Tag: Designated Driver

LOS ANGELES — A tuned up “Fast & Furious” zoomed to No. 1 at the weekend box office, selling an unexpectedly strong $72.5 million in tickets in North American theaters.

The result — more summer than spring, which is typically a quiet moviegoing period — reignites a film franchise that had been dismissed by Hollywood, if not Universal Pictures, after a disappointing third installment in 2006. That movie, “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,” stalled after selling just $62.5 million at domestic theaters, less than half the total of each of its two predecessors, “The Fast and the Furious” and “2 Fast 2 Furious.”

But Universal and its financing partner, Relativity Media, decided to place another bet on the street-racing franchise. Research showed that audiences were still keenly interested in Vin Diesel, who moved on after headlining the original “The Fast and the Furious.” If it could get other members of the original cast to return, Universal figured moviegoers would turn out for a fourth movie — and bring their kids.

“I’m euphoric that our production team had the foresight to do this even though people snickered,” said Nikki Rocco, president of Universal Pictures distribution. “We saw an opening for a big action movie in April and decided to bite the bullet.”

http://wn.com/TIME_Magazine_Interviews_Alan_Mulally

Interview with Alan Mulally

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1894410_1893837_1894182,00.html

It is extremely rare for one leader to play a major role in two of America’s top industries. Alan Mulally is that rare case.
As president of Boeing’s commercial-airplane business in the late 1990s, he revamped the company’s product mix, transformed production and embraced digital technology. In the process, he made Boeing a model for global manufacturing. He also guided the company through the aftermath of 9/11, which dealt a nearly crippling blow to the aerospace industry. Fast-forward to 2009 and the challenges facing Detroit and the entire global auto industry are daunting. As CEO of Ford Motor Co., Alan, 63, is restructuring a 100-year-old industrial powerhouse in the midst of a crisis that threatens the very survival of our auto industry.
I’m rooting for him. My support is both emotional and rational. My father worked at Ford for more than 30 years. On the business side, the auto industry is an important customer and partner for Microsoft, with a long track record of shared technological innovation.
Changing industries can upset even the most seasoned executive. Not Alan. He understands the fundamentals of business success as well as any business leader I know. He has smartly and sensitively made the transition from airplanes to cars, inspiring confidence and trust in employees, suppliers, shareholders and customers. As the auto industry steers through this critical period, leaders like Alan are essential to delivering on the vision of new energy-efficient vehicles and connected technologies. Ford is fortunate to have a man of his qualities at the wheel.

http://www.esquire.com/features/data/nate-silver-car-culture-stats-0609

This is surely one of the signs of the apocalypse: Americans aren’t driving as much as they used to.

In January, according to statistics compiled by the Federal Highway Administration, Americans drove a collective 222 billion miles. That’s a lot of time spent behind the wheel — enough to make roughly eight hundred round-trips to Mars. It translates to about 727 miles traveled for every man, woman, and child in the country. But that figure was down about 4 percent from January 2008, when Americans averaged 757 miles of car travel per person. And this was no aberration: January 2009 was the fifteenth consecutive month in which the average American drove less than he had a year earlier.

This is, historically speaking, highly unusual behavior. If there have been two seemingly immutable trends for the American consumer, they’re that he’s eaten more every year and driven more every year. The late 1960s are sometimes assumed to be the height of car culture. But in January 1970, the average American drove only about 393 miles in his vehicle, or about half of what he drove every month until recently.

The one thing that has sometimes caused Americans to put on the brakes is higher gas prices. Although driving is a relatively inelastic activity — a doubling of gas prices reduces miles traveled by only a small fraction — it has nevertheless been somewhat sensitive to changes in fuel costs. Vehicle miles traveled fell between 1981 and 1982, for instance, when the price of gas was the equivalent of three dollars in today’s prices, and between 1990 and 1991, when the Persian Gulf war triggered a temporary spike in the price at the pump.

http://www.theapiary.org/the-apiary/2009/12/18/inside-with-filmmaker-jordan-vogt-roberts-part-ii.html

Jordan Vogt-Roberts is putting a very nice wrap on 2009. Directly on the heels of his cheeky-as-hell “Yogi Bear Audition Reel” (which scored his business partner TJ Miller a lead part in the upcoming live-action/animated Yogi Bear movie), Vogt-Roberts learned that his short, Successful Alcoholics, had been accepted to the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, and that a greenlit Comedy Central special is on the docket and will be keeping him busy for the early part of 2010. We sat down recently to chat with our old pal and caught up on the latest and greatest.

Apiary: First of all, CONGRATS AGAIN on Sundance! This is extremely exciting, for lots of reasons! What was the process you had to go through to get your short seen in the first place?

JVR: Sundance just has a pretty basic submission system. We submitted back in September. 6,098 or some crazy amount of shorts got submitted this year. For U.S. Dramatic they picked 18.

Apiary: Holy fuck. That’s ridiculous. Are you familiar with the others that were chosen?

JVR: No, not yet. I met a few of the directors last night at a gala. Spike Jonze is in my category for a short. So that’s pretty ridiculous.

Apiary: WOW. Are you pretty nervous? I mean, just in general, for the whole event and EVERYTHING? Or are you pretty cool Hollywood by now?

JVR: I’m not nervous necessarily. I’m going to Park City with the intention of having a good time and hanging out. Our short is 25 minutes and it’s a really dark comedy so it’s always interesting to see how it plays. We shot it so long ago (Feb 2008), and post-production took so long because we had no money, so we were working with editors during nights and weekends. It’s really nice to have the short get out there and have a good reaction. I guess Sundance is the final test though, eh?

Apiary: For sure. Do you know any details on your screening as of yet? And, who are dreaming of meeting or who are you gonna stalk out? Are there any films you yourself are excited to view? Do you get an all access pass?

JVR: Yeah, they sent me the dates of the screenings today. I’m in the shorts program II. Basically as a filmmaker my understanding is that I can eat and drink for free the entire week. Considering our short is called Successful Alcoholics…you better believe I’ll be pretty drunk. I have a badge that will get me a lot of places but I’m just going to play the whole thing by ear. Last night at a Directors Guild Gala for Sundance filmmakers, I met Jason Reitman, the Duplass Brothers, and a whole bunch of great artists. It was incredible how there’s a very real sense of camaraderie with everyone saying, ‘FUCK YEAH…SUNDANCE”. I’d like to use that kinship to get drunk with Philip Seymour Hoffman or someone like that.

It’s just validating considering we slaved over that short for so long it really kinda became this white whale for a while.

Lizzy Caplan and TJ Miller, Successful Alcoholics

Apiary: Let’s talk about Blerds for a bit. We talked about it a couple years ago, but now I’m wondering: How do you see that experience in retrospect? What did it mean to you then, and what has its return been?

JVR: Blerds is crazy in retrospect. I was lucky to be a part of it. You have these comedians who are absolutely destroying both coasts right now — TJ [Miller], Kumail [Nanjiani], [Kyle] Kinane, [Matt] Braunger, etc — and we couldn’t get our shit together enough not to self-destruct as a group.

Blerds was when I discovered for myself that comedy was what I wanted to do with film. So that was a pretty big deal.

I also think that for a lot of the comics, once they saw the amount of attention the videos were getting — which basically means the amount of attention their material was getting — it kind of told a lot of them it was time to leave Chicago and take the next step.

Apiary: You also got a TJ Miller out of it. 🙂 What is your working partnership with him, exactly?

JVR: Sometimes we want to kill each other, we work together so often. We have a pretty similar work ethic in the sense that we’ll both kill ourselves to get something done, or do something ridiculous for the sake of comedy. The bear video is a good example of that.

Apiary: Ha, for sure! Admit it, you were scared of the bear.

JVR: The bear weighed 600 pounds and could tear us apart. It was an insane Wednesday afternoon. I joke that when I show my L.A. friends their reaction is something like, “wow, this is amazing,” and then I show my friends in the Midwest or my family and they say something like, “oh my god…were you safe?”, “what were you thinking?’ or just, “you’re in idiot.”

Jordan Vogt-Roberts (right) with Bam-Bam the Bear

But TJ and I own a damn company together at this point for our Comedy Central special, so somehow we’ve legally been linked together.

Apiary: Essentially, you are married. I’m sorry, I didn’t get a gift (yet). So, come again now? Comedy Central special? Do discuss.

JVR: So, this is one of those frustrating Hollywood things where TJ and I sold an hour special / backdoor pilot to Comedy Central almost a year and a half ago. Contracts took a seemingly endless amount of time, but we’re finally close to shooting it. We actually would be shooting now if I didn’t make that damn bear video, causing TJ to get cast and go off to New Zealand to shoot Yogi.

