Nostalgia Wallow Part Deux

Posting last week about the first book I ever owned reminded me of the first book I read that fully captured my imagination as a story -- so much so that I spent thirty years trying to find it, and finally laid my hands on a copy two years ago.

The book was a young adult science-fiction novel by Paul Capon, "The End of the Tunnel." It's about four young kids who go on a caving trip together in England, get trapped in a cave by a landslide, and follow the cave deep under ground, encountering a forgotten civilization, before finally finding their way back to the surface -- through the Paris catacombs.

It was, as the kids say these days, a thorough mindf***.

I read this book once, when I was seven or eight years old, and it made such an impression I've retained scenes, characters, and images, for almost fifty years. For example: as the kids head out for their exploration, they pass a hole in the ground, where, for good luck, they drop a penny and listen to hear how long it takes to hit the bottom. It takes a looooong time. Later, once they're trapped under ground, they eventually come across the bottom of that hole -- and find a pile of coins lying under it, with the coins on the bottom of the pile dating back hundreds of years.

How cool is that?

I could go on, but all I really want to say is how much I loved that book, and how happy I was when I tracked down a copy of the original printing. It wasn't inexpensive, because the book has been out of print for five decades, and is something of a collector's item, but looking at a recent listing for it on Abebooks.com, I think I got off pretty cheap.

Any favorite books you remember vividly from childhood? Any you spent a lifetime tracking down?

Let me know.

Heroes

A friend of mine from the comic book business dropped me an email this morning, asking for my input -- he and his family had noticed that one of this summer's big blockbuster comic book movies used several elements from stories he'd written a number of years ago.  One of his family members suggested he hire a lawyer to see if he could get some recompense, and my friend wanted to know if I had any experience that might be useful, given that a character I'd created for Marvel Comics had been adapted for two movies.  He was talking about The Punisher, but those of you who read my comics in the Seventies know that stories of mine were adapted for the first two Spider-Man films, so I guess my response should probably include my experience regarding those movies too.

Well.

Some people like to ease the band aid off the wound slowly and with care to avoid pulling out any hairs.  Me, I've always been a rip-that-sucker-off-fast kind of guy.  So, to put it bluntly, I got nothing for either Punisher film, and nothing for my stories being adapted for the Spider-Man movies.  I didn't even get credit for creating the Punisher, or for the use of my story material in Spider-Man.

Honestly, I didn't expect that I would.

I'm not happy about the fact, but I'm resigned to it.  I accept the reality of how the business operated when I wrote those stories, and I'm truthful enough with myself to admit I knew full well that I was giving over all my rights to the material at the time.  There hasn't been a comic book professional since the 1940s who hasn't been fully aware of the exact nature of the deal we were making with the publishers: what happened to Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster was common knowledge and an established part of comic book lore.  So it would be disingenuous of me now to claim I was misled, or mistreated, or that I didn't realize what I was doing, or that somehow Marvel reneged on some imaginary implied promise that I'd share in whatever bounty might come their way from exploiting characters and stories I created.  Nobody promised me anything.  The deal was clear -- I wrote the stories, I created the characters, and in return I accepted a page rate payment for the work I performed. 

Sure, there was some question about the legality of the practice prevalent at the time of putting the assignment of rights contract on the back of the check paying you for the work.  But that's a question of legality -- and it was resolved with later contracts that clearly established the nature of the work for hire arrangement -- and it has nothing to do with what I believe is really a moral and ethical issue.  Morally and ethically, for me to claim that I was "cheated" somehow would be a lie.  Nobody forced me to write comics.  Nobody forced me to accept the terms of the deal as it stood. 

I knew what I was doing, and I did it anyway.

Does it hurt when I see a movie made from a character I co-created, without receiving credit or recompense?  Sure it hurts.  I don't think it's particularly nice of Marvel Comics to pretend that the Punisher sprang full-blown onto the scene without parents.  It's pretty cheesy, mean-spirited behavior.  What would it cost them to credit Ross Andru, John Romita, and me, for writing and drawing the story that brought the Punisher into being?  If they were worried we might use that credit to press a claim -- why not ask us to sign a release?  Knowing they were under no legal obligation to give us credit, but they felt it was the human, decent thing to do, I would've been happy to sign a release; I was happy to give an interview for the DVD.  But nobody asked.  I doubt anyone even thought about it.  And that's what hurts, really.  I don't expect money, I don't expect a piece of the action, but I sure would have appreciated a little acknowledgment when those credits flashed by.

But to repeat: I knew what I was doing, and I did it anyway.

On a happier note, I get lotsa bucks from the use of characters I created for DC Comics in the late 70s and 80s.   Firestorm, Power Girl,  King Croc, Steel, and lately, Vixen, have all spun off toys and statues and games and videos and other cool stuff, and thanks to the forward-thinking contracts DC started offering creators in the late 70s, I and my artist collaborators get a piece of all that revenue.  And that makes me happy.

So in a way, it balances out.

