The Nekkid Truth

Back from Jamaica. It was that wonderful sort of vacation that felt longer than it really was—and wasn't a week with the in-laws.

But if there was a maxim this vacay reinforced, a law never to be forgotten, it was this:

With the rarest of exceptions, the people you see on a nude beach
are not the people you want to see nude.

When we took the tour that eventually wound its way to our room, the lithe Jamaican guy with the carefully trimmed goatee who looked like he was more than ready to help some 40-year-old women get their respective grooves back pointed out that our room was 50 feet from one of the resort's two pools and the more secluded of the two beaches. Of course, this was the clothing-optional beach, but, hey, no problem, mon.

After my wife asked if we could get another room and was told no, we made some dinner reservations, waited for the resort to unlose our bags (our biggest complaint with the Grand Lido Negril—that's right, fuckers, I'm name-checking you right here—was the abysmal check-in experience in which we lost an entire afternoon because they misplaced our luggage and refused to take any responsibility for that, um, misplace-al), and went to a well-deserved sleep.

The next morning, we figured, hey, we're right next to the beach, and it's a nicer one than the main beach, as well as shadier. (See, my wife, she's of Irish-Scottish-British ancestry and so the only thing that would make her, genetically, less accomodating of massive amounts of sunlight is if she was also albino.) It was also less crowded and much closer to the bar. (That ancestry also leads to a prodigous constitution.) So, we set up camp.

And, it all went pretty well. Sure, there were some naked seniory dudes frolicking in the ocean and some naked seniory ladies willing to doff their housedresses and enjoy the sun's golden kiss, but they were, relatively, far away. Their crazy old-folks nakedness was far enough away to be innocuous and, with the combined distraction of good book and frosty rum-based beverages, easily forgotten. Until I got into the pool.

Nice pool, too. Never more than 6 people in it at once the entire four days we were there. They handed drinks to you from the bar so you never had to leave the water. So, Sue and I found a teensy patch of shade in the pool, cozied up with something frosty called a Purple Rain, and chilled. Then, one of these AARP newbies jiggled over, pants nowhere in sight, and decided to get in the pool. Slowly. Awkardly. Like he was ambling sideways over a very small pony.

I have now, officially, seen more old dude sac than I've ever wanted, or needed to.

And the women weren't much better. Either way too large to be seen without a velvet track suit on, or old with strange implants that rendered them oddly disporportionate, like floor lamps with brand new bulbs.

Of course, there needed to be exceptions to the rule: the trio of twentysomething black girls in town for a friend's wedding who, clearly, went to the clothing-optional beach to see who could encourage the most coronaries. (Not that I looked; remember, I had my book.) Or the young couple who I thought was European—judging by the guy's insistence on parading around like a stubbled Adonis while his girlfriend rubbed lotion into his every crevasse—but turned out to be from DC and Jersey, respectively. (And she clearly didn't take to the nude experience, fastening her top every chance she got. I think. Again, me and my book didn't notice.)

And the weirdest thing wasn't the fact that all these people were naked: It was seeing them later, dressed, at the buffet, or at dinner. Or, as it happened, on a never-ending line at the airport—that's were we "met" the DC/Jersey couple and had weird conversations in which both Sue and I had to submerge the memories of them nekkid. And those are weird conversations to have. Because you have to pretend not to have been, in a very real sense, intimate with them. You've seen them in their birthday suits, and while the atmosphere wasn't exactly sexually charged, what with the ancient testes knocking about, you've seen them in a way that usually only lovers do.

But, despite—or perversely—because of all that, we had a great time. Meet some interesting people, some of which kept their clothes on. Snorkeled, swam, drank, ate, and laughed. What more can a brother ask from a long weekend?

(Yes, more attire for the elderly, I know.)

Off the Grid, Bitches

My wife and I are taking our first, ever extended vacation from the kiddies. Off to Jamaica, in fact, to soak up the Ian Fleming vibe and, hopefully, as much Red Stripe as possible (because, for those of you playing at home, it was Bond's favorite beer).

And I feel twice as nice because Adam and I finished our first draft of the first issue of our Wildstorm mini. So, put that in your bong and smoke it.

See you cats on Monday...unless I'm hostage by all the dreadlocked voodoo rastafarai gangsters that have been sitting around waiting for Hollywood to remember how awesome they were as bad guys back in 1989.

Jah love.

The Artist Formerly Known As

This whole graphic novel thing was swimming along so easily. Pitched the idea to the publisher at San Diego 2005. Finished writing by the end of October 2005. Found an artist by that November. Targeted San Diego 2006 as the big debut. And then...not much.

The reason that I haven't been keeping you all abreast (heh...I said breast) of what was happening with Monster Attack Network is because nothing's been happening. And that was a problem. The work that should've been getting done wasn't. Life had a way of getting in the way. Births, deaths, paying gigs...the only thing that was missing was a wedding, and we'd officially be able to say that the Circle of Life rolled in and fucked us.

So, eight months after seeing our first character sketches—and not seeing a single page of finished art—Adam and I decided to part ways with the artist. Which really is a shame, because he's an insanely talented cat who could've made this book sing. But we'll never know.

I've still got the sheet music, though...if anyone's interested. Seriously, lemme know.

Map Quest

Is it me, or should every TV news outfit not be using Google Earth as their defacto map tool? I mean, it's cool and all, and does feel like something out of a Tom Clancy book, but there's something, I don't know, journalistically flimsy about entrusting something so important as maps to an internet doodad.

As illustrated in that great West Wing scene where CJ and Josh have an eye-opening meeting with some lobbyists who want to change the map of the world because it doesn't corroborate with reality (Africa, technically, is like 50 times bigger than the UK, but on the map, the discrepancy is much smaller, all to inflate the importance of Great Britain), maps are how we see the world. They are a reduction, of course, of what's really out there, but it's the only way we can really wrap our minds around the existence beyond our doors.

