-- Hijinks Ensue made me laugh my ass off this week.
-- In the most recent Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Aquaman and the Atom have shrunk down to cellular size to fight nanomachines killing Bats from the inside. At one point (and please, savor every moment of this sentence) Aquaman uses his telepathy to summon a lymphocyte to act as his mighty seahorse within Batman's bloodstream.
After the chase, the following exchange occurs:
AQUAMAN: (to cell creature) Good boy! You were magnificent! Yessss, big hug.
ATOM: He's not hugging you. "He" is merely interpreting you as a foreign body, to be surrounded and destroyed.
AQUAMAN: Sure FEELS like a hug to me. And since we found you in Batman's bloodstream, I think we'll name you "Platelet."
ATOM: Except that's a lymphocyte.
AQUAMAN: "PLATELET" IT IS!!
Please, make this version of Aquaman the DCU version. Pleeeeeeeease.
And for those of you who have written in: I am indeed gratified by the unexpectedly large role Jaime Reyes as Blue Beetle has played in the new kid-friendly Batman animated hit. Or, less subtly, I am gratified by the role a character whose book has just been canceled is playing on the hit animated show starring another character who's just been killed off.
Synergy: You're Doing It Wrong.
-- Courtesy Kevin Church: Backflip on a Big Wheel.
-- Scoreboard. Filthy Hollywood Sodomite Socialist Liberals = Very Fucking Good Selling Things in the Free Market. Pious Big Business Tax Break Lovin' Conservatives =Very Fucking Bad at Selling Things in the Free Market.
Capitalism: You're Doing It Wrong.
-- Mike Nelson's Guitar Fridays are inspired by one of my favorite series of posts over at Lawyers, Guns and Money, their Sunday Battleship Blogging.
-- They're also reviewing/commenting, chapter-by-chapter, Herring's From Colony to Superpower, which I'm in the middle of reading. I ... cautiously recommend it.
-- I will be installing Boxee on a Mac Mini this week and will report back.
-- D Pet Hotels: Upscale Pet Hotels: I walk by it every day. I believe we now owe the Third World one free suicide bombing.
-- I bought six of these. It's not OCD, it's simple practicality.
-- You know what? Science is really important, not just because "science" is important, but because learning to think about the world in that way -- hypothesis, experiment, review based on empirical data -- is really, really important. Having a creationist President is an actively bad thing, not because I give a shit about whether he understands evolution*, but because that sort of intellectual laziness permeates both government policy and culture.
-- Game Designer/writer Jeremy Bernstein suggests that this season of Lost requires us to come up with a phrase for a TV show that has unjumped the shark. He suggests "going back to the island." I concur and will join others in pointing out that two more seasons of The Adventures of Daniel Faraday, Two-Fisted Action Physicist, along with Snarky Sawyer and Enigmatically Hot Juliet on the Island of Pulp Time Travel woud be just fine, Jack/Kate free.
-- Seamus Heaney FTW. In the Comments, your favorite poet. And yes, even Manly Men should have a favorite poet. Especially Manly Men Who Drink.
* One does not "believe" in evolution, any more than one "believes" in atomic theory. The same understanding of science that makes your cell phone work brings us evolution. Call your mom = Australopithecus. Suck it up.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Guitar Fridays: the Gibson Les Paul
by M A N
Image: The Holy Grail of Les Pauls, the '57 Goldtop.
From the iconic opening riff of "Sweet Child o' Mine" and the driving staccato rhythm of Led Zepplin's "Immigrant Song," to the weeping wail of Gary Moore's "Still Got the Blues," this behemoth is one of the most coveted instruments on the planet. If the Fender Stratocaster is the precision sniper rifle of the guitar world, then the Les Paul is a veritable Howitzer of sound. It's meaty tone can go from raunchy clack to the smooth and buttery lament of angels with just the flick of a switch.
The guitar was designed in the early 50s with the help of jazz guitarist Les Paul to compete with the Fender Telecaster (Les Paul is also the man responsible for multi-track recording). In everything from Jazz to Speed Metal, it has been a staple of the music industry ever since.
The Les Paul is made from the heavier maple and mahogany woods (heavier woods give a the guitar a brighter sound) with a maple neck and a choice of either maple, ebony, or rosewood for the fretboard. It has a set neck, PAF humbuckers (although custom pickups are always available--Seymor Duncan P 90 Soapbars are my personal favorite) and comes in a variety of flavors (Standard, Custom, Studio, etc.). And it's heavy. I mean heavy. If you're going on a lengthy tour and planning to use a Les Paul on stage, make sure you have a masseuse on call. But even with the weight, the Les Paul just feels right in your hands.
I had a '73 sunburst Les Paul for a few years and it was one of those instruments that just screamed tone. It weighed a metric ton and its finish was terribly worn from years of being played, but it was still simply gorgeous (Nothing frustrates me more than seeing people with amazing guitars who never play them for fear of devaluing the instrument. It's a guitar. It's meant to be played!). You could even feel the years of barroom smoke in the wood (which I am thouroughly convinced added to its tone).
Aside from its weight, there's another little downside to the Les Paul. Though Gibson has their economy line (Epiphone), a new Les Paul will set you back a hefty chunk of change (and a classic Les Paul will set you back your first born). It's not an entry level instrument. This is a machine for professionals. Its quality is a testament to that.
Gibson introduced a new Les Paul last year called the Dark Fire. I've never played one so I can't attest to its tone or playability, but on paper it appears to be an incredible machine. At it's core, it's a Les Paul with a computer inside that allows you to change the tone beyond the simple tone knob controls. And it's self tuning. Self tuning. Damn, I love the future.
Click links below to hear the Les Paul in action.
Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin) -- solo live
Gary Moore -- "Still Got the Blues"
Zakk Wylde -- "Farewell Ballad"
Nigel Tufnel -- Sustain
Les Paul -- a nice mini-documentary with the man himself
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
LEVERAGE: "The Snow Job" Open thread
Running late. Go ahead and post reactions and questions for "The Snow Job", and on Thursday I'll combine answers to those questions with the ones from last week.
This was the second episode filmed, and I haven't seen it in a while -- interesting to see how the acting rhythms have changed, and how our attitudes toward the characters changed as the chemistry between the actors evolved.
Oh, and for what it's worth -- those "Next Weeks' Scenes" looked cool, eh? They should; "The Twelve Step Job" was directed by Rod Hardy, and is one of my favorite episodes of the season. I can't wait to see it again.
This was the second episode filmed, and I haven't seen it in a while -- interesting to see how the acting rhythms have changed, and how our attitudes toward the characters changed as the chemistry between the actors evolved.
Oh, and for what it's worth -- those "Next Weeks' Scenes" looked cool, eh? They should; "The Twelve Step Job" was directed by Rod Hardy, and is one of my favorite episodes of the season. I can't wait to see it again.
Waid Wednesday #8: The Proposal, Part One
The difference between a pitch and the next stage of the development process—a proposal—is story. A proposal must demonstrate that your pitch has “legs” by providing a more specific outline of events, additional background on the characters, and some sample plots.
As with most every document in comics, there is no “right” way to format a proposal, but I’ve found through years of experience that this is what works best for me:
Lead with the high concept, a brief but dynamic one- or two-sentence description of the idea—
—follow that with a little more detail on the bigger picture, clarifying the who, what, where, when, how and why of it all—
—next, give brief bios of the main characters—no more than a short paragraph for each, but enough about them so that whoever’s reading your proposal can have a good handle on them by the time they get to—
—the outline, a more detailed version of “the bigger picture” that walks us gradually through the series an issue or two at a time. Provided it’s interesting to read, feel free to devote about a page to synopsizing issue one, a half-page or so to issue two, and gradually less detail for the next handful of installments. At this point, you’re still in the proposal stage, so you’re walking the fine line between showing you have confidence in your ideas and revealing that you’re so in love with them that you have every page of your opus worked out nine years in advance, which frightens every editor ever. If, as you’re writing your proposal, you’re not sure of the difference, imagine buying a car. Imagine buying it from a confident, knowledgeable salesman who demonstrates its most attractive features and then lets the merchandise do the talking. Then imagine buying it from a salesman who won’t let you leave the showroom until he explains in excruciating detail exactly how the high-performance fuel injection system interfaces with the 1.6L 4cyl VTEC-E engine and insists on giving you the 82-year history of the factory that tooled the camshaft. My point is, don’t overwhelm.
Then end your document with a fitting summary/conclusion.
To give you a more concrete example of what works, here’s my proposal—broken up over two posts—for a series I did a few years ago for Top Cow called HUNTER-KILLER (and which I’m relaunching this summer as a HUNTER-KILLER VS. CYBERFORCE mini with artist Kenneth Rocafort). Yes, technically, at this point, I wasn’t “selling” anything—since the very basic concept came from Marc Silvestri, the publisher (and artist), the book was already green-lit, and I probably didn’t have to go into this much detail—but simply for my own peace of mind, I chose not to break format. Having to write a formal proposal would, I knew, push me to think through every aspect of the series.
*******
HUNTER-KILLER PROPOSAL
First draft/September, 2004
THE HIGH CONCEPT: Genetically engineered beings hunt rogue agents from their own secret program, desperately scrambling to keep these “Ultra-Sapiens” from becoming Weapons of Mass Destruction in the hands of the world’s superpowers, power brokers, and madmen.
THE BIGGER PICTURE: What ordinary citizens don’t know is that the Cold War wasn’t fought over nuclear détente. It was clandestinely fought over the Ultra-Sapiens race, a eugenically created strain of covert super-beings with various powers and abilities—some fairly mundane, some earth-shattering. In 1962, when the public thought ballistic missiles had been planted in the jungles of Cuba, the small communist country had in fact become the assembly point for an army of Russian Ultra-Sapiens. JFK was not weighing the consequences of nuclear retaliation as history has taught us, but of super-human retaliation. So fearful were the world's super powers the existence of their Frankenstein's monsters would become known, even the perceived threat of nuclear annihilation was preferable to the truth.
During the height of the Cold War, Russian and U.S. diplomats were not only tracking nuclear missiles but Ultra-Sapiens. Like some perverse real-life version of Pokemon, these altered humans were being counted and measured by their power, and secret treaties were struck in order to achieve a constant state of détente. If America had one who, for instance, could wipe out a small town with the poison in his sweat glands, Red China was allowed two that could become invisible.
In between the end of the Cold War and now, however, the vast majority of Ultra-Sapiens banded together and revolted against years of being treated as military property. After wiping out the agencies which tracked them and most records of their own existence, some retired, some went into hiding, and some put themselves on the open market.
TODAY
Now a new organization, the HUNTER-KILLERS, has been gathered to once and for all find—and decide the fates of—these rogue super-beings. Some are harmless, some are evil, but all of them must be accounted for. Moreover, those who are deemed to be a threat to the public safety, regardless of their moral leanings, must be “accounted for” with extreme prejudice.
A few Ultra-Sapiens have been assimilated into the Hunter-Killer organization, using their special abilities to help enforce its agenda and/or cloak its presence. Most field missions, in fact, are led by a female U-S named Samantha Argent (more on whom below).
The Ultra-Sapiens are each powered by and marked with a latticework of bioengineering visible just under the skin—“tattoos” in shapes and locations on the body that suggest their powers (near the eyes for vision powers, on the skull for mental powers, etc.).
THE CHARACTERS:
ELLIS (age 22) is our POV character, a second-generation Ultra-Sapien who has only recently learned of his power, which was kept from him by his parents until their death. Ellis can mirror/mimic the powers of other nearby Ultra-Sapiens, making him a perfect “dowsing rod” for the Hunter-Killers as they track rogues—the closer Ellis gets to them, the stronger the mirroring effect.
A man of action, Ellis is also very contemplative, an armchair philosopher who’s always looking for a greater meaning in the agency’s overall agenda. Ellis deals with regularly making hard life-and-death decisions by immersing himself in the writings of Empericus, Baier and other moralists and ethicists in his off-hours.
And when we say life-and-death decisions, we mean it. Every adventure should hinge on a completely unpredictable climax. Even the missions that seem like milk runs end up throwing some sort of surprising “can’t/must” dilemma in our boys’ laps, and we Ellis’s decisions will always be surprising. The harder and more unpredictable the choices he’s faced with, the richer and more interesting a hero he’ll be.
WOLF (age indeterminate—mid-thirties, at least) is the buddy in this buddy book, an Ultra-Sapien who sometimes works for Ellis’s agency and sometimes works solo. As his name suggests, he’s our tough guy, a super-assassin with great strength, speed, and reflexes. His is the most extensive “tattoo”—a full-body overlay that allows him to fade into near-invisibility.
