You’re not the only movie exec who can greenlight his 5th grader’s movie script, Washburn.

Well, well, Washburn, my old friend, times must be hard at that sad little warehouse you call a motion picture studio. What's with this wild rumor I hear? This crazy announcment in Variety that you’ve signed your kid’s 5th grade English assignment to 'write a science fiction movie script' into production? “The Goo Aliens fight Space Pirates,” is it? Sony Pictures, with a budget of 80 million? With Singer to direct? I see, I see.

If this is some kind of scheme, it will never work. If you think you’ve got some kind of advantage over me, that’s where you’re wrong. Because you’re not the only movie exec who can greenlight his 5th grader’s movie script, Washburn.

My kid’s in the same school. Of course, you’d know that, since you put your little boy Braydon in Hodgington Academy not three months after my Sophia was enrolled. Bush league move, that, Washburn. Did you not consider my Sophia has the same English teacher, and had the same assignment?

“Rainbow Princess Cop” goes into principal photography in six weeks. Oh, and while I have your attention, three more words: Jolie. Gosling. Dench. That’s right: Dench. I sense you’re wincing a bit at that, aren’t you? I am forced to chuckle like a cheap melodrama villain. Mwa-ha-ha, Washburn.

It didn’t have to be like this. Remember the old days, when we were in film school in that wave following Spielberg and Scorsese? We were going to set the world on fire. We could have been partners. But here we are, forty years and countless trophy wives later, these children of our late middle age pitched in heated proxy wars for box office totals that mean nothing, nothing!

Actually, what was I thinking? They mean everything.

Nevertheless, this is the life we’ve chosen. Ever since Goldman made a fortune off of his grand-daughter's Time-Travel Unicorn Bounty-Hunter concept, this is the path the American public has chosen for Hollywood. We merely provide, Washburn, we do not dictate the tastes of a nation. But I digress…

I hear you have no third act, Washburn. I hear the Space Pirates have no motivation. Well, all the fire-breathing black-hole Godzilla clones Weta can render won’t get Blockso the One-eyed Pirate Prince through his dark night of the soul!

Yes, it’s true: Sophia made a copy of Braydon’s script. We know everything.

You thought you could keep this from me? Well, I thought we were friends! But co-chairing the PTA subcommittee on uniforms and field trips means nothing to you. I had to learn it from the front page of Variety like every other schmuck in this town.

I have Michael Bay on hold right now. This is what we call the endgame, my friend.

To conclude, I wish you the best, Washburn, I really do. I consider you my closest rival. Sophia (she really has her father’s instincts for this sort of thing) tells me Pennington’s boy wrote “Pizza Disaster!” (it's lazy and uninspired, the boy simply won't apply himself, even with Adam Sandler on board). And Weinberg’s kids, well, “Nemo Unchained” would be caught in legal limbo for decades. No, it is you and I, my old friend, who will see this battle through to the bitter end.

See you at the Oscars, Washburn. May the best parent win.

Mistletoe Drone.. of DEATH!!!!!: (a one-act Christmas melodrama)

They ordered Love...
....they got MURDER!!!!!

Here is my 2014 Christmas gift to you all:

Mistletoe Drone ... of DEATH!!!
Inspired by a true story

*** Mistletoe Drone Operator at TGI Friday’s was the best job this "kind-of-a-loner, kept to himself" could get.***

SCENE: TGI Fridays, interior. BARRY, pimpled and bitter, is dressed in TGI Friday's shirt and suspenders with lots of flair. His hair is lank and greasy, a sneer on his face. He holds the MISTLETOE DRONE controller and scans the restaurant. It’s filled with young couples in love, feeding each other french fries and sesame jack™ chicken strips.

BARRY (Voice-over): (Bitterly) Look at all you happy couples. Sitting there with your thai pork tacos, staring into each other’s eyes, longing to kiss. Here, I'll make you kiss!

He controls the MISTLETOE DRONE toward a SEXY COUPLE. It stops, its mistletoe payload directly over the WOMAN's head. The SEXY COUPLE looks up. WOMAN laughs, and MAN kisses her.

MISTLETOE DRONE dips closer, closer, while the SEXY COUPLE’s kiss becomes more passionate.

Ominous music swells.

Enter MANAGER

MANAGER: Hey, Barry, that drone’s a little close, don’t you think?

BARRY (falsely cheerful): Hey, yeah, oops! Guess they looked a little too happy!

The MISTLETOE DRONE rises, ominous music fades. The SEXY COUPLE's kissing becomes more passionate.

MANAGER: Want me to take over for a while?

BARRY: Nah, I’m good.

