Month: June 2012

R.I.P. the Queen of Romantic Comedy Nora Ephron




It’s hard to believe that the witty romanticist of Upper West Side, Nora Ephron, is gone.  It seems that it was only yesterday (actually more than four years have gone) that she was concerned about the condition of her neck.  And what a classy dame – managed to hide her leukemia from nosy parkers of the media variety; wrote a script (Lost in Austen) and committed to direct it in 2013, as if nothing was going on!

Here is someone who didn’t ride to her fame on the back of the nepotism (both her parents were Hollywood screenwriters).  She was in her late 30s when she started transferring her writing skills from journalism to TV and 41 when she penned her first movie script (together with Alice Arlen) for Silkwood directed by Michael Nichols.

At her best, she was able to reach a remarkably broad audience.  Her female characters were tested by circumstances, connections and emotions familiar to anyone.  In her greatest hits (When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail) she managed to make her writing both highbrow and accessible at the same time – a rare feat in contemporary cinema.  Her writing skillfully combined sharp humor and intelligence with uplifting, almost fairy-tale, aspirations to achieve human happiness.  As the result, these movies have become undeniable critical and commercial successes.  Together they grossed $572 million to date, returning 5.6 times of their total budgets.

Most importantly, Nora Ephron left us with fond recollections of funny moments and snappy quotes that will be affectionately cited by fans and shamelessly imitated by other writers for generations to come.  And for that we are grateful to you, Nora Ephron.      

Quote of the Week: If You Haven’t Got Material


220px-MamasAndPapas260"You could be a good singer from now ’til hell and back and if you haven’t got material, you’re just standing there with your mouth open. You’ll be singing commercial jingles for the rest of your life."

                                        Mama Cass Elliot

The Frustrated CFO's comment:

When I first heard this long-ago interview on The Best of The Mamas & the Papas  compilation, I thought right away that Mama Cass stumbled on something very fundamental and universal here.  It's not just music.  Without writers, actors wouldn't have roles to perform.  Without choreographers, dancers would be standing there motionless.       

In fact, I frequently use this quote as an analogy in business situations.  It works wonders, for example, in shrinking heads of "star" traders and salesmen, who think themselves to be the only important people in an organization.  They forget that the music they are singing to clients and customers is a combination of the company's goodwill created by executives, the finances that buy the products, the infrastructure that delivers and supports the commerce.  Without all of these efforts together, they would be standing there with their mouths opened selling… nothing.

     

The Frustrated CFO Comments on Huffington Post’s College Dropouts Gallery


Click to view Huffington Post's Famous College Dropouts Gallery and read The Frustrated CFO's comment.

The Chronically Insubordinate “Nurse Jackie”


Images-1If there are people out there who can be identified as The Frustrated CFO's devoted readers, they probably have been to the author's Facebook page and know that, for the time being, Nurse Jackie is listed there as one of my top 5 favorite TV shows.  Besides the incredible ballsiness of the creators, who do not shy away from some of the most controversial issues of healthcare industry, social division, workplace dynamics, and intimate relationships, my highest appreciation goes for the show's realistic depiction of the overwhelming human frailty. 

There are no good or bad people on the show – everyone is a cunt with some redeeming moments here and there.  Nobody more so than Jackie Peyton herself, all her blemishes exposed under the microscope of the show's creators.  I have no right to judge, but I hope my readers will agree that Jackie can be considered severely flawed even under our contemporary, shifting moral standards.  She is a shitty mother, wife, friend, girlfriend.  It would be an unpleasant experience to simply bump into her on the street by accident.  She is a cheater, a liar, and… oh, yes, a drug addict.  As I always say, "Love the show, hate Jackie." 

I can hear the opposition screaming at me, "But she is a wonderful nurse!  She helped so many people!"  Here's what I have to say to that: Jacky Peyton is a highly skillful professional, but she is a terrible employee, who violates all rules of her workplace and, as a result, does more damage than good.  Moreover, she is an unethical employee who bestows her graces on a few people of her choosing, while screwing others.

Those who consistently watch the show probably anticipate my bringing up her current season shenanigans.  But no, I will not do that. Instead, I would like to give you an example of Gross Audacity strategically introduced to us at the very start of the series.

The main medical emergency of the Pilot was a young bicycle messenger with a brain bleed.  When he died, Jackie falsified his driver license to pass him as an organ donor, because she was of opinion that it was a "right thing to do."  Then she sat in front of his family and lied to their disbelieving faces about it.  The deceit deepened when she convinced the transplant team that Coop signed off the body release to them.  Jackie can lie like no one else!  And you know why she doesn't waver? Because she thinks that she is above personal wishes of a dead young man,  above rules and regulations, above subordination.  She believes that she can get away with anything as long as she follows her own perverse sense of right and wrong.  And that's fucked up!