SAMANTHA ARGENT (mid-twenties) is the coordinator of the Hunter-Killer project and often a field agent vying with headstrong Ellis for control of the missions. Samantha, also an Ultra-Sapien, has a tattoo and/or special clothing that allows her to manipulate the electromagnetic energy coursing though her veins and coalesce that energy into ammunition for her unique armaments. Samantha, in contrast to most action-heroines, actually has a warmth and a sense of humor to her; she’s tough and in charge, but she’s by no definition a bitch. She’s enough at ease with herself to successfully maintain a non-emotional but furniture-breaking physical relationship with one of the other members of the cast.
MORNINGFROST is the prime villain of our series. The head of the Hunter-Killer project, those under his command have no idea he’s manipulating them based on his own (accurate) visions of the future. Eventually, they will find out about his machinations and turn on him.
******
Breaking this long doc up into two posts; second half to follow next week.
As with most every document in comics, there is no “right” way to format a proposal, but I’ve found through years of experience that this is what works best for me:
Lead with the high concept, a brief but dynamic one- or two-sentence description of the idea—
—follow that with a little more detail on the bigger picture, clarifying the who, what, where, when, how and why of it all—
—next, give brief bios of the main characters—no more than a short paragraph for each, but enough about them so that whoever’s reading your proposal can have a good handle on them by the time they get to—
—the outline, a more detailed version of “the bigger picture” that walks us gradually through the series an issue or two at a time. Provided it’s interesting to read, feel free to devote about a page to synopsizing issue one, a half-page or so to issue two, and gradually less detail for the next handful of installments. At this point, you’re still in the proposal stage, so you’re walking the fine line between showing you have confidence in your ideas and revealing that you’re so in love with them that you have every page of your opus worked out nine years in advance, which frightens every editor ever. If, as you’re writing your proposal, you’re not sure of the difference, imagine buying a car. Imagine buying it from a confident, knowledgeable salesman who demonstrates its most attractive features and then lets the merchandise do the talking. Then imagine buying it from a salesman who won’t let you leave the showroom until he explains in excruciating detail exactly how the high-performance fuel injection system interfaces with the 1.6L 4cyl VTEC-E engine and insists on giving you the 82-year history of the factory that tooled the camshaft. My point is, don’t overwhelm.
Then end your document with a fitting summary/conclusion.
To give you a more concrete example of what works, here’s my proposal—broken up over two posts—for a series I did a few years ago for Top Cow called HUNTER-KILLER (and which I’m relaunching this summer as a HUNTER-KILLER VS. CYBERFORCE mini with artist Kenneth Rocafort). Yes, technically, at this point, I wasn’t “selling” anything—since the very basic concept came from Marc Silvestri, the publisher (and artist), the book was already green-lit, and I probably didn’t have to go into this much detail—but simply for my own peace of mind, I chose not to break format. Having to write a formal proposal would, I knew, push me to think through every aspect of the series.
*******
HUNTER-KILLER PROPOSAL
First draft/September, 2004
THE HIGH CONCEPT: Genetically engineered beings hunt rogue agents from their own secret program, desperately scrambling to keep these “Ultra-Sapiens” from becoming Weapons of Mass Destruction in the hands of the world’s superpowers, power brokers, and madmen.
THE BIGGER PICTURE: What ordinary citizens don’t know is that the Cold War wasn’t fought over nuclear détente. It was clandestinely fought over the Ultra-Sapiens race, a eugenically created strain of covert super-beings with various powers and abilities—some fairly mundane, some earth-shattering. In 1962, when the public thought ballistic missiles had been planted in the jungles of Cuba, the small communist country had in fact become the assembly point for an army of Russian Ultra-Sapiens. JFK was not weighing the consequences of nuclear retaliation as history has taught us, but of super-human retaliation. So fearful were the world's super powers the existence of their Frankenstein's monsters would become known, even the perceived threat of nuclear annihilation was preferable to the truth.
During the height of the Cold War, Russian and U.S. diplomats were not only tracking nuclear missiles but Ultra-Sapiens. Like some perverse real-life version of Pokemon, these altered humans were being counted and measured by their power, and secret treaties were struck in order to achieve a constant state of détente. If America had one who, for instance, could wipe out a small town with the poison in his sweat glands, Red China was allowed two that could become invisible.
In between the end of the Cold War and now, however, the vast majority of Ultra-Sapiens banded together and revolted against years of being treated as military property. After wiping out the agencies which tracked them and most records of their own existence, some retired, some went into hiding, and some put themselves on the open market.
TODAY
Now a new organization, the HUNTER-KILLERS, has been gathered to once and for all find—and decide the fates of—these rogue super-beings. Some are harmless, some are evil, but all of them must be accounted for. Moreover, those who are deemed to be a threat to the public safety, regardless of their moral leanings, must be “accounted for” with extreme prejudice.
A few Ultra-Sapiens have been assimilated into the Hunter-Killer organization, using their special abilities to help enforce its agenda and/or cloak its presence. Most field missions, in fact, are led by a female U-S named Samantha Argent (more on whom below).
The Ultra-Sapiens are each powered by and marked with a latticework of bioengineering visible just under the skin—“tattoos” in shapes and locations on the body that suggest their powers (near the eyes for vision powers, on the skull for mental powers, etc.).
THE CHARACTERS:
ELLIS (age 22) is our POV character, a second-generation Ultra-Sapien who has only recently learned of his power, which was kept from him by his parents until their death. Ellis can mirror/mimic the powers of other nearby Ultra-Sapiens, making him a perfect “dowsing rod” for the Hunter-Killers as they track rogues—the closer Ellis gets to them, the stronger the mirroring effect.
A man of action, Ellis is also very contemplative, an armchair philosopher who’s always looking for a greater meaning in the agency’s overall agenda. Ellis deals with regularly making hard life-and-death decisions by immersing himself in the writings of Empericus, Baier and other moralists and ethicists in his off-hours.
And when we say life-and-death decisions, we mean it. Every adventure should hinge on a completely unpredictable climax. Even the missions that seem like milk runs end up throwing some sort of surprising “can’t/must” dilemma in our boys’ laps, and we Ellis’s decisions will always be surprising. The harder and more unpredictable the choices he’s faced with, the richer and more interesting a hero he’ll be.
WOLF (age indeterminate—mid-thirties, at least) is the buddy in this buddy book, an Ultra-Sapien who sometimes works for Ellis’s agency and sometimes works solo. As his name suggests, he’s our tough guy, a super-assassin with great strength, speed, and reflexes. His is the most extensive “tattoo”—a full-body overlay that allows him to fade into near-invisibility.
SAMANTHA ARGENT (mid-twenties) is the coordinator of the Hunter-Killer project and often a field agent vying with headstrong Ellis for control of the missions. Samantha, also an Ultra-Sapien, has a tattoo and/or special clothing that allows her to manipulate the electromagnetic energy coursing though her veins and coalesce that energy into ammunition for her unique armaments. Samantha, in contrast to most action-heroines, actually has a warmth and a sense of humor to her; she’s tough and in charge, but she’s by no definition a bitch. She’s enough at ease with herself to successfully maintain a non-emotional but furniture-breaking physical relationship with one of the other members of the cast.
MORNINGFROST is the prime villain of our series. The head of the Hunter-Killer project, those under his command have no idea he’s manipulating them based on his own (accurate) visions of the future. Eventually, they will find out about his machinations and turn on him.
******
Breaking this long doc up into two posts; second half to follow next week.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Ephemera 2009 (4)
The Remnants from John August on Vimeo.
-- John August does a great post on The Remnants, his web-pilot, including cost breakdown and cameras used. This is where the New Media's going to come from at first, of course: pros mucking about in the cheap end of the pool. Personally I'd pay a buck a pop to see this every week. And, quite frankly, John's mad not to continue this in webcomic form.
Two casting notes. a.) Ze Frank is pretty good. I'm certainly more likely to cast him in something, having seen him in this. b.) Justine Bateman doesn't have a lot to do here, but she auditioned for Sophie Devereaux on Leverage at a moment when it looked like Gina's visa wasn't going to come through ... and she tore the roof off the joint. Seriously, seriously soulful, dead sexy read, and funny. She did, by far, the best "bad actress" scene in the auditions. Second only to Gina. It's bizarre to think how different the show might have been.
-- My new favorite bit of concept art (click for fullsize). More by the artist Jason Chan here.
-- Sure, everyone loved Paprika, but I'll stick with Millenium Actress.
-- Courtesy Bruce Sterling, a case of kidnapping on Facebook. I don't think anyone's fully plumbed the New Identity in a non-"Hollywood explaining it to executives" way in mainstream narrative (we may not actually be able to). A few years ago, when Cory Doctorow and Alice Taylor came to LA, I invited them to a Lucha VaVoom. Standing outside the theater, I suddenly realized that, despite months of e-mail conversations and casual familiarity, I had no idea what they looked like. I called Alice on her cell and guided them in as if on sonar.
-- Turns out synching Google Calendar with your iCal just requires this. It doesn't synch shared calendars as far as I can tell, but it's good enough for government work.
-- James Moran shows off his workscreen. Can't do it, myself -- I need Screenwriter on fullscreen when writing, although the new outlining pane is intermittently useful. I just tried a new workflow on the movie I'm writing, we may take a look at it this week.
-- Ken Levine's doing a series on how actors memorize scripts. I'm calling Mark Sheppard up and getting his answer, seeing as he's become The Guy Who Can Do the Two Page Speech.
-- Speaking of learning (and memorizing) I'm back on the Pimsleur Method for Spanish. I have to say, for a city where one-hour commutes are the norm, language tapes are efficient, and Pimsleur quickly got me to the point where I could read a newspaper and hold pretty decent conversations. I lost a lot of it since I moved to Canada, but now that I'm back in a functionally bi-lingual city, it's coming back. The tapes are mixed with high-school activity workbooks and a favorite trick -- children's books printed in the language you're studying.
Thinking of trying Rosetta Stone online, so if anyone's had experience with it (or has any other language-learning techniques), give a shout in the comments.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Guitar Fridays: The Stratocaster
by M A N
This is my guitar. There are many like it, but this one is mine (you can tell by the Cthuloid Cephalapod sticker).
The Fender Stratocaster is one of the most recognizable guitars on the planet. Even on the off chance that its double cutaway shape and signature headstock don't look familiar to you, you no doubt have the sounds of this versatile instrument lurking somewhere in your music collection. From the bell-like chimes in blues, twang of country, clackety-clack of funk, full-on shred of metal, to the warm and smooth tones of jazz, you've heard this guitar.
The Stratocaster hasn't changed much in the 50 plus years it's been in production. I guess when you get it right the first time, there's no need to. The body is usually made out of ash, alder, or basswood, though some more exotic woods are used from time to time. It has a maple neck with either a maple or rosewood fingerboard (mine is rosewood) then ends with the most recognizable headstock in history (as you can see, mine has the cool fat 70s style).
Wood, hardware (bridge and tuning pegs) and electronics (pickups, volume and tone pots) can vary in quality. American made Strats are considered a higher quality guitar than those made in Mexico or Taiwan and always fetch a higher price. As a general rule, the more the price goes up, the higher the quality of the components used to make the instrument and, usually, the better the sound. But this is not always true (this goes for any guitar, not just Strats).
I used to work at a music store in Buffalo and one of my duties was maintaining the hundreds of guitars we had hanging on the walls. I got to know those guitars rather intimately and knew which ones felt and sounded the best. And it was never the most expensive ones. Though the pricey guitars sounded and played wonderfully, they weren't necessarily the best in the store (though certainly worth the money). It's also how I was able to tell which customers were the serious players and which ones were just wannabes. The real players would always ask me, if I had a choice, which guitar I would buy. Wannabes (and the occasional collector) always went for the price tag. *
One of the most amazing things about the Stratocaster is how it helps define the musicians who play them. These guitars have become physical extensions of the players themselves to the point where seeing them without a Stratocaster makes them appear naked. The instrument has become such a significant part of their personas that seeing them with another instrument feels like you are staring into a bizzarro world where everything is somehow wrong. Don't believe me? Look here and tell me what you think. Doesn't seem quite right, does it?
I readily admit that my taste in music is not only poor, but also dated. The examples below of Strat players and their Strats in action are pretty one dimensional, so if you know of any others that should be recognized, let's hear about them in comments. Have a great weekend everyone.
