This was the 1996 version produced by, and starring, Tom Cruise.
Summary: not all of it was preposterous.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Book review: The Lunatic Express
Authored by Carl Hoffman in 2010 (ISBN 978-0-7679-2980-6). The subtitle is "discovering the world via its most dangerous buses, boats, trains and planes".
I expected to be shocked and humored. I was, but less than I expected, as the story is as much about the author as it is about his travels.
During his 159-day excursion across four continents (five, if one defines Indonesia as belonging to Oceania) and 19 countries Hoffman opted for the most dangerous, least pleasant mechanisms. Never first class, always steerage. He would ask locals their opinions about such-and-such a conveyance and used their warnings as confirmation that it was the correct ride for him. Hoffman speaks only English and overcame this limitation pretty well, in his estimation, in most places, with the exception of China, the most modern and safe of his destinations and the least tolerant of his ignorance.
Except for the North American portions he traveled through extreme weather: very hot through South America, Africa and India; very cold through Afghanistan, China, Mongolia (40 degrees below zero) and Russia. None of the warm-weather transportation included air-conditioning; indeed, most did not have windows. The cold-weather transportation occasionally provided a space heater.
Most of the rides were dangerous, or at least statistically much more dangerous than the buses, boats, trains and planes that I am familiar with. A statistician the author hired to estimate the risk of death during the 159 days came up with one in 2,000. This was risk of death only; accidents were also possible, perhaps more probable than death. Further, the estimate covered the transportation only and excluded the risk of robbery, murder and kidnapping. The author described those latter risks as considerably smaller than one might imagine, with the exception of his travels through Afghanistan.
Of the dozens of examples from this book, one from Senegal in 2002:
Why so dangerous? After all, the technology necessary to make a bus stop, a boat float, a train ride or a plane fly is known the world over. Hoffman cites corruption and the lack of good governance as one primary reason and poverty as another. One might question corruption as a significant factor. In other words, even without honest government inspection, after enough serious accidents from a given provider the customers would stay away. But, many of the operators the author interviewed paid bribes to inspectors and policemen that significantly impacted their operating expenses. Funds that might have used to repair brakes or windshields, or create schedules, evaporated instead. Hoffman repeated over and over the effects of poverty. Transportation can be fast, reliable, comfortable and safe to varying degrees, and all those elements cost money. Those without money make do with very little of those elements, including safety.
Hoffman's trip started with a 19-hour bus ride from his home outside Washington, D.C. to Toronto, via New York city, and ended 158 days later with a multi-day bus ride from Los Angeles back home via Las Vegas, Vail, Kansas City and Pittsburgh. He had planned to return before Christmas but was unable to arrange it. He strongly hinted at his divorce, and that the cause was his extended absence. He also has three children at home, who ages he did not reveal, and he wrote often of missing his family. Normally I have little patience for people who abandon their families in favor of travel for work. In this case, though, his feelings on the subject are powerful, and perhaps beyond his ability to control them. When his wife asks, "how can you love someone who might be killed or kidnapped or die in a plane crash and puts his family through that pain and worrying?" he responds to us:
I expected to be shocked and humored. I was, but less than I expected, as the story is as much about the author as it is about his travels.
During his 159-day excursion across four continents (five, if one defines Indonesia as belonging to Oceania) and 19 countries Hoffman opted for the most dangerous, least pleasant mechanisms. Never first class, always steerage. He would ask locals their opinions about such-and-such a conveyance and used their warnings as confirmation that it was the correct ride for him. Hoffman speaks only English and overcame this limitation pretty well, in his estimation, in most places, with the exception of China, the most modern and safe of his destinations and the least tolerant of his ignorance.
Except for the North American portions he traveled through extreme weather: very hot through South America, Africa and India; very cold through Afghanistan, China, Mongolia (40 degrees below zero) and Russia. None of the warm-weather transportation included air-conditioning; indeed, most did not have windows. The cold-weather transportation occasionally provided a space heater.