Cartography is an immense responsibility because those maps are the only reference points for current events. And for an Emmy-quality news organization to say that maps generated by out-of-date satellite photography (I know it's out of date because when I Google Earthed my house, the two cars in my driveway haven't belonged to me for years) and posted on the internet are as close to reality as possible can't be right.

Google Earth is cool, but it's a special effect. Relying on it as a source of record is like writing a thesis based on Wikipedia research. Not only should these news outlets know better, but we have to hold them to higher standards than that.

The Road Not Taken

EDITED: 8/9/06

Apparently, the powers that be don't want you to see what was a collection of clips from the HORRIBLE live-action Justice League pilot. Hell, if I had powers, I wouldn't want you to see it either.

'Sweet' Mother of God

I've pretty much given up on MTV. Primarily, because there's no longer any M in the TV. Secondarily, because Adam no longer works there. (Sort of. He does exec produce Nick Cannon's Wild N Out, but he's not on staff.) So I don't often find myself landing on that channel as I scour the tube for something to watch. I'm actually comfortable with the idea that MTV has passed me by, or I've passed it by. One or the other.

In truth, though, I'm hoping its MTV that changed, and not me, because I can't imagine that any of the stuff we used to watch was as unrepentently, unapologetically evil as My Super Sweet 16. If you haven't seen this show, then I encourage you to seek it out, just to marvel, slack-jawed, at how some parents have raised their little girls.

I mean, take a look at this one, Nicole, who wants to hire some local celeb rapper to play her party. For $25,000. For a sweet 16 party. That will be forgotten by all who attended within the week. I think I spent as much on my wedding. And I had a nice wedding. No C-list hip-hoppers, though.



I hope that my relationship with my children never gets so emotionally bankrupt that I have to resort to lavish, ridiculous financial gifts to make them hug me. Because, really, that's all this is: a ploy for affection. And if your kid won't say "I love you" without getting a gift first—like, say, the $40,000 BMW Nicole gets at the end of her "episode"—congratulations, you've officially raised a whore.

Two Steps Forward...

I'm not talking about that Paula Abdul song. (But, if it's stuck in your head, then that's just my present to you.)

No, I'm talking about The Sci-Fi Channel. It feels like a network with just a clear mandate as Sci-Fi (you know, just have programming that's somehow related to science fiction) shouldn't be as confused as it is. For every stellar and/or promising show like Battlestar Galactica and Eureka (which I only caught the pilot for, but I've got a couple episodes Tivo'd, including John Rogers') they do something mystifying like ECW Wrestling or, God help us, Who Wants to Be a Superhero.

Wrestling? Really? And that's science fiction, how? Yes, a bunch of those guys are probably juiced to the gills, but steroids are science science. The network isn't called Sci-Sci. And do the programming masterminds really think the core audience for sci-fi digs wrestling? These are the same geeks who got beat up in high school by the wrestling team; why revisit that world for shits and giggles? Throw in some more reruns of Firefly or Ultraviolet (the BBC mini, not the Jovovich-athon) or Alien Nation or Knight Rider or Jonny Quest or Automan or something. Quality or kitch would at least get you somewhere. But wrestling? Wrestling!?

And Who Wants to Be a Superhero doesn't even deserve to be spoken of in polite company. Let me just say this: I have watched lots of TV in my day. A whole lot of it for fun and, once it became part of my job, a whole lot more. Some of it has been terrific, some middling, and some pretty heinous.

Who Wants to Be a Superhero is the worst television program I've ever seen. Ever. Worse than American Idol, which was, until now, the worst-produced TV show on the air. The saddest part is that if Stan Lee were to die tomorrow, they'd be duty-bound to include it in his obituary.

Why can't Sci-Fi get their act together? I love the fact that they've nurtured Galactica, allowing Ron Moore, David Eick, and their crew to push the limits of televised science fiction. If only they didn't push themselves in the other direction.

'Galactica' Wood

It just won't go down...

Things I Learned in San Diego

(Okay, maybe not "learned," exactly—because I knew a bunch of them already—but was struck by them all the same.)

1. Cell phones need to come with a stronger vibrate setting. There's no way to hear a cell phone ring on the convention floor, not with that throng, and the simple act of walking renders my phone's vibrate null and void. I want some kind of industrial-strength, porn-star setting on my next phone. I want to be able to remove fucking barnacles.

2. Bring talcum powder. As I get older and heavier, I find that walking 5 or 6 miles each day surrounded by, essentially, Calcutta in costume, can result in a sort of adult-onset diaper rash. Yeah, I know. The talc would've helped.

3. Jim Lee should take pictures of his house and give copies to every kid who wants to be a cartoonist/comics artist. So, when that kid's parents say "There's no money, no future to be had drawing these stoopid comics," he can just whip out pictures of Jim's San Diego spread and say, "Yeah, there is." Seriously, the nicest house I've ever been in, bar none. And he was a complete gent for inviting us over.

4. "I'm just sayin'" is the perfect capper to every statement. Doesn't matter how serious or slight, "I'm just sayin'" means no one can argue your point. "Pol Pot actually had a lovely eye for haberdashery. I'm just sayin.'" Try it...you'll be doing it all day.

5. Geek chicks are well-endowed. From a sociological point of view, its just interesting. Maybe it has something to do with the lack of sunlight one suffers spending all of adolescence writing in leather-bound journals or listening to Tori Amos or watching The Nightmare Before Christmas for the eleventy-first time. Or maybe its the fact that they were hiding under tent-like blouses at every thespian society gathering or emo outing. It's still unclear why but, even with the natural exceptions to prove the rule, there's enough evidence to support the statement that geek chicks are stacked.

