recently to discuss topics ranging from his impressive body of work, to spirituality, to the genius of Marlon Brando. Here's what transpired:

Tell us about wearing the shoes of Allan Quartermain, one of the first heroes of pulp fiction.

Patrick Swayze: I think any kid who's ever had an adventurous bone in their body, either read Haggard's book or saw one of the film versions. It was a lot of fun for me because I felt like I was coming home, back to that kind of period hero role that I was born for, and in many ways I've lived my whole life, with all the training I've done in things like martial arts, horsemanship, stunt work, and just being a mountain man and survivalist. All these things that are passions in my life were great to bring to this character. It was also an interesting choice they made changing him from an Englishman to an American. There was a very specific reason for that; to try to bring it into a more contemporary feeling. "King Solomon's Mines" helped launch an entirely new form of storytelling that evolved into films like the Indiana Jones trilogy and Romancing the Stone, although those films were all pretty tongue-in-cheek, and I think we take it much more seriously. We wanted to create a dramatic epic that had a sense of fun. What I also wanted to try to do with it was incorporate my passion for conservation and wildlife, to have Quartermain evolve from a great white hunter into a conservationist.

Swayze as the original pulp fiction hero, Allan Quartermain, in King Solomon's Mines.

You spent five months in South Africa shooting this film. What were your impressions of the country?

I was there once before when I did a movie with my wife, Lisa, called Steel Dawn.

I loved that movie!

(laughs) Yeah, people love that movie. That cracks me up. It's like I'm the king of cult followings, with Point Break, Road House, Next of Kin...but there is something about Africa, this ancient energy that just permeates your whole being, just standing on that earth. As I was there, and spending time with the lions and tigers and elephants--I actually became friends with this elephant named Harry that we used in the movie that was just amazing! He's the huge, 15-foot elephant in the opening of the film. We actually used two elephants playing the same part: Harry and Sally. (laughs) I just decided to approach this elephant the same way I do my horses: with a lot of love and trust. It got to the point where he'd pick me up with his tusks and I'd shake him, and he'd shake back. On my last day, I was leaving the set in this Land Rover, and I stopped the vehicle, and there was Harry. I wanted to see if he'd come to me or not, so I yelled "Harry!" And he saw me, threw back his trunk, and started charging towards my vehicle! I thought "O-kay!" So he stopped right by the vehicle, stuck his trunk inside and wrapped it around me because he didn't want me to go! I was ready to take a big part of my ranch back home and turn it into an elephant preserve after that.

Did you do most of your own stunts?

Normally what I do is let the stunt double do most of the rehearsals, the idea being that the less you do, the less chance you have of getting hurt. Although my stunt double didn't ride horses, so all the horsemanship was up to me. But most of the stunts you see in my films are done by me.

It was nice to see Alison Doody acting again. I think every man who saw her in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade has yet to catch his breath.

It's a real pleasure working with a leading lady who knows exactly who she is. A lot of leading ladies, when they finally get to a certain point in their careers, get angry, and have an attitude, but Alison didn't. She was a real pro and made it safe for us both, because she's very happily married, and so am I, which helped us to establish this relationship set in the 19th century where you just didn't cross a certain line with someone you weren't married to, even though every fiber of your being is screaming to. Plus, it helped us to navigate around that predictable moment of "when is the guy gonna hook up with the girl?"

Of course, with this film, it was just that wonderful kiss between the two.

Which in the 19th century, was akin to a love scene! If there's one thing I've learned in any love scene I've done in a film, it's that it's not about sucking face. It's not about jumping someone's bones. It's about the connection between two human beings in the eyes, the idea that this person makes you whole and completes you. That's what's really sexy. And that's what makes this relationship in the film really sexy: it's all about working up to that kiss.

L to R: Patrick Swayze, Patsy Swayze and Patrick's wife, Lisa Niemi, in Patsy's Houston dance studio, circa 1977.

Let's talk about your background. You were born and raised in Houston, Texas. Your mom is a legendary choreographer who started her own studio in Houston. What did your dad do?

Well, his dad was one of the foremen of the King Ranch, which was the biggest ranch in the world, at one point. So my dad was raised on a ranch. At one point, he was the state champion calf roper. Needless to say, he got me into that stuff from the time I was little. My dad was a really organic, kind of earthy man. He was one of those men that was full of loving energy and had a sweet, gentle nature, but he was also one of those men that you didn't want to cross. He had that Southern man kind of energy to where if they ever lose that graciousness for one moment and that tone changes, you better run. There's no warning. He really taught me so many things that in your younger years are kind of cliché, but as you get older, you realize their importance: like integrity, passion, in your work ethic. I now live my life by most of the things my dad taught me. I think my favorite saying of his would be: "All I got is my integrity. To this day, I ain't never seen a hearse pulling a U-Haul." (laughs) Really, playing Allan Quartermain was an opportunity for me to play my dad.

And your mother, Patsy, is world-renowned dancer and choreographer.

That's the other side of me: the intensity, the passion, the drive, the belief in communicating something through the arts. It's all those qualities of my mother's that have really led me down all these tangential paths in my life. My parents were an amazing couple.

Swayze as Orry Main, in the ABC mini-series North & South (1985).

Your father was a man of integrity, and you seem to largely play men of integrity, going back to your character Orry Main in the miniseries "North & South," the role that helped launch your career.

What sucks an audience in is that ticking clock of whether this character is going to achieve what it is that they want in their life and it's usually not something physical. It's usually something internal, some subtext that's eating at them or haunting them like a demon. It's a deep-seated thing that they may, or may not, get past in order to get to what they need to achieve. Who really cares how many things you can blow up and who wins? It's how you get there. It's the process that's really the powerful thing in storytelling.

Clockwise: Patrick Swayze, Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, C. Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio, and Emilio Estevez in Francis Coppola's The Outsiders (1983).

The Outsiders came out around the same time, and helped to solidify your stardom. Tell us about the experience of working on that landmark Coppola film, which made stars out of a huge cast of unknowns, with names like Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, and many others.

It was wonderful. Playing Orry really graduated me into playing the role of Darrel Curtis. And Francis was a great teacher for me. What I got from Francis was the true essence of what "organic" means. He would have us live in the house as a family, and be brothers. I would teach these kids how to jump freight trains and ride them. I used to jump freights in my surfing days, when I'd jump a freight leaving Houston for the Gulf Coast and then jump another one to get home. I taught these kids all the skills I knew: how to fight, how to do back flips and hand stands. I was teaching gymnastics classes to all the guys every day. The only one who was too cool to work with us was Matt Dillon. (laughs) He was much more into "I'm a New Yorker. I ain't into that stuff. That's pussy stuff." (laughs) But (Tom) Cruise took to it like a magnet. That's what I love about Tom, same thing with John Travolta. I love guys who are like sponges. No attitude, just "I want to learn." And if you look at them now, those are the guys that have careers. When you come from "I don't know," your growth is limitless. When you come from "I know," your growth stops. But Francis got so detailed. He didn't want anything coming out that didn't come from you as a person. No play-acting. No doing "words." We rehearsed that film completely improvisationally. We really became this family of three boys who were too young to be left alone, but we had no choice, because our parents were dead. And we had to survive, and we had to maintain our dignity. If there's a common thread among all the characters I've played, I think it's the exploration of all our dignity as people. So Francis became a huge part of my life. We were all together at his winery up in Napa for the 20th anniversary of the film, and the director's cut that's coming out on DVD, and it was like old home week. It was like my father was in my life again. Francis will always be an inspiration to me, because he never gives up.

Swayze and Jennifer Grey in the smash hit Dirty Dancing (1987).

With Dirty Dancing, did you and the rest of the cast and crew have any clue that the film would become the phenomenon that it did?

Everyone always wants to say in hindsight, "Oh yeah, I knew it all along." But Dirty Dancing was another one of those situations where we were just re-writing constantly, Eleanor Bergstein, Emile Ardolino and I, around the clock. When you find one of those projects where everyone jumps in with both feet, for me, those are the movies that make history. Dirty Dancing had that kind of energy. I would say it's the only film in my life that made me realize I had to keep my dancing quiet, because if dancing had been the thing that had launched me initially, I would have always been "dancer turned actor," and never been taken seriously as an actor. But what made that movie famous wasn't me shaking my butt. It was the fact that the young, funky Jewish girl gets the guy not because she's the hottest girl on the block, but because of what she's got in her heart. That's what's worth falling in love with. I truly believe that's why that movie continues to live on, like Ghost. I never used to believe in luck before, but when I think back on some of the films I've done, there's got to be a little luck in there somewhere, you know? I mean, who gets to be involved with one movie that makes history? (laughs) It's that mystical law of chance the Buddhists talk about called "miyoho."