But I'm one of the lucky ones -- as are all of the creators who came into the business after the mid-Seventies.  We get a piece (albeit a small piece) of the cash our characters generate.  The people who came before us, though, aren't so lucky.  A lot of those writers and artists end their careers with not much to show for the work they've done but the money they earned along the way.  Some of them are in pretty dire straits financially.

If you'd like to do something about that, check out the Hero Initiative -- a non-profit fund organized by fans and professionals to help creators who've fallen on hard times.  Give back a little of what they've given you.

You're under no legal, moral or ethical obligation to do so.

But it's the nice thing to do.

It's the right thing to do.

Jumping aboard the Wayback Machine...

Feeling a little nostalgic today.  I won't bore you with a long, rambling, I-remember-when, but I was thinking about the first book I recall owning -- a Hardy Boys juvenile novel, published in 1959: "The Mystery of Cabin Island."  (This was, I believe, the original 1929 version; it's important to identify when a Hardy Boy book was published, since the book was revised to eliminate ethnic stereotypes and update vernacular in the mid-Sixties.)  Loved that book.  Still do.  And that's all I have to say about that.  What was the first book you remember owning?

Darkon Rising

Watched an entertaining documentary last night called Darkon, which follows the exploits of a LARP group on the East Coast.  LARP, for those of you not in the know, is an acronym for live action roleplaying -- i.e.: folks who dress up as knights and elves to fight pretend battles in parks and school yards.  The documentary is fairly sympathetic to the people in this group, though it doesn't try to hide the fact these LARPers are, to put it kindly, pretty odd.  My first reaction, watching the film, was a queasy embarrassment -- you know the feeling you get when you're at some kind of public event, a wedding maybe, and someone who really shouldn't decides to show off their singing voice?  You shudder; you silently plead with them, "Oh no, no, please, don't get up there, don't do that, oh no, please don't."  But they do, and you cringe on their behalf, and pretend you don't notice they're making an ass of themselves, and you pray, for their sake, that nobody has a video cam.

Well, that's how I felt as the movie introduced us to these nice, well-meaning, slightly loopy folks who make war with foam swords and duct-tape shields.  But as the film progressed, and I got to know the various LARPers and their families, I began to have another reaction.  (The queasy embarrassment didn't go away; it just faded into the background.)  I began to think these folks aren't all that weird or strange, after all.  What they do -- the way they play their game -- isn't that different from how most people committed to a hobby, a sport, or some other personal enthusiasm, pursue their interests.  Is there any difference in kind between someone who puts on a costume to battle with fake swords, and someone who puts on a uniform to play weekend baseball?  There's a park near my house, and almost every night during the summer, the baseball diamonds are filled with guys in their mid-twenties, early-thirties, dressed up in uniforms and playing baseball.  Somehow, that isn't considered strange, but putting on a hand-sewn tabard and whacking another guy over the head with a foam bat, somehow, that's thought to be weird. 

I guess an argument could be made that amateur sport clubs promote physical fitness, but something tells me keeping fit isn't the primary motive at work for these guys.  Joining an amateur sports league, wearing a uniform, playing ball -- it's role playing.  For a couple of hours once or twice a week, you can pretend you're a baseball legend.  And honestly, that's what you're doing: you're pretending.  You hit a home run, you win the game -- so what?  What difference does it make in the "real" world?  Absolutely none.  The only place it matters is inside you, in the way you see yourself.  I guess LARPing serves the same purpose for people who got picked last, if at all, for their sandlot baseball teams.  God bless 'em, I say.

Anyway, anyway, it's a very entertaining film.  Highly recommended.  Get it through Netflix, or failing that, pick it up on Amazon.  It's worth your time.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Ehh

Heads up:  This is the official, Conway's Corner obligatory Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull review.  Feel free to skip it if you've had enough Indiana Jones talk over the Memorial Day weekend.  If you're interested in my take on the film (and why would you be?  If you're a reader of this blog, you've probably already seen it), then read on.

Naturally, like many guys my age who grew up reading comics and can kinda-sorta remember old time movie serials from watching them on Fifties television, I'm a huge Indiana Jones fan.  And like many Indiana Jones fans (I think this is true), I experienced a gradual sense of deflation over the first three movies, from balls-out excitement watching Raiders of the Lost Ark, to excitement tempered by distaste watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, to finally a grudging excitement and a ho-hum sense of lowered-expectations satisfaction from watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  (It's not that Last Crusade was a disappointment, by any means; it's just that, the best that could be said for it, was that it wasn't a disappointment.  It was, in a word, okay.  It hit the right beats, it didn't go too far overboard, and it wasn't an embarrassment to enjoy.  But still and all, truth to tell, it was no great shakes.  Fun, yes, but not particularly memorable.  Except for one or two lines by Henry Jones, Senior.)

