Monday, August 18, 2003
Svegliati! The Italian American Community NEEDS Internet Literacy!!!!

A community is not much of a community if it doesn't have communication.

For 5 years I have been "beating the drums" that the Italian American Community:

(1) Support an Italian American Internet PORTAL that would be an aggregate of in excess of 20,000 web sites that would permit any I-A to go to ONE place, at ONE Web Address, and find ANYTHING about their Italian American and Italian Culture.

The major Italian American organizations have been silent, without reason.

(2) Have all major Italian American organizations encourage their members to become Internet Literate, to the point of having a project within each Chapter to achieve 100% "literacy"!

NO such projects that I know of have been initiated.

(3) Have all major Italian American organizations send out DAILY Email Bulletins to each member that would include both Organization Business and Information on Italian American Studies, and or pleas for assistance in contacting "transgressors"
of the culture.

Such a system has not yet been adopted by any organization.

I am including two articles, in brief and extended form that show:

(1) The "Instant Messaging/Communication of the Internet has turned the Movie Marketing business on it's head.

(2) Because of the Internet, E-mail, Instant Messaging, Blogs, etc.... Politics will never be the same!!!!

===========================================================
INSTANT MESSAGING AND IT'S ROLE IN MOVIE MARKETING

Word of mouth — buzz — has long been an element in a film's success or failure. But rapid advances in technology, in the hands of an "American Idol" culture quick to express its vote-'em-off sentiments, has accelerated the pace of communication so much that Hollywood feels the reverberations at the box office almost immediately.

"In the old days, there used to be a term, 'buying your gross,' " said Rick Sands, chief operating officer at Miramax, referring to the millions of dollars studios throw at a movie to ensure a big opening weekend.

"You could buy your gross for the weekend and overcome bad word of mouth, because it took time to filter out into the general audience," he said. "Those days are over. Today, there is no fooling the public."

The casualties are everywhere, and even mighty studio marketing machines have been powerless to stem the tide.

Widely released movies this summer dropped off an average of 51% between their first weekend and their second, according to Nielsen EDI Inc., a box office tracking firm. Five years ago, the drop-off averaged 40%. A 22% decline!!!

The movies with the greatest investment, and the greatest expectations, had horrific disappointments. "The Hulk" opened with $62 million but fell 69.7% by its second weekend. "2 Fast 2 Furious" started off with $50.4 million but dipped 63%. "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" turned in a disappointing $37 million and then saw its fortunes drop by 62.8%. And the much-maligned "Gigli" was in a class by itself, plunging faster than the scariest summer thrill ride — a disastrous $3.7-million opening weekend, followed by a record-breaking drop of 81.9%.

On the other hand, instant word of mouth can also be the fuel to light a film's box office success. "Ringu," a cerebral horror flick — caused a sensation in Japan, a technology-forward country with lots of cell phones. The power of instant feedback— was immediately apparent.

"I remember it struck fear into the hearts of our Japanese distributors, because it was a new phenomenon," Sands said. "By the time people walked out of the theaters, they were instant messaging. And it is so much more pronounced now."

In the U.S. these days, the pace of chat is fast enough, in some cases, to affect a movie's box office results from its Friday opening to Saturday night.

The impact of instant messaging can be magnified, because its users tend to be Hollywood's favorite customers: teenagers, a group particularly sensitive to peer reaction.
==========================================================
INTERACTIVE MEDIA PORTENDS A REVOLUTION IN GOVERNANCE
are continuous and interactive.

Something powerfully transformative is underway in state politics, and it is nothing less than voters' self-liberation from a claustrophobic and demeaning political culture out of sync with today's 24/7 information society and unworthy of the larger creativity of the Golden State.

I would add another comparison: Hiram Johnson's 1910 campaign for governor, in which the Progressives, organized only three years earlier as the Lincoln-Roosevelt League, swept into office and reformed state government to the point of virtually refounding it. Suspicious of their electoral success, the Progressives worried that a counter-coup might be launched by "special interests" and gave themselves The recall as an ace in the hole, a way of staging a counter-coup if necessary...