6. Geek guys are stacked, too. And that's all I'm gonna say about that.

7. Some parents should just be ashamed of themselves. Adam and I crashed the giant ballroom a little early for the Snakes on a Plane panel, and caught the tail end of the Lucasfilm presentation. Needless to say, the 6,000 seat Hall H was filled with every stripe of Star Wars character. We grabbed two seats on the aisle, and happened to be next to this knockout of a girl, dressed as slave-girl Princess Leia. I mean, really, really beautiful this girl was, and not wearing much of anything. Then, she started talking to the 40-something guy sitting next to her. Turns out he was her dad. And she was 14 years old. Now, as awkwardly revolting as it is to realize that you were, innocently and inadvertently, lusting for a minor, that's nothing compared to the fact that this girl's father not only allowed her out of the house dressed like an astro-whore, but took her to a place—first among many—where she'd be eyeball-schtupped by men 4 times her age who wouldn't think she was sad or silly for dressing like that, they'd feel entitled. And, as a father, you're not supposed to put your kid in situations like that. You're not supposed to chum the water with your own offspring.

8. Listening is an art. Adam and I had an impromptu pitch meeting with an editor—who shall remain nameless—out in the convention center's lobby. Another, already established writer walked past and exchanged pleasantries with the editor. While we were all looking at this writer/interruptor, the editor, thinking we didn't see him do this, mouthed the words "I have no idea who these guys are" to the writer. But we did. Now, as an editor myself, I get pitches all the time, some over the phone, some via email, and some—when I'm attending an event, like a film festival or a convention—in person. And even if I don't care, or if I know within the first 10 words, that it's something I'm not interested in, I pay attention...or pretend to. It's just a matter of mutual respect.

9. Joshua Hale Fialkov is a good man. A couple of years ago, I reviewed a comic called Elk's Run, written by the aforementioned Joshua Fialkov, being published by a tiny indie outfit called Hoarse & Buggy. It was very, very good, and I said so in EW. He dropped me a very nice note of thanks. I then met him at San Diego last year, and he had a big ol' poster-sized blow up of the review. He thanked me again and I told him what I tell everyone: When I was covering comics for EW, it was all about finding the stuff that was good and telling other people about it. I wanted EW to be an advocate of comics in general, and good comics in particular. We've since traded a bunch of emails and spoken on the phone here and there. Since then, Elk's Run was picked up by another publisher, which subsequently went bankrupt. Now, Random House has decided to collect Elk's Run and publish it as a hardcover. So, I tracked Josh down this year to congratulate him. Then, unbidden, he walked me and Adam over to the Simon and Schuster booth and introduced me to their publisher, telling him that we were writing comics, too. Now, he didn't have to do that...not by a long shot. But he did. Because he's a good man.

10. Avoid San Diego. That is, if you're a writer trying to get any real business done. There's no talking to anyone on that convention floor—it's too busy to keep a real thought in your own head, let alone expect anyone to concentrate on whatever pitch you've got. Hell, you're lucky if they remember your name. I might focus on some smaller cons next year. But San Diego itself is a nice little town, especially the Gaslamp and La Jolla. They've got some of the friendliest homeless people you'll ever see. One guy asked me for some change and I gave him the NYC-standard "Nah, buddy. Can't help you. Sorry." He fired back with a "You got nothing to apologize for, brother. God bless." In Manhattan, that same dude would've tried to crawl up my ass for that penny I swallowed when I was three.

Savant Magic

So I was in L.A. on Monday, making a little pit stop before San Diego. My plane got in at 5:15pm and my gracious host, my boy/writing partner Adam--who day-jobs as a TV producer--was on a shoot and invited me along. He was exec-producing a live concert that MySpace was throwing to promote Pharell Williams' new album.

I drive up to the top floor of a parking garage across from the Arclight Theater and see a massive stage erected, with cameras on cranes and lights on towers and scantily-clad would-be groupies. (And some would-be groupies that shouldn't have been as scantily-clad as they were.)

The show was about to start and so Adam and I went down to the control room truck...as an executive producer is wont to do. So I'm sitting there as the concert begins. There are 6 cameras recording the show and there's a director in the truck who's doing the show "live to tape," which means that for all intents and purposes, unless something goes horribly wrong, the show could pretty much air as is. He's telling the dude sitting at the control panel which camera to switch to and when: "Ready one, take one...ready four, four...dissolve two, two."

If you've never seen this before, you should find a way to get into a control room at some point. It's this very unique, insanely impressive dance. This director gets into a zone where he's feeling the music, anticipating when to cut, directing the cameramen what to focus on, and rattling out this hypnotic string of direction fo the technical dude and the switcher...who has to be in that same rhythm in order to keep up.

When it's done well, it's mesmerizing to watch, like some backbrain ninja at work.

Nerd Prom Bound

Clearing the decks so I can be free of my corporate shackles and make way with all due haste to the West Coast. Cobbling together some proposals for editors I'm meeting with at the big San Diego Comic Convention, polishing my I-know-what-I'm-doing speak, recharging the portable DVD player...you know, getting my game face on.

Sadly, won't have any of Monster Attack Network to show while I'm out there, but that's another story for, potentially, another time. But I will be signing (I know!) copies of Shatter, which I wrote the introduction for, on Saturday at Noon. So, come on by the AiT/Planetlar booth if you want to see someone sit idly behind a desk eager to sheepishly take credit for someone else's hard—and revolutionary—work. Or, if you just want to point and laugh, you'll know where to find me.

This just in...

First Dance Dance Revolution, now this:

"The Powerpuff Girls -- those adorable, roundheaded, big-eyed stars of the now-defunct Cartoon Network show -- have been resurrected and reinterpreted for Japanese TV audiences as Demashitaa! Powerpuff Girls Z. They're still cute, still powered by Chemical X and apparently still battling evil monkey nemesis Mojo Jojo. But now they're a little older and also carry weapons."

Just...look:



















Because what was really missing from the Powerpuff Girls (and I'm not ashamed to admit that I liked it; really smart and contempo for a show targeted at little girls) was the capacity for upskirt shots.

Watch where you step...part of my soul just fell out.

Z Marks the Spot

I am a sucker for a good adventure. Ever since I can remember, that's been the kind of story that I respond to, the kind that pulls me and and won't let go. Perhaps it's the whole Star Wars-was-my-first-movie-experience thing. Or the Robert E. Howard's-Conan-novels-were-a-formative-influence business. (Really, they were. Never analyzed it all that much, but there are more than a few similarities between the Cimmerian's crude code of conduct—always keep your word, never put too much faith in gods, never hit a woman [unless she's actively trying to kill you, then all bets are off]—and the way I live my life.)

When I got older, I discovered Alexandre Dumas and The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask, and The Count of Monte Cristo. Fell in with Jack London. Plumbed the depths of greek and norse mythology. Rode along with the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Stumbled upon Ernest Shackleton's true tales of derring-do (and if you haven't read the Endurance saga, hie thee to a bookery). Hell, for a while there, I was even a Boy Scout...though adventure doesn't really come into play all that often, unless the adventure you're talking about is of the pyrotechnic/porn smuggling variety.

All of this is to say that one of my favorite movies of the last ten years is The Mask of Zorro. Honestly. It's a little lite, occasionally, but nevertheless, it completely holds together as both a romance and an adventure. And I credit the film's success entirely to Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. Their script is a perfect tapestry of story points, character beats, and set pieces, all woven together in such a way that everything that happens on screen feels both surprising and inevitable. Yes, Antonio Banderas is all untamed swagger and Anthony Hopkins is gilded gravitas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, well, we all know what she is. But that movie works because the script is a finely-tooled dramatic machine.

And that's why I was so disappointed by Pirates of the Caribbean 2. Because the only thing that felt inevitable was the end...and it dragged on so long, that I even began to doubt that. And the leave-everything-unresolved cliffhanger didn't help: Movies should be done-in-one exercises or, if you need to serialize, do it in such a way that provides resolution but still leaves unanswered questions. (The paragon of this is The Empire Strikes Back. We know what happens to everyone by the end of the film. Sure, it's a downer, and that people still need rescuing, but Luke has faced Darth Vader and Han has faced his past demons. The promised confrontations happen.) But most filmmakers don't know how to serialize, don't know how to layer plot threads that can both sustain across the gulf of time and wrap up to offer the release you look for in an adventure.

Pirates 2 is an exercise is quantity: How much can we give you until you're satisfied? Doesn't matter if what we give you is any good, just tell us when you've had your fill. No wonder this is the land of competitive eating. The single most depressing thing about Pirates 2 is that it's gonna be the top-grossing film of the year, demonstrating to all in Hollywood that This Is How It Should Be Done. The second most depressing thing is that it was written by Elliott and Rossio, who've I've already declared my admiration for. I can only hope that they were Bruckheimered, forced to abandon that which they knew to be good and just in favor of the large and loud.

Pirates 1 was a happy accident, benefitting greatly from the energy that Johnny Depp put forth in stealing a movie out from under its stars as well as a well-told (but still a little indulgent) tale.

Pirates 2 is just an accident.

War of the Poses

I'm not a political cat. Never have been. I've got enough personal apocalypses to deal with that the larger, global ones—the ones that I've no real control over—get kicked to the curb. I don't read the paper. I don't watch the news. I don't troll the newsblogs. That's what The Daily Show is for: a 23-minute distillation of information and perspective from someone who's viewpoint I trust.

So you'll forgive me if this next bit is a little blunt; my chops at political discourse are dull at best, and nowhere near the ginsu-like sharpness of the Kung-Fu Monkey. But maybe by talking it through I can make some sense of it.

We know, with relative certainty, that North Korea has weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering it to both our allies overseas and across the Pacific to our West Coast. (And just because the first test failed doesn't mean they're not gonna, you know, fix it.) The country is run by a maniac. They've openly declared their hatred for the U.S. Taking all of those things into consideration, our government is aggressively pursuing a diplomatic solution...and sticking to those talk-guns despite N-K's escalation of the situation.

Diplomacy. Check.

Now, with Iraq. We abandoned diplomacy pretty early into the game and went, with non-talk-guns blazing, into a country that "had" weapons of mass destruction, controlled by a maniac who openly declared his hatred for the U.S. Of course, we were later told that the intelligence was wrong, and that there were no WMDs...but how were we to know that? Sometimes, intelligence is just wrong.

See, I don't think so. I think the intelligence was spot on in that it revealed that Iraq didn't have any WMDs, and led the powers that be to decide it was "safe" to invade. After all, that's the only real difference between the Iraqi situation and the North Korean one: One has nukes and the other doesn't.

Why invade then and not now, if the ultimate mission is still to protect the United States and its citizens from enemies at home and abroad? Because then, nothing could sink its nuclear teeth into our collective asses. And we knew that.

Over the Hump

Is it me, or are we just about done for summer movies? Can you honestly tell me that you're looking forward to anything that's coming out between now and September?

Me neither.

And that's sad. Summer used to be a three-month-long Christmas, full of new, spangly, gift-wrapped movies opening every weekend like, to steal Woody Allen's words, a magnificent vagina. Now, what have we really got to look forward to from now until Labor Day?

Lady in the Water: Someone really needs to lock M. Night Shyamalan away for a long while and when we let him out, force him to direct someone else's material. I mean, really? Narf-women at the bottom of pools? C'mon. Spike Lee used to be as big headed and ego-mad...then he made Malcolm X and Clockers and Inside Man and they were good. And written by someone else.

