celebrities

Actors owe us everything but seldom acknowledge it

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As far as fame and notoriety go, actors are probably up there at the top of the list.  They are known the world over, loved by everyone, and hailed for their talent.  The ego of an A-list actor is just about the biggest thing on the face of this earth, closely followed by their bank balance, and their embarrassing emotional baggage.  Everyone loves the actors, everyone has their favourite (even me), and there are countless posts on social media discussing the good and bad of this or that actor’s repertoire.  I know, I’ve joined in some of them.

What no one seems to get, especially the actors themselves, is that if it weren’t for us writers, they’d be gas station attendants, shop assistants, bar staff and car valeters.

Every time I see a red carpet event on the television, I watch the actors sashaying up to the cameras. turning this way and that, and accepting praise for their latest movie with gracious smiles, and I quietly seethe.  I get really irritated by these events, because it’s the actors that get all the glory, when us writers have done all the work.  Without us, there would be no actors.

An actor is a liar, all actors are liars.  It’s the be-all and end-all of their existence.  They spend their working lives pretending to be someone else, pretending to have a different personality than the one they were born with, a different life story.  Never trust an actor, they lie for a living, and some of them are extremely skilled at it.  I digress however, the thing that annoys me is that they all owe every moment of their success, to us writers.  Do they ever acknowledge this fact though?  Do they hell.  You will seldom see any actor thanking the writers who have made them famous.  The nearest they get is to thank their director at the Oscar ceremony, and yet if it wasn’t for our talent and creativity, they would not be enjoying the privileged life they lead.

Writers have to make do with a mention in the credits of movies and tv shows, but how many people outside of the business, who aren’t into writing themselves, can name the writers of any movie or tv shows (Lord of the Rings is exempt from this question by the way)?  I doubt there are many.

This is a situation that will never change of course, so long as actors continue to be so highly paid and so long as they are given so much power.  That doesn’t stop it being morally wrong though.

Acts of Life release party and giveaway

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Announcing the Acts of Life release party and giveaway event.

Over on my facebook author page I’m running an event to celebrate the release of Acts of Life.  I’m combining the event with an easy, fun competition to give away ten e-copies of the book.  In order to take part, follow these simple instructions.

Go to the event here and join.

Write a story in no more than 300  words and post it on the page.  Your story can be any genre and have any storyline you choose but it must centre around a celebrity.  Your chosen celebrity can be a real one (alive or dead) or one you’ve made up.

On Friday 21st June I shall pick ten winners who will each win an e-copy of Acts of Life.

If less than 20 take part in the competition, it will be cancelled, so get your stories in as soon as possible to be in with a chance of winning.  It’s fun, its easy and the prize is worth a little effort.  One participant has already posted  his story, so hop on over to the event now and join up.

God Save Me From Armchair Pop Psychologists

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I saw this on facebook today and was so incensed I just had to blog about it.  It was posted by Tyrese Gibson (the singer/actor?  The black guy from Fast and Furious?).  Tyrese has tried his hand at a few things in order to keep his name in the media, from acting, to singing and even co-authoring a book and the one thing that ties all these these three things together is that he’s lukewarm at all of them.  Never mind, that’s not the point of the blog.

Some time ago he co-authored a book that got a moment of public notice for a day or two.  I bought it and even read it and agreed with some of it.  It was meant to be a man’s eye view of relationships and how to get on in life generally and once you managed to drag yourself through the first half of the book, which was just a biopic of his own life, he and his co-author then gave vent to their own views on how we should all behave in order to better our lives in all sorts of ways.

Today Tyrese posted the above photograph on his facebook page and I was enraged enough to comment on it.

What he’s saying, in essence, is that sexy women are boring and boring in bed.  Whilst I cannot find a single reason to argue with this pearl of wisdom (we women have known this for centuries but men have never listened), it amazes me that he is preaching this stuff as his own opinion.

So if he believes sexy women are boring in bed, whey then has he never dated/married a plain dumpy frumpy woman huh?  He obviously believes that all of the sexy women he’s been seen with are all boring and boring in bed?  Does he have a current girlfriend/wife?  Does she know he finds her boring in bed?  If not then someone please tell her and let me see her reaction.

Perhaps he doesn’t find his current girlfriend/wife (if there is one) sexy at all?  Perhaps that’s why he’s with her, for her wonderful personality and interesting knowledge and experience.  Does she know he finds her unattractive?  If not, please inform her and let me see her reaction.

With the above statement, Mr Gibson is biting off his own balls without having the basic intelligence to realise the idiocy of the statement.  Either all his sexy women are boring, or all his interesting ones are ugly.  Which is it brah..?

Of course he could turn around and deny that this is his opinion at all, in which case why post such rubbish and put the title of his up-coming book on the bottom of it?  Seriously, does this guy even have a brain?

Tyrese, you’re a good looking dude.  Stick to looking pretty and leave the armchair pop psychology to those of us who actually understanding people huh?

