The Valley Wire - 9/25/2009

Hollywood Tunes into TV
By Mary Beth Gentle

It’s that magical time of year. All that glitters is gold. And for one brief moment in time all shows on the New Fall TV Schedule hold the promise of brilliance. And much like a kid on Christmas morning, I race home from work eager to unwrap each new show. Luckily the new and returning shows are premiering in a staggered schedule so my DVR should be able to keep up.

My favorite new TV show of the fall season so far is Glee, the story of a high school glee club full of underdogs. I can already tell that this musical ‘dramady’ with a heart will be my guilty pleasure. The story lines and cliché characters are nothing we haven’t seen before, but once the music starts to play and the characters burst into song I am a willing and captive audience.



Glee centers around the ever optimistic High School teacher and glee leader, Will Shuester (Matthew Morrison), as he helps a rag tag group of adolescents discover their dreams and at the same time re-discovering his own. The glee club consists of awkward teen misfit, Rachel (Lea Michele), football star Finn (Cory Monteith), wheel chair bound Arty (Kevin Mchale), flamboyant fashion plate Kurt (Chris Colfer) and diva in training Mercedes (Amber Riley) to name a few. Every high school click is covered in the show, even down to the overly perfect cheerleaders out to take down the glee club.

You might think the drama ends there, but most of the drama actually takes place in the teachers lounge. There is the domineering cheerleading coach who refuses to let a dime of the schools budget go to the support of the glee club, there is a testosterone charged football coach and a germ phobic guidance counselor who has a crush on Will. Not to mention the drama that Will encounters on a daily basis with his somewhat shrewish wife who would rather he was in a job that was more upwardly mobile.

From the onset, the pilot is packed with musical numbers that are both impressive and entertaining. And there is enough quirkiness to raise this show above all the other teen-based dramas clogging up the airwaves. In the pilot episode when Will takes the glee club to check out the competition, we quickly understand as do the kids in the club, that it’s going to be a long year with lots of musical numbers if they are going to make it to the State Championships. But, with lines like Rachel’s, “We’re gonna win because we’re different. That’s what makes us special.” She proves that the show has the heart needed to make us care about the characters. And when it comes to TV, new or old, without heart we aren’t going to tune in.

If you have already missed the opening episodes of Glee, you can catch them online at either Fox.com or Hulu.com. And if musical teen dramadies are just not your thing, there are still plenty of new and returning TV shows to tune into in the coming weeks, some of the other new shows that I will be checking out are; Flash Forward, Cougar Town, V, The Good Wife and the Vampire Diaries. And the returning TV shows that I can’t wait to tune back into are; Fringe, Survivor, Ugly Betty and Brothers and Sister to name a few. This is one Hollywood Cube Dweller that has her fall TV schedule all planned out…and here’s hoping that a least a few shows live up to my hope for brilliance.

The Valley Wire - 9/4/2009

Hollywood Pays Tribute
By Mary Beth Gentle

Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; these are just a few titles from the man that put pen to paper and helped define a generation, my generation. When the news hit my desk last month that Writer/Director John Hughes had died, a black cloud drifted over the Hollywood Cubicles. My entire youth flashed before my eyes and then slowly, I began to smile at the memories his movies brought to mind. John Hughes was a master at capturing the moments of teen angst with a perfect balance of heart and humor in a way no one had before or has since.

I pulled up his list of credits and was amazed at just how many films John Hughes had written, produced and directed. And was even more amazed by the fact that I have probably seen most of them at some point in my life. I sat down and decided I was going to try to pick my top three John Hughes movies. Too hard. So, I had to narrow it down to the top three that he both wrote and directed. Here is the list I came up with:

Sixteen Candles – 1984

The story centers around a slightly awkward high school sophomore, Samantha "Sam" Baker played by Molly Ringwald, as she struggles to get through her sixteenth birthday, which her entire family has forgotten as they prep for her sister Ginny’s big wedding day. As Sam struggles to survive a house filled with chaotic wedding plans, two sets of slightly insane Grandparents and a ‘geek’ with a giant crush on her, she must also come to terms with her own infatuation with the very popular and attractive senior, Jake Ryan. John Hughes captured the angst of high school life in this coming of age tale with real characters dealing with real problems in what is still a very funny movie. Will anyone remember it’s Sam’s birthday? Will her sister actually get married? And will true love find Sam and Jake together at the end? If you haven’t seen this one – it’s worth checking out.


The Breakfast Club – 1985

This ultimate teen angst movie finds a diverse group of high school students, consisting of an athlete (Emilio Estevez), a criminal (Judd Nelson), a basket case (Ally Sheedy), a princess (Molly Ringwald), and a brain (Anthony Michael Hall), sharing Saturday detention. Over the course of the day, they attack the barriers that ordinarily kept them apart, they discover more than just a few similarities in their lives and new bonds are formed. They discover that maybe they are not as easily defined as the labels put upon them by both the outside world and themselves. At the end of the film they go their separate ways, but still hopeful that these bonds will exist outside of detention. This movie had something that everyone could relate to, because some part of each of us can be found somewhere in these characters.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – 1986

Deciding he needs a day of fun with his girlfriend and his best friend before they all head off to different colleges, high school senior Ferris Bueller, played by Matthew Broderick, decides to skip school on a spring day by convincing his parents that he is sick. When the rest of the school learns of Ferris's exaggerated illness, they begin to offer donations to help "Save Ferris”. But there is one person not convinced by the deception, the school's Dean of Students, Edward Rooney. Ferris and his friends arrive in downtown Chicago and have the time of their lives, all the while avoiding Ed Rooney and making sure they get back home before Ferris’ parents get off work. Ferris Bueller did what the rest of us could only dream of doing – he took the day off!

Here are a few more of the many John Hughes movies that I have enjoyed over the years; She’s having a baby, Pretty in Pink, Uncle Buck, The Great Outdoors, Planes Trains and Automobiles…the list goes on and on. So whether you in the mood for the teen angst of The Breakfast Club, the comedy of Dan Aykroyd and John Candy or some good old family fun with the Home Alone Movies, I recommend you settle in and watch a movie in honor of John Hughes.

The Valley Wire - 8/14/2009

Hollywood, Comic-Con and the Vampires
By Mary Beth Gentle

Hollywood was out in full force at the annual San Diego International Comic-Con last Month. The Studio’s had rolled out Sneak Peaks of the new TV Season and the upcoming tent pole movies. The Celebrities were paraded around in all their glory. And the fans packed into the convention halls to catch every moment of fun. But, this year there was an added element at Comic-Con, this year the vampire people had come out of the shadows.

On the evening I arrived, I left my hotel to head across the street to check into the convention and get my badge. And that was when I first saw them, the ‘Twilighters’ – the fans of all things related to the Twilight books and movies. It wasn’t just a small gathering of fans of the vampire phenomenon, it was a crowd of close to a thousand, desperate to make sure they were guaranteed entry into the convention auditorium to see and hear the stars of the latest in the saga speak. It was the night before Summit Entertainment’s New Moon panel was set to take the stage and there was already a line wrapping itself around the building. There were tents erected, sleeping bags rolled out and some very confused security guards trying to keep a sense of calm in the vampire madness.



The next day, those who were lucky enough to make it inside the convention hall were treated to a sneak peak of scenes from the upcoming New Moon release and a panel of the full cast from the movie. Was it worth it? The people I talked to on the inside said it made their whole year. One young girl even went so far as to say it made her whole life. Having industry access to the panel, I decided to poke my head in and see what all the fuss was about. And as I looked up to the cast of pretty people and swooned a little at the site of Robert Pattinson, it was the fan base that really caught my attention. For the most part they were all women. In fact, I would have to say that this may have been the first time in Comic-Con history that there were that many Women in attendance at any one event. They were enraptured. And from a Studio point of view, I can only say one thing, ‘Ka-ching’.

When the New Moon Panel was over, I thought the madness would stop. But, it did not stop there, it quickly spilled out onto the floor of the main convention. It consumed anything that got in its way. It seemed as if everything was suddenly vampire related. Everywhere you looked there were T-Shirts with Twilight inspired sayings such as; ‘ Team Edward’ or ‘Team Jacob’. The advertisers were even getting into the act by hanging giant banners all over the convention. Apparently BMW feels that vampires would drive Mini Coopers.

And where New Moon left off, HBO’s True Blood took over. True Blood is the more mature telling of forbidden Vampire love. And it was one of the more frightening and frenzied moments on the convention floor when the cast of True Blood made an appearance at the Warner Brothers booth. Neither the Warner Brothers representatives nor Convention Security were ready for the number of vampire people that descended upon them. I was not willing to take any elbows to the ribs, but I did get a ‘True’ Vampire fan to fight her way through the crowd for a great shot of the cast. I, on the other hand, went and stood with a few lone Sci-Fi Fans that were clinging to the hope that the vampire craze would die before their very eyes.



From the amount of vampire material the Studios are filling their movie and TV slates with, it doesn’t sound like the vampire craze will die off anytime soon. The CW will try its hand at vampire love with Vampire Diaries in the fall, Universal will release The Vampire Assistant and Johnny Depp has just signed on for a remake of The Dark Shadows. I am not sure how long the vampire craze will actually last or if Comic-Con will ever be the same again, but I do know that with the vampire people around, things will stay interesting.

The Valley Wire - 7/17/2009

Hollywood and the Summer Hours
By Mary Beth Gentle

My little corner of Hollywood has decided to adopt summer hours. I’ve often heard of this concept. In the past it only seemed to apply to an elite few, but not this year. This year the Hollywood cube dweller has made the grade! When we first got the news that we could have half day Friday’s for the remainder of the summer, I nearly fell-off my chair at the generosity of the powers that be. My fellow cube dwellers immediately began racing up and down the hallways jumping for joy and spreading the news. For one brief moment in time we were kids again and the concept of a summer break actually meant something. It was the ever-elusive ‘golden ticket’ and we had just won.

Of course, we weren’t really getting our entire summers back. Those lazy endless days of summer from our childhoods were long since gone. But, we would be getting five free hours a week. Which meant that we would be starting our weekends five hours earlier, five hours of unexpected time, five hours to remind us of our lazy days of summer. Life was good. The sky was blue. The world was full of possibilities.

And on paper that was exactly how it sounded, it was beyond exciting. The first week of summer hours was only a few weeks ago and on that first Monday I was already making plans for that first half-day Friday. But, by mid-week reality had started to sink in. With summer releases looming at every turn, comic-com preparations hitting full swing and new movies prepping to shoot, the pile on my desk was growing by the second. It was becoming clear that I was going to have to work even harder and stay later the rest of the week to have a shot at an early Friday departure.

And there was the Catch-22. Were the powers that be truly being kind or had they simply devised a new and diabolical plot to get the Hollywood Cube Dwellers to work twice as hard all week for the promise of a few hours of free time on a Friday? Was it worth it? Were we all being played? By Wednesday I hadn’t left my cube to go home until well past eight o’clock. If I was going to make that early departure on Friday, I knew Thursday would be even later. But, it would be worth it after all I was going to get a half-day on Friday. I was going to have my lazy days of summer.

By that first Friday at Noon, I still had a pile of paperwork that needed to be put in order, a couple of crew members that needed travel approvals and a press screening that needed to be organized. How was I ever going to get everything done and still make my departure time? I was only one cube in a sea of cubes and I was surrounded on all sides by equally busy and equally frantic cube dwellers with the same story. Too much work to do and not enough time to do it in. None of us had ever worked so hard for a long weekend before.