As Marshall McLuhan foresaw some 40 years ago, the media revolution has expanded the bandwidth of politics. We live in an around-the-clock information environment in which radio, television, the Internet, newspapers, e-mail, instant messaging, entertainment, blogs, etc. are continuous and interactive. This situation has four major political effects.

FIRST, people are becoming increasingly high-speed and interactive in the way that they absorb and process information. This is especially true of younger people, whose dexterity and speed in navigating the Internet can be breathtaking...

By contrast, traditional politics, including state government centered in Sacramento, is guided by 18th century protocols and procedures and is essentially 18th century in its pace. Government is just too slow compared with the ways other sectors of society go about their business.

SECOND, a continuous multimedia environment, has expanded the universe of governance to include entertainment celebrities, radio talk-show hosts, sports figures, electronic and print pundits, blogs and mega-wealthy activists....

THIRDLY, The high-speed Internet- connected multimedia culture, cannot be controlled at any one point. It is open, unfiltered and rabidly democratic. Now it helps spawn political candidacies. For example, Huffington said that one reason she's running for governor is because of all the e-mails she'd received urging her to run. Candidates open Web sites, not headquarters. The political debate is conducted in cyberspace, with blogs of virtually all political stripes and voters providing the dialogue — and it's instantly accessible.

State politics, by contrast, is a largely closed system of noncompetitive seats, limited budgetary options and rules designed to impede action, with the development of leadership on a voter-imposed time clock. In short, politicians are playing on an increasingly smaller court at a pace that seems frozen by Internet standards.

FINALLY, The new environment, demands a personal connection...

Californians seem to be demanding a similar connection with their political leadership. This doesn't mean they want to press political flesh, though physical contact always seems to help. Rather, they look to media to provide the contact, as Franklin D. Roosevelt did with his fireside chats. Roosevelt exploited what McLuhan later described as the vivid intimacy of radio, second only to the telephone as a mode of person- to-person subliminal contact. Seen in this light, the "Arnold" phenomenon seems more than mere celebrity worship.

What seems to be going on in California, then, is not a political sideshow — and nothing to be defensive about. Almost accidentally, a political instrument conceived in January 1911, when there were no radios or TV sets, when telephones and typewriters were luxuries, has opened the door to a new political world. How ironic that the recall, designed for a sparsely populated state of 3.4 million that was slow to communicate, has accelerated and compounded the political effects of our Internet-juiced multimedia environment.

No wonder California voters seem to be in a state of emotional and moral release, seeking a new connection to their politicians. Far from being a circus or even a grand opera, the current situation, as personally painful as it must be for Gov. Gray Davis, offers a breakthrough opportunity to rethink, reform, revitalize — indeed, refound — state government.
===========================================================

If you think as I, That it is Critical to ALL our Plans for the Future, for us to embark on "The Italian American Internet Literacy Initiative", forward this to your Organization's leaders, with your supporting comments!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

===========================================================
Both articles appear complete below.
===========================================================
HIGH-TECH WORD OF MOUTH MAIMS MOVIES IN A FLASH

Los Angeles Times
By Lorenza Muñoz
Times Staff Writer
August 17, 2003

Fatima Bholat stepped into the summer sunshine, fresh from the darkened theater where she'd just seen "The Hulk." It was opening day, and the 16-year-old high school junior had rushed out with her younger brother to see director Ang Lee's moody take on the big green superhero.

Now she wanted to tell her friends all about it. She whipped out her silver-and-blue T-Mobile cell phone, pressed a button and did something that strikes terror into the hearts of studio executives:

She tapped out a message telling her friends exactly what she thought of the movie — and the verdict was brutal.

Fatima's pan was all her friends needed to convince them to stay away.