MANAGER (Looking at SEXY COUPLE, who knock dishes off the table and climb on to continue making out and groping each other): Well, you’re doing a great job.

BARRY: Thanks, boss!

Exit MANAGER

BARRY scans the room again. His eyes squint.

BARRY (Voice-over): Oh, you blissfully ignorant fools. All of you, believing love is anything but a bittersweet prelude to a lifetime of solitary misery.

His attention becomes focused on a YOUNG INNOCENT COUPLE making lovey-eyes at each other; it’s apparent they are on an early date, infatuated but shy.

BOY: Hey, they have that mistletoe drone thing. (exaggeratedly casual) That's cool, I guess.

GIRL: Oh, I hope it doesn't come here. It would be a *shame* if I had to kiss you. (She smiles and blushes.)

BARRY (Voice-over): Is that... Tiffany? Tiffany who once spurned my advances? I spent the night of Spring Fling alone because of you, Tiffany! Oh, and now, you flounce and rut with this unworthy cur?

BOY stabs a shrimp, puts it on GIRL'S plate

BARRY: (voice-over) Ah! You split with him a Jack Daniel's Shrimp and Ribs that should by rights be mine? Oh, yes, kiss him, by all means ... I’ll make you kiss. I’ll make you kiss... in hell!

BOY: Hey, that operator is looking at you funny. Do you know him, Kelly?

GIRL: Never seen him before.

MISTLETOE DRONE-view camera, closing in on the YOUNG INNOCENT COUPLE who smile and set down their cutlery as it approaches, and give each other a bashful glance.

BARRY (voice-over): Oh, sweet revenge best served cold, with Tennessee Whisky Cake for desert, on special this week!

The BOY moves close to the GIRL, puts an arm around her shoulder. She touches his hand as they wait for the MISTLETOE DRONE...

MISTLETOE DRONE-view camera as their smiles turn to confusion, then fear as the MISTLETOE DRONE buzzes ominously closer, closer.

BOY: It's coming in kind of... fast...

GIRL: Hold me!

BARRY begins to chuckle, rising to laughter, rising to maniacal laughter.

Cut to SEXY COUPLE, now half-naked, making out on their table. BLOOD SPATTER hits them. They look up. WOMAN screams.

MANAGER: Oh, for Pete's sake, Barry.

Fade to credits as BARRY’s laughter grows ever louder and the screams of patrons drown him out.

-- END --

Colchis is famous for the Golden Fleece

Jason and Medea

Excerpts from a new international version


Cast
Chorus: various fifth and sixth grade Korean public school students whose vocab consists mostly of phrases from their textbooks.

Jason: A greek warrior, prince of Iolcus
Medea: Sorceress and princess of Colchis
Creon: King of Corinth


Part 1, Colchis:

Chorus:
Hello, how are you? I’m from Colchis.
Colchis is beautiful and special.
Colchis is famous for the Golden Fleece.

[Enter Medea]
This is Medea. She is very pretty.
She can do magic too.
But, she is very sad. Let’s listen!

Medea:
Oh, but that the world could know of my laments,
of the darkness in my soul. For it has
been said that tragedy should bite my heels
until time’s bitter end, that I should be
the ruin of great men through magicks and treason
most foul. But in truth I know not whether
my mind’s contents are fair or foul, for a life
of shelter tells me that should the test come,
I may not know it. Hark? What silver flash
upon the sea’s wine-stained horizon do I spy?

Chorus:
Look! It’s a boat! Such a big boat!
Who is it? Who is in the boat?
Medea does not know.
But, he is handsome.

ENTER Jason

Chorus:
That is Jason. He’s from Greece.
He’s very strong and kind. He wants to be King.
Let’s listen again!

Jason:
Long I have journeyed and hard, to this land
to seek and claim the fleece of gold foretold
as birthright destiny. But unseeming
of kindness is this land, and people here
shall surely prove awesome strange indeed.
But lo, what shape is that of woman shone
on distant parapet? Let us move close,
that providence may to me her hand reveal.

Chorus:
Medea likes Jason. She will help him.
She gives him many things.
She helps him get the golden fleece.

----

Let me know in the comments if you want the rest.

Writer's Corner: a close look at The Deep-Blue Goodbye, by John D. MacDonald

An inexcusably pulpy cover

John D. MacDonald was a very successful crime writer from the 1950's through the 1980's. He's best known now for the Travis McGee series, which starred an observant, cynical houseboat beach-bum in Lauderdale, Florida. MacDonald also wrote more hard-boiled fiction such as the novel The Executioners, which was twice filmed under the title Cape Fear. But Travis McGee, the blue-collar James Bond who took on cases where he can recover money and take half as the fee, was his most enduring creation.