Let's talk about some of your other films. One of your earliest films I really liked was Walter Hill's Uncommon Valor, with Gene Hackman.

I come from a place where I want to be part of a collaborative, nurturing kind of energy. A lot of times you'll have actors who just want to phone it in until their close-up, or just phone it in when they're off-camera, and Gene never did that. It didn't matter if he had an attitude about something that had made him angry on the set, always with the other actor; he was there 100% for you emotionally, no matter which side of the camera he was on. That made me realize that was the kind of actor I wanted to be. I've always been very lucky with those kinds of people. I was in this hardware store off Vineland one day, and somebody got out of a car next to me, and I just turned into a zombie, got off my motorcycle, and followed this guy into the story, without a clue as to who he was. All of the sudden, this big Indian puts himself between me and this guy, and I'm thinking "Oh my God, I've just finished "North & South" and The Outsiders and I've had this kind of stalking stuff happen to me. What am I doing?!" Then I realized it was Marlon Brando! So I did the typical fan thing and said the completely wrong thing: "I just finished working with Francis Ford Coppola on a movie. Then I thought "Oh my God, you dummy! Isn't he in the middle of a lawsuit with Francis?!" (laughs) So I wound up following him around and talking to him, and felt like I was at a therapist's, and he just listened to me talk. I finally stopped myself and said "I'm sorry; I'm really embarrassed by this." He turned around as he was about to leave and said "Hey son, I see something in your eyes. Don't give it up. Believe in yourself." And that has stuck with me forever, through the worst times, that Marlon Brando saw something in my eyes.



Let's talk about Road House, which might be my favorite film of yours. Your character Dalton wasn't the typical action hero. He was quite complex.

The whole basis of Road House was a modern-day western with the lead character being quite a complicated man. It would have been very simple to go down the road of playing tough and acting intense. But just playing "tough guy" never really goes anywhere. It might go somewhere for a little bit in a certain genre of film, but then people get tired of that genre and tired of that actor. This was going to be possibly the one real fight film I did where a lifetime of training I'd gone through would be able to be put into one movie. In the fight scenes, none of us were pulling our punches, except for the ones to the face. We made sure that everyone who was fighting really knew how to fight, so that you'd lift people off the ground, but you didn't break bone. We wanted to avoid the stuntman "biff, bam, bop" thing. In certain ways, I saw Dalton as Shane. And I liked the fact that it was one of the first opportunities for me to put out there my passion for being a peaceful warrior: to be highly-skilled, but to avoid violence or hurting another human being at all costs, unless you have no choice. But my complete concern in that film was to focus on the performance, and the fighting was secondary. The thing that continues to amaze me about Road House is the huge cult following it has, not only with male viewers, but with women, as well. I guess it's that whole idea of the man who's really mush inside. Women want men to get more sensitive, then they do, and women write songs like "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" (laughs)

Swayze and Demi Moore in Ghost (1990).

Speaking of "chick flicks," let's talk about Ghost.

That, for me, was another testament that when you get people believing they're doing something special, something special happens. Jerry Zucker, being renowned for his comedic work, brought a wonderful thing to this project. And the writer, Bruce Joel Rubin, was a real gift because Bruce is a very spiritual man. When we'd be talking during the re-writes, we'd go into deeper topics about spirituality, but we finally came up with the idea that if you truly love someone and then you die, you take the love with you, because that's all you can really take. By curbing the desire to try to say too much, and thus possibly alienating people, and going back to very simple truths, it just seemed to resonate with a lot of people around the world. It was one of those films that come along and an alarm goes off in my body, telling me that I have to do it. It passed what I call "the goosebump test." When that happens, I know I have to do a film.

Patrick Swayze and wife Lisa Niemi at their ranch, Rancho Bizarro, in May 2009.

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AN ACT OF GOD ** out of ****
STUDIO 54

In the last 40 years or so, we've seen the Almighty embodied by a nice old man (George Burns), an authoritative black man (Morgan Freeman) and now a gay man (Jim Parsons). This is progress. The stand-up act/sketch comedy that is An Act Of God is proving a hit thanks to the pull of Parsons. If they decide to extend the run, perhaps Caitlyn Jenner will be next?

As a sketch on Saturday Night Live et al, God would have been low-hanging fruit. Surely he'd always have something to say about current events on "Weekend Update?" As a persona for a comedian called over for a chat on talk shows, God might have been an inspired career move. As the main attraction of a full blown Broadway show, God proves very mild entertainment.

Written by David Javerbaum, this is essentially a one-man show. But since God can be seen as embodied in three persons, here we have Jim Parsons as God; Tim Kazurinsky as the archangel Gabriel, a sort of narrator who reads out certain passages from the Bible when called upon; and Christopher Fitzgerald as a kvetchy, questioning archangel Michael. While Michael's desire to get answers to burning questions like "Why do people suffer" are meant to drive the evening forward, it's not really what this show is about.

What An Act Of God is really about is God's act, the routine he might offer up in Las Vegas: a splashy entrance, a monologue and then questions from the audience. Like Carol Burnett with less Tarzan yelling. Happily, Parsons makes this mild conceit sort of work. He's genial, pointed, sharp-tongued and sassy in the way you hope God might really be, if your God is the kind of god embodied by Jesus (tells good stories, always open to a teaching moment) and shares the values of liberal New Yorkers. If you prefer the Old Testament God of wrath and judgment and smiting of enemies (like the older man in front of me who sat stone-faced throughout the entire evening and bristled when God cursed about Sarah Palin), well, you might want to stick to televangelists.

As for what God actually says here, it's just riffs on what you might expect: the silliness of Noah's ark if you try to take it seriously, how he feels about gays (spoiler alert: he's a fan) and the fact that, no, God is NOT rooting for your football team to win the Super Bowl. And stop telling him to bless America. America has been blessed enough!



So, harmless but not very engaging. At two points, An Act Of God reaches for more. First, Parsons does an excellent job threading the needle when discussing how God ordered Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac. Here, the text by Javerbaum looks to go a little deeper, a little more serious, without ever losing the fun or needlessly offending. Parsons explains that God chooses to keep himself in the dark sometimes (it's more fun that way) so God really isn't sure if Abraham will go through with it. His genuine fascination when realizing that Abraham is really going to do it -- really going to kill his own son -- proves a compelling, dramatic moment. It's actually a rather touching passage and hints at how a better show might have done so much more, especially with Parsons in the lead.

The other, less successful attempt to be bold involves Michael's increasingly agitated concerns about the presence of evil, why suffering, why hunger, why pain and so on. He tries to confront God and while Moses and others have gotten away with this on occasion, it ain't easy and Michael doesn't get very far. Then, rather abruptly, the show is over.

While Fitzgerald and Kazurinsky were perhaps welcome faces for Parsons to play off, Kazurinsky in particular has virtually nothing of note to do. They seem more distraction than anything else. Joe Mantello's direction can't make them seem essential and his talents aren't stretched here. As modest as this effort feels, it would certainly seem far more tepid if Parsons weren't holding it together with his charm and presence.

The scenic design by Scott Pask combined with the lighting of Hugh Vanstone and sound design of Fitz Patton proves ultimately a disappointment. It looks sort of Vegas flashy at first. But the dark clouds and thunder when God gets moody feel cliche and the finale -- scraps of paper started whirling around for no apparent reason -- is bizarre and pointless in its staging. Actually, the finale kind of feels like the Book Of Revelations: you've got some flashy imagery but once it's over you sit back and think, "Huh?"


