. . . stereotypes are bad because they usually portray negative perceived traits of a culture; not all black people eat watermelon . . . I'm black and I don't enjoy eating watermelon, a stereotype for black people . . .in America, more white people eat watermelon than black people by default because we black people are the minority.



In fact me calling me black is my stereotyping myself because I'm tan. . . .but my hair is curly.



the bottom line: stereotypes reinforce negative generalizations made about a culture or race of people.



"All gay people love Liza Menelli" (that's a generalized stereotype too . . . )



Remembering those 94 or 51 or 24 or 17 people killed in Oklahoma.



(the media can't get it right . . .did anyone die in Oklahoma? the media keeps changing the number)

in response to . . .

THE WRAP.COM (MY FAVORITE ONLINE JOURNAL)

It was an adventure that somehow turned into a career.

When Sofia Vergara got a call to audition for a Barry Sonnenfeld movie called "Big Trouble" back in 2001, the 29-year-old Colombian wasn’t an aspiring actress. She was a TV hostess on the Spanish-language Univision network, a former dental student who’d fallen into modeling and then hosting for the Latin market.

She had dreams of fame and fortune, to be sure, but most of them didn’t focus on the United States, and they certainly didn’t include acting.

“I really had no interest in being an actress,” Vergara told TheWrap [4]. “But I wanted to see what happened. I got the part and I liked it and said, ‘Maybe I can do this. I’ll stay here six months, one year, and see what happens.’

“Twelve years later, I haven’t left.”

Also read: The Wit & Wisdom of Gloria Delgado-Pritchett [5]

Not only is she still here -- still in the U.S. and still acting -- but Vergara is fairly ubiquitous. She’s a core cast member of "Modern Family", which has won the Emmy as TV’s best comedy series for three years in a row; she’s a three-time Emmy nominee herself, losing to her castmate Julie Bowen twice.

And as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett, the younger wife of family patriarch Jay Pritchett (played with wry aplomb by Ed O’Neill), she’s TV’s reigning bombshell, embracing the tight dresses and dishing out the fractured English with gusto and volume.

See photos: 10 Outtakes from Sofia Vergara's EmmyWrap Cover Shoot [6]

For Vergara, who’d begun her unplanned move into acting less than two years after being diagnosed with (and recovering from) thyroid cancer, the success still comes as something of a shock.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, definitely,” she insisted. “I knew I could be funny, because I was always making my friends laugh. But I didn’t think I was going to be in a super-successful sitcom being funny.”

She said this while sitting in a photo studio in New York’s fashion district, where she’d just finished posing for TheWrap's EmmyWrap magazine. On camera, she switched on the sass and attitude with ease. Slightly de-glammed in a white T-shirt afterwards, she told her story in a rush. (To get the real flavor of Vergara you should probably just eliminate all the punctuation and read fast.)

New York is Vergara’s home base when she’s not shooting "Modern Family" in Los Angeles, a job that takes three weeks a month and eight months a year. On the East Coast, she can relax and be near her 20-year-old son, who’s in school in Boston, and also oversee a business empire that includes a clothing line for Kmart and a number of endorsement deals, Cover Girl and Pepsi among them.

Also read: Sofia Vergara Tops Forbes List of Highest Paid TV Actresses [7]

Last year she became the highest-paid woman in television with $19 million in earnings in 12 months, according to Forbes. ("Modern Family" accounts for less than $5 million of that.) And unlike some artistes who shy away from talk of their riches, she admitted that it was part of the plan.

“My brain, it’s always thinking of how I could make a business out of it,” she said. “I have to say, honestly, that this was not about the art of acting for me. It was always, I want to make money off my image and do what I can do because I have a son, I have a family, I want to have money. I love the business part of my career.”

"Modern Family" not only made Vergara a star and made those business deals possible, but also fixed her persona in the public mind: glamorous, expressive (“Shouting With Sofia Vergara” was a popular YouTube compilation), a little ditzy and, oh yeah, sexy.

Creators Steve Levitan and Christopher Lloyd tailored the role for her, she said. “They had meetings with me at the beginning and they would ask me things, because the character has a lot of similarities with my real life. I am an immigrant in this country, I have an accent, I’m Colombian, I have a child from a previous marriage. So it was created around me. But now they have Google so they don’t really need to ask me, ‘What is a Colombian dish or a Colombian hat?’ They just go and Google it.”

