Sam [Samuel Z. Arkoff] once said he could come into work and make up movie titles out of thin air, and many times a picture was sold based on a title alone, like Day The World Ended! They [Arkoff and James H. Nicholson] were that confident in what they could do.Ron Waite (in Sam Arkoff and A.I.P.)
I've been (and still am) a bit busy the past few days writing an 'academic' presentation that I'm supposed to give at a conference on Saturday. I've always been inspired by Arkoff's approach to making movies, so I follow it I when I submit proposals for presentations: I come up with a snappy title and don't even begin to think of the details until after it's been accepted. It usually works well for me, but this week my mojo seems to have abandoned me, so I find myself cutting and pasting crap that I've already done and trying to make it fit into the title and abstract that I've already submitted. What? You think nobody else does this? Heh, look around...
Be back after the weekend...
I hope the weekend presentation went well! Nothing like flying by the seat of your pants to get the adrenaline flowing.
ReplyDeleteBTW, the word verification for this comment was "mrqhllap" I wonder who Mr Qhllap is and where he lives?
Thanks Mr. Angry! Yeah, it went fairly well (nobody left the room while I was talking!).
ReplyDeleteThat bastard Qhllap owes me some money and recently skipped town!
Salamaat,
ReplyDeleteyou two are hilarious!
i was just gonna say i hope it went well..and now I am glad it went well...
nice trick by the way, we'll keep that in mind for any future academia forays!
By the way, word verifications are torture for me!
Hi Maliha, and thanks!
ReplyDeleteYeah, Blogger's word verification is particularly cumbersome and annoying (I have to go through it on my own blog even when I'm logged in).
You know the answer is to switch to wordpress which includes the magical protection of Akismet. No word verification necessary!
ReplyDeleteKyklops - glad it went well - your seat of the pants technique reminds me of a time I had to do 15 mins presentation on "finance efficiencies" to a team of senior managers. Problems was (1) I had done no prep and (2) there were no efficiency improvements to report.
ReplyDeleteSo, on the spot, I invented "FISH" analysis - this was a 2 x 2 grid (what else?) showing Focus on, Immediate Priorities, Steer Clear Of, and Hurdles - I then had all the managers fill out "FISH sheets" (and sign them)for 10 mins then "went round the room" for the last 5 - saved my arse and generated enough ideas to keep the "efficiecies" team busy for the next 6 months....
Pal, heh, that was quick thinking. In my case I just had to 're-package' some stuff I'd done before.
ReplyDelete