For many years now, one of our regular attendees at the D: All Things Digital conference has been award-winning movie and television director, producer and writer Barry Sonnenfeld, who is–as it turns out–a not-so-closeted geek in his spare time.

(He also appeared onstage in 2006 at D4 in an interview with Walt Mossberg, which you can see here.)

In fact, the man behind movies like “Men in Black” and TV shows like “Pushing Daisies” (and who likes to sport a Stetson and cowboy boots 24/7) does a gadget review column for Esquire magazine called “The Digital Man.”

Now he is branching out to a vlog about his geek passions on Crackle, which will appear every two weeks from wherever he is–either from his homes in East Hampton, N.Y. or Telluride, Colo., or from movie or TV sets.

And, compared to the cinéma vérité style of BoomTown (translation: shaky filming and bad sound), Sonnenfeld’s vlogs are pretty high quality, although they are not too overdone as those from Hollywood types always are, and it’s hard not to admire the editorial use of a martini.

Here’s his intro video vlog below, as well as one about a cross-country trip Sonnenfeld and his “analog” dog, named Lucky, took in a 2010 Ford Taurus SHO (super high output) and another about his experience helping his wife, Sweetie, cook for some film industry friends using the Traeger Professional Wood Pellet Grill.

Next week: A chain saw, although I hope Sonnenfeld will go light on the martinis for that demo.

From Crackle: The Esquire Digital Man Preview:

From Crackle: Ford Taurus SHO:

From Crackle: Traeger Professional Wood Pellet Grill:

While John Hughes has almost nothing to do with the Internet, BoomTown–who is of a certain age–was saddened to hear about the premature passing of this director supreme of suburban teen angst movies of the 1980s.

He died yesterday of a heart attack at 59 years old.

His hit films included “The Breakfast Club,” “Sixteen Candles” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” He wrote “The Breakfast Club” and “Sixteen Candles,” as well as “Pretty in Pink,” “Home Alone,” “Some Kind of Wonderful” (I heart Watts) and tons of others.

In other words, the creator of the infamous “Brat Pack.”

Here are two movie clips to enjoy on this slooooow Friday in August, from Hulu, and a terrific montage video from YouTube, which make me feel–almost–young again.

And here is a link to a fascinating blog post about someone who, oddly enough, was Hughes’s pen pal.

The Breakfast Club:

Sixteen Candles:

Hughes Montage:

One of our favorite D: All Things Digital speakers, and now a regular attendee, has been Hollywood director, producer, writer and big-cowboy-hat-about-town, Barry Sonnenfeld (pictured here at D6).

So, BoomTown extends belated but Texas-sized congratulations to Sonnenfeld for winning an Emmy earlier this week for directing the pilot of “Pushing Daisies” on ABC.

A gadget freak, as well as an entertainment mogul, Sonnenfeld was very entertaining and insightful about Hollywood’s uncomfortable relationship with technology in his interview with Walt Mossberg in 2006 at D4 (and which you can find here in photos and video).

Backstage at the Emmy Award show, which annually fetes the television industry, Sonnenfeld–who always tries to get Walt and me to ask outrageous questions of speakers at the conference in exchange for walk-ons on his shows and movies (so far, we have not bitten, although he has gotten off some good ones as an audience member in the Q&A part of the interviews)–gave a typically saucy interview to the press about his win.

And, no surprise, Sonnenfeld did manage to deliver one perfect geeky quip, as the music cue started to cut off his speech on Sunday night, which I doubt the glam crowd there got, but was not lost on me:

“Love TV and fear the Internet.”

A lot more than settling a strike, I would posit.

A lot has been written about the writers’ strike in Hollywood, which is officially over after three acrimonious months with the overwhelming vote by the members of the Writers Guild of America to accept a contract it hammered out with the entertainment studios.

Writers will presumably be back at their keyboards today.

The toll? Hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenues and no new episodes of “Heroes” (what will evil Sylar do now that his powers have returned?), all over how writers should be paid for content that appears online.

That there is precious little money being made online by anyone does not seem to have mattered, as the struggle metastasized into a symbolic battle over all the wrenching changes that digital technologies have made on the industry and are sure to make even more significantly in the future.

Writers, most of all, understand a dramatic narrative, and this one tells the tale of their work being digitized and downloaded without a lot of reward or control. It is a familiar story to them, of course, as technology after technology has not been kind to them.

