SRL Lecture
I went to the Mark Pauline lecture (founder of SRL) at CCA. Suprisingly, I met up with an acquaintance of mine at the lecture. She goes to school there. The world just got smaller :-)
The lecture was very good. Two things I noticed….
He lost part of his right hand in an accident many years ago. He functions well missing 2 fingers and a thumb but I’m sure he’d rather have kept them. That’s a big reminder to me to always be safe in the shop; it just takes 1 accident… and you don’t ever get them back.
I asked, “Do your shows pay for themselves?”
“Oh no. I lose hundreds of thousands of dollars on them. In San Jose last summer, we had a paying audience so I just lost $15,000. Normally it’s much more.” He talked a little bit about how he uses it as a promotional expense on his taxes. Just after the show, he mused how he’s probably lost millions over the years.
Oh and he told us where the name “Survival Research Labs” comes from. It was pretty funny. It’s a story involving corporate re-appropriation, Soldier of Fortune Magazine, figuring out how to kill the right wing when the time came, sniper scopes and a mail fraud PO Box in Georgia. :-)