And now we come to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

I enjoyed it, but honestly, I had to work at it.  On at least three separate occasions, the filmmakers (this is one of those cases when the plural really does apply; this is a film by both Spielberg and Lucas, with all the good and bad that implies) threw me out of the movie and made me aware I was watching something that bore no resemblance whatsoever to reality.  Yes, I know, any movie that involves a two-fisted archaeologist, a female commie sword-fighting psychic, and secret alien remains hidden in a magnetic box at Area 52, bears little resemblance to what we normally refer to as the "real world."  But none of that is beyond the realm of acceptable "fantasy reality;" i.e.: if you accept the basic situation -- we're in an action movie about commies pursuing the mystery of what happened in Roswell in 1947 or whenever, and they're opposed by an over-the-hill archaeologist who's already had some pretty extreme adventures -- then you won't have a problem accepting any of the foregoing.

But you might have a problem with how Indiana Jones survives being trapped at a nuclear test site in Nevada; or how Mutt Williams catches up to a pair of speeding army vehicles in a South American jungle; or how the filmmakers chose a lame circular escape attempt to provide an opportunity for the Big No-Surprise Reveal concerning the identity of Mutt's long-dead dad.  (Uh, guess what, it's Indiana.)

Look, I'm willing to accept that a 65-year old man can fight like a 30-year old.  (Fitness is relative; a 65-year old Joe Frazier could easily cream most 30-year old non-athletes.)  I'm willing to believe the U.S. government kept a secret stash of alien artifacts in a warehouse in Nevada in the 1950s.  (It's outlandish but there's nothing to say it couldn't have happened and we just never found out about it.)  I'm even willing to believe Indiana Jones dumped Miriam Ravenwood at the altar and it never came up in conversation with his dad a few years later, despite the fact this was the daughter of one of his father's best friends.

However.  I am not willing to believe a human being can survive being blown up by an atomic bomb just by hiding in a conveniently lead-lined refrigerator.  I am really not willing to believe said human would survive being hurled several miles through the air inside said lead-lined refrigerator.  Then get out and still have his hat.

I mean, come on.

There's nothing this flat-out unbelievable in Raiders of the Lost Ark.  (The closest you get is the idea that Indy hid out on the superstructure of a German U-Boat while it crossed the Mediterranean; lucky for him it never submerged.)  There's nothing this unbelievable in Temple of Doom (okay, maybe it's a stretch Indy and his pals survive falling from a plane by means of an inflatable raft; but you can justify it because we don't really know how far they fell, or at what angle they hit, or how deep the snow is they landed on, etc.).  And unless I'm forgetting something, there's nothing this out-of-reality in Lost Crusade.

But wait, you're saying, what about all the fantastic magical stuff that happens in these movies -- the Ark opens up and releases killer demons; an Indian mystic pulls the living heart out of a human sacrifice (and forgets to do it to the hero's girl friend); Henry Jones, Sr., survives a fatal gunshot wound thanks to the healing properties of the Holy Grail.  Aren't those things unbelievable?  Aren't they outside the boundaries of reality?

Sure they are; but they're the MacGuffins of these films -- the plot devices that motor the rest of the story.  Whether they're inherently fantastic or not doesn't matter.  They are, in effect, the gimmies of these movies.  By the time they arrive we've suspended our disbelief.  Because, up till then, everything else we've seen has been within the bounds, more or less, of commonly accepted reality.

But, come on -- Mutt Williams playing Tarzan with a troop of monkeys?  Swinging from tree to tree and doing it fast enough to catch up with a speeding truck?  Really?  Really?  (By contrast, I don't find it unbelievable that Mutt gets in a sword-fight with the commie psychic; it's been established that he fenced, and it's established that she fences; and while it's a stretch, it's at least humanly possible that by coincidence, these two people would find themselves in opposition, and both end up with swords.  Not likely, sure; just possible.)

And, please, how's this for a limping plot device:  Indy and his people escape from the bad guys and get separated from each other just long enough for Miriam to tell Indiana he's Mutt's father, and then, as soon as Indy knows the truth but before it leads to any awkward conversation, they're captured again and the plot is back on track.  How incredibly convenient for the filmmakers.  How utterly predictable.   Nothing is accomplished by the failed escape attempt except the revelation Indiana is Mutt's father.  It's a total movie moment and it completely took me out of the "reality" of the story. 

To me, these three things -- refrigerator escape, Tarzan moment, circular escape attempt -- are signs the filmmakers did not take their responsibility to the audience seriously.  They didn't just push the bounds of believable; they knocked those bounds over and trampled them underfoot.  I almost felt like they were laughing at us:  "Sure," they seem to be saying, "you may take this stuff seriously, but we sure don't.  How dumb is this material, anyway?  Isn't it ridiculous?  Aren't you ridiculous for wanting to suspend your disbelief?  Don't think so?  Then watch this!"

It's... insulting.

Anyway... as I said above, I did enjoy the movie, but I had to work at it.  I had to suspend my suspension of disbelief.  Which is a shame, because it didn't have to be that way.  The atomic bomb sequence is superfluous -- you could just as easily cut from the rocket sled escape to Indy in FBI custody; Mutt could've found another way to catch up with the bad guys; and clever script-writing could have given us a lovely moment between Miriam and Indiana as the truth of Mutt's heritage slips out -- maybe providing some insight into why she kept it from Indy for so long, and how he feels about the sudden knowledge that the world still holds some surprises for the man in the battered brown hat.

Passing on and passing by

The memorial service for Karen's dad was yesterday, so I wasn't in the mood to update the blog.  I'll do so later today.

That's gotta hurt...

Read 'Em and Beep

This will come as no surprise, I'm sure, but in case you've been wondering, I'm something of a geek.  I love gadgets, the shinier and higher-tech the better.  If it weren't for Sell-It-On-eBay, I'd have a closet full of out-of-date tech goodness -- including several iterations of ebook readers, going way back to the original Nuvomedia Rocketbook.  (Now there was a monster -- big as a hardback book, heavy as a concrete block, but capable of holding several hundred books, with an easy-to-read screen.  If you didn't mind developing carpel tunnel syndrome from reading an Agatha Christie novel, it was pretty handy.)  I've tried stand-alone ereaders, Palm and Windows Mobile PDAs with ereader programs, software programs for notebooks and laptops... you name it, I've tried it; I've even attempted to read books on my mobile phone.  So far, nothing has quite worked, though some have come pretty close.  Why these things continue to attract me, I'm not really sure -- maybe I just like the idea of carrying a small library around with me as I go about my day.  It's a sickness, I admit it, but I'm not really ready to seek a cure.

The latest gizmo I've been using is the Sony PRS-505 Digital Book Reader.  It's a pretty nice device -- as light as a paperback book, with a nice clear screen, an easy-to-use interface, and enough memory onboard (with the option to add two SD cards) to carry upwards of a thousand books.  In addition to buying titles from an online store that works pretty much the way iTunes works with an iPod, you can also load plain text files, or Microsoft Word docs, or PDFs onto the device without much difficulty.  It also supports MP3 playback, including audio books.  Combine this baby with the free public domain books at Project Gutenberg, and you have access to thousands of titles ranging from classic to modern literature.  If you're interested, you can find it here:



Shiny, isn't it?

Ooooooo....

n00b!!!

A friend of mine, whose wife is about to start a job at Blizzard (oh envy, oh jealous heart), admitted to me recently that he's tried to play World of Warcraft, but has had a hard time getting into it.  "All I know is you've got to kill a bunch of spiders," he told me ruefully.  "Am I missing something?"

Well, yes. actually.

But it's not his fault -- the truth is, unless you have a particular mindset, or previous experience with a certain kind of game play, WoW can be difficult to get into at first.  The manual, what there is of it, doesn't help much.  The in-game tips are useful, but limited.  To learn the game, you have to play the game, which means you have to be willing to feel lost and bewildered for hours before things begin to click into place and make sense.  Some of us enjoy that sense of disorientation and exploration; some of us don't.  Those who don't, feel frustrated, and eventually give up.  They don't get it, and honestly, I don't blame them.

Myself, I blundered about the newbie area for hours the first few days I played -- not understanding, for example, that my weapons and armor were gradually being eroded during battle, and that I had the option to replace them with new weapons and armor from fallen mobs.  ("Mobs" are the creatures and NPCs you kill during game play; they drop goodies which you can pick up by right-clicking on their fallen bodies.  See?  Now you know something I didn't know the first couple of hours I played.)  Eventually I had no weapon to kill anything with, and I was stuck -- till I asked another player what the heck I was supposed to do now.  He showed me how to fix my weapon at a weapon dealer, and voila!  I was on my way.

A little while later, around level 12 or so, I got stuck again when I came upon a fishing quest.  I had no idea how to fish, and there were no tips to tell me what to do.  So again, I asked another player;  she showed me how to fish -- and voila!  I was on my way again.

You may see a pattern developing here.

One of the secrets of WoW -- in fact, the secret of WoW -- is that you can't play the game alone; you need help from other players.  Once you understand that, the rest falls into place.

Yes, asking for help in the early stages of the game marks you as a n00b, a newbie; but the fact is, at almost every level of the game, you are a n00b, at least compared to somebody who's been at that level or in that situation before you.  There's nothing wrong with being a n00b -- a newbie -- though there are always jerks who'll act like there is.  Most players, though, will be happy to help you; most of us remember what it was like to blunder around those first few hours, or days, or weeks, trying to figure out what to do next.  A lot of the fun in playing WoW comes from helping other players.  So don't be afraid to ask for help.

I've promised my friend I'll give him a hand the next time he wants to start a new character.  I'll even start a new toon with him, if he wants, so we can play those early levels together.  I'm pretty sure it'll be fun for both of us.

Why is being smart a bad thing?

As the primary season dwindles to a close, I find myself thinking about a perennial issue in American politics --  the way some politicians play to that portion of the electorate who appear to believe well-educated, well-spoken, and generally smart candidates are somehow a bad thing.

We all know the drill: Candidate Not-My-Guy is an "elitist" -- political speak for "college educated know-it-all."  Somehow, implying someone is well-educated has become a short-hand way to disqualify him or her as a "representative of the people."  When you think about it, this is bizarre.  Do we really want our leaders to be uneducated buffoons?  (Okay, given the result of the last two presidential elections, maybe we do, but still.)  When did electing someone stupid to high office become a goal for America?  How did we end up in a situation where smart equals bad and dumb equals good?

This isn't a new phenomena.  The 19th Century gave us the "Know-Nothing" Party, and plenty of candidates for public office over the years have portrayed themselves as "just plain folks" in an effort to appeal to the masses.  But it seems to me this presents us with a larger set of contradictions  deeply woven into the fabric of American life.

We are, after all, a people who believe in upward mobility.  We want our children to do better than we did; we want them to achieve more, to be better educated, to be more successful -- in effect, to leave us behind.  (Of course, there are parents who don't want this for their children, who feel threatened by their sons or daughters' achievements, and resent it when their kids try to better themselves.  Let's leave them out of this -- they don't deserve our consideration.)  Most parents want their children to get a good education; most are willing to make tremendous financial sacrifices to see it happen.  And when their children do achieve this kind of success, these parents burst with pride, and are delighted to tell everyone how wonderful their kids are, and how great they feel about their achievements.

So, on the one hand, we applaud education, we admire success, we take pleasure in academic achievement.

And, on the other hand, we resent paying taxes for public schools, we resent teachers for seeking higher salaries, we ridicule "eggheads" and "smarty-pants," and we act like an Ivy League education is a fatal sign of elitism and a disqualifier for the most important job in the country.

Does this make any sense to anyone?

There are those who'll try to make a distinction here: they'll claim the "elitist" label isn't a reference to the candidate's education, but to his "distance" from the lives of "ordinary Americans."  Please.  No politician who's risen to the level of being a serious candidate for higher office these days can ever be truly connected to the lives of "ordinary Americans."  The citizen candidate, plucked straight off the farm like Jimmy Stewart in a Frank Capra film, is long gone -- if he or she ever existed.  All political candidates for high office are, by definition, members of the elite.  Some just hide it better than others. 

(George W. Bush hid it better than his father, with his down-home Texas twang, his malapropisms and just-folks mannerisms; but the reality is, he was born with the proverbial golden spoon shoved up high where the sun don't shine, and he has as much in common with the average American as the average American has with a starving kid from Darfur.) 

Sometimes, you've got to wonder...

Amy Walker tells it like it is...

This has been floating around the internets the last few days, and it's worth a look:

Amazing.

Making movies by the book

Back in the late 70s, early 80s, Roy Thomas and I wrote several movies together, and for a time, while the script that became "Conan the Destroyer" was in development and production, we were even "warm" -- pursued by producers and agents who wanted to rub our knobby little heads for luck and magic.  It was fun, particularly since neither of us had any idea what we were doing, at least in the "we've been to film school and we know all the rules" sense.  Like Indiana Jones, we were just making it up as we went along, writing the kind of movies we'd like to see, and doing it pretty much by gut instinct.  Stories either "felt" right, or they didn't; scenes either worked for us, or they didn't; characters were enjoyable for us to write, or they weren't.  We were flying by the seat of our paired pants, and believe it or not, it worked out pretty well.  Out of the seven or eight scripts we wrote and sold together, two were produced, and in the world of Script Development Hell, that's what's known as a terrific batting average.  Yep, we did darn well --

-- till we ran into a team of producers who knew the "rules" of writing screenplays, and decided we weren't following them.  Didn't matter we'd written two films that had been produced.  Didn't matter we were "warm" and in demand.  Didn't matter that among them, not one of these three producers actually had produced a movie.  (Two were attorneys and one was a Canadian TV animation producer.)  They read a book, and the book said there was a right way and a wrong way to structure films, and by God, these folks were gonna make sure we did it the right way.

The movie they hired us to write, by the way, was "X-Men."  This was in 1984, and somehow these folks had locked up the rights and made a deal with Orion studios to finance development.  They'd developed several scripts already with other writers, and had run out of money to fund a complete new script, so they offered us  a special deal -- they'd pay for a first draft, period.  No outline, no rewrites.  Against the advice of our agent and attorney, we took the deal.  How could we resist?  We were comic book writers; Roy had written the X-Men in comics; I was a huge fan.  Here was our chance to write a screenplay for an X-Men movie.  No way were we going to turn this down.

Biiiiig mistake.

Rule of thumb: when people don't pay you what you're worth, they treat you like you aren't worth anything.

Roy and I ended up writing two outlines, a first draft, and a revision, and it was the worst experience of our film-writing career to that point.  And that includes working with Ralph Bakshi on two scripts ("Fire and Ice" and another, unproduced screenplay); working with Dino de Laurentiis on "Conan the Destroyer;" and the disaster that was our bizarre association with the aborted Mad Magazine movie.  What made this particular experience so bad?

The producers had read a book.