So far, I have only managed to make it out of the office a few hours early. On the first couple of Friday’s I ended up spending my ‘free’ time sitting poolside with a blackberry in one hand and a cell phone in the other, it might not sound ideal, but I would rather be poolside returning emails than sitting in an office on a beautiful summer day! As one forever-hopeful cube dweller, I can’t help but cling to the dream that at least one Friday this summer I will leave early and without a cell phone glued to my ear!

Princess Protection Program on DVD Today!!!

Screenwriter Annie DeYoung's Princess Protection Program - Is great fun for the whole family - Get your copy today!!

The Valley Wire - 6/30/2009

Hollywood and the Princess
By Mary Beth Gentle

Hollywood has always held a certain fascination with the Princess. The concept of a gentle and refined heroine forced to overcome incredible odds is classic Hollywood storytelling at it’s best. Since there has been a Hollywood, there has been a Princess movie. There are many classics, family favorites and new movies on the list; Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Shrek, The Princess Bride, Princess Diaries and Enchanted to name a few. And of course no Studio does the Princess movie better than Disney.

The Disney Channel premieres a new entry into the Princess line-up this week with the Princess Protection Program. The Disney Channel Original Movie stars real life friends Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez as a pair of unlikely friends. The story brings together an insecure girl from rural Louisiana, Carter Mason (Selena) and a teenage monarch of the fictional country Costa Luna, Rosalinda Marie Montoya Fiore (Demi). When an evil dictator threatens to take over her small kingdom, the young Princess’ life is put in danger and an agent from the Princess Protection Program must rescue her. His mission is to keep her undercover and safe from harm. That agent is Carter’s Father, Mason and he brings Princess Rosalinda (Rosie) to the small Louisiana town where she must learn to behave like a normal American teenager. It takes a while for the two girls to bond, but when they do there is no stopping them.

I had the opportunity to sit down with the screenwriter of Princess Protection Program, Annie DeYoung, writer of such other Disney Channel movies as; Return to Halloweentown and Johnny Kapahala: Back on Board as well as the highly acclaimed TNT movie, The Ron Clark Story. I asked her a few questions about the experience of working on the next Disney Princess movie.

Every script, every story told begins first with inspiration. I asked Annie where she found that inspiration for her Princess story, “The idea for the Princess Protection Program was inspired by two of my favorite stories, one a movie and one a TV show. I loved the idea of a secret government organization that you only find out about when you need it, like in "Alias." In this case, it's an organization of secret agents who exist solely to protect princesses in peril. I also loved the clash of cultures: the average American girl getting stuck living with a princess. I must have watched "Roman Holiday" fifty times while I was writing the script!”

The Princess Protection Program is definitely a modern take on the classic Princess movie. I asked Annie how she felt her new Princess would fit in with the classic Disney Princesses. “There are actually two princesses in Princess Protection Program. One is a real royal princess -- like Audrey Hepburn in "Roman Holiday" -- pampered, entitled, wealthy. The other is this average American girl -- like you and me -- who learns every girl has a princess deep down inside of her. Both of these girls have aspects of the classic Disney princess, who is always a normal girl at heart.”

This average American girl can’t wait to settle in on the couch and enjoy the premiere of the Princess Protection Program. And maybe while watching the movie, I will not only be entertained, but I will rediscover that little girl who grew up watching Cinderella as often as she could. And the world again will be filled with dreams of fairy godmothers, ball gowns and Prince Charming!

The Princess Protection Program premieres on the Disney Channel this Friday, June 26th and then releases on DVD the following Tuesday. I recommend everyone take the opportunity to watch the next Disney Princess Classic!

