Podcast appearances and mentions of michael posner

While protecting human rights and recognising the importance of marginalised cohorts of societies were features of how society operated in the 2000s, the return of President Trump has ushered in an era where the importance of human rights have taken a back seat. Michael Posner, Lawyer and former United States Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor & author of 'Conscience Incorporated: Pursue Profits While Protecting Human Rights', joins Mandy to discuss.

Today, we tackle some big-picture questions about the role of business in society when it comes to protecting human rights and democracy. And of course, this is very topical. I am honour to welcome Michael Posner to the show. Michael is the director of the Centre for Business and Human Rights at New York University's Stern School of Business. He is a human rights lawyer, and he was Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labour under the Obama administration. He is the author of a new book, Conscience Incorporated: Pursue Profits While Protecting Human Rights, which, given the state of things in the world and the United States, is pretty timely and important. Michael covers a ton of ground here, from the primacy of shareholder capitalism, how to make decisions in a world comprised of competing expectations and trade-offs, the tensions associated with decisions around human rights and environmental concerns, when CEOs should speak up, and his thoughts on the Trump administration and what's happening with regard to the United States' role in the world and to democracy and human rights. Show notes: Michael Posner - https://bhr.stern.nyu.edu/author/michaelposner/ Conscience Incorporated: Pursue Profits While Protecting Human Rights - https://bhr.stern.nyu.edu/publication/conscience-incorporated/ Centre for Business and Human Rights at New York University's Stern School of Business - https://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/about/departments-centers-initiatives/centers-of-research/business-and-human-rights/center-business-and-human-rights Fair Labour Association - https://www.fairlabor.org/ Xinjiang, forced labour, and solar panels - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-57124636 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Learn more about The Decision-Making Studio: https://thedecisionmaking.studio/ All our podcast episodes are here: https://thedecisionmaking.studio/podcast  Our latest newsletter: https://us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=f19fc74942b40b513cf66af32&id=cbd8d34efe Get in touch: https://thedecisionmaking.studio/contact-us

In this episode of Capital for Good we speak with Michael Posner, the Jerome Kohlberg Professor of Ethics and Finance at NYU's Stern School of Business, director of the school's Center for Business and Human Rights, a long-time leader in the field, luminary thinker, advocate, former State Department Official, and the author of the new book, Conscience Incorporated. We begin with Posner's early interests in international human rights issues, sparked in law school when he was tasked with investigating atrocities in Uganda under Idi Amin. He lays out the principals of early, post-World War II and UN inspired human rights law focused on universality, and the responsibility of governments to promote, protect and enforce human rights. Notably absent from this early framework is the role of business. Posner explains that his interest in the intersection of human rights took shape when he began to observe that large multinational corporations had a critical role to play, particularly when they operated in weak states that lacked the ability to protect human rights. We discuss why companies should care, fundamentally, about human rights on ethical dimensions (“outsourcing might be a smart business strategy, but you can't outsource responsibility if you're the main economic beneficiary,”) and because there are material costs that can arise from irresponsible practices, often reputational crises and/or regulation. We explore the deficiencies of various business frameworks: how and why Milton Friedman's shareholder primacy worldview fails to account for environmental and social externalities and a broader set of stakeholders; how and why ESG conflate environmental and social considerations and emphasize risk rather than meaningful performance on issues like climate change or worker protections. Posner suggests that this moment of backlash against all things ESG, DEI and “woke capitalism” offers us an opportunity to do better. We touch on sometimes complex tensions between climate change and human rights concerns, acknowledging that climate change can only be solved if we transition to a lower carbon economy, with the scale up of renewable energy and the development of technologies like electric vehicles, which in turn rely on things like batteries. We know that today batteries are reliant on inputs like critical minerals, long mined in ways and places rife with human rights challenges, and today often controlled by Chinese companies. China is also the world's largest and lowest cost producer of solar panels, and much of that production occurs in Xinjiang, with forced labor of the Uyghur ethnic minority. Posner discusses a number of ways to better integrate climate and human rights considerations. Before opening the floor to audience questions, we discuss the evolution of technology and human rights issues. When Posner was at the State Department from 2010 to 2012, he had a front tow seat to the Arab Spring and the “Facebook Revolution,” witnessing how activists used social media to fight authoritarianism. Although he says he still believes in the power of technology to open up political discourse, he has become much more concerned about issues of data privacy, surveillance, harmful violent and incendiary content, information and disinformation, and ways in which companies try to shield themselves with first amendment (to which they are not legally subject) to avoid more vigorous content moderation or human rights engagement. We conclude with the role of corporate leaders when it comes to human rights. While Posner notes he is typically conservative about how much executives should speak out on specific issues, he believes strongly that “business leaders need to be attentive and active if there are fundamental threats to our democracy.” This episode of Capital for Good was recorded as part of Social Impact Week 2025, a week of social impact-related events for the Columbia Business School community, organized by the Social Enterprise Club, Green Business Club, Community Impact Club, and LEO Impact Fund. Thanks for Listening! Subscribe to Capital for Good on Apple, Amazon, Google, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Drop us a line at socialenterprise@gsb.columbia.edu.  Mentioned in this Episode Conscience Incorporated: Pursue Profits While Protecting Human Rights The Fair Labor Association

2025 will be a pivotal year for technology regulation in the United States and around the world. The European Union has begun regulating social media platforms with its Digital Services Act. In the United States, regulatory proposals at the federal level will likely include renewed efforts to repeal or reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Meanwhile, States such as Florida and Texas have tried to restrict content moderation by major platforms, but have been met with challenges to the laws' constitutionality.  On March 19, NYU Law hosted a Forum on whether it is lawful, feasible, and desirable for government actors to regulate social media platforms to reduce harmful effects on U.S. democracy and society with expert guests Daphne Keller, Director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford Law School's Cyber Policy Center, and Michael Posner, Director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at NYU Stern School of Business. Tess Bridgeman and Ryan Goodman, co-editors-in-chief of Just Security, moderated the event, which was co-hosted by Just Security, the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights and Tech Policy Press. Show Notes: Tess Bridgeman Ryan GoodmanDaphne Keller Michael PosnerJust Security's coverage on Social Media PlatformsJust Security's coverage on Section 230Music: “Broken” by David Bullard from Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io/t/david-bullard/broken (License code: OSC7K3LCPSGXISVI)

Capital for Good is the podcast where we hear from business and civic leaders about their visions, plans, and hard work to build a vibrant, inclusive, and sustainable society.  Through in-depth and candid conversations, we explore solutions to some of our most urgent challenges. In this season of Capital for Good, host Georgia Levenson Keohane will speak with an extraordinary line-up of guests, including business and government leader Janno Lieber, the CEO of New York's MTA, one of the country's largest and oldest public transportation systems; journalist, digital media CEO, and Nobel Prize winner Maria Ressa; investor, climate champion, and former Presidential candidate Tom Steyer; Maria Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of Voto Latino; Kevin Ryan, one of New York and the country's leading internet entrepreneurs and investors; Anna-Lisa Miller, the founding executive director of Ownership Works; New York City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander; Greg Shell, managing partner and head of inclusive growth strategies at Goldman Sachs; and Michael Posner, the director of NYU's Center for Business and Human Rights and author of the new book, Conscience Incorporated.

Can we reclaim a common truth in the age of social media? In this America at a Crossroads conversation, human rights expert Michael Posner joins journalist Madeleine Brand to discuss how social media shapes democracy, the spread of misinformation, and what can be done to restore trust in facts.

On today's podcast, Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett talks with Michael Posner, a professor of business and human rights at New York University, about the landmark verdict last month in Al-Shimari v. CACI. The case involved claims against a government contractor for its role in the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib detention facility in Iraq in 2004. It became the first case of its kind to make it to trial—and now a jury has returned a verdict finding the company liable and imposing $42 million in damages. They discuss how the case will affect private companies, government contractors, and the future of human rights litigation. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Please note that this episode contains content that some people may find disturbing. Listener discretion is advised. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Law, disrupted, John is joined by a professor of Ethics and Finance at NYU's Stern School of Business and a director of the Center for Business and Human Rights, Michael Posner. He is also joined by Julianne Hughes-Jennett, Head of Quinn Emanuel's ESG practice and experienced litigator of business and human rights issues. Together, they discuss what we really understand the term “human rights” to mean for business and the current challenges regarding human rights implementation across the business world.Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fmHost: John B. Quinn Producer: Alexis HydeMusic and Editing by: Alexander Rossi