The book shall remain nameless here, because I don't want to encourage any would-be screenwriters to read it and ruin their craft.  Let's just say, if you spent any time around filmmakers in the last thirty years, you encountered this book, and you know the man who wrote it developed a lucrative business running seminars purporting to teach writers how to structure films.  The concepts in this book aren't particularly insightful -- the author basically offers a way to apply theater's three-act structure to film -- but they're presented as a fool-proof, absolute technique that guarantee a perfectly structured screenplay.  Maybe so.  But in the hands of the marginally-creative (I'm referring to the executives and non-writing producers who control the development of film screenplays), these rules strangle creativity, and guarantee that every movie made is structured exactly like every other movie made.

These days, when you watch a film -- even a well-crafted one -- you probably find yourself anticipating every plot point, every emotional beat, every twist and turn.  You know, somehow, that about half an hour in, something will happen to the hero that "changes everything."  You know, in your gut, that half-way through the movie, when all looks bleak, someone will offer the hero "unexpected" support that gives him the will or the insight to carry on despite the odds.  And you know, about twenty-five minutes before the movie ends, somebody the hero loves or respects is going to die, or get kidnapped, or break up with him, or tell him he's a fool/coward/loser, and this will be the straw that breaks that heroic camel's back.  Yes, and during those last twenty-five minutes, the hero will finally confront his enemy or his inner demons, during the big trial, the climactic invasion, the last minutes before the wedding ceremony, and yes, yes, yes, he will triumph/or fail brilliantly!!  And then, just when you think it's over, guess again!  There's one last surprise that will force a fantastic piece of derring-do, or a heartfelt plea, or a ridiculous over-the-top pie fight, bringing us all home to a satisfying, completely predictable ending as the credits finally roll.

I'm not saying films shouldn't be structured, or even that the three-act structure, as such, is bad.  I'm simply pointing out there are many different kinds of structure, and films do not inherently require a three-act structure.  Unfortunately, though, in the world of The Book, only one structural formula is acceptable to the suits who write the checks.  Because that formula has become ubiquitous in modern movies, audiences have come to expect it, and feel uncomfortable when a film-maker manges, miraculously, to break the formula and do something different.  We all know what happens when audiences feel uncomfortable: they complain, and they stay away.  So the formula becomes self-reinforcing.  And we're trapped in a cycle of expectations that spiral inward to a creative and emotional dead-end.

Sigh.

Roy and I were insecure enough in our writing -- we knew we didn't know what we were doing, after all -- that we deferred to the producers' confidence and certainty in the rightness of the Book's view of structure.  We began second-guessing ourselves, we started to apply the Book's rules to our work, we began thinking in terms of three-act structures (I'd always thought in terms of the original Greek theater's five-act structure, myself), and we lost that gutsy spark of instinctive creativity that had carried us that far.  After the "X-Men" debacle (needless to say, the script we finally wrote wasn't that good) we wrote one more screenplay together, and one television project, but for me, at least, my heart had gone out of it.  I no longer trusted my instincts.  I no longer felt the hot excitement of an explorer facing an unknown adventure.

I was no longer flying by the seat of my pants, or making it up as I went along.

Pity, too.  We had a lot of fun, till we got hit with the Book.

Okay, this is just awesome...

It starts off looking like somebody's trying to do the stupidest thing ever, and then... omg... 

Free-for-all Friday: Webcomics I like

Just squeaking this update in under the wire.   Whew!

Couple of recommendations, under the heading of webcomics I like.  First off, we have Extra Life by Scott Johnson:

Next, there's You'll Have That by Wes Molebash:

And finally, last and hardly least, the ever-popular Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik:

All are lots of fun, and Extra Life sponsors a couple of great podcasts, also hosted by Scott Johnson -- Extra Life Radio and The Instance.  Scott's a funny guy, a natural radio personality.  Check out the shows, check out the comics.

(Oh, and about a post I made earlier this week, recommending the British science-fiction show Primeval:  I still recommend the first series, episodes 1-6, but I'm about half-way through the second series of seven episodes, and so far, I have to admit I'm very disappointed.  Almost everything I liked about the first series is missing from the second.  I can only assume the producers were pressured to make changes, and it's a damn shame.  Unless they manage to turn things around in the last four episodes of series two, and that doesn't seem likely, I'll have to take this show off my recommendation list.  Though I still think the first series is very good, the second series is a complete botch.  So far.  Sigh.)

The Face on the Cutting Room Floor

Just a quick note today, to recommend a book you'll have trouble getting unless you're willing to skirt the legal limits of copyright law.  (And this provides a great example of what's wrong with current copyright law, but that's a subject for another time.)  The book in question is a noir crime thriller/mystery called "The Face on the Cutting Room Floor," by Cameron McCabe.  