And if Gloria comes across as a supercharged stereotype of the hot, fiery Latina -- well, that doesn’t bother Vergara in the slightest.

“I don’t know why people think stereotypes are so terrible,” she said. “I am Gloria, my mother is Gloria, my aunts are Gloria. I mean, it’s not like I’m putting on a fake bra with big prosthetics, you know. It might be a stereotype, but I think the character is fantastic. She’s colorful, she’s honest, she’s out there, she cares about people. She’s loud, but I am loud. She’s crazy, but I am crazy. It’s not a problem.”

Initially, though, she had second thoughts about what viewers would think of her character. “I was worried, because I thought nobody was going to like a hot-looking Latin woman married to the older guy,” she said. “It was totally like the description of the gold-digger. But after we shot the pilot, I realized that I had chemistry with Ed. I think everybody completely believed that Gloria and Jay belonged together.”

"Modern Family" won praise from the start. It became an anchor on ABC’s schedule, picked up three Golden Globe nominations (including one for Vergara) after only four months on the air, and it ended its inaugural season by landing eight Emmy nominations and winning the award for Outstanding Comedy Series. 

By its third season, the show had been sold for syndication and had become the year’s 10th highest revenue-generating show. It also reflected the continuing maturation of the TV-comedy family, depicting three couples representing three kinds of families: a typical sitcom pairing (Ty Burrell and Julie Bowen), a multi-racial older-man/younger-woman coupling (Vergara and O’Neill) and a committed same-sex relationship (Eric Stonestreet and Jesse Tyler Ferguson). (See sidebar, page 24.)

Its success also jump-started Vergara, Inc., in the U.S. market. “The things I do outside of 'Modern Family' are all things that I’ve been planning for a long time,” she said. “I wanted to be a household name to be able to do all these other things, and I have totally achieved it. I’ve been working for 22 years in the Latin market mainly, but with 'Modern Family' I was able to really do everything.”

Everything will soon include a few more film roles, including parts in Robert Rodriguez’s "Machete Kills," in actor/director John Turturro’s "Fading Gigolo" with Woody Allen and Sharon Stone, in "Heat" with Jason Statham and in "The Smurfs 2."

And it may include a producer credit on a television series called "Killer Woman," which she, her manager Luis Balaguer and Ben Silverman developed from the Argentinian series "Mujeres Asesinas". It is waiting for a pickup from ABC.

She knows she’s become a role model of sorts for young Latinas -- “I try to be myself, because there’s a lot of people that are watching” -- but she shies away from using that as a soapbox to address the hot-button issue of immigration.

“Whatever my ideas and my opinions are, I try not to do that,” she said. “Only thing I can tell you is that for us as immigrants to be in a country like this, we should all be grateful that we have the opportunity, because only in a country like this that has opened the doors for us we can do so many things. So we should follow their laws.”

In other words, don’t expect her to get up onstage at the Emmys and make any political speeches. Then again, she never figured she’d be anywhere near the stage at any awards show.

“It didn’t even occur to me that I was going to be nominated for anything,” she said. “The day my publicist called me and said, ‘You’ve been nominated for a Golden Globe,’ I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’”

And now she’s been nominated for three Globes and three SAG Awards and three Emmys, as part of a show that has completely dominated the Emmy supporting categories. In its first year, all six of the major cast members -- Vergara, O’Neill, Bowen, Burrell, Stonestreet and Ferguson - -opted to enter themselves in the supporting category rather than singling out anyone as lead, and everyone but O’Neill was nominated.

The next two years, all six have landed nods, monopolizing two of the six Supporting Actress spots and four of the six Supporting Actor spaces. Over the three years, "Modern Family" has not only won the three Comedy Series awards, but its cast has taken home five of the six available supporting trophies: two each for Bowen and Stonestreet and one for Burrell.

Vergara said that she has no problem losing to Bowen -- “what I care is that the show keeps going on and is successful no matter who wins” -- but she nodded when asked if she ever feels like telling her castmate, “You’ve won twice, how about giving me a turn?”

“I already told her, but she doesn’t care,” she said with a laugh. “I think she’s going to win again.”

A struggle over the U.S.S. Enterprise's past and future helped sour J.J. Abrams on the "Star Trek" franchise and may have contributed to his decision to take on the "Star Wars" universe.