Jimi Hendrix ex: "Machine Gun"
Buddy Guy ex: "Sweet Home Chicago"
David Gilmour ** ex: "Marooned"
Eric Clapton ex: "Hoochi coochie Man"
Stevie Ray Vaughn ex: "Little Wing"
Eric Johnson ex: "Cliffs of Dover"
Dick Dale ex: "Miserlou"
Yngwie Malmsteen ex: "Icarus Dream Fanfare with Orchestra" Wanktastic!
Next week: the Gibson Les Paul.
* My favorite story regarding the sound quality of a Stratocaster involves Steve Vai. While recording the song "The Boy From Seattle" ( a tribute to Jimi Hendrix) for his Alien Love Secrets album, he scoured the land for the perfect Stratocaster. After play-testing hundreds of Strats, he finally settled on a cheap Mexican made model he found in a pawn shop because it simply had the best "Strat" sound.
** David Gilmour is the proud owner of the Fender Stratocaster with the serial number 001 (which, incidentally was NOT the first Strat ever made).
Thursday, January 22, 2009
MarkWaid.com
Now you've done it.
I had to nag Waid into blogging -- and now he's enjoyed the feedback from you fine folk enough that he's been inspired, in a ridiculously short amount of time, to launch his own blog over at MarkWaid.com .
In the tradition of most group blogs, Mark will crosspost on both sites, with the subject matter kind of differentiating out as he establishes his own site's persona. Waid Wednesday will continue here, along with other tidbits he thinks fit here rather than there. Toss both sites on your reader to make sure you miss no Waid-y goodness.
I had to nag Waid into blogging -- and now he's enjoyed the feedback from you fine folk enough that he's been inspired, in a ridiculously short amount of time, to launch his own blog over at MarkWaid.com .
In the tradition of most group blogs, Mark will crosspost on both sites, with the subject matter kind of differentiating out as he establishes his own site's persona. Waid Wednesday will continue here, along with other tidbits he thinks fit here rather than there. Toss both sites on your reader to make sure you miss no Waid-y goodness.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Waid Wednesday #7: Ground Floor Stuff
When I talk to aspiring comics writers, they’re often most mystified not by the scripting (there are plenty of script books out there) or the language (most anyone who’s interested in doing this for a living already knows what a “panel” is, what “balloons” are, etc.). They’re freaking out because they don’t know where to start. Almost no comics editor will read a spec script cold; whether you’re angling to sell your own series or write for an existing property, you need to start with a Pitch, generally followed by a Proposal.
The Pitch is your first chance to demonstrate your understanding of the Economy Of Storytelling--that you know how to pace a comics story and have some clue as to how much fits on the page. And no editor will have faith that you can squeeze a complete story into a hundred panels if you can’t squeeze your idea into two pages. True story: back when I was on staff at DC, a well-meaning but green freelancer sent me his pitch for his creator-owned series. It was sixty-two pages long. Worse, because this writer was friends with my boss, I was forced to actually suffer through this paper cinderblock, and it was arguably the most miserable experience with fiction I’ve had to this day. I would honestly, truly rather read Moby Dick backwards than crawl through a sixty-two page document that was sixty-one pages too long, and even if it had been filled to the brim with moments of staggering brilliance that would humble Jack Kirby and Alan Moore, I still would never have been interested in seeing it published because I had zero confidence that the writer could demonstrate any sense of economy in his storytelling.
(Footnote: Three years and four editors later, the series was actually published, and I would swear to this day under oath that its eight relentless issues actually weigh more than eight issues of any normal comic.)
The Pitch isn’t about story so much as it is about testing the waters (oh, how clever a metaphor that will appear to be in a moment). A Pitch Document explains, in broad strokes, the characters and the story and the “feel” of it all. (Is it drama? Comedy? Crime? Romance?) Not too much detail is necessary at this point; all you’re really trying to do is gauge the interest of whoever’s reading it. Make it enticing, show confidence, and for the love of Murphy, keep it short. By way of an example, here’s a write-up (done with artist Mike Wieringo and, sadly, declined) that I worked up a few years ago when I was asked to pitch for Aquaman. It is not a perfect example of a Pitch Document if what you’re pitching is your own concept--this document builds on preexisting knowledge of who Aquaman is, basically, and what he can do--but read it for form and feel.
AQUAMAN
Mark Waid/Mike Wieringo
Preliminary Pitch for a One-Shot/August 3, 2003
I am so sick of people making fun of Aquaman that I’m beginning to take it personally. For the last ten years or so, the way we’ve been scrambling to combat Aquaman’s “Dork of the Sea” image--and I’ve been guilty of trying this, too--is by making Aquaman increasingly darker, grittier, and tougher, the brooding, angry king beset with trouble. Each incarnation of the character seems grimmer than the last, to the point where all that’s left for us to do is give him two hooks. And a peg-leg.
Yes, the seas can be turbulent and stormy, but y’know what? Far more often, the ocean is a universal symbol for peace and contentment. It’s a calming influence. If it weren’t, Bermuda would be deserted and Hawaii would be an industrial trade port. It is most people’s “happy place.” Yes, the ocean is the set piece for “A Perfect Storm,” but it’s also the world of “Finding Nemo” and “The Little Mermaid.” I have never yet met anyone of any age who didn’t come away from Sea World envying the guides who swim with the whales and porpoises. I propose we turn this “grim Aquaman” paradigm around for a one-shot and see what happens.
Our POV character in this story is a female marine biologist--and since Aquaman’s turf covers the world, there’s no need to make her American. (In fact, Russian is preferable--I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the culture of Russian courtship, and that could really play in nicely.) At any rate, our biologist--let’s call her Yelena for now--may have heard the name “Aquaman” here and there, but to her, he’s about as real and significant as, say, German football stars are to you and me.
Yelena’s work is done with grungy old equipment and spit-and-bailing-wire technology, the best she has to work with. Her whole world has a gritty feel to it-- --so when this bright, blond, shining knight of a man pops out of the water and into her life, she’s addled simply by the contrast. Their paths cross, and she’s drawn into an Aquaman adventure that takes us out on (and under) the water.
Yelena’s not reluctant. To Yelena, this “Aquaman” is, yes, mysterious like the sea--but in a warm, enticing way. To Yelena, he is otherworldly, like a fairy tale character come to life. He rarely speaks (though when he does, he’s staggeringly charming), he lives in the water, and he smiles. Constantly. In fact, at first, Yelena has a nearly impossible time taking him seriously. He’s like a walking cartoon.
And yet...the more she gets to know him, the further she’s drawn out of her world and into his, she’ll come to realize that there’s something going on behind those wide eyes of his. Looking in them, she sees peace and confidence; looking through them, she’s gradually introduced to an underwater world of absolute wonder, a place that is far more colorful and in tune with nature than is her own gritty lifestyle. Once she surrenders to the implausibility of it all, she’s rewarded a thousandfold, and so are we. Aquaman’s joy becomes her joy becomes our joy.
There will be no mocking. NO jokes about how “dumb” talking to fish is. Anyone with a keyboard can make cynical jokes. That’s easy. What’s harder is reminding you why, when you were a kid, you thought the idea of living underwater or riding on the backs of whales WAS cool. We can do that. We can remind you, and Yelena’s awed voice will be there to back us up.
* * * * * *
That’s a sample Pitch Document. Breezy but with some personality to it. Not specific on story but strong on concept. Text broken up into chunks so it’s more inviting to read. Again, you’re just exploring an editor or publisher’s interest at this stage. If they’re intrigued by the Pitch, they’ll ask you to put together a Proposal.
Next: The Proposal
The Pitch is your first chance to demonstrate your understanding of the Economy Of Storytelling--that you know how to pace a comics story and have some clue as to how much fits on the page. And no editor will have faith that you can squeeze a complete story into a hundred panels if you can’t squeeze your idea into two pages. True story: back when I was on staff at DC, a well-meaning but green freelancer sent me his pitch for his creator-owned series. It was sixty-two pages long. Worse, because this writer was friends with my boss, I was forced to actually suffer through this paper cinderblock, and it was arguably the most miserable experience with fiction I’ve had to this day. I would honestly, truly rather read Moby Dick backwards than crawl through a sixty-two page document that was sixty-one pages too long, and even if it had been filled to the brim with moments of staggering brilliance that would humble Jack Kirby and Alan Moore, I still would never have been interested in seeing it published because I had zero confidence that the writer could demonstrate any sense of economy in his storytelling.
(Footnote: Three years and four editors later, the series was actually published, and I would swear to this day under oath that its eight relentless issues actually weigh more than eight issues of any normal comic.)
The Pitch isn’t about story so much as it is about testing the waters (oh, how clever a metaphor that will appear to be in a moment). A Pitch Document explains, in broad strokes, the characters and the story and the “feel” of it all. (Is it drama? Comedy? Crime? Romance?) Not too much detail is necessary at this point; all you’re really trying to do is gauge the interest of whoever’s reading it. Make it enticing, show confidence, and for the love of Murphy, keep it short. By way of an example, here’s a write-up (done with artist Mike Wieringo and, sadly, declined) that I worked up a few years ago when I was asked to pitch for Aquaman. It is not a perfect example of a Pitch Document if what you’re pitching is your own concept--this document builds on preexisting knowledge of who Aquaman is, basically, and what he can do--but read it for form and feel.
AQUAMAN
Mark Waid/Mike Wieringo
Preliminary Pitch for a One-Shot/August 3, 2003
I am so sick of people making fun of Aquaman that I’m beginning to take it personally. For the last ten years or so, the way we’ve been scrambling to combat Aquaman’s “Dork of the Sea” image--and I’ve been guilty of trying this, too--is by making Aquaman increasingly darker, grittier, and tougher, the brooding, angry king beset with trouble. Each incarnation of the character seems grimmer than the last, to the point where all that’s left for us to do is give him two hooks. And a peg-leg.
Yes, the seas can be turbulent and stormy, but y’know what? Far more often, the ocean is a universal symbol for peace and contentment. It’s a calming influence. If it weren’t, Bermuda would be deserted and Hawaii would be an industrial trade port. It is most people’s “happy place.” Yes, the ocean is the set piece for “A Perfect Storm,” but it’s also the world of “Finding Nemo” and “The Little Mermaid.” I have never yet met anyone of any age who didn’t come away from Sea World envying the guides who swim with the whales and porpoises. I propose we turn this “grim Aquaman” paradigm around for a one-shot and see what happens.
Our POV character in this story is a female marine biologist--and since Aquaman’s turf covers the world, there’s no need to make her American. (In fact, Russian is preferable--I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the culture of Russian courtship, and that could really play in nicely.) At any rate, our biologist--let’s call her Yelena for now--may have heard the name “Aquaman” here and there, but to her, he’s about as real and significant as, say, German football stars are to you and me.
Yelena’s work is done with grungy old equipment and spit-and-bailing-wire technology, the best she has to work with. Her whole world has a gritty feel to it-- --so when this bright, blond, shining knight of a man pops out of the water and into her life, she’s addled simply by the contrast. Their paths cross, and she’s drawn into an Aquaman adventure that takes us out on (and under) the water.
Yelena’s not reluctant. To Yelena, this “Aquaman” is, yes, mysterious like the sea--but in a warm, enticing way. To Yelena, he is otherworldly, like a fairy tale character come to life. He rarely speaks (though when he does, he’s staggeringly charming), he lives in the water, and he smiles. Constantly. In fact, at first, Yelena has a nearly impossible time taking him seriously. He’s like a walking cartoon.
And yet...the more she gets to know him, the further she’s drawn out of her world and into his, she’ll come to realize that there’s something going on behind those wide eyes of his. Looking in them, she sees peace and confidence; looking through them, she’s gradually introduced to an underwater world of absolute wonder, a place that is far more colorful and in tune with nature than is her own gritty lifestyle. Once she surrenders to the implausibility of it all, she’s rewarded a thousandfold, and so are we. Aquaman’s joy becomes her joy becomes our joy.
There will be no mocking. NO jokes about how “dumb” talking to fish is. Anyone with a keyboard can make cynical jokes. That’s easy. What’s harder is reminding you why, when you were a kid, you thought the idea of living underwater or riding on the backs of whales WAS cool. We can do that. We can remind you, and Yelena’s awed voice will be there to back us up.
* * * * * *
That’s a sample Pitch Document. Breezy but with some personality to it. Not specific on story but strong on concept. Text broken up into chunks so it’s more inviting to read. Again, you’re just exploring an editor or publisher’s interest at this stage. If they’re intrigued by the Pitch, they’ll ask you to put together a Proposal.
Next: The Proposal
Living Room Table
Was just about to clean up the living room, when I realized my mess was almost perfectly arranged.