In the Guise of Angels.

Y’know, those who hold themselves up as the greatest of inspirers, the most honourable of mentors, the biggest examples of the best humanity can offer, are usually the most deceitful, selfish and dishonest of people.

They trade on their image of wholesomness, beauty and wisdom and they preach tolerance, one love and celebration of diversity in all it’s beautiful forms and yet they scheme, manipulate and control when the cameras are switched off.

I find it sad that such a beautiful exterior hides such clever, subtle manipulation and that so many others who’s faces never see the spotlight are so eager to be dominated and controlled by such clever, beautiful evil. Just as the pied piper of Hamelin played his beautiful music and all the little rats danced to their deaths, so this new Messiah gives a word, a shy smile, a false acknowledgement of love and the hearts of half the world turn a shade darker. Behind the brightly glowing neon sign declaring peaceful and loving acceptance of all, they wait for prey to come like zombies driven by the need for blood. And come they do, in their millions. All driven by the same controlling force, the need for those beautiful eyes to rest upon their countenance for just a moment and as they open their hearts to receive the promised gifts of universal love and a celebration of their own unique beauty and skill, the dark mass of the beautiful one’s adherants prepares to dine on their flesh.

In the guise of angels, the darkest demons hide..!

The real face of twitter

I’ve been on twitter for around a year or so.  Not long by many people’s standards but before I published my books there was no real need for the extra burden of different social networking sites.  Actually I did get onto twitter before that but I quickly found it to be useless for actively engaging with anyone, so I stayed away and didn’t use my account until I started self publishing.

And there’s the rub.  Twitter is crap for conversation.  If it’s friends and happy conversation you’re after, stay away from twitter and stick with good old eff bee.  Twitter is for 3 things and 3 things only.

1.  Celebrities

2.  Fans

3.  Advertising your shit.

I’ll take each of these in turn.  Twitter is THE place for today’s celeb’s to let the rest of us plebs know that they are actually real live people and not some cgi invention.  They post their pictures and funny videos and tell us all about what they’re doing on set or in the studio and trade witty repartee with other celebs. They also plug their latest movie/album/book/tv show etc on twitter.  For celebs, twitter is an amazing free advertising bill board and they love it.

Hot on the heels of all the celeb twitterers come their fans – in their millions.  The fans come to twitter simply to try to get noticed by their idol (yes I’ve done that too and quickly realised I was on a hiding to nothing).  Every tweet by their favourite celeb is pounced on and the number of replies skyrockets quickly.    Each one hopes and prays their idol will reply to their tweet and some of them will tweet hundreds of times a day solely to try and get noticed by their idol.  What they don’t realise is that alot of the more major celebs on twitter will  have ‘staff’ doing their tweets, announcing the latest movie/album etc and posting photos ad nauseam.  The chances of getting a tweet by a major movie star on twitter is about the same as me walking outside of my house right now and slipping up in a heap of rocking horse shit..!

I used to be a fan of Dwayne The Rock Johnson and used to tweet hello to him and send him the digital artwork I did of him but I never got a response.  Seeing his tweets and his responses (on the rare occasions when he does actually respond) has put me off him as a person.  He’s beautiful to look at and is good at acting but as a person he sucks.  Thanks twitter, you took my idol from me..!

And then there’s advertising.  Twitter is heaving with people all trying to sell their shit (me included) and each one tweets endlessly about how wonderful their product is and why it’s better than everyone else’s.  That’s all well and good but you see dear, there are no actual customers on twitter, only other crazed sellers who have no intention whatsoever of ever buying your shit nor anyone else’s.  If you’re trying to sell your shit on twitter, you’re wasting your time because you’re not reaching actual customers there.  It took me ages to realise this (I can be thick sometimes) and I sat down and wondered what the heck I was doing flogging my guts retweeting other authors, when the effort doesn’t increase my book sales.

And hard work it is too.  It takes a serious amount of time out of your day using twitter.  You’re expected to retweet people so that they will retweet you back.  I say, supposed, because in practice it doesn’t happen that way.  I spent a couple of hours a day retweeting people and only ever got 3 or 4 retweets in return and half of those I did get were ones where I’d thanked someone for retweeting or said hello to a new follower – all carefully chosen by the retweeter so as not to include a link to my work.

I now go there for just a couple of minutes a day to check for new followers and direct messages but I no longer retweet people.  The number of retweets I got in no way made up for the time I spent or the numbers of tweets I retweeted.  I have my facebook author pages set up so everything I post there automatically goes to my twitter page too so I’m still sort of using it as free advertising.

I prefer to actually interact with people so I stay on facebook.  I have my personal page and my author page and I find it more pleasing to have actual conversations with people than simply dispense links that immediately get lost in the cess pool of other tweets, which no one reads or pays attention to.

Is is just me?  What do you think of twitter?