On June 10, the jury reached a verdict in the federal trial against Chiquita Banana. It found that the company had financed a paramilitary group in Colombia in the late 1990s and early 2000s, resulting in the deaths of eight men, and it awarded the victims' families $38 million in damages. It's the culmination of a 17-year-long multi-district litigation that had faced significant procedural, evidentiary, and legal challenges. And it may represent a new frontier in the fight to hold corporations legally accountable for human rights violations.Executive Editor Natalie Orpett discussed the case and its implications with Michael Posner, Director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University's Stern School of Business and a former Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/c/trumptrials.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we continue out look back at the films released by Miramax in the 1980s, focusing on 1987. ----more---- TRANSCRIPT   From Los Angeles, California. The Entertainment Capital of the World. It's the 80s Movie Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   On this episode, we are continuing our miniseries on the movies released by Miramax Films in the 1980s, concentrating on their releases from 1987, the year Miramax would begin its climb towards the top of the independent distribution mountain.   The first film Miramax would release in 1987 was Lizzie Borden's Working Girls.   And yes, Lizzie Borden is her birth name. Sort of. Her name was originally Linda Elizabeth Borden, and at the age of eleven, when she learned about the infamous accused double murderer, she told her parents she wanted to only be addressed as Lizzie. At the age of 18, after graduating high school and heading off to the private women's liberal arts college Wellesley, she would legally change her name to Lizzie Borden.   After graduating with a fine arts degree, Borden would move to New York City, where she held a variety of jobs, including being both a painter and an art critic for the influential Artforum magazine, until she attended a retrospective of Jean-Luc Godard movies, when she was inspired to become a filmmaker herself.   Her first film, shot in 1974, was a documentary, Regrouping, about four female artists who were part of a collective that incorporated avant-garde techniques borrowed from performance art, as the collective slowly breaks apart. One of the four artists was a twenty-three year old painter who would later make film history herself as the first female director to win the Academy Award for Best Director, Kathryn Bigelow.    But Regrouping didn't get much attention when it was released in 1976, and it would take Borden five years to make her first dramatic narrative, Born in Flames, another movie which would also feature Ms. Bigelow in a supporting role. Borden would not only write, produce and direct this film about two different groups of feminists who operate pirate radio stations in New York City which ends with the bombing of the broadcast antenna atop the World Trade Center, she would also edit the film and act as one of the cinematographers. The film would become one of the first instances of Afrofuturism in film, and would become a cultural touchstone in 2016 when a restored print of the film screened around the world to great critical acclaim, and would tie for 243rd place in the 2022 Sight and Sound poll of The Greatest Films Ever Made. Other films that tied with include Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels, Woody Allen's Annie Hall, David Cronenberg's Videodrome, and Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. A   Yes, it's that good, and it would cost only $30k to produce.   But while Born in Flames wasn't recognized as revolutionary in 1983, it would help her raise $300k for her next movie, about the lives of sex workers in New York City. The idea would come to her while working on Born in Flames, as she became intrigued about prostitution after meeting some well-educated women on the film who worked a few shifts a week at a brothel to earn extra money or to pay for their education. Like many, her perception of prostitution were women who worked the streets, when in truth streetwalkers only accounted for about 15% of the business. During the writing of the script, she began visiting brothels in New York City and learned about the rituals involved in the business of selling sex, especially intrigued how many of the sex workers looked out for each other mentally, physically and hygienically.   Along with Sandra Kay, who would play one of the ladies of the night in the film, Borden worked up a script that didn't glamorize or grossly exaggerate the sex industry, avoiding such storytelling tropes as the hooker with a heart of gold or girls forced into prostitution due to extraordinary circumstances. Most of the ladies playing prostitutes were played by unknown actresses working off-Broadway, while the johns were non-actors recruited through word of mouth between Borden's friends and the occasional ad in one of the city's sex magazines.   Production on Working Girls would begin in March 1985, with many of the sets being built in Borden's loft in Manhattan, with moveable walls to accommodate whatever needed to be shot on any given day. While $300k would be ten times what she had on Born in Flames, Borden would stretch her budget to the max by still shooting in 16mm, in the hopes that the footage would look good enough should the finished film be purchased by a distributor and blown up to 35mm for theatrical exhibition.   After a month of shooting, which involved copious amounts of both male and female nudity, Borden would spend six months editing her film. By early 1986, she had a 91 minute cut ready to go, and she and her producer would submit the film to play at that year's Cannes Film Festival. While the film would not be selected to compete for the coveted Palme D'Or, it would be selected for the Directors' Fortnight, a parallel program that would also include Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It, Alex Cox's Sid and Nancy, Denys Arcand's The Decline of the American Empire, and Chantel Akerman's Golden Eighties.   The film would get into some trouble when it was invited to screen at the Toronto Film Festival a few months later. The movie would have to be approved by the Ontario Film and Video Review Board before being allowed to show at the festival. However, the board would not approve the film without two cuts, including one scene which depicted the quote unquote graphic manipulation of a man's genitalia by a woman. The festival, which had a long standing policy of not showing any movie that had been cut for censorship, would appeal the decision on behalf of the filmmakers. The Review Board denied the appeal, and the festival left the decision of whether to cut the two offending scenes to Borden. Of all the things I've researched about the film, one of the few things I could not find was whether or not Borden made the trims, but the film would play at the festival as scheduled.   After Toronto, Borden would field some offers from some of the smaller art house distributors, but none of the bigger independents or studio-affiliated “classics” divisions. For many, it was too sexual to be a straight art house film, while it wasn't graphic enough to be porn. The one person who did seem to best understand what Borden was going for was, no surprise in hindsight, Harvey Weinstein. Miramax would pick the film up for distribution in late 1986, and planned a February 1987 release.   What might be surprising to most who know about Harvey Weinstein, who would pick up the derisive nickname Harvey Scissorhands in a few years for his constant meddling in already completed films, actually suggested Borden add back in a few minutes of footage to balance out the sex with some lighter non-sex scenes. She would, along with making some last minute dialogue changes, before the film opened on February 5th, not in New York City or Los Angeles, the traditional launching pads for art house films, but at the Opera Plaza Cinema in San Francisco, where the film would do a decent $8k in its first three days.   Three weeks after opening at the Opera Plaza, Miramax would open the film at the 57th Street Playhouse in midtown Manhattan. Buoyed by some amazing reviews from the likes of Siskel and Ebert, Vincent Canby of the New York Times, and J. Hoberman of The Village Voice, Working Girls would gross an astounding $42k during its opening weekend. Two weeks later, it would open at the Samuel Goldwyn Westside Pavilion Cinemas, where it would bring in $17k its first weekend. It would continue to perform well in its major market exclusive runs. An ad in the April 8th, 1987 issue of Variety shows a new house record of $13,492 in its first week at the Ellis Cinema in Atlanta. $140k after five weeks in New York. $40k after three weeks at the Nickelodeon in Boston. $30k after three weeks at the Fine Arts in Chicago. $10k in its first week at the Guild in San Diego. $11k in just three days at the TLA in Philly.   Now, there's different numbers floating around about how much Working Girls made during its total theatrical run. Box Office Mojo says $1.77m, which is really good for a low budget independent film with no stars and featuring a subject still taboo to many in American today, let alone 37 years ago, but a late June 1987 issue of Billboard Magazine about some of the early film successes of the year, puts the gross for Working Girls at $3m.   If you want to check out Working Girls, the Criterion Collection put out an exceptional DVD and Blu-ray release in 2021, which includes a brand new 4K transfer of the film, and a commentary track featuring Borden, cinematographer Judy Irola, and actress Amanda Goodwin, amongst many bonus features. Highly recommended.   I've already spoken some about their next film, Ghost Fever, on our episode last year about the fake movie director Alan Smithee and all of his bad movies. For those who haven't listened to that episode yet and are unaware of who Alan Smithee wasn't, Alan Smithee was a pseudonym created by the Directors Guild in the late 1960s who could be assigned the directing credit of a movie whose real director felt the final cut of the film did not represent his or her vision. By the time Ghost Fever came around in 1987, it would be the 12th movie to be credited to Alan Smithee.   If you have listened to the Alan Smithee episode, you can go ahead and skip forward a couple minutes, but be forewarned, I am going to be offering up a different elaboration on the film than I did on that episode.   And away we go…   Those of us born in the 1960s and before remember a show called All in the Family, and we remember Archie Bunker's neighbors, George and Louise Jefferson, who were eventually spun off onto their own hit show, The Jeffersons. Sherman Hemsley played George Jefferson on All in the Family and The Jeffersons for 12 years, but despite the show being a hit for a number of years, placing as high as #3 during the 1981-1982 television season, roles for Hemsley and his co-star Isabel Sanford outside the show were few and far between. During the eleven seasons The Jeffersons ran on television, from 1975 to 1985, Sherman Hemsley would only make one movie, 1979's Love at First Bite, where he played a small role as a reverend. He appeared on the poster, but his name was not listed amongst the other actors on the poster.   So when the producers of the then-titled Benny and Beaufor approached Hemsley in the spring of 1984 to play one of the title roles, he was more than happy to accept. The Jeffersons was about to start its summer hiatus, and here was the chance to not only make a movie but to be the number one listed actor on the call sheet. He might not ever get that chance again.   The film, by now titled Benny and Buford Meet the Bigoted Ghost, would shoot in Mexico City at Estudios America in the summer of 1984, before Hemsley was due back in Los Angeles to shoot the eleventh and what would be the final season of his show. But it would not be a normal shoot. In fact, there would be two different versions of the movie shot back to back. One, in English, would be directed by Lee Madden, which would hinge its comedy on the bumbling antics of its Black police officer, Buford, and his Hispanic partner, Benny. The other version would be shot in Spanish by Mexican director Miguel Rico, where the comedy would satirize class and social differences rather than racial differences. Hemsley would speak his lines in English, and would be dubbed by a Spanish-speaking actor in post production. Luis Ávalos, best known as Doctor Doolots on the PBS children's show The Electric Company, would play Benny. The only other name in the cast was boxing legend Smokin' Joe Frazier, who was making his proper acting debut on the film as, not too surprisingly, a boxer.   The film would have a four week shooting schedule, and Hemsley was back to work on The Jeffersons on time. Madden would get the film edited together rather quick, and the producers would have a screening for potential distributors in early October.   The screening did not go well.   Madden would be fired from the production, the script rewritten, and a new director named Herbert Strock would be hired to shoot more footage once Hemsley was done with his commitments to The Jeffersons in the spring of 1985. This is when Madden contacted the Directors Guild to request the Smithee pseudonym. But since the film was still in production, the DGA could not issue a judgment until the producers provided the Guild with a completed copy of the film.   That would happen in the late fall of 1985, and Madden was able to successfully show that he had directly a majority of the completed film but it did not represent his vision.   The film was not good, but Miramax still needed product to fill their distribution pipeline. They announced in mid-March of 1987 that they had acquired the film for distribution, and that the film would be opening in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Nashville, St. Louis, and Tampa-St. Petersburg FL the following week.    Miramax did not release how many theatres the film was playing in in those markets, and the only market Variety did track of those that week was St. Louis, where the film did $7k from the four theatres they were tracking that week. Best as I can tell from limited newspaper archives of the day, Ghost Fever played on nine screens in Atlanta, 4 in Dallas/Fort Worth, 25 screens in Miami, and 12 in Tampa-St. Pete on top of the four I can find in St. Louis. By the following week, every theatre that was playing Ghost Fever had dropped it.   The film would not open in any other markets until it opened on 16 screens in the greater Los Angeles metro region on September 11th. No theatres in Hollywood. No theatres in Westwood. No theatres in Beverly Hills or Santa Monica or any major theatre around, outside of the Palace Theatre downtown, a once stately theatre that had fallen into disrepair over the previous three decades. Once again, Miramax didn't release grosses for the run, none of the theatres playing the film were tracked by Variety that week, and all the playdates were gone after one week.   