His first McGee novel, The Deep Blue Goodbye, appeared in 1964, and while it seemed to ride on the coattails of James Bond's runaway success, there's a lot more to it than that. Strange as it seems, the McGee books were part of a thriving culture known as 'books for men,' in an age when men - mainstream, actual men - read books. Books on war, books about cowboys, books about private detectives. Pulp writers like Zane Grey pumped out western after western, and war titles were also numerous. Somewhere along the line, (I'd say about 1980) men stopped reading, and mysteries almost died out with them, until Sue Grafton and Sara Paretzky came along with female leads to save the genre. But that's another post.

Approaching the McGee novel's from a writer's perspective, there's an awful lot to learn from the success of one of America's great mid-list genre authors. So let's tear into one specific passage, looking at its key strengths and weaknesses, to answer the one question every author needs to ask: Why should my reader keep turning the page?

This passage occurs on the second page, after McGee introduces that he's on his boat, The Busted Flush, and the location is Lauderdale, Florida.

Chookie McCall was choreographing some fool thing. She had come over because I had the privacy and enough room. She had shoved the furniture out of the way, set up a couple of mirrors from the master stateroom, and set up her rackety little metronome. She wore a faded old rust-red leotard, mended with black thread in a couple of places. She had her black hair tied into a scarf.  

She was working hard. She would go over a sequence time and time again, changing it a little each time, and when she was satisfied, she would hurry over to the table and make the proper notations on her clip board. 

Dancers work as hard as coal miners used to work. She stomped and huffed and contorted her splendid and perfectly proportioned body. In spite of the air conditioning, she had filled the lounge with a faint sharp-sweet odor of large overheated girl. She was a pleasant distraction. In the lounge lights there was a highlighted gleam of perspiration on the long round legs and arms.

There's nothing fancy here, it's just clean simple prose, a bunch of facts with only a few moments of inspired writing. But for a moment, let's just soak in that first sentence: Chookie McCall was choreographing some fool thing. Here are my reactions to that sentence:

1. What kind of name is that? It's great, a mix of hard consonants ending with a soft l; it speaks of a mind tuned to whimsy and seriousness in equal measure.

2. We know Chookie's a dancer, but not just any dancer, she's one who does choreography. In 1964, most men would be happy to date a dancer, but Trav has met a woman who goes one better - she 'writes' dance.

3. From 'some fool thing' we know all sorts of things. First, we know Trav doesn't know or appreciate much about dance. Second, we know that even if he doesn't care about dance, he cares enough about Chookie to let her do her job on his houseboat.

That's pretty cool, that he can pack all that information into one short sentence.

Overall this scene is a great indication of the compassion Trav feels for women. As it turns out, Trav and Chookie aren't sleeping together. As the book develops, Trav's feelings for women separate into a strange mishmash of 60's paternal chauvinist condescension with a fig leaf of equality-of-sexes neo-enlightenment. This little bit here on the boat, where Trav is both patron and companion is a great bit of foreshadowing.

The paragraph continues with a bunch of things they tell you not to do in writing school, namely start four consecutive sentences with the pronoun She. There's a lot of descriptive tour-guiding with one stellar phrase (rackety little metronome), and I'm willing to let MacDonald break a workshop 101 rule because he's given me enough confidence from the opening of the book and his 'some fool thing' line that I move along the bridge of description till we get to the payoff: 'Dancers work as hard as coal miners used to work.' Here we get a sense of Trav's appreciation for Chookie and her career even if he knows nothing about it. He's a guy with some insights. In other words, he's a voice worth listening to.

Then he spends a few sentences of pure 'male gaze,' reducing Chookie to her body and its smells and the pleasure he gets from them. It's really kind of piggy, and justified only because she's a dancer, and dancers are a reduction of body to art, but it's still a male privilege thing, which, while offensive, plays to MacDonald's audience. Which is another measure of MacDonald's talent. You can reduce McGee to sexist pig, or you can try to rationalize it by saying MacDonald created actual empowered women - and he does have a lot of strong female characters - but - and this is not a small point - you still trust McGee as a narrator. McGee is self-aware, confident, and reliable. This goes a long way in securing the trust of a reader.

You may think MacDonald wasn't smart enough to think through all these issues of gender and patrician attitudes, but later passages, where McGee thinks of himself as a modern knight errant, saving damsels and feeling guilty for bedding the women he saves, would prove you wrong. These are exactly the kinds of things writers think about, and when he was on, MacDonald was in tune with everything he was doing, and with his core audience.

And so, let's reduce everything to one rule: Find your audience, and give them a reason to keep turning the pages. Everything after that is gravy.