Most of the rides were dangerous, or at least statistically much more dangerous than the buses, boats, trains and planes that I am familiar with. A statistician the author hired to estimate the risk of death during the 159 days came up with one in 2,000. This was risk of death only; accidents were also possible, perhaps more probable than death. Further, the estimate covered the transportation only and excluded the risk of robbery, murder and kidnapping. The author described those latter risks as considerably smaller than one might imagine, with the exception of his travels through Afghanistan.
Of the dozens of examples from this book, one from Senegal in 2002:
The Joola had a rated capacity of 580 passengers ... of the 1,863 confirmed passengers [plus other unconfirmed] ... [61] survived, only one of them a woman. Three hundred more people died on the Joola than on the Titanic, and nearly every single one of the dead came from the town of Ziguinchor -- among them its best and brightest students.
Why so dangerous? After all, the technology necessary to make a bus stop, a boat float, a train ride or a plane fly is known the world over. Hoffman cites corruption and the lack of good governance as one primary reason and poverty as another. One might question corruption as a significant factor. In other words, even without honest government inspection, after enough serious accidents from a given provider the customers would stay away. But, many of the operators the author interviewed paid bribes to inspectors and policemen that significantly impacted their operating expenses. Funds that might have used to repair brakes or windshields, or create schedules, evaporated instead. Hoffman repeated over and over the effects of poverty. Transportation can be fast, reliable, comfortable and safe to varying degrees, and all those elements cost money. Those without money make do with very little of those elements, including safety.
Hoffman's trip started with a 19-hour bus ride from his home outside Washington, D.C. to Toronto, via New York city, and ended 158 days later with a multi-day bus ride from Los Angeles back home via Las Vegas, Vail, Kansas City and Pittsburgh. He had planned to return before Christmas but was unable to arrange it. He strongly hinted at his divorce, and that the cause was his extended absence. He also has three children at home, who ages he did not reveal, and he wrote often of missing his family. Normally I have little patience for people who abandon their families in favor of travel for work. In this case, though, his feelings on the subject are powerful, and perhaps beyond his ability to control them. When his wife asks, "how can you love someone who might be killed or kidnapped or die in a plane crash and puts his family through that pain and worrying?" he responds to us:
But how could you not live that life, taste that taste, after you'd had it?The life he refers to is the vivid, dangerous, exciting existence of meeting new humans and sharing their world. All the poor people he met were extremely generous, feeding him from their small portions, buying his meals, watching over him and his things. Most traveled in large family groups, always crowding into spaces. He describes luxury and wealth as the ability to avoid contact with others.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Book review: Free Prize Inside
I was excited to read this book, authored by Seth Godin in 2004 (ISBN 1-59184-041-4). I have read other books on marketing and the deception and creativity of the marketers fascinated me.
I was a little disappointed at first. The book starts with advice regarding promoting one's idea in an organization. He notes that the ideas that stand out are often orthogonal to the product or service they are attached to. Think of the plastic toy in the cereal box. While many of us like to think of ourselves as hard-headed, rational consumers, few of us follow the advice of Consumer Reports. We like, in Mr. Godin's words, "design", "style" and "extras". Ideas along these lines will not necessarily appeal to the senior leaders in an organization because it is nearly impossible to prove they will be successful. The ideas that will appeal, such as more or better of the thing the organization already delivers, are unlikely to be blockbusters because promotional efforts are so expensive.
Then, like so many business-oriented books, Mr. Godin highlights several recent ideas that have been successful: PowerBar, a bakery for dogs, endless pools for swim training, fast barbershops in Japan. All were remarkable, and successful. After reading these examples, however, I can't help but think of the probably thousands of remarkable ideas that failed and never make it into a book. How does one predict which will succeed. It reminds me of the Butterfly Effect: predicting where hurricanes will land and how strong they will be is useful. Why not track these atmospheric disturbances back to their origin of the Easter coast of Africa to determine what characteristics can be used for prediction. What happens, though, is all disturbances look the same at birth: the Hurricane Hugos and the storms that never disturb a blade of grass are indistinguishable. It is said that a single flap of a butterfly's wing inside one of these systems might be the trigger. So it might be with these business ideas: one simply cannot predict which will succeed.
I mentioned I was disappointed at first, but the book finished strong with a guide for developing remarkable products and services. Again, not that he or anyone can predict which will be successful, but in the early parts of the book he compellingly explains why mere improvements to existing products or services will lead to success.
His guide is Edgecraft: take any existing thing and take one or more aspects of it to the furthest edge. For example, some people find braces on teeth to be unattractive. What if you could make them less visible? Mr. Godin would say the proper question is: what if you could make them invisible? Merely answering the first question will not get you very far. He gives a long list of traits to follow to the edge. A sampling:
* Products that are very safe (antibacterial wipes for children) or very dangerous (heli-skiing).
* Make things that are typically disposable permanent, such as a $2,000 pen, or make disposable things that are typically permanent, such as disposable digital cameras.
* Variety: a record store with tens of thousands of choices, or a record store with only a few dozen choices.
Finally, the unintentionally humorous. He cites Moore's Law when discussing how one might leverage technology and says further,
I was a little disappointed at first. The book starts with advice regarding promoting one's idea in an organization. He notes that the ideas that stand out are often orthogonal to the product or service they are attached to. Think of the plastic toy in the cereal box. While many of us like to think of ourselves as hard-headed, rational consumers, few of us follow the advice of Consumer Reports. We like, in Mr. Godin's words, "design", "style" and "extras". Ideas along these lines will not necessarily appeal to the senior leaders in an organization because it is nearly impossible to prove they will be successful. The ideas that will appeal, such as more or better of the thing the organization already delivers, are unlikely to be blockbusters because promotional efforts are so expensive.
Then, like so many business-oriented books, Mr. Godin highlights several recent ideas that have been successful: PowerBar, a bakery for dogs, endless pools for swim training, fast barbershops in Japan. All were remarkable, and successful. After reading these examples, however, I can't help but think of the probably thousands of remarkable ideas that failed and never make it into a book. How does one predict which will succeed. It reminds me of the Butterfly Effect: predicting where hurricanes will land and how strong they will be is useful. Why not track these atmospheric disturbances back to their origin of the Easter coast of Africa to determine what characteristics can be used for prediction. What happens, though, is all disturbances look the same at birth: the Hurricane Hugos and the storms that never disturb a blade of grass are indistinguishable. It is said that a single flap of a butterfly's wing inside one of these systems might be the trigger. So it might be with these business ideas: one simply cannot predict which will succeed.
I mentioned I was disappointed at first, but the book finished strong with a guide for developing remarkable products and services. Again, not that he or anyone can predict which will be successful, but in the early parts of the book he compellingly explains why mere improvements to existing products or services will lead to success.
His guide is Edgecraft: take any existing thing and take one or more aspects of it to the furthest edge. For example, some people find braces on teeth to be unattractive. What if you could make them less visible? Mr. Godin would say the proper question is: what if you could make them invisible? Merely answering the first question will not get you very far. He gives a long list of traits to follow to the edge. A sampling:
* Products that are very safe (antibacterial wipes for children) or very dangerous (heli-skiing).
* Make things that are typically disposable permanent, such as a $2,000 pen, or make disposable things that are typically permanent, such as disposable digital cameras.
* Variety: a record store with tens of thousands of choices, or a record store with only a few dozen choices.
Finally, the unintentionally humorous. He cites Moore's Law when discussing how one might leverage technology and says further,
Think about this: Within a few years, we'll be able to predict the weather -- accurately -- two months ahead of time.This was 2004 and we are on the eve of 2011. I guess in fairness to him, it depends on the definition of "a few years".
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Game Speed and Psychotherapy
I am a big fan of professional football, and one theme we hear frequently from analysts, players and coaches is how much faster the professional game is when compared with the college game. New players must adjust to this speed, through practice and game play, so that when their senses perceive a situation on the field their body will react quickly enough to make the necessary play. There is no time for thinking.
My wife is a psychotherapist. Many people have never availed themselves of psychotherapy, and the practice is still wrapped in a sort of taboo blanket. What is it like? What is the purpose? Why can't these people fix themselves?
If you were to throw most college football players, even the top draft picks, directly into an NFL game without the hours and hours and hours of practice they would normally undertake, those college football players would perform poorly. Furthermore, and I cannot prove this (nor can anyone disprove it), I would guess that additional game play would not help. The yelling from the coaches, the disgusted looks from teammates, and the mocking from opposing players would direct most not-ready-for-prime-time players into maladaptive behaviors. They would not get better.
Psychotherapy is practice for those who think their emotional skills are not as good as they could be for the prime-time game (real-life). The client (player) can discuss game-day (real-life) situations with the therapist (coach): what the client is thinking and feeling during those moments, and what the best responses might be. After repeated practice, and the confidence that comes with the mastery of a concept or situation, the client can better handle life's difficulties.
Another metaphor that comes to mind is psychotherapy as tool. If your problem is a nail, you will want a hammer, not a wrench. Life presents certain challenges for which psychotherapy is the most helpful tool.
This discussion causes me to think of Viktor Frankl, who said, "between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." He was speaking of his experience in a Nazi concentration camp, where all of his freedoms had been taken by the SS guards, with the exception that he could always choose his own feelings in response to the world around him, even as desperate as that world was for him at the time.
My wife is a psychotherapist. Many people have never availed themselves of psychotherapy, and the practice is still wrapped in a sort of taboo blanket. What is it like? What is the purpose? Why can't these people fix themselves?
If you were to throw most college football players, even the top draft picks, directly into an NFL game without the hours and hours and hours of practice they would normally undertake, those college football players would perform poorly. Furthermore, and I cannot prove this (nor can anyone disprove it), I would guess that additional game play would not help. The yelling from the coaches, the disgusted looks from teammates, and the mocking from opposing players would direct most not-ready-for-prime-time players into maladaptive behaviors. They would not get better.
Psychotherapy is practice for those who think their emotional skills are not as good as they could be for the prime-time game (real-life). The client (player) can discuss game-day (real-life) situations with the therapist (coach): what the client is thinking and feeling during those moments, and what the best responses might be. After repeated practice, and the confidence that comes with the mastery of a concept or situation, the client can better handle life's difficulties.
Another metaphor that comes to mind is psychotherapy as tool. If your problem is a nail, you will want a hammer, not a wrench. Life presents certain challenges for which psychotherapy is the most helpful tool.
This discussion causes me to think of Viktor Frankl, who said, "between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." He was speaking of his experience in a Nazi concentration camp, where all of his freedoms had been taken by the SS guards, with the exception that he could always choose his own feelings in response to the world around him, even as desperate as that world was for him at the time.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Book review: The Hollywood Economist
This book was authored by Edward Jay Epstein in 2010 (Library of Congress 2009943414).
I found this book hard to follow, but I can summarize the main themes, which the author conveniently summarizes in his epilogue.
One. Hollywood was started in the early 1900s by (mostly Jewish) individuals who were blocked from making movies in New York and Massachusetts by the Edison Trust. By the mid-1920s weekly attendance was 57 million, and by the 1930s (Depression years) attendance was 75 million weekly (out of a population of 130 million). Hollywood was very profitable.
Two. Theater attendance plummeted with the rise of television. After peaking at 90 million weekly viewers in 1948 attending 500 motion pictures produced by a workforce of 320,000, only 45 million attended weekly in 1958. Tickets accounted for 80% of revenues in 1948 and 20% of revenues in 2007. But Hollywood deal-makers are resourceful; they currently spend millions to advertise each movie to (primarily) under-25 males to remain immensely profitable. While clever, original productions such as Slumdog Millionaire dominate the Oscars, these movies have little to do with Hollywood's success; rather, Spiderman 3 and its ilk pay the bills.
Three. It is unclear what the future holds, but given Hollywood's financial creativity in years past, the author expects Hollywood to invent new ways of making money, despite the surge in viewers looking to the free Internet and pirated DVDs for entertainment.
Beyond these themes, I was intrigued by the way studios spread their risk. Each movie is typically produced by an independent company, wholly-owned by the studio. This independent company pays the studio for distribution services, so much so, that those doing business with the independent company should expect it to lose money. For example, they offer to hedge funds and other investors an opportunity to front to these independent companies part of the production costs. The investors collect at the end, but from a smaller pie than one might imagine, given the off-the-top amounts going to the studio. Governments at both a national, regional and local level provide tax breaks to studios who produce some of the movie at a given location or perform some of the work there. So, the film may be shot in Canada and edited in Germany using Pennsylvania staffers, with all those governments kicking in a share. To get the tax breaks the studios may have to sell the movie to a local entity, and then lease it back from that entity.
Headline actors and actresses do not perform their own stunts, despite what they might claim on The Tonight Show, for two reasons. First, action movies are not shot linearly and the action scenes often require very different backgrounds. We have all heard of the stunt double, but in modern films the more accurate description is stunt-twins, -triplets, even -quadruplets. There may be several men playing James Bond, one who hangs from a cliff, another who jumps from a speeding car, and another who dodges thrown knives. Beyond this, a movie starring Nicole Kidman will not do well at the box office or with later DVD sales and rentals if Nicole Kidman is not in the movie. She may decide she does not like the director, she may break her ankle stepping off a curb on her way to the grocery store. To protect itself from these incidents a studio will want to purchase insurance. An insurance company will happily take this risk in exchange for a couple-million-dollar premium, so long as risks are minimized, which means no stunts. Not only will the insurance contract forbid stunts, but before issuing the policy the insurer's staff will scrutinize the script for danger and after issuing the policy may send staff to the set at various times to verify. The author states that the deception may not be vanity on the part of the actors and actresses, but may instead be required per their agreement with the studio.
Certain actors, and to a lesser extent actresses, hold a lot of power, and three were especially interesting to me. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the headliner for Terminator 3. The producers felt he was needed because of his role in Terminator 2, not because of his acting skills (indeed, he played a robot). In addition to a $29.25 million fee, whether or not the movie was ever played, he also received $1.5 million for private jets, limousine service, personal physicians and cooks, and the like. And, he was entitled to a share of the profits, with profits being defined in a way that there would actually be profits, unlike with the wholly-owned company described above that typically loses money. Further, the studio paid the Governor's company, not Mr. Schwarzenegger himself, given him flexibility in structuring his pay for a more advantageous tax outcome.
This was small potatoes compared with Tom Cruise and the Mission Impossible trilogy. He earned more the $70 million from the first and $92 million from the second.
Many actors and actresses are truly interested in the artistic side of movie-making, as opposed to the commercial side, so that players such as Sean Penn and Julia Roberts will star in small films, the kind shown at Sundance, for the Screen Actors Guild minimum wage of $788 per day.
Last, and this example saddened me more than the others, is Michael Moore and his Fahrenheit 9/11. Production was a political hot potato, given its content, and many studios did not want to distribute it. This censorship attracted press attention which eventually persuaded the Harvey and Bob Weinstein (brothers) to do so. Mr. Moore's statements regarding the studios were not entirely accurate, but more compelling, driving more press attention. The attention drove the movie to $228 million in ticket sales and $30 million in DVD sales, of which $21 million Michael Moore took. One can read a Wikipedia article for a fuller description of these events.
All of the above facts and figures, of course, I took from the book. I have no way of knowing whether they are true.
I found this book hard to follow, but I can summarize the main themes, which the author conveniently summarizes in his epilogue.
One. Hollywood was started in the early 1900s by (mostly Jewish) individuals who were blocked from making movies in New York and Massachusetts by the Edison Trust. By the mid-1920s weekly attendance was 57 million, and by the 1930s (Depression years) attendance was 75 million weekly (out of a population of 130 million). Hollywood was very profitable.
