General

Last night I saw Cloverfield at the Chinese. And loved it. Since the first trailer, I’ve been plugging my ears and shouting “la la la la” whenever someone tried to tell me something about the movie, and I’m glad I did. A blank slate is a movie-goer’s best friend.

I have the opposite situation for two of the trailers that played before Cloverfield: Iron Man and The Eye. I did two week’s work on each — not nearly enough to merit credit, but enough that I know every single plot point. If there’d only been a Hancock trailer, it would have been a trifecta.

Because you’ll ask: I haven’t seen any of the three. The Eye changed studios, directors and stars soon after I worked on it. (Not my fault, I swear.) I took the job because I really wanted to write something scary. Even with all the genres I’ve worked in, I had never done a horror movie.

I feel much more kinship towards Hancock and Iron Man, along with their writers, directors and producers. Both had strong scripts before I got involved, and I enjoyed helping out where I could.

So it’s not just me. This [Fortune blog article](http://bigtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/01/07/warner-dvd-format-war-was-hurting-movie-sales/?source=yahoo_quote) attributes this year’s 2% drop in DVD sales to consumer paralysis over which of the new formats to buy:

Market research showed it wasn’t just NetFlix (NFLX) or Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes hurting traditional DVD sales, either. Consumers who bought HDTVs were so afraid of backing the wrong high-definition movie format that they decided not to buy movies at all.

It’s a phenomenon that would be familiar to anyone who’s read Barry Schwartz’s Paradox of Choice: in our desire to not pick wrong, we often don’t pick at all.

Thanks to [Mike Curtis](http://hdforindies.com) for the link.

Last week, I blogged about [my upcoming speech](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/writing-the-future) at Drake University (my alma mater), which was entitled “The Challenge of Writing in a Digital Age.” I posted my basic thesis statements, and invited comments. As expected, the hive mind was very helpful in reshaping (and renaming) many of my thoughts, so I’m very grateful to those who wrote in.

The speech went well. It was a nearly-full house, with a lot of first-year students in the crowd, and they seemed to keep pretty engaged.

In terms of content, I don’t think the talk was the equal of the [speech on professionalism](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/professional-writing-and-the-rise-of-the-amateur) I gave at Trinity University last year, which covered some of the same ground and used one of the same anecdotes. This one wasn’t as organized or persuasive. I think there’s a much better speech to be written on a single one of these topics (such as Authority), but I’d already committed to the sampler platter.

I promised several professors I’d hold off posting the text of the speech until after extra-credit assignments were turned in. Those deadlines should have now passed.

If you’d prefer a .pdf version (it’s 19 pages), you can find it [here](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/writing_in_digital_age.pdf).

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It’s an honor–a pleasure–to be back on campus, standing on this stage where just a couple of weeks ago, actual presidential candidates were trying to seem electable.

I feel I should stress: I have absolutely no political ambitions. But I do have a bit of a platform tonight, a list of observations about the things I see looming on the horizon, and what’s to be done about it. I’m not going to ask for your vote, but I am going to ask for your attention. And most importantly, I’m going to ask you to turn off that part of your brain that automatically goes, “Yeah, well, but that doesn’t apply to me.”

(Actually, you don’t have to turn that part of your brain off. Just put it on vibrate. Let your objections go to voicemail.)
What I’m going to try to convince you tonight is that writing matters. That seems like a pretty easy sell at a university. After all, most of you are students. You’re getting grades. Of course writing matters.

But I’m going to be a little more ambitious tonight. I’m not talking about just academic writing. I’m talking about all writing. I’m talking about email. Memos. Your blog. I’m talking about what you wrote on your friend’s Facebook wall. All that writing you don’t think you’re getting graded on–well, you are.

Whether you want to or not, you’re being judged on it. And you’re being judged differently because of the era you’re living in.

So if I do my job right tonight, I’m going to send you out of here a little bit rattled, a little bit paranoid, but hopefully better prepared. [Read more…] about The Challenge of Writing in a Digital Age

I’m off to Venice for Critics’ Week, so Matt is running things in my absence. I’ll leave comments open for this thread, if you have thoughts or questions about The Nines (or other topics of interest).

Ciao e grazie.