Today, you can find two slightly different copies of the film on a very popular video sharing website, one the theatrical cut, the other the home video cut. The home video cut is preceded by a quick history of the film, including a tidbit that Hemsley bankrolled $3m of the production himself, and that the film's failure almost made him bankrupt. I could not find any source to verify this, but there is possibly specious evidence to back up this claim. The producers of the film were able to make back the budget selling the film to home video company and cable movie channels around the world, and Hemsley would sue them in December 1987 for $3m claiming he was owed this amount from the profits and interest. It would take nine years to work its way through the court system, but a jury in March 1996 would award Hemsley $2.8m. The producers appealed, and an appellate court would uphold the verdict in April 1998.   One of the biggest indie film success stories of 1987 was Patricia Rozema's I've Heard the Mermaids Singing.   In the early 1980s, Rozema was working as an assistant producer on a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation current affairs television show called The Journal. Although she enjoyed her work, she, like many of us, wanted to be a filmmaker. While working on The Journal, she started to write screenplays while taking a classes at a Toronto Polytechnic Institute on 16mm film production.   Now, one of the nicer things about the Canadian film industry is that there are a number of government-funded arts councils that help young independent Canadian filmmakers get their low budget films financed. But Rozema was having trouble getting her earliest ideas funded. Finally, in 1984, she was able to secure funding for Passion, a short film she had written about a documentary filmmaker who writes an extremely intimate letter to an unknown lover. Linda Griffiths, the star of John Sayles' 1983 film Lianna, plays the filmmaker, and Passion would go on to be nominated for Gold Hugo for Best Short Film at the 1985 Chicago Film Festival.   However, a negative review of the short film in The Globe and Mail, often called Canada's Newspaper of Record, would anger Rozema, and she would use that anger to write a new script, Polly, which would be a polemic against the Toronto elitist high art milieu and its merciless negative judgements towards newer artists. Polly, the lead character and narrator of the film, lives alone, has no friends, rides her bike around Toronto to take photographs of whatever strikes her fancy, and regularly indulges herself in whimsical fantasies. An employee for a temporary secretarial agency, Polly gets placed in a private art gallery. The gallery owner is having an off-again, on-again relationship with one her clients, a painter who has misgivings she is too young for the gallery owner and the owner too old for her.    Inspired by the young painter, Polly anonymously submits some of her photographs to the gallery, in the hopes of getting featured, but becomes depressed when the gallery owner, who does not know who took the photos, dismisses them in front of Polly, calling them “simple minded.” Polly quits the gallery and retreats to her apartment. When the painter sees the photographs, she presents herself as the photographer of them, and the pair start to pass them off as the younger artist's work, even after the gallery owner learns they are not of the painter's work. When Polly finds out about the fraud, she confronts the gallery owner, eventually throwing a cup of tea at the owner.   Soon thereafter, the gallery owner and the painter go to check up on Polly at her flat, where they discover more photos undeniable beauty, and the story ends with the three women in one of Polly's fantasies.   Rozema would work on the screenplay for Polly while she was working as a third assistant director on David Cronenberg's The Fly. During the writing process, which took about a year, Rozema would change the title from Polly to Polly's Progress to Polly's Interior Mind. When she would submit the script in June 1986 to the various Canadian arts foundations for funding, it would sent out with yet another new title, Oh, The Things I've Seen.   The first agency to come aboard the film was the Ontario Film Development Corporation, and soon thereafter, the National Film Board of Canada, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council would also join the funding operation, but the one council they desperately needed to fund the gap was Telefilm Canada, the Canadian government's principal instrument for supporting Canada's audiovisual industry. Telefilm Canada, at the time, had a reputation for being philosophically averse to low-budget, auteur-driven films, a point driven home directly by the administrator of the group at the time, who reportedly stomped out of a meeting concerning the making of this very film, purportedly declaring that Telefilm should not be financing these kind of minimalist, student films. Telefilm would reverse course when Rozema and her producer, Alexandra Raffé, agreed to bring on Don Haig, called “The Godfather of Canadian Cinema,” as an executive producer.   Side note: several months after the film completed shooting, Haig would win an Academy Award for producing a documentary about musician Artie Shaw.   Once they had their $350k budget, Rozema and Raffé got to work on pre-production. Money was tight on such an ambitious first feature. They had only $500 to help their casting agent identify potential actors for the film, although most of the cast would come from Rozema's friendships with them. They would cast thirty-year-old Sheila McCarthy, a first time film actress with only one television credit to her name, as Polly.   Shooting would begin in Toronto on September 24th, 1986 and go for four weeks, shooting completely in 16mm because they could not afford to shoot on 35mm. Once filming was completed, the National Film Board of Canada allowed Rozema use of their editing studio for free. When Rozema struggled with editing the film, the Film Board offered to pay for the consulting services of Ron Sanders, who had edited five of David Cronenberg's movies, including Scanners, Videodrome and The Fly, which Rozema gladly accepted.   After New Years 1987, Rozema has a rough cut of the film ready to show the various funding agencies. That edit of the film was only 65 minutes long, but went over very well with the viewers. So much so that the President of Cinephile Films, the Canadian movie distributor who also helped to fund the film, suggested that Rozema not only add another 15mins or so to the film wherever she could, but submit the film to the be entered in the Directors' Fortnight program at the Cannes Film Festival. Rozema still needed to add that requested footage in, and finish the sound mix, but she agreed as long as she was able to complete the film by the time the Cannes programmers met in mid-March. She wouldn't quite make her self-imposed deadline, but the film would get selected for Cannes anyway. This time, she had an absolute deadline. The film had to be completed in time for Cannes.   Which would include needing to make a 35mm blow up of the 16mm print, and the production didn't have the money. Rozema and Raffé asked Telefilm Canada if they could have $40k for the print, but they were turned down.   Twice.   Someone suggested they speak with the foreign sales agent who acquired the rights to sell the film at Cannes. The sales agent not only agreed to the fund the cost from sales of the film to various territories that would be returned to the the various arts councils, but he would also create a press kit, translate the English-language script into French, make sure the print showing at Cannes would have French subtitles, and create the key art for the posters and other ads. Rozema would actually help to create the key art, a picture of Sheila McCarthy's head floating over a body of water, an image that approximately 80% of all buyers would use for their own posters and ads around the world.   By the time the film premiered in Cannes on May 10th, 1987, Rozema had changed the title once again, to I've Heard the Mermaids Singing. The title would be taken from a line in the T.S. Eliot poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which she felt best represented the film.   But whatever it was titled, the two thousand people inside the theatre were mesmerized, and gave the film a six minute standing ovation. The festival quickly added four more screenings of the film, all of which sold out.   While a number of territories around the world had purchased the film before the premiere, the filmmakers bet big on themselves by waiting until after the world premiere to entertain offers from American distributors. Following the premiere, a number of companies made offers for the film. Miramax would be the highest, at $100,000, but the filmmakers said “no.” They kept the bidding going, until they got Miramax up to $350k, the full budget for the film. By the time the festival was done, the sales agent had booked more than $1.1m worth of sales. The film had earned back more than triple its cost before it ever opened on a single commercial screen.   Oh, and it also won Rozema the Prix de la Jeunesse (Pree do la Jza-naise), the Prize of the Youth, from the Directors Fortnight judges.   Miramax would schedule I've Heard the Mermaids Singing to open at the 68th Street Playhouse in New York City on September 11th, after screening at the Toronto Film Festival, then called The Festival of Festivals, the night before, and at the Telluride Film Festival the previous week. Miramax was so keen on the potential success of the film that they would buy their first ever full page newspaper, in the Sunday, September 6th New York Times Arts and Leisure section, which cost them $25k.   The critical and audience reactions in Toronto and Telluride matched the enthusiasm on the Croisette, which would translate to big box office its opening weekend. $40k, the best single screen gross in all Manhattan. While it would lose that crown to My Life as a Dog the following week, its $32k second weekend gross was still one of the best in the city. After three weekends in New York City, the film would have already grossed $100k. That weekend, the film would open at the Samuel Goldwyn West Pavilion Cinemas, where a $9,500 opening weekend gross was considered nice. Good word of mouth kept the grosses respectable for months, and after eight months in theatres, never playing in more than 27 theatres in any given week, the film would gross $1.4m in American theatres.   Ironically, the film did not go over as well in Rozema's home country, where it grossed a little less than half a million Canadian dollars, and didn't even play in the director's hometown due to a lack of theatres that were willing to play a “queer” movie, but once all was said and done, I've Heard the Mermaids Singing would end up with a worldwide gross of more than CAD$10m, a nearly 2500% return on the initial investment. Not only would part of those profits go back to the arts councils that helped fund the film, those profits would help fund the next group of independent Canadian filmmakers. And the film would become one of a growing number of films with LGBTQ lead characters whose success would break down the barriers some exhibitors had about playing non-straight movies.   The impact of this film on queer cinema and on Canadian cinema cannot be understated. In 1993, author Michael Posner spent the first twenty pages of his 250 plus page book Canadian Dreams discussing the history of the film, under the subtitle “The Little Film That Did.” And in 2014, author Julia Mendenhall wrote a 160 page book about the movie, with the subtitle “A Queer Film Classic.” You can find copies of both books on a popular web archive website, if you want to learn more.   Amazingly, for a company that would regularly take up to fourteen months between releases, Miramax would end 1987 with not one, not two, but three new titles in just the last six weeks of the year. Well, one that I can definitely place in theatres.   And here is where you just can't always trust the IMDb or Wikipedia by themselves.   The first alleged release of the three according to both sources, Riders on the Storm, was a wacky comedy featuring Dennis Hopper and Michael J. Polland, and supposedly opened in theatres on November 13th. Except it didn't. It did open in new York City on May 7th, 1988, in Los Angeles the following Friday. But we'll talk more about that movie on our next episode.   The second film of the alleged trifecta was Crazy Moon, a romantic comedy/drama from Canada that featured Keifer Sutherland as Brooks, a young man who finds love with Anne, a deaf girl working at a clothing store where Brooks and his brother are trying to steal a mannequin. Like I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, Crazy Moon would benefit from the support of several Canadian arts foundations including Telefilm Canada and the National Film Board of Canada.   In an unusual move, Miramax would release Crazy Moon on 18 screens in Los Angeles on December 11th, as part of an Oscar qualifying run. I say “unusual” because although in the 1980s, a movie that wanted to qualify for awards consideration had to play in at least one commercial movie theatre in Los Angeles for seven consecutive days before the end of the year, most distributors did just that: one movie theatre. They normally didn't do 18 screens including cities like Long Beach, Irvine and Upland.   It would, however, definitely be a one week run.   Despite a number of decent reviews, Los Angeles audiences were too busy doing plenty of other things to see Crazy Moon. Miramax, once again, didn't report grosses, but six of the eighteen theatres playing the film were being tracked by Variety, and the combined gross for those six theatres was $2,500.   It would not get any award nominations, and it would never open at another movie theatre.   The third film allegedly released by Miramax during the 1987 holiday season, The Magic Snowman, has a reported theatrical release date of December 22, 1987, according to the IMDb, which is also the date listed on the Wikipedia page for the list of movies Miramax released in the 1980s. I suspect this is a direct to video release for several reasons, the two most important ones being that December 22nd was a Tuesday, and back in the 1980s, most home video titles came out on Tuesdays, and that I cannot find a single playdate anywhere in the country around this date, even in the Weinstein's home town of Buffalo. In fact, the only mention of the words “magic snowman” together I can find for all of 1987 is a live performance of a show called The Magic Snowman in Peterborough, England in November 1987.   So now we are eight years into the history of Miramax, and they are starting to pick up some steam. Granted, Working Girls and I've Heard the Mermaids Singing wasn't going to get the company a major line of credit to start making films of their own, but it would help them with visibility amongst the independent and global film communities. These guys can open your films in America.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again next week, when we continue with story of Miramax Films, from 1988.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

