Laura Zinger Producer

When did America become the place that kills kids? Trayvon Martin was just killed because he looked suspicious as a black kid wearing a hoodie in a gated community and whether or not Zimmerman was telling the truth about being attacked by Trayvon Martin (I personally think he’s lying), he still shot and killed an unarmed kid. And he may escape all charged because of Florida law, “Stand Your Ground,”  which states “that a person may use force in self-defense when there is reasonable belief of a threat, without an obligation to retreat first.” I’m utterly confused about why a law like this exists in the first place, and I also want to know where is the list or outline of what a “reasonable belief of threat” even is.

Now in the news is the case of Guillermo Pineda, an 18 year old Latino kid who was shot and killed a year ago by a 58 year old man who fired gunshots into the air above Pineda and some friends that he  allegedly saw looking into his BMW, and whom he was trying to scare away be firing gunshots above their heads. One of the bullets struck Guillermo and killed him. This man was just acquitted of involuntary manslaughter. 

Neither one of these men is taking any kind of responsibility for their actions. Both men are directly responsible for the death of two kids. If people want to own and shoot guns, there must be some kind of implicit understanding that what you do with that gun, any life you take with that gun, you are responsible for. You are responsible for that person’s life and for their family’s lives. 

When I was in high school in an incredibly affluent suburb of Chicago, I had a friend whose brother was a A+, honor roll student. Her brother was off the book smarts, was from a good, well off family, and was also breaking into cars at night with his friends using a freaking glass cutter and stealing things out of cars. He was eventually caught, and his sister, my friend, told me that she and her family felt that he was doing it because he was bored. I thought that was a stupid reason to be breaking into cars and stealing, but what I think she meant and wanted me to know was that he was not a bad kid. He was just doing something stupid. No one in the 90s would have shot a kid breaking into cars. I feel like in the 90s when I was in high school, there was more tolerance and compassion towards kids. Not that kids should be breaking into cars and stealing and that they shouldn’t be punished, but people understood that kids do stupid things, not because they’re bad, but because they’re young and dumb and maybe someone isn’t paying attention to them at home or they’re acting out.

What happened?! Why in 2011 and 2012 are full blown adults with children killing kids? Is this just what racism combined with modern day hyper-hysteria and this growing, “don’t fuck with me or my stuff, I am more important than you” culture? 

What is going on these days? It’s horrifying and deeply disturbing. If we can’t help kids that are going down the wrong path, then why even have kids? And it didn’t seem like Trayvon was going down any bad path at all, he was just out walking, in a gated community, with a hoodie on. 

I wrote a bunch of tweets in a fury the other night, because Kirk Cameron is spouting ridiculous anti-gay sentiments, and I wake up today and Gay News Chicago is following me on Twitter. Yay! Gay is okay!

(I wrote this blog post on my company website here, and am reposting it.)

REALLY?! According to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)  women buy 55% of all theater tickets!

Melissa Silverstein, runs the blog Women And Hollywood, (now running on Indiewire here) wrote an excellent blog post about this with this dead-on observation, “This news should rock each and every executive in Hollywood more than the Bigelow Oscar win.  Cause this is something they understand.  This is money and women are delivering the money.  Big time.”

Melissa S. thinks that the reasons female bought ticket sales increased so dramatically in 2009 are: “ New Moon and The Blind Side with a side of The Proposal.”  I disagree. I totally and completely believe that the #1 reason that women buy more theater tickets than men is Twilight. Check this list of the top grossing films in 2009. Twilight: New Moon (the 2nd one) was #2 at  a total box office gross earning of $296,623,634 and a whopping open night box office total of $142,839,137. Avatar did beat Twilight: New Moon in overall box office gross earnings ($749,766,139), but not in opening night box office totals ($77,025,481).Twilight: New Moon made double what Avatar did on opening night! Why?! Why do the high numbers of female bought ticket sales coincide with the release of the Twilight series? Each new Twilight release kills at the box office. According to Boxofficemojo.com,  The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 “Easily Holds First.”   Box Office Mojo wrote, “Breaking Dawn has an overwhelming edge and will easily score its third-straight weekend on top of the box office.”  Meanwhile the Muppets are plummeting in box office sales. But really who the heck wants to have sex with Kermit the Frog or Miss Piggy?