Competing ambitions between Paramount, CBS and Abrams' production company Bad Robot over merchandising surrounding the first film in the rebooted "Star Trek" franchise led the director to curtail plans to turn the series into a multi-platform experience that spanned television, digital entertainment and comic books, according to an individual with knowledge of the dispute.

"J.J. just threw up his hands," the individual told TheWrap [4]. "The message was, 'Why set up all this when we'll just be competing against ourselves?' The studio wanted to please Bad Robot, but it was allowing CBS to say yay or nay when it came to what was happening with the 'Star Trek' products."

"Star Trek Into Darkness" arrives in U.S. multiplexes Thursday with tie-ins ranging from Bing to Hasbro. It is expected to gross more than $100 million at the domestic box office over the extended weekend. 

See photos: 'Star Trek Into Darkness' Premiere: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana [5]

Yet this marketing assault pales compared to the one that Abrams (above) and Bad Robot once envisioned for "Star Trek" and now plan to construct around the new "Star Wars" films.

A major stumbling block: "Star Trek's" licensing and merchandising rights are spread over two media conglomerates with competing goals. The rights to the original television series from the 1960s remained with CBS after it split off from Paramount’s corporate parent Viacom in 2006, while the studio retained the rights to the film series. CBS also held onto the ability to create future “Star Trek” TV shows.

Paramount must license the “Star Trek” characters from CBS Consumer Products for film merchandising.

Much to the dismay of Bad Robot, CBS' merchandising arm continued to create memorabilia and products based on the cast of the original 1960s series and market them to Trekkies. The production company did market research and found that there was brand confusion between Abrams' rebooted Enterprise crew and the one starring William Shatner and DeForest Kelley.

Also read: 'Star Trek Into Darkness' Eyes $100M Box-Office Opening [6]

TheWrap has learned that Bad Robot asked CBS to stop making products featuring the original cast, but talks broke down over money. The network was making roughly $20 million a year on that merchandise and had no incentive to play nice with its former corporate brother, the individual said. In response, the company scaled back its ambitions to have "Star Trek's" storylines play out with television shows, spin-off films and online components, something Abrams had been eager to accomplish.

Also read: 'Star Trek Into Darkness' Review: Thrilling Sequel Balances Fun with a Post-9/11 Sensibility [7]

Paramount declined to comment for this article and a spokesperson for Bad Robot did not respond to a request to comment.

"As the merchandising rights holder for Star Trek, CBS Consumer Products has ongoing relationships with all our partners, including Paramount," a spokesman for CBS Consumer Products said in a statement. "We have worked closely with them for the last five years to create merchandise to enhance the movies and satisfy fans. We are all looking forward to a successful opening of ‘Into Darkness.’”

Also read: 'Star Wars' 7, 8 and 9 Are 'The Most Exciting,' Says George Lucas Biographer (Exclusive) [8]

Despite the initial bumpy ride, it appears that Paramount, Bad Robot and CBS Consumer Products worked more harmoniously on "Star Trek Into Darkness." The parties collaborated on a Star Trek video game (left) that will feature the voices of the film's stars Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto; a graphic novel prequel to the film that was overseen by screenwriter Roberto Orci; and a novelization from Simon & Schuster (below).

Still, Jeff Gomez, CEO of the transmedia consulting firm Starlight Runner Entertainment, says there could have been so many more lucrative tie-ins. He contends that the rebooted franchise has enormous potential outside the multiplex.

"Right now the 'Star Trek' movies are movies," Gomez said. "There is no apparent ongoing transmedia strategy behind them, just a handful of licensing opportunities around the release of 'Into Darkness.'

"Why would that be attractive to an artist who sees beyond the boundaries of the silver screen to envision a true multi-platform narrative all based on a global franchise?”

Also read: Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher Back for 'Star Wars'? George Lucas Says Yes [9]

Abrams' ambitions to create a multi-platform film franchise will find a more natural home at Disney, analysts and industry experts tell TheWrap. As successful as "Star Trek" has been, few franchises match the profitability and cultural prominence of George Lucas' space opera, which would be difficult for any director to pass up.

“Disney has always been oriented to multi-platform revenue stream situations,” Seth Willenson, a film library valuations expert, told TheWrap.

