Things I've done since the end of the worst relationship ever - for me, for anyone I know, for the entire planet:
1) Bought a membership at 24 Hour Fitness. Expensive. More than I could afford even if I had a job with a salary. I ease my conscience by going 5 or 6 times a week. I lift until the muscles in my left arm shake, like the shivery tremors that cascaded down the arms of the old priest who would substitute teach at my high school, a serious looking man, perpetually embarrassed by his age. I run in front of the TV set that plays CNN. I watch Kanye West's mom die.
2) Bought a Netflix membership. Watched French New Wave. Watched the two Terrence Malick movies I hadn't seen yet - "Badlands" and "Days of Heaven," both about romance - human love, and Malick's passionate zeal for the weird beautiful living world. Watched "Vertigo."
3) Bought an eighth. Spent Thanksgiving weekend in a haze of glitter weed. Discovered that I could write while stoned.
4) Started a novel. Wrote almost 200 pages. Can't figure out what to do next. Have barely touched it in two days.
5) Started a beard, concurrent to the novel. November is National Novel Writing Month. November is No Shave November. I haven't cut my hair or shaved my face in weeks.
6) Gained a few pounds. At one point last Winter or Spring - in the bad time, the weird depressive times - I was at 159. Not even Manorexic. Skinful. Now, zipped up to a healthy 175. Eating lots of carrots and apples.
7) Stayed in on two consecutive Saturdays. Watched movies. Wrote my novel. Stared out my window at San Francisco, pondering the weekend from the outside, wondering if I would ever feel more a part of the human race, if anyone did.
8) Met a random girl on a random night in SF. Turned out poorly for several reasons.
9) Took part in a Stanford study on back pain. Popping pills thrice a day. Between the back pain and the mental pain, I feel like a real adult.
10) Pined after the cute Asian girl law student who drinks coffee and studies at the cafe just down the street from McSweeney's. I exchanged furtive glances with the air around her waiting for her to notice me. Every time I walk into the cafe in the morning, I always say, "If Cute Asian Girl Law Student is in here today, then this time, I'm going to ask her out." And Every Time, she's in there. Awkward, awkward, awkward, ragged claws scurvy maws.
11) Tomorrow I'm going to walk into a barber and ask for a shave and a haircut. I don't want to do this for many reason. I have had the beard (or stubble, or scruff) for as long as I've been writing the novel. Samson and Delilah, you know? And I've just gotten used to it. Do I want to look in the mirror and see myself three years younger? But can I deal with the pretension of having a beard? Why is it that no choice in life is ever remotely clear cut? Why do I feel the presence, a few neutrino pathways to the right, of an alternate universe where everything is different?
12) I finally transferred a bunch of songs from my old computer onto my new one, and when I did that I found a playlist that I constructed as a soundtrack for the movie I was making with my old high school friends the summer of 2005, when I was working in Los Angeles during the week and then driving down to San Diego on weekends to make the movie. And when I drove back and forth I would listen to the soundtrack, and such beautiful images would appear in my mind's eye. When I listened to the theme music from "Last of the Mohicans" I could see the finale of my own movie with crystal clarity, as if touched by some mad demon with an interest in amateur filmmaking.
For the first time in a long time - since Berlin, almost two years ago - I get that feeling with music, again. And that feels good. Content.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Wes Anderson
One of my writing teachers had an interesting theory about Hemingway. We had been reading "The Sun Also Rises," which is still the only Hemingway I've read besides "The Snows of Kilamanjaro." It was a senior-year lit class, affectionately called the Novel Salon. Each week, we take a different book, read it, dissect it, ponder why it works and why it doesn't. It wasn't literary analysis. We were all writers, or wanted to be. The prideful spite-fink in me felt no end of aroused dignity, considering that I was the only writer in class recognizable to the local public at large. Celebrity pride, senior year pre-graduation pride, starting-a-relationship pride - it was an interesting time.
Anyways, the teacher's theory went thusly - "The Sun Also Rises" was the breakthrough for the Hemingway form, stripped of excess emotion, descriptive of only the barest actions, deadpan dialogue that ran on until you forgot who was talking to who and wondered if it even mattered. It's the Hemingway that everyone has read - true connoisseurs sample the better chapters of "A Moveable Feast" (the best ones involve Fitzgerald), when you reach a certain age you have to read "The Old Man and the Sea." And it is told entirely from the perspective of Jake Barnes, with his old war wound that left him impotent, maybe even castrated. When you understand that about Jake, and you see how it affects his worldview - to Hemingway, and to Barnes, to be asexual is to be neutral, disinterested, vague - then Hemingway's style makes sense. A first-person narrator who is distant from his own life is unbearably sad, like the book itself.
But after "The Sun Also Rises" (according to the teacher), Hemingway wrote predominantly in the third person, and although his writing was still good, there was something essentially wrong with it. The notion of a single individual cut off from the world is sad; the notion that everyone is like that, every character, the godlike omniscient narrator, is just a little bit lazy, and depressive, and nihilistic.
I thought of the teacher's theory last night, as I fell asleep to "The Royal Tenenbaums," I movie which I passionately loved when I first saw it in theaters. For three years after, Wes Anderson struck me as a genuine film artist. When I heard that his next movie was going to be a high-seas adventure involving claymation and Bill Murray, my head exploded. But then "The Life Aquatic" came out. There is much brilliance in the movie, but there is something missing, too. It is a film lovers' candy land, the kind of adventure we all dreamed of having. But so much of the movie is adrift. The final scenes are moving, and yet, so few of the characters in the film have any real emotional arc. The middle hour is little more than a bunch of people hanging out in beautiful sets. And the sets are beautiful. But it's an empty beauty.
It steadily began to dawn on everyone else that "Life Aquatic" was not the genius film we were expecting, and so, by the time "The Darjeeling Limited" arrived in theaters, Anderson-bashing was a genuine pastime.
I haven't seen "Darjeeling," though I want to. But having reviewed "Royal Tenenbaums," I think I've finally figured out the problem with "Life Aquatic." There are a bunch of great actors in "Tenenbaums," but the most underrated has to be Alec Baldwin, in what might be his best performance, his gravel voice combining the gravitas of his earlier glamour-boy roles with the light whimsy of his current comedic second act. It's Baldwin who directs us, like a good storyteller or a wise old medicine man or a filmmaker, in the film's opening scenes, which cut across decades of Tenenbaum life, introducing us to all the characters at a whip-quick pace that could have come out of Pynchon or Roald Dahl.
There is no Baldwin voice in "Life Aquatic" - and that is a problem. Like the Tenenbaum children, Steve Zissou is a genius past his prime, a great talent descended into mediocrity. The narrator in "Tenenbaums" shows us that great talent; in "Life Aquatic," we have to take it on faith, and just to make sure, Anderson keeps making other characters say, "Steve is great, we love Steve, we'd do anything for him." Brilliant as Bill Murray can be, he lets his characters find him, and not the other way around - and he can never (to me) summon up the authority of someone who is supposed to be such a great leader of men. (He works better in "Lost in Translation" and "Broken Flowers" with his lifelong loners.)
"Royal Tenenbaums" feels much closer because of the narration - first-person cinema. We can understand the heavily stylized atmosphere - this is a fairy tale, a book gotten from a library, a retelling of an old story. "Life Aquatic" feels much more removed - third-person cinema. It feels like it should be more realistic, not more kitschy.
That's my theory anyways.
"Hotel Chevalier" rocks.
Anyways, the teacher's theory went thusly - "The Sun Also Rises" was the breakthrough for the Hemingway form, stripped of excess emotion, descriptive of only the barest actions, deadpan dialogue that ran on until you forgot who was talking to who and wondered if it even mattered. It's the Hemingway that everyone has read - true connoisseurs sample the better chapters of "A Moveable Feast" (the best ones involve Fitzgerald), when you reach a certain age you have to read "The Old Man and the Sea." And it is told entirely from the perspective of Jake Barnes, with his old war wound that left him impotent, maybe even castrated. When you understand that about Jake, and you see how it affects his worldview - to Hemingway, and to Barnes, to be asexual is to be neutral, disinterested, vague - then Hemingway's style makes sense. A first-person narrator who is distant from his own life is unbearably sad, like the book itself.
