Damian Chapa’s Polanski: Unauthorized

With all the buzz surrounding Roman Polanski’s time spent in jail, it seemed almost a foregone conclusion that a movie would be made on his behalf. Sure enough, low-level actor Damian Chapa has undertaken the dubious task of portraying the ethically challenged filmmaker, detaiing the director’s highest of highs and lowest of lows. From his war-torn childhood to his brief marriage with Sharon Tate, Polanski: Unauthorized pulls no punches. The only problem with the film is that save for the flashbacks to his childhood in Poland and a handful of scenes with his Hollywood contemporaries, there’s not much that’s entirely enticing about the film. The late David Carradine, a close friend of Chapa’s has gone on record as saying, “Chapa is Polanski,” and the statement is udeniably true. If one thing stands out, it is Chapa’s ucanny ability to tap into the dark mind of one of cinema’s most polarizing figures. Though the cinematography and porous screenplay straddle the histrionics of a soap opera, select scenes are worth coming back to. The film’s biggest drawback is a bevy of scenes in which Polanski converses with The Devil. Their often lengthy dialogue detracts from Chapa evading his way around tricky situations, which is the very essence of the film. And yet for all its down moments, Polanski: Unauthorized is still mildly compelling. Sure its disturbing, creepy and tough to sit through, but a film about a sex offender doesn’t exactly marry itself to a Disney pedigree. In sum, while it’s probably not worth owning, there’s little reason to not add it to the Netflix queue. If anything it proves that even the most unheralded of actors can often turn a ho-hum screenplay into something worth watching.

As The Soldiers Head to War….Remember These Things

Deploying the Soldier-Entrepreneur
By Dr. Craig Columbus

Earlier this week, President Obama announced his decision to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan by mid-2010. The president chose to address the nation from the U.S. Military Academy in front of a large audience of West Point cadets.

While there is still much to be done in the multi-front war against terror, its time to start thinking biggerabout the role that those cadets and an entire generation of conflict-tested American military personnel will play. This applies not only on the battlefield, but also in the boardrooms of tomorrow; not simply as an expression of patriotic gratitude, but rather as a conscious strategy of economic pragmatism backed by emerging research.

In their fascinating new book, Start-Up Nation, authors Dan Senor and Saul Singe trace the roots of Israels economic miracle to the entrepreneurial and improvisational skills developed by its citizenry through compulsory service in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). Because of Israels reserve-dominated, horizontal military structure, its soldiers are often required take more initiative at lower ranks and are forced to multi-task to overcome a scarcity of manpower.

Senor and Singe propose that this hands-on entrepreneurial training explains, in part, how a nation of only 7.1 million people could attract close to two billion in venture capital investment and boast more NASDAQ-listed companies than any country in the world other than the United States. Israels innovation economy has consistently gained share in the global market despite the worlds recent financial crisis and the domestic chaos of security operations in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.

Perhaps most importantly is the authors contention that when Israeli soldiers complete their service, a personal network of close-knit entrepreneurs is often just a phone call away. It is this last-mile piece of marrying future soldier-entrepreneurs to sources of available capital and coaching that is so critical.

The challenge in the United States is partially one of awareness stemming from a declining public profile of veterans in positions of civilian and business leadership.

Within Congress, for example, veterans have been under-represented since 1994 compared to that bodys historical makeup. Duke Universitys Dr. Peter Feaver refers to the trend as a veterans deficit. According to Feaver, the opposite condition existed throughout most of the 20th century as the percentage of veterans in Congress was 10 to 15 percent higher than among the same age group of men.

But all of that may be about to change with an influx of new leaders rich in hands-on leadership experience, often with significant consequences, fresh from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Much like their Israeli counterparts, the tempo and lighter footprint of U.S. military operations of the last eight years has often required improvisation and creativity.

At the same time, entrepreneurs have been facing their own set of unique challenges stemming from the global financial crisis. Author Nicholas Taleb popularized the term Black Swan to characterize the randomness and uncertainty of the recent financial system failures. The term refers to the 17th century discovery of black swans in Australia, debunking the Western misconception that all swans were white.

Talebs premise that extreme, improbable events are, in fact, surprisingly common, reflects the recent experiences of both our soldiers in Iraq/Afghanistan and free-market participants. Little evidence exists that operating conditions will become less complex for business leaders given a prolonged period of restrictive lending, capital scarcity, increased regulation, and encroaching state capitalism.

Therefore, training a new generation of entrepreneurs will require preparing them for the unexpected and stressing the importance of being able to make do with the tools at ones disposal. This reality does not diminish the importance of essential skills acquired in Americas MBA programs. Rather it points to the vast economic promise of an expanded resource pool of talented veterans, skilled in encountering the unknown and making difficult leadership decisions based on incomplete information.

President Obama said in his speech at West Point on Tuesday night, We failed to appreciate the connection between our national security and our economy, referring to the impact of deficit spending. However, there is another important connection: Seated in the audience were the resources to both preserve the nations security and help invent its economic tomorrow.

Dr. Craig Columbus is a Fellow for Entrepreneurship and Innovation with The Center for Vision & Values. He is also the executive director of the entrepreneurship program and chair of the Department of Entrepreneurship at Grove City College.