The title refers to the legendary (and very real) practice of cutting an actor out of a film during the editing process.  For the purposes of this book, however, the title has multiple layers of meaning -- it refers not only to the apparent victim, but to the protagonist, and, in a meta-sense, to the author of the book as well.  This is a complex, fascinating novel, one of the original noir novels that had such a tremendous influence on crime films in the 40s and 50s.  It's also a fun read, as you follow the main character -- Cameron McCabe, the narrator and ostensible author of the book -- during the investigation of the death of a young starlet, the proverbial "face on the cutting room floor."  The prose and dialog is taut, heavily influenced by writers as varied as Hammett and Hemingway, and the plot is a mind-bender.  Plot twists layered on plot twists, ironies on top of ironies, and an ending that leaves you satisfied -- but with almost none of your questions answered.

Astonishing.

Unfortunately, "Face" is out of print, and has been for over twenty years.  Penguin published the most recent edition in 1986.  So, if you want to read this book (and I really recommend you do), you'll have to pick it up as an unauthorized ebook (or try to find it in a library).  Either way, read this book.  Read it now.

The ghosts of Darrowshire

Something I really enjoy about World of Warcraft is the effort the designers make to create a compelling backstory for events and quests in the game.  Quests, in WoW, are tasks you're given by non-player characters (NPCs), and usually involve exploring locations,  delivering messages, gathering items or escorting other NPCs on dangerous missions.  In themselves they're pretty simple and repetitive.  What makes them interesting are the stories, or lore, that accompany the quests.  As you accomplish various goals you learn details about the history of Azeroth (the World of Warcraft), details about the characters who inhabit it, and you develop your reputation with different groups, or factions, that operate in the world.

The best quests, in my opinion, are those that form what's known as a "quest chain."  These are a sequence of tasks which, when accomplished, lead you to a deeper understanding of the lore, and a greater involvement with the game.  The more you do, the more you learn.  Some of what you learn is significant to your advancement; some of it just makes the game world richer.  A great example of the later is the quest chain that begins with the ghost of Pamela Redpath in Darrowshire, in the zone known as the Eastern Plaguelands.

Pamela's ghost starts you on a quest chain that ultimately takes you across Azeroth, and, if followed fully, gives you insight into some of the game's human-based lore.  To get a hint of what that might entail, have a look at this machina video created by a fan of the game, using in-game action combined with a song he'd written:



Admittedly, not the greatest song in the world (sorry, Cranius), but it should give you a sense that there's more going on here, emotionally, than just slash-and-hack.

Though there's a lot of slash-and-hack too.

Anyway, check it out, and I'll catch you later, in the Outlands...

A skeptical skeptic

Two magazines I read on a regular basis are Skeptic and Skeptical Inquirer.  Both are smart, thoughtful and intelligent, though I find Skeptic to be the better written and more entertaining.  (Any magazine that has the Amazing Randi on its editorial board is practically guaranteed to be entertaining.)  They take a reasoned and skeptical (duh) approach toward popular controversies, asking critical questions about commonly held beliefs and assumptions, and they make me think.  I rarely finish reading an issue of either magazine without being forced to confront an unconscious preconception at least once. 

(The most recent issue of Skeptic, concerning global warming, is particularly good -- while making no bones about the reality of global warming, and the likelihood that humankind's activities contribute to it, the magazine also makes a strong case against relying on climate model predictions to understand the process.)

So, I like these magazines.  I like their approach, and I enjoy reading them.

But...

One of the topics they both cover, over and over, is the social and political battle in America between creationism (or its stalking horse, "intelligent design") and the theory of evolution, and, by extension, the "debate" between science and religion.  I don't think I've read an issue of either magazine that hasn't contained an article or a book review attacking creationism  or the religious world view.  And, honestly, I'm tired of it.

Understand, I agree with the premise that religious belief is fundamentally irrational, and, in a strict sense, delusional.  I think creationism and intelligent design are an anti-intellectual fraud.  I shudder when I read that large portions of the American population "doubt" or "don't believe in" evolution.  (Evolution isn't something you "believe in."  It's an established fact and isn't subject to "belief" or "doubt."  You might as well "doubt" the law of gravity.)  And I worry for the health of our democracy when so many voters are so ill- or mis-informed.

But here's where I part company with the editors of Skeptic and Skeptical Inquirer.  I think it's futile to argue the case for evolution and atheism on any kind of rational level, as these magazines do, because belief in creationism and a personal deity is, by definition and in practice, irrational.

Just as evolution isn't a subject for belief, creationism isn't a subject for reason.

Belief in creationism and a personal deity doesn't result from a process of reasoning (the Jesuits notwithstanding), and can't be addressed by rational argument.  If it were, and if the people who held these beliefs were open to reason, there would be no debate; the question would be resolved, the subject would be closed, and we could move on to something else.

(Actually, I wonder if there is such a thing as rational thought.  According to some recent brain research, the mind apparently comes to a decision before the reasoning process even begins.  In that case, a human being isn't so much a rational animal, as a rationalizing animal.  In other words, to rephrase Descartes, the formulation shouldn't be "I think, therefore I am," it should be, "I think I think, therefore I think I am.")

No, you can't debate a creationist or a theist.  Because the basis of their world view is emotional, not rational, reason doesn't apply.  But that doesn't mean you shouldn't fight their efforts to make the rest of the world "think" the way they do.

The way to fight an emotional belief isn't by trying to reason with the believer; the way to fight an emotional belief is through emotion.

Give up appealing to their mind; appeal to their emotions.

Embarrass them.

After all, that's how proponents of creationism and theism deal with the proponents of evolution: through ridicule.  They mock the idea that "your uncle was a monkey."  They ridicule science for "leaving God out of the equation."  They laugh at our insistence that the human mind can understand anything outside "the word of God."  ("God said it, Moses wrote it, I believe it.")

So fight fire with fire.

Make fun of 'em.

"Creationism is proof Darwin was right, because only a monkey would believe the world was created in six days."

"If you're going to base your beliefs on a book, at least pick a book that's consistent and well-written, with likable characters and a plot that makes sense.  My book is Lord of the Rings.  I believe in Frodo, Gandalf, and Galadriel."

You may not convince them you're right, but there was never much hope of that anyway, so at least you can have a laugh at their expense.  That's got to be worth something.

Then, could we please move on to something else?

Short and sweet

Even though (or perhaps because) I wrote television for almost twenty years, I'm not much of a fan of American TV.  Once you've worked in the sausage factory, it's hard to get too excited when you're offered a nice helping of Kielbasa.  Karen and I do enjoy "Lost" and "Heroes," "Two and a Half Men" and "Rules of Engagement," but for the most part I can't escape the been-there, done-that feeling that much of series TV evokes.  I'm particularly bored by shows that try too hard to be different (conforming in their non-conformity, predictably "unpredictable").  And let's not even get started on so-called "reality" TV.

But there are things I like -- I mentioned a few above -- and when I do find something entertaining, I like to pass it on.  So, in that spirit, let me recommend a show you won't be able to watch here in the States till sometime later this summer.

It's called "Primeval," from ITV1 in Britain, and it combines elements of "The X-Files," "Lost," and "Heroes."  The hero is Nick Cutter, an evolutionary zoologist whose wife vanished mysteriously eight years ago.  Cutter and a team of fellow scientists have been co-opted by the British home office to investigate the appearance of creatures from earth's primeval past, who arrive in the present through inexplicable "anomalies" -- wormholes that cut through time and space.  The storyline is both character- and action-driven, the writing is smart, and the acting is first rate.  As for the special effects -- frankly, they're spectacular, and much better than you'd ever expect to see on a television series.  The first run of shows, which premiered in the UK last year, comprised six episodes and ended with a terrific cliff-hanger.  The second series just finished its run on ITV1, and there's a third series in the works.  BBC America picked up the rights, and plans to run it on Sunday nights along with "Torchwood" and "Robin Hood."

(I picked up the DVD set of the first series a few months ago from Amazon UK, and ran it on my region-free, PAL-compatible DVD player.  This, by the way, is a great way to get American shows on DVD before they're released here.)

Highly, highly recommended.

Sad day...

Karen's father passed away today.

Saturday: Comics I Like

Here's a sweeping statement I'm happy to admit probably has less truth to it than I'd like to think, but which I'm going to make anyway:  Comic book artists today can be divided into two camps, originating from two different approaches to graphical art and storytelling.  

The first approach is what I'd call form-and-function realism, and can trace its origins back to Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon, among others.  Raymond's artistic descendants include artists as varied as Al Williamson, Neal Adams, John Buscema, Mike Kaluta, and Alex Ross.  (Talk about variation.)  Their primary emphasis seems to be on form and mood, and while realism per se isn't always their goal (certainly not in Kaluta's case), they use techniques based in realism to achieve their ends -- form, shadow, an approximation of the natural world.  All of it rooted in the dramatic, "realistic" approach first really popularized by Alex Raymond in his newspaper strip, Flash Gordon, and later, in Rip Kirby.

The other style, for lack of a better term (or at least, for lack of any term that comes to me at the moment), I'll call cartoon-and-graphic-based, and its primary source is the work of Milton Caniff on his newspaper strip, Terry & the Pirates, and later, on Steve Canyon.  Caniff's approach has been inherited by comic book artists like Jack Kirby, John Romita, Ross Andru, and lately, the brothers Hernandez, and Darwyn Cooke.   Here the emphasis is on storytelling-through-graphics,  with less concern for realism, and more attention given to a clean, dramatic line.  Most comic books today seem to be descended more from the Caniff line than from that represented by Raymond.  

I'm not making a value judgment about the artist merits of either style -- I think they're both terrific.  I just find it interesting, and worth thinking about.  I started thinking about it when I looked through a recent reprint of a Justice League story I wrote years ago, drawn by Dick Dillin.  It occurred to me Dick's art owed a great debt to Milton Caniff, and that got me thinking about some of the other artists I'd worked with -- like Romita, and Andru (influenced by Caniff), and Don Newton and Dick Giordano (influenced by Raymond).  I've also been re-reading Caniff's Terry & the Pirates and Steve Canyon:

I've also had a lot of fun reading Tom Roberts' new (heavily illustrated) biography of Alex Raymond:

Thoughts?  Comments?  Let me know.