And they told their friends. Soon the chatter would end up in a girls Internet discussion group, where all the world could see what a few teenagers in Manhattan Beach thought about a movie.

"The Hulk" opened with $62 million but fell 69.7% by its second weekend. "2 Fast 2 Furious" started off with $50.4 million but dipped 63%. "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" turned in a disappointing $37 million and then saw its fortunes drop by 62.8%. And the much-maligned "Gigli" was in a class by itself, plunging faster than the scariest summer thrill ride — a disastrous $3.7-million opening weekend, followed by a record-breaking drop of 81.9%.

Instant word of mouth, as a trend, probably traces back to 1998 in Japan with the release of "Ringu," Sands said.

The cerebral horror flick that inspired a U.S. remake — "The Ring," which was released here last fall — caused a sensation in Japan. And in a technology-forward country with lots of cell phones, instant word of mouth became the fuel that lighted that film's box office success. The power of instant feedback — good or bad — was immediately apparent.

In the U.S. these days, the pace of chat is fast enough, in some cases, to affect a movie's box office results from its Friday opening to Saturday night.

"Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" signaled it was in trouble when it dropped 11% overnight.

(Conversely, a hit like "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" can show its mettle instantly; the Disney film, which opened on a Wednesday, actually went up 17.3% from Friday to Saturday, according to Nielsen EDI.)

Generally, though, Hollywood lives and dies by the weekend-to-weekend comparisons, which have fluctuated dramatically this summer.

And in the highly competitive summer months, conventional wisdom has it that a movie must keep second-weekend drops to between 30% and 50% to survive. If it drops more than 50%, "it's over," as one distribution executive put it.

"Today, there is just no hope of recovering your marketing costs if the film doesn't connect with the audience, because the reaction is so quick — you are dead immediately," said Bob Berney, head of Newmarket Films, which distributed "Whale Rider," a well-received, low-budget New Zealand picture that grossed $12.8 million and has endured through the summer. "Conversely, if the film is there, then the business is there."

The box office numbers seem to buck the perception that summer audiences are undiscerning thrill-seekers, easily lured into the cineplexes with slick marketing and the promise of big stars and glitzy special effects.

"Saying something is good is not good enough," said Adam Fogelson, head of marketing for Universal Pictures, whose "Seabiscuit" and "Bruce Almighty" helped bring the studio its highest-grossing summer ever, "The Hulk" notwithstanding.

"It has to be fresh or different or new, or a new star has to be born out of the film," he said. "I don't think simply a satisfying version of what someone expects will guarantee great box office."

Sometimes the bad buzz, fueled by sneak previews or even early advertising, starts swirling around the Internet well before opening night.

By the time the critics weighed in on one of this summer's biggest flops, "Gigli," the Jennifer Lopez-Ben Affleck romantic comedy already had attracted global condemnation.

"There were screaming headlines around the world," lamented Geoffrey Amer, head of marketing for Sony Pictures, which distributed the film.

"It spiraled out of control," he said. "People all over the world were communicating to each other just how bad [they thought] this movie was, and so it gave people reason not to go."

Added Tom Sherak, a partner at Revolution Studios, which produced the doomed picture: "Remember that theory that any publicity is good publicity? It's not true anymore. Bad publicity and extended bad publicity kills the movie that much faster."

For "The Hulk," the bad publicity began on Super Bowl Sunday.

>From that point, when the studio aired the first ads, the movie became "a big green target," said Universal's Fogelson.

Some rabidly critical fans took their wrath to the Internet and began pushing "the urban legend" that the movie's Hulk looked more like Shrek or Gumby than the mighty green comic book character they remembered.

"We were fighting the word of mouth and bad publicity from the get-go," Fogelson said. "The Super Bowl ad provided a platform from which people could start firing the gun."

