The Death of Newspapers, Part II: The End of Free-Lancing

From California Progress Report, a very distressing story about the decline in demand for free-lance stories by writers already hit hard by newspaper closings and cutbacks. Money quote: "For me, the freelance life is not sustainable... I need a job of some kind to support my journalism habit." And this: “I used to get up to $750 per article and then I could turn around and market the same article to European magazines … Now I am lucky if I get $350 per article and of course, because of the Internet, I can no longer resell any article. On a daily basis I see offers from as little as $5 to $50 for articles! And worse, I know many writers who are submitting because they don’t have a lot of choice.”

Trust me: I feel their pain. Back in the mid '90s, for a year or two following the closing of The Houston Post, it wasn't uncommon for me to sell the same free-lance interview with a Harrison Ford or a Patrick Swayze to two or three different papers. Hell, I managed to market only slightly different versions of a Tom Hanks interview to five different papers -- including the Los Angeles Times -- around the time Apollo 13 was released. Those were the days, my friend, I thought they'd never end. But they did. (For more illustrations like the one above, check out the website of writer Stephen Beale.)

Critics' choices

I am a proud member of the Houston Film Critics Society -- but don't hold that against the organization, it's a classy outfit anyway. We're going to be handing out awards for 2009's best achievements in film this Saturday, Dec. 19, starting at 4 p.m. in the Brown Auditorium Theater of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. And unlike those snobby wankers over at the Hollywood Foreign Press or the Motion Picture Academy, we're open to having everyone join in the festivities. Well, OK, maybe not everyone -- but at least as many people as can fit into Brown Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public, followed by a reception in the museum galleries. I'll be on hand to intro a special HFCS tribute to the late, great Patrick Swayze. And actor G.W. Bailey will be honored with a well-deserved Humanitarian Award for his work with the Sunshine Kids Foundation.

BTW: Nominees for the HFCS Best Picture of 2009 award include (500) Days of Summer, Avatar, District 9, Inglourious Basterds, Invictus, Precious, Star Trek, The Hurt Locker, Up and Up in the Air. I'd tell you in advance which movie is the winner, but then HFCS president and co-founder Nick Nicholson would kill me. Suffice it to say that HFCS prides itself on surprising. Last year, for example, the Best Film prize went to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. So expect the unexpected.

To Patrick Swayze, thanks for everything

While combing through my archives, I found this interview I did with Patrick Swayze during the 1995 New York junket for To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. It was a movie, he admitted, for which he had to struggle to land an audition -- because, evidently, no one involved thought he was right for the part of Vida, a drag queen performer.

"Early on," Swayze said, "when I first heard about it, I couldn't even get a script for it. And my agent couldn't get me in (for an interview), and they wouldn't see me, because, you know, Patrick Swayze is terminally macho. It wasn't until the end, when they had exhausted all their other possibilities, that I got to go in."

And even then, Swayze wasn't allowed to see the script until a few hours before the audition. He read a few pages, saw that Vida has several long speeches, and immediately realized he didn't have time to properly prepare.

"So I told them, `Look, I can't do these words. So if this is a case where I have to do these words, forget it. But if you let me come in, I'll give you a half-hour monologue on my life as a drag queen, and see if I can turn into Vida while I watch her materialize in the mirror.'

"And I wound up giving them an hour-long monologue. I just took Patrick Swayze's life, and told it as if he'd grown up as a drag queen in Texas. And that was a neat story. " Yes, indeed.

R.I.P.: Patrick Swayze (1952-2009)

Please don’t misunderstand: Patrick Swayze and I weren’t bowling buddies or anything like that, and I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to pass myself off as someone grieving for a close, personal friend. But I find myself deeply saddened by his demise – and, yes, more than a little peeved that, being caught up in the Toronto Film Festival right now, I don’t have nearly enough time to write a farewell worthy of the guy.

Our paths crossed several times over the years, due in no small measure to the fact that he was a Houston native, and I started interviewing him for The Houston Post as far back as The Outsiders (1983). I have very happy memories of a lunch we shared at a downtown H-Town restaurant in 1987, just before Dirty Dancing opened. He knew he was the verge of a major career breakthrough – and he was so openly, eagerly exuberant that I experienced a kind of contact high just sitting near him.

I remember an uproarious incident during the press junket for Point Break in the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel. I was walking toward my room after a morning of roundtable interviews when I heard Swayze shouting my name from across the atrium. When I turned to respond, I saw he was on a floor two stories above mine, with one leg draped over the railing, pretending he was preparing to dive into the lobby far below. So I had to shout back in response: “Don’t do it, Patrick! You have so much to live for! The movie’s not that bad!” He laughed so hard, I momentarily feared he might lose his balance and really take the drop. I laughed, too, but I didn’t actually smile until he took his leg off the railing.

I don’t pretend to have known the man very well, but, as I say, I always enjoyed talking with him, and always appreciated his seemingly boundless enthusiasm. I cannot believe there isn’t a place somewhere on the other side where such a vital spirit can continue to thrive. More, later.