In this three-year deal, victory was declared when the writers did get a percentage of the revenue from fees paid to stream their work on the Web.

Sorry to be a downer, but those fees will always and forever be peanuts, even if getting a percentage (rather than a residual) is seen as a win.

That’s because the big bucks in online content must come from advertising, which the writers will not grab a piece of at this point, if ever.

And if you think the creation of original online content is in its nascency, and it is, the robust business models around how to pay for it are even more stillborn.

Of course, there is money here and money there–some from items purchased, some from sponsorships, some from basic CPM economics.

But it is all very tentative and small now and advertisers are still not springing open their wallets with the kind of money they are used to spending on television.

And why should they? It is safe to advertise there, despite dwindling audience, wherein quality online content has so far shown itself to be very uncertain.

While there is an occasional errant hit of the most basic kind (Funny or Die’s “The Landlord” or similar material), there is no systemic or large-scale efforts to establish this industry of original online content in a way that is different from what has come before.

Of course, writers did hightail it up north to Silicon Valley during the strike to try to get some money to create new kinds of online-entertainment production companies.

But it felt like it was out of desperation, rather than a real commitment to change the system they were working in and to pioneer new forms of entertainment based around the Web medium.

The last time writers tried to marry venture capitalists, by the way, was in the last bubble and that was out of pure greed at the sight of the dot-commers all getting rich.

Well, greed did not work then and fear will not now. I would imagine writers will now abandon those efforts now that their old paychecks are back.

That’s too bad, because what’s needed is a whole new class of talent that has very little stake in the old one and who are seeking new ways of creating content, doing business and, most of all, envisioning the future.

Perhaps that is unspecific and not as real as the deal that was hammered out at the Luxe Hotel in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles between union reps and Disney’s Bob Iger and News Corp.’s Peter Chernin.

Now I have stayed at that hotel, in fact, for a conference, held nearby at the Getty Museum on a high hill overlooking Los Angeles. Called the Entertainment Gathering, it touched on the changing nature of the entertainment industry and also on the collision with the digital world it was facing.

Of course, there was a lot of talk about the innovation boom in Silicon Valley and what it meant for the entertainment industry.

At a break, one old entertainment mogul attending wanted to point out to me that Hollywood was like that once. He regaled me with stories of the mostly immigrant entrepreneurs who had left the certainty of the East Coast and had come to California and created a whole new business in the orange groves that once dominated the Los Angeles region.

“Can you imagine that?” he asked me, sweeping his hand over the vista.

Indeed, I could.

Well, that was quick.

Unlike the writers, who have been striking for a dog’s age now (11 weeks), the Directors Guild of America reached a three-year deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers after just five days of talks.

Internet issues were front and center, as with the writers.

“This was a very difficult negotiation that required real give and take on both sides,” said DGA president Michael Apted in a statement. “Nonetheless, we managed to produce an agreement that enshrines the two fundamental principles we regard as absolutely crucial to any employment and compensation agreement in this digital age: First, jurisdiction is essential. Without secure jurisdiction over new-media production–both derivative and original–compensation formulas are meaningless. Second, the Internet is not free. We must receive fair compensation for the use and reuse of our work on the Internet, whether it was originally created for other media platforms or expressly for online distribution.”

In practical terms, that means that directors get jurisdiction over: derivative product from other covered media; original content above $15,000/minute or $300,000/program or $500,000/series; and original content under that threshold when a DGA member is involved.

Here’s the DGA release with all the particulars of the settlement.

What this means for the writers’ continued strike is unclear, but the DGA agreement could be used to jump-start the negotiations between the writers and Hollywood studios anew.

One thing is certain: The pressure is now on the screenwriters.

5. Because his World Wide Pants production company took only two weeks to bang out a separate agreement with writers to go back to work at his “Late Show” on CBS from their strike after saying they would try to make a deal.

4. Because he will get the best guests now, because actors would rather forgo Botox than walk across picket lines over at places like NBC’s “Tonight Show” and “Late Night” to flack their latest movie, TV show or whatever.

3. Because his show will be funnier than competitors, who are also resuming production with their writers still on strike, because writers are funny and nonwriters are, um, not.

2. Because this might prove to be a small return to sensibility between the two sides in the fight–writers and studios–both of whom are not negotiating at all as much as conducting what is now a pretty senseless PR fight in which everyone is a loser and no one will win.

1. Because he named his production company World Wide Pants.