But after "The Sun Also Rises" (according to the teacher), Hemingway wrote predominantly in the third person, and although his writing was still good, there was something essentially wrong with it. The notion of a single individual cut off from the world is sad; the notion that everyone is like that, every character, the godlike omniscient narrator, is just a little bit lazy, and depressive, and nihilistic.
I thought of the teacher's theory last night, as I fell asleep to "The Royal Tenenbaums," I movie which I passionately loved when I first saw it in theaters. For three years after, Wes Anderson struck me as a genuine film artist. When I heard that his next movie was going to be a high-seas adventure involving claymation and Bill Murray, my head exploded. But then "The Life Aquatic" came out. There is much brilliance in the movie, but there is something missing, too. It is a film lovers' candy land, the kind of adventure we all dreamed of having. But so much of the movie is adrift. The final scenes are moving, and yet, so few of the characters in the film have any real emotional arc. The middle hour is little more than a bunch of people hanging out in beautiful sets. And the sets are beautiful. But it's an empty beauty.
It steadily began to dawn on everyone else that "Life Aquatic" was not the genius film we were expecting, and so, by the time "The Darjeeling Limited" arrived in theaters, Anderson-bashing was a genuine pastime.
I haven't seen "Darjeeling," though I want to. But having reviewed "Royal Tenenbaums," I think I've finally figured out the problem with "Life Aquatic." There are a bunch of great actors in "Tenenbaums," but the most underrated has to be Alec Baldwin, in what might be his best performance, his gravel voice combining the gravitas of his earlier glamour-boy roles with the light whimsy of his current comedic second act. It's Baldwin who directs us, like a good storyteller or a wise old medicine man or a filmmaker, in the film's opening scenes, which cut across decades of Tenenbaum life, introducing us to all the characters at a whip-quick pace that could have come out of Pynchon or Roald Dahl.
There is no Baldwin voice in "Life Aquatic" - and that is a problem. Like the Tenenbaum children, Steve Zissou is a genius past his prime, a great talent descended into mediocrity. The narrator in "Tenenbaums" shows us that great talent; in "Life Aquatic," we have to take it on faith, and just to make sure, Anderson keeps making other characters say, "Steve is great, we love Steve, we'd do anything for him." Brilliant as Bill Murray can be, he lets his characters find him, and not the other way around - and he can never (to me) summon up the authority of someone who is supposed to be such a great leader of men. (He works better in "Lost in Translation" and "Broken Flowers" with his lifelong loners.)
"Royal Tenenbaums" feels much closer because of the narration - first-person cinema. We can understand the heavily stylized atmosphere - this is a fairy tale, a book gotten from a library, a retelling of an old story. "Life Aquatic" feels much more removed - third-person cinema. It feels like it should be more realistic, not more kitschy.
That's my theory anyways.
"Hotel Chevalier" rocks.
National Novel Writing Month: Finish Line
Word count: Forty-eight thousand, eight hundred, sixty six. That reads alot better than 48866, the counter on the bottom of the microsoft word document. (I actually type in TextEdit - no page numbers, no word counter. Makes it feel a bit more like a typewriter, without the annoying clacking, or the ink. I tried typing with a typewriter once. Not a success.)
I'm just over a thousand words from finishing the National Novel Writing Month goal of 50 thousand words. That is good. It is also good that I am not quite fazed by the notion of one thousand words. I have maintained a good, steady, true pace. I write for an hour, maybe more, besides all the creative mind work at my unpaid internship. I work out for an hour, maybe less. I just bought my first ever set of gym gloves. I never wanted to be one of those gym glove guys, mainly because with my physique, it seemed a little bit pretentious. Then I saw a guy who was Peter Parker without the spider bite, complete with coke bottle glasses and long skinny arms, a white tank top and short black shorts. That motherfucker has a gym glove, shit man, I'm a fucking guido boxing king by comparison. There goes my italian american demographic.
Most of the paragraphs in the novel (it's still not a book, yet - maybe in another hundred pages) read like the one I just wrote. Vague. Wandering. Perhaps insightful, perhaps obnoxious. There's editing material.
Of course, the problem is, I'm not even halfway there. Not close. Activity still must happen. Twists must be coiled. Lives must be cut short, unexpectedly, sorrowfully. This current chapter (3 of 5) I want to be a real gothic romance. Mistaken identity. Misshapen love polygons. Mind rape.
I've been exceptionally content the last few days. There is a desperate part of my mind that can't stop screaming that it's only temporary. The plan was always to show up to Gaieties on Wednesday clean shaven and cut haired. But girls keep giving me mixed signals. Some say keep it all - grow the scruff. Others say lose the half-beard, keep the long flowy hair. All I want is a definitive answer. Then again, it will be nice to meet with people I haven't seen in awhile and not get their two-second what-the-fuck-is-on-your-face stare. My uncle George made the first Jesus crack. Bless you, my son.
I'm just over a thousand words from finishing the National Novel Writing Month goal of 50 thousand words. That is good. It is also good that I am not quite fazed by the notion of one thousand words. I have maintained a good, steady, true pace. I write for an hour, maybe more, besides all the creative mind work at my unpaid internship. I work out for an hour, maybe less. I just bought my first ever set of gym gloves. I never wanted to be one of those gym glove guys, mainly because with my physique, it seemed a little bit pretentious. Then I saw a guy who was Peter Parker without the spider bite, complete with coke bottle glasses and long skinny arms, a white tank top and short black shorts. That motherfucker has a gym glove, shit man, I'm a fucking guido boxing king by comparison. There goes my italian american demographic.
Most of the paragraphs in the novel (it's still not a book, yet - maybe in another hundred pages) read like the one I just wrote. Vague. Wandering. Perhaps insightful, perhaps obnoxious. There's editing material.
Of course, the problem is, I'm not even halfway there. Not close. Activity still must happen. Twists must be coiled. Lives must be cut short, unexpectedly, sorrowfully. This current chapter (3 of 5) I want to be a real gothic romance. Mistaken identity. Misshapen love polygons. Mind rape.
I've been exceptionally content the last few days. There is a desperate part of my mind that can't stop screaming that it's only temporary. The plan was always to show up to Gaieties on Wednesday clean shaven and cut haired. But girls keep giving me mixed signals. Some say keep it all - grow the scruff. Others say lose the half-beard, keep the long flowy hair. All I want is a definitive answer. Then again, it will be nice to meet with people I haven't seen in awhile and not get their two-second what-the-fuck-is-on-your-face stare. My uncle George made the first Jesus crack. Bless you, my son.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
"Dan In Real Life"
Steve Carell excels at the comedy of loneliness. He can play abrasive (his old Daily Show personality) and stupid (his retard savant in "Ron Burgundy," which is still the stupidest movie that everyone I know loved - everything about it, stupid, idiotic, dull, pandering comedy, except for the cameo by Vince Vaughn and everything Steve Carell says or does). But in "The Forty Year Old Virgin," in "The Office," and now, in the instantly underrated "Dan In Real Life," he excels at playing men who are quietly desperate for, and frightened of, other people.
Yes, Michael Scott on "The Office" is a loudmouth - almost a carbon copy, at first glance, of that earlier Daily Show personality. But there was a moment in the second season when the show moved past its status as a remake of the funniest show ever - the Halloween episode, which ended with Michael, alone in his big empty house, answering the door to give kids some candy. It was a rare moment of real quiet - as opposed to awkward, eye-rolling, stuttering quiet that the show turns into comic gold. That episode, coming so soon after "Virgin," sealed Carell's personality. It will always be hard not to like him.
