The Horrifying, Nerve-Wracking, Wonderful Anxiety of Creating Saturday Night Live

For over forty-five years Saturday Night Live has been an American cultural constant, a weekly parody of politics, entertainment, and society that continues to produce live shows on a hectic, weekly schedule. As Tina Fey described it, it’s schedule is “designed around cocaine;” but even since the drug’s departure the fast-paced, last-minute production style has remained. To create one of the longest-running and most beloved television programs possible, actors, writers, and crew members work around the clock, overnight, and up until the last possible second to make the sketch comedy fever dream a reality.

To Go Or Not To Go: The State of Movie Theaters Post-Pandemic

The COVID–19 pandemic and the rapid rise in streaming service content combined perfectly to decimate the movie theater industry during 2020 and large parts of 2021. According to Gallup, movie theater attendance during the harshest parts of the pandemic was understandably at historic lows, which “includes a historically high 61% who did not visit a […]

Come All Ye Hopeful – The Frustratingly Open World Of Self-Publishing

A frightening trend has emerged in the creative market, where anyone can succeed, but in reality that makes it just as hard to actually succeed, if not harder. As an aspiring writer, I wanted to look at the current state of self-publishing, and how this supposedly-open avenue may be an even more difficult path for writers than traditional ones.

Dungeons & Dragons & Podcasts

The game Dungeons & Dragons, commonly known as D&D, has been synonymous with nerd culture ever since its inception in the late 1970s. A tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG), D&D was seen as odd and uncool for decades, with its vast amount of rules, dice, pen and paper gameplay, and the sheer strangeness of five friends […]

Remembering Hollywood’s Blacklist: The Guilds’ Darkest Hour

SAG-AFTRA, the main labor union for film, television, and radio actors, emerged from the union of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and the much more celebrated Screen Actor’s Guild. According to their website, SAG-AFTRA’s purpose is to “provide competitive wages and safe, excellent working conditions for our members.” While the success of […]

Money for Nothing: The Highs and Lows of Crowdfunded Video Games

Over five billion dollars have been pledged on the crowdfunding site known as Kickstarter, where consumers can choose to directly finance projects and products that they are interested in. While you can start a crowdfunding campaign for basically anything – an Ohio man famously raised $55,000 for a bowl of potato salad – more money […]