Here is my question for those who still think that Jackie is a Good Nurse – if you had an employee like that on your staff, how would you deal with her?  By the way, this and many other cases could've landed dear Jackie in jail.  Loving mother, isn't she?

       

Lessons from the Author of “CFO Techniques”


GI_98327_CFO TechniquesOr Ten Things Your Publisher Will Forget to Tell You.

Disclaimer:  The following conclusions are based on a specific experience of one first-time author with one particular publisher.  Marina Guzik does not infer that any other writer of professional books, working on her first or n-th opus for any other, or even the very same, publisher would encounter the same disappointments. 

1.  There will be no color inside your book.  Color printing is expensive and the publisher's intent is to keep the production cost to a bare minimum.  So, all your colorful charts and graphs will be in fifty shades of gray (pun is always intended). The good news is that many people read eBooks now and those are full of color.

2.  As I found out after the signing of the contract, publishers of professional literature utilize a practice of technical reviewing.  Regardless of your credentials, depth of knowledge, experience and professional stature, the publishers will need to hire someone for 2 cent per page to serve as a technical reviewer for your book.  This person's job is to verify that you did not make any errors in definitions, calculations, etc.

3.  Amazingly, this technical reviewer will get his bio printed prominently in the Front Matter right after your own, the author's.  Moreover, the publisher's production department will not have enough common sense to at least make it shorter than the one provided by the humble author, who thought it was unnecessary to list all her accomplishments.

4. Speaking of production.  Somehow their compiler squashes words together, cuts out letters in the illustrations, and does other weird things to the final book layout.  So, after everything is done, you will still need to reread your book in its entirety, fishing out this stupid shit, before giving your final-draft approval.  

5.  As you get closer to the finish line, the publisher will randomly move the book's release date back and forth, due to some internal considerations (like printing arrangements), without letting you know.  So, don't book that wrap party for yourself (did you think for a second that the publishers will do it?) until the book is actually out. 

6.  If the publisher includes a Promotion clause in your contract, which states: "We’ll promote the Work, using Our reasonable judgment about the methods and amount of promotion," you should understand that it means they will not spend a penny on promoting your book – there will be no advertising, no sales tables at the professional conferences, and stuff like that.  There will be nothing, except their "wonderful PR team's" campaign.  

7.  There are Publishers and there are publishers.  If your book is with Wiley, for example, it will be handled by a stronger public relation team.  On the other hand, smaller, less known publishers are staffed with people who didn't make it into the world of the big-time PR influence.  They don't have connections and their rolodexes are skimpy.  They don't have a pull to call on, let's say, a reviewer at Financial Times and recommend your book.  So, their entire "promotional campaign" amounts to posting a public release on PRWeb.com and, allegedly, mass-emailing it to their undisclosed distribution list. 

8.  That single promotional tool, the public release, will be written in a wooden, cumbersome language.  Moreover, it will misrepresent some crucial aspects of your book.   And when you rewrite it yourself to make it snappier and smarter, they will completely ignore your version and post their own anyway.  They will add insult to injury by misspelling your name under your quote.    

9.  If you dare to express your frustration with all this bullshit on the pages of your blog, which is specifically designed as a venting outlet, they will lash out at you and then shut you out: they will not even list your book among their featured titles.

10. Last, but not least, the various eBook versions (Nook, Kindle, ePub, PDF, MOBI) will not be protected by any resellers.  They will be ripped off every legitimate site, including that of your publishers', and offered for free on the Internet.  Thus, your copyrights will be brutally infringed and your meager ability to earn any royalty off of your own work will be drastically diminished.  The publishers will not do anything about it.  They will not even reply to your emails on the subject.  

You have to appreciate, though, what they do tell you in advance:

1.  Even though there are 6 million companies with less than 100 employees in this country and you wrote a book that can help them to survive, you can consider yourself lucky if a few thousand copies will be sold in several years.  How many small-business owners and their downtrodden senior financial managers have you seen improving their organizations by the book?   

2. Hence, there is no fame or fortune in writing professional books; 

3. It's not the book itself, but what you do with it.

Knowing this keeps you real.  If you are not going to promote the book at your own expense, or utilize it to enhance your professional exposure, accept the fact that seeing it published simply massages your ego.  Nothing more.