"Dan in Real Life" was marketed terribly and will not make nearly as much money as it should, but it was cheap, and it will live on. It's the kind of movie you hope families will watch together. That's how I saw it - it was our Thanksgiving movie (it was that or "Into the Wild.") It's about a family reunion, and has a little bit in common with "The Family Stone," that terrifying mishmash of contrivance and emotion. "The Family Stone" packed a bunch of talented people with big names (Claire Danes, Sarah Jessica Parker, Diane Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Craig T. Nelson, Luke Wilson), and then wasted them. "Dan in Real Life" flips the equation - the extended family is full of unfamous character actors (Amy Ryan from "Gone Baby Gone," frequent "Friends" guest star Jessica Hecht,) and they've all got great material.
This is a rare kind of family movie where you feel as if you know everyone. The peak of the movie comes when Steve Carell and Dane Cook sing "Let My Love Open the Door," by Pete Townshend. Everything that has brought the film to this point sounds mawkish at best. Carell is a single father - he has brought his three precocious daughters to the annual family reunion - he misses his wife, goes to a local bookstore, meets a beautiful French woman who could probably only be played by Juliette Binoche - it turns out, surprise surprise, she's dating his rascal brother, Dane Cook - he loves her, he can't say anything, he loves his brother - and then, the family puts on its Talent Show. Has any family ever put on a talent show?
And Dane Cook wants to impress his girlfriend (who, we are quite sure now, has fallen for Carell - she reads his book, after all!) So he has his loving brother help him sing "Let My Love Open the Door." But Cook forgets the words, and Carell knows all of them. And they sing, and they both look straight at Binoche. And I would have been fine if the scene had gone on forever - if Carell and Cook, having reached the end of the song, kept on humming, invented new words, always returning to the chorus, which Carell whisper-sings in his little voice, almost on the edge of crying. The song ends - it has to - and there is a reverse shot on the entire family - there might be 20 of them, it's hard to count. And I realized, in the few seconds that shot held, that I felt like I knew every single one of these people. And I didn't want the movie to keep going, because it had to solve its romantic conundrum, and there was no way to solve it without becoming a movie movie as opposed to a slice of real life.
And the movie doesn't quite solve itself. The last scenes are the weakest - except for the penultimate scene, where Carell has to explain himself to his daughters, and to himself. Steve Carell for Best Actor, dude.
Yes, Michael Scott on "The Office" is a loudmouth - almost a carbon copy, at first glance, of that earlier Daily Show personality. But there was a moment in the second season when the show moved past its status as a remake of the funniest show ever - the Halloween episode, which ended with Michael, alone in his big empty house, answering the door to give kids some candy. It was a rare moment of real quiet - as opposed to awkward, eye-rolling, stuttering quiet that the show turns into comic gold. That episode, coming so soon after "Virgin," sealed Carell's personality. It will always be hard not to like him.
"Dan in Real Life" was marketed terribly and will not make nearly as much money as it should, but it was cheap, and it will live on. It's the kind of movie you hope families will watch together. That's how I saw it - it was our Thanksgiving movie (it was that or "Into the Wild.") It's about a family reunion, and has a little bit in common with "The Family Stone," that terrifying mishmash of contrivance and emotion. "The Family Stone" packed a bunch of talented people with big names (Claire Danes, Sarah Jessica Parker, Diane Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Craig T. Nelson, Luke Wilson), and then wasted them. "Dan in Real Life" flips the equation - the extended family is full of unfamous character actors (Amy Ryan from "Gone Baby Gone," frequent "Friends" guest star Jessica Hecht,) and they've all got great material.
This is a rare kind of family movie where you feel as if you know everyone. The peak of the movie comes when Steve Carell and Dane Cook sing "Let My Love Open the Door," by Pete Townshend. Everything that has brought the film to this point sounds mawkish at best. Carell is a single father - he has brought his three precocious daughters to the annual family reunion - he misses his wife, goes to a local bookstore, meets a beautiful French woman who could probably only be played by Juliette Binoche - it turns out, surprise surprise, she's dating his rascal brother, Dane Cook - he loves her, he can't say anything, he loves his brother - and then, the family puts on its Talent Show. Has any family ever put on a talent show?
And Dane Cook wants to impress his girlfriend (who, we are quite sure now, has fallen for Carell - she reads his book, after all!) So he has his loving brother help him sing "Let My Love Open the Door." But Cook forgets the words, and Carell knows all of them. And they sing, and they both look straight at Binoche. And I would have been fine if the scene had gone on forever - if Carell and Cook, having reached the end of the song, kept on humming, invented new words, always returning to the chorus, which Carell whisper-sings in his little voice, almost on the edge of crying. The song ends - it has to - and there is a reverse shot on the entire family - there might be 20 of them, it's hard to count. And I realized, in the few seconds that shot held, that I felt like I knew every single one of these people. And I didn't want the movie to keep going, because it had to solve its romantic conundrum, and there was no way to solve it without becoming a movie movie as opposed to a slice of real life.
And the movie doesn't quite solve itself. The last scenes are the weakest - except for the penultimate scene, where Carell has to explain himself to his daughters, and to himself. Steve Carell for Best Actor, dude.
Blog Blog Blog
I haven't added to this bad boy in almost two weeks - perhaps because I've realized the futility ("realize the futility" could be a good name for a "curb your enthusiasm" spoof), or because I've been spending all my time writing the novel, or maybe I just got spooked because someone told me they'd been reading this. Two someones. I prefer writing for the ether. It doesn't talk back, except in the back of my mind, where it sounds a bit like Orson Welles (late-period fat-happy), and it always say, "Good show, old kid!" Then he turns back to his game of baccarat with Scrooge McDuck (voiced by Sean Connery) and Bruce Wayne (future Bruce Wayne from "The Dark Knight Returns.") and Clint Eastwood (Clint Eastwood).
Nothing happened in the last two weeks. I like my new shrink. We threw a party. Thanksgiving came. The Christmas season is starting. I haven't shaved or cut my hair. My novel swelled without growing. Seriously, the entire second part (which I was hoping would be deeply psychological) is a long and vague slog forward. How do you write good traveling? My characters seem to exist separately, each in their own universe. Whenever they don't talk, I write these long elaborate paragraphs that zip and zap and zop from one not-quite-topic to the next:
Andy stared down the rooftops. The landscape had a perverse kind of beauty in its outline. The dull space-maximized square buildings, laid along one after the other - along the middle there were entire low-cost patches owned and operated by cut-rate apartmentiers who promised a number of amenities to supplement the crushing claustrophobia of existence therein. Each tiny room was outfitted with a soundway - a once-popular portway derivation which absorbed only the sound and passed it along through the ether. You could order a beachside soundway and fall asleep to the push-pull of the waves; or a forest soundway, with wind cresting through the trees and obnoxiously undomesticated creatures moaning generic cries of woe and hunger. Andy knew this, because Johnny lived in one of those cheap little apartment blocks. His apartment was large - his parents were the landlords - and yet, Andy had taken many long hours, that first time in Johnny's room, getting over the fact that there were no windows.
Then there will follow a dialogue sequence written like something Hemingway crammed out in a night of hard coffee and cheap wine:
"You think this is transcendence?" asked Johnny. "Those are all the people. The brains. They've been absorbed into this place - whatever it is."
"It's not," said Maura. "Look at them, at their faces. They look so happy."
"They're drugged."
"They're in heaven."
"They're in prison."
"Maybe heaven is a prison," Maura said. "Would that be so bad?"
Johnny said, "Yes."
"What if you didn't know it was a prison?" Maura asked. "If you were happy forever with no second thoughts?"
"It would still be a prison," said Johnny.
"You're just like Andy," said Maura.
"I like to think he's just like me," said Johnny.