Moreover, Willenson notes that Abrams, who has a deal that is believed to include creative and profit participation in "Star Wars" inspired merchandise and spin-offs, will have more control in shaping the legacy of the Skywalker clan than he would have had with developing side projects for the "Star Trek" crew. Unlike with "Star Trek," with its rights split between Paramount and CBS, Disney owns the rights to “Star Wars” outright thanks to its $4 billion purchase of Lucasfilm last year.

"The derivative rights situation on 'Star Trek' is complicated because you’re dealing with cross-company cultures, so it makes it harder to implement a grand plan," Willenson said.

As for Disney's grand "Star Wars" plan, it's sounding an awful lot like the one Abrams once envisioned for "Star Trek." There will be television properties, theme park rides and spin-off films all centered around the new trilogy that Abrams will oversee.

It's a page borrowed from Disney's exploitation of the Marvel comic books and if it works out, it should make Abrams very rich indeed.

Comment la bataille sur les droits «Star Trek» a tué JJ Grandes ambitions d'Abrams

Les droits de licence et de merchandising de la franchise sont répartis entre CBS et Paramount qui a créé des maux de tête pour la société de production Bad Robot de la multihyphenate



Publié le: 15 mai 2013 @ 7:41 pm



Une lutte pour le U.S.S. Le passé et l'avenir de l'entreprise ont permis aigre J.J. Abrams sur le "Star Trek" franchise et peut-être contribué à sa décision de prendre le "Star Wars" univers.



Ambitions concurrentes entre Paramount, CBS et la société de production Bad Robot d'Abrams sur merchandising entourant le premier film de la saga "Star Trek" franchise redémarré conduit le Directeur de limiter des plans pour transformer la série en une expérience multi-plate-forme que la télévision fractionné, divertissement numérique et bandes dessinées, selon une personne ayant connaissance du différend.



"JJ juste leva les mains,« l'individu dit TheWrap [4]. "Le message a été:« Pourquoi mettre en place tout cela quand nous allons être en compétition contre nous-mêmes? Le studio voulait s'il vous plaît Bad Robot, mais il laissait CBS dire yay ou non quand il s'agit de ce qui se passait avec les produits de la 'Star Trek' ".



"Star Trek Into Darkness" arrive dans les multiplexes américains jeudi avec tie-ins allant de Bing à Hasbro. On s'attend à ce brute de plus de 100 millions de dollars au box-office national au cours du week-end prolongé.



Voir les photos: "Star Trek Into Darkness de la Première: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana [5]



Pourtant, cet assaut de marketing n'est rien comparé à celui qui Abrams (ci-dessus) et Bad Robot fois envisagées pour "Star Trek" et maintenant l'intention de construire autour des nouveaux "Star Wars" films.



Une pierre d'achoppement: les droits de licence et de merchandising "Star Trek" sont réparties sur deux conglomérats médiatiques avec des objectifs concurrents. Les droits de la série télévisée originale des années 1960 sont restés avec CBS après qu'il s'est séparée de l'entreprise mère Viacom Paramount en 2006, tandis que le studio a conservé les droits de la série de film. CBS a également tenu sur la possibilité de créer des futurs "Star Trek" émissions de télévision.



Paramount doit autoriser les caractères "Star Trek" de CBS Consumer Products pour le merchandising du film.



Au grand dam de Bad Robot, bras de merchandising CBS a continué à créer des souvenirs et des produits basés sur le casting de la série originale des années 1960 et de les commercialiser à Trekkies. La société de production a fait des études de marché et constaté qu'il y avait confusion entre la marque redémarré l'équipage de l'Enterprise d'Abrams et celui mettant en vedette William Shatner et DeForest Kelley.



A lire également: "Star Trek Into Darkness 'Eyes 100M $ Box-office ouverture [6]



TheWrap a appris que Bad Robot demandé à CBS de cesser de faire des produits mettant en vedette la distribution originale, mais les négociations ont achoppé sur l'argent. Le réseau faisait à peu près 20 millions de dollars par an sur cette marchandise et n'avait aucun intérêt à jouer gentil avec son ancien frère d'entreprise, l'individu dit. En réponse, la société a revu à la baisse ses ambitions pour avoir des histoires "Star Trek" jouent avec des émissions de télévision, films spin-off et de composants en ligne, quelque chose Abrams avait été désireux d'accomplir.



A lire également: "Star Trek Into Darkness de l'examen: suite passionnante Soldes Fun avec un Post-9/11 Sensibility [7]



Paramount a refusé de commenter cet article et un porte-parole de Bad Robot n'ont pas répondu à une demande de commentaire.



«En tant que détenteur des droits de merchandising pour Star Trek, CBS Consumer Products a des relations suivies avec tous nos partenaires, y compris Paramount," un porte-parole de CBS Consumer Products a déclaré dans un communiqué. «Nous avons travaillé en étroite collaboration avec eux pour les cinq dernières années pour créer marchandises pour améliorer les films et satisfaire les fans. Nous sommes tous impatients à une ouverture réussie de 'Into Darkness».



LIRE AUSSI: 7, 8 et 9 'Star Wars sont «le plus excitant», dit George Lucas biographe (Exclusive) [8]



Malgré le parcours cahoteux initial, il apparaît que Paramount, Bad Robot et CBS Consumer Products ont travaillé de façon plus harmonieuse sur "Star Trek Into Darkness». Les parties ont collaboré à un jeu vidéo Star Trek (à gauche) qui mettra en vedette les voix de stars Chris Pine du film et Zachary Quinto, un roman prequel graphique pour le film qui a été supervisé par le scénariste Roberto Orci et un novelization de Simon & Schuster ( ci-dessous).



Pourtant, Jeff Gomez, PDG de la société de conseil transmédia Starlight Runner Divertissement, affirme qu'il aurait pu être tellement plus lucratif tie-ins. Il soutient que la franchise redémarré a un potentiel énorme en dehors du multiplex.



«En ce moment films de la« Star Trek »sont des films", a déclaré Gomez. "Il n'existe aucune stratégie transmédia en cours apparent derrière eux, juste une poignée de possibilités de licence autour de la sortie de 'Into Darkness».



"Pourquoi cela serait-il intéressant pour un artiste qui voit au-delà des limites de l'écran d'argent pour envisager un véritable récit multi-plate-forme tout basé sur une franchise mondiale?"



Lire aussi: Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher Retour à «Star Wars»? George Lucas dit oui [9]



Les ambitions Abrams pour créer une franchise de films multi-plateforme à trouver une maison plus naturel chez Disney, les analystes et experts de l'industrie disent TheWrap. Autant de succès que "Star Trek" a été, quelques franchises correspondent à la rentabilité et culturel importance de George Lucas de space opera, ce qui serait difficile pour un administrateur de laisser passer.



"Disney a toujours été orientée vers des situations de flux recettes multi-plate-forme," Seth Willenson, un film bibliothèque valorisations expert, dit TheWrap.



En outre, Willenson note que Abrams, qui a un accord qui est censé inclure la participation créative et de profit dans "Star Wars" marchandises ont inspiré et spin-offs, auront plus de contrôle dans l'élaboration de l'héritage du clan Skywalker qu'il aurait eue avec développer des projets secondaires pour l'équipage "Star Trek". Contrairement à «Star Trek», avec ses droits répartis entre Paramount et CBS, Disney détient les droits de "Star Wars" pure et simple grâce à l'achat de 4 milliards de dollars de Lucasfilm l'an dernier.



"La situation des droits dérivés sur 'Star Trek' est compliqué parce que vous avez affaire à des cultures inter-entreprises, il est donc plus difficile à mettre en œuvre un grand plan", a déclaré Willenson.



En ce qui concerne le plan grandiose "Star Wars" de Disney, c'est sonnant beaucoup comme l'une Abrams fois envisagé pour "Star Trek". Il y aura des propriétés de télévision, visites de parcs thématiques et des films spin-off tous centrés autour de la nouvelle trilogie qui supervisera Abrams.



C'est une page emprunté à l'exploitation de Disney des bandes dessinées Marvel et si ça marche, il faut faire Abrams très riche en effet.

[1]

Why did I write my new book, “Picasso’s Ghost”?

Norman Mailer taught me that good writing is bold writing. Norman also said to write about what I know -- and I know the Picasso family. And I finally felt it was time someone defended Pablo Picasso from his reputation of being a tyrant and abusing his family.

My connection with the Picassos began one night in 1971 when Pablo’s illegitimate son Claude – with Francoise Gilot -- and I danced to Gloria Gaynor's “I Will Survive” in a Manhattan disco, at a party given by Diane Von Furstenberg.

We fell in love. A successful cover girl, I supported us because Claude made little money as a photojournalist and at times would wear not just my ex-husband’s clothing, but my own. (His favorite piece of clothing of mine was the Romanian blouse I wore on my cover of Newsweek.)

There was no hope that he would inherit Picasso's fortune since Pablo was superstitious and would not leave a will, and French law refused to recognize an illegitimate wife or children.

So Francoise sued, and in 1974, she won a massive lawsuit against Picasso's estate, on behalf of the children. She became a billionaire on paper, but due to legal red tape Claude could not immediately access his money, so we continued to live on my savings.

In 1975, he jilted me. But more on that later.

Francoise always claimed she left Picasso because he was being unfaithful to her; yet after her affair with Picasso had ended, she married Dr. Jonas Salk – demanding that he sign a contract allowing her to be unfaithful. She had a small apartment in Paris that she frequented several months a year -- sans Salk.

Her hypocrisy in claiming to have left Picasso for his womanizing but then insisting on a life of infidelity while married to Salk infuriated Claude and Paloma, his sister via Francoise. In fact, the last person to receive a formal wedding invitation to Paloma's enormous wedding was her own mother.

Because Picasso married Jacqueline Roque instead of their mother, Claude and Paloma were raised to hold Jacqueline, a potter’s daughter, in contempt. Claude told me one night he punched his stepmother in the face in jest and practically knocked her out while watching a boxing match on television with her and his father. He claimed Picasso laughed about this.

In “Picasso’s Ghost”, I write about Claude recalling this evening with a macabre sense of glee. Not long after the incident, Claude, Paloma and Francoise were banned from all of Picasso’s homes: the villas, residences and chateaux.

The world has had sympathy for Claude because of Picasso's exiling his own son from his life, but Claude's violence towards his stepmother has remained undisclosed.

Claude would try to see his father but was repeatedly told by the guards that his father was not in. One night, when Claude scaled the gates of Notre Dames Des Villes, Picasso's villa in the south of France, Picasso had his own son arrested for trespassing.

There are other reasons Picasso exiled Paloma, Francoise and Claude, but the bottom line is he was old. He needed his energy to paint. People stood in the way of his creativity, and that included his own family, including not just Claude and Paloma but Francoise. All of these people belittled Jacqueline Roque, who had become his designated caregiver. I heard these unkind words.

Because of the bad blood between Jacqueline and Francoise, when Picasso died, his children were unwelcome at the Chateau des Vauvenargues to view his body. So it was that, a few nights after Picasso’s death in 1973, while Claude and I were in the chateau’s moonlit graveyard, looking for his father’s coffin, Claude asked me to marry him.

In 1977, four years later, Jacqueline shot herself in the head in her villa in Mougins.

My engagement to Claude lasted less than three years. While Francoise's lawsuit against Picasso’s estate was being settled, she bought me a wedding dress. A year later, when he refused to answer the question, “When are we getting married?" I left him.

So today Francoise, Claude and Paloma have all of Pablo’s wealth and art while Claude has become the court-appointed administrator of the estate. As such, he sold the Picasso name and signature to PSA Peugeot-Citroen for use by the French automaker, according to the New York Times. A family compact,

The Citroen Xsara Picasso, was put on the European market, featuring ugliest design in the world. It was so bad that Marina Picasso, the artist's granddaughter and Claude's niece, challenged the deal in court.

''I cannot tolerate that the name of my grandfather be used to sell something as banal as a car,'' she told a French newspaper. ''He was a genius who is now being exploited outrageously. His name, his very soul, should not be used for any ends other than his art.''

Meanwhile, Paloma’s jewelry is sold at Tiffany under the name Picasso – though not as such in France because the French feel both she and Tiffany are exploiting Picasso’s name.

Did Picasso, in refusing to leave a will, know what was to come: that Claude would sell his father’s name while Paloma would exploit it. Did either of them ever respect Pablo, or did they just value him for his possessions?

I wonder if Pablo Picasso is crying in his grave.

With Bryan Forbes passing, I was reminded of what a good director he was.

He taught me the importance of listening. Oh, I had taken acting classes with Wyn Handman, who directed the American Place Theatre with classmates the likes of Richard Gere and Brad Davis, and filmed many commercials as a spokesperson, but "Stepford Wives" was my first major motion picture. It was the 1975 Ira Levin thriller in which women are turned into docile electronic incarnations of themselves.