THEATER OF 2015

Honeymoon In Vegas **
The Woodsman ***
Constellations ** 1/2
Taylor Mac's A 24 Decade History Of Popular Music 1930s-1950s ** 1/2
Let The Right One In **
Da no rating
A Month In The Country ** 1/2
Parade in Concert at Lincoln Center ** 1/2
Hamilton at the Public ***
The World Of Extreme Happiness ** 1/2
Broadway By The Year 1915-1940 **
Verite * 1/2
Fabulous! *
The Mystery Of Love & Sex **
An Octoroon at Polonsky Shakespeare Center *** 1/2
Fish In The Dark *
The Audience ***
Josephine And I ***
Posterity * 1/2
The Hunchback Of Notre Dame **
Lonesome Traveler **
On The Twentieth Century ***
Radio City Music Hall's New York Spring Spectacular ** 1/2
The Heidi Chronicles *
The Tallest Tree In The Forest * 1/2
Broadway By The Year: 1941-1965 ***
Twelfth Night by Bedlam ***
What You Will by Bedlam *** 1/2
Wolf Hall Parts I and II ** 1/2
Skylight ***
Nellie McKay at 54 Below ***
Ludic Proxy ** 1/2
It Shoulda Been You **
Finding Neverland ** 1/2
Hamlet w Peter Sarsgaard at CSC no stars
The King And I ***
Marilyn Maye -- Her Way: A Tribute To Frank Sinatra at 54 Below ***
Gigi * 1/2
An American In Paris ** 1/2
Doctor Zhivago no stars
Fun Home **
Living On Love * 1/2
Early Shaker Spirituals: A Record Album Interpretation ***
Airline Highway * 1/2
The Two Gentlemen Of Verona (Fiasco Theatre) ***
The Visit (w Chita Rivera) ** 1/2
The Sound And The Fury (ERS) **
Broadway By The Year: 1966-1990 ***
The Spoils * 1/2
Ever After (at Papermill) **
Heisenberg *** 1/2
An Act Of God **

_____________
Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the founder and CEO of the forthcoming website BookFilter, a book lover's best friend. Trying to decide what to read next? Head to BookFilter! Need a smart and easy gift? Head to BookFilter? Wondering what new titles came out this week in your favorite categories, like cookbooks and mystery and more? Head to BookFilter! It's a website that lets you browse for books online the way you do in a physical bookstore, provides comprehensive info on new releases every week in every category and offers passionate personal recommendations every step of the way. It's like a fall book preview or holiday gift guide -- but every week in every category. He's also the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day and features top journalists and opinion makers as guests. It's available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website and his daily blog. Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes.

Note: Michael Giltz is provided with free tickets to shows with the understanding that he will be writing a review. All productions are in New York City unless otherwise indicated.

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After seeing the new movie, Love & Mercy, we'll never hear The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" the same way again. During a scene in which Brian Wilson (portrayed by Paul Dano) brings the beloved 1966 song to life with a swirl of French horn and sleigh bells, the audience gets swept up in the 24 year-old musician's auditory hallucinations as he dictates ascending chromatic scales to session players. This moment in the biopic reinforces Wilson's reputation as one of the great melody makers of the 20th century. It also recalls the Oscar-winning 1984 film, Amadeus, wherein Mozart is depicted as the frenzied savant who recites chord progressions to his mythological nemesis, Antonio Salieri. The similarity isn't a mistake: Brian Wilson is a rock 'n' roll songwriter worthy of composer - and eccentric - status.

Written by Oren Moverman and Michael A. Lerner with input from Wilson, Love & Mercy is an atypical biographical sketch that takes us on a trip inside the genius mind of The Beach Boys' original frontman from the mid-1960s through the late-1980s. The film's storyline favors emotional tug-of-war over compositional details, and director Bill Pohlad keeps all eyes on the canvas with his expressionist portrait of Wilson that goes behind the music into the messy, intimate relationship between art and survival.

The movie flips between Wilson in his forties (played by John Cusack) and in his earlier life as an idealistic singer (Dano) experiencing the ups and downs of success in Los Angeles, California. Each version of Wilson is scarred - either by abuse or addiction or both. The older Brian courts a kindhearted Cadillac saleswoman named Melinda Ledbetter (played with admirable restraint by Elizabeth Banks) under the evil thumb of psychotherapist Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti at his creepy best); the younger Brian juggles a wife with touring and bandmates (including his two brothers and cousin) but can't escape the hammer of his father's rage and perfectionism. Wilson's wounds generate boundless creativity (his masterpiece 1966 album, Pet Sounds, was spurred on by a disparaging comment made by his father) and social paralysis (he weighed 300 pounds and spent several years dressed in a bathrobe before a 1979 divorce). Marilyn Wilson (Erin Darke), his first wife and mother of his daughters Carnie and Wendy, is depicted as a loving force that inspires The Beach Boys' biggest hit of the 1960s, "Good Vibrations." By the time Wilson meets second wife Ledbetter in the 1980s, his soul is the pulp of pills and therapy gone awry. When Ledbetter is allowed to help Wilson heal, the simple promise of sharing a bowl of matzo ball soup together is enough to make him fall in love with her.

Love & Mercy isn't a play-by-play of Brian Wilson's life; instead, the dramatization attempts to capture the aura of the songwriter's creative impetus. The dual portrayal serves the disjointed halves of the singer's career well. As engrossing as it is to watch the Dano version of Wilson conjure musical fantasies and wrestle with demons, Cusack's performance as the lost musician is vulnerable and core altering. He may not resemble Brian Wilson, but he masters the singer's paranoia, emptiness and yearning with every blank stare, pause and shrug.

The signature sound of The Beach Boys is the true star of Love & Mercy. It's no surprise the film has launched at the same time that concert tickets go on sale for the band members' summer tours. These days, Brian Wilson performs as a solo artist, accompanied by former bandmate Al Jardine; his cousin, Mike Love, the voice that drove the hooks on three of the group's four number-one singles ("I Get Around" in 1964; "Help Me Rhonda" in 1965; "Good Vibrations" in 1966; "Kokomo" in 1988), now heads a touring configuration of The Beach Boys that includes Bruce Johnston. Sadly, Wilson's brother Dennis drowned tragically in 1983; and youngest brother Carl - who sang the delicate lead vocal on "God Only Knows"- died of cancer in 1998.

In the annals of American pop music, there's room for all of The Beach Boys. Yet, this film skews the band's legacy in Brian Wilson's favor. At the end of the day, the same sweet and melancholy melodies he hears in his head are the ones that also linger in ours, willing us to believe in the power of love and mercy and matzo ball soup.


Paul Dano as Brian Wilson. Publicity photo courtesy of Roadside Attractions.

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When I read a recent New York Times article by Elinor Burkett titled, "What Makes a Woman?" I found that I agreed with her on one point. I too thought that small minority of transgender people objecting to the "Vagina Monologues" was needless and reactionary. I have friends who have been part of all transgender productions of the 'Monologues'; these productions have been happening for over a decade, and Eve Ensler has been a supporter of the transgender community.

However, unlike Dr. Burkett, I recognized that this minority was just that: the minority.

Throughout the article, transgender people are represented as some monolithic entity. Additionally, she makes sweeping generalizations that can be disproven by both science and simple anecdotes. Let's look at some of the issues with the article.

1. The article falsely claims that gender is entirely a social construct.

This is falsifiable in several ways. First, take the sad case of David Reimer, born male, but raised female after a botched circumcision as a baby. Reimer never identified as female, and eventually transitioned back to male in his teens and killed himself in his early 30s. Then there are many, many other studies linking gender identity and biology, as well as a recent meta-study that all concluded there are biological elements to gender identity.

While social conditioning plays a role in gender, there's little debate anymore that biological reasons play a significant role in gender identity as well. Poor, dead David Reimer showed us that even an entire childhood of conditioning was insufficient to define him.

2. Male privilege is not monolithic and universal

Privilege is a multilayered and intersectional phenomenon. While Dr. Burkett says she does not want to play the oppression Olympics, it is also a gross oversimplification to use Caitlyn Jenner to imply that all men have more privilege than all women. There's race, religion, wealth, ability, region, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and many more factors at play. Men have more privilege than women on average, but there are clearly some women who have more than some men because of these other factors.

3. The female experience is not universal... or limited to non-transgender (cisgender) women

I know gold-star lesbians who have never woken up in the morning worried that they're pregnant. The girl next door to me growing up needed a hysterectomy at 12 and never had a period. I know women who have been told that unless they have had kids, they don't really know what it's like to be a woman.

Conversely, transgender women also definitely have to worry about being beaten or raped. We can have our breasts stared at, or suddenly become the "coffee wench" for men at meetings. My last job paid me a fraction of what the male programmers who theoretically worked under me made.

