Ron Howard's "Dilemma" by Patrick Goldstein (Journal Entry, for 10/8)

I stumbled on an article/blogpost this week in the LA Times by Patrick Goldstein, about Ron Howard. I decided to read it for a couple of reasons though. One, because I am a pretty big Ron Howard fan, and two, because the lede was actually quite good and had me hooked. It wasn't a conventional lede though, or at least by the standards we've been learning by. It was a little more anecdotal, story-like if you will, and less newsy. I didn't mind it at all though, because I personally prefer anecdotal ledes, and can relate to them better since I base  I took note of this right away, and also took fact that it still explained what the article would pertain to: Ron Howard's decision to release a film in January. Right away this got me thinking, based on what I've known about him, (and some good information that was included in the first paragraph) why he would possibly release a film in January, and I was actually momentarily concerned. Was the star filmmaker going down an unwise path to inevitable failure with this movie? Would it ultimately be, a "dump" as January is known to be "dump month" in the film industry...?

As I continued to read, I found that this was not the case. The intro was set up in such a way though that it got me thinking exactly what this writer probably anticipated his audience to start thinking. Before I go on with the rest of the article, I think it was a very wise tactic to go ahead and drop Ron Howard's name in the title, because it attracts a specific type of audience right away, and therefore, makes the article easier to follow because people reading may already feel the same way the writer felt. (I hope that makes sense...) It also saves the writer some time explaining in-depth as to why it would be such a shock for Ron Howard to make such a bold move, (though in all fairness, he definitely still went ahead and gave some background.)

The article continues on to talk about how times are ever-changing, and January may be graduating from "dump-month" to a perfectly able month for the box-office and films, if the film is positioned and advertised correctly.

This post was in fact a blogpost, which had a lot of affect on me, because I enjoyed how well it was set up and organized. I've been looking into blogs lately for inspiration, (that isn't to say that I don't read news articles online anymore, but if you recall something I wrote about a couple weeks ago, I'm always looking out for the difference between online reporting, and blogging. I also look for stylistic things that may help me with my own blog.)

There was definitely a point where this post could have gone south with an overload of information, getting far too involved with Howard's past with movies, or something along the lines of that, but in fact, just enough was said. There was actually a good amount of background information on the idea of January being "dump-month" which I think was really important, in order to understand that there is faith in Universal Pictures and Howard, to actually find success in releasing this movie during a seemingly risky time of the year. The writer name-dropped a couple of other successful January released films, such as 'Cloverfield' and 'The Book of Eli', which gives me as the reader some faith in Howard.

Going back to the stylistics of this blog quickly, I really enjoyed the fact that all of the writer's thoughts flowed very nicely, and were swiftly followed by proper evidence. I think in a lot of blogs, there tends to be a lot of opinion, and it was interesting to see such a combination of opinion backed up by factual evidence. The reality is, that Goldstein's opinion happened to be the same as many in the film industry, which takes an extra amount of knowledge about what one is writing about. Also, I really enjoyed the fact that Goldstein opened the post, dropping "The Social Network" because without realizing, it got me thinking of a couple different things. For one, "The Social Network" has seen a lot of success in the box office, and it's kind of strange to see such a successful movie being dropped in the beginning of a story that sends off a sort of doomed feeling about a successful filmmaker... Perhaps it's a way of being positive about the whole subject, to say that Howard may follow in the footsteps of this successful movie? But there's not a real connection for me, except for the fact that Howard's movie trailer was shown in the previews for "The Social Network."

The only thing that I would probably question, is why it may be okay to start off with such an anecdotal lede, when the story in fact lends itself to an entirely different direction in the end...Goldstein ends the post, discussing the fact that perhaps January has graduated from being dump month, and that there needs to be a new dump month. In my own blog writing, and article writing, I've noticed criticism for writing a lede one way, and then having the story actually be slightly off in another direction. Does that mean that this is acceptable in different scenarios? I'm actually genuinely curious to know the answer, because it's an interesting tactic that I'd like to master myself if I can understand fully. From what I can tell, the story is not genuinely in an entirely different direction, more that the writer followed the sequence of information he found, and the sequence of events, to end the story at a different place from where he started.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2010/10/say-it-aint-so-why-is-ron-howards-new-film-coming-out-in-january.html