Writer heads for Outer Limits

From The Chicago Tribune: Here's a particularly thorough appreciation of screenwriter Joseph Stefano, who died this week, age 84. Psycho was terrific -- but personally, "The Outer Limits" used to scare me even more. And has there ever been a TV show with a better opening? (Brief download and RealPlayer required for the latter.)

 

Chinese screenwriter succeeds by being just realistic enough

From CriEnglish.com: I'm not crazy about posting links to articles on official Chinese Government websites (this one's from the English-language arm of China Radio International) -- not while the Chinese are busy keeping their citizens from visiting websites containing words they don't like. (I won't assist their efforts by using those words here, but one of them starts with "D" and ends with "Y" and rhymes with "stemockrasie." Ha, take that Chinese computer police!)

But this profile of screenwriter Su Shuyang offers some interesting insights into what it once took -- and perhaps still does -- to achieve success as a writer in such a society. As Eric Idle once put it: "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life." And it ends with a fine, if unintentional, double entendre: "Let's hope he can achieve this goal and present the world with more realistic works about contemporary China." Something tells me Su Shuyang has been longing to tell "more realistic" stories about China for a long time.