And then a pirated version of the film was downloaded on the Internet two weeks before its June 20 opening, providing even more fodder for critics. The picture's mixed reviews sealed its fate. "The Hulk" has brought in $130 million domestically so far — a number that Universal executives concede is a disappointment given that its combined production and marketing costs amounted to an estimated $177 million or more.

High-tech gear can deliver raves as well as pans. Only minutes into the raunchy goofball comedy "American Wedding," 17-year-old Nick Bateman demonstrated the powers of positive, instant feedback. In the darkened Washington, D.C., theater, his father at his side, he pulled out his metallic Motorola V60 cell phone and text-messaged his best friend: "It's hilarious. You really need to see it."

The film grossed $33.4 million its opening weekend, less than the first sequel's opening but more than the debut of the original film, "American Pie." Despite Bateman's efforts, though, the film dropped 53.7% in its second weekend — not terrible for the third film in a series but not great either.

The impact of instant messaging can be magnified, because its users tend to be Hollywood's favorite customers: teenagers, a group particularly sensitive to peer reaction.

"If one of my friends says you shouldn't watch this movie, then I'm not going to waste $10 to see the movie," Bateman said.

Some of this summer's biggest hits, such as Disney's "Finding Nemo" and "Pirates," showed the kind of staying power that comes only through positive word of mouth.

Paramount's lower-profile "The Italian Job" also did steady business from late May through the summer and has grossed $97.1 million.

And underdogs like the spelling bee documentary "Spellbound"; the non-narrative documentary on birds, "Winged Migration"; the British-Indian soccer comedy "Bend It Like Beckham"; and the lusty British-French drama "Swimming Pool" thrived on a smaller scale this summer because they got people talking.

Good buzz for Fox Searchlight's horror flick "28 Days Later" began on the Internet long before the movie was released in the U.S.

"Amidst the hype for all the blockbusters, we just kind of quietly put the movie out there and let the consumers do the marketing for us," said Nancy Utley, head of marketing for Fox Searchlight. "Consumers are banding together and protecting themselves from all the marketing out there. They want to know if the movie is really worth going to see."

Oren Aviv, Disney's marketing chief, said repeat customers and great word of mouth contributed to his studio's summer success.

"Finding Nemo" has become the highest-grossing animated film of all time as well as the most successful movie of the year, bringing in $326 million in domestic box office as of Thursday. "Pirates of the Caribbean" has grossed $239 million domestically.

In a summer characterized by slightly lower attendance, with movie admissions down 3.3% from last year — when "Spider-Man" ruled the box office — there's a simple lesson to be learned, Aviv said:

"Make a good movie and you win. Make a crappy movie and you lose."

High-Tech Word of Mouth Maims Movies in a Flash
http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/
la-et-dropoff17aug17,1,5781237.story?coll=la-home-leftrail
=========================================================
Politics, Wired
RECALL MAY BE DIZZYING, BUT IT PORTENDS A REVOLUTION IN GOVERNANCE

The Los Angeles Times
By Kevin Starr
August 17, 2003

SACRAMENTO -- The stage chosen by Arnold Schwarzenegger to announce his gubernatorial candidacy — "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" — was the coup de grâce for me. The atmosphere surrounding the recall election had deteriorated into a political circus. When a Times reporter asked me to answer the rising chorus of laughter and mockery directed at California, I threw my towel into the ring. This time, the Golden State had gone over the top. I couldn't defend it any longer.

But I'm now retrieving my towel. The circus has become a grand opera. Giuseppe Verdi's "La Forza del Destino," perhaps, with its brooding sense of destiny. Or Richard Wagner's "Lohengrin," in which a solitary knight takes on the forces of evil. Had Sen. Dianne Feinstein chosen to run, we might even have had Giacomo Puccini's "Turandot," with its rich suggestions of womanly political power.

Yes, Schwarzenegger's entry into the race was unorthodox, but he is a formidable political figure, as are Cruz Bustamante, Arianna Huffington, Bill Simon, Peter Ueberroth, Tom McClintock and Peter Camejo. Collectively, they suggest how rich our political resources are; in a real way, their candidacies honor California. They cannot be easily blasted into oblivion by negative television ads, as happened to former Mayor Richard Riordan in the 2002 Republican primary. Even if a candidate engages in what state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer has described as "puke politics," California voters don't seem in the mood to buy it. Something powerfully transformative is underway in state politics, and it is nothing less than voters' self-liberation from a claustrophobic and demeaning political culture out of sync with today's 24/7 information society and unworthy of the larger creativity of the Golden State.

Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, who rode a political tsunami of his own, recently said as much. The former governor compared the recall phenomenon to Proposition 13, the 1978 property-tax-cutting initiative that conquered all before it, including Brown's initial opposition to the measure. I would add another comparison: Hiram Johnson's 1910 campaign for governor, in which the Progressives, organized only three years earlier as the Lincoln-Roosevelt League, swept into office and reformed state government to the point of virtually refounding it. Suspicious of their electoral success, the Progressives worried that a counter-coup might be launched by either Southern Pacific Railroad or other big-business interests on the right, or big labor on the left. The recall gave the Progressives an ace in the hole, a way of staging a counter-coup if necessary.

It will take time for historians and political scientists to tease out and understand the forces at work in the first gubernatorial recall election in California. As I take my towel from the ring, I have a suggestion.

First, people are becoming increasingly high-speed and interactive in the way that they absorb and process information. This is especially true of younger people, whose dexterity and speed in navigating the Internet can be breathtaking. Even Californians who came of age in the pre-Net world have broadened their sources of information. Just consider how often you acquire information by word of mouth from someone who picked it up on the Internet, hours in advance of radio, TV or newspapers.

A continuous multimedia environment, secondly, has expanded the universe of governance to include entertainment celebrities, radio talk-show hosts, sports figures, electronic and print pundits, blogs and mega-wealthy activists. One doesn't have to hold office, in other words, to participate in governance. In these sluggish economic times, officeholders have less and less to give and, in this era of sharp blue/red political divisions, less and less room in which to maneuver. That's one reason why foundations are becoming, increasingly, an important component of governance in California. They actually can get something done, and they have something to give away. The Irvine Foundation, for example, is taking up the question of growth in the Central Valley, while the Packard Foundation is acquiring stands of redwood trees in Santa Cruz and subsidizing farmers in the Central Valley so they won't sell their land to developers.

In this new condition of fusion governance, entertainment celebrities have been the biggest winners. One recent example was Sean Penn, who conducted his own fact-finding tour of Iraq. Politics, film people are fond of saying, is entertainment for ugly people. Entertainment, politicians are increasingly being forced to recognize, is a form of politics for the good-looking.

The high-speed Internet- connected multimedia culture, thirdly, cannot be controlled at any one point. It is open, unfiltered and rabidly democratic. Now it helps spawn political candidacies. For example, Huffington said that one reason she's running for governor is because of all the e-mails she'd received urging her to run. Candidates open Web sites, not headquarters. The political debate is conducted in cyberspace, with blogs of virtually all political stripes and voters providing the dialogue — and it's instantly accessible. State politics, by contrast, is a largely closed system of noncompetitive seats, limited budgetary options and rules designed to impede action, with the development of leadership on a voter-imposed time clock. In short, politicians are playing on an increasingly smaller court at a pace that seems frozen by Internet standards.

The new environment, finally, demands a personal connection. In the early 1900s, pioneering film theorists — Hugo Munsterberg, Vachel Lindsay and William Dean Howells among them — contended that motion pictures offered audiences a form of collective dreaming in which contact between individuals on screen and in the audience was of a direct and personal kind. We do not merely watch our favorite film actors. We enter into subliminal dialogue with them.

Kevin Starr is state librarian of California and University Professor at USC. His "Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge, the 1990s" is forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf.

Politics, Wired
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/
la-op-starr17aug17,1,1166198.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions