Elmo Visits Ricky Gervais' Office

I found this treasure while reading Warwick Davis's biography.  Ricky Gervais's comedy always pushes me to my limits of accepting that his examples of social awkwardness are actually for the greater good.  By contrasting an adult little person to a children's character, he's actually re-establishing Warwick's adulthood and need for dignity even while he intentionally compromises it.  Ricky's childlike glee comes off as most juvenile of the three in the end :)

Ricky Gervais has given a lot of exposure to performers with disabilities.   I'm reminded that enterprising young comedians should really ditch their attachment to dignity since dignified people are not funny until the moment that dignity is compromised.

Warwick Davis has the best attitude about life, you know.  He is never above any material and thinks enough of himself but not too much so to be fun for other people.  I'd really like to see Life's Too Short, which is what they were making when this was filmed.  I want to adopt a similar attitude to his for this project.

Oh gosh I need a first post like whoa

I wrote this long navel gazing account about disability and why I want to make media portrayals of disability and disabled individuals working in the entertainment industry the subjects of my academic research for grad school, but it was starting to get too personal.  Maybe I will come back to that when I have a finer focus in my research efforts.

For now, I just want to join the academic discussion and become a graduate student in an MA screenwriting program.  My understanding before starting research is that there ARE disabled actors and there ARE respectfully written parts for disabled characters, but the two don't meet often enough.  I was hesitant myself to continue studying acting after taking a career test in middle school that informed me that acting is a more physical skill than I thought.

My goals in research are:

• To develop a well-informed perspective on disability to write deep, complicated disabled characters in roles as varied, deep, and well developed as possible.
• To encourage other writers to do the same.
• To convince studios that disabled female leads are not always victims or martyrs.
• To promote inclusion and accessibilty for individuals with varying physical and mental conditions who wish to work in the entertainment industry
• To create opportunities for said individuals and encourage them to pursue them.
• To learn the craft of research and gain an area of expertise in subjects possibly including employment law, the Americans with Disabilities Act, media studies, feminism, and film production safety.

OK, that's all I can think of for now and it feels overwhelmingly unfocused.  But that's why I blog.  To solve problems and find focus.  Onward to complete my writing samples, finish at least one published journal article this year, at least one short film production, and apply for graduate school in a screenwriting MFA.