People keep asking me what the novel is about. I change the subject and mention that their new article of clothing looks great. Then they comment on my scruff. Well, one person (a girl person) (from work) said I looked scruffy. Other adjectives accrue. Who am I kidding. I look like I spent two weeks in a prison sniffing glue. Also, I think I'm gaining weight. I blame "Curb Your Enthusiam" for all this complaining.
The one good thing about the novel is that it is a novel. It is long and dull and torpid and bland and pretentious and unabsorbing, but it is over 150 pages long, with no end in sight, and so it is a genuine novel now. I just need to keep writing it. I don't have the parachute of "It's just for National Novel Writing Month" or "It's just to see if I can do it." Now it's getting real. Do I like my characters? A little bit. I've killed off a couple without batting an eyelash. Could I kill off the rest of them? I have to. I have to kill off one of my favorites - a girl, an important girl. Looking back, I've adopted a kind of close third person for almost everyone but her - when it comes to her mind, I turn away, embarrassed, maybe even frightened. Nervous, certainly. The other women in the book are either no-bullshit flirty, violently maternal, or insane. My main guys are anxious, amused, adventurous, and arrogant.
This is supposed to be a fantasy novel. They are supposed to scale the top of the world. But there is so little wonder in my book right now. It has everything bad about fantasy and realism with none of the good parts. I'm the worst writer ever. I hate myself and everyone around me. I love the world too much to do so little justice to it in book form. There are too many beautiful and amazing things that appear in front of my eyes every day. Today I walked around San Francisco with a friend and sat near Fisherman's Wharf and looked out on Alcatraz and Sausalito and the Golden Gate Bridge. How do you describe that? I just did, poorly. On a clear day, you can see too many things from the window of my apartment. I hope that heaven lets you time travel. It has to, right?
My best friend thinks I'm a tortured writer. But the torture is entirely self-inflicted. The world doesn't torture me. The urge to capture it does. HP Lovecraft wrote, "I am well-nigh resolv'd to write no more tales, but merely to dream when I have a mind to, not stopping to do anything so vulgar as to set down the dream." That's exactly how I feel. Dreams are much nicer when you don't feel the terrific desperate need to set them down in print.
Nothing happened in the last two weeks. I like my new shrink. We threw a party. Thanksgiving came. The Christmas season is starting. I haven't shaved or cut my hair. My novel swelled without growing. Seriously, the entire second part (which I was hoping would be deeply psychological) is a long and vague slog forward. How do you write good traveling? My characters seem to exist separately, each in their own universe. Whenever they don't talk, I write these long elaborate paragraphs that zip and zap and zop from one not-quite-topic to the next:
Andy stared down the rooftops. The landscape had a perverse kind of beauty in its outline. The dull space-maximized square buildings, laid along one after the other - along the middle there were entire low-cost patches owned and operated by cut-rate apartmentiers who promised a number of amenities to supplement the crushing claustrophobia of existence therein. Each tiny room was outfitted with a soundway - a once-popular portway derivation which absorbed only the sound and passed it along through the ether. You could order a beachside soundway and fall asleep to the push-pull of the waves; or a forest soundway, with wind cresting through the trees and obnoxiously undomesticated creatures moaning generic cries of woe and hunger. Andy knew this, because Johnny lived in one of those cheap little apartment blocks. His apartment was large - his parents were the landlords - and yet, Andy had taken many long hours, that first time in Johnny's room, getting over the fact that there were no windows.
Then there will follow a dialogue sequence written like something Hemingway crammed out in a night of hard coffee and cheap wine:
"You think this is transcendence?" asked Johnny. "Those are all the people. The brains. They've been absorbed into this place - whatever it is."
"It's not," said Maura. "Look at them, at their faces. They look so happy."
"They're drugged."
"They're in heaven."
"They're in prison."
"Maybe heaven is a prison," Maura said. "Would that be so bad?"
Johnny said, "Yes."
"What if you didn't know it was a prison?" Maura asked. "If you were happy forever with no second thoughts?"
"It would still be a prison," said Johnny.
"You're just like Andy," said Maura.
"I like to think he's just like me," said Johnny.
People keep asking me what the novel is about. I change the subject and mention that their new article of clothing looks great. Then they comment on my scruff. Well, one person (a girl person) (from work) said I looked scruffy. Other adjectives accrue. Who am I kidding. I look like I spent two weeks in a prison sniffing glue. Also, I think I'm gaining weight. I blame "Curb Your Enthusiam" for all this complaining.
The one good thing about the novel is that it is a novel. It is long and dull and torpid and bland and pretentious and unabsorbing, but it is over 150 pages long, with no end in sight, and so it is a genuine novel now. I just need to keep writing it. I don't have the parachute of "It's just for National Novel Writing Month" or "It's just to see if I can do it." Now it's getting real. Do I like my characters? A little bit. I've killed off a couple without batting an eyelash. Could I kill off the rest of them? I have to. I have to kill off one of my favorites - a girl, an important girl. Looking back, I've adopted a kind of close third person for almost everyone but her - when it comes to her mind, I turn away, embarrassed, maybe even frightened. Nervous, certainly. The other women in the book are either no-bullshit flirty, violently maternal, or insane. My main guys are anxious, amused, adventurous, and arrogant.
This is supposed to be a fantasy novel. They are supposed to scale the top of the world. But there is so little wonder in my book right now. It has everything bad about fantasy and realism with none of the good parts. I'm the worst writer ever. I hate myself and everyone around me. I love the world too much to do so little justice to it in book form. There are too many beautiful and amazing things that appear in front of my eyes every day. Today I walked around San Francisco with a friend and sat near Fisherman's Wharf and looked out on Alcatraz and Sausalito and the Golden Gate Bridge. How do you describe that? I just did, poorly. On a clear day, you can see too many things from the window of my apartment. I hope that heaven lets you time travel. It has to, right?
My best friend thinks I'm a tortured writer. But the torture is entirely self-inflicted. The world doesn't torture me. The urge to capture it does. HP Lovecraft wrote, "I am well-nigh resolv'd to write no more tales, but merely to dream when I have a mind to, not stopping to do anything so vulgar as to set down the dream." That's exactly how I feel. Dreams are much nicer when you don't feel the terrific desperate need to set them down in print.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Razor Thick
There was a point in my life - from the start of high school until perhaps midway through college - when I lived a life in perpetual denial of my origins, embarrassed, fearful that other kids would find me strange or hateful. I was, you see, a closet geek. I stopped visiting comic book stores, I hid all my old "Star Wars" novels in my family's dark labyrinthine storage closet, I tried fill up my brain with indie-popular music. To no avail. It gives me tingles when I buy a hardbound comic book collection. Epic fantasy novels set me free. ComicCon is my Mecca. George R. R. Marten is my god.
And last night was one of the best nights of my life. I got to watch a new "Battlestar Galactica" on a real-life movie screen. "Razor," a double-episode movie event that the show's producers hammered together to bide time before season 4 debuts in April, brings together everything great and wonderful about the show into a neat little standalone package. Like "Lost," the show excels at combining pop-SF scenarios with highbrow speculative themes - space battles and moral ambiguity never mixed so smoothly.
The main character in "Razor" is Kendra Shaw - a newbie to the series, played by Stephanie Chaves-Jacobsen, a halfie actress born in Hong Kong and raised in Australia. She says "frak" like she means it and takes no shit from nobody, not when she's delivering commands, not when she's slipping off to the bowels of the ship to inject a little happy juice into her neck. Drug abuse is treated casually by the show, as are two characters' heretofore unrevealed lesbianism - and there are also throwaway references to abortion (it's been outlawed) and genetic experimentation (think stem cell research with grown-up human people instead of leftover baby matter).