This week, we continue out look back at the films released by Miramax in the 1980s, focusing on 1987. ----more---- TRANSCRIPT   From Los Angeles, California. The Entertainment Capital of the World. It's the 80s Movie Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   On this episode, we are continuing our miniseries on the movies released by Miramax Films in the 1980s, concentrating on their releases from 1987, the year Miramax would begin its climb towards the top of the independent distribution mountain.   The first film Miramax would release in 1987 was Lizzie Borden's Working Girls.   And yes, Lizzie Borden is her birth name. Sort of. Her name was originally Linda Elizabeth Borden, and at the age of eleven, when she learned about the infamous accused double murderer, she told her parents she wanted to only be addressed as Lizzie. At the age of 18, after graduating high school and heading off to the private women's liberal arts college Wellesley, she would legally change her name to Lizzie Borden.   After graduating with a fine arts degree, Borden would move to New York City, where she held a variety of jobs, including being both a painter and an art critic for the influential Artforum magazine, until she attended a retrospective of Jean-Luc Godard movies, when she was inspired to become a filmmaker herself.   Her first film, shot in 1974, was a documentary, Regrouping, about four female artists who were part of a collective that incorporated avant-garde techniques borrowed from performance art, as the collective slowly breaks apart. One of the four artists was a twenty-three year old painter who would later make film history herself as the first female director to win the Academy Award for Best Director, Kathryn Bigelow.    But Regrouping didn't get much attention when it was released in 1976, and it would take Borden five years to make her first dramatic narrative, Born in Flames, another movie which would also feature Ms. Bigelow in a supporting role. Borden would not only write, produce and direct this film about two different groups of feminists who operate pirate radio stations in New York City which ends with the bombing of the broadcast antenna atop the World Trade Center, she would also edit the film and act as one of the cinematographers. The film would become one of the first instances of Afrofuturism in film, and would become a cultural touchstone in 2016 when a restored print of the film screened around the world to great critical acclaim, and would tie for 243rd place in the 2022 Sight and Sound poll of The Greatest Films Ever Made. Other films that tied with include Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels, Woody Allen's Annie Hall, David Cronenberg's Videodrome, and Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. A   Yes, it's that good, and it would cost only $30k to produce.   But while Born in Flames wasn't recognized as revolutionary in 1983, it would help her raise $300k for her next movie, about the lives of sex workers in New York City. The idea would come to her while working on Born in Flames, as she became intrigued about prostitution after meeting some well-educated women on the film who worked a few shifts a week at a brothel to earn extra money or to pay for their education. Like many, her perception of prostitution were women who worked the streets, when in truth streetwalkers only accounted for about 15% of the business. During the writing of the script, she began visiting brothels in New York City and learned about the rituals involved in the business of selling sex, especially intrigued how many of the sex workers looked out for each other mentally, physically and hygienically.   Along with Sandra Kay, who would play one of the ladies of the night in the film, Borden worked up a script that didn't glamorize or grossly exaggerate the sex industry, avoiding such storytelling tropes as the hooker with a heart of gold or girls forced into prostitution due to extraordinary circumstances. Most of the ladies playing prostitutes were played by unknown actresses working off-Broadway, while the johns were non-actors recruited through word of mouth between Borden's friends and the occasional ad in one of the city's sex magazines.   Production on Working Girls would begin in March 1985, with many of the sets being built in Borden's loft in Manhattan, with moveable walls to accommodate whatever needed to be shot on any given day. While $300k would be ten times what she had on Born in Flames, Borden would stretch her budget to the max by still shooting in 16mm, in the hopes that the footage would look good enough should the finished film be purchased by a distributor and blown up to 35mm for theatrical exhibition.   After a month of shooting, which involved copious amounts of both male and female nudity, Borden would spend six months editing her film. By early 1986, she had a 91 minute cut ready to go, and she and her producer would submit the film to play at that year's Cannes Film Festival. While the film would not be selected to compete for the coveted Palme D'Or, it would be selected for the Directors' Fortnight, a parallel program that would also include Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It, Alex Cox's Sid and Nancy, Denys Arcand's The Decline of the American Empire, and Chantel Akerman's Golden Eighties.   The film would get into some trouble when it was invited to screen at the Toronto Film Festival a few months later. The movie would have to be approved by the Ontario Film and Video Review Board before being allowed to show at the festival. However, the board would not approve the film without two cuts, including one scene which depicted the quote unquote graphic manipulation of a man's genitalia by a woman. The festival, which had a long standing policy of not showing any movie that had been cut for censorship, would appeal the decision on behalf of the filmmakers. The Review Board denied the appeal, and the festival left the decision of whether to cut the two offending scenes to Borden. Of all the things I've researched about the film, one of the few things I could not find was whether or not Borden made the trims, but the film would play at the festival as scheduled.   After Toronto, Borden would field some offers from some of the smaller art house distributors, but none of the bigger independents or studio-affiliated “classics” divisions. For many, it was too sexual to be a straight art house film, while it wasn't graphic enough to be porn. The one person who did seem to best understand what Borden was going for was, no surprise in hindsight, Harvey Weinstein. Miramax would pick the film up for distribution in late 1986, and planned a February 1987 release.   What might be surprising to most who know about Harvey Weinstein, who would pick up the derisive nickname Harvey Scissorhands in a few years for his constant meddling in already completed films, actually suggested Borden add back in a few minutes of footage to balance out the sex with some lighter non-sex scenes. She would, along with making some last minute dialogue changes, before the film opened on February 5th, not in New York City or Los Angeles, the traditional launching pads for art house films, but at the Opera Plaza Cinema in San Francisco, where the film would do a decent $8k in its first three days.   Three weeks after opening at the Opera Plaza, Miramax would open the film at the 57th Street Playhouse in midtown Manhattan. Buoyed by some amazing reviews from the likes of Siskel and Ebert, Vincent Canby of the New York Times, and J. Hoberman of The Village Voice, Working Girls would gross an astounding $42k during its opening weekend. Two weeks later, it would open at the Samuel Goldwyn Westside Pavilion Cinemas, where it would bring in $17k its first weekend. It would continue to perform well in its major market exclusive runs. An ad in the April 8th, 1987 issue of Variety shows a new house record of $13,492 in its first week at the Ellis Cinema in Atlanta. $140k after five weeks in New York. $40k after three weeks at the Nickelodeon in Boston. $30k after three weeks at the Fine Arts in Chicago. $10k in its first week at the Guild in San Diego. $11k in just three days at the TLA in Philly.   Now, there's different numbers floating around about how much Working Girls made during its total theatrical run. Box Office Mojo says $1.77m, which is really good for a low budget independent film with no stars and featuring a subject still taboo to many in American today, let alone 37 years ago, but a late June 1987 issue of Billboard Magazine about some of the early film successes of the year, puts the gross for Working Girls at $3m.   If you want to check out Working Girls, the Criterion Collection put out an exceptional DVD and Blu-ray release in 2021, which includes a brand new 4K transfer of the film, and a commentary track featuring Borden, cinematographer Judy Irola, and actress Amanda Goodwin, amongst many bonus features. Highly recommended.   I've already spoken some about their next film, Ghost Fever, on our episode last year about the fake movie director Alan Smithee and all of his bad movies. For those who haven't listened to that episode yet and are unaware of who Alan Smithee wasn't, Alan Smithee was a pseudonym created by the Directors Guild in the late 1960s who could be assigned the directing credit of a movie whose real director felt the final cut of the film did not represent his or her vision. By the time Ghost Fever came around in 1987, it would be the 12th movie to be credited to Alan Smithee.   If you have listened to the Alan Smithee episode, you can go ahead and skip forward a couple minutes, but be forewarned, I am going to be offering up a different elaboration on the film than I did on that episode.   And away we go…   Those of us born in the 1960s and before remember a show called All in the Family, and we remember Archie Bunker's neighbors, George and Louise Jefferson, who were eventually spun off onto their own hit show, The Jeffersons. Sherman Hemsley played George Jefferson on All in the Family and The Jeffersons for 12 years, but despite the show being a hit for a number of years, placing as high as #3 during the 1981-1982 television season, roles for Hemsley and his co-star Isabel Sanford outside the show were few and far between. During the eleven seasons The Jeffersons ran on television, from 1975 to 1985, Sherman Hemsley would only make one movie, 1979's Love at First Bite, where he played a small role as a reverend. He appeared on the poster, but his name was not listed amongst the other actors on the poster.   So when the producers of the then-titled Benny and Beaufor approached Hemsley in the spring of 1984 to play one of the title roles, he was more than happy to accept. The Jeffersons was about to start its summer hiatus, and here was the chance to not only make a movie but to be the number one listed actor on the call sheet. He might not ever get that chance again.   The film, by now titled Benny and Buford Meet the Bigoted Ghost, would shoot in Mexico City at Estudios America in the summer of 1984, before Hemsley was due back in Los Angeles to shoot the eleventh and what would be the final season of his show. But it would not be a normal shoot. In fact, there would be two different versions of the movie shot back to back. One, in English, would be directed by Lee Madden, which would hinge its comedy on the bumbling antics of its Black police officer, Buford, and his Hispanic partner, Benny. The other version would be shot in Spanish by Mexican director Miguel Rico, where the comedy would satirize class and social differences rather than racial differences. Hemsley would speak his lines in English, and would be dubbed by a Spanish-speaking actor in post production. Luis Ávalos, best known as Doctor Doolots on the PBS children's show The Electric Company, would play Benny. The only other name in the cast was boxing legend Smokin' Joe Frazier, who was making his proper acting debut on the film as, not too surprisingly, a boxer.   The film would have a four week shooting schedule, and Hemsley was back to work on The Jeffersons on time. Madden would get the film edited together rather quick, and the producers would have a screening for potential distributors in early October.   The screening did not go well.   Madden would be fired from the production, the script rewritten, and a new director named Herbert Strock would be hired to shoot more footage once Hemsley was done with his commitments to The Jeffersons in the spring of 1985. This is when Madden contacted the Directors Guild to request the Smithee pseudonym. But since the film was still in production, the DGA could not issue a judgment until the producers provided the Guild with a completed copy of the film.   That would happen in the late fall of 1985, and Madden was able to successfully show that he had directly a majority of the completed film but it did not represent his vision.   The film was not good, but Miramax still needed product to fill their distribution pipeline. They announced in mid-March of 1987 that they had acquired the film for distribution, and that the film would be opening in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Nashville, St. Louis, and Tampa-St. Petersburg FL the following week.    Miramax did not release how many theatres the film was playing in in those markets, and the only market Variety did track of those that week was St. Louis, where the film did $7k from the four theatres they were tracking that week. Best as I can tell from limited newspaper archives of the day, Ghost Fever played on nine screens in Atlanta, 4 in Dallas/Fort Worth, 25 screens in Miami, and 12 in Tampa-St. Pete on top of the four I can find in St. Louis. By the following week, every theatre that was playing Ghost Fever had dropped it.   The film would not open in any other markets until it opened on 16 screens in the greater Los Angeles metro region on September 11th. No theatres in Hollywood. No theatres in Westwood. No theatres in Beverly Hills or Santa Monica or any major theatre around, outside of the Palace Theatre downtown, a once stately theatre that had fallen into disrepair over the previous three decades. Once again, Miramax didn't release grosses for the run, none of the theatres playing the film were tracked by Variety that week, and all the playdates were gone after one week.   Today, you can find two slightly different copies of the film on a very popular video sharing website, one the theatrical cut, the other the home video cut. The home video cut is preceded by a quick history of the film, including a tidbit that Hemsley bankrolled $3m of the production himself, and that the film's failure almost made him bankrupt. I could not find any source to verify this, but there is possibly specious evidence to back up this claim. The producers of the film were able to make back the budget selling the film to home video company and cable movie channels around the world, and Hemsley would sue them in December 1987 for $3m claiming he was owed this amount from the profits and interest. It would take nine years to work its way through the court system, but a jury in March 1996 would award Hemsley $2.8m. The producers appealed, and an appellate court would uphold the verdict in April 1998.   One of the biggest indie film success stories of 1987 was Patricia Rozema's I've Heard the Mermaids Singing.   In the early 1980s, Rozema was working as an assistant producer on a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation current affairs television show called The Journal. Although she enjoyed her work, she, like many of us, wanted to be a filmmaker. While working on The Journal, she started to write screenplays while taking a classes at a Toronto Polytechnic Institute on 16mm film production.   Now, one of the nicer things about the Canadian film industry is that there are a number of government-funded arts councils that help young independent Canadian filmmakers get their low budget films financed. But Rozema was having trouble getting her earliest ideas funded. Finally, in 1984, she was able to secure funding for Passion, a short film she had written about a documentary filmmaker who writes an extremely intimate letter to an unknown lover. Linda Griffiths, the star of John Sayles' 1983 film Lianna, plays the filmmaker, and Passion would go on to be nominated for Gold Hugo for Best Short Film at the 1985 Chicago Film Festival.   However, a negative review of the short film in The Globe and Mail, often called Canada's Newspaper of Record, would anger Rozema, and she would use that anger to write a new script, Polly, which would be a polemic against the Toronto elitist high art milieu and its merciless negative judgements towards newer artists. Polly, the lead character and narrator of the film, lives alone, has no friends, rides her bike around Toronto to take photographs of whatever strikes her fancy, and regularly indulges herself in whimsical fantasies. An employee for a temporary secretarial agency, Polly gets placed in a private art gallery. The gallery owner is having an off-again, on-again relationship with one her clients, a painter who has misgivings she is too young for the gallery owner and the owner too old for her.    Inspired by the young painter, Polly anonymously submits some of her photographs to the gallery, in the hopes of getting featured, but becomes depressed when the gallery owner, who does not know who took the photos, dismisses them in front of Polly, calling them “simple minded.” Polly quits the gallery and retreats to her apartment. When the painter sees the photographs, she presents herself as the photographer of them, and the pair start to pass them off as the younger artist's work, even after the gallery owner learns they are not of the painter's work. When Polly finds out about the fraud, she confronts the gallery owner, eventually throwing a cup of tea at the owner.   Soon thereafter, the gallery owner and the painter go to check up on Polly at her flat, where they discover more photos undeniable beauty, and the story ends with the three women in one of Polly's fantasies.   Rozema would work on the screenplay for Polly while she was working as a third assistant director on David Cronenberg's The Fly. During the writing process, which took about a year, Rozema would change the title from Polly to Polly's Progress to Polly's Interior Mind. When she would submit the script in June 1986 to the various Canadian arts foundations for funding, it would sent out with yet another new title, Oh, The Things I've Seen.   The first agency to come aboard the film was the Ontario Film Development Corporation, and soon thereafter, the National Film Board of Canada, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council would also join the funding operation, but the one council they desperately needed to fund the gap was Telefilm Canada, the Canadian government's principal instrument for supporting Canada's audiovisual industry. Telefilm Canada, at the time, had a reputation for being philosophically averse to low-budget, auteur-driven films, a point driven home directly by the administrator of the group at the time, who reportedly stomped out of a meeting concerning the making of this very film, purportedly declaring that Telefilm should not be financing these kind of minimalist, student films. Telefilm would reverse course when Rozema and her producer, Alexandra Raffé, agreed to bring on Don Haig, called “The Godfather of Canadian Cinema,” as an executive producer.   Side note: several months after the film completed shooting, Haig would win an Academy Award for producing a documentary about musician Artie Shaw.   Once they had their $350k budget, Rozema and Raffé got to work on pre-production. Money was tight on such an ambitious first feature. They had only $500 to help their casting agent identify potential actors for the film, although most of the cast would come from Rozema's friendships with them. They would cast thirty-year-old Sheila McCarthy, a first time film actress with only one television credit to her name, as Polly.   Shooting would begin in Toronto on September 24th, 1986 and go for four weeks, shooting completely in 16mm because they could not afford to shoot on 35mm. Once filming was completed, the National Film Board of Canada allowed Rozema use of their editing studio for free. When Rozema struggled with editing the film, the Film Board offered to pay for the consulting services of Ron Sanders, who had edited five of David Cronenberg's movies, including Scanners, Videodrome and The Fly, which Rozema gladly accepted.   After New Years 1987, Rozema has a rough cut of the film ready to show the various funding agencies. That edit of the film was only 65 minutes long, but went over very well with the viewers. So much so that the President of Cinephile Films, the Canadian movie distributor who also helped to fund the film, suggested that Rozema not only add another 15mins or so to the film wherever she could, but submit the film to the be entered in the Directors' Fortnight program at the Cannes Film Festival. Rozema still needed to add that requested footage in, and finish the sound mix, but she agreed as long as she was able to complete the film by the time the Cannes programmers met in mid-March. She wouldn't quite make her self-imposed deadline, but the film would get selected for Cannes anyway. This time, she had an absolute deadline. The film had to be completed in time for Cannes.   Which would include needing to make a 35mm blow up of the 16mm print, and the production didn't have the money. Rozema and Raffé asked Telefilm Canada if they could have $40k for the print, but they were turned down.   Twice.   Someone suggested they speak with the foreign sales agent who acquired the rights to sell the film at Cannes. The sales agent not only agreed to the fund the cost from sales of the film to various territories that would be returned to the the various arts councils, but he would also create a press kit, translate the English-language script into French, make sure the print showing at Cannes would have French subtitles, and create the key art for the posters and other ads. Rozema would actually help to create the key art, a picture of Sheila McCarthy's head floating over a body of water, an image that approximately 80% of all buyers would use for their own posters and ads around the world.   By the time the film premiered in Cannes on May 10th, 1987, Rozema had changed the title once again, to I've Heard the Mermaids Singing. The title would be taken from a line in the T.S. Eliot poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which she felt best represented the film.   But whatever it was titled, the two thousand people inside the theatre were mesmerized, and gave the film a six minute standing ovation. The festival quickly added four more screenings of the film, all of which sold out.   While a number of territories around the world had purchased the film before the premiere, the filmmakers bet big on themselves by waiting until after the world premiere to entertain offers from American distributors. Following the premiere, a number of companies made offers for the film. Miramax would be the highest, at $100,000, but the filmmakers said “no.” They kept the bidding going, until they got Miramax up to $350k, the full budget for the film. By the time the festival was done, the sales agent had booked more than $1.1m worth of sales. The film had earned back more than triple its cost before it ever opened on a single commercial screen.   Oh, and it also won Rozema the Prix de la Jeunesse (Pree do la Jza-naise), the Prize of the Youth, from the Directors Fortnight judges.   Miramax would schedule I've Heard the Mermaids Singing to open at the 68th Street Playhouse in New York City on September 11th, after screening at the Toronto Film Festival, then called The Festival of Festivals, the night before, and at the Telluride Film Festival the previous week. Miramax was so keen on the potential success of the film that they would buy their first ever full page newspaper, in the Sunday, September 6th New York Times Arts and Leisure section, which cost them $25k.   The critical and audience reactions in Toronto and Telluride matched the enthusiasm on the Croisette, which would translate to big box office its opening weekend. $40k, the best single screen gross in all Manhattan. While it would lose that crown to My Life as a Dog the following week, its $32k second weekend gross was still one of the best in the city. After three weekends in New York City, the film would have already grossed $100k. That weekend, the film would open at the Samuel Goldwyn West Pavilion Cinemas, where a $9,500 opening weekend gross was considered nice. Good word of mouth kept the grosses respectable for months, and after eight months in theatres, never playing in more than 27 theatres in any given week, the film would gross $1.4m in American theatres.   Ironically, the film did not go over as well in Rozema's home country, where it grossed a little less than half a million Canadian dollars, and didn't even play in the director's hometown due to a lack of theatres that were willing to play a “queer” movie, but once all was said and done, I've Heard the Mermaids Singing would end up with a worldwide gross of more than CAD$10m, a nearly 2500% return on the initial investment. Not only would part of those profits go back to the arts councils that helped fund the film, those profits would help fund the next group of independent Canadian filmmakers. And the film would become one of a growing number of films with LGBTQ lead characters whose success would break down the barriers some exhibitors had about playing non-straight movies.   The impact of this film on queer cinema and on Canadian cinema cannot be understated. In 1993, author Michael Posner spent the first twenty pages of his 250 plus page book Canadian Dreams discussing the history of the film, under the subtitle “The Little Film That Did.” And in 2014, author Julia Mendenhall wrote a 160 page book about the movie, with the subtitle “A Queer Film Classic.” You can find copies of both books on a popular web archive website, if you want to learn more.   Amazingly, for a company that would regularly take up to fourteen months between releases, Miramax would end 1987 with not one, not two, but three new titles in just the last six weeks of the year. Well, one that I can definitely place in theatres.   And here is where you just can't always trust the IMDb or Wikipedia by themselves.   The first alleged release of the three according to both sources, Riders on the Storm, was a wacky comedy featuring Dennis Hopper and Michael J. Polland, and supposedly opened in theatres on November 13th. Except it didn't. It did open in new York City on May 7th, 1988, in Los Angeles the following Friday. But we'll talk more about that movie on our next episode.   The second film of the alleged trifecta was Crazy Moon, a romantic comedy/drama from Canada that featured Keifer Sutherland as Brooks, a young man who finds love with Anne, a deaf girl working at a clothing store where Brooks and his brother are trying to steal a mannequin. Like I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, Crazy Moon would benefit from the support of several Canadian arts foundations including Telefilm Canada and the National Film Board of Canada.   In an unusual move, Miramax would release Crazy Moon on 18 screens in Los Angeles on December 11th, as part of an Oscar qualifying run. I say “unusual” because although in the 1980s, a movie that wanted to qualify for awards consideration had to play in at least one commercial movie theatre in Los Angeles for seven consecutive days before the end of the year, most distributors did just that: one movie theatre. They normally didn't do 18 screens including cities like Long Beach, Irvine and Upland.   It would, however, definitely be a one week run.   Despite a number of decent reviews, Los Angeles audiences were too busy doing plenty of other things to see Crazy Moon. Miramax, once again, didn't report grosses, but six of the eighteen theatres playing the film were being tracked by Variety, and the combined gross for those six theatres was $2,500.   It would not get any award nominations, and it would never open at another movie theatre.   The third film allegedly released by Miramax during the 1987 holiday season, The Magic Snowman, has a reported theatrical release date of December 22, 1987, according to the IMDb, which is also the date listed on the Wikipedia page for the list of movies Miramax released in the 1980s. I suspect this is a direct to video release for several reasons, the two most important ones being that December 22nd was a Tuesday, and back in the 1980s, most home video titles came out on Tuesdays, and that I cannot find a single playdate anywhere in the country around this date, even in the Weinstein's home town of Buffalo. In fact, the only mention of the words “magic snowman” together I can find for all of 1987 is a live performance of a show called The Magic Snowman in Peterborough, England in November 1987.   So now we are eight years into the history of Miramax, and they are starting to pick up some steam. Granted, Working Girls and I've Heard the Mermaids Singing wasn't going to get the company a major line of credit to start making films of their own, but it would help them with visibility amongst the independent and global film communities. These guys can open your films in America.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again next week, when we continue with story of Miramax Films, from 1988.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