Star Wars De-specialized

Headline:

This is the Jabba you should never have seen.

A "despecialized edition" of the original Star Wars is now available for (quasi-legal) download.

Backstory:
I've been longing to see the original 1977 theatrical release ever since George Lucas slapped Part IV: A New Hope before the crawl for the 1981re-release. Part IV, what was that, we wondered around the junior high school lunch table. We felt a little cheated that four years earlier, we'd walked in on the middle of the story. We didn't know this was just the first of George Lucas's tinkerings. By the mid 2000's, he'd made edits so that Han doesn't shoot first, thrown in a bunch of new aliens, added digital Jabbas to unused footage, and re-shot battle sequences.

Countless touch-ups later, the movie is now more the lynchpin of Lucasfilm mind games and pawn of Lucas's megalomania than it is a piece of filmed entertainment. Consider that Lucas refuses to let the original releases of the trilogy be viewed or released. He recalls 35mm prints of the original whenever they come up, and says the originals are but 'drafts' of the movies now available and 'enhanced' through his digital re-editing. All well and good, except...

The original Star Wars is a monumental achievement. It's probably the most sophisticated piece of pre-digital special effects work ever put to film. With 1970's technology - basically plastic and rubber - Lucas created an entire world of spaceships and aliens, and with each sequel he upped the bar. I have no idea why Lucas is ashamed of these movies. You, sir, kicked ass. These are seminal works of American history.

But he refuses to let anyone see these movies - his best work - in their original, un-tampered versions. It's baffling. Lucas should be proud of these masterpieces. He should be hosting retrospectives and receiving awards, not hiding them away from some churlish sense of shame.

Enter the 'De-specialized' version, created by a team of dedicated graphic wizards around the world. These are some serious restorationists and digital ninjas themselves, cobbling together a 1977 'original' from what Disney/Lucasfilm has dumped on the world - a travesty of poor color correction and technical flaws - and those few original prints not yet under his control.

Here: this video gives a great sense of the amount of work involved, and the variety of source materials used:



Pretty cool? Pretty cool.

Okay, yeah, I know. The past is gone. The Har Mar Cinema, where I watched the original, was gutted in a renovation in the 90's, then turned into a Cub Foods fifteen years later. I no longer fit into my Superman underoos. You can't go back to Tatooine. The restoration will never be the original.

But I could indulge my inner ten-year old and watch a grey-market release of Lucas's masterpiece. If only it were legal, I'd do it... right... now...

For more information on the legacy of Lucas's tinkerings, visit SaveStarWars.com

Sometimes a Fantasy: Billy Joel's forgotten masterpiece

I sometimes forget that back when I was a kid, Billy Joel was my favorite singer. Maybe I repress that memory, but that's another story. 52nd Street and The Stranger were my go-to albums for a quiet night at home, reading in the big green chair. Which is odd, because at the time, Glass Houses was his big album. He'd jut turned the corner from somewhat obscure, kinda respected singer/songwriter/balladeer to badass rock star and whipping boy for Springsteen's fanboys, and let's face it, he probably deserved it.

Because Billy Joel, for all the macho posturing of his megahit phase, was also always a schmuck at heart. Obsessive, depressive, angry, but always too willing to yield to his heart of schmalz. There's a certain machismo that can only be measured by when the guy who wrote "She's always a woman to me" later tries to pass off "You May be Right" or "Only the Good Die Young" as bad-boy rebel anthems. I always felt as though if he ever met up with a genuine tough guy, with a Bruce Springsteen or one of those bastards from a heavy metal band, he'd go down before the second punch.

Which only made his pathos that much more interesting. I'm just gonna say it: Billy Joel was every nerd's go-to macho surrogate. I didn't know this when I was a kid, but I sensed it.

Looking back on his hits now, I think Sometimes a Fantasy might just sum up his whole life. Because, man, this video, I just don't know.

It starts with a phone call, one of those ancient push-button things, and Billy calling some girl. He's in a run-down squatter's place, squirming on a bed, Vacant sign flashing outside his window, all bug-eyed with desperate love. He starts singing into the phone when the woman answers. She's all elegant, dressed in a white gown, striding indignantly about her posh all-white apartment. She clearly hates Joel but for some reason won't hang up. Probably she's got tons of money and can't stand that Billy's a poor artist whose lithium prescription ran out.