My Super-Ex Girlfriend: Someone really needs to lock Ivan Reitman away and just never let him out. At all. Just retire on the Ghostbusters money.

Miami Vice: I'd like to give Michael Mann the benefit of the doubt, since he's never made a bad movie—really, ever...kinda remarkable, isn't it?—but there's a stink coming off this worse than the week-old coffee grinds that Colin Farrell's assistant dug out from the whiskey puke that was covering it.

Talladega Nights: I just can't do it. The flop sweat is so evident from the trailer, I've no real desire to see the film itself. That's the problem with the insular world that Will Ferrell has created for himself: He's got enough power to make movies that he thinks are drop-dead funny and never has to run the material past anyone else. Who might tell him that it just...sits there.

World Trade Center: It might be terrific, it might be an abomination, who knows? But I'm not excited to see it either way. And not even pseudo-curious like I was with United 93.

Snakes on a Plane: I think this is gonna suck. Truly and for certain. Because they're trying too hard to embrace that which can only come through accidental genius. You can't plan to make a good-bad movie, it just has to happen organically. There's no design for a film like Commando...only random magic.

And that's the summer, skipping a few l'il flicks like Clerks II (you know what you're gonna get, by and large), Little Miss Sunshine (sappy Sundance fave that isn't actually very good but will be a sleeper hit), a handful of CG-kid-flicks (Barnyard, Ant Bully, Monster House) that feel a little average, and one genuine potential surprise: The Descent, which could pop like only a real gut-smart horror flick can.

I miss the summer.

Back in the Saddle

Hey, gang...yeah, it's been a while, and yeah, I've got my pants on. Anyway, if you want to know how I spent at least 45 minutes of my summer vacation, click here.

More later. Got stuff to say.

Out of the Office: Update

I put on pants today.

For those of you taking part in the pool...

Out of the Office

Hey, gang. Sorry it's been a little scarce as of late. I'm on vay-fucking-cation. Yeah, baby...off for the whole week. Not doing a goddamned thing with it, either. Some days, the sum total of my ambition is pants.

Oh, and introducing the wife to Battlestar Galactica. Which has been fraktastic. That's what summer is for, at least for guys like me, who don't give two shits about the beach and read enough for my job that doing it on vacation isn't a "treat." No, summer is for boxed sets...novels for the lazy who don't want sand in their cracks.

So, y'all be good, and I'll check in on yous later.

Report from the Metro Beat

So, I saw this movie the other day. I liked it, but didn't love it. It has moments of real grandeur and sweep and emotion, even though it plods a bit in places and ends 30 minutes before the last reel is up. And it's very, some would say slavishly, beholden to the movies that came before it—sometimes that's cool and nostalgic, and sometimes that smacks of a lack of inspiration.

But the thing that was rolling through my mind as I left the theater was, "Margot Kidder really was something special."

I Wish I Was Taller

Not by a lot, mind you...but a few inches wouldn't be bad. Then again, I'm sure everyone who isn't tall enough to play pro ball wouldn't mind a little boost. But I've got no control over that. Isn't in the cards--though I will never forget my grandmother telling be to just go over to the jungle gym and hang from a high bar for a bit. This was the same grandmother who tried to tie one end of a string to my loose tooth and the other end to a door...and then slam that door. Not much for letting things take their own course, my grandma.

As for things I do have control over...I wish I could draw. Always have. When I was a kid, I thought I could. I'd draw dinosaurs and lightsabers and birds of prey and the Flying Pheonix from G-Force (or Battle of the Planets, depending on what shitty local TV station it was on). When I got older, I would take my favorite comic panels and blow them up to fill a huge piece of oaktag paper and make my own Wolverine posters. And I thought I was halfway decent at it, until I met people who really knew what they were doing, like my friend Roger.

Roger could just draw, in a way that I couldn't. He went to the School of Visual Arts in NYC for advertising design. He hated it. He wanted to be a screenwriter, and put his ad portfolio away, even though he could've made a perfectly plummy life for himself as an art director. I always respected him for that, but at the same time I always envied the fact that he could sit down with a pencil and paper and make something cool.

But I've never wanted to be able to draw as much as I do now that I'm "working" in comics. Because for as much as we're in an writer-ascendant phase in comics, it's still a writer-artist's medium. Comics can be a collaborative medium...but it doesn't have to be. In no other form of visual mass media can a piece of work be the product of one person and not suffer for it. (Hell, books are the only mass media period you can do by yourself. Guitar- or piano-based singer-songwriters need not apply. Everything sounds better with drums.)

The potential for one-man-bandness in comics is somewhat unique...and while I'm completely digging seeing the wonders that a good artist can do with our words, I can't help but think that it wasn't quite meant to be this way. One man (or woman) with an idea and the skill to realize that idea: there's something primal about that and some of the great artists--in the larger, artiste sense--did it that way. Eisner, Miller, Crumb, Otomo. (Of course, the list of ground-quaking writers or artists is just as long, but you get my point.)

So, I wish I could draw...just to know what it's like not to have to fear nuance getting lost in translation, or power drained by signal degradation. Plus, artists get the chicks.

Mea Culpa

Sorry for the lack of real posts, but it's gotten a little crazy ovah heah. Many of the things that had been in the hopper are hopping right out and turning into real honest-to-goodness opportunities. The manager has asked me to take another look at Hero Unlimited, with an eye towards two things: 1) Freshening it up for, perhaps, another go on the spec circuit and 2) maybe turning it into a TV pilot—which can be done, but would require telling a totally different story (luckily, I already know what it is) with the same characters.

Bad Medicine, the other TV pilot that Adam and I finished last month, has hooked both his agent and my manager, and things may heat up on that front later in the summer.

Then the comic book stuff: Wildstorm wants to move forward on a 5-issue limited series that we pitched them in February and there may be a kernel of interest on some Batman ideas.