If being female is a checklist of experiences, then a lot of cisgender people would be left off of it, too.

4. Caitlyn Jenner is an outlier within the transgender community

Caitlyn Jenner is representative of all transgender women in the way the Kardashians are representative of all cisgender women.

Which is to say, not at all.

Many transgender women have very little safety, money or privilege pre-transition, especially as people perceived as effeminate men. After transition, transgender women are highly susceptible to extreme poverty, violence, incarceration, HIV infection, homelessness and unemployment. To imply that transgender women usually carry over a large portion of prior male privilege post-transition flies in the face of every demographic statistic we have. Not to mention common sense.

5. Sex hormones do affect us

Let's be real here: hormones do affect our emotional state. This one is common sense, to an extent. We almost don't need doctors to tell us that sex hormones are one reason why teenagers are moody, many women experience ups and downs during their cycle, testosterone is correlated with aggression (why you get your pets fixed) and changes in emotional response are often a sign of the onset of menopause.

So, why should it come as any surprise that when transgender people begin taking Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), many see some changes in how they experience events around them? Or more importantly, why should they be shamed for expressing how they experience these changes?

6. Judging an entire class of people based on anecdotes is stereotyping

Dr. Burkett's article takes great umbrage at a few transgender academics and activists who got into online squabbles over language. I have no problem with the word vagina, or "The Vagina Monologues," and neither do the vast majority of transgender people. But based on these interactions with a small but vocal portion of the transgender community online, she has decided that the entire transgender community is a threat to all women.

Ascribing a universal set of beliefs to transgender people based on a small subset of that community is a form of stereotyping. Using those stereotypes to condemn an entire community is bigotry.

7. Human dignity is not a zero-sum game

Accepting transgender women as women does not fundamentally detract from the rights, dignity, or value of cisgender women. The argument that calling transgender people women or men dilutes or pollutes the meaning of these words is effectively the same argument used by those opposed to marriage equality. They claimed that adding same sex unions to the definition of marriage will destroy it, or devalue the worth of straight people's marriages.

Accepting a transgender woman as female doesn't devalue the institution of womanhood any more that accepting gay spouses devalues the institution of marriage.

8. Dr. Burkett's anti-trans arguments are the same as those used by right-wing misogynists

Stella Morabito is a writer over at The Federalist, and comes from the Phyllis Schlafly school of thought. She opposes abortion under any circumstances, no-fault divorce, sex before marriage, women working outside the home after they have children, same sex marriage, supports abstinence-only education, thinks feminism is a form of communism and that feminists are waging the "real war on women".

But Dr. Burkett and Ms. Morabito agree on one thing: they both get really, really angry about transgender people calling themselves men or women. In fact, Morabito wrote an article titled "How the Trans-Agenda Seeks to Redefine Everyone," that makes almost the exact same points as "What Makes a Woman?"

Rather interesting intellectual company for a feminist to keep.

9. Transgender women are held to an impossible standard for gender expression

It's hard to believe Dr. Burkett's claims that she has nothing against transgender people when she finds Caitlyn Jenner's Vanity Fair photo so offensive, but hasn't also written 2,000 words in the New York Times decrying all the other similarly clad (and Photoshopped) women who have graced the cover in the past. Therein lies the rub.

Transgender women are accused of not being "real" if they don't express themselves in a way that is stereotypically feminine enough, and also accused of being fake or caricatures if they present in a stereotypically feminine way. This leaves a narrow to nonexistent window of "acceptable expression."

For example (true story) both I and a co-worker at my last job coincidentally owned identical business suits. However, it was been hinted to me that the suit was both too masculine (because of how it is cut), or too feminine (because it comes with a skirt, and is beige in color). My co-worker who owned the same suit did not have her gender questioned in the same way.

10. Gender confirmation surgery isn't about gender stereotypes

Dr. Burkett's article states that transgender women have GCS more often than transgender men because of gender stereotyping. This seems highly unlikely, given that trans women outnumber trans men by about 3:2 to start with, and that GCS for transgender men is far more complicated, expensive and produces a less functional result than GCS for transgender women. In short, if gender stereotypes play any role in the statistic she cites, it is a small one.

11. Feminism isn't just for the "right" kinds of women

Past acceptability politics in feminism included the National Organization for Women (NOW) disowning its lesbian members in the 1960s because Betty Friedan feared that outspoken lesbians were a threat to the feminist movement. Setting up lesbians as a "Lavender Menace" created a rift that ultimately weakened the movement for women's rights, and hurt queer women in particular. Even today, lesbian, bisexual and transgender women suffer the most from economic disparities.

Now, transgender people are told by Dr. Burkett and others that they are only welcome in the movement if they give up their claims of being men and women, and to only express their gender in ways that people like Dr. Burkett find acceptable.

Can there be any serious expectation that anyone would find such terms for inclusion acceptable?

12. Language evolves over time

Language evolves as culture changes. Our cultural understandings of marriage, gender, sex and basically anything LGBT are in flux. Additionally, as I have written before, the English language has a very hard time with non-binary gender concepts. How does our language include people who identify as men who are pregnant? How do we have language that doesn't "other" people who identify as women, but transitioned to get there?

Many self-identity words are the site of a struggle with how to define them. We should regard the meanings of those words more poetically and be open to others using them differently.

13. People don't choose to be transgender

Dr. Burkett hints that she thinks being transgender is a choice, when she writes, "What we do with those genders -- the roles we assign ourselves, and each other, based on them -- is almost entirely mutable." Ummm... no.

No one chooses this life because they think it will be fun or easy. Every statistic, survey and study we have says this is a hard road, and we know it. We transition not because we think it is easy or fun, but because it is easier than continuing to live a lie.

14. Labeling transgender people as not real men or women is part of the problem

In our binary society, when transgender people are labeled not "real" men or women, it implies they are things, "its," or simply not human. The results of being seen as fake, or as non-human are devastating.

From Gwen Araujo, to Brandon Teena, to Angie Zapata, to Jennifer Laude, to Cemia Dove, our lack of ownership of our bodies and identities has meant being forcibly stripped, groped, raped, strangled, stabbed, drowned, burned and bludgeoned. It means that transgender panic defenses live on in court, and sometimes even win. After Brandon McInerney shot Larry King twice in the back of the head in the middle of a crowded classroom, the jury deadlocked on the case. Some even sympathized with the murderer. "[Brandon] was just solving a problem," one juror said.

While Dr. Burkett claims she abhors violence against transgender people, she is part of the problem when she tries to deny them the right to self-identify as men or women.

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Tonight, I'm joined by prolific filmmaker Liz Garbus. The Academy Award-nominated documentarian has directed a new film that uses rare archival footage and never-before-heard recordings to paint a remarkable portrait of legendary singer Nina Simone. The project, titled What Happened, Miss Simone?, premieres June 26th on Netflix.

In the clip below, Liz explains the distinguishing quality that sets her documentary apart from the much-talked-about upcoming Nina Simone biopic starring Zoe Saldana.



For more of our conversation, be sure to tune in to Tavis Smiley on PBS. Check our website for your local TV listings: www.pbs.org/tavis.

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Have you noticed that lately, women over 50 are actually visible in movies and online series? Yes! We're still here -- visible, vocal and active.

I've just finished binge-watching "Grace and Frankie," and although I haven't lost a husband to his male lover, there was a lot to relate to in the strength of these two women negotiating senior singleness. Despite very different viewpoints, the two women bond and support each other. Many of may have unlikely support networks. One of my own groups consists of nine women who had nothing more in common than being available on Wednesday nights. We've been together since 2009, through moves, new jobs, weddings, deaths, retirements, vacations, illness and successes.

At the movies, Blythe Danner is also negotiating the single life in I'll See You in My Dreams. The death of her dog opens her up to a series of new experiences, including romance, that many of us can relate to. This is a realistic portrayal of a woman, full of energy and busy at 70. We revisit our equally active friends (although in a less realistic setting) in The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I love that Evelyn embarks on a new career because she needs the money and ends up wildly successful -- never mind her age. I've documented women in their eighties creating successful businesses, so it isn't a surprise in the real world, but is still a novelty on a movie.