The scene I recall his talented direction was the following: All we wives were seated in a group therapy session when the topic turned to how our husbands were forcing us to do intense housework and we were rebelling. But instead of objecting to the masculine brow beating, eager to please any male when the topic was cleaning, I said, “It took me so long to get my upstairs floor to shine, I didn’t have any time to bake.”

Also read: Notable Celebrity Deaths of 2013 [4]

"Have you ever tried Easy Off?" my girlfriend asked.

"Is it really that good?" I replied. Bryan wanted me to think about a life and death situation and the gravity this would imply. 

"Listen to Toni, Carole. You’re not listening to her," Bryan yelled.

And he was right. The music became chime-like and eerie and the audience was given a clue that I was dead. That all the wives were dead. We were servants to our husbands. Slaves. Zombies in house dresses. Not wives. Loving wives.

This was a pivotal scene and Bryan made it work because he watched our performances like a myopic hawk and was forceful in his direction. We all listened to him, especially when he yelled, which wasn’t often.

"Stepford Wives" drew mixed reviews and endures as a cult film and a quasi-feminist document. It helped make the phrase Stepford wife, describing any woman who seems vapid and compliant, an enduring part of the lexicon.

In 2004 Bryan Forbes was named a Commander of the British Empire. But for all his accomplishments, Bryan remained remembered almost exclusively for “The Stepford Wives,” and sometimes found himself having to defend the film against misinterpretation. 

In an interview in 2004, he recounted having been accosted by an umbrella-wielding woman at a press screening. “I remember saying to this particular savagely disturbed woman, 'You’ve missed the whole point,'" he recalled. "A, it’s a fantasy; B, if anybody looks stupid, it’s the men.  It’s not an attack on women. It’s an attack on women being exploited by men."

An Army sergeant was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without parole for the 2009 killings of five fellow service members at a combat stress clinic in Iraq.

A military judge, Army Col. David Conn, found Sgt. John Russell guilty of premeditated murder on Monday and imposed the sentence Thursday morning. The only other possible penalty for Russell would have been life in prison with the possibility of release.

Russell will be transferred within the next several days to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, Army spokesman Lt. Col. Gary Dangerfield said late Thursday.

The 14-year veteran from Sherman, Texas, had previously pleaded guilty to unpremeditated murder in exchange for prosecutors taking the death penalty off the table. Under the agreement, prosecutors were allowed to try to prove to an Army judge at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state that the killings were premeditated. A streamlined court-martial ended Saturday.

The shooting was one of the worst instances of soldier-on-soldier violence in the Iraq war and raised questions about the mental stresses of serving repeated tours of duty.

Killed in the 2009 shooting in Baghdad were Navy Cmdr. Charles Springle, of Wilmington, N.C., and four Army personnel: Pfc. Michael Edward Yates Jr., of Federalsburg, Md.; Dr. Matthew Houseal, of Amarillo, Texas; Sgt. Christian E. Bueno-Galdos, of Paterson, N.J.; and Spc. Jacob D. Barton, of Lenox, Mo.

Russell's lawyers argued that he was deluded by depression and despair at the time. An Army mental health board found that Russell suffered from severe depression with psychotic features and post-combat stress.

Russell had long sought help with sleep troubles and was stammering and crying for help in the days before the shooting. His commanders were so alarmed that they disarmed him and sent him for repeated visits to mental health clinics, said attorney James Culp.

However, prosecutors argued that Russell was trying to paint himself as mentally ill in an attempt to win early retirement — just as he was facing a sexual harassment complaint that could derail his career and his benefits.

The day before the killings, psychiatrist Michael Jones told him that a mental disability retirement would require "some kind of suicidal psychotic crisis," Maj. Daniel Mazzone said during closing arguments, according to the Los Angeles Times.

But when Russell saw Jones again the next day, the psychiatrist said he had no intention of giving him "a golden ticket" out of the Army.

When Russell returned about an hour later, prosecutors say, he was looking for Jones, but wound up killing two patients, a bystander and two other mental health workers, including Navy Cmdr. Springle, who had also briefly treated Russell in the days before the shootings. Jones escaped injury by jumping out a window.

The Associated Press