I'm thinking about a children's book—either a graphic novel or an honest-to-goodness illustrations-and-text picture book. A story I've been kicking around in my head about autism.

And then, finally, the screenplay that Adam and I have been intermittently working on for the last eight months, which, sadly, ends up taking the back seat to whatever is the most time-urgent. (For most of last year, that was Monster Attack Network, then it was regular old day-job stuff, then Bad Medicine, all on top of our respective parental/husbandly duties.)

Oh, and suddenly there's an animation window opening up that we need to figure out how to take advantage of.

And the Vertigo pitches we need to work up...

And, eventually, sleep.

Poor King of the Sea

How does one actually learn that their superpower is talking to fish? Seriously, like, how far down the list do you have to go before you get to that? Flying, I get. X-ray vision, sure, people are horny and that one dude suddenly gets a nice little surprise. Super-speed, yeah, you'll stumble upon that pretty easily trying to catch a morning train.

But at what point do you get to the talking at shit and seeing if it'll talk back? And, even if you somehow arrive to that sad superhero place where you are trying to strike up random conversations with animals, how do you settle on fish? They certainly wouldn't be the first species you tried--dogs, cats, lions, horses, parakeets, roaches, spiders all would've been higher on my list. Whoever keeps going all the way into phylum's basement is one persistent sumbitch...or, retarded.

I'm just saying, is all. Kinda sad.

Spoon!

All I can say is about friggin' time. Finally, 10 years after it premiered on Fox, Ben Edlund's crazy-brilliant animated show is coming out on DVD. I can, at long last, destroy those shitty bootlegs I bought at San Diego two years back. Ben Edlund goes on the list of people who are too scary-smart to exist in the same world as the rest of us hacks.

(I recall someone saying, when John Rogers posted on his blog that Ben was set to write an episode of Global Frequency, "You were gonna be Ben Edlund's boss!" John replied, and I quote, "I will be blunt—in no way shape or form would I have been Ben Edlund's boss. I would have been the guy who ran the show Ben was working on. The very second he finished his first story pitch, I thought 'Shit, now I'm going to have to spend a year pretending I don't secretly know he's a much better writer than I am.' ")

So, I rejoice.

Mr. 3000...

...was a bad movie, I know, but in looking for titles with the number "3000" in it, it was the Bernie Mac fiasco or 3000 Miles to Graceland, which the simple typing of has made me throw up in my mouth a little.

No, sometime in the last couple of days, this l'il blog has tallied up more than 3000 hits. Now, some of those are mine, but not all that many. So thank you all for continuing to stop by and for finding something here worth coming back for.

Now I just have to keep it going...stupid pressure.

OneWord

There's a site called OneWord that offers a very simple writing challenge. (I found it while visiting the AiT/Planetlar site, and seeing Larry's take on "cult.") You are presented with a word, seemingly plucked out of the ether, and given 60 seconds to write something about that word. Whatever comes to mind.

As writers, we see it as our mandate to think about what we write. Hell, I know I've spent years mentalizing my way through stories, waiting for them to click in a way that makes sense. But this little exercise doesn't give you time to think, or even to revise. This is the very definition of writing from the gut.

You're on the clock. One minute for one word. There's nothing to it but to do it.

10 Things I Hate About Commandments

Not to be a YouTube whore...but it's so damned easy.

Chappelle Knows All

In case you were wondering why the Aquaman show didn't get picked up by The CW...

Outlets #2

That Shit is Real, Yo

Unlike my man Bill, who seems to have it in for the Mission: Impossible flicks (and, if you check out his blog, he's got some good reasons), I kinda liked this latest installment. It holds together a damned sight better than M:I-2—which, when watching today, is a structural mess. There's no reason for an action/spy thriller to be completely devoid of action for the entire first hour. And even the John Woo-ness, which I loved when I first saw it, hasn't aged very well. Totally untethered to reality, that movie is.

But there's a moment in M:I-3 that really resonated with me. Ethan Hunt has just escaped from the Big Bad's clutches and learns that his wife is being held in a building almost a mile from his current location. So, easily-GPS-trackable cell phone in hand, Ethan takes off down a riverside road in Shanghai, in full sprint, and the camera tracks him almost the entire way. In one shot. And, say what you will about Tom Cruise, that fucker can run.

It reminded me of what I love about old Jackie Chan movies: That those incredible stunts were actually being done by Jackie himself. He was willing to sacrifice his body—and sanity, more often than not—for my ten bucks. There's an incredible verisimilitude to seeing reality on screen, and never more so than during a moment when you usually don't.

I recently went to go see Lawrence of Arabia at the Ziegfeld theater in Manhattan. (If you've never been, I highly recommend it. One of my favorite NYC activities is sneaking out of work early and catching a matinee at the Ziegfeld, preferably of a film late in its run. There is nothing like sitting in that glorious, red-velvet, single-screen movie palace BY YOURSELF. For those two hours, I have the greatest private screening room in the world.)

Anyway, Lawrence. I'd never seen it on a big screen before, so it was something of a new experience. Besides being blown away, once more, by the strength of that cast (can you imagine being the casting director who got to say to Lean, "I found this kid named Peter; he's a little slight, but he might be good for the lead"?), you just gasp at the magnitude of that production. The scene where Auda's (Anthony Quinn, who inhabits the screen with a bigness that's extinct in today's Hollywood) cavalry storms the fort at Aqaba is, for the most part, a long, sweeping single shot with hundreds of horsemen decending on, and laying waste to, a desert installation.

And it was all done...for real. No CGI. No fake horses. No camera tricks. What you see is what they had. And there's a weight to that scene, to every scene in Lawrence, that can't be replicated.

It makes every film made today look like it's cheating.