LEVERAGE: It's Practically a Single Entendre
Always with the conference room scenes. Good Lord, it's dark in there ...
The Mile High Job is one of those episodes that seems so simple. It begins with us in the writers' room cheering "They're on an airplane, and have to pull off the con before they land! It's practically a bottle show!" and ends with a 70-foot replica fuselage on the soundstage. Oh, and we had to build an airplane bathroom with wild walls, because you just can't get a camera in there for the beautiful fight carnage.
Interesting dynamic in this ep, actually, and one of the episodes you can see the various creative styles of the writers really highlighted. The Notorious B.E.R.G. wrote this one. She favors contained spaces and an active victim/surrogate victim in the con. Chris Downey likes the "setting" episodes -- "It's a wedding! It's a --" -- whoops, spoiler, never mind.
I tend to construct the villain plan absent the heroes, then drop them in. Also, I favor multiple little cons on the way to the big con -- witness the pilot, Homecoming, and the season finale, along with various tweaks along the way. A lot of times I start with "What will we steal?", while Chris starts with "where are we?" There's a fair bit of cross-pollination in the room, of course, and we've spot-welded our approaches several times -- Berg and Chris worked together on The 12 Step Job, while our Filthy Assistant's first script, The Juror #6 Job, shows the taint of both Chris and I.
Layered on the plots, of course, are the stories. Which, as we all know, are not the same thing. Homecoming was about the team learning that being good guys is a lot harder than being bad guys. Two Horse is about dealing with your past. Bank Shot is all about the team growing up, cementing the family bond -- the 'kids' having to pull off the gig on their own. Miracle is about faith and hubris, of course, and you can go on and on. We don't like to lay it on too thick, but the team story is the top layer. End of day, it's very hard to get the audience to give a shit about the vic-of-the-week. In 42:30 they just don't have the screentime. So tying our guys in -- in hopefully non-hacky ways -- is the key to the show's emotional grounding.
For what it's worth, Mile High Job is a trust episode betwen the rest of the team and Hardison. I'd put it in the first half of the season arc. For those of you playing the home game, Bank Shot is the swing episode -- the transition to where the team is fully invested in each other, and walking away is not really an option.
Unless somebody really, really screws up.
Right, questions ...
Richard Jensen: Question about the fight scene. How much is written in advance and how much is blocked out in the shooting?
Depends on the fight scene and who's writing it. Usually we drop one signature bit in there, just to create a framework. Hold on ... let me pull up a pdf of Bank Shot. Tweak the formatting a bit ...
EXT. STANTON PARK - MOMENTS LATER
At the black SUV, THUG #1 stays in the driver's seat, THUG #2 and the head METH DEALER approach the briefcase. They pop it open on a nearby trash can.
THUG #2: It's more than we asked for.
METH DEATHER: Well, ain't that punk just full of surprises.
A BANG as the rear door pops open. Reveal ELLEN CLARK [mid- 40's, a cut over her left eye presumably from battling the thugs during her capture]. She's gagged and her wrists are duct-taped. She bolts from the SUV, manages to make it a few steps, but stumbles. Instantly the Meth Dealer is over her. He draws a REVOLVER, moves to pistol-whip her.
METH DEATHER (CONT'D): Where the HELL you think you're going,
old lady? Where the --
A hand CLAMPS on his raised wrist. He looks back. REVEAL Eliot, holding the Dealer's raised gun-hand.
ELIOT: Hey, what smells like crank and screams like a girl?
Before the Meth Dealer can reacts, Eliot KICKS out his right knee. The Meth Dealer SCREAMS like a girl and collapses. Eliot casually turns to the other Thugs as he empties the chamber to the revolver, letting the rounds fall.
ELIOT (CONT'D): Hmm. Right answer.
Thug #2 rushes Eliot. Eliot moves inside, one-two-three brutal blows, then aikido-flips the guy into a mid-air spin. Thug #1 is halfway out the driver's side door when Eliot closes and KICKS the door, slamming the Thug into the door frame. The SUV door swings open, allowing Eliot to SLAM the door on him again. As that Thug drops, the first one attacks from behind -- Eliot spins, PUNCHES through the window, grabs the THUG and SLAMS him up against the door by pulling his shirt.
As the last Thug drops, Eliot notices little BAGGIES OF METH scattered on the ground. He kicks one idly, turns back to Ellen Clark. Eliot crosses to Ellen, crouches. Throws on his most charming smile. She pulls off her own gag.
ELLEN: Who are you?
ELIOT: Well, ma'am. We'd be the cavalry.
Not exactly as played, but close enough. Charlie Brewer then turned this into something about 300% more complicated and cooler. They tend to fall on either side of this in level of detail.
R.A. Porter: ... I was also amused by the foley work during Eliot's knife conversation.
If there is one thing we can teach you, Spec-Monkeys, it is this: foley + volume = comedy
Sapphire Smoke: By the way, those bridesmaids dresses were disgusting looking, PLEASE tell me that was the point of them lol. You mentioned about scenes/lines being cut for time and stuff, are there any particularly good ones you wish ended up making it in this episode or any of the previous ones?
They were as intentionally ugly as our Costume Designer would let us get away with. I, personally, always marvel at that awful tradition.
I don't miss anything in particular. [EDIT: Actually, three things worth discussing, but they're spoilery. We'll do it tomorrow.]
It's worth noting that in the middle Nate/Sterling scene in Two Horse -- the one at the stable office -- Sophie, Parker and Hardison are actually crammed in that closet directly behind Sterling. The scene started as a comedy scene, and ended up in editing as a dramatic scene.
Alan Scott: Also, some of us haven't been exposed to your Holmes/Watson rant--and if we didn't want to hear you rant, we wouldn't be reading your blog.
Commenter ajay pretty much nailed it: Absolutely. At the beginning of "A Study in Scarlet", Watson has just returned from Afghanistan with a nasty case of PTSD. He went straight into the Army from medical school, and straight to Afghanistan the next year. So he can't really be more than 26 or so when the novel starts - Victorian doctors went to university at 18 or so and studied for five or six years. And Holmes is about the same age if not younger - he's studying at the university, he's had no previous job that anyone mentions, and Watson doesn't describe him as significantly older than himself.
John Watson is a twenty-six year old combat hard-ass with mujhadeen shrapnel buried in his leg (or shoulder, depending on the story), not some foppish fuckwit with a bowler hat. Sherlock Holmes is your substance-abusing perpetual grad student solving cases for the London underworld/working class that the cops won't touch. THAT'S why everybody fucks up Holmes and Watson including, probably, my favorite writer in the world.
About two years ago I was developing that version of Holmes and Watson with a director to do a TV pilot, and our agents correctly argued that no network was really looking for that. However, it's my fondest wish to someday do that show.
Oh, and they're women. Did I mention that?
Maybe, someday.
kinesys: Also: Much love for Dan Lauria and Nicole Sullivan. I love seeing the comedic actors that you're pulling out of your hat and giving them the opportunity to pull out some dramatic chops. I actually did NOT recognize Dan Lauria at first.
More on the way. Brent Spiner was nice enough to drop by. Wheaton owes me one if we go a second season.
billjack: I've noticed some inconsistency in the characters' skills--most notably Parker can act and improv this week when her inability last week was a plot point. How do you keep track of each character's strengths and weaknesses in their skill-sets? ... Are you tracking changes in the characters' skills over the season (as you clearly are with the relationships)? Many shows end up with every character just good enough at every necessary skill as the plot requires them to be which would be a shame to do with such clearly defined characters as these.
The assumption is that most of them have Thief 101 skills. However, they all have their strengths, and you won't see a ton of crossover. Sophie and Parker do the lifts and pickpocketing; Eliot never touches computers except when it's a plot point that he has to; Hardison is the only hacker and never does sleight-of-hand, etc. and can't pick a lock. We wound up giving Eliot and Hardison more con stuff because, well, Kane and Aldis are just really frikkin' funny. You will note that Eliot is almost never part of a long con -- short scenes only.
There is a definite arc to Parker's ability to roleplay throughout the season, and Sophie's tutelage is one of the little relationship runners. It pays off in a big way in an upcoming episode. You'll note that usually, even when she's good, she's very close to blowing it at all times. Same thing with Eliot and Hardison cross-pollinating skills as their relationship -- I wouldn't call it a friendship -- evolves over the course of the season.
Joseph: Any other ideas for the DVD release - cut scenes, video diaries, commentaries. I cannot wait for this release! Have you thought of doing any podcast commentaries?
We've got a ton of b-reel, and that'll be a big part of the next few months, putting that together. We may do podcasts as a dry run for the DVD commentary, if people are into it.
Mitchy: This might have been filmed earlier but the Hardison/Parker scenes still zing as much as last week; is that a pairing that hit the ground running for you and the script writers or was it just luck that paired them up so often in these first episodes?
No, we intended that relationship when we developed the show, and once we saw the chemistry in the pilot we were relieved that we could explore it. Nothing worse than trying to force a relationship on characters who just don't click organically. On the other hand, the team kind of naturally splits along those lines: Nate and Sophie doing brainwork/long con, Parker and Hardison doing insertion/security work, and Eliot beating the shit out of somebody.
Warlach: That said, just a quick question: surely the mirror in the cabinet where you first see Hardison place a bug would make the device pretty obvious?
It's a reactive alloy that will blend in with the wood grain and -- HEY! LOOK OVER THERE!
Kevin: The plotting on this episode seemed a little shaky to me. In addition to what Tal_Kaline noted above, there were a number of inconsistencies that seemed unrealistic ...
We freely admit, this one was our big-comedy "farce with guns." We kind of cashed our Big Comedy card with this one. But frankly, it was worth it. The Fun Train will NOT BE STOPPED!!
All right, I need to get to bed, because some of us are writing six more goddam episodes. Thanks for watching, and we hope you enjoy tonight's Leverage-y diversions. Consider this your episode Open Thread.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Life on Mars?
by M A N
Well, is there ? I'm going to venture a highly uneducated guess and say no, but it's fun to speculate. A nice roundup of "where we are now" comes from Phil Plait over at one of my favorite blogs: Bad Astronomy.
And if you're looking for the thrill of discovery a little closer to home, there is a fascinating series of posts over at Scientific American called Dispatches from the Bottom of the Earth . A scientist by the name of Robin Bell is documenting the expedition to study a mountain range hidden beneath the ice sheet in Antarctica. Mountains of Madness anyone?
We also seem to have taken one step closer toward invisibility. The military applications are pretty obvious, but I'm curious. What commercial uses would there be for this technology? So tell me, Monkeys. What would you use an invisibility cloak for?
(And let's try to avoid the "sneaking into the girls' locker room" type shenanigans, for decency's sake. If you need invisibility to see someone naked, it's probably safe to say that your kung fu is not strong. Nor your use of teh Google.)
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Food For Thought: Shadows on the Wall
My favorite book is Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind (please, no judging). I mean, I LOVE this book. Of my list of five books I'd take with me to a deserted island, it sits at the top. I can't really say why, either. It certainly isn't the best book I've ever read or the most well written (and the last several books of that series get bogged down with the author's ideology which make them difficult to get through), but there's something about the story, the characters, and the way everything unfolds that I find myself rereading all 820 pages at least once a year.
So imagine my surprise when I discovered that there is now a television show based on that book. Like any fan, I sat down to watch the show, but was completely surprised by how different it was from what I was expecting. I wasn't expecting a Lord of the Rings quality adaptation and knew it would have a tone more along the lines of Xena or Hercules (which it does), so as a WFR fanboy, my expectations were pretty grounded. But as I watched through the episodes, I noticed that the show, the story, was, well, different.
This, of course, made sense. Things would have to be changed. Telling a story through nearly a thousand pages of text is different from telling it visually in 42 minute chunks. Some scenes would have to be abridged, if not outright cut, certain characters would have to be molded and shaped in a way to make them sympathetic much more quickly than what a writer can get away with in a novel, story structure would have to be more rigidly formatted for t.v. than the looser stylings of prose. All of this got me to wondering. How much does the medium within which a story is being told dictate the story itself? When the mediums change, does the story cease being one story and become another?
I don't know and I'm sure that's something that can be debated about in comments. But my point here isn't to find an answer to the question, but to think about story itself. Without walking too far into Plato's cave, I'm talking about the TRUE story, the one that's sitting in your head right now. What medium best serves THAT story? And be honest with yourself. Just because you want to write a stageplay doesn't necessarily mean that it's the best medium for the story.