The magnificent Helen Mirren, currently on Broadway, is enjoying her new TONY as she reminds us of Queen Elizabeth's long career. In Woman in Gold, she also reminds us that you don't have to be the Queen of England to be tenacious and tough.

Yes, I know that we still have a long way to go and that visibility doesn't automatically mean equality. Still, I want to celebrate this recognition that we're still here. You can probably add dozens of examples to this short list. And I know that everyone reading this is standing up and standing out in her own way.

Because we're still here -- and we're not going away!

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I haven't put pen to paper in a creative manner in so long. Fact is, since my transition from strictly music to a much broader scope of the entertainment business and it's many facets, the only creativity I've displayed recently is what I wear to an appearance. It's like as if I'm in character as "Uncle Louie" and my wardrobe is a huge part of that image. It represents who I have become in my business. It makes me easily identifiable and hopefully, memorable. When people see me again... they remember! It has to be a flashy color-coordinated outfit; that's become part of the Uncle Louie signature look. Shirts with a matching fitted hat. I never bend the brim of my hats and I always leave the stickers on. That drives Goldberg crazy so for that alone, it's become part of my routine! As somebody with some serious OCD, routine means a lot too. I also have ADD, so try and stay with me; I get off subject a lot! Back to my clothes. I match those articles of clothing to my sneakers and I'm always sure to wear a huge flashy watch, a couple of rings, maybe a World Series or NBA Championship ring, an iced out bracelet, and I can't forget my big gold chains. Dookie chains like rappers wore in the '80s or a couple of huge Cuban link chains, depending on my mood. If I'm at one of my Legends of Wrestling events, I have to rock the huge gold Championship Belt pendant that Rey Rey custom made for me. It matches the Legends of Wrestling World Championship belt he made and since I can't wear the belt, the giant pendant is the next best thing! The best part when I'm wearing all that stuff is that I don't take myself serious, it's almost like cosplay but for a character that I created. I'm Louis Gregory, but when I put on those clothes and I lift those huge gold chains over my head, when they rest around my neck, on my shoulders, I become Uncle Louie.

I decided to get back to writing. It's always something I loved. In college, English Literature was my major. I figure it's like riding bike; writing is just, it's just, well... something you can always do, right? I mean, a pen is like a car, isn't it? Just get behind it and push until it picks up momentum and it'll coast right through the page like a car down a steep hill. My pen leaves word after word on the paper like the Lawman Mustang. Take Bill Goldberg for instance; he gets into one of his muscle cars, slams his size 14 stingray boot down on the gas, accelerates across the pavement, leaving an indelible signature in hot, stinky, burned rubber. I want to leave my mark too, without the smell of course (or so I hope), but you get what I'm trying to say, right? Where was I...

I am not "living the dream" -- I'm "living my dream." I am so lucky to be doing so many exciting things and every day feels like a new adventure. The challenges are part of the fun and they make the success and the victory taste that much better. What I'm trying to say is, yeah it's cool but don't get me wrong, it isn't all just good times and fun getaways. There is a lot of moving parts to what we do. Each event that we produce or promote has so many moving parts. It takes a lot of team effort and coordination to ensure they are a success. Words cannot explain what it's like to talk to Brian Knobs (Nasty Boys) for an hour on the phone about a business idea and how best to execute it. If you were a fly on the wall for those conversations, you would fly around looking for fly paper! As far as creating shows and making appearances, the "build it and they will come" philosophy only works in the movies. Building it is just a small fraction of the equation. You have to build it, promote it, and execute it. You are only as good as your last event. There are a few bits and pieces in between too. Can't forget the most important part though, you have to be able to get paid! Getting paid is always tricky, but if you don't get paid it isn't a business, it's a hobby. You can't keep food on your plate, a roof over your head and the lights on if you aren't making money.

Social media has played a huge role in what I do. Some of the biggest websites in my business have written articles about my success in social media. It's been both humbling and motivational. I have to stay on the cutting edge of each social media platform, for me and for my clients. I also have to understand the pitfalls and consequences of social media. A lot of people who follow my Twitter or my Instagram must think "hell, I can do that."

I recently spoke to a follower from my social media who has become a friend and I was venting about how tired I was on the road. I always love a good opportunity to complain a bit, I get that from my mom. He told me how easy my job seemed, how I got to travel around with Goldberg and "watch Goldberg sign autographs all day," and he asked how hard that could possibly be. Man, for a second that really aggravated me. I wanted to make sure that he and the rest of the world knew how hard I worked. Then I realized that his perception of what I do was actually my fault. Nobody to blame but myself. Social media is just so powerful and at the end of the day, it creates a perception that becomes a reality. My Tumblr blog may be the only window into my life for a lot of my friends, fans and followers. After all, I am the only one to blame for what they see through that window and I adhere to a strict code when it comes to painting that picture. I won't vent, won't be negative or never let anybody see me sweat via social media. There is one small caveat; I tend, from time to time, to tell people precisely what I think about them -- but that's another story.

There was that time when I told Questlove of the Roots how much I disliked something he did with regard to Eric B and Rakim; that went viral of course so I had to pull back on the reigns and be a little less liberal with sharing my thoughts in that regard. Still though, if one was to judge my role in the entertainment business strictly by what goes on my social media, they may think that was all I do; hang with Goldberg, hang with Eric B., eat dinner with celebs, drive cool cars, eat really good food -- and a lot of it! That is what my social media portrays, so I guess there must be hundreds of thousands of people following me on Twitter who think I just eat a lot and hang out with Goldberg. Kind of humorous I guess, not really totally accurate but definitely a microcosm of the positive things that I post on my pages.

Social media paints a picture and everybody with their own Instagram, Twitter, or whatever platform they use becomes an artist with the paintbrush, painting their own portrait. Ever think of it that way? My followers see me in the studio with Romero Britto, painting with him, so they think my life is happy and perfect like his iconic pop art masterpieces.

Back to Goldberg for a second. Man can Bill eat! I'll tell you what... I can eat too, but not like this guy. Coming up in this business with Prince Markie Dee and The Fat Boys, back when I was a rapper and a lyricist, when I was only an entertainer, before I became a businessman, being around foodies was an everyday thing. Eric B. and Deion Sanders would take me to the "french restaurant" all the time. Yeah, the French Restaurant was Popeyes, but that's beside the point. Who eats more than The Fat Boys? After working with Bill Goldberg I realized very quickly who eats more than The Fat Boys -- he does! Wow, the sheer amount of food he consumes puts The Fat Boys to shame! The biggest difference being that The Fat Boys ratio of caloric intake versus their exercise is significantly disproportionate, whereas Goldberg's love of food is paralleled by his ability to burn those calories with as much vigor as he consumed them. At 48 years old, he is in the best shape of his life; his cardio is exceptional.

As I watch Goldberg jump in the ring, he hits pads and then begins a sparring session, sweating off breakfast and lunch with a barrage of kicks and upper cuts. I pull out my iPhone and record a video of him sparring with King Mo at American Top Team. I open Instagram and post it, shortly thereafter my phone vibrates, it's Glory Kickboxing. I grab a pen, get behind it and push. I write down ideas, reminders, things I want to share. We shake hands with Dustin "The Diamond" Poirier, say goodbye to Kimbo Slice and we jump in the car. Pedal to the metal, we leave some of our rear tires in that Coconut Creek parking lot. On the road again, we joke about how much fun he had hitting people. I'm not sure what or who's next, but Bill is... Waffle House!

(In my next post I'll talk about how Legends of Wrestling was last weekend at CitiField.)

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Typically, a summer flick doesn't transcend its stereotypes. It's even less often that a film that revives a thirty year old franchise is better than mediocre. More importantly, a film that rips apart every Hollywood trope--things execs hold dear in film making--shouldn't exist in mainstream media in the first place.

Yet, here we have Mad Max: Fury Road. It's not a reboot of the iconic 80s Mad Max franchise but rather an addition to it, despite the murky timeline and change in actor. It's not a testosterone laden "dude flick" in which every character is a white male. In fact, the titular character, Max Rockatansky, sits shotgun next to Imperator Furiosa, often literally. This film not only strays from the traits of most summer blockbusters but also strays from every single thing people thought it would be. In a franchise founded on a post-apocalyptic wasteland, fast cars, and male leads, a film full of strong females and a vague sense of hope doesn't seem to fit. But it does. Perfectly.