It’s actually somewhat based around the Blerds shorts and a bunch of other content TJ and I were making.We’re hoping to use a lot of Chicago people in it. Kumail, Braunger, Hannibal [Buress], and others.

We have the money from Comedy Central now. So nothing is going to stop it from getting made. Which is pretty incredible. It’s draining because it has taken so long to get to this point. But we basically have creative license for 42 minutes on Comedy Central to showcase our brand of humor. So um…thanks Comedy Central. It will also be nice because I feel like it’s going to act as the swan song for the Blerds format.

We’re hoping to start filming in March now. I mean, it has already taken a year and a half of my life and we haven’t even shot a frame of it yet. I’d love to deliver a final tape to Comedy Central a few months after we shoot. I’d like to think it will air by the end of the summer, but I have no control over such things.

Apiary: Besides the Comedy Central and Sundance news, what else is coming down the pipeline for you? Because those two things aren’t enough, you know.

JVR: I’m developing something with Al Madrigal that I’m pretty excited about. I just wrapped season 2 of a Web series for FOX with a comedy duo Pete and Brian. Thomas Middleditch and I just finished a trilogy of shorts that we’re going to try and pitch something based on. I just try and stay busy. TJ and I have some script ideas that we’re hoping Successful Alcoholics will get people excited about. Or perhaps just making a feature of that. Ultimately I just want to pay my rent as a director.

Apiary: Another admirable goal, indeed! I have a feeling on 2010…Do you?

JVR: I mean, I currently can pay my rent as a director…but sometimes you look at your bank account, and you wonder if your ‘artistic integrity’ would be better served by the sanity of getting a steady paycheck from Starbucks.

I hope 2010 is good. L.A. is fickle though.

Apiary: Speaking of the which, do you have any “only in Hollywood!” stories to share, either good or bad? You’ve been there, two years now?

JVR: I was once pitching something at MTV and was standing outside with my manager. For some reason, my manager knows Warren G (because that’s what people in Hollywood do) and Warren came up to us and started to smoke a blunt. My manager walked away and thus I was stuck smoking a blunt with Warren G. So that was…interesting. Dumb stuff like that happens all the time here; people lose perspective on everything.

I was at a party the other week and Terrence Howard showed up. He interrupted my conversation to ask me something facetiously, which turned into him and I discussing the merits of the movie House Party. It’s a weird place.

Honestly, I think about it a lot. There’s something wrong with everyone here. We’ve all chosen to work in a place where people are straight up known to be bad people, mean people, man children, misogynists, whatever. Keeping perspective here is a job in itself.

There are no seasons here, so you go to bed in October and wake up in August saying, ‘where the hell did those months go’?

http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/news/10820/interview-sundance-midwest-indie-film-fest-headliner-jordan-vogt-roberts

CHICAGO – “Successful Alcoholics,” a new short comedy film by Chicagoan Jordan Vogt-Roberts, has been making the major film festival rounds, including the Sundance Film Festival, and will be the featured film at the Midwest Independent Film Festival in Chicago on their Comedic Shorts Night, Tuesday, June 1st.

Jordan Vogt-Roberts hails from Detroit, and molded his comedy chops in Chicago. His Comedy Collective there was named “Blerds,” and through that he started doing video shorts. “Successful Alcoholics” premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, and has went on to play various fests, including Los Angeles, South X Southwest and the Rícon International Film Festival in Puerto Rico, where it won Best Comedy Short.

Vogt-Roberts, now living in Los Angeles, is returning to Chicago next Tuesday, June 1st, for the Midwest Independent Film Festival. “Successful Alcoholics” will be the featured film in the festival’s annual Comedic Shorts Night.

HollywoodChicago interviewed Vogt-Roberts recently, and he dished on the differences in drinking styles in Los Angeles vs. Chicago and his style of comedy film.

HollywoodChicago.com: You are the official selection to headline next Tuesday’s Midwest Independent Film Festival Comedic Shorts Night. What other honors have been bestowed on “Successful Alcoholics?”