Every medium has its pros and cons (I'm referring more toward the creative aspect of writing for a medium as opposed to working within a medium--different animals). As Sensei Waid has said numerous times before, comics is a visual medium. If your story isn't very visual, comics might not be the best medium for it. So it's a matter of finding which medium will work best for that story.
This may sound a little backwards since most writers probably find a story that best serves a medium rather than the other way around. But if you have a story gelling in your brain that you're struggling to tell the way you want to, it's possible that it's the medium that's the problem. Anway, food for thought.
So how 'bout it, fellow monkeys? What's your favorite adaptation of a story from one medium to another? Least favorite?
So imagine my surprise when I discovered that there is now a television show based on that book. Like any fan, I sat down to watch the show, but was completely surprised by how different it was from what I was expecting. I wasn't expecting a Lord of the Rings quality adaptation and knew it would have a tone more along the lines of Xena or Hercules (which it does), so as a WFR fanboy, my expectations were pretty grounded. But as I watched through the episodes, I noticed that the show, the story, was, well, different.
This, of course, made sense. Things would have to be changed. Telling a story through nearly a thousand pages of text is different from telling it visually in 42 minute chunks. Some scenes would have to be abridged, if not outright cut, certain characters would have to be molded and shaped in a way to make them sympathetic much more quickly than what a writer can get away with in a novel, story structure would have to be more rigidly formatted for t.v. than the looser stylings of prose. All of this got me to wondering. How much does the medium within which a story is being told dictate the story itself? When the mediums change, does the story cease being one story and become another?
I don't know and I'm sure that's something that can be debated about in comments. But my point here isn't to find an answer to the question, but to think about story itself. Without walking too far into Plato's cave, I'm talking about the TRUE story, the one that's sitting in your head right now. What medium best serves THAT story? And be honest with yourself. Just because you want to write a stageplay doesn't necessarily mean that it's the best medium for the story.
Every medium has its pros and cons (I'm referring more toward the creative aspect of writing for a medium as opposed to working within a medium--different animals). As Sensei Waid has said numerous times before, comics is a visual medium. If your story isn't very visual, comics might not be the best medium for it. So it's a matter of finding which medium will work best for that story.
This may sound a little backwards since most writers probably find a story that best serves a medium rather than the other way around. But if you have a story gelling in your brain that you're struggling to tell the way you want to, it's possible that it's the medium that's the problem. Anway, food for thought.
So how 'bout it, fellow monkeys? What's your favorite adaptation of a story from one medium to another? Least favorite?
Ephemera 2009 (3)
-- My Bloody Valentine 3-D. Wow, the 3-D works. Seen in a packed theater with the appropriate screaming, it's a hell of a time. Occasionally it forgets its nature and attempts to let people act, but not so often to distract you from the over-the-top gore. The coolest thing? This gentleman makes an appearance:
-- Apparently there's been a rash of perfect ice circles forming in Britain.
As we know, it's impossible for such complexity to arise spontaneously in nature. Plainly, this is proof of an intelligent designer!
-- There are a lot of specialty travel sites, but a friend has recently started one oriented around "just couples" travels, focusing on getting to know the destination organically rather than hitting touristy spots. Check out Travels with Two.
-- Although this Penny Arcade strip mentions documentaries about single letters of the alphabet merely in passing/mocking, I must note I would watch a documentary about the letter Q. My friends still joke about the fact I read Salt: A World History. Often during the mocking they botch the title as "The Story of Salt." That, of course, is totally off-base. It's not the story of salt; it's the story of the world as told through the lens of salt. I can only imagine their shame, now that I've pointed out their mistake.
It's a great book. He's also written about Cod and Oysters. But the Salt book is really his best.
-- Gail Simone's Welcome to Tranquility is the comic you didn't read, and you are poorer for it. And anyone who can explain why the Batman R.I.P. arc was both necessary and relevant to the sequence in Final Crisis, feel free to take your shot in the Comments.
-- Cowboy BeBop is, and will forever be, Cowboy BeBop.
-- Today in the writer's room:
"Did you know Dolly Parton's first album was cut in 1957?"
"I did not."
"And look at this album cover --"
"-- Dolly had a really modern look back then."
" John, why are you on a Dolly Parton Timeline site?"
" ... blogging is not always pretty, Chris. Sometimes you follow a link, and it leads you ... places."
-- You're welcome.
-- For discussion in the Comments: Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man or Angie Dickinson in Rio Bravo?
-- Apparently there's been a rash of perfect ice circles forming in Britain.
As we know, it's impossible for such complexity to arise spontaneously in nature. Plainly, this is proof of an intelligent designer!
-- There are a lot of specialty travel sites, but a friend has recently started one oriented around "just couples" travels, focusing on getting to know the destination organically rather than hitting touristy spots. Check out Travels with Two.
-- Although this Penny Arcade strip mentions documentaries about single letters of the alphabet merely in passing/mocking, I must note I would watch a documentary about the letter Q. My friends still joke about the fact I read Salt: A World History. Often during the mocking they botch the title as "The Story of Salt." That, of course, is totally off-base. It's not the story of salt; it's the story of the world as told through the lens of salt. I can only imagine their shame, now that I've pointed out their mistake.
It's a great book. He's also written about Cod and Oysters. But the Salt book is really his best.
-- Gail Simone's Welcome to Tranquility is the comic you didn't read, and you are poorer for it. And anyone who can explain why the Batman R.I.P. arc was both necessary and relevant to the sequence in Final Crisis, feel free to take your shot in the Comments.
-- Cowboy BeBop is, and will forever be, Cowboy BeBop.
-- Today in the writer's room:
"Did you know Dolly Parton's first album was cut in 1957?"
"I did not."
"And look at this album cover --"
"-- Dolly had a really modern look back then."
" John, why are you on a Dolly Parton Timeline site?"
" ... blogging is not always pretty, Chris. Sometimes you follow a link, and it leads you ... places."
-- You're welcome.
-- For discussion in the Comments: Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man or Angie Dickinson in Rio Bravo?
Friday, January 16, 2009
Six Scripts
As various Humans reported today, Leverage has a new six-script order. To clarify fan speculation, these will not be tacked on to the end of Season One, but would be in theory the first six of a Season Two, if we are indeed picked up for a second go-round.
It is encouraging, but not a guarantee. So keep watching and linking and recapping if you like the show, and if you don't, well, ummmm ... read more? I don't know where that sentence was going.
It is encouraging, but not a guarantee. So keep watching and linking and recapping if you like the show, and if you don't, well, ummmm ... read more? I don't know where that sentence was going.
WW #6 Follow-Up: Good With The Treasure Hunting, Not So Much With The Treasure KEEPING
Judging from the comments, the "Six Qualities" list sparked one of our more interesting debates. The comments certainly had me thinking and reflecting. Some clarifications:
1) I apologize if anyone thought I was deliberately belittling Dr. Henry Jones or the Indy movies. At least one commenter seemed to have taken it personally. Not my intent. Raiders is still one of the greatest screenplays of all time and one of the best movies in anyone's film collection, including mine. But I honestly think that what I love most about that movie is its subversiveness towards the classic movie-hero tropes--most notably that if you take Indy out of that movie, the plot stays virtually intact. Okay, yeah, it might take the Nazis a little longer to find the Ark out there in the desert, but they still get their faces eaten off by tampering with Forces Unknown. ("Find the ark and get it to the US Government. He did that." Please. Only because the Villain Defeated Himself.) I really don't mind this. And, more importantly, I surrender to it.
2) I still feel like you have to stretch the definition of "successful" in order to make it fit Indy, who loses things almost as often as he finds them and manages to leave an awful lot of archaeology-unfriendly destruction in his wake, but I certainly accept that "successful" doesn't always mean "at the obvious goal" and can mean "at an unintended goal" so long as you can sell the audience on the idea that the latter's just as significant. (Not always a given.)
3) I have no idea how Frodo manages to bypass this list, but I'm convinced I could figure it out if I liked him as a character even remotely and hadn't spent eight moviegoing hours silently imploring his comrades to just leave the little bastard behind.
4) I probably should have added the word "altogether" to the statement "if my hero is missing one or more of these qualities". Not backpedalling, just emphasizing the earlier point--not every hero has to have all six qualities firing on all cylinders all the time. But, as I said, if I look back on some story of heroic fiction that I've written and realize I failed to have my protagonist hit these touchstones even once, the story feels "off" unless I did it on purpose.
Agreed all around that sometimes the most interesting stories are about the protagonist acquiring one or more of these traits as part of his journey. In fact, to further the discussion, let's let's expand on the original list. Here's how I interpret the Six Qualities. YMMV. (In fact, since it's not even my list to begin with and I no longer know how the original author interpreted these terms, MY mileage may be the one that's varying.)
COMPETENT--this doesn't leave a whole lot of room for interpretation. Hero doesn't have to be consistently brilliant--that's dull--but it seems like you want your hero to be at least baseline not-a-total-buffoon. I suppose there are exceptions--within the world of the Pink Panther, Clouseau is a hero, I guess--but I'm not sure these guidelines translate well to slapstick comedy.
BRAVE--again, pretty self-explanatory. Fundamental, I'd say. Because no matter how quirky or comically cowardly your hero seems, anyone who's willing to start down the path of the Heroic Journey however reluctantly is, to some degree, "brave."
MORAL--I take "moral" at its strictest definition: demonstrating a consistent ethical code, not necessarily MY ethical code. Dr. Doom is actually "moral" in that sense. I do think that if your hero's all over the map morally, it's much harder for the audience to keep his motivations straight.
SELFLESS--toughest to infuse consistently without making your hero a dull boor. Personally, I like selfless heroes more than heroes with feet of clay--personal preference--but I fully understand why they don't resonate widely. In Back to the Future, one of my favorite movies of all time, Marty McFly shows only the occasional flash of selflessness--his goal is, in fact, 100% selfish and his own welfare is almost always at the forefront of his actions. But the key word there is "almost"--there are the occasional flashes of selflessness in act three, and I'd argue that without them, the story would be more hollow.
RELEVANT, at least as I interpret it, means that the hero's goals or needs are in some way relatable to our own--the more relatable, the better. The reason Spider-Man's popularity overtook Superman's back in the '60s was that Spider-Man's problems were relevant to us--family worries, trouble at school, feeling like you can't catch a break. Meanwhile, Superman's biggest problem was that he couldn't figure out how to enlarge the Bottle City of Kandor.
And SUCCESSFUL we've already discussed. Successful at something important to the audience, something the importance of which (if it isn't the stated goal) clearly supersedes on an emotional level any failed goals.
I repeat: not a recipe. Rules of thumb. But, for writing pulp adventure, rules I find useful.
1) I apologize if anyone thought I was deliberately belittling Dr. Henry Jones or the Indy movies. At least one commenter seemed to have taken it personally. Not my intent. Raiders is still one of the greatest screenplays of all time and one of the best movies in anyone's film collection, including mine. But I honestly think that what I love most about that movie is its subversiveness towards the classic movie-hero tropes--most notably that if you take Indy out of that movie, the plot stays virtually intact. Okay, yeah, it might take the Nazis a little longer to find the Ark out there in the desert, but they still get their faces eaten off by tampering with Forces Unknown. ("Find the ark and get it to the US Government. He did that." Please. Only because the Villain Defeated Himself.) I really don't mind this. And, more importantly, I surrender to it.
2) I still feel like you have to stretch the definition of "successful" in order to make it fit Indy, who loses things almost as often as he finds them and manages to leave an awful lot of archaeology-unfriendly destruction in his wake, but I certainly accept that "successful" doesn't always mean "at the obvious goal" and can mean "at an unintended goal" so long as you can sell the audience on the idea that the latter's just as significant. (Not always a given.)
3) I have no idea how Frodo manages to bypass this list, but I'm convinced I could figure it out if I liked him as a character even remotely and hadn't spent eight moviegoing hours silently imploring his comrades to just leave the little bastard behind.
4) I probably should have added the word "altogether" to the statement "if my hero is missing one or more of these qualities". Not backpedalling, just emphasizing the earlier point--not every hero has to have all six qualities firing on all cylinders all the time. But, as I said, if I look back on some story of heroic fiction that I've written and realize I failed to have my protagonist hit these touchstones even once, the story feels "off" unless I did it on purpose.
Agreed all around that sometimes the most interesting stories are about the protagonist acquiring one or more of these traits as part of his journey. In fact, to further the discussion, let's let's expand on the original list. Here's how I interpret the Six Qualities. YMMV. (In fact, since it's not even my list to begin with and I no longer know how the original author interpreted these terms, MY mileage may be the one that's varying.)