Additionally, for being a two-hour long high speed chase, Fury Road does a remarkable job of building the characters. The 80s legend Mad Max was eliminated within minutes of the film, but that's okay -- he's replaced by an authentic, heartbreaking character. This version of Max comes with hallucinations and flashbacks, painting a more human picture of Max and making it easier to understand his turbulent emotions. Viewers don't have to be wasteland wanderers to relate to this character; they can easily sympathize because they see his pain. And, even though every major character in this movie is vastly different, they're all pursuing a common ideal: redemption. Furiosa, the women who fled the Citadel with her, and Nux--the War Boy--are raw, gritty, and real as they chase this dream. The female characters in this movie don't even fit their usual "damsel in distress" trope, which is a refreshing change from the usual action films.

Despite all of the ways Fury Road sets itself apart from Mad Max, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, the film gives ode to its predecessors by ensuring that elements from those films are present throughout. Creating a sequel thirty years after the previous movie is a dangerous game, and George Miller, writer and director, played it well. The leg brace Max created for himself after being shot in the knee in Mad Max? Present. A music box like the one he gave to the Feral Kid in The Road Warrior? Spotted. The Interceptor makes a brief appearance before being wrecked and then taken in by the Citadel -- another radical move made by Miller. This isn't a different Max; this is just Mad Max on even more octane.

Mad Max: Fury Road isn't for everyone. It's violent, bloody, and chaotic. On the other hand, it's poignant, mind-blowing, and even beautiful. It takes everything Mad Max was in the 80s and amps it up a few notches. This film is a masterpiece in the action genre, and it's certainly the best film I'll see all year. Plus, any movie that includes a flame throwing guitar player is just plain awesome.

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"A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding." - Marshall McLuhan

I've watched a lot of porn documentaries. A lot. It's kind of a thing. There's a new documentary that's causing quite a stir right now, and I've been getting asked about what I think.

This is not my review of that documentary; I've spoken at length, on social media and in interviews about the flaws I see in that film. Rather than offer more of the same opinions, I want to focus on an element of this discussion that seems readily apparent to me... an uncomfortable reality no one else is talking about.

In the late 90s, long before MTV stopped showing music videos, they sent a reporter named Tabitha Soren to LA to cover the porn industry. Her show aired as part of their True Life series. It painted one of the most objective pictures the mainstream has ever produced about fame, money and HIV; but frankly, her conclusions still skewed anti-porn. The audience seemed receptive, but the feedback from the network was that it was still too pro-porn. Tabitha Soren was allegedly fired, according to AVN's former editor Mark Logan, for being too sympathetic to an industry that deserves none.

Two adult-friendly documentaries premiered this year. I'm in one of them, X-Rated: The Greatest Adult Movies of All Time. At its core, it's got some presentation of reality, but really, it's just standard late night fair -- no substance, all titty. Showtime refused to promote it until after its original screening. Sitting behind his desk, Showtime president David Nevins was worried something positive about porn would scare away his shareholders. Once he saw it, and determined it was safe enough, he allowed some press.

The second is an independent feature, with the funds for production raised via Kickstarter. Directed by Sean Dunne, who won Best New Documentary Director for Oxycana at the Tribeca Film Festival, Cam Girlz endorses the budding webcam industry and the girls who participate in it. It's a beautifully shot film, and stunningly color corrected; it's only criticism being that it doesn't talk enough about the downsides of camming. The film premiered at AEE (the Adult Entertainment Expo, the industry's big trade show), received very little mainstream press and is now for sale on Vimeo.

These are just a couple of examples, drawn from a massive collection of similar circumstances, of what happens if you suggest anything other than Porn is Bad. Porn is still that much of a hot-button topic; people might whisper affirmations in hush-hush tones, but are terrified to say something dissenting from popular opinion in a forum where audiences will hear it. A filmmaker can't present empowerment because a film critic can't say, "that film was great."

To see this dynamic in action, we need only look at Hot Girls Wanted, the newest doc in a long line of Porn is Bad narratives. Hot Girls Wanted premiered to critical acclaim at Sundance. With its perfect storm of a well-known feminist producer, the money to hire a crack PR team and its easily-digestible message, a media frenzy ensued, revitalized recently by Netflix's debut of the film.

Admittedly, yes, there are some negative reviews counteracting all of the positive ones. Susan Elizabeth Shepard at Vice deconstructs the specific parts of the film that are incorrect. Dr. Chauntelle Tibbals at Uproxx explains the tonal problems at the core of the film.

However, no one is talking about the quality of the film, as a film. Not one review, good or bad, mentioned the camera work, or lack thereof. Not one examined the pacing issues. Not one considered how much was plainly staged -- the scene where Tressa tells her mom she does porn comes to mind. (Hey mom, this camera crew is following me around but don't worry, it's not because I do porn or anything.)

Everyone is discussing the film's take-away points: Porn is exploitative. Porn is corrupting our youth. Look at these poor girls. They need rescuing.

Porn is Bad.

It's an old, tired narrative about the business, but it's safe for the press. So what if some porn stars criticize your review? That's much more manageable that criticism from the entirety of the flyover states, or worse, your editor, a little closer to home.

So therein lies the conflict. Work in porn and make a pro-porn documentary; watch it be dismissed as biased and unimportant. Be a mainstream company and make a pro-porn documentary; watch it disappear because there's no story the press is willing to tell. Make an anti-porn documentary; watch it start discussions and make money.

Audiences demand stories about porn. Audiences eat them up, whether it's positive (X-Rated garnered the highest ratings for an original documentary Showtime had seen in years) or negative, like Hot Girls Wanted (which, at the time of writing, is in the "trending now" category on Netflix). But network suits and mainstream media won't allow an unbiased story. Filmmakers have to present what's safe, or risk their film not being sold (or worse, not being seen at all). The only prerequisite for success is the right point of view.

It's worth pointing out that, yes, obviously, it's still possible to make the film and tell the story you want to tell. But I must play the cynic and say, if your film falls in a forest where there are no ears to hear, does it still make a sound?

I do believe that there is an audience out there that wants an unbiased story, but the pressure from the audience that doesn't is too great. Too much of this country, too much of our culture, is afraid to look at porn in any way other than as this bull in the china shop of our morality.

But we, the adult industry, we are going to keep trying. I know I am. I have plans for my own social experiment of sorts -- a documentary that just presents the reality of the business, the good and the bad, without any sort of spin. I'm going to hire a PR team, be the celebrity feminist producer, and watch what happens.

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What is it like to visit Pixar Animation Studios?: originally appeared on Quora: The best answer to any question. Ask a question, get a great answer. Learn from experts and access insider knowledge. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.



Answer by Ken Miyamoto, Produced screenwriter, former Sony Pictures script reader/story analyst, former Sony Studios liaison

I'm happy and thrilled to say that this dream came true this very day.   

First and foremost, to me, Pixar Animation Studios is the equivalent to Disney during its early heyday (1930s-1960s).  For the millennials (and for my children's generation), it's arguably their direct equivalent to Disney. John Lassetter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, and other Pixar giants are this generation's Walt Disney.  They've brought amazing storytelling to animation.  Storytelling that not only enthralls children, but adults as well.  My two boys (9 and 6) are Pixar fanatics.  And so am I.       

Onto my visit to Pixar Animation Studios...

A longtime friend of mine has been an animator at Pixar since Ratatouille. He's been gracious enough to send my boys Pixar posters over these last few years.  Posters that cover their walls in their rooms. 

This week, I flew from Wisconsin to Mountain View (Silicon Valley) to attend a Quora Top Writer event, as well as some consulting meetings.  I contacted my Pixar friend on a whim to see if there would be any way I'd be able to visit the studio.  Thankfully, he insisted...

A Unique Experience

Unlike other studios (Sony, Fox, Warner Brothers, Universal), Pixar does not open their campus to the public for tours.  You have to know somebody within.  Even then, it's difficult to be let into the restricted areas beyond the main building's lobby (see below).  Thankfully, since my friend is an animator, I was allowed beyond the lobby and into the animation offices, development offices, and their maze of game rooms, bars, facades, etc. Sadly, I couldn't take any pictures in those areas, so you'll have to rely on my account, which is fresh in my head. 

But first, let me share the pictures I was allowed to take and offer you a peak into the experience of visiting Pixar...

