On being critical

I've ordered a couple of books that should serve as an introduction to film and literary criticism.

This is in keeping with my decision to educate myself with the language of filmmaking, to fill the gaps in my knowledge of the art and practice of writing and making movies. It should be interesting, and give me some needed perspective on my own efforts to write screenplays.

We'll see. At the very least I will have learned something. In the mean time I'm still working through my two volume biography of Orson Welles, fascinating in and of itself. Welles is still a young man at this point--I'm still pre-Citizen Kane--and I bet he was an exhausting little scamp to associate with when he was that age.

My first draft for Yod-17 is still coming along. I'm almost halfway through it now. When I finish it I'll put it aside for a while, and work on another project I'm pretty excited about. The new project is a novel I'll be co-writing with my best friend. She's crazy busy but hopefully she'll be able to find the time to contribute to the project. She's a very good writer herself, and she's also a forensic psychologist, so hopefully this will turn into something we can convince someone to publish.

We'll see. In the mean time I'm going to keep reading, writing, and watching. And hoping.

Yod-17

I'm going ahead and giving you the working title for my latest screenplay (above) because it'll tell you absolutely nothing about what it's about.

Yes, I hate the title, but it was all I could come up with and I have to call it something. So, I settled on this.. Hopefully something better will suggest itself to me as I get deeper into the first draft.

It's basically a ghost story set on a space ship--which, I am well aware, is also an apt description of my favorite film of all-time, Alien. This is sort of an homage to that film, without being a rip-off of it. It is to be hoped, anyway.

The first draft is coming along pretty well, I'd say. I'm almost at the end of the first act, which is almost the point at which I can say I'll probably finish it.

It's unabashedly a horror story with science fiction-ish trappings. The basic, underlying motivation for this is to scare the ever-loving shit out of the audience. That's really all I want to do with this bad boy.

What else have I been up to? I've been indulging myself in another, new passion, and that is film.

Yes, I know I write screenplays, but I've never spent much time thinking about the language of film, the history, the context. Over the past few weeks I've developed an obsession about this subject, and I've been working to fill the gaps in my knowledge.

To that end, I watched the entire series, The Story of Film, on Netflix, and I heartily recommend it to you, too, if you are so inclined. I'm also planning to watch some classic films I haven't seen--today it was Taxi Driver. And I'm going to make an effort to see some newer films, now showing at my local theater--last week I saw Trainwreck, which I enjoyed a great deal and also recommend to you.

Reading material is Simon Callow's two-volume biography of Orson Welles, someone I've always found fascinating but knew very little about. I'm sure my library will contain several more books on influential filmmakers or history and critical analysis of films ere much longer.

I'm having fun, and seeing possibilities, getting inspiration from what I'm learning, and finding all sorts of interesting material to use to bore the hell out of anybody unlucky enough to be in close enough proximity. I'm sure I'm about to become a major hit at parties. If I ever went to any.

Anyways, that's what I've been up to, over the past few weeks. How about you?

Soggy 4th of July randomocity

Looks like we're going to get a little rain today. By 'a little' I mean three or four inches in an hour or so. Yes, the downpour is a comin' . . .

Which means it'll be a while before I can go out and pace around the neighborhood while I ruminate over this new project I've given myself.

This is going to be a horror/science fiction thing--see how I put 'horror' first? That's because it'll lean more in that direction than the other. It's going to be a screenplay. I won't got into detail except to say it's kind of a monster movie/haunted house story set in space. Kind of like Alien--it's going to kind of be an homage to that movie, actually. As well as to all those 50s monster movies that helped to warp my psyche into it's current shape.

A couple of things I need before I can get started, though:

• an ending
• a title

It's weird but I at least need to have an idea of what the ending will be before I get started. And I have to call it something. I've got an idea for a working title that I'll probably use--I hate it, but hopefully something better will suggest itself when I start banging away.

Which still leaves me without an ending. I suppose the best thing for me to do is to start working on a treatment and worry about it then. In fact, that is what I'm going to do. Or at least get started on today, in a little while.

That's my plan for the holiday--working on a treatment, and laundry. And hoping not to get washed away with the persistent downpours headed my way.

It's been a while since I've posted, so I want to say congrats to all my gay friends who can now legally marry in this country. It's a long time coming. There's still a long way to go but it's a good start, I guess.

So, stay dry if you're in my area today, have fun, and create something today.

It's been kind of a rough week

There's very little more depressing than discovering that one's heroes are mortal after all.

Two people I've admired for years, and who are at the heart of many a good memory in a long and dark time for me, have died this week.

One is Christopher Lee. Seeing his movies when I was a kid made quite an impression on me, and led me down the path I've been following ever since. He awakened a love of horror in me, one that is still strong and healthy to this day. I didn't know until years later about the incredible life the man lived. Look it up, if you're unaware. You wouldn't believe me if I went into it here and if you hadn't heard already.

The other is Dusty Rhoades. Yes, that Dusty Rhoades, the pro wrestler, real name Virgil Runnels. Yes, there was a time when I was a devoted wrestling fan, and Dusty--aka The American Dream--was at the heart of a lot of fun memories I have from that time. I know people disparage wrestlers, but I have a lot of respect for the ones who reach the top of that game and stay there for a prolonged period. That requires a strange mixture of charisma, verbal skills, and athletic ability.

Granted, the Dream wasn't an impressive athlete, but he was a master at manipulating crowds. Give him a microphone and an audience and he'll have that audience doing whatever he wants them to do. If he'd ever gone into politics he'd be a force to be reckoned with. He had a way of connecting with ordinary people, a way of communicating that he understood the struggles the common people have to go through to live their lives.

And he was all too aware of how people perceived him, and used that for some of the funniest moments I've ever seen on TV.

Anyway, one of those men dying, followed quickly by the other, was a one-two punch that I wasn't ready for this week, and I've been kind of down in the dumps for a few days. Of course, there are other factors at play, too, but you don't care about those.

I've managed to keep banging away on the first draft of this novel, too. I may be onto something with it--there are aspects that I find very interesting. At this rate I should be done with the first draft by the end of the year. Maybe even sooner, if I get on a roll.

Yeah, I'm digging Netflix now

I've been binge watching a new show on Netflix--Sense8. From the minds of J. Michael Stryznski, and the Wachowskis--and if you don't know who those people are, search IMDB.com and come back afterwards.

It's a fairly new phenomenon--it's a show that's designed to be binge watched. There's no way something like this would work in a one-episode-a-week format. I'm not saying you need to sit and watch the entire thing in one sitting, but I do advise you do three or four episodes per session.

For a long time I resisted getting Netflix. I didn't think I'd ever watch it, and, to be honest, I don't as much as other people I know. But there are shows there that aren't available anywhere else, and there are vast wastelands of nothing on regular cable TV, so it helps.

Anyways, should you feel intrigued, one caveat--you need to watch this show. You can't just have it on and sort of check in on it every so often while you do something else. If you do that you'll be completely confused.

Also, there is this moment in episode four that is the epitome of excellence in scriptwriting. All I'll say is it involves the Four Non-Blondes song, "What's Going On?" It was perfection. It literally and figuratively hit all the right notes. If you haven't been paying attention you won't Get It.

I'm sorry, but stuff like that, artistic perfection, makes me giddy.

As far as my own work is concerned, I've decided to adapt a screenplay I wrote a while back into novel form. This was the very first screenplay I ever wrote and it never quite worked--now that it's sort of laid there in my subconscious for a while, marinating in my life experiences and hopes and nightmares, I'm hoping it now has aged into a certain piquancy. We shall see. I just started it so it'll be awhile before enough of it emerges so I can decide if I'm just wasting my time with it (again) or if I have something this time.

So, that's what's going on with me. You?

Remembering . . .

I've been seeing all sorts of remembrances here and there, observances and commemorations of those who died in service to their country. I've seen articles written by veterans, angry that people seem to use Memorial Day to mark the beginning of summer, and that's about it--a day to head to the beach or cook out. Here at my apartment complex they've opened the pool, which they do every Memorial Day weekend.

I'm not a veteran, and don't have any close friends or family who are veterans, but this day does strike a chord with me. Here's how I think we should honor those who died.

Remember what they died for. What they really died for. I'm not talking about the buzzwords the politicians use, like "freedom" and "security." Remember who was pounding the drums to go to the war in the first place, and how they've treated those who came back from it, and whose bank accounts have grown obscenely because of it.

Honor the dead by questioning the motives of those who want to start new wars. Look at who is in favor of it, and what their connections are to people who would benefit from a war--arms manufacturers and defense contractors. How are people who aren't so hawkish treated? During the whole Iraq fiasco I was shouted down constantly when I said that the people who seem to be so desperately in favor of the war would make tons of money off of it, and the evidence that Saddam was involved with al Quaeda was sketchy at best and I felt like we were being lied to. My patriotism was questioned and there are people who do not speak to me to this day because of that. Even though it's turned out I was right, and every day there's even more evidence that, if anything, I understated the case. It was much worse than I imagined, and I was imagining pretty bad.

Make sure, before you decide you support a war, that there is convincing--and I mean convincing--evidence that it's necessary, that we have definite goals in mind, and that we'll take care of the veterans who are wounded, psychologically as well as physically, when they come home. If the politicians and pundits say we can't afford to do that, then we can't afford to start the war in the first place, regardless of our motives.

In short, the best way to honor the dead, I think, it to make it harder for the politicians to start new wars to create more of them.

The suture removal story

I'm just going to leave this here so I can point people to it when I want to tell them this story. Because, while at the moment it's topical and amusing, it probably won't remain that way.

Okay, I had minor surgery a few weeks ago to remove a basal cell carcinoma from my scalp--see my previous posting about that little adventure. At the time, the doctor who performed the surgery told me that he had resigned from that practice, so when I came back to have the stitches removed it would be a different doctor.

Fine with me. Let's just get this over with.

So, three weeks later I return to keep my appointment to have the stitches removed. As I enter the office building where the dermatology practice was located I noticed that the doctor who had performed my surgery had his own practice in the same building. I figured, oh, that's why he resigned, to start his own practice.

I've worked in the health care industry for over a quarter century so I know that some doctors change practices as often as they change underwear. In short, no biggie.

I continue on to the other end of the building where my doctor's office was located. And they're closed.

Not closed for the day. Closed as in out of business.

So, I'm standing there, with these bloody damned stitches in my head, wondering how in the hell I'm going to get them removed. For a medical practice to just close without making arrangements for their patients or even letting them know is sort of the ultimate in uncool behavior.

I went back to the front of the building and dropped in on the doctor who had operated on me. He happened to be up front when I came in and he remembered me, and had his staff work me in. He also told me the other practice had closed a week earlier and they hadn't bothered to tell anybody. He was exceptionally nice about it. His nurse removed my stitches and he did an exam--no further signs of cancer, nothing to worry about--and we had a little chat about his former employers. He was as unhappy with them as I was.

So, I got extremely unlucky and got equally lucky right afterwards, which is sort of how things work for me.

So, if you came here because I mentioned the suture removal story and you wanted to know what it is, this is it.