The Valley Wire - 6/5/2009

Hollywood Heats Up For Summer
By Mary Beth Gentle

It’s that time of year again and Hollywood is hoping to set the Box Office on fire. The month of May has already started off with a bang with early openers; X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Star Trek, Angels and Demons and Up. I can already tell that it’s going to be one of those summers, the kind where if you miss just one weekend at the movies, there may be no hope of catching up at all. Of the big May releases I have only seen two so far, so unless I do a marathon movie weekend I may be waiting for the fall DVD season.

Of the two movies that I have seen so far, I am happy to report that the summer is shaping up to be a good one for movies. Star Trek was one of the best ‘popcorn’ movies I have seen in awhile. Director, J.J. Abrams breathed new life into an otherwise sagging franchise. I think whether you are a full-blown ‘Trekkie” or have never watched one incarnation of the series – you will enjoy this action packed adventure. The other early summer movie I saw was Disney/Pixar’s Up. It is the story of 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen and the adventure he embarks on by tying thousands of balloons to his house to float away to a remote waterfall in South America. What he expects to be his final journey is only the beginning as his adventure brings him new friends and a new sense of purpose. The bonus was the amazing 3D imagery.

June promises more fun with a slew of new movies every week, with the big ones being; Land of the Lost, The Taking of Pelham 123, The Proposal and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. That does not even cover the buddy comedies or the horror films that will make their debuts in the month of June. I can’t help but look forward to The Proposal. In an otherwise testosterone filled summer of car chases, monsters and space battles, it’s nice to look forward to at least one romantic comedy. Sandra Bullock plays a high-powered book publisher who forces her younger assistant, Ryan Reynolds, into marriage so she can avoid deportation to Canada. If you haven’t seen the trailer yet, take my advice, put this one on your must see list.

And then there is always one movie that is the hands down favorite to win the summer box-office and this summer it is without a doubt, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. July is the month of Harry Potter and it is the movie to beat. Although, there are a few other entries that will attempt to challenge the young wizard, namely, Johnny Depp as gangster Dillinger in Public Enemies, 3D family comedy G-Force from Disney and finally Adam Sandler will take a shot with the comedy Funny People. But, as much as a few of these other movies look interesting, I have read the books, seen the movies and I can’t help but root for the boy wizard to win this one.

August has always been the traditional summer dumping ground, the place where Studios release the movies that they hold little faith in. But, in a crowded summer box-office season I don’t know how true that is anymore. August holds a few potentials with G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra, Julie & Julia and Inglorious Basterds. Not one of those titles sounds like dumping ground material to me. I especially look forward to checking out Meryl Streep as Julia Child in Julie & Julia. It looks like an utterly charming movie as it chronicles the life of frustrated secretary Julie Brown (Amy Adams) as she sets out to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s famous cookbook in the span of a year.

This list of movies alone should be enough to keep us all busy throughout the summer, but sprinkled throughout the three months are smaller movies that might steal away some of the lime light from the tent-pole Studio offerings. A few that have made my potential list are; My Life in Ruins – the trailer alone makes me want to pack it in and head to Greece! The July entry Adam, looks like it could steal a few hearts in the moving tale of an emotionally fragile writer who is drawn to her handsome downstairs neighbor who has Asperger’s Syndrome. It looks quirky enough to be a nice escape from the normal summer fare. And finally August offers a 1960’s comedy, The Boat that Rocked about an illegal radio station run by a group of rogue DJ’s. Looks like a fun way to wrap up the summer!

So wherever your movie tastes run, whether it be the long buried inner ‘Trekkie’ with Star Trek or the desperate for a descent romantic comedy with The Proposal you are sure to be pleased this summer. I know that I will be venturing out of my Hollywood Cubicle to catch more than a few of these movies.

The Valley Wire - 5/8/2009

Hollywood Works Out
By Mary Beth Gentle

Spring has arrived in Hollywood and all the ‘A’ Lister’s are prepping their minds and bodies for the summer. They have their personal chefs blending up their protein shakes. They have their personal assistants scouring the shops along Rodeo Drive for the perfect summer beachwear. And they are spending quality time in their private gyms with their personal trainers. And those of us in the Hollywood cubicles are no different.