Here's Nervous Billy on the phone:

And here's his lady, having none of it:

Nervous Billy doesn't quit, though. She's on the phone, and that means there's hope. Nervous Billy didn't get a zillion platinum albums by hearing no and taking it. No, Nervous Billy, when he's desperate for action, he has a guiding spirit he can consult, a suave bastard who knows how to handle guff. So every once in a while Nervous Billy looks at this other Billy Joel who's apparently in the room with him. This is Cool Billy, with his hair slicked back and a big old sexy... beard? Cool Billy nods and smokes, and encourages Nervous Billy to just keep singing. But things don't go well, until Nervous Billy hands the phone over to Cool Billy. And all he does, see, is hold it up to his ear and raise an eyebrow. 

Thusly:

 And then she's all:

And, oh, yeah....

Suddenly the chick is all hot for Nervous Billy. And even though he's singing the same crap song, now it's all syrup and honey to that uptight rich ice queen. There's some more lyrics about phone sex, and they get all hot, and there's shots of feet clenching and loins quivering in quick cuts, and then a split-screen of them like they're in the same bed... and then it's all over, and the video cuts to a ringing phone that isn't answered at all. Sometimes a Fantasy, it turns out, was only a fantasy.

This is like the ultimate coked-up genius video. If there were MacArthur genius grants for things that seemed cool when you were totally cranked on coke, this video would have earned Joel a zillion bucks. It's also a glimpse into the nervous psyche of Joel himself, a man who despite selling all those albums, despite sold out shows and marrying Christy Brinkley, could never quite see himself as anything but a schlub from Long Island, screaming into a microphone for people who would never appreciate him for himself, but always fell for the suave bastard he wanted them to think he was.

I'm kind of over Billy Joel, and so is he, actually. He stopped writing songs after 1993 and got bored with singing his greatest hits over and over. He lately made a splash with a once-a-month stand at Madison Square gardens, but before that he'd seemingly resigned himself to living kind of a quiet life on Long Island with his fourth wife. But every once in a while, he can still make a splash, like he did in 2012 for the hurricane Sandy relief concert. If you want a better run-down of what he's up to, check out this Grantland piece, or this question and answer thing in the New York Times, which shows that he's settled down a bit, but probably isn't above riding his motorcycle in the rain, if that's what it takes.

You can watch the whole twitchy, wtf-y masterpiece of Sometimes a Fantasy here:

Field-goal kicking mules and stubborn authors

Time for a Round-up!
A semi-regular feature in which, having nothing important to say, I point out a few things that happened on the web, then make a few half-thought-out observations on them for your amusement.

Short Story: Calm by Clare Needham
I've been interested in smaller magazines, those in orbit to the Tin Houses and McSweeney's of the world, and found a little gem called Bodega. Here you can find smaller pieces with great impact like Clare Neeham's Calm, a story of a woman, a man, a road trip, and the kind of joy you can only achieve through denial. Enjoy!

Tournament of Books controversy:
The LA Times follows a (non) story about Scott McClanahan, author of Hill William, who allegedly tried to withdraw his book from The Morning News's Tournament of Books. There was no author reaction included, which I find strange. This didn't stop the article, or the commentariat of the tourney from typing furious comments on the matter: he was ripped for being ungrateful, a money grabber, and other sad things. All for a single Facebook post he never followed through on. It's a tempest in a teapot, of course, a single ill-advised post being exploited for clicks, though I'd love to hear Scott McClanahan's take on it. I kind of want to root for him now that he's been lynched in the comments section, but that would bust my bracket.  Sorry, Scott!

You can read the thread here, at the bottom of the play-in judging round.

Retro-movie due for a remake: Gus

Don Knotts and Gus.
Why the long face?

I had a few beers the other day and was reading a story about how the NFL is considering moving field goals to the 25 yard line because they're so easy. So I immediately thought of Gus, the field goal kicking mule from the 1976 Disney sports-sploitation movie. I even tracked it down and watched ten minutes of it, and realized that Gus sits at the nexus of so many movie genres it should be the subject of a much longer critical essay.

It's an animals do sports movie. It's got an all-star cast (Don Knotts, Ed Asner, Tim Conway) slumming for paychecks. Most intriguingly, it's among the last of the Disney studio's cash-strapped post-Walt pre-Eisner slump films (The Apple Dumpling Gang! The Love Bug!). Did I mention it's about a goddamn field-goal kicking mule?

And it sits in the heart of my childhood, released in that golden summer of 1976. Ah, childhood. Nothing else could make this movie sound good except that I watched when I was eight. So, seriously - is Gus any good? Nope, not really. Even Roger Ebert didn't like it. Here's his original review from 1976.

But seriously, NFL, why not consider mules?

Movie trailer of the week: 
And the award for best use of "Hooked on a Feeling" since the Ally McBeal dancing video baby craze of 1997 goes to: Guardians of the Galaxy: