I am getting my chance at RADIO!

[JonathanLB]

Last Wednesday, I received an e-mail from a radio host asking if I would be interested in being their official movie critic / commentator for their "Hot Talk" program. I of course jumped at this chance and sent an e-mail back, but told him I would be in Indy for a few days. So I called back today, got up early just to talk to their producer there.

Anyway, they want me to "appear" on a regular basis, basically every Friday and talk about the newest movies and whatever else is new in the entertainment industry. The station is WHTR 93.7 FM in Albany, New York and also near Scotia, New York, a really small town with a population of just less than 8,000. But the broadcast radius is 32 miles, so the station reaches a lot of smaller towns in the area.

Mind you, it is not like I am going to be on the Howard Stern show or some national radio broadcast or an NYC show going out to millions of people, but you have to start somewhere right? This will be good free publicity for my site, JLB Movies, and they will allow me to promote that each week, or at least I'll get a few free mentions! :)

I'm really excited about this. I mean I don't care if there are only 200 people visiting at any given time, it would still be super cool, IMO. It only took me one month online for my Website to get this type of arrangement, which is awesome! I have already poured hundreds and hundreds of hours into that site. In fact, I probably have put 700 hours into it, give or take 100, which is about as much as my first book and much more than my second book. Of course in the future I want it to grow into a real, major site, not just a few hundred reviews, but 1,000+ by April 1, 2004. That is my goal.

[Taylor Millard]

Congrats!! I leave for my internship in Washington DC for WMAL 630 AM in a week.

Best of luck to ya! :)

[JonathanLB]

That sounds really cool too. Radio is pretty cool, I think it would be fun...

There are a lot of things that interest me, but they all center around movies basically, haha. As one friend has in his AIM away message, "Movies are my lifeblood..." and he continues with a bunch of other commentary, haha.

[Mu Satach]

Congrats Jon!

Radio is fun and addicting. :)
Best of luck with it!

[darth_mcbain]

Excellent - congratulations. Sounds like a really cool gig. I don't suppose the radio station is online? We could listen in...

[Jedieb]

Congrats!

[CMJ]

Geez Jon that's fantastic! Are we in competition to see who "makes it" in the biz? LOL...you have a definite advantage so far. ;)

[JonathanLB]

I think you have the advantage! I have seen maybe 1/5 as many movies as you it seems like, LOL. I'm plugging away, trying to educate myself over here in Portland, haha, but it does take a long time. I mean there is no quick way to see several hundred important movies. You just have to do it day by day and think, "Ok, in a few years, I will really have come a long ways, but not next week, not next month..."

Plus, you even have a screenplay and stuff, that is awesome. It would be SO cool if we both made it in the film industry, even if we were not huge powerbrokers or anything, hehe, if we could just have a part in the film industry. At least that is what I would like, just to have my name affixed to a few movies or somehow in the film industry, like the way Leonard Maltin's quotes are often on the back of DVDs and stuff. That's very cool.

I guarantee anyone can be in the film industry. If you want to be, for instance, the driver who takes cast and crew to the set or equipment or whatever, you can do that without even having any education and you still get your tiny part of Hollywood. Or you can be a set dresser, or a prop maker, or a number of other little jobs where you still may get credit. Of course, the number of people who want to be leading actors, major directors, producers, or screenwriters far outstrips the number of people who actually make it.

I kind of look at Harry Knowles and the way he has taken his Internet site into the stratosphere and realize there are so many ways to break into anything. Here I am quite a good writer and Harry a pretty lousy one, BUT Harry is a major player in film gossip and his site is HUGE, so he got a book deal without any problem. I am having so much more difficulty because of course I am a nobody basically until I can somehow break in and become a somebody, haha. So my review site is sort of another attempt at that. I figure if I keep writing my books and try to make it that way I have a great chance eventually, but even better if I can build a large review site and maybe a small but significant group of visitors. If I had a published book, my Website would probably take off, while if I had a hugely successful Website (ala AICN) then I could get a book deal easily. So I figure that is like double the chance basically, unless of course I was unable to do a good job at either, in which case it'd be silly I suppose.

I am pretty much thinking that I will not try to get into the film industry in any way or do much filmmaking related stuff until I am out of college. Then that will be my focus, and at that point I am hoping that my review site is very huge (in the range of 2,000 reviews, or the size of 15 book length works or more), also hoping to have at least several books out, so when I try to break in I think I will give myself a massive edge over the other people who are not too well informed about the film industry. When I was at LMU, that was a conversation we had one day and it made me realize that I don't want to be just another film student who only goes to film school for the supposed "glamor" of Hollywood, when really moviemaking is not like that at all; it's hard work. Basically the teacher was saying how he realizes that most people in film school and college in general "do not have time to see very many movies," and in fact a senior I knew there had never even HEARD of Gosford Park, which was nominated for Best Picture, so I was just thinking, what the heck?! I don't care if you're a film production major, I don't care if you're a graduate student, I don't care how talented you think you are, if you don't follow the industry and you don't know the history of movies and haven't seen the classics of the past, you cannot be a truly great filmmaker and, IMO, won't even be a decent one.

You can tell when a director has an appreciation for what came before him and I would expect directors to be authorities on their craft and industry. I understand they get very busy, but if I was directing I'd take a few weeks break in between projects at the least and spend the time seeing movies I missed while I was busy. It would be great to be a critic and director, something I don't think really exists. How coold would it be to see a site like SpielbergReviews.com where you get actual reviews BY Steven Spielberg of tons of current movies and what he thinks of them all?

Of course, I guess it would be funny/awkward if he gave something a bad review that one of his friends did, basically, and I admit that is odd but it's like opinions. You have to separate bashing an opinion and bashing a person, just as if I say one of Spielberg's movies is not very good, I'm not saying he isn't a great director, just that I didn't like that movie. If you bash an opinion, you are just bashing an idea that many people may have, like the opinion that TPM is not good. But if you bash the person who voices it, it's a very specific criticism and much more inappropriate. Oh well, I'll deal with that issue of reviewing colleagues' movies later if it ever comes up, which it may not, so if I'm that lucky I'll think about it then, haha ;)

[CMJ]

I might have seen more films...but I don't have a radio deal. That is AWESOME man...I wish you all the best.

That AFI gig starts tommorrow..I'll try and let everyone know how it goes.

[JMK]

That's amazing Jon! I hope it works well for you!

[JonathanLB]

Hey, I got my chance today! I got a call at 7 a.m., but I thought it would be yesterday I'd get that call, so I was a bit worried. Anyway, it's all good, so at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 Eastern, I got about 10 minutes on the radio! It was really fun and exciting.

I was a bit nervous at first, but actually most of that passed while I was listening to the ads before the show started, hehe. Phil Stern has a perfect radio voice, I mean duh, but it's funny how these guys are all so perfect for the radio. I do not have a voice like that. I think I have a good voice, or I've been told that, but by no means a TV or radio voice! lol.

It was pretty neat, though, what a cool experience. He must have mentioned my Website name at least 10 times in that short period. He kept saying, "I'm here with Jonathan Bowen of JLBMovies.com (emphasized well), hello Jonathan, how are you today?" It was really cool. He then kept mentioning it throughout our talk. Very good promotion, but I guess these guys are total professionals so they know how to work it.

I felt like it went really well, I mean him and I had a good conversation, talked Spider-Man for a while first, then to Star Wars. I told him most of the reviews so far are very positive, but there are of course the detractors. He was like, "Yes, there are always people who just don't get it." He was pretty cool! Then we talked about the films this weekend, mainly Unfaithful, and he said how much he likes Diane Liane. I agree, she's dang hot for being 37 or 38 or whatever. Dang hot. I thought so in Murder at 1600 too. Then briefly mentioned The New Kid or whatever it is, the other new film today. Then we talked a bit about whatever else is coming up in the next few weeks, like Insomnia, Enough, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and finally Minority Report a bit (he asked if it was true there are a number of sci-fi films coming this summer).

I got a good impression, I mean if that were a test for instance, I'd say I did very well, but it's all up to how he feels of course and his producer. I really, really hope they ask me back, I cannot stress that enough, hehe. I sent an e-mail afterwards and just thanked him for the opportunity and said I had fun and that if they would like me back again, I would be very grateful. So here, my fingers are crossed!

I look forward to having the chance to do this again, hopefully, and if they liked what they got today I will be back weekly to do their film commentary.

[CMJ]

Very, very cool Jonathan. Sounds like you were a hit. :)

[JMK]

Maybe we can find a soundclip from the station or something! ;)

[JonathanLB]

I checked for a Website of theirs and I did not find one. :\

I have no idea even how many listeners probably tuned in, but it is kind of weird when I think about it. I mean, over here, I am thousands of miles away from New York. I was on the phone. That is basically all, haha, I mean yeah I was on the radio, but it's hard to comprehend. It's not like doing a public speach as a professor or something, or in some auditorium. I have to imagine people listening to their radio and hearing the conversation, hehe, but that's ok. It's probably better that way.

[JMK]

Globalization Jon, globalization. The www makes distances irrelevant. :)

[JonathanLB]

True, true.

I don't know why I didn't comment before, but anyways, that signature rocks. That is my best friend's favorite scene that he has seen from the four trailers so far.