Two. Theater attendance plummeted with the rise of television. After peaking at 90 million weekly viewers in 1948 attending 500 motion pictures produced by a workforce of 320,000, only 45 million attended weekly in 1958. Tickets accounted for 80% of revenues in 1948 and 20% of revenues in 2007. But Hollywood deal-makers are resourceful; they currently spend millions to advertise each movie to (primarily) under-25 males to remain immensely profitable. While clever, original productions such as Slumdog Millionaire dominate the Oscars, these movies have little to do with Hollywood's success; rather, Spiderman 3 and its ilk pay the bills.
Three. It is unclear what the future holds, but given Hollywood's financial creativity in years past, the author expects Hollywood to invent new ways of making money, despite the surge in viewers looking to the free Internet and pirated DVDs for entertainment.
Beyond these themes, I was intrigued by the way studios spread their risk. Each movie is typically produced by an independent company, wholly-owned by the studio. This independent company pays the studio for distribution services, so much so, that those doing business with the independent company should expect it to lose money. For example, they offer to hedge funds and other investors an opportunity to front to these independent companies part of the production costs. The investors collect at the end, but from a smaller pie than one might imagine, given the off-the-top amounts going to the studio. Governments at both a national, regional and local level provide tax breaks to studios who produce some of the movie at a given location or perform some of the work there. So, the film may be shot in Canada and edited in Germany using Pennsylvania staffers, with all those governments kicking in a share. To get the tax breaks the studios may have to sell the movie to a local entity, and then lease it back from that entity.
Headline actors and actresses do not perform their own stunts, despite what they might claim on The Tonight Show, for two reasons. First, action movies are not shot linearly and the action scenes often require very different backgrounds. We have all heard of the stunt double, but in modern films the more accurate description is stunt-twins, -triplets, even -quadruplets. There may be several men playing James Bond, one who hangs from a cliff, another who jumps from a speeding car, and another who dodges thrown knives. Beyond this, a movie starring Nicole Kidman will not do well at the box office or with later DVD sales and rentals if Nicole Kidman is not in the movie. She may decide she does not like the director, she may break her ankle stepping off a curb on her way to the grocery store. To protect itself from these incidents a studio will want to purchase insurance. An insurance company will happily take this risk in exchange for a couple-million-dollar premium, so long as risks are minimized, which means no stunts. Not only will the insurance contract forbid stunts, but before issuing the policy the insurer's staff will scrutinize the script for danger and after issuing the policy may send staff to the set at various times to verify. The author states that the deception may not be vanity on the part of the actors and actresses, but may instead be required per their agreement with the studio.
Certain actors, and to a lesser extent actresses, hold a lot of power, and three were especially interesting to me. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the headliner for Terminator 3. The producers felt he was needed because of his role in Terminator 2, not because of his acting skills (indeed, he played a robot). In addition to a $29.25 million fee, whether or not the movie was ever played, he also received $1.5 million for private jets, limousine service, personal physicians and cooks, and the like. And, he was entitled to a share of the profits, with profits being defined in a way that there would actually be profits, unlike with the wholly-owned company described above that typically loses money. Further, the studio paid the Governor's company, not Mr. Schwarzenegger himself, given him flexibility in structuring his pay for a more advantageous tax outcome.
This was small potatoes compared with Tom Cruise and the Mission Impossible trilogy. He earned more the $70 million from the first and $92 million from the second.
Many actors and actresses are truly interested in the artistic side of movie-making, as opposed to the commercial side, so that players such as Sean Penn and Julia Roberts will star in small films, the kind shown at Sundance, for the Screen Actors Guild minimum wage of $788 per day.
Last, and this example saddened me more than the others, is Michael Moore and his Fahrenheit 9/11. Production was a political hot potato, given its content, and many studios did not want to distribute it. This censorship attracted press attention which eventually persuaded the Harvey and Bob Weinstein (brothers) to do so. Mr. Moore's statements regarding the studios were not entirely accurate, but more compelling, driving more press attention. The attention drove the movie to $228 million in ticket sales and $30 million in DVD sales, of which $21 million Michael Moore took. One can read a Wikipedia article for a fuller description of these events.
All of the above facts and figures, of course, I took from the book. I have no way of knowing whether they are true.
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