By Charles Peirce
The Hare Hypothesis by Iain Spence is an interesting piece of pop-culture analysis which tries to link trends in youth movements to a larger pattern operating throughout history. It’s easy to understand the appeal — as anyone with a bit of historical perspective might start to notice the repetition of certain cultural trends. For Spence, whose background is in writing about music and youth in the UK, those repetitions are cycling in a four-stage pattern which he connects with his own, specific reading of the Life Scripts concept of Transactional Analysis.
Casting is one of the obvious essentials of any film, and like all aspects of the process worth examining: the assumptions that define it and the possibilities of how it might be used to best advantage. Casting’s key place comes in financing, where attaching the right star allows raising money based on their monetary value to specific regions or demographics. Enough attached stars offer the promise of pre-sales in distribution, and enough pre-sales can then determine a base budget. This would seem to follow the simple logic of a star’s popularity guaranteeing viewers, a shortcut in the task of finding an audience. 