Young Filmmakers Beware!

It's fun to get your short film up on the web on sites like YouTube and let your friends across the country see it.



I was talking today with members of the Board of Governors at the Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences. We were discussing the problem of young filmmakers who can't wait to get their short films up on the web.

They told me that Academy rules state that if you put a short on the web, especially on a pay per view site, YOU CAN FORGET ABOUT ENTERING IT IN THE ACADEMY AWARDS AND STUDENT ACADEMY AWARDS. To the Motion Picture Academy,being on the web is the same as running your movie on TV, which would also disqualify it. Films for Academy consideration first have to be shown in theaters or entered in film festivals that are academy sanctioned. Even then, some film festivals like to put the winners of their competition on the web. This would disqualify you too.

Of course, if trying for an Oscar is not a priority to you, then do as you like. But if it is, please check Academy rules before you agree to let your film be put on line. http://www.oscars.org

When I get more info, I'll pass it on. Meantime, good luck.
I'd hate to see all your hopes and hard work be disqualified on a technicality.

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Question: What is a Pyrrhic Victory?

Yesterday’s Question: What is a Papist?
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History for 5/27/2009
Birthdays: James 'Wild Bill' Hickock, Julia Ward Howe, Aemelia Jenks-Bloomer, Dashiell Hammett, Vincent Price, Dr. Henry Kissinger is 86, Leopold Goldowsky (the inventor of Kodachrome film), Hubert H. Humphrey, Herman Wouk, Christopher Lee is 86, Harlan Ellison, Joseph Feinnes. Richard Schiff, Peri Gilpin, Paul Bettany is 38

595 a.d. Today is the Feast day of Saint Augustine of Canterbury, who saw children in the slave docket and when told 'Those are Angles"-The barbarian tribe that England is named for. Augustine replied: Non Sunt Anglicai, Sunt Angelis”- Those are not Angles, those are Angels". Augustine of Canterbury should not be confused with the Saint Augustine of Hippo, who wrote the Confessions and said:" Lord, help me to be Chaste.... But not just yet."

1647-The first witch execution in Salem Massachusetts. Contrary to popular perception, more witches were hanged or crushed with stones than burned.

1647- Peter Stuyversant inaugurated as Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam. The one legged old soldier was a staunch Calvinist who was sent to “clean up the town”.

1703- Czar Peter the Great laid the cornerstones for his new capitol Saint Petersburg. The Baltic Port was called at one time Petrograd and Leningrad but was changed back to the original name in 1989. It was the capitol until Lenin moved it back to Moscow in 1917.

1831- Mountain man explorer Jedediah Smith killed fighting Commanches.

1930- HAPPY BIRTHDAY SCOTCH TAPE -Chemist Richard Drew of Saint Paul Minnesota invented cellophane tape, marketed by the 3M Company under the brand Scotch. It was called Scotch after the stereotype perception that Scots people are frugal with money, so it’s a good value. Three years later Drew invented Masking Tape as a way for car manufacturers to pain cars two tone.



1933- Disney’s cartoon“The Three Little Pigs” premieres, whose song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” becomes a national anthem of recovery from the Depression.
It was also a favorite song of Adolph Hitler. Disney animators were especially proud of the quality of the character animation. Director of the short Burt Gillette left Disney after wards to run the Van Beuren Studio in New York.

1935- The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Franklin Roosevelt’s National Recovery Act (The NRA) program. Roosevelt responds by trying to stack the court with judges more to his liking. He referred to them as 'The Nine Old Men', a sobriquet Walt Disney would borrow in 1949 for his animators.

1937- San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge opens.



1941- The German battleship Bismarck finally sunk by massed Royal Navy ships and torpedo planes. The British sailors of the battleship HMS Prince of Wales helped the German sailors out of the water saying:”Now you, one day it may be us.” In December their ship was sunk by the Japanese.

In 1981 I heard CBC radio interview with the last surviving flag-deck officer of the Bismarck , a Baron von Mullenheim-Rechburg, who had just published a memoir. The radio interviewer asked him:" When did you get the idea to write this book? He replied:" When I was floating around in the burning water..." The interviewer then asked incredulously" Then why did you wait forty years? He replied casually:" Well...you know, things come up..."

1942- Top Nazis in occupied Czechoslovakia Reynhard Heydrich was assassinated by the resistance who tossed a bomb into his car. Hitler angrily responded by ordering the SS to select a Czech village at random and destroying it. They picked Lidice; they leveled it and murdered all its inhabitants.

1949- Actress Rita Hayworth married Arab playboy Prince Aly Khan.

1961 – The first black light is sold

1969 – Construction on Walt Disney World Orlando began.

1977-The Sex Pistols release their Punk hit God Save the Queen, the Fascist Regime, in time for the Queen’s Jubilee year. Her Majesty preferred the Beatles All You Need is Love.

1991- The Milwaukee police question serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer after finding a distraught, bleeding young Laotian immigrant in the street. The boy was struggling to shake off the effect of date-rape drugs given him by Dahmer. After deducing that it was merely a lovers quarrel, the police returned the boy to Dahmer, who later killed and ate him.

1995- Actor Christopher Reeve was left paralyzed from the neck down after falling from his horse in an equestrian event in Charlottesville, Va. He became a spokesman for stem-cel research but his national effort was stymied by powerful religious lobbies. Reeves died in 2004.

1997- President Bill Clinton liked to appease his critics by appointing conservative judges despite popular perception of him as a super-Liberal. This day this practice came back to bite him when the conservative Supreme Court of William Rheinquist unanimously rejected Clinton’s plea that a President should not be subject to a private law suit while in office. A woman named Paula Jones with heavy funding from the religious right wing of the Republican Party was suing him for sexual harassment. The Supreme Court paved the way for the Paula Jones case to proceed making it possible for the grand jury testimony and subsequent impeachment trial to proceed. Clinton was later found in contempt of court by a judge for lying in the Jones inquiry.
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Yesterday’s question: What is a Papist?

Answer: A derogatory name for Roman Catholics used by English Protestants since Henry VIII’s time.