Outlets #1

Something I'm trying, spurred on by a thread at The Engine. Essentially, someone--Colleen Doran, I think--said that you can tell a perfectly good story with stick figures, and that more writers should try. Now, because my drawing skills have atrophied to the point of non-existence, I've gone a slightly different route.

Lemme know what you think.

Let 'em eat Chuck

This is the greatest thing on TV right now. And by "greatest," I mean "most awesome." And by "most awesome," I mean "something completely worth TiVo-ing (because it's on Cartoon Network at 5:30 am) and watching over and over so you can bathe in its Cheez-Whizzy-ness."

I bring you Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos. (And, despite being only one "K" away from out and out racist, the portrayal of Asians probably gets you the rest of the way.)

Ante Up and Kick In Like Men

I have very little patience for modern rock and roll. To be more accurate, I have very little patience for the artists who create modern rock and roll. The music isn't bad—I have banged my head to My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, and Green Day—but to look at them, they're children. Post-teenagers if we give them the benefit of the doubt.

What happened to the men who used to make rock and roll? Even when they were young, the boys from AC/DC, Van Halen, Cream, Traffic, Black Sabbath, etc. looked like men who had lives before rock and brought some of that to bear on their music. I remember hearing stories of how the other members of The Who wanted to kick out Roger Daltrey...but they were afraid of him. He grew up on the wrong side of a coal-mining town (or something) in the bad part of the U.K. and had something of a violent streak. Can you imagine being afraid of Billie Joe from Green Day, who's so "hardcore" he thanked his manager and agents first in his Grammy acceptance speech?

Jimi Hendrix had already been in and out of the Army by the time he was touring with Little Richard's band. He was in his early 20s when he landed in London, blowing the doors off the city by opening a set with "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"—with McCartney in the damned audience. And Robert Plant may have looked like a female elf, but that thing he kept trying to suffocate in his trousers was clearly not safe for Catholic school girls.

Rock stars used to be dangerous, now they look like art-school kids with chips on their shoulders.

And that's a big reason why I think hip-hop has taken off the way it has in the last 15 years. Because, say what you will about the music itself (my love for it ebbs and flows, but I've always respected it), the artists are MEN. Whether they can back up their claims to thug-life credibility or not, or if they go the proficient loverman route, it doesn't matter. I think their perceived manliness is what sells a lot of records. (But black music has long been made by artists who were men first. The R&B acts that dominated the pre-disco charts were made up of some hard-working brothers: James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Jackie Wilson, the Temptations, the Four Tops.)

Look at it this way: the people buying records (and I will still refer to them as such) are, for the most part, teenaged girls. The TRL demographic. Always has been, always will be. And so the desire for the music, and the musicians that make it is, both consciously and subconsciously, a sexual one. (And that is why, back in the '50s, Elvis was such a hit: He was giving black music a face that was somewhat tolerable to white parents—he was the other other white meat.)

I don't find it surprising at all that young women are choosing, with their wallets at least, Prince Charming as their romantic ideal...not Prince Charming's intern. I just wonder when rock and roll will remember that.

Casino Royale

I've got no problem with this whatsoever, aside from all the French:

So, I'm Back

Finished the Summer Movie Preview. It was a long road, but there is a sense of satisfaction one gets having the final product in your hands...or, in my case, on my desk, with Tom Hanks' face glaring at me.

But the strangest thing about it all — and this almost slipped by me — is that this issue marks my 10-year anniversary at the weekly entertainment magazine.

Aside from breathing, I've never done anything for 10 straight years. School was always broken up in chunks, never dated anyone for that long (though I've been with my wife for almost 12, but that shifted from dating, to being engaged, to being married: all different dynamics)....

An old friend of mine, let's call him Brad (because that's his name), was a drummer. Since he was, like, six years old. By the time he and I were in a band together, in high-school, he'd been playing the drums for longer than he had not been playing the drums. And he was really good. Astonishingly good. The kind of percussionist who warmed up with Buddy Rich solos. The kind of musician that, frankly, could've done far better than our shitty band. And I was always a little jealous that he had this thing that he did, and knew how to do well, and would always be doing because he loved it.

Not that being a magazine editor is my end-all- be-all (though, let me be clear, I do enjoy it and think that I'm half-way decent at it), but I'm starting to understand what it's like to have invested time in an endeavor and be able to take pride in that investment. Not bad at all.

The Home Stretch

The light at the end of the tunnel is beckoning to me, like a $12 Atlantic City whore. Almost done with my white whale of an issue. But I came across this, while giving my eyes a rest from editing copy that features the phrase "Garfield's A Tale of Two Kitties":

This pensive post on Javier Grillo-Marxuach's journal (which you should read, because he's a good writer—they don't let just anyone be a supervising producer on Lost, you know), all about the varied and sundry Supermen, Batmen, and James Bonds, ends with one of the more provocative pop-culture statements I've ever heard:

"Ponder this...within our lifetime, someone other than William Shatner will play the role of captain James T. Kirk."

Hot damn. And he's right. Captain Kirk is a one of the few genuinely American characters—that didn't come from a comic book—that can lay claim to a mythic, almost Shakespearean heft. There will, undoubtedly, come a time when someone will want to tell new adventures of the original Starship Enterprise, and realize that they were never as good as when Kirk, Bones, and Spock were at the helm.

And we will all hate the 22-year-old chump they cast, but it won't matter...because the 13-year-old kids who tune in (or download) will think he's the shit, and they will buy all the DVDs and the videogames and the cell phones that look exactly like the communicators. (Seriously, why hasn't anyone ever done that? It wouldn't be hard, and I'd buy one.) From that point on, Jake Bronson (or whatever the hell his name is gonna be) will be James T. Kirk.