The FIFA Women's World Cup is just a few months away, and with preparations underway, Donnovan brings on Minky Worden, Director of Global Initiatives at Human Rights Watch to discuss how the tournament (and organization) needs to be better than it was in Qatar for the athletes competing in Australia and New Zealand (3:20). Afterwards, he chats with NYU professor Michael Posner on the hardships created by worker-paid recruitment fees, a subject of his research into global sporting events (37:42). To wrap up, Donnovan chats with University of Waterloo PhD student Kevin Wilson on how new multi-sport facilities can be used after major events have wrapped up (1:02:02). The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Sports & Media or any affiliates. 

An online transcript is available  .There's growing evidence that the routine practice of meditation improves quality of life (including relief from anxiety, increased focus, and the mitigation of negative emotions) and that these benefits can be seen after as few as five sessions of meditation. But we didn't really need scientific journals to tell us that: Practitioners of mindfulness meditation have been enjoying the benefits of this natural brain hack for millennia.  On today's program, host Seán Collins talks with a pioneering neuroscience researcher who describes what goes on in the brains of people who meditate, with a hospice doctor who trains his colleagues in techniques of meditation to help them deal with the stresses of their work, and with the founder of a program in Southern California that teaches at-risk youth to meditate as part of a program in effective social and emotional learning..Michael Posner, Ph.D., M.S.Professor EmeritusDepartment of PsychologyUniversity of OregonEugene, Ore..Glen Komatsu, M.D.Chief Medical OfficerProvidence Hospice, Los Angeles CountyTorrance, Calif..Patricia JonesFounderP.S. I Love You FoundationRedondo Beach, Calif..Seán refers to the Balance app — a personalized meditation coaching tool which is available for both the Apple and Android platforms..MORE INFORMATIONShort-term meditation training improves attention and self-regulation (Tang, Posner, et al., 2007)Short-term meditation induces white matter changes in the anterior cingulate (Tang, Posner, et al., 2010)Mechanisms of white matter change induced by meditation training (Posner, Tang, & Lynch, 2014)Circuitry of self-control and its role in reducing addiction (Tang, Posner, et al., 2015)Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction vs Escitalopram for the Treatment of Adults With Anxiety Disorders (Hoge, et al. 2023)..    

An online transcript is available On the next episode of the HEAR ME NOW Podcast, we'll explore Mindfulness Meditation with three great people who have connections to the practice. Dr. Michael Posner is a brain researcher who has demonstrated changes in brain tissue of people who meditate AND shown changes in how they deal with stress and anxiety.Patricia Jones has been helping at-risk youth in Los Angeles to meditate for 25 years.And Dr. Glen Komatsu, a hospice and palliative medicine physician in Southern California, teaches Mindfulness Meditation techniques to his colleagues to help them deal with the stress of their work. Dr. Posner's research shows that as few as five short sessions of meditation can begin to change how people feel and react to stress. In this four minute BONUS episode, Dr. Komatsu coaches us in a simple meditation technique that you can try out before listening to the next podcast episode. 

Guest Host Bruce Claggett speaks with Michael Posner, author, “Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories: That's How the Light Gets In, Volume 3”

In this episode of Law, disrupted, John is joined by a professor of Ethics and Finance at NYU's Stern School of Business and a director of the Center for Business and Human Rights, Michael Posner. He is also joined by Julianne Hughes-Jennett, Head of Quinn Emanuel's ESG practice and experienced litigator of business and human rights issues. Together, they discuss what we really understand the term “human rights” to mean for business and the current challenges regarding human rights implementation across the business world.The three begin by delving into the meaning of “human rights” and their legal ramifications for business, including whether “human rights” means different things in different jurisdictions.Michael moves the conversation towards due diligence in relation to human rights and enforcement of human rights in connection with business, noting recent legislative examples, including the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which was created to make sure the US doesn't support forced labor among ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region. Julianne picks up with recent EU developments, including the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and legislation such as the Failure to Prevent Act in France. She also posits whether the UK Bribery Act's section 7, failure to prevent offense, could be a model for a provision for a mechanism for a failure to prevent human rights impact by the business. This could bring greater legal certainty for businesses and victims, alike.Finally, the trio mulls over the meaning of ESG and how it has evolved since its creation around 20 years ago. Michael notes that companies often heed such guidelines cynically in the name of ROI. He also emphasizes the financial implications of social issues related to labor supply chains.

Sylvain Charlebois, Beatrice Deer, Kelly Alexander, David Heurtel, Dr. Chris Labos, Marc Miller, Michael Posner

Do you ever find it difficult to manage your mood when you're exposed to too much screen time?Life is made easier by digital technology. However, it can also harm your well being if not handled properly. Fortunately, there are practical ways to manage it so you can live a more fulfilling life while being productive at work and at home. Would you like to learn to decrease your screen stress while using the benefits of technology?In this program, our guest, Dr.Hannes Bend explains how to manage yourself when you experience stress due to too much screen time. Hannes Bend is the founder of breathing.ai, machine learning inventor, award-winning and published researcher in neuroscience and technology and meditation teacher . He overcame years of anxiety and depression using mindfulness and breath work, and started breathing.ai to make technologies adaptive to human wellbeing and breathing. He has worked with top experts in the fields of science and breath work such as Dr. Michael Posner and his longtime mentor Wim "The Iceman" Hof to merge technology, psychology, neuroscience, art, mindfulness and AI to improve human wellbeing significantly. Tune in to this episode so you can discover the value of breathing to reduce stress in the workplaceTHREE WAYS TO GET THE FREE RESOURCES SHARED IN THIS PROGRAM SIGN UP AT https://bit.ly/HHMGSUTEXT: Word "Joyful" to 38470. JOIN FB Group: Happy and Healthy Mind with Dr. Rozina: http://bit.ly/HHMwDRGLOVE THIS VIDEO and CHANNEL? HERE are YOUR NEXT STEPS!1) SUBSCRIBE to my channel! https://bit.ly/RozinaYT2) SHARE THIS EPISODE WITH A FRIEND3) GRAB YOUR FREE AUDIO GUIDE: “Relax on the go” https://www.stresstojoy.com/newsletter 4) SIGN UP FOR YOUR FREE Stress to Joy AUDIOBOOK on AUDIBLE: https://adbl.co/2w9LL5W 5) GET MY BOOKS/GUIDED GRATITUDE JOURNAL/AUDIOBOOKShttps://drrozina.com/books/ 6) ENROLL IN STRESS TO JOY ONLINE COURSEhttps://www.stresstojoy.com/onlinecourse 7) BOOK ME FOR YOUR SPEAKING, LEADERSHIP TRAINING, CORP. CONSULTING:  https://drrozina.com/ 8) MAKE AN APPOINTMENT FOR TREATMENT: https://shifahealth.org/request-an-appointment LET'S CONNECT!

Do you ever find it difficult to manage your mood when you're exposed to too much screen time?Life is made easier by digital technology. However, it can also harm your well being if not handled properly. Fortunately, there are practical ways to manage it so you can live a more fulfilling life while being productive at work and at home. Would you like to learn to decrease your screen stress while using the benefits of technology?In this program, our guest, Dr.Hannes Bend explains how to manage yourself when you experience stress due to too much screen time. Hannes Bend is the founder of breathing.ai, machine learning inventor, award-winning and published researcher in neuroscience and technology and meditation teacher . He overcame years of anxiety and depression using mindfulness and breath work, and started breathing.ai to make technologies adaptive to human wellbeing and breathing. He has worked with top experts in the fields of science and breath work such as Dr. Michael Posner and his longtime mentor Wim "The Iceman" Hof to merge technology, psychology, neuroscience, art, mindfulness and AI to improve human wellbeing significantly. Tune in to this episode so you can discover the value of breathing to reduce stress in the workplaceTHREE WAYS TO GET THE FREE RESOURCES SHARED IN THIS PROGRAM SIGN UP AT https://bit.ly/HHMGSUTEXT: Word "Joyful" to 38470. JOIN FB Group: Happy and Healthy Mind with Dr. Rozina: http://bit.ly/HHMwDRGLOVE THIS VIDEO and CHANNEL? HERE are YOUR NEXT STEPS!1) SUBSCRIBE to my channel! https://bit.ly/RozinaYT2) SHARE THIS EPISODE WITH A FRIEND3) GRAB YOUR FREE AUDIO GUIDE: “Relax on the go” https://www.stresstojoy.com/newsletter 4) SIGN UP FOR YOUR FREE Stress to Joy AUDIOBOOK on AUDIBLE: https://adbl.co/2w9LL5W 5) GET MY BOOKS/GUIDED GRATITUDE JOURNAL/AUDIOBOOKShttps://drrozina.com/books/ 6) ENROLL IN STRESS TO JOY ONLINE COURSEhttps://www.stresstojoy.com/onlinecourse 7) BOOK ME FOR YOUR SPEAKING, LEADERSHIP TRAINING, CORP. CONSULTING:  https://drrozina.com/ 8) MAKE AN APPOINTMENT FOR TREATMENT: https://shifahealth.org/request-an-appointment LET'S CONNECT!

