Category: blog wars

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Why the Low-budget Filmmaking Glut will be Good

Some people complain that filmmaking is becoming too inexpensive, and now anyone thinks they can make a film. They say this will result in a glut of bad films.

Well, what did we have before? Too many good films?

Anyone who says this is an elitist arse. When they complain about too many people making films, they most certainly do not mean themselves. No, they have surpassed some mystical benchmark of divine birthright, involving a combination of ‘natural’ talent, intelligence, and insight combined with superior upbringing, and they therefore have a right to consider themselves an artist.

Bollocks!

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REDEFINING THE HORSE RACE

[The following article was written shortly after I followed David Orchard on his Vancouver Island Tour in 1998, and while I was producing a promotional video for Orchard’s 1998 Progressive Conservative Party leadership campaign.]

David Orchard doesn’t need to convert the PC elite to stop globalization. He just needs to be heard by voters
by Patrick Harrison

The media believes in horse-race reporting, i.e. here comes Clark, Clark’s coming down, coming up behind it’s Segal, Segal moving up, Clark’s looking over his shoulder, here comes Segal as they move into the first turn… Say that out loud as fast as you can, and you’ll have a good idea what to expect out of the press in the months leading up to the PC leadership race.

That’s why you may get very little chance to hear what anyone, let alone David Orchard, actually has to say about anything.  But if you do, listen very carefully.  Orchard combines the analytical relentlessness of Noam Chomsky with the charisma and flair for realpolitik of Pierre Trudeau.  Stompin’ Tom Connors, on hearing of Orchard for the first time, immediately ordered all his writings and speeches (there’s a hefty whack of them) and pledged undying support.  It is this power of conversion Orchard is now focusing full-force on the Conservative Party of Canada.

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