Jordan Vogt-Roberts: We premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this year, and then we’ve done a whirlwind of festivals. At the South X Southwest festival, they created a program just for us, so it was Successful Alcoholics, Spike Jonez new short and one other. We won a festival in Puerto Rico and been to many others. One of the more interesting ‘honors’ that was bestowed upon us was I got contacted by a rehabilitation and training center in Southern Arizona, which deals with alcoholics and training team members who deal with them. They wanted to get a copy of the film to show the people they were training and the people in the program as a launching point for discussion. That was really bizarre. [laughs]

HC: What inspired this story? Was it outside observation or personal experience?

JVR: [Laughs] It’s both. Everyone in the film met in Chicago and bars are open until 4am there. I hang out with a lot of comedians and they are heavy drinkers. [laughs] We all move to Los Angeles, and the drinking culture is different out there, it’s crazy in different ways. In this drinking realm, we’ve seen great things come of it and we’ve seen terrible things come of it.

HC: Did you think at any point it would be a risk to take on the subject of heavy, anti-social drinking in a comedy short?

JVR: Yes, absolutely, I think there is naturally a point about halfway through the short where people get uncomfortable and wonder if this what they signed up for or ‘is this too heavy’ or ‘will it get saccharine and cheesy.’ I’m really interested in balancing tone with comedy and sort of going back and forth between the concepts, by intertwining them it becomes more poignant. That is what we set out to do with Successful Alcoholics.

HC: What was your reaction after you started to get recognition for the short. Were you confident about the material to understand why it was getting recognition?

JVR: T.J [Miller, the co-writer] and I, when we first started working on this, it was so long ago. It was a long post-production period, and waiting for Sundance drags it out further. It’s not that we had lost touch with it at all, but here in L.A. sometimes people don’t respond to darker material like that. It makes them uncomfortable. I’ve actually been shocked that people have been responding so well. In retrospect, it makes sense, because at the end of the day Lizzy Caplan and T.J.[the lead actors] performances are great. They sell it, you get invested in the story and the way that it’s structure you get in, you start having fun. You’re in a world for ten minutes where it’s fun, exciting and funny. And then it gets dark and kind of disturbing but by that point you’re engaged.

Lizzy said awhile ago ‘it’s like watching a video of a kid, and you’re laughing at the kid because he’s so stupid, look at how stupid this little kid is. And then 10 minutes into it, someone leans over and says, you know that kid’s mentally challenged.’ [laughs]
Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts of ‘Successful Alcoholics’
Photo Credit: © Successful Alcoholics

HC: Is this film an instance of the thing that makes you great also has the power to destroy you?

JVR: Sure. In the film, T.J. and Lizzy, in my mind, are in a romantic style movie. Watching two people just stumble together, but they’re with each other stumbling and it’s exciting when you watch them succeed and heartbreaking when you watch them fail.

HC: What has made you laugh in your life? What sitcom? What film? What stand-up comedian?

JVR: Humor is just how I relate to everyone. I’ve made friends and lost friends because of my sense of humor. I’m pretty eclectic in my tastes. There is a sitcom from Canada called ‘Trailer Park Boys’ that I find pretty incredible, obviously ‘Seinfeld’ is great. I like comedy films that are infused with genre material, films like ‘Ghostbusters.’ Even the comedic elements of ‘Three Kings’ and ‘Boogie Nights’ I think are amazing, because they are used to balance the reality of things. As far as stand-up comedians, that is a world I got thrust into and I don’t think my life’s path ever intended for me to know so much about stand-up comedy, through the Chicago scene. [laughs]

HC: What was magical to you about making movies when you were a kid?

JVR: Honestly, humor is how I always related to people, and comedy was always big to me when I was a kid. I would play with my action figures, and there were home movies of me setting up these villages and hiding dog treats, then narrating as I had my dog walk through the town, smashing the buildings. It wasn’t much later until I decided I wanted to get into film, but I remember thinking cinematically, like slow motion. I remember thinking I wish life were like that.

HC: Who, is your opinion, is the greatest living film director and why?

JVR: I’ll tell you who I think is the most interesting now. I’m most interested in what Christopher Nolan is doing. He has found this way to take incredibly mainstream movies, yet keep character, theme and story intact. He has a big budget, risky sci-fi movie [’Inception’] coming out this summer, that’s he wrote himself, and after the ‘The Dark Knight’ the studio just said they’d make it. It is getting to the point where you can make an ultra-personal movie, but on a scale that a mass audience can enjoy. I think that’s really interesting.