And is that really what it boils down to? Which film has the most sex appeal? And why does higher sex appeal translate into higher theater ticket sales made by women? Is Twilight really just acceptable porn for women? I really think so. I find it disturbing how many people are attracted to and obsessed with the Twilight series because of the underlying messages in the film.

I admittedly saw the first Twilight movie in the theater at a sold out showing with a good friend of mine who just so happens to work at a domestic violence shelter. We laughed the entire film. And this film was not a comedy. We laughed so hard because the whole thing was so ridiculous and over acted and teenage angsty. We even let ourselves get swept away by the insanely intense relationship between Bella and Edward, but at the end of the theater while we were shuffling out to leave with the rest of the filmgoers, we were shocked and horrified that we were probably the oldest people in the entire theater. (Except for 3 foreign men in their 40s who we assumed got confused and wandered into the wrong theater.)  Not only was the audience almost totally and completely a tween or teenager, but they were all women! We saw maybe 10 males in the entire sold out showing.

Our feelings about the film immediately changed after seeing how young and female this crowd was. I would never ever let my teenage daughter see this film. Here’s why: Bella is in love with a man that they both know could at any time hurt her because he is a vampire and she is a blood filled human. Even though they both know (and more importantly she knows!) that he could potentially kill her, they still have a relationship. What kind of a message is that giving to young women?! It’s clearly telling young women that it’s okay to be in a relationship with a man that can hurt you as long as he loves you. As long as he stares longingly at you and hurts others who try to hurt you. Bella and Edward’s relationship is nothing more than a thinly veiled instance of what happens in domestic violence situations. The back and forth of threatening and actual violence and apologies and insanely intense displays of love. I find the Twilight saga disgusting. I wish that another film could be responsible for the higher number of ticket sales purchased by women, but sadly there is not.

If I had a teenage daughter, I would have taken her to see the Muppets this past weekend, not The Twilight Series: Breaking Dawn Part 1.  Why? Because Miss Piggy is one of the strongest female characters on the big screen today. But sadly, she’s just a puppet. When will women start seeking out real strong women to represent them onscreen? I hope it happens soon or at least in my lifetime.

Read More

Talking fast in LA is a big no no. I learned this on my first day as an unpaid script reading intern at a development company that was on the verge of being bought out by Universal. My immediate boss was the Vice President of Story Development, and as far as I could tell, she mostly sat in her office and rearranged the scripts on her shelves and fielded phone calls from a manically depressive writer whose script they had optioned.

My job was to answer the phones, and at first, I failed miserably, talking so quickly that my tongue often got trapped in unknown crevices in my mouth causing me to stumble over words in non-sensical and highly innovative ways. One day, I was on the verge of evolving a new form of language during a phone call when my immediate boss signaled to me that she wanted to talk to me once I hung up the phone. I could tell something wasn’t right.

(Editor’s note: I’m paraphrasing and somewhat making up what she said to better fit the context of how i took her comments these oh so many years ago.)

“Laura.” Annoyed look from immediate boss.

“Yes?”

“You need to slow down. People can’t understand you.”

“Oh.”

“Just try to take it easy. “

“okay.”

“And please write more legibly.”.

“Ok.”

For some reason, my memory is making this whole situation muchore pleasant that I truly remember it. What I just wrote is probably what happened. But what I heard at the time was,
“Yo, Bitch. Slow the fuck down.”

At the time, I was a very anxious person, so The speed in which i talked was a great gauge of how anxious I was feeling on any one day. Los Angeles is a place that generates a lot of anxiety from driving in 6 lanes of traffic to living in a depressive building with a former NBA, current alcoholic neighbor who played jazz loudly devastatingly into the night to bosses who didn’t like interns and secretly wanted robots reading their scripts for them so they didn’t have to like them nor engage them. (Robots, when they’re ready are going to sweep LA. Good luck finding a job then, silly College Grad. Well you’re pretty much silly if you even get a college degree or buy a house in America today anyway.

My point is, I knew upon immediate arrival in LA that if i wanted to save my soul, be free and be me, I was going to have to leave LA and take my chances at being a filmmaker elsewhere. This was before youtube, iPhones, flip cams, Twitter, and Facebook. It was a bold, courageous decision I had to make, and 9 months later, I left LA for my childhood home outside of Chicago, my father welcomed me with open arms then quickly got absorbed in television and hos work once again. It’s like nothing had changed, except now I knew talking fast was me, and I wasn’t going to slow down for anyone.