You can see the full list [here](http://wga.org/awards/awardssub.aspx?id=1516), including all the TV nominations. Special kudos to picketing-mate Irene Turner, whose An American Crime got a nod in longform.
‘Wherefore’ does not mean where
A headline in today’s Hollywood Reporter:
> Wherefore art thou, ‘Juliet’? It’s at Uni.
The story is about a book set up at Universal. The headline is incredibly frustrating. Wherefore isn’t a fancy way of saying where. It’s a fancy way of saying why or therefore:
As longtime readers will know, I’m generally not Mr. Stickler when it comes to word usage. I’ve gotten several terms wrong over the years, including “begging the question.” I fully understand that words change meaning over time as languages grow and adapt. English is particularly nimble in this regard, and that’s a good thing. [English is not Latin](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2005/english-is-not-latin).
So why my beef with “wherefore?”
Wherefore isn’t a modern word in any sense. Its only use is in lame callbacks to the balcony scene in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. So every time it’s misused as a synonym for “where,” the writer reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the iconic scene.
JULIET
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name; or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love and I’ll no longer be a Capulet.
ROMEO
(aside)
Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?
JULIET
‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy: thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What’s Montague? It is nor hand nor foot, nor arm nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man. O be some other name!
She’s not asking where he is. She’s asking why this hot guy she’s in love with has to be Romeo, a Montague, member of the rival gang. If we were writing that line now, it would be something like:
JULIET
O Romeo, Romeo, why must thou be Romeo?
But the where/wherefore mistake is so fundamentally entrenched that we now expect Juliet to be straining at the edge of the balcony, looking out in the night with hopes of seeing her true love. It sets up the idea that she knows he’s coming, that a rendezvous has been set. It changes the scene in fundamental ways.
I’m a realist: this fight will never be won. I’m certain I’ll go to my grave having just read a headline on the Mentalinet which makes the exact same mistake. I’m calling it out simply in hopes that some of my readers might join the fraternity of people who know that it’s wrong, and will bristle when they see it.
iMovie 09: Almost certainly maddening
Among the products Apple announced today is iMovie 09, an update to their entry-level video editor that I currently find completely unusable. They have [demo videos](http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/) up showing some of the new features, which range from very helpful (stabilization) to fairly gimmicky (the animated maps).
What’s most clear, however, is that they’re sticking with the bizarre and unfortunate editing interface.
Yes, I have the curse of knowledge: I know how an editing system is “supposed to” work, as it does in Final Cut, Avid and to some degree, the original iMovie. But I’m always game for a new and better idea, particularly if it makes heretofore complicated things easier for newcomers to understand. iMovie is supposed to let ordinary Mac users cut together simple videos. I get that.
But worse than being unlike real editing systems, iMovie is unlike any normal Mac application. Take a look at how [Precision Editor](http://movies.apple.com/media/us/mac/ilife/imovie/2009/tutorials/apple-ilife-imovie-use_precision_edit_view_to_trim_video-us-20090106_r640-10cie.mov?width=640&height=400) works in the new iMovie.
You move the mouse along the gray bar, or inside one clip or inside another clip. You’re not clicking or dragging; you’re just floating. Unlike every other Mac application in which a click selects something (or moves the insertion point), a click in iMovie is a cut — or more precisely, it adjusts the out point of the top clip. A click in the lower clip adjusts its in point. There’s feedback, in the sense that the video suddenly jumps, but it’s not immediately clear what’s changed, or what would be undone if you hit Undo.
Throughout iMovie, there’s a lot of WTF? Important things are hidden in pop-up menus, often attached to clips. I understand and support the idea of attaching actions to objects, but how is Precision Editor an action? It’s a noun, not a verb, and opens as a separate viewer.
The timeline is the other major frustration. Anyone who has ever watched YouTube understands that in video, time moves from left to right. If you drag the playhead — the little circle — you’re moving forward and backward in the clip. But not in iMovie. In iMovie, time wraps like text, left to right then up and down. Apple has created a new and inferior grammar for no good reason.
Fortunately, Final Cut Express is only $169 on Amazon
Postmodernism will eat itself
In the comments thread to my post on [Charlie Brown, advertising, and whatever comes after postmodernism](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2008/charlie-brown-postmodern), reader Michael makes an important point:
> If everything is a reference to a reference to a reference, as so much creative work is currently, then audiences are forced to either “get” everything, or else be alienated by everything. It may work in the short term for a target audience, but the work won’t hold up for long. Once the references become irrelevant, the work built on references becomes, likewise, irrelevant.
That’s the crux and the crisis: you’re creating things that won’t make sense 20 years from now. Or 20 minutes, given the speed of our culture.
Certainly there are things forged out of this postmodern, paste-it-together ethic that will last — probably because they have some artistic achievement beyond their ability to string together pop-culture references. “Single Ladies” is really well shot and performed. If you put it in a time capsule, it will still make sense, the same way Tina Turner’s “Proud Mary” holds up.
But as an extreme example, consider Weezer’s deliberately memetastic “Pork and Beans” video ([link](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQHPYelqr0E), not embeddable). It’s fantastic and won’t make a lick of sense to anyone who didn’t use YouTube from 2004 to 2008.