Sean Illing talks with the author Johann Hari about his new book Stolen Focus, which explores what's happening — and what's already happened — to our attention. They discuss how exactly Big Tech "stole" our ability to focus, what many leading scientists say about how we are psychologically and physiologically changed by the powerful new draws on our attention, and whether or not we need an "attention rebellion" to fight back against the tech giants, whose business models depend on us getting easily distracted. Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), Interviews Writer, Vox Guest: Johann Hari (@johannhari101), author References:  Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention — and How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari (Crown; 2022) Companion site with audio excerpts from interviews with experts and additional endnotes: stolenfocusbook.com Getting Ahead of ADHD by Joel T. Nigg (Guilford; 2017) "Capitalism is turning us into addicts" by Sean Illing, interviewing David T, Courtwright (Vox; Apr. 18, 2020) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan (1964) "Enhancing attention through training" by Michael Posner, et al. (Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences (4); 2015) "Facebook and texting made me do it: Media-induced task-switching while studying" by Larry Rosen, et al. (Computers in Human Behavior, 29 (3); 2013) "Accelerating dynamics of collective attention" by Sune Lehmann, et al. (Nature Communications; 2019)   Enjoyed this episode? Rate Vox Conversations ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of Vox Conversations by subscribing in your favorite podcast app. Support Vox Conversations by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts This episode was made by:  Producer: Erikk Geannikis Editor: Amy Drozdowska Engineer: Paul Robert Mounsey Deputy Editorial Director, Vox Talk: Amber Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sean Illing talks with the author Johann Hari about his new book Stolen Focus, which explores what's happening — and what's already happened — to our attention. They discuss how exactly Big Tech "stole" our ability to focus, what many leading scientists say about how we are psychologically and physiologically changed by the powerful new draws on our attention, and whether or not we need an "attention rebellion" to fight back against the tech giants, whose business models depend on us getting easily distracted. Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), Interviews Writer, Vox Guest: Johann Hari (@johannhari101), author References:  Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention — and How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari (Crown; 2022) Companion site with audio excerpts from interviews with experts and additional endnotes: stolenfocusbook.com Getting Ahead of ADHD by Joel T. Nigg (Guilford; 2017) "Capitalism is turning us into addicts" by Sean Illing, interviewing David T, Courtwright (Vox; Apr. 18, 2020) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan (1964) "Enhancing attention through training" by Michael Posner, et al. (Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences (4); 2015) "Facebook and texting made me do it: Media-induced task-switching while studying" by Larry Rosen, et al. (Computers in Human Behavior, 29 (3); 2013) "Accelerating dynamics of collective attention" by Sune Lehmann, et al. (Nature Communications; 2019) Enjoyed this episode? Rate Vox Conversations ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of Vox Conversations by subscribing in your favorite podcast app. Support Vox Conversations by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts This episode was made by:  Producer: Erikk Geannikis Editor: Amy Drozdowska Engineer: Paul Robert Mounsey Deputy Editorial Director, Vox Talk: Amber Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the last decade, executives at the Hallmark Channel and Lifetime have realized that Hanukkah exists. Now every year seems to bring a new heaping spoonful of shmaltz for Jewish audiences and anyone bored of watching the same Christmas stories told with new wide-eyed actors. Recent entries have been Mistletoe & Menorahs and Love, Lights, Hanukkah!, while this year's Eight Gifts of Hanukkah puts its own semitic spin on the format. But how should we feel about these movies? Are they a sincere effort to educate Middle America about the Seleucid Greek takeover of a small province of Jews and their successful revolt and rededication of the temple? Or is it a shallow attempt at forcing onscreen diversity? We discuss. Plus: Hear about the final book in our month-long book club, Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories: From This Broken Hill, Volume 2 by Michael Posner. What we talked about Email bonjour@thecjn.ca to get an exclusive invite to our new Slack channel Hear Michael Posner interviewed on The CJN Daily at thecjn.ca Read an excerpt from Posner's book at thecjn.ca Credits Bonjour Chai is hosted by Avi Finegold, Ilana Zackon and David Sklar. Michael Fraiman is the producer. Andre Goulet is the technical producer. Our theme music is by Socalled. The show is a co-production from The Jewish Learning Lab and The CJN, and is distributed by The CJN Podcast Network. Find more great Jewish podcasts at thecjn.ca.

Michael Posner is known as the "King of Cohen". He spent $35,000 of his own money to travel the world researching Leonard Cohen, the Canadian Jewish poet legend—and only after the globetrotting and spending did a publisher agree to take Posner on. Posner's biography of the late singer is coming out in three volumes. The first was released last November; the second, this month, almost five years to the day of his death in 2016. Posner has interviewed hundreds of people who knew and admired the troubadour in an effort to compile what is poised to be the definitive Cohen biography. Posner joins today to discuss what he learned about Cohen, including the gritty details of Cohen's escapades, dalliances and inspirations. What we talked about: Find the book at simonandschuster.com Visit Michael Posner's website at michaelposner.com Watch the performance of “Hallelujah” by Tamir Greenberg and Valerie Hamaty on YouTube Credits The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Victoria Redden is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We're a member of The CJN Podcast Network; find more great Jewish podcasts at thecjn.ca.

Mike chats with author Michael Posner about volume two of his Leonard Cohen trilogy, covering Leonard's life from 1971 until the late-80s. Michael calls his book "Untold Stories: From The Broken Hill", I prefer the title "Sex, Zen and Rock 'n Roll".

I am honored to have a true legend in our field on the podcast today. The post 244. Attention w/ Dr. Michael Posner appeared first on The Testing Psychologist.

Dr. Michael Posner, Associate Professor of Statistics and Data Science and Founding Director of the Center for Statistics Education in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Villanova University, joins us to discuss motivating students with the meaning behind the material and inviting students into courses that generate fear (like statistics!)

Michael Posner is the Director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at NYU's Stern School of Business, the first-ever human rights center at a business school, where he is also a Professor of Ethics and Finance. From 2009-2013, Posner served in the Obama Administration as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and has dedicated his life to advancing human rights in how it impacts global business. Follow Ryan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryankmacinnis/ Follow Ryan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rkmac Follow Michael on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-posner-35689079/  Music used: Medieval Fantasy by MaxKoMusic | https://maxkomusic.com/ Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_US

What is the science behind capturing people's attention? And what do you do after you have someone's attention; what is your intention? Is our attention fleeting and fickle, like a goldfish? Or is it something that can be recaptured and rekindled easily? Our guest today, Ben Parr cleverly uses a great Bonfire Analogy to describe how we ignite, build and rekindle attention.  Ben Parr is an award-winning entrepreneur, author, investor, and journalist. He is the author of the best-selling book Captivology: The Science of Capturing People's Attention and the Co-founder of Octane AI, the marketing automation platform for Messenger and messaging apps.  Ben has a unique journey as an entrepreneur. In studying the science of attention, Ben has become deeply appreciative of storytelling; how we can capture and keep someone's attention through a narrative. But one of the tricks that we can learn from Ben is the art of how to curate a story. How we can be intentional with our presentations, our writing or even our conversations so our audience remain enthralled.  In our discussion with Ben, we talk about the reason he decided to research and write a book on attention. In a world where it feels like everyone is trying to grab our attention, Ben talks about how attention is something you need to both earn and be intentional about.  (23:43) “Attention is not something that you just get, it's something that you have to both earn, and that you have to be intentional about and the way you get attention. Because I can get attention by running down the street streaking, but I'm not going to get the kind of attention I want and not from the people I want. And this podcast would be done from a jail cell!” Ben loves to discover new music which opens up a great conversation about his playlist and even though he is a saxophonist, Ben never set his aspirations on emulating one of the great saxophonists like Kenny G. But instead, always strives to be the best possible version of himself.  Next, you can listen to our follow-on episode (#236); our Grooving Session with Kurt and Tim where we discuss how to apply Ben's insights to improve our lives, relationships and work environments. Behavioral Grooves strives to bring you insight and research from world-leading experts. And we do this without the use of paid advertising. If you would like to support our continued ad-free work, please consider becoming a Behavioral Grooves Patreon by visiting https://www.patreon.com/behavioralgrooves. Thank you! Topics (2:28) Welcome and Ben's new suggestion for our speed round! (10:30) Why Ben wrote Captivology? (12:59) Goldfish vs. humans - who has a longer attention span? (15:47) Why capturing attention is like building a bonfire  (18:43) How musicians Joshua Bell and Susan Geiser orchestrate your attention (22:15) Why David Copperfield is the master of keeping your attention (24:07) Curating the most important information (31:05) Techniques for curating information and how to tell a captivating story (35:40) Ben's favorite trigger for capturing attention  (39:26) How Ben discovers new music (41:34) Why Ben ultimately strives to just be a better version of himself   © 2021 Behavioral Grooves Links Ben Parr “Captivology: The Science of Capturing People's Attention” https://amzn.to/3ejByXB  Captivology http://captivology.com/  Octane AI https://www.octaneai.com/  Dessa:  On Being Deeply Human https://behavioralgrooves.com/episode/dessa-being-deeply-human/ Inside the Backlash Against Facebook http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1532225,00.html  Joshua Bell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJhZ0J3bIYc  David Copperfield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Copperfield  Episode 226: The Power Of Unity: Robert Cialdini Expands His Best Selling Book Influence https://behavioralgrooves.com/episode/cialdini-unity-in-influence/ Episode 155: John Bargh: Dante, Coffee and the Unconscious Mind https://behavioralgrooves.com/episode/john-bargh-dante-coffee-and-the-unconscious-mind/ Dr. Michael Posner https://ion.uoregon.edu/content/michael-posner  Michael Gazzaley https://neuroscape.ucsf.edu/profile/adam-gazzaley/  Episode 220: How Do You Become Influential? Jon Levy Reveals His Surprising Secrets https://behavioralgrooves.com/episode/how-to-be-influential-jon-levy/ Episode 212: Scrutinizing Hype: Powerful lessons from The Hype Handbook with Michael F. Schein https://behavioralgrooves.com/episode/scrutinizing-hype-with-michael-f-schein/ Discover Weekly Spotify https://www.spotify.com/us/discoverweekly/  Musical Links  John Legend “All Of Me” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=450p7goxZqg  OAR “Hey Girl” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb17JzKSiVA  Bube Fiasco “The Show Goes On” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rmp6zIr5y4U  Afro Jack DJ “Rock The House” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6h0_9Zv7aM  Imogen Heap “Hide and Seek” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYIAfiVGluk  Led Zeppelin “Stairway to Heaven” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkF3oxziUI4  Queen “Bohemian Rhapsody” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ9rUzIMcZQ   Guns n' Roses “Welcome to the Jungle” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1tj2zJ2Wvg  Kid Cudi “The Void” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKDY5YMpyUc  Cosmo Sheldrake “Cuckoo Song” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbQyFZmuA58  Kenny G “Songbird” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN2RnjFHmNY  Stan Getz “Misty” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3qS363m7-w  Branford Marsalis “Cianna” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unRHCRsbJM0 

In the final hour, Dan Bernstein and Leila Rahimi discussed the behind-the-scenes footage from the NFL Draft that was recently released. Included was Bears rookie quarterback Justin Fields' pre-draft interview. Later, they were joined by Michael Posner, the director of MLB's authentication program. He discussed the process in which MLB authenticates memorabilia such as the ball from a player's first big league hit. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the final hour, Dan Bernstein and Leila Rahimi discussed the behind-the-scenes footage from the NFL Draft that was recently released. Included was Bears rookie quarterback Justin Fields' pre-draft interview. Later, they were joined by Michael Posner, the director of MLB's authentication program. He discussed the process in which MLB authenticates memorabilia such as the ball from a player's first big league hit. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ryan MacInnis is a former Boston Globe Journalist turned Product Marketing Leader with demonstrated success at enterprise companies like LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as zero to one technology startups in the artificial intelligence, real estate, and legal tech space. In his spare time, MacInnis is a fellow at NYU under the direction of Michael Posner, the former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor in the Obama Administration, researching the intersection of technology, automation, and policy on organizational structures and labor markets more broadly.Connect with Ryan:Ryan on LinkedInRyan on TwitterMade possible by:This show is brought to you by Recess.io. The platform for internal marketing communications professionals.

Achieve Peak Performance through Hard Work and Mindfulness with Steven Kotler Do you often find yourself giving up when things get hard? Are you more interested in instant gratification? Most people will say yes to these questions. After all, taking the easy way out feels safe and comfortable. But the truth is we are biologically designed to reach peak performance; we just need hard work  to achieve it. In today’s episode, Steven Kotler will share with us why fear and hardship make us quit. And as one of the world’s leading experts on human performance, he will also talk to us about hard work to manage our fears and anxiety to reach our peak performance. He will also discuss what triggers our flow. Tune in to the full episode and learn how you can train to reach the impossible. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Learn how fear motivates you. Discover how you can motivate yourself to reach your peak potential. Steven shares the foundations of the flow. Resources Steven’s books: Bold and The Art of Impossible Steven Kotler: Author and Speaker Try out Steven’s Interactive Worksheet! Flow Research Collective — Learn about what breaks your flow. Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention by Michael Posner Create a daily meditation ritual in just seven days! Download BUILD YOUR DAILY MEDITATION RITUAL and other freebies at com! FREE Podcast Action Guide! Apply the lessons you learn from this episode as you listen! Sign up at com and I’ll send it right away! Episode Highlights Fear and the Impossible Some people become successful in life because they overcome the impossible. They reinvent themselves to make their dreams a possibility and a reality. Steven explains this is important to know because nobody starts at their peak. We begin with a combination of focus and Fear can direct you to where you need to focus. The key is learning how to manage your fear and anxiety and turn them into a challenge that you can overpower. Listen to the full episode to learn why fear is essential in overcoming the impossible. Dealing with Fear Using Hard Work Reaching the impossible becomes hard because powering through your fears — real or imagined — is challenging. Start with motivation, then focus on goals. After that, you put hard work on your grit skills. This is not a quick process; you need to keep going until you have enough grit skills as your foundation. You’re going to be truly successful if you have a solid foundation and the perseverance to work hard on your fear. This is similar to how athletes train to be their best before taking on risks. Understanding Peak Performance Flow or peak performance is the optimal state of consciousness that occurs when you feel and perform your best. When you’re in the flow, everything — creativity, learning, productivity — is amplified. There are 22 known triggers to the flow. They work by either increasing dopamine or norepinephrine — focusing chemicals — in our system, lowering the cognitive load, or both. The most important trigger is a complete concentration on your task. Michael Posner, a former psychologist at the University of Oregon, also explains the importance of meditation for your flow training. Everybody can get into the flow because we are biologically designed to do so. What Is Peak Performance Training? Peak performance training starts with an extrinsic motivation These extrinsic things often fuel your anxiety or fear, which drives your motivation and focus. After overcoming them, you move to intrinsic motivators, like curiosity, which lets you develop your passion and pursue hard work to fulfill it. Your passion drives you to have a purpose, which leads to your need for autonomy. And autonomy requires mastery. Tune in to the full episode to learn about the role of these factors in your peak performance. How Anxiety and Depression Affects the Flow It is essential to understand that while anxiety fuels our motivation, it can also dampen it. This happens because two known causes of anxiety — genes and trauma — affect our ability to focus. However, research also shows that these causes don’t necessarily translate to anxiety disorders. Genetics is only half of the factor, and trauma may also lead to post-traumatic growth. The remaining six causes often occur because we can’t find our motivation to work on the flow. Using Grit and Motivation as Foundations Physical grit is simple to train because we are all built to be persevering. Training it is working on it consistently. The next level of grit is controlling your thoughts, and this is where mindfulness training becomes essential. Motivations are as crucial as grit in creating solid foundations for peak performance because it pushes you to work on your fear and determination. If you find your motivation and start working on your goals, your body releases the reward chemicals you need. And these chemicals also help you train your grit. However, it is essential to note that laying down these foundations is neither easy nor fast. They need constant work.   Important Notes on the Flow Although the flow works wonders, it can also have adverse effects because it can blur your understanding of the past, present, and the future or the deep now. Since it takes years to train, we may initially feel demotivated, especially since we often seek instant gratification. But working on your grit and motivation, as well as reaching your flow, is the ultimate gratification you can get. Do the hard work slowly because it takes time to cultivate your passion. 5 Powerful Quotes [06:53] “Learn to use fear as a compass and what I mean by that is — and you don’t start really in peak performance — if you’re sort of following your biology, there’s a sequence, there’s an order, and you don’t really go directly head-on at fear for a little while.” [15:27] “Triggers (of focus) work by doing one of three things. They either drive dopamine into our system, they drive norepinephrine into our system or they lower cognitive load, or they do some combination.” [19:49] “Everybody can get into flow, right? Man, women, children the age, the old. It is universal. It shows up in anyone anywhere provided certain initial conditions.” [23:30] “What we call passion is nothing more than like the intersection of multiple curiosities, right? You just got to live there for a little while and let it grow into passion.” [38:21] “Grit without flow is misery. Like, flat out. You can’t have it like it’s technically — grit without flow is burnout.” About Steven Steven Kotler is one of the leading experts in the study of human performance. He wrote several New York Times-bestselling books and was nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes for his journalistic work. He is also the co-founder of Rancho de Chihuahua dog sanctuary and a cohost of the top-rated iTunes podcast called Flow Research Collective Radio. If you want to connect with Steven, visit his website or LinkedIn.   This episode brought to you by http://www.tonal.com/ Try TONAL for 30 Days risk-Free!  For $100 OFF the smart accessories use Promo Code: ROSIE    Enjoy the Podcast? If you felt radically loved from listening to this podcast, subscribe and share it with the people you love! Love to give us 5 stars? If you do, we’d love a review from you. Help us reach more people and make them feel loved. Do you want to help people reach their peak performance? A simple way is to share what you’ve learned today on social media. Don't forget to follow and message us on these platforms! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rosieacosta Twitter: https://twitter.com/rosieacosta Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/radicallylovedrosie TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@itsrosieacosta To feeling radically loved, Rosie  

Michael Posner: Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories...with TRE's Giles Brown

Award-winning writer Michael Posner speaks with Banyen Books & Sound about his new biography, Leonard Cohen: Untold Stories. From his groundbreaking and bestselling novels, The Favourite Game and Beautiful Losers, to timeless songs such as “Suzanne,” “Dance Me to the End of Love,” and “Hallelujah,” Leonard Cohen is a cherished artist. Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories draws on hundreds of interviews to reach beyond the Cohen of myth and reveal the unique, complex, and compelling figure of the real man. Michael Posner is a writer, playwright, journalist, and the author of seven books. These include the Mordecai Richler biography, The Last Honest Man, and the Anne Murray biography, All of Me, both of which were national bestsellers. He was Washington Bureau Chief for Maclean’s magazine, and later served as its national, foreign, and assistant managing editor. He was also managing editor of the Financial Times of Canada for three years. He later spent sixteen years as a senior writer with The Globe and Mail.

In case you missed it, Celebrate the Festival of Lights with a Tribute to Music and Literary Legend LEONARD COHEN. In conversation with Michael Posner, author of Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories: The Early Years (Book #1 of Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories. A 3 volume series.) Plus an unforgettable performance of Cohen classics by Broadway star [...]

Today on the podcast, I speak with author Michael Posner, who has recently released his first of three books that look at the life of legendary artist and musician Leonard Cohen. We talk about Cohen, his early life and what made him so iconic.  Find the book here: https://www.simonandschuster.ca/books/Leonard-Cohen-Untold-Stories-The-Early-Years/Michael-Posner/Leonard-Cohen-Untold-Stories-series/9781982152628 Support the show for $3/month at www.patreon.com/canadaehx or donate at www.canadaehx.com E-mail: craig@canadaehx.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/canadianhistoryehx Twitter: www.twitter.com/craigbaird Instagram: @Bairdo37

Professor Michael Posner is currently the Co-Director of the Center of Business and Human Rights at NYU Stern. Previously, he served in the Obama administration as the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Daniel and Tiffany sat down with Professor Posner to talk about his illustrious career as a lawyer, advocate, and statesman, why he thinks human rights should be a central tenet of a business education, and what to do about Facebook. Hosted by: Daniel Yellin & Tiffany Lin Produced by: Daniel Yellin & Galila Gray Edited by: PJ Wyderka

Mike speaks with Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories: The Early Years author Michael Posner about Leonard Cohen.

Untold Stories: The Early Years is Michael Posner's collection of stories about poet, musician, lover and icon, Leonard Cohen. We have a good shmooze to share with you.

Historian Ted Widmer and Michael Posner, an NYU Stern professor and former U.S. State Department official, discuss local politics, journalism, and money in elections in the age of ubiquitous Internet connectivity. How can high school students get involved in democracy? What are some ideas to save the media industry? How can--or should--the government regulate the social media giants? Don't miss this wide-ranging talk.

Historian Ted Widmer and Michael Posner, an NYU Stern professor and former U.S. State Department official, discuss local politics, journalism, and money in elections in the age of ubiquitous Internet connectivity. How can high school students get involved in democracy? What are some ideas to save the media industry? How can--or should--the government regulate the social media giants? Don't miss this wide-ranging talk.

Historian Ted Widmer and Michael Posner, an NYU Stern professor and former U.S. State Department official, discuss local politics, journalism, and money in elections in the age of ubiquitous Internet connectivity. How can high school students get involved in democracy? What are some ideas to save the media industry? How can--or should--the government regulate the social media giants? Don't miss this wide-ranging talk.

Justine Nolan, Associate Professor & Associate Dean, University of New South Wales, Michael Posner, Jerome Kohlberg Professor of Ethics and Finance, Business and Society & Co-Director, Center for Business and Human Rights, NYU Stern School of Business / Tara Wadhwa, Policy Associate, Center for Business and Human Rights, NYU Stern School of Business / Dr Dorothée Baumann-Pauly, Research Director, NYU Stern School of Business, speaking on Panel XIII: 'The Responsibility of Internet Platform Companies to Mitigate Harmful Content Online'. Cambridge International Law Journal 7th Annual Cambridge International Law Conference, ‘Non-State Actors and International Law'. For more information about the conference, and the Journal, see http://cilj.co.uk/ This entry provides an audio source for iTunes U.

Justine Nolan, Associate Professor & Associate Dean, University of New South Wales, Michael Posner, Jerome Kohlberg Professor of Ethics and Finance, Business and Society & Co-Director, Center for Business and Human Rights, NYU Stern School of Business / Tara Wadhwa, Policy Associate, Center for Business and Human Rights, NYU Stern School of Business / Dr Dorothée Baumann-Pauly, Research Director, NYU Stern School of Business, speaking on Panel XIII: 'The Responsibility of Internet Platform Companies to Mitigate Harmful Content Online'. Cambridge International Law Journal 7th Annual Cambridge International Law Conference, ‘Non-State Actors and International Law'. For more information about the conference, and the Journal, see http://cilj.co.uk/ This entry provides an audio source for iTunes U.

How many of us take for granted the simple freedoms and rights we enjoy in this digital age? James Woolsey, past director of the Central Intelligence Agency, leads a fascinating panel discussion on "Human Rights in the Information Age," with Samantha Power and Michael Posner. The panel was part of the Aspen Ideas Festival. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/panel_discussion_-_human_rights_in_the_information_age