The Outside

Note:  All pictures have been taken, with permission, by me, thus the rights are solely mine and can only be copied and shared with my permission and/or due credit with links back to this answer.

Pixar Animation Studios is located just outside of Oakland in Emeryville, CA.   When driving to the studio, you'll likely be looking around wondering how such an exclusive animation giant can be located near such a poverty-stricken community (at least from where I was driving from), until suddenly you see the environment change as you get closer.  Emeryville, at least surrounding Pixar, is a charming neighborhood.  In fact, you could look at Monster's Inc. (and other Pixar films) and see many reflections of the town within the story.  It's clearly obvious that the animators were inspired by their surroundings on many occasions. 


You pull up to the gate and patiently wait your turn.  My visit happened to fall on family and friends day at Pixar, where lucky family and friends of Pixar employees were allowed to enter the campus and see a screening of Pixar's Inside Out.  I was offered a ticket by my friend, however, I opted out because my two sons (and wife) were jealous enough.  I'd want to see the film with them for the first time anyway.

At the gate, you receive your charming little pass that must be worn at all times. 


 You proceed to the outdoor parking lot and make your way down this walkway...


What first catches your eye, especially for you fellow Pixar fanatics out there, is...


Yes, the Luxo Lamp and Luxo Ball, two of Pixar's earliest icons that have appeared in almost all of their films.  

The campus is beautiful.  In the back, you'll see an amphitheater that they likely use for events.  To the right is a soccer field.

If you walk past the main building, you'll find...

A basketball court and beach volleyball court beyond it

A grill area

A lap pool and Fitness Center Building (not pictured)

But you'd likely not go far beyond the initial Luxo Lamp and Luxo Ball because right behind them is...

The Steve Jobs Building

(You can see my reflection in the right door)

This is the core of the campus.  The original building.  Steve Jobs, if you didn't know already, was the previous head of Pixar many, many years ago. He oversaw the design of the building from beginning to end.

So you take a deep breath, open the door, walk in, and see...


You've likely glimpsed at this building in the Blu-ray or DVD extras of Pixar films, but it's a whole different experience when you are actually there. 

You check into the security desk using an iPad...


You're greeted by two familiar friends...


And others...


To your right, you'll see Pixar's collection of Academy Awards and additional accolades as well...


There's a Pixar Store (not pictured) where I spent perhaps a little too much money, followed by many commons areas offering unique Pixar art. 

In this case, each Pixar employee was featured utilizing pictures and names. 





A mail room of sorts. 
 
Entrances to the main screening theater.

Cafe Luxo


Before I get to the juicy, behind-the-scenes stuff... take a look at the newer Pixar building just a short walk away from The Steve Jobs Building...

Brooklyn

I don't know the reasoning behind the name of the building, but it is the newest edition of the campus. 

Here's a brief peak inside...

Behind the Scenes

Now, let's go back to The Steve Jobs Building. 

Here we have "The Atrium"


Pixar thinks of this whole building as a brain.  And as you know, each side of the brain is responsible for various functions of the whole. 


So we have the left side of the building...


Beyond "The Atrium" lies security-locked doorways into the various technical departments (likely those working with servers, computers, functionality, etc.). 

And then you have the right side of the building...


Up the stairs and down the first floor halls you have security-locked doors to the animation offices, development offices, story department, motion capture (the "acting room" where animators can film themselves or other beings for animation references), etc. 

And yes, in the middle, is where both sides of the "brain" converge for meals, events, etc. 

But let's focus on the right side.

Let's go in, shall we...

No Pictures Allowed

I'm sorry to say that I wasn't allowed to take pictures beyond this point as my animator friend took me behind the security doors.  I wish, wish, wish that I could have snapped a few but I also know that the pictures wouldn't have done that place justice. 

Behind those glass doors was a maze of Disneyland-like facades, with each section of the area with its own theme.  All with attached offices for animators, story department, etc. 

Now, I say "offices" loosely because a majority of them are Disneyland-like exhibits.  You know when you are entering a Disney ride and the design of the area building up to the actual ride is an experience onto itself?  THAT'S how many of these offices are. 

Employees are given freedom to do with their offices as they'd like, within reason. 

One office was a built into a tiki cabin.  Another employee constructed a whole second floor to his office, complete with a bed, etc.

Even more impressive was one that was recently completed by an animator. He utilized foam to create what appeared to be a Mayan Ruins facade.  Both the outside AND inside of his office resembles, in amazing detail, a Mayan Ruin, complete with ferns coming out of the "rocks".  So basically, it looks as if he works in a cave.  It was amazing to see. 

Next, my animator friend took me over to another office where I met another animator.  He and his co-worker turned their office into the cabin of an old plane that crashed into the jungle long ago.  No joke.  I walked in and felt like I was on the set of "Lost".  It was complete with REAL tree branches coming out of the walls and into the office... and, oh, it also had a smoke machine that he graciously turned on for me. 

Spread throughout this side of the building are hallways leading to commons areas that each had different themes.  Their video game area is under development and will apparently have a spaceship facade in place.  There are many bars throughout the area, each with their own themes as well.  These are utilized for after hour celebrations and relaxation. 

Then my animator friend took me into his office. 

Here is where the magic was even more enhanced because he demonstrated his animation process right before my eyes. 

The Magic

Pixar was working on a Saturday, which is unusual.  They're in overtime putting the final touches on the upcoming November 2015 release A Good Dinosaur. 

I'm not (and can't... and wouldn't anyway) offer any spoilers.  I will say that my friend cued up a scene that he's animating for the film.  It was of the main dinosaur character and the human child. 

I watched as he utilized the software to manipulate the images in any way, shape, or form that he choose.  He went on to demonstrate the process of injecting the character emotion, heart, and soul that we've seen in so many amazing Pixar films.  Animation is clearly not just about moving animated pictures.  It's so much more.  The attention to detail that Pixar exhibits is amazing and I can't put into words how utterly enthralling it was to see how they do it. 

A Dream Come True

As a storyteller myself, as a kid at heart, as a film lover, and as a father of two boys that love movies just as much as I do, this experience was a dream come true. 

Imagine going back in time and getting a tour of Walt Disney Studios during those golden years of the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s.  Imagine being able to peek behind the curtain.  I did that today.  I walked through a magical world of imagination. 

On the upper level of the off limits area, there is a gallery of art for whatever film is about to be released (in this case Inside Out).  Again, this isn't open to the public and isn't even open to most guests.  We walked through the endless gallery of conceptual drawings, models, art work, etc.  It's a visual feast as you watch the concept grow and evolve into what it would eventually become in the upcoming film.  It's magic.  Present day magic encompassed by imagination.  Imagination that seems to be ever-so distant and unfamiliar to most these days yet here we have hundreds of talented people that get to explore and "exploit" their imagination hour after hour for the later benefit of all.  

It was a dream come true.  And if you happen upon anyone that works there, or knows someone that works there, I highly recommend you put a foot forward and try to step into that magical realm called Pixar Animation Studios. 

And, oh, my favorite picture of the day...




More questions on Quora:

• Hollywood: What is it like to work at a major film studio?
• Pixar Animation Studios: Did Pixar accidentally delete Toy Story 2 during production?
• Colleges and Universities: What does it feel like to attend a world-renowned university?

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Weeks before he was convicted in a widely publicized trial for allegedly running over pavement dwellers while intoxicated, Bollywood actor Salman Khan freewheeled with Fortune India's Pavan Lall on the sidelines of a movie set on early disappointment, dealing with rejection and his approach to painting. The case has gone into appeal to a higher court. The following are excerpts from the interview.

1. Your father Salim Khan says one won't catch you doing anything but acting. How do you respond?

What you see is what I am. I cry and laugh on screen as I would in real life. I never play character roles like that of a 60-year-old man or a local Indian with a Bhojpuri accent. I don't do things that alienate the broader audience, so it has to be homogeneous but basic and simple.

2. What was it like breaking into movies?

When I went to meet moviemakers they would say, "you should have come six months earlier, or six months later," or "you're too young right now" or "[you're] too old for this" or "we have just signed someone else," or "we are not making anything right now," or "we're looking for a big star"-- not really outright rejections, but my father had also said his share of no's to people in the industry, so I'm sure there was some sense of angst within people whom I later encountered then. I never had the problems of having no food at home or living in rented houses and so on, but I wanted to prove a point to the guys who rejected me and there were quite a few of those.

3. Tell us about those...

So one person I remember was producer Anand Girdhar who used to make small budget B-grade movies and was making one called "The Graduate." And so I went to meet him and I must have been 17 or 18. He was looking for someone to play a teacher who falls in love with a student, and after he met me he thought I was too young. I insisted and said I could wear a fake moustache and look older, and in turn he asked if I was going to leave his office or if he should ring the buzzer to have me escorted out. I met him years later, and, of course, I didn't recognize him, but he smiled and said, "I'm the same guy who kicked you of my office," and I hugged him and said thanks, because I wouldn't be where I was without people like him.

4. Any role models in the acting world?

I like Sylvester Stallone and Dilip Kumar, but I'm not really a fan of any actors. What I am is a big admirer of success stories of people who start out as underdogs and become successful. Stories of people who come from nowhere and reach somewhere.

5. Your thoughts on acting in Hollywood?

Why would I want to go to Hollywood? If anything, I may do a Hindi movie in English -- you know, like that new catchphrase: Make in India, and sell abroad.

6. What do you dislike most about India?

That there is such little civic sense. The corruption has gotten better, and believe it or not, one of the few industries today where there's very little black money is in media and entertainment.

7. You have a reputation for being difficult to get through to in interviews. Has that to do with your disdain for the media in general?

Have I always hated the media? No, actually the media has always been kind to me, but there is always that one journalist who will come and attend a press conference or a film screening and in the middle of it all ask a question that borders on something personal or totally unrelated -- and which makes me at that point of time hate all of them.

8. Your charitable foundation Being Human is a case study for success where others in your shoes have tried and gotten nowhere. Does that get you support from your fellow film stars as well?

Actors Aamir Khan and Shahrukh Khan have promised me a few days or dates this year to help promote the foundation, so I told them whatever works will [work]. Actor Akshay Kumar wrote out a check, but most of the others also have their own charitable trusts, which is good I guess. I'm not saying you just have to give it to Being Human. Step out of your house, look right and look left, and if you see someone needy, do something about it -- give to a hospital, a school, a doctor -- sort someone's life out instead of putting money in black boxes blindly where you don't know where it's going.

9. You tinker with art and give your paintings away. Are you trained, or self taught?

I'm not taught, still learning. When I see that a color is off, or an eye is off balance, I fix it. I make mistakes and learn from them. I used to sketch landscapes earlier but don't have the patience for it today. I don't follow precise lines or form. I just go with the flow. If it comes out looking good then that's fine, if not, then I downplay the weaker, darker sides of my portraits.

10. Your first gig with the camera was a model for a cola ad. How did that go?

I was barely 15 years old and swimming at the Sea Rock Hotel and ad film director Kailash Surendranath's wife noticed me and told her husband, "this kid swims well and looks good without a shirt, hire him." So I flew to Goa and there were these professional models who were all like 6 feet and 2 inches, 6 feet and 3 inches tall standing around. I took one look, said no way, and was heading back to the car when a buddy dragged me back. That was the beginning.

11. But it was never an actor that you wanted to be, right?

That's right. In those days, it was unheard of for a screenplay writer's son to become an actor. It didn't work like that. So, I wanted to be either a director or a writer, and I worked to that end putting together a few scripts so that I could direct them. Of course, as we all know it never worked like I wanted it to.

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While it was inevitable, it seemed impossible.

The death of Sir Christopher Lee this week is resonating with fans around the world -- and while I've dreaded this news for years, I feel fortunate about how I received it:

My amazing screenwriter friend, Daniel Waters (Heathers, Batman Returns, Vampire Academy) -- truly a cinéaste's cinéaste, he -- sent me a thoughtful note, offering condolences, and noting that Mr. Lee was "not immortal after all": useful and motivating advice for anyone!

Obviously, Christopher Lee was a legend, and he remains one. I've never concealed my considerable appreciation for the man. No performer's career have I followed so avidly, and very, very few, I feel, deserve to be followed so avidly. In a movie culture of ever bigger, louder, and emptier booms, and a celebrity culture of relentless panty flashes and nip slips, Mr. Lee always reminds us of elegance, of discipline, of presence. With Christopher Lee in a production, there was never any need for lame camera-shaking and ADD cutting -- he held you. (According to Australian artist and director Philippe Mora, whom I consider a friend, Mr. Lee was also a self-focusing actor: he facilitated the cinematographer's work by aligning himself with the lens!)

I enjoyed a lengthy interview with Christopher Lee several years ago, before the first Lord of the Rings live-action movie opened, launching the greatest chapter of Mr. Lee's career -- at least if measured by global popularity. (Thank you, John Smith.) Not a bad gig for an octogenarian! He proved a terrific subject, attentive and energetic, as full of tales as you'd expect. And I love Saruman the White and Count (*ahem*) Dooku (let's call him Darth Tyranus, shall we?) as much as anyone. I also happen to own several copies of Dracula A.D. 1972 -- and be advised, I am apt to share. However, a career as incredibly vast as Mr. Lee's also invites appreciation for his many efforts of which the general populace may not be aware. With respect and appreciation to Sir Christopher Lee, his family, his friends, his enormous show-biz circle, and fans everywhere, allow me to present this friendly little handful:

THE LAST UNICORN

Based on the classic fantasy novel by Peter Beagle -- who got on well with Mr. Lee as the actor provided his own fluent dubbing for the German version -- this wonderful Rankin-Bass animated production (the same team who brought us The Hobbit and The Return of the King), features top voice talent from Mia Farrow, Jeff Bridges, Alan Arkin, and of course Christopher Lee: as the delightfully grim King Haggard.




THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN INVINCIBLE

This terrific albeit zany superhero romp -- notably bearing themes decades before they'd become popular in the current oversaturated crop -- also features Alan Arkin (as the eponymous, struggling-alcoholic savior), and is directed with great panache by Philippe Mora: a friend of Mr. Lee's, who also directed him in The Howling II (pick your own subtitle). Philippe also turned me on to Mr. Lee in 1960's youth-rebellion flick Beat Girl. Here witness the legend, as Mr. Midnight (Lee) tempts Captain Invincible (Arkin) to "Name Your Poison" via a song by Richard O'Brien and Richard Hartley -- of Rocky Horror fame! Years before his recent heavy-metal resurgence, ever-elegant Mr. Lee was not afraid to cut loose and rock out!

(Warning: This cannot be unseen, nor can it be unheard. And I loooooooove it.)





THE CHILDREN OF HÚRIN

While unmistakably Tolkien, written throughout the professor's career, finally meticulously assembled by son Christopher Tolkien and published in 2007, this tome may not win over pedestrian hobbit aficionados, but the threads of Norse myth and Tolkien's own mythos, woven through this work, prove astounding -- and achingly poetic. How fortunate for us that Christopher Lee lends his mighty and moving tones to the audiobook version -- coolest bedtime stories ever -- wherein the lifelong lover of Tolkien finally becomes his most fitting voice.




THE WICKER MAN

Along with his turn as Pakistan's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Mr. Lee frequently cited, including to me, The Wicker Man as the finest film of his career (see my interview with director Robin Hardy) -- and it's not hard to see why: by turns haunting and hilarious, and then devastating in its implications, the film is an absolute one-of-a-kind, horror -- or suspense, more accurately -- for smart people. (Join us! Ha!) I never say "OMG!" -- but Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle? OMG!!!




LORD OF MISRULE (a.k.a. TALL, DARK, AND GRUESOME)

From his childhood in London, his noble efforts in World War II, paying his dues as a "spear carrier," his breakthrough in Hammer's Frankenstein and Dracula films, and working with peers Ursula Andress, Roger Moore, Peter Cushing (and Vincent Price and John Carradine), and innumerable others -- to behind-the-scenes glimpses, his L.A. years, and even his descent from the line of Charlemagne and his forebears who began Australia's first opera company, this remarkably illuminating autobiography is an absolute must for anyone interested in show-biz (to put it mildly), or, y'know, life. I thank the used book dealer on Hollywood Boulevard, who provided me with my first copy: the paperback edition of Tall, Dark, and Gruesome. The book is currently kinda expensive (but worth it).

Thank you, Sir Christopher Lee: a legend whose works shall live on!

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