COMPETENT--this doesn't leave a whole lot of room for interpretation. Hero doesn't have to be consistently brilliant--that's dull--but it seems like you want your hero to be at least baseline not-a-total-buffoon. I suppose there are exceptions--within the world of the Pink Panther, Clouseau is a hero, I guess--but I'm not sure these guidelines translate well to slapstick comedy.
BRAVE--again, pretty self-explanatory. Fundamental, I'd say. Because no matter how quirky or comically cowardly your hero seems, anyone who's willing to start down the path of the Heroic Journey however reluctantly is, to some degree, "brave."
MORAL--I take "moral" at its strictest definition: demonstrating a consistent ethical code, not necessarily MY ethical code. Dr. Doom is actually "moral" in that sense. I do think that if your hero's all over the map morally, it's much harder for the audience to keep his motivations straight.
SELFLESS--toughest to infuse consistently without making your hero a dull boor. Personally, I like selfless heroes more than heroes with feet of clay--personal preference--but I fully understand why they don't resonate widely. In Back to the Future, one of my favorite movies of all time, Marty McFly shows only the occasional flash of selflessness--his goal is, in fact, 100% selfish and his own welfare is almost always at the forefront of his actions. But the key word there is "almost"--there are the occasional flashes of selflessness in act three, and I'd argue that without them, the story would be more hollow.
RELEVANT, at least as I interpret it, means that the hero's goals or needs are in some way relatable to our own--the more relatable, the better. The reason Spider-Man's popularity overtook Superman's back in the '60s was that Spider-Man's problems were relevant to us--family worries, trouble at school, feeling like you can't catch a break. Meanwhile, Superman's biggest problem was that he couldn't figure out how to enlarge the Bottle City of Kandor.
And SUCCESSFUL we've already discussed. Successful at something important to the audience, something the importance of which (if it isn't the stated goal) clearly supersedes on an emotional level any failed goals.
I repeat: not a recipe. Rules of thumb. But, for writing pulp adventure, rules I find useful.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Waid Wednesday #6: Six Qualities of a Hero
Late posting. And thin. Sorry. Horrific week, dead desktop computer beyond resurrection. So, this, sent to me almost two decades ago by award-winning writer/artist Ty Templeton, who in turn cribbed it from a then-recent PSYCHOLOGY TODAY article. Author lost to time (and to Google), exact citation lost to time, but this list has been in my head nonetheless ever since I first read it and is an invaluable checklist/touchstone that, to this day, I refer to every time I write a story in any genre.
THE SIX QUALITIES OF A HERO:
Competent
Brave
Moral
Selfless
Relevant
Successful
While all six characteristics are not always 100% present in every hero (see: Jones, Indiana, who fails u-t-t-e-r-l-y and r-e-p-e-a-t-e-d-l-y at Quality Six), I find the list terrifically insightful and have come to learn that if my hero is missing one or more of these qualities, I had better be able to articulate why...and if/how that makes it a better, more compelling story. Because generally it does not.
In the comments: debate. And, for extra credit, defend Indy to my satisfaction. Good luck with that.
THE SIX QUALITIES OF A HERO:
Competent
Brave
Moral
Selfless
Relevant
Successful
While all six characteristics are not always 100% present in every hero (see: Jones, Indiana, who fails u-t-t-e-r-l-y and r-e-p-e-a-t-e-d-l-y at Quality Six), I find the list terrifically insightful and have come to learn that if my hero is missing one or more of these qualities, I had better be able to articulate why...and if/how that makes it a better, more compelling story. Because generally it does not.
In the comments: debate. And, for extra credit, defend Indy to my satisfaction. Good luck with that.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
LEVERAGE: 'Til Death. Like A Steel Cage Match.
A short post on "The Wedding Job", as we're a bit stacked up today. This was the third episode shot -- you can see some of the raw edges in the character relationships intended for the early part of the season. I think you can also track the season by Beth's evolving hair-style. Maybe we'll have a competition after the season finale. Figure out the original order based on dialogue and hairstyle, and win a prize!
Written by Chris Downey, directed by Jonathan Frakes (yes, that one.) Watching Frakes direct is a delight. High energy, lots of laughs on set. Actors directing actors is always fun. They share a common working vocabulary -- and are a bit more ruthless.
This is, as Chris calls it, our "farce with guns." It was actually born the day we were putting up the Hundred Cards of Crime. I'd written "Scandal in Bohemia" on a card. Chris, because he has a life, didn't get the reference. I immediately launched into my long explanation of the story -- with a digression into my usual rant of how everybody always cast Holmes and Watson too old -- when Chris cut right through to "Nate as a minister is interesting." So a "steal a wedding" became our high concept, and what's the most dangerous wedding?
You got it. Oh, and yes, you do recognize the FBI guys. FWIW, his is my second favorite fight scene of the year, if only because it's so Jackie Chan in tone. Man, Downey really hit all the buttons of the show with this one ...
EDIT: Almost forgot. That's Chris Kane doing not just the fight knifework but the kitchen knifework. He's actually a pretty great cook.
Let's tackle last week's questions, then open this up to an Open Thread for Comments and questions about this week's ep. Particularly the amazing fight scene.
Caseyo: asked about the books since I saw Apollo's list, was checking to see if there are any other's I should pickup when I go back to work.
Sorry, I was just jammed up that day. Sitting on my shelf right now are:
Sapphire Smoke: It might be just me, but the whole Hardison and his thing for orange soda reminds me of Kenan & Kel. "Who looovvee orange soda? Kel loooovves orange soda" LOL!
Aldis brought in the orange soda first day, and it's now become a running gag. Sadly trimmed from a script -- his half-page rant about the inferiority of Eastern European orange soda.
Hollie Neil: (Stork Job) seemed like a really expensive episode to shoot. Explosions, child actors, etc . The other episodes were slightly more contained (the bank, the church, etc) Did you have to sacrifice anything you loved in order to make all that work? Just curious.
Actually, shooting on our own set for Howl Force, plus KNOWING we were writing for a bigger budget, kept things relatively under control. We did however trim up the budget for a few future episodes to pay for it, but that's okay, that's the balance every TV show does. Ask the BSG folk about the boxing episode someday.
Ironically, blowing things up is not that expensive. CHILDREN, on the other hand, are brutally expensive. And you have to be all, like, careful with them and everything. Fuck 3-D, we desperately, desperately need robot children for tv acting.
TheMindFantastic: The American Embassy scene, found the banter especially interesting. 'Irina' knowing how a person will lie by eye movements, seems right out of a Bandler-Grinder NLP book, which links to the 'Anchoring' Sophie tells Eliot and Nate about, which is right out of a Ross Jeffries manual on seduction (who got most of his tech from Bandler-Grinder). That alone (mostly because its shit I happen to know about) made this my fav ep so far
It's almost as if you were looking over the hard-researching shoulder of ep writer Albert Kim. Who had to explain to his wife why he had that stack of books on seduction she found in his office. Ouch.
Robert Emerson: You know, episodes of shows where the premise is fake movie or television shoots are always hilarious, as those involved seem to exorcise some ghosts of real shoots past through the episode. I mean, seriously, damn funny episode, espcially the "Director." :D Anyone or group of someones in particular?
The Howl Force experience is based on various nightmare tales of eastern european film shoots from our crew. From the 1st Ad to the Best Boy, everybody's shot in a tax-friendly former dictatorship at some point in their life. We did, at one point, turn to each other and say "you know, we could just shoot out the rest of Howl Force and sell it to SciFi ..."
Rob: On one hand, I don't have a really clear thread of character/relationship development. This might be a function of broadcast order, but to sum up, given they started out as People Who Work Alone, they all got more or less totally comfortable with this arrangement way too quickly. After the pilot it's a little like I've just checked back in for season 2. Is this intentional? Tied to the slightly retro tone?
A mix of both. It's always hard, once the audience has bought the ticket, for the writers to say "Whoa, whoa, slow down the fun train ...". Coflicts remain between the characters all season, and the eps in original order track the arc a little more carefully. Actually, a major new conflict/shift occurs about halfway through, so it'll be fun to see how people respond to that.
On the other hand, yeah, retro fun. I think we split the diference.
KazG: The injury that Eliot was holding an ice pack to in the beginning looked pretty real, was that make up or Chris Kane's own stunt-induced damage?
SOMEBODY went out at 1am after his weekly poker game with Tim Hutton and SOMEBODY started tossing around a football, until SOMEBODY slipped on the asphalt in his goddam cowboy boots.
Miraculously -- and I mean MIRACULOUSLY -- that Somebody heals at weirdly supernatural speed. We only had to cover the problem in two shots (the lesbian bar joke was an on-set throwaway, I think). Seriously, the entire asphalt burn was healed in under three days. The doctors were freaked. It definitely supports the idea that "shitkicker" actually has a genetic component.
Commish: ) I'm going to do some poking around on the internet myself, but I'm just curious how real, and how large-scale, of a problem the situation with orphans in Serbia is. How much did you learn about that whole dilemma in order to shoot the episode? Were the actors involved in your research? Were you hoping that this episode might highlight the problem so that it might be further addressed?
We did a fair bit of research, more into the adoption scams (that tend to run out of Russia) than the Serbian issue. Enough to get really, really depressed while writing. But no, we're not arrogant enough to think we're drawing attention to the situation. If someone's motivated to poke around based ont he show, we'll take the win.
commish cont'd: 2) The only nit-pick I had this week was the way they decided to get the "real" director in Belfast out of the picture. They had to SWITCH his cell phone to send him a fake text message? Hardison couldn't just get the guy's actual cell phone #, and rout him a fake text message? Besides, wouldn't the guy be halfway to the airport when he realized it wasn't his phone, and be back on set within an hour? I know I need to zip it and suspend some disbelief, but I just wanted to mention that one.
You're looking at the "we can only afford to shoot one third of the actual scam" version of that scene. But fair on ya, particularly because we phone scam all the time without a lift.
commish cont'd: Ooh, wait, if I can get it answered, I have one more question... how are the ratings coming for this show? Is TNT pleased? How do the +3 ratings for it compare with some of the other original programming that TNT is airing?
TNT is pleased, and our DVR numbers in particular are ... strong, and we'll leave it at that. You know, at this point in the broadcast model, there's no real point to the overnight ratings we all quote, but that's what we've been doing for years, so that's what we all talk about. TNT, like most cable shows, looks at "runs" of episodes -- so, say, the three showings on Tuesday are added together -- and also pays a lot of attention to DVR +3.
Killah Mate: Don't worry about it though, it wasn't too suspension-shattering. In fact, if we ignore the locations, extras casting, all that budget-dependent stuff (and hell, even Casino Royale wasn't shot anywhere near Montenegro) you come out looking pretty good. I appreciated the amount of local language spoken, even by the leads (which is rarely done, maybe because they don't want it to sound stupid - which your guys and girls didn't, so props to the language team). Also, you established a nice sense of place (lovely greenscreen work, regardless of the actual source of the panoramas).
We appreciate your appreciation. Gina did have some grim satisfaction in watching everybody else learn how to do what she does every damn week. I know there's been a bit of a kerfuffle on the greenscreen samples, but that's one of those things where the importance of a.) affordable and b.) available at c.) the right resolution with d.) the matching camera movement trumped fine-point accuracy.
All told, we do our best in seven days. Nicely enough, there are a lot of actors who speak multiple language sin LA; we do tend to favor native speakers if they're available in those roles.
Jim Kakallos: I was also going to ask about Hardison using a translation book as opposed to software (even if the software I could use is too slow, I don't believe that Hardison hasn't hacked the NSA's super secret real time programs).
Hardison foolishly forgot to switch his keyboard over to Cyrillic on the drive over, so at that moment it was faster for him to pick up his dead-tree dictionary.
No, seriously. That's why. LOOK OVER THERE!
That's it for the mailbag this week. Use this thread for comments and questions, and we'll see you soon. Thanks for the time and attention.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Ephemera 2009 (2)
-- Mike Nelson is too modest to pimp here, but issue #1 of HEXED came out this week (hey, free first issue is a FREE DOWNLOAD!! SMART!!). It's very, very good. I call it "Juno meets Hellblazer". I don't know what Mike calls it. Great artist, too.
-- From Warren Ellis: Polar Nuclear Lighthouses. I repeat. Nuclear. Lighthouses.
-- Mysterious Skin / Brick / The Lookout, that's a hell of a run. Skin is a hard, hard movie but for a weekend rental you can't go wrong with either Brick or Lookout. The Lookout is actually the best of the lot, really a hell of a movie, and streaming off Netflix. You could pump it through your XBOX360 and have it up on the big screen in five seconds. Oh, wait, Brick is available on Amazon VOD, too. Cool.