HC: Which film comedian would you like to work with today, and what type of range would you like to get out of him or her? Or how would you like to use that individual in a way people wouldn’t expect?

JVR: The people who I’m dying to work with are not necessarily comedians, just actors who can handle comedy really well. I would like to work with Philip Seymour Hoffman, who has shown that he has the range for whatever you want. There are character actors that blend into things, and that’s who I want to see in a more comedic role.

“Successful Alcoholics,” directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts and featuring T.J. Miller and Lizzy Caplan, headlines the Comedic Shorts Night at the Midwest Independent Film Festival, Tuesday, June 1st, at the Landmark Century Centre Cinema

Aug 16, 2010

– Anthony Crupi, Mediaweek

USA Network has reupped Ford as the exclusive automobile sponsor of its original drama series White Collar, crafting a multiplatform partnership that includes significant brand integration and a number of customized interactive features.

Beginning Tuesday, August 17, USA’s dedicated White Collar site will host a series of exclusive videos featuring actress Marsha Thomason behind the wheel of a Ford Fusion Hybrid. (Thomason’s role as special agent Diana Barrigan was expanded for season two of White Collar; she is perhaps best known for playing Naomi on ABC’s Lost from 2007-10.)

The online vignettes offer White Collar fans a virtual tour of some of the iconic New York locations that serve as the backdrop of the crime drama. Thomason will motor her way from the FBI’s Park Avenue digs to the wilds of Brooklyn, where she’ll make a pit stop at the Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower in Fort Greene.

“New York is as much of a character in the show as are Neal and Peter and Diana,” said Alexandra Shapiro, USA’s svp, brand marketing and digital. “These guys are filming on-location in the city almost 50 percent of the time and so New York is a constant presence. It lends a certain kind of intrigue to the series, which is what we wanted to draw on in the vignettes.”

Last season, the 2010 Ford Taurus was integrated within the narrative of the series. The car was also featured in an online game, “Chasing the Shadow.” “We’re excited to be back for another season,” said Ford experiential marketing manager Jeff Eggen. “The Fusion Hybrid is a perfect fit for this ‘behind the scenes’ tour of the city.”

Each vignette will be baked into an interactive map of the city loaded with images and detailed information about each location. The network will promote the video clips and guide via social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. At present, USA’s White Collar Facebook page has 267,906 fans, while the show’s Twitter feed is followed by 12,835 devotees.

The digital execution will lead to a linear integration in the series’ Sept. 7 summer-season finale. In addition to garnering screen time as Thomason’s vehicle of choice, the Fusion Hybrid will also be featured in a 90-second scripted vignette that will borrow certain visual elements from the online clips.

Thomason’s journey around New York will play out in an exclusive 120-second “powerpod” takeover. Immediately following the customized clip, USA will air a standard 30-second Fusion commercial that will lead viewers right back into the episode.

The collaboration is designed to create an organic association with the Diana Barrigan character and the Ford Fusion, Shapiro said. “She adds a strong female presence to the show, along with Tiffani Thiessen,” Shapiro said. “And Diana’s a good match for the Fusion, which is designed with the environmentally conscious consumer in mind. It’s green, but still sleek, sexy and modern.”

Mindshare’s Detroit office handles all national media planning and buying for Ford.

After the first half of season two wraps in September, White Collar will be on hiatus until winter 2011. USA has not announced a precise date for the premiere of season 2.5.

Through the first five episodes of season two, White Collar is averaging 4.01 million viewers in its Tuesday 9 p.m. time slot. As of August 3, the sophomore run is drawing 1.68 million adults 25-54 and 1.57 million viewers 18-49.

http://blogdowntown.com/2010/10/5758-downtown-bars-offering-incentives-for-designated

The nice thing about living Downtown is being able to drink Downtown without worrying about needing a safe ride home from a night on the town. Fortunately, for your bridge and tunnel friends, there’s now an incentive to ensure they have a sober driver for the ride home.

Beginning Thursday, over 40 local bars and restaurants will begin offering incentives for the designated drivers as part of “RADD in Downtown LA”. Freebies vary by location, but they include games of pool, French fries, jukebox picks, and, of course, soda-pop. RADD, the organization that tagged the line, “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk,” started the program in June, but it will be having its official launch in support of the October Art Walk.