Comments on: Stars on Hollywood and Vine

By: Chaires

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By: Tony

Tony — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:08:18 +0000

Good luck with the production, Laurel – my daughter had her translation of Spring’s Awakening performed at the Edinburgh Fringe by her uni drama group and is now working on a musical with some friends. Luck does play a part I guess but nowhere near as much as talent and, above all, persistence! So keep at it and dragoon as many friends as possible

By: Laurel Kornfeld

Laurel Kornfeld — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:00:49 +0000

As an actress myself (among other things), I believe that talent is lacking in Hollywood today rather than “oversupplied.” The so-called “stars” today are nothing like Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Stewart; they’re mostly all packaging and marketing and very little substance. Especially today in the Internet age, being successful as an actor is not “almost all luck.” If someone really wants to be a good actor, there are many places to develop the talent and skills. Instead of sitting around drinking coffee, actors can put ourselves out there on the Internet and play a more active role in our careers. Personally, I completely reject the so-called “star” system. Acting is a craft. As my former college roommate, now a PhD in neuroscience, often said, the only stars she recognizes are the ones in the sky. The same goes for me. Even though I’m an actress, I’d rather read about the real stars up there than about some person who is probably less talented than I am. If an actor is doing what he or she loves, he or she is successful. By that definition, I’m in, no matter what the rest of the world thinks.

Well, I can’t comment without mentioning my favorite subject, so here goes. As both a writer and actress, I recently finished writing my first full length play, which I want to see produced and act in. The subject: the demotion and reinstatement of Pluto.

By: andyxl

andyxl — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:54:22 +0000

Tony – I was expecting responses about careers and the cruel world, but I can take a brief determinist tour. You are taking a pre-quantum viewpoint there : the the world is microscopically predictable but in practice random because (a) the forward calculation is too big, and (b) you don’t know where all the atoms started. However quantum physics takes almost the opposite viewpoint : the microscopic universe is random, but it follows rules; then statistics guarantees that the large scale world is in practice predictable.

I would like to have been around when Katherine Hepburn’s wave function collapsed.

By: Hollywood and Vine, California and Lake | Cosmic Variance

Hollywood and Vine, California and Lake | Cosmic Variance — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:43:08 +0000

[...] visited Caltech last week, but I missed his talks since I was traveling myself. He posits an interesting comparison between young hopefuls in academia and The Industry — hanging around, trying to get noticed [...]

By: Tony

Tony — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 09:09:04 +0000

Reminds me of my take on determinism in philosophy: yes, the universe is deterministic, but only in retrospect. Looking backwards it is easy to show exactly why something happened – why Hepburn, Stewart, Bogart, Grant became so successful – but looking forwards it is impossible to predict exactly what will happen. The universe could not contain a computer powerful enough to predict exactly who would be on Andy’s youngest’s list of top ten actors in thirty years time.