-- Charlie Stross' Jennifer Morgue is finally out in paperback, meaning you can now do the one-two punch with Atrocity Archive. I will admit that although I like both books, I actually prefer "The Concrete Jungle" novella in Atrocity Archive. You can read both on your Kindle ...
-- ... which, having had for nearly a year now, I will say is well worth the money if you buy as many books as I do. Like most people I have a deep aversion to throwing away books, and finding trading situations can be tricky (although Mrs. Glenn likes The Paperback Exchange EDIT: she actually recommends The Paperback Swap.).
The Kindle provides several benefits. First, I keep my big clunky non-fiction off the much smaller bookshelves of my tiny LA bungalow house. I read more, because I have that 3 pound, 1000+ page Colony to Superpower tucked into the outside sleeve of my briefcase so I can pick it up at lunch anywhere I go. It handles magazine subscriptions well -- I picked up subscriptions to Asimov and Amazing, which I'd never do with the dead tree version. Better for the environment, too.
The Kindle editions are discounted enough that I've managed, particularly on the hardcover purchases, to earn back in savings what the Kindle cost. It takes about three days to get used to -- during which you wonder what chimp engineer designed it so every surface a normal human would use to hold the device is actually a button -- but after that you can't live without it. I now actually delay some book purchases because they don't have a Kindle edition yet.
-- speaking of books, the First Law trilogy: ** SPOILER**I love, love, love Joe Abercrombie's writing style and storytelling. His female characters aren't great, but hey, first book. I urge you to read the trilogy. I'd read his shopping list. However, I don't know if I needed to spend 3000+ pages to suddenly discover that the entire work was a buildup to: "What if Gandalf was a dick?" (highlight to read).
-- New link going into the sidebar: Frontal Cortex, neuroscience fun by Jonah Leherer. Prepare to lose a day plowing through the archives.
-- Keep a pipe bomb on you at all times, you can use it to shift that genny out of the elevator door. Although I've noticed the practice is waning. Oh, and on the roof of Mercy Hospital, Smokers should ambush ladder-climbers from the LOWER rooftop, closer to the edge. You're still in range.
-- I recently in a meeting said "As useless as a Hunter on the roof of Mercy Hospital." Sadly, I do not think it's going to catch on.
-- In the Comments, please post your senior prom theme song. Which, for the life of me, I personally cannot remember ...
-- From Warren Ellis: Polar Nuclear Lighthouses. I repeat. Nuclear. Lighthouses.
-- Mysterious Skin / Brick / The Lookout, that's a hell of a run. Skin is a hard, hard movie but for a weekend rental you can't go wrong with either Brick or Lookout. The Lookout is actually the best of the lot, really a hell of a movie, and streaming off Netflix. You could pump it through your XBOX360 and have it up on the big screen in five seconds. Oh, wait, Brick is available on Amazon VOD, too. Cool.
-- Charlie Stross' Jennifer Morgue is finally out in paperback, meaning you can now do the one-two punch with Atrocity Archive. I will admit that although I like both books, I actually prefer "The Concrete Jungle" novella in Atrocity Archive. You can read both on your Kindle ...
-- ... which, having had for nearly a year now, I will say is well worth the money if you buy as many books as I do. Like most people I have a deep aversion to throwing away books, and finding trading situations can be tricky (although Mrs. Glenn likes The Paperback Exchange EDIT: she actually recommends The Paperback Swap.).
The Kindle provides several benefits. First, I keep my big clunky non-fiction off the much smaller bookshelves of my tiny LA bungalow house. I read more, because I have that 3 pound, 1000+ page Colony to Superpower tucked into the outside sleeve of my briefcase so I can pick it up at lunch anywhere I go. It handles magazine subscriptions well -- I picked up subscriptions to Asimov and Amazing, which I'd never do with the dead tree version. Better for the environment, too.
The Kindle editions are discounted enough that I've managed, particularly on the hardcover purchases, to earn back in savings what the Kindle cost. It takes about three days to get used to -- during which you wonder what chimp engineer designed it so every surface a normal human would use to hold the device is actually a button -- but after that you can't live without it. I now actually delay some book purchases because they don't have a Kindle edition yet.
-- speaking of books, the First Law trilogy: ** SPOILER**I love, love, love Joe Abercrombie's writing style and storytelling. His female characters aren't great, but hey, first book. I urge you to read the trilogy. I'd read his shopping list. However, I don't know if I needed to spend 3000+ pages to suddenly discover that the entire work was a buildup to: "What if Gandalf was a dick?" (highlight to read).
-- New link going into the sidebar: Frontal Cortex, neuroscience fun by Jonah Leherer. Prepare to lose a day plowing through the archives.
-- Keep a pipe bomb on you at all times, you can use it to shift that genny out of the elevator door. Although I've noticed the practice is waning. Oh, and on the roof of Mercy Hospital, Smokers should ambush ladder-climbers from the LOWER rooftop, closer to the edge. You're still in range.
-- I recently in a meeting said "As useless as a Hunter on the roof of Mercy Hospital." Sadly, I do not think it's going to catch on.
-- In the Comments, please post your senior prom theme song. Which, for the life of me, I personally cannot remember ...
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Big Hollywood and Why I Admire David Zucker
Yeah, if you're just here for LEVERAGE pr0n, best skip this. For you newcomers, I may need to establish that this is my blog, not an official blog of TNT. All opinions on this site are utterly my own. Only I am responsible for them. TNT or any other parent company neither agrees or endorses anything on this site.
Seriously, you're not going to enjoy this. Go back to TWoP.
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No.
Stop e-mailing me. Stop wondering, in your blog, when I'm going to start going over there. One or two odd posts where the facts are wrong, I can handle that -- hell, that was the whole point of "Just Stay Down", people's hypotheses should be tested against actual facts. It was an intellectual exercise in the scientific method. With snark.
But after swinging by Big Hollywood this morning, I realized (me) + (that site) = (getting on the boat to look for Kurtz).
It's a crack pinata. It's a garden of crack pinatas, and I'm spinning and spinning -- half the site is triumphantly noting that Hollywood is finally making conservative or secretly conservative big budget mega-hits (Dark Knight! Iron Man! Transformers!) while the other half bemoans how Hollywood keeps making anti-war/anti-American movies mega-flops. Somehow the massive hits made by mega-corporations are happy subversive accidents, while flops are the direct product of these exact same mega-corporations' self-destructive liberal agendas.
For chrissake, there's even one woman, the sum total of her post was how Hollywood types don't worry about taxes because we incorporate and then laugh at the Red State rubes who pay taxes. Because S-corps don't exist outside the 90210 zip code, as you well know. But Hollywood is laughing at you, America! This post basically summarizes populist conservative rhetoric in America, brought to its alchemically pure conclusion in Sarah Palin: "Oh , they think they're sooo smart, don't they? Well we'll show them!"
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This is the section you were probably sent here for. It's not here anymore. A friend of mine e-mailed me, and pointed out that personal attacks were beneath the level of this blog, particularly now that it's a group blog. He basically ass-kicked me, and he's right. I can't invite Mark and Mike on here, try to make the focus of the blog in the new year alt media production, and continue on these rants. I certainly can't pick this fight, and then deny Comments. At the same time, I desperately never, ever, ever want to discuss these humans again.
The major teaching point is: do not post at 1 am.
Let's just note that Big Hollywood's bugaboo is "Hollywoood"'s incessant attempt to shove anti-war/anti-culture movies down our throats. In particular, Editor-in-Chief John Nolte notes that there were 16 movies he'd consider anti-War in the last two years, most of which were actually independently produced documentaries or did not, in fact, directly involve the Iraq War. And that they flopped. Actual numbers show that most broke even at least. You can recreate the research with five minutes and BoxOffice Mojo.
But I was, to be blunt, a raving asshole while I made that point. And I'm trying to do less of that. As a matter of fact, consider this my last binge of the New Year, before the resolution kicks in.
You can probably find this original page in the Google cache.
So consider it trimmed down tooooo ....
*********************************
"Now, John," you might say, as a reasonable human, "that's not fair. Big Hollywood's argument is that the anemic box office domestically indicates Americans don't want to see movies that show America in a bad light, and despite that fact Hollywood produces lots of them -- okay, not lots of them but anyway -- still produces these movies because of its liberal bias. You should engage his intended argument, not his actual one."
Well, first off, for a trillion dollar industry dedicated to pushing anti-War movies on America, dedicating to this cause less than 5% of the last 300 movies kind of indicates our hearts aren't really into it. Not to mention the limited number of release theaters for most of the movies we discussed. FIFTEEN THEATERS for Redacted, for chrissake. Here's a quick clue -- when Hollywood wants to sell something, we make it as widely available as possible for purchase. Crazy, I know. What sort of marketing mumbo-jumbo is this?
You'll note thay evil "Hollywood" kind of lay down on the oppression job, allowing An American Carol to be released in 1600+ theaters, and Proud American to be released in 750 theaters, and Expelled to be released in over 1000 theaters, the widest release of a documentary in history. As far as soul-crushing propaganda machines go, we are not getting the memos out, apparently.
Let's take a moment to address the first, possibly non-crazy part of that argument: we should use domestic box office. No, because Nolte was right to use the worldwide box office in his argument.
This is how it works, kids. Hollywood is run by large corporations. Large corporations do not want to make controversial political movies. Which is why, by and large, they don't. They want to make franchise-friendly four-quadrant super-profitable family entertainment, with some sex comedies for the teens/dumb-guy comedies for college students, sprinkled liberally with horror movies for Date Night. Which is why, by and large, they do.
This is not hard. This is capitalism. Capitalism is our friend.
Artsy People in Hollywood, on the other hand, often want to do something artistically satisfying, or personally important. And, too, studios sometimes want to win awards, because with that prestige comes more bargaining power with the Artsy People, and often more profits. And, hey, some Execs are secret Artsy People. It's kind of cool, actually.
So let's pretend I'm Reese Witherspoon. I'm going to do that right now. Gosh, I'm pretty. This shirt doesn't go with my eyes, though --
-- okay, let's bail on that. Let's pretend we're watching Reese Witherspoon. NO! Not like that! What is wrong with you people?! Let's make you Reese Witherspoon. You can bear the burden.
Right, Reese. After a couple years as the It Girl in little dramas, you break big in Pleasantville/Cruel Intentions/Election. You have a hell of a year. Now you are the Head on the Poster, and in five years you topline movies making Suits lots of money. How much money? Roughly $770 million worldwide by 2005, not to mention winning an Oscar along the way, which increases both your marketability and the marketability of every movie you star in from now on.
You then announce that you found a very tough little script called Rendition you want to do. You'll do it on the cheap. Anybody wanna help?
The correct answer is "Who do you need dead, Miss Witherspoon?"
There is some trepidation, of course, in the studio office. Let us produce a short play to illustrate how both the dilemma and the resolution may have played out:
Suit #1: In this movie you have brought me, Reese Witherspoon -- America's blonde shiksa sweetheart -- is married to an Arab who is wrongfully kidnapped by the Americans, and tortured. Because, you imply, stopping terrorism can sometimes be bad.
Suit #2: Yes.
Suit #1: Get the fuck out of my office.
Suite #2: If we do this, if we take this risk for her, she may spend her enormous marketplace capital on a project of ours in the future. Say, that script for Romantic Comedy #283 sitting there on your desk.
Suit #1: I am intrigued, but still trepidacious.
Suit #2: She may win an Oscar. She's done it before, it's a serious drama ... that would boost our profile, add to our marketplace capital, and insure profitability with the Oscar Bump.
Suit #1: Still not sure. Let us call Foreign Sales Guy.
Foreign Guy: (entering) I sensed you needed me.
Suit #1: Reese Witherspoon. Anti-war drama.
Foreign Guy: Budget?
Suit #2: Under thirty million. Gyllenhal's in it too.
Foreign Guy: Reese Witherspoon reading -- not even aloud, just sitting and reading -- will sell X million tickets worldwide. Gyllenhal's a bonus. You're covered.
Suit #2: Thank you, Foreign Guy.
Foreign Guy: You're welcome. Now excuse me, I have to go kill an African-American comedy two offices down.
Thus, a box-office "flop" is born -- because it is, in fact, probably going to be profitable in the long run, and make Artsy/Important people happy. And it just might be a really, really good movie.
******************************
This leads us to why, frankly, I admire the hell out of David Zucker.
Because this is the decision everyone makes in Hollywood -- actors, directors, even execs. You have Hollywood Capital -- reputation, proven box office performance both domestic and foreign -- a non-physical set of Assets within the economic system, but capital A-assets nonetheless. (It is, frankly, damn close to a reputation-based economy. Hollywood runs on whuffie.)
And let us get this straight. You have earned that asset, through a mix of hard work and luck, like every other independent contractor in the nation. You have something people wish to buy. It has a value, established in an open and free pure public marketplace.
You then trade this capital with other participants in your indistry for services or products. Services like creative control, or exclusivity, or a product like a script you want, or the studio's own resources -- time, money, access to physical production means, promotion apparatus -- dedicated to your own agenda. This is what every person who has made one of these movies has done. Even execs trade their capital to make movies that might be a risk but might be art, and it's their right, because it's their capital. And if they fuck up, the marketplace will HAMMER them for it.
That's what David Zucker did for An American Carol.
Zucker took his Hollywood Capital, his money, his rep, and his relationships, and invested it in a project he believed in. Hell, do you think that was easy? To make that movie in Hollywood? The amount of shit he must have taken? Good. For. Him.
Was it funny? Well, not to enough people, I guess. But that doesn't matter. He spent his Hollywood Capital, and made the product he both believed in and believed the American Public would buy. Which is exactly how every one of these movies was made. This is what Witherspoon and Gyllenhal did for Rendition. The financiers did for In the Valley of Elah. The stars of Lions for Lambs. It's what Gibson did for Passion of the Christ. They spent their Hollywood Capital, and took their risk. Often slightly less risk as far as Hollywood structure goes because of the nature of the community, but an equal risk in the marketplace.
The difference is, the guys at Big Hollywood look at Stop-Loss -- costing $25 million and making $11 million -- and deduce that America is rejecting Hollywood's liberal agenda. While I look at An American Carol -- costing $20 million and making $7 million -- and deduce "Huh, people didn't seem to like that movie."
Indeed, I might look at the failure of those two overtly political movies at the either end of the ideological spectrum say "Huh, people don't seem to like overtly political movies from either end of the ideological spectrum." But probably not, as I'm not the sort of fuckwit who tries to derive patterns off two lousy data points.
***********************************
So that's the short (ahem) version of why I'm not going over to Big Hollywood, and it will absolutely be my last post on the place. Hell, I'm closing the Comments on this post, because even idly reading them, positive or negative, will be a waste of time. Why? Because they relate to Big Hollywood.
We at Kung Fu Monkey, between Doctor Who jokes and comic book references and the odd political screed, are in the business of Making Shit, or helping you Make your Shit. When conservatives Make Shit we applaud, because we know how hard it is (Good for you, Sherwood Baptist Church. Aces up.)
When conservatives -- or liberals -- spend all their time bitching about how hard it is to Make Shit, they're not worth anyone's time.
Seriously, you're not going to enjoy this. Go back to TWoP.
*******************************
No.
Stop e-mailing me. Stop wondering, in your blog, when I'm going to start going over there. One or two odd posts where the facts are wrong, I can handle that -- hell, that was the whole point of "Just Stay Down", people's hypotheses should be tested against actual facts. It was an intellectual exercise in the scientific method. With snark.
But after swinging by Big Hollywood this morning, I realized (me) + (that site) = (getting on the boat to look for Kurtz).
It's a crack pinata. It's a garden of crack pinatas, and I'm spinning and spinning -- half the site is triumphantly noting that Hollywood is finally making conservative or secretly conservative big budget mega-hits (Dark Knight! Iron Man! Transformers!) while the other half bemoans how Hollywood keeps making anti-war/anti-American movies mega-flops. Somehow the massive hits made by mega-corporations are happy subversive accidents, while flops are the direct product of these exact same mega-corporations' self-destructive liberal agendas.
For chrissake, there's even one woman, the sum total of her post was how Hollywood types don't worry about taxes because we incorporate and then laugh at the Red State rubes who pay taxes. Because S-corps don't exist outside the 90210 zip code, as you well know. But Hollywood is laughing at you, America! This post basically summarizes populist conservative rhetoric in America, brought to its alchemically pure conclusion in Sarah Palin: "Oh , they think they're sooo smart, don't they? Well we'll show them!"
*******************************
This is the section you were probably sent here for. It's not here anymore. A friend of mine e-mailed me, and pointed out that personal attacks were beneath the level of this blog, particularly now that it's a group blog. He basically ass-kicked me, and he's right. I can't invite Mark and Mike on here, try to make the focus of the blog in the new year alt media production, and continue on these rants. I certainly can't pick this fight, and then deny Comments. At the same time, I desperately never, ever, ever want to discuss these humans again.
The major teaching point is: do not post at 1 am.
Let's just note that Big Hollywood's bugaboo is "Hollywoood"'s incessant attempt to shove anti-war/anti-culture movies down our throats. In particular, Editor-in-Chief John Nolte notes that there were 16 movies he'd consider anti-War in the last two years, most of which were actually independently produced documentaries or did not, in fact, directly involve the Iraq War. And that they flopped. Actual numbers show that most broke even at least. You can recreate the research with five minutes and BoxOffice Mojo.
But I was, to be blunt, a raving asshole while I made that point. And I'm trying to do less of that. As a matter of fact, consider this my last binge of the New Year, before the resolution kicks in.
You can probably find this original page in the Google cache.
So consider it trimmed down tooooo ....
*********************************
"Now, John," you might say, as a reasonable human, "that's not fair. Big Hollywood's argument is that the anemic box office domestically indicates Americans don't want to see movies that show America in a bad light, and despite that fact Hollywood produces lots of them -- okay, not lots of them but anyway -- still produces these movies because of its liberal bias. You should engage his intended argument, not his actual one."
Well, first off, for a trillion dollar industry dedicated to pushing anti-War movies on America, dedicating to this cause less than 5% of the last 300 movies kind of indicates our hearts aren't really into it. Not to mention the limited number of release theaters for most of the movies we discussed. FIFTEEN THEATERS for Redacted, for chrissake. Here's a quick clue -- when Hollywood wants to sell something, we make it as widely available as possible for purchase. Crazy, I know. What sort of marketing mumbo-jumbo is this?
You'll note thay evil "Hollywood" kind of lay down on the oppression job, allowing An American Carol to be released in 1600+ theaters, and Proud American to be released in 750 theaters, and Expelled to be released in over 1000 theaters, the widest release of a documentary in history. As far as soul-crushing propaganda machines go, we are not getting the memos out, apparently.
Let's take a moment to address the first, possibly non-crazy part of that argument: we should use domestic box office. No, because Nolte was right to use the worldwide box office in his argument.
This is how it works, kids. Hollywood is run by large corporations. Large corporations do not want to make controversial political movies. Which is why, by and large, they don't. They want to make franchise-friendly four-quadrant super-profitable family entertainment, with some sex comedies for the teens/dumb-guy comedies for college students, sprinkled liberally with horror movies for Date Night. Which is why, by and large, they do.
This is not hard. This is capitalism. Capitalism is our friend.
Artsy People in Hollywood, on the other hand, often want to do something artistically satisfying, or personally important. And, too, studios sometimes want to win awards, because with that prestige comes more bargaining power with the Artsy People, and often more profits. And, hey, some Execs are secret Artsy People. It's kind of cool, actually.
So let's pretend I'm Reese Witherspoon. I'm going to do that right now. Gosh, I'm pretty. This shirt doesn't go with my eyes, though --
-- okay, let's bail on that. Let's pretend we're watching Reese Witherspoon. NO! Not like that! What is wrong with you people?! Let's make you Reese Witherspoon. You can bear the burden.
Right, Reese. After a couple years as the It Girl in little dramas, you break big in Pleasantville/Cruel Intentions/Election. You have a hell of a year. Now you are the Head on the Poster, and in five years you topline movies making Suits lots of money. How much money? Roughly $770 million worldwide by 2005, not to mention winning an Oscar along the way, which increases both your marketability and the marketability of every movie you star in from now on.
You then announce that you found a very tough little script called Rendition you want to do. You'll do it on the cheap. Anybody wanna help?
The correct answer is "Who do you need dead, Miss Witherspoon?"
There is some trepidation, of course, in the studio office. Let us produce a short play to illustrate how both the dilemma and the resolution may have played out:
Suit #1: In this movie you have brought me, Reese Witherspoon -- America's blonde shiksa sweetheart -- is married to an Arab who is wrongfully kidnapped by the Americans, and tortured. Because, you imply, stopping terrorism can sometimes be bad.
Suit #2: Yes.
Suit #1: Get the fuck out of my office.
Suite #2: If we do this, if we take this risk for her, she may spend her enormous marketplace capital on a project of ours in the future. Say, that script for Romantic Comedy #283 sitting there on your desk.
Suit #1: I am intrigued, but still trepidacious.
Suit #2: She may win an Oscar. She's done it before, it's a serious drama ... that would boost our profile, add to our marketplace capital, and insure profitability with the Oscar Bump.
Suit #1: Still not sure. Let us call Foreign Sales Guy.
Foreign Guy: (entering) I sensed you needed me.
Suit #1: Reese Witherspoon. Anti-war drama.
Foreign Guy: Budget?
Suit #2: Under thirty million. Gyllenhal's in it too.
Foreign Guy: Reese Witherspoon reading -- not even aloud, just sitting and reading -- will sell X million tickets worldwide. Gyllenhal's a bonus. You're covered.
Suit #2: Thank you, Foreign Guy.
Foreign Guy: You're welcome. Now excuse me, I have to go kill an African-American comedy two offices down.
Thus, a box-office "flop" is born -- because it is, in fact, probably going to be profitable in the long run, and make Artsy/Important people happy. And it just might be a really, really good movie.
******************************
This leads us to why, frankly, I admire the hell out of David Zucker.
Because this is the decision everyone makes in Hollywood -- actors, directors, even execs. You have Hollywood Capital -- reputation, proven box office performance both domestic and foreign -- a non-physical set of Assets within the economic system, but capital A-assets nonetheless. (It is, frankly, damn close to a reputation-based economy. Hollywood runs on whuffie.)
And let us get this straight. You have earned that asset, through a mix of hard work and luck, like every other independent contractor in the nation. You have something people wish to buy. It has a value, established in an open and free pure public marketplace.
You then trade this capital with other participants in your indistry for services or products. Services like creative control, or exclusivity, or a product like a script you want, or the studio's own resources -- time, money, access to physical production means, promotion apparatus -- dedicated to your own agenda. This is what every person who has made one of these movies has done. Even execs trade their capital to make movies that might be a risk but might be art, and it's their right, because it's their capital. And if they fuck up, the marketplace will HAMMER them for it.
That's what David Zucker did for An American Carol.
Zucker took his Hollywood Capital, his money, his rep, and his relationships, and invested it in a project he believed in. Hell, do you think that was easy? To make that movie in Hollywood? The amount of shit he must have taken? Good. For. Him.
Was it funny? Well, not to enough people, I guess. But that doesn't matter. He spent his Hollywood Capital, and made the product he both believed in and believed the American Public would buy. Which is exactly how every one of these movies was made. This is what Witherspoon and Gyllenhal did for Rendition. The financiers did for In the Valley of Elah. The stars of Lions for Lambs. It's what Gibson did for Passion of the Christ. They spent their Hollywood Capital, and took their risk. Often slightly less risk as far as Hollywood structure goes because of the nature of the community, but an equal risk in the marketplace.
The difference is, the guys at Big Hollywood look at Stop-Loss -- costing $25 million and making $11 million -- and deduce that America is rejecting Hollywood's liberal agenda. While I look at An American Carol -- costing $20 million and making $7 million -- and deduce "Huh, people didn't seem to like that movie."
Indeed, I might look at the failure of those two overtly political movies at the either end of the ideological spectrum say "Huh, people don't seem to like overtly political movies from either end of the ideological spectrum." But probably not, as I'm not the sort of fuckwit who tries to derive patterns off two lousy data points.
***********************************
So that's the short (ahem) version of why I'm not going over to Big Hollywood, and it will absolutely be my last post on the place. Hell, I'm closing the Comments on this post, because even idly reading them, positive or negative, will be a waste of time. Why? Because they relate to Big Hollywood.
We at Kung Fu Monkey, between Doctor Who jokes and comic book references and the odd political screed, are in the business of Making Shit, or helping you Make your Shit. When conservatives Make Shit we applaud, because we know how hard it is (Good for you, Sherwood Baptist Church. Aces up.)
When conservatives -- or liberals -- spend all their time bitching about how hard it is to Make Shit, they're not worth anyone's time.
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