Well…okay…we are a little different. Our personal chefs work in the Studio Commissary, we shop at the local Target for our summer fashions and we tune into the Biggest Loser for our personal training sessions. But, this year things are going to be a little different for this cube dweller, I nabbed the golden ticket and was one of the lucky few to be awarded entrance to the brand new Studio Gym. It has state of the art equipment, flat screen televisions and on the plus side it is completely affordable.

A lottery was held and only a limited number of employees were accepted to the new gym. So already, in typical Hollywood fashion, it has become a gym for the elite few and a waiting list of over seven hundred has been formed. Normally, I would be against such elitism and shout from the rooftops that it is unfair to the masses. But, this time around, for the first time in all my years working at the different Studio Lots – I have made the ‘A’ list for something!

Having spent so many years on the ‘B’ or ‘C’ lists I played it very cool in the cubicle hallways as not everyone who entered the lottery in my area made it in. It was hard not be giddy when I came back from my tour of the new gym. It was hard not to be giddy when one of the senior executives in the area did not make it into the gym. It was hard not to be giddy the first morning I went to the gym for my workout. I think I did a pretty good job at not outwardly displaying my excitement.

But, as with all things, there are always strings attached. There are always great insights to be learned when you see life on the other side of the tracks. And I quickly learned that life on the gym ‘A’ list was not as easy as it seemed. Because everyone wants to be on the ‘A’ list, you have to work extra hard to stay there or get booted off. And that was when the other shoe fell, it was announced that you had to go a required number of times a week in order to keep your gym membership or you would be booted and someone from the waiting list would move into your spot.

And suddenly life on the ‘A’ list was not so glamorous after all. If I was going to stay on that list I was going to have to work for it. I was going to have to get to work extra early or stay extra late to get that work out in if I was going to keep my good standing. And in the beginning I was okay with that. I got here, I did my workout, it felt good. Then I did the one thing I shouldn’t have done, I started to wonder who was going to the gym during the non-work hours. Who was there at eleven in the morning? Who was there at three in the afternoon? And that was when I realized that maybe I wasn’t so elite after all. The executives that can schedule their own time and go to the gym whenever they wanted, were really the elite ‘A’ Lister’s and I was merely ‘A’ list filler.

So, even though the bloom is off the rose, I am going to stay with my gym membership. I am going to continue to get up early to do my workout. And even though I don’t have a personal chef, I don’t shop on rodeo drive and I don’t have a personal trainer sculpting my body, I am getting in shape and those ‘Target’ fashions are going to look great this summer!

The Valley Wire - 2/20/2009

Hollywood Takes a Gamble
By Mary Beth Gentle


This year when the Academy Awards come to town it won’t be LA that they come to, it will be more like Las Vegas. And I say that only because the Hollywood Cube Dweller Oscar pool ballot is due any day and I have not seen one movie. I know that is hard to believe – I do work in Hollywood after all – but it is true. I have my list of the five nominated movies for best picture; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon, The Reader and Slumdog Millionaire. And amazingly enough, I haven’t seen one of them.

The nominations were announced on January 22nd and I thought I would have more than enough time to see everything on the list. I have always prided myself on the fact that I see all the top movies and then I sit down with my office pool ballot and I vote with my heart. I never listen to who Vegas predicts as the odds on favorites or who the Hollywood insiders guarantee to pull out the win. But, this year I may just be out of time. It’s been almost a month since the announcements were made and I still have not seen anything.

I quickly started making the calls around town to see who might have an Academy Screener or two that I could borrow. For those of you that don’t know what those are – they are DVD copies of the nominated movies that go out to Academy and Guild members all over town. Academy Screeners are one of the biggest gambles the Studios take throughout the year. These DVD’s have always been a top source for piracy rings. The Studios have taken steps to secure their product by putting in security codes on the discs and sending out scary legal letters to all the recipients about not losing track of or sharing their copies. Needless to say, the DVD’s still make their way all over town.

But, as with anything in Hollywood, the lists to borrow any of the top movies on DVD were a mile long and I was, as always, on the bottom of the list. So, I have done the only thing I could do, I went on line with my office pool ballot at my side and decided to throw my heart out the window and vote with the best odds I could find. I mean come on, my hard earned five bucks was at stake and during an economic downturn, a girl has to do what a girl has to do.

So, I read about the Vegas handicaps. I went to all the Entertainment sites and read their predictions. I tallied what pictures had won at the Golden Globes, which actors had won at the SAG Awards and which Guild awarded what to who in their Academy Bake-off’s. And I basically came to the following conclusions: I am not Vegas material, the internet is filled with people with too much time on their hands and most importantly, I really just need to go to a movie theatre and see the movies.

So, this year I made the decision not to join the office pool. I figure if I can’t vote with my heart there is really no point voting at all. I will just have to tune in to root for my favorite actors, rate the nights best and worst fashions and enjoy the show. Next year, I will make sure I see al the movies, so that this Hollywood Cube Dweller is ready for next office pool.

The Valley Wire - 1/20/2009

Hollywood and the Hero
By Mary Beth Gentle

Explosions. Natural disasters. Diabolical bad guys. Hollywood has always known how to set the scene that puts us on the edge of our seats waiting for the hero to appear and save the day. And for the most part, whether Hollywood gives us a character that is inherently heroic or reluctantly heroic, they do a pretty good job at delivering. Bottom line, Hollywood loves a hero. They create them. They promote them. And whenever possible they build an entire franchise around them.

From the time we are very young we find heroes at every turn. They are in our bedtime stories, our television shows and our movies. We pick our favorites, we collect our action figures and we fight over who gets to play the hero and who has to be the bad guy. Hollywood did not invent the concept of the hero, but they are better than anyone at making them larger than life.

There have always been heroes and the tales of their heroic deeds have been told and written down since the beginning of time. By definition a hero or heroine is a person endowed with great strength or ability and who in the face of danger or adversity displays great courage. Hollywood has made a pretty good business out of the telling and re-telling of the famous Heroes throughout time. There have been countless movies of swashbuckling and sword-fighting heroes, cowboy movies helped define the early Hollywood hero and of course Superheroes have become the ultimate Hollywood box office hero.

And whenever possible, Hollywood will look to the world around them for heroes that have walked among us. Every war movie ever made is based on a true-life hero or an amalgamation of the many heroes that have served our country, historical heroes are an easy mark for Hollywood as they can spin the facts in order to tell the most captivating story and then there is the modern day hero. He is the every-man, the imperfect hero who steps forward when no one else will or can.

We have had one such man in the news over the recent week, Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger. He was the pilot of US Airways Flight 1549 who went on to safely land the Airbus A320 in the Hudson River saving all 155 people on board. This is the type of heroic event that had all of us in the Hollywood cubicles glued to our computers to watch and read every detail we could. In the Hollywood cubicles we spend our days working on the TV shows and movies of the make believe heroes. It was amazing to see something that heroic happen in real life.

It is events like this that in many ways prove Hollywood right. We all want a hero. We want the innocent to be saved. We want the wrongs to be righted. We want the hero to save the day. And right now that hero is a commercial airline pilot named “Sully”.

And I know that in many ways there are heroes all around us. They are serving our communities, caring for our children or even simply taking the time to help a neighbor in need. In someway to someone, we are all heroes. But, when you want to escape the daily routine and see something that is larger than life, it’s Hollywood that we turn to for that escape.

And I can guarantee you that right now every Producer in Hollywood would love to be the person that ends up owing the rights to tell “Sully’s” story. Because of this man, what could have been a horrible disaster had a very happy ending. It is a story with all the elements to be found in a Hollywood movie, but this one has a real life modern day hero in Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger.