Help a Disabled Author Start the Zombie Revolution!

Gene Hackman

Gene Hackman was 25 years old when he finally decided to take his chance at acting by enrolling at the Pasadena Playhouse in California on the G.I. Bill. Legend says that Hackman and friend Dustin Hoffman were voted "least likely to succeed." He failed out after 3 months. He received one of the lowest grades the school had ever given, 1.3 out of 10. He hopped on a bus to New York City to make it on stage and prove them wrong.

While in New York, Hackman worked as a soda jerk, furniture mover, and worked nights at the Chrysler Building as part of the crew that polished the leather furniture.

In a 2004 Vanity Fair story on him, Dustin Hoffman, and Robert Duvall, Hackman said one of the worst memories of being a struggling actor, was working as a doorman at the Howard Johnson’s restaurant in Times Square. He recalled having seen former Marine officers pass him by when opening the door for them, of which one had said "Hackman, you're a sorry son of a bitch." Another time, a Pasadena Playhouse acting teacher whom Hackman hated walked by him, stopped, and shouted, “See Hackman, I was right, you would never amount to anything!” 

Gene Hackman went on to win two Academy Awards & three Golden Globes!

Jordan Belfort - The Wolf of Wall Street

The Wolf of Wall Street Official Trailer

Inspiration For The Writer

People too weak to follow their own dreams, will always find a way to discourage yours.

Fifty Shades of Grey ‘will be NC-17

The screenwriter for the film adaptation of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” Kelly Marcel, said in a recent interview that her script contains “a lot of sex” but that her understanding of the material as she adapts it is as an old-fashioned love story. Nevertheless, she told The Telegraph, “It will be NC-17. It will be raunchy. We are 100% going there.”

That the adaptation has “a lot of sex” is unsurprising to anyone with even a cursory familiarity with the stunningly popular “Fifty Shades” book series, as is the bit about it being a love story. The reason Marcel's statement is noteworthy is that, if the production goes forward as an NC-17 and is released as such, it would almost certainly challenge the NC-17 rating's current status as a commercial kiss of death. The last two “high”-profile NC-17 releases, 2011's “Shame” and 2007's “Lust, Caution” both grossed in the neighborhood of $4 million, and the highest-grossing NC-17 ever, 1995's infamous “Showgirls,” made little more than $20 million. Considering that 20 million is the number of copies the “Fifty Shades” books had sold as of last summer, it is not excessively fanciful to speculate that a “Fifty Shades” movie, regardless of rating, could be every bit the money maker as a movie as it has been in print. And, further, that with the precedent of a financially successful NC-17 theatrical release, the movie industry's treatment of the rating as a thing to shun at all costs may relax, and more adult views of sexuality could be seen on the silver screen.

The film has yet to be cast and there is still no director attached, so “Fifty Shades of Grey” is far from taking any kind of appreciable shape as an actual film. But its ability to challenge Hollywood's thinking on the NC-17 rating makes this a project, regardless of one's feelings of the artistic merits of the material, to keep an eye on.