The plot flashes back to follow the story of the "Pegasus," running concurrent to the timeline of the series proper but presenting a Bizarro-world version where the characters' choices lead them beyond damnation. It's reminiscent of the second season "Lost" episode that followed the trials and travails of the Tail-end survivors - more evidence that these two shows belong together in a new pantheon science-fiction storytelling, playing with viewers' perception and suggesting, "Rashomon" style, a world without good and evil, beyond any normal strain of morality. Like most episodes of "Lost," "Razor" is all about the search for redemption - Kendra has some demons in her past - and somehow, the "Battlestar" geniuses weave plenty of background mythology into an essentially standalone piece.
And last night was one of the best nights of my life. I got to watch a new "Battlestar Galactica" on a real-life movie screen. "Razor," a double-episode movie event that the show's producers hammered together to bide time before season 4 debuts in April, brings together everything great and wonderful about the show into a neat little standalone package. Like "Lost," the show excels at combining pop-SF scenarios with highbrow speculative themes - space battles and moral ambiguity never mixed so smoothly.
The main character in "Razor" is Kendra Shaw - a newbie to the series, played by Stephanie Chaves-Jacobsen, a halfie actress born in Hong Kong and raised in Australia. She says "frak" like she means it and takes no shit from nobody, not when she's delivering commands, not when she's slipping off to the bowels of the ship to inject a little happy juice into her neck. Drug abuse is treated casually by the show, as are two characters' heretofore unrevealed lesbianism - and there are also throwaway references to abortion (it's been outlawed) and genetic experimentation (think stem cell research with grown-up human people instead of leftover baby matter).
The plot flashes back to follow the story of the "Pegasus," running concurrent to the timeline of the series proper but presenting a Bizarro-world version where the characters' choices lead them beyond damnation. It's reminiscent of the second season "Lost" episode that followed the trials and travails of the Tail-end survivors - more evidence that these two shows belong together in a new pantheon science-fiction storytelling, playing with viewers' perception and suggesting, "Rashomon" style, a world without good and evil, beyond any normal strain of morality. Like most episodes of "Lost," "Razor" is all about the search for redemption - Kendra has some demons in her past - and somehow, the "Battlestar" geniuses weave plenty of background mythology into an essentially standalone piece.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
National Writing Month: The Best Day Ever
I woke up today with one thing in mind: I was going to get my poor characters out of that god damn bar.
See, in constructing my vague outline for this thing (I don't even like calling it a novel anymore - it feels more like this big, swaddling, B-movie Blob creature), I had always envisioned Part One as this sort of storm-is-gathering introduction - all the characters come together in a tiny bar at the top of a hill at the far side of the world from their eventual goal, learn their purpose, set off on their quest. The good news is that more than 18 thousand words later, I've got nine protagonists, two potential antagonists, an entire world mapped out, and several assorted mysteries to solve.
But they were still in that god damned stupid idiotic bar. (Inside the McGuff Inn. Get it?)
I'm not going to stare a man in the face and say that these are exactly well-mapped characters. I came up with most of the names and backgrounds on the fly. But if they aren't quite breathing yet, they've at least got a pulse.
So I woke up around 9 and slept until 10. The fact that I'm going to start a low-(but-nevertheless-definitively-)paid telecommuting job has sapped my passion for arriving to my fascinating yet unpaid job earlier than noon. I woke up and decided that I would go to the gym. At the gym I realized how I was going to get them out of the bar. I ate Chinese food in a take-out restaurant called "Asia Chinese Food." I came home. I watched TV. I did a blog posting. And then I started writing.
They're out of the bar. At long, long last, they're out of the bar.
Now I have no idea what to do next.
See, in constructing my vague outline for this thing (I don't even like calling it a novel anymore - it feels more like this big, swaddling, B-movie Blob creature), I had always envisioned Part One as this sort of storm-is-gathering introduction - all the characters come together in a tiny bar at the top of a hill at the far side of the world from their eventual goal, learn their purpose, set off on their quest. The good news is that more than 18 thousand words later, I've got nine protagonists, two potential antagonists, an entire world mapped out, and several assorted mysteries to solve.
But they were still in that god damned stupid idiotic bar. (Inside the McGuff Inn. Get it?)
I'm not going to stare a man in the face and say that these are exactly well-mapped characters. I came up with most of the names and backgrounds on the fly. But if they aren't quite breathing yet, they've at least got a pulse.
So I woke up around 9 and slept until 10. The fact that I'm going to start a low-(but-nevertheless-definitively-)paid telecommuting job has sapped my passion for arriving to my fascinating yet unpaid job earlier than noon. I woke up and decided that I would go to the gym. At the gym I realized how I was going to get them out of the bar. I ate Chinese food in a take-out restaurant called "Asia Chinese Food." I came home. I watched TV. I did a blog posting. And then I started writing.
They're out of the bar. At long, long last, they're out of the bar.
Now I have no idea what to do next.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
The Top 10 Stephen King Stories That Haven't Been Adapted Yet (and how to not make them crappy)
Stephen King has written practically everything that a writer can write - trim little horror novels with words and images seared into our collective nightmare memory (Carrie covered in pig's blood, Cujo frothing at the mouth, "All work and No Play make Jack a Dull Boy); Epic fantasy-horror treatises that meander through time and space, question the existence of God, and take big ensemble casts and kill them off slowly in magnificent ways ("Desperation," "It," "The Stand"); dozens upon hundreds of short stories and novellas - King might be the last author to turn short form fiction into such an addictive treat. Gasbags like Harold Bloom whine that King has his flaws, but King's managed to remain remarkably unpretentious about his work, an impressive achievement for someone who wrote himself into his own fantasy epic. He writes the way Howard Hawks directed - he makes it easy to kick back and get absorbed.
That's probably why there have been over 100 adaptations of King's books into film and TV. The list is rife with dross and low-budge video franchises that keep going until they had to invent more numerals (who knew "Children of the Corn" could stretch so far?) Too often, the people behind the camera seemed to just miss the point completely. "Cujo" turned the horrifically unhappy ending into a boringly happy fadeout; "Apt Pupil" pruned all the darker elements out of King's prose (like the protagonist's concentration camp wet dream). It's not that you have to be completely honorable to the book's story - Stanley Kubrick pissed King off to high heaven with "The Shining," but even if the movie departs from the original narrative, it absolutely captures the perfect King mixture of terror and humor.
"1408" rolled into theaters over the summer; next up is "The Mist," a film by Frank Darabont, who turned a near-forgotten King novella into "The Shawshank Redemption," one of the true singular films of the 90s, and also gave us the adaptation of "The Green Mile," a long and lazy tall tale with lots of heart (if not much tension). So there are reasons to be hopeful. This trailer is not one of those reasions. Besides giving away half the plot points, it indicates that Darabont has decided to replace the main fright aesthetic of the story - the image of silent, endless mist, and the horror that there might be strange things in there - with a bunch of poorly animated giant evil moths. Why, Darabont, why?
In honor of (or perhaps horror at) "The Mist," here's a list of the 10 best King stories that haven't seen the moviehouse yet, and how to make sure they don't suck:
10: Gerald's Game - In the mid-90s, the author wrote a trio of books that centered on women in perilous domestic situations who take extraordinary steps to deal with their abusive husbands. There was "Dolores Claiborne," "Rose Madder," and the best of the bunch was this little ditty about a bit of married role-play gone way, way wrong. Jessie Burlingame is in the bedroom with her husband Gerald, in a cabin in the forest far from prying eyes or helpful hands. Gerald likes to play games, but tonight, Jessie decides she's not that into the handcuffs. Gerald decides to take her any way. Jessie kicks him, so hard that Gerald has a fatal heart attack and leaves her all by herself, naked, handcuffed to a bed. The book has a few flashbacks and throws in a necrophiliac serial killer late in the game, but mostly, the set-up is the story: Jessie's handcuffed to a bed, and she has to get out.
Unfilmable, you say? I say, in a year when everyone is complaining there are no more good roles for actresses, here's a portrait of a married woman taking charge of her relationship, trapping herself in an impossible situation and forced to confront her demons form the past to escape. It's empowering, it's dramatic, it's sexy, it's fearless. You talk about De Niro gaining weight for "Raging Bull"? Psh. How about being naked in a bed onscreen for 90 minutes? Done wrong, this could be horrible; done right, honoring King's minute attention to detail (the steady decomposition of Gerald's corpse, Jessie's ultimate gruesome solution for escaping), this could be stellar.
9: Beachworld - In the future, a spaceship crashlands on a desert planet. Two crewmen survive. While they wait for rescue, cabin fever sets in. The sand might be alive. You could take the story any number of ways - make one of the survivors a woman and add a sexual element, send the characters off exploring. But King's central visual - the endless swaying sand - is haunting, and makes Tatooine look warm and cozy by comparison.
8: Insomnia - King has said that this is his least favorite book. Unfortunate, since in Ralph Roberts, the elderly widowed insomniac who starts to see strange things in the early morning moonlight, King created his most idiosyncratic protagonist. A likable old guy from a boring little town who suddenly finds himself embarking on a grand adventure in the winter of his life, complete with an age-appropriate love interest? How many great actors over 70 have been dying for a role like this? Get Nicholson, or Newman, or throw some digital wrinkles on Ed Harris if you have to.
7: The Regulators - Open on a quiet little street in suburban nowhere. Kids walk down the street slurping ice cream cones; fathers drive home from work, mothers drive home from their lovers; lawnmowers mow. A paper boy bikes down the street. A car rides up next to him. The window rolls down. A shotgun opens a hole in the paper boy's midsection. Bedlam - absolute and bloody - ensues. Think "Desperate Housewives" meets "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." This supernatural genre mash-up has all the fixings of vintage King - big ensemble cast of eccentrics, shadowy unstoppable villains, a devil child with powers beyond the ken of mere mortals.
6: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - Like "Gerald's Game," the story of a woman alone in the wilderness, except here, it's a teenaged girl with a radio who listens to the Red Sox and takes inspiration from the titular closer. This practically wordless story could be a Terrence Malicky swoonfest - the beauty of nature, etc - but the tone is more reminiscent of "Aguirre, the Wrath of God," with the frightening presence of what could be a bear or the devil hovering just offscreen until the spellbinding conclusion. Paging Dakota Fanning.
5: The Drawing of the Three - King's "Dark Tower" epic is big and messy. It contains some of his best writing, but you don't write something for over 30 years without some fits and starts. King usually steers readers to his later books, but it's this one, Part 2, that encapsulates everything great about the series. In the first few pages, Roland - think Clint Eastwood crossed with King Arthur - wakes up on a beach and gets two fingers and a big toe chopped off by a mutant lobster; his luck goes downhill from there, as he hops back and forth across the decades to New York City. Under the guise of a fantasy novel, King digs into the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s, the Drug trade of the 80s, and everything great and awful about pre-Giuliani Big Apple. You might think it sounds crazy, but if ever the words "Scorcese" and "Fantasy" could be uttered in the same sentence, this would be the movie.
4: Roadwork - Like "Regulators," a book from King's altar ego, Richard Bachman - the pseudonymic personality that produced a line of particularly dour and hopeless books. "Roadwork" is easily King's most straightforward story ever, which makes it all the more frightening. A guy has just lost his son, his marriage is on the rocks, and a new interstate highway is being built right over his home and his business. Urban insanity like you could only find in the 70s follows. This is not a happy story, and at times it reads like the sort of fuck-the-man manifesto that seems outdated today. But King tells the story with passion and verve. David Fincher, who made urban life look like all kinds of hell in "Seven," would love this juicy little pulp story about a guy who's mad, and sad, as hell.
3: I Am The Doorway - Astronaut goes to space, gets infected with virus, yadda yadda yadda. But this is a Stephen King story, so it's not just a virus. In what might be the most horrifying visual King has ever conceived, little eyes start to cover his hands. The man can sense the alien intelligence; soon, it begins to take him over. There are so many crappy special effects today - give the boys at ILM the chance to put some crazy eyes on hands, you've got, if nothing else, the best trailer of the year.
2: The Talisman - Co-written by Peter Straub, this is a genuine picaresque story of one boy's travel across the country to save his mother. With the occasional skip into an alternate dimension. And with werewolves, and alot of other supernatural beasties. "The Talisman" has almost been filmed several times, but each time, the deal fell through - perhaps because the protagonist is a young boy who has to go through all kinds of hard-R experiences before he can find what he's looking for. Here's a wild idea - make it animated. Seriously, 2-D animation is a few years away from experiencing a comeback (for one thing, it's alot cheaper). Get those "Samurai Jack" boys off of Star Wars and onto something worthy of their talent. (Note - just after I wrote this, I discovered that Genndy Tartovski, the creator of "Samurai Jack," was in talks to develop a cartoon version of "The Dark Tower." Use this as a warm-up, Genndy).
1: The Long Walk - Another Bachman book, another dark tale with tragedy written in its code. In a near-flung future, every year, one hundred teenaged boys start walking. That's all. It's not a race, though you do have to maintain a steady pace. Except that when you stop walking, you die. Last one left alive gets everything he ever wants. This is a story about mental and physical exhaustion, and as the hours and days tick by, the relationship among the boys takes on a number of different faces - they're all in it together, like soldiers in a trench, and yet they're also competing against each other for nothing less than their lives. Gus Van Sant would shit himself for a movie like this, and for once, it could actually turn out good.
That's probably why there have been over 100 adaptations of King's books into film and TV. The list is rife with dross and low-budge video franchises that keep going until they had to invent more numerals (who knew "Children of the Corn" could stretch so far?) Too often, the people behind the camera seemed to just miss the point completely. "Cujo" turned the horrifically unhappy ending into a boringly happy fadeout; "Apt Pupil" pruned all the darker elements out of King's prose (like the protagonist's concentration camp wet dream). It's not that you have to be completely honorable to the book's story - Stanley Kubrick pissed King off to high heaven with "The Shining," but even if the movie departs from the original narrative, it absolutely captures the perfect King mixture of terror and humor.
"1408" rolled into theaters over the summer; next up is "The Mist," a film by Frank Darabont, who turned a near-forgotten King novella into "The Shawshank Redemption," one of the true singular films of the 90s, and also gave us the adaptation of "The Green Mile," a long and lazy tall tale with lots of heart (if not much tension). So there are reasons to be hopeful. This trailer is not one of those reasions. Besides giving away half the plot points, it indicates that Darabont has decided to replace the main fright aesthetic of the story - the image of silent, endless mist, and the horror that there might be strange things in there - with a bunch of poorly animated giant evil moths. Why, Darabont, why?
In honor of (or perhaps horror at) "The Mist," here's a list of the 10 best King stories that haven't seen the moviehouse yet, and how to make sure they don't suck:
10: Gerald's Game - In the mid-90s, the author wrote a trio of books that centered on women in perilous domestic situations who take extraordinary steps to deal with their abusive husbands. There was "Dolores Claiborne," "Rose Madder," and the best of the bunch was this little ditty about a bit of married role-play gone way, way wrong. Jessie Burlingame is in the bedroom with her husband Gerald, in a cabin in the forest far from prying eyes or helpful hands. Gerald likes to play games, but tonight, Jessie decides she's not that into the handcuffs. Gerald decides to take her any way. Jessie kicks him, so hard that Gerald has a fatal heart attack and leaves her all by herself, naked, handcuffed to a bed. The book has a few flashbacks and throws in a necrophiliac serial killer late in the game, but mostly, the set-up is the story: Jessie's handcuffed to a bed, and she has to get out.
Unfilmable, you say? I say, in a year when everyone is complaining there are no more good roles for actresses, here's a portrait of a married woman taking charge of her relationship, trapping herself in an impossible situation and forced to confront her demons form the past to escape. It's empowering, it's dramatic, it's sexy, it's fearless. You talk about De Niro gaining weight for "Raging Bull"? Psh. How about being naked in a bed onscreen for 90 minutes? Done wrong, this could be horrible; done right, honoring King's minute attention to detail (the steady decomposition of Gerald's corpse, Jessie's ultimate gruesome solution for escaping), this could be stellar.
9: Beachworld - In the future, a spaceship crashlands on a desert planet. Two crewmen survive. While they wait for rescue, cabin fever sets in. The sand might be alive. You could take the story any number of ways - make one of the survivors a woman and add a sexual element, send the characters off exploring. But King's central visual - the endless swaying sand - is haunting, and makes Tatooine look warm and cozy by comparison.
8: Insomnia - King has said that this is his least favorite book. Unfortunate, since in Ralph Roberts, the elderly widowed insomniac who starts to see strange things in the early morning moonlight, King created his most idiosyncratic protagonist. A likable old guy from a boring little town who suddenly finds himself embarking on a grand adventure in the winter of his life, complete with an age-appropriate love interest? How many great actors over 70 have been dying for a role like this? Get Nicholson, or Newman, or throw some digital wrinkles on Ed Harris if you have to.
7: The Regulators - Open on a quiet little street in suburban nowhere. Kids walk down the street slurping ice cream cones; fathers drive home from work, mothers drive home from their lovers; lawnmowers mow. A paper boy bikes down the street. A car rides up next to him. The window rolls down. A shotgun opens a hole in the paper boy's midsection. Bedlam - absolute and bloody - ensues. Think "Desperate Housewives" meets "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." This supernatural genre mash-up has all the fixings of vintage King - big ensemble cast of eccentrics, shadowy unstoppable villains, a devil child with powers beyond the ken of mere mortals.
6: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - Like "Gerald's Game," the story of a woman alone in the wilderness, except here, it's a teenaged girl with a radio who listens to the Red Sox and takes inspiration from the titular closer. This practically wordless story could be a Terrence Malicky swoonfest - the beauty of nature, etc - but the tone is more reminiscent of "Aguirre, the Wrath of God," with the frightening presence of what could be a bear or the devil hovering just offscreen until the spellbinding conclusion. Paging Dakota Fanning.
5: The Drawing of the Three - King's "Dark Tower" epic is big and messy. It contains some of his best writing, but you don't write something for over 30 years without some fits and starts. King usually steers readers to his later books, but it's this one, Part 2, that encapsulates everything great about the series. In the first few pages, Roland - think Clint Eastwood crossed with King Arthur - wakes up on a beach and gets two fingers and a big toe chopped off by a mutant lobster; his luck goes downhill from there, as he hops back and forth across the decades to New York City. Under the guise of a fantasy novel, King digs into the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s, the Drug trade of the 80s, and everything great and awful about pre-Giuliani Big Apple. You might think it sounds crazy, but if ever the words "Scorcese" and "Fantasy" could be uttered in the same sentence, this would be the movie.
4: Roadwork - Like "Regulators," a book from King's altar ego, Richard Bachman - the pseudonymic personality that produced a line of particularly dour and hopeless books. "Roadwork" is easily King's most straightforward story ever, which makes it all the more frightening. A guy has just lost his son, his marriage is on the rocks, and a new interstate highway is being built right over his home and his business. Urban insanity like you could only find in the 70s follows. This is not a happy story, and at times it reads like the sort of fuck-the-man manifesto that seems outdated today. But King tells the story with passion and verve. David Fincher, who made urban life look like all kinds of hell in "Seven," would love this juicy little pulp story about a guy who's mad, and sad, as hell.
3: I Am The Doorway - Astronaut goes to space, gets infected with virus, yadda yadda yadda. But this is a Stephen King story, so it's not just a virus. In what might be the most horrifying visual King has ever conceived, little eyes start to cover his hands. The man can sense the alien intelligence; soon, it begins to take him over. There are so many crappy special effects today - give the boys at ILM the chance to put some crazy eyes on hands, you've got, if nothing else, the best trailer of the year.
2: The Talisman - Co-written by Peter Straub, this is a genuine picaresque story of one boy's travel across the country to save his mother. With the occasional skip into an alternate dimension. And with werewolves, and alot of other supernatural beasties. "The Talisman" has almost been filmed several times, but each time, the deal fell through - perhaps because the protagonist is a young boy who has to go through all kinds of hard-R experiences before he can find what he's looking for. Here's a wild idea - make it animated. Seriously, 2-D animation is a few years away from experiencing a comeback (for one thing, it's alot cheaper). Get those "Samurai Jack" boys off of Star Wars and onto something worthy of their talent. (Note - just after I wrote this, I discovered that Genndy Tartovski, the creator of "Samurai Jack," was in talks to develop a cartoon version of "The Dark Tower." Use this as a warm-up, Genndy).
1: The Long Walk - Another Bachman book, another dark tale with tragedy written in its code. In a near-flung future, every year, one hundred teenaged boys start walking. That's all. It's not a race, though you do have to maintain a steady pace. Except that when you stop walking, you die. Last one left alive gets everything he ever wants. This is a story about mental and physical exhaustion, and as the hours and days tick by, the relationship among the boys takes on a number of different faces - they're all in it together, like soldiers in a trench, and yet they're also competing against each other for nothing less than their lives. Gus Van Sant would shit himself for a movie like this, and for once, it could actually turn out good.
In A Naked Attempt To Appear on IMDB's Hit List, I'm Going to Start Posting Ranked Lists of Esoteric Pop Culture Topics
My life has moved beyond cliche into despicability.
National Novel Writing Month: 12,000
Almost a quarter of the way across the finish line, and a bit ahead of schedule too. 12,000 words is a long time for almost nothing to be happening, yet nevertheless I've almost managed it.
That's not true. If you could map my narrative with that cool machine they use for measuring the movement of tectonic plates, my story be one steady neutral line occasionally punctuated by gigantic shifts up and down (OH MY GOD THE WORLD'S ON FIRE! OH MY GOD WE'RE BEING GASSED! OH MY GOD ROFLMAO!) Oh well. Guess it's better to be over the top than nothing at all.
One thing I'm starting to notice - the first few days, I would just sit down and write and not worry so much about the word count. Now, I'm having this terrible watched-pot-never-boils thing where I'll write one paragraph, check the word count, be disappointed. Restrain yourself, Franich!
I think I've assembled a cast of characters.
That's not true. If you could map my narrative with that cool machine they use for measuring the movement of tectonic plates, my story be one steady neutral line occasionally punctuated by gigantic shifts up and down (OH MY GOD THE WORLD'S ON FIRE! OH MY GOD WE'RE BEING GASSED! OH MY GOD ROFLMAO!) Oh well. Guess it's better to be over the top than nothing at all.
One thing I'm starting to notice - the first few days, I would just sit down and write and not worry so much about the word count. Now, I'm having this terrible watched-pot-never-boils thing where I'll write one paragraph, check the word count, be disappointed. Restrain yourself, Franich!
I think I've assembled a cast of characters.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
National Novel Writing Month: The First Thing I've Written In Three Days That I Kind Of Like
"We need to find her hand," Andy said, gasping. "They can reattach it. Science can reattach anything."
National Novel Writing Month: Long Dark Weekend of the Soul
I had the worst hypochondria all weekend. It might sound weird to talk about hypochondria like it's a disease, but that's exactly how I've come to think of these occasional spells I get (usually on weekends, because I don't have work or anything useful to distract my mind) when every five seconds I feel like another part of my body has contracted an irrevocable disease which medical science doesn't know about and can't cure.
Sampler - I woke up yesterday with a hangover, despite several last-minute-before-sleep attempts to fill my body with H2O. My brother and I went to go and see the movie about Ian Curist, the tragic genius lead singer of Joy Division. Ian Curtis had epilepsy. Of all the possible conditions I've spent a bit of my lifetime obsessing over, Epilepsy is the one that I keep on returning to. A long time ago, a family friend died from it - that's probably where it started. There is something about epilepsy which frightens me more than any of the normal conditions - the fact that it lasts a lifetime and usually ends it, the randomness of it, the imprecise visual of a brain completely at war with the body that supports it. It was uncomfortable watching the film - I think because something about the moviewatching experience seems so close to mental synapse shutdown anyways (the way the outside world disappears, the imprecise flicker of the film screen at 24 frames per second). So then I spent the rest of the day anxiously avoiding using my mind, for fear that one stray thought might be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
Avoiding using your brain is thankfully simple in the modern world. I went on the internet and surfed wikipedia. My neighbor's wireless connection was particularly good yesterday - no doubt they had better things to do on a Saturday than use the internet - so I managed to catch up on my stories. "The Office" was good, 'Dirty Sexy Money" was better, and then I made the mistake of watching "Grey's Anatomy," which, like all hospital shows, is a nightmare for a hypochondriac. Girl comes into the hospital with weakened bones from dieting - good god, I think to myself, have I been eating right? Old guy with a heart problem is allergic to anesthetic? What if I'M allergic to anaesthetic? That would mean that when they operate on me for my heart/lung/brain/liver/toe condition, I'll need to be conscious! I can't deal with the pressure of having a surgeon's fingers tickling my inner organs! I can barely deal with the pressure of leaving my apartment on a beautiful day!
Another thing that freaked me out about the Ian Curtis film - suicide. I have never once in my life wanted to commit suicide, but since sixth or seventh grade I have thought about suicide, in the abstract - holding a gun to your head, tying a noose around your neck, swallowing a boatload of prescription pills. It freaks me out - the finality of it. And it freaks me out to think that death really is so close. It reminds me of a line from "Arkansas," the book which McSweeney's is publishing in the springtime which is going to win alot of awards and hopefully climb up the bestseller's list if there is any justice in this unjust world - "It was much too easy to kill a man."
I wonder if there are any statistics on who commits suicide more often - people who do believe in the afterlife, or people who don't. And I wonder if they commit suicide because they think they're right, or because they think they're wrong.
It was that kind of weekend. I talked to my best friend, and she expressed the same kind of vaguely depressed ennui. Maybe it's the jump back from daylight savings time, or the inscrutable weather in the Bay Area (three days ago, I can't see out my window for the fog; today, I can see all the way to Napa, and smell the wine on the light bayside breeze).
I think my mind is making up excuses to not write this novel. Which is ironic, because the only time I ever feel really good, and centered, is when I have been writing on a regular schedule.
I need a plot. Right now all I have is a few little characters in a bar. Nothing is happening. I know what happens in three steps, but the next two are mysterious. Solution: go to the local cafe and write until closing time.
Sampler - I woke up yesterday with a hangover, despite several last-minute-before-sleep attempts to fill my body with H2O. My brother and I went to go and see the movie about Ian Curist, the tragic genius lead singer of Joy Division. Ian Curtis had epilepsy. Of all the possible conditions I've spent a bit of my lifetime obsessing over, Epilepsy is the one that I keep on returning to. A long time ago, a family friend died from it - that's probably where it started. There is something about epilepsy which frightens me more than any of the normal conditions - the fact that it lasts a lifetime and usually ends it, the randomness of it, the imprecise visual of a brain completely at war with the body that supports it. It was uncomfortable watching the film - I think because something about the moviewatching experience seems so close to mental synapse shutdown anyways (the way the outside world disappears, the imprecise flicker of the film screen at 24 frames per second). So then I spent the rest of the day anxiously avoiding using my mind, for fear that one stray thought might be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
Avoiding using your brain is thankfully simple in the modern world. I went on the internet and surfed wikipedia. My neighbor's wireless connection was particularly good yesterday - no doubt they had better things to do on a Saturday than use the internet - so I managed to catch up on my stories. "The Office" was good, 'Dirty Sexy Money" was better, and then I made the mistake of watching "Grey's Anatomy," which, like all hospital shows, is a nightmare for a hypochondriac. Girl comes into the hospital with weakened bones from dieting - good god, I think to myself, have I been eating right? Old guy with a heart problem is allergic to anesthetic? What if I'M allergic to anaesthetic? That would mean that when they operate on me for my heart/lung/brain/liver/toe condition, I'll need to be conscious! I can't deal with the pressure of having a surgeon's fingers tickling my inner organs! I can barely deal with the pressure of leaving my apartment on a beautiful day!
Another thing that freaked me out about the Ian Curtis film - suicide. I have never once in my life wanted to commit suicide, but since sixth or seventh grade I have thought about suicide, in the abstract - holding a gun to your head, tying a noose around your neck, swallowing a boatload of prescription pills. It freaks me out - the finality of it. And it freaks me out to think that death really is so close. It reminds me of a line from "Arkansas," the book which McSweeney's is publishing in the springtime which is going to win alot of awards and hopefully climb up the bestseller's list if there is any justice in this unjust world - "It was much too easy to kill a man."
I wonder if there are any statistics on who commits suicide more often - people who do believe in the afterlife, or people who don't. And I wonder if they commit suicide because they think they're right, or because they think they're wrong.
It was that kind of weekend. I talked to my best friend, and she expressed the same kind of vaguely depressed ennui. Maybe it's the jump back from daylight savings time, or the inscrutable weather in the Bay Area (three days ago, I can't see out my window for the fog; today, I can see all the way to Napa, and smell the wine on the light bayside breeze).
I think my mind is making up excuses to not write this novel. Which is ironic, because the only time I ever feel really good, and centered, is when I have been writing on a regular schedule.
I need a plot. Right now all I have is a few little characters in a bar. Nothing is happening. I know what happens in three steps, but the next two are mysterious. Solution: go to the local cafe and write until closing time.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
National Novel Writing Month: Roundabout 4000, and Persona
Today was in many ways awful. Couldn't sleep. Wake up to a text from the girl. Bad day at the office. Terrible feelings of sickness, general physical and mental spiritual. Disaffection for my fellow men. Detachment from the same. My second 2000 words are awful, meaningless, whirling, plotless, falling far from existential and reading more like the haphazard fantasy that my little student writes. I smoke a cigarette and climb the hillside to my stately apartment, and I feel as if I am going to collapse from exhaustion. I feel again like I'm dying of something.
So I put in "Persona," a film of Bergman's I actually purchased almost a year ago. It's amazing how few films I really watched in college, when I was supposedly a major in Film Studies. And now, in less than a week, rata-tat-tock, "Badlands" by Malick, "Band a Part" by Godard, "Persona" by Bergman. "Persona" is almost my favorite of the lot. Not sure how I feel about the ending, although I think that I appreciate it. It's not about the ending, anyways. It's a film which seems to nail precisely the sort of thing that I have been feeling for awhile. The main character (one of them, at least) is an actress who has stopped speaking - who perhaps cannot speak, out of disgust or fear or disenchantment with how little speech can really express.
I am remembering how much I love the movies.
So I put in "Persona," a film of Bergman's I actually purchased almost a year ago. It's amazing how few films I really watched in college, when I was supposedly a major in Film Studies. And now, in less than a week, rata-tat-tock, "Badlands" by Malick, "Band a Part" by Godard, "Persona" by Bergman. "Persona" is almost my favorite of the lot. Not sure how I feel about the ending, although I think that I appreciate it. It's not about the ending, anyways. It's a film which seems to nail precisely the sort of thing that I have been feeling for awhile. The main character (one of them, at least) is an actress who has stopped speaking - who perhaps cannot speak, out of disgust or fear or disenchantment with how little speech can really express.
I am remembering how much I love the movies.
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