As much as it'll pain those of us who hold the image of the young, almost Elvis-pretty Shatner close to our hearts, it will be necessary. Because the only way a character achieves immortality is if he or she can be reinterpreted for each subsequent generation. That is how new life gets breathed into old heroes, and that is why Bond and Othello and Falstaff and Willy Loman and Mr. Darcy live on, instead of becoming relics, like John Rambo or Steve Austin or, yes, Atticus Finch.

Hell, if we can tolerate three different Indiana Joneses, we can handle another Cap'n Kirk.

EDIT: In case you hadn't heard, Lost-boy J.J. Abrams will follow Mission: Impossible 3 with the next Star Trek film...featuring a young Kirk and Spock at Starfleet Academy. My powers are beyond even my understanding.

I Must Break Him

Something occured to me the other day:

If I was single, and still living in the New York metropolitan area, and if he was single, and still the anchor of The Daily Show...I would have to kill Jon Stewart.

Or, at the very least, choke him into a coma. Because he would be taking all the women. All of them.











See?

You, in the Corner...Want an Award?

The Connies.

Because, I suppose, everyone wants to feel good about themselves at least once a year, even people who run comic book conventions.

I Beg Your Pardon

Hey, gang. Sorry I've been scarce these last few days. The weekly entertainment magazine has got me editing the behemoth called the Summer Movie Preview, and it's currently attempting to swallow me whole, leaving the smaller chunks for the remora to snack on.

Having to close 65 pages worth of magazine can take the punch out of a fella, and it'll continue to do so until next Wednesday, at which point I will barricade myself inside my house, armed with scotch, Taco Bell, a ping-pong ball gun filled with sulfuric acid, and a seemingly endless supply of dirty diapers, and I will stay there for a week.

So you may not be hearing from me very much. Unless I run out of clean diapers.

Hell Called

It wants its fucking snow back.

(Sorry. Just a little ticked at having to haul my frakking gloves out of the winter box. Where they had been. Because. It. Is. April. Dammit.)

Are We Short on Chefs?

I like food. Very much so. Anyone who sees me can, probably, readily assume that. (In my youth, I could lay claim to a physique that approached Carl Weathers' in Predator. Today, it's more Carl Weathers on Arrested Development.)

I even like watching the Food Network, especially on Sunday mornings, if for no other reason that to see if that saucy southern belle Paula Deen can manage to put a stick of butter into everything she cooks, including salad. Emeril I can tolerate, but the freaky cult of celebrity that surrounds him is very Children of the Damned. Watching someone cook is, when you get down to it, is like watching someone putting together a model kit. Cheering him on when he adds a spice, or says "Bam!" is patently ridiculous. But he seems to know how to cook, so, whatever. And let's not talk about Giada Di Laurentiis. Not only is she apparently the granddaughter of the producer who gave us both Dune AND Silence of the Lambs, but she is the hottest chef on TV. She turns the act of milling fresh black pepper into something dirty.

But suddenly there are cooking reality shows. Top Chef on Bravo, America's Next Food Star on Food Network, and now NBC is doing a show called Celebrity Chef Challenge (or something). Now I will sit through a proven professional plying his or her trade, but do I really need to sit and watch some nobody butcher a bisque? Are we suddenly in the midst of a chef-draught, and we need to recruit from the polloi to repopulate the ranks? I didn't think so.

I don't need to see people compete at something for which there are already established pros. It's the equivalent of flag football on ESPN. (And we're not far off: apparently, they're talking about airing domino games. Really.) And I should watch this because I'm so hard up for the sheer spectacle of competition? What, are there no other shows on TV that feature people battling for the same gilded carrot? Did all that other reality shit disappear?

Damnit, now I'm hungry again.

How the 'West' Was Won

Can I just tell you, now that Galactica is off the air, my can't-miss-it TV show is The West Wing. It, and The Sopranos, are the two shows that I must, MUST watch the night they're on. Now, I've been a faithful Winger since the pilot, through the years when Aaron Sorkin was crafting heady, drug-fueled talkathons, through the whole Qumar nonsense, through John Wells' insistence that no one talk that fast or funny anymore and, finally, through the reinvigoration that's been the Campaign.

What excites me most is the inevitability of it—the fact that, when The West Wing started, with President Bartlett in his second year in office, you had to know that, in one fashion or another, his term would eventually end. He couldn't last forever. As nut-quaking as the Galactica season finale was, it came as an out-of-left-field surprise. But The West Wing had a similar sort of series slate-clearing built into its DNA. At some point, we had to get a new president and, with him, a decent number of new faces, new dynamics, new wrinkles.

The fact that this is the final Wing season actually means that they can do whatever they want to with the election, without having to live with the ramifications. If they were gonna get another year, you had to know that Jimmy Smits' Matt Santos was going to win if for no other reason so that we didn't have to endure the craggy Alan Alda (plus, a Santos win would've kept Bradley Whitford's Josh Lyman and Janel Maloney's Donna Moss in the fold). But now, all bets are off. And that's kind of exhilirating.

Network TV is all to predictable too much of the time. I like that, apparently, a death sentence has breathed new life into a show could've just limped to a close.

Jay and a Not-So-Silent Bob

I heartily recommend that you stop by Kevin Smith's online diary, and soon. He's up to the third part (of four, I think) of his heartbreaking account of Jason Mewes' downward spiral into, and then recovery from, a massive drug addiction. Parts of it are funny, because it is Kevin Smith and, say what you will about his movies, he is a funny dude. But much of it is sad, in a helpless sort of way.

I've never had a friend who abused himself to that extent, so I've never had to rationally be harsh to someone I love. I do, however, know all too well what it feels like to have a family member struggle with a condition that, essentially, only they have the power to reverse. And I've learned all you can do is give them every erg of support you can muster, every possible resource you can enlist, and remove every obstacle set before them so that, in the end, salvation is only a matter of will.

M.A.N...Alive

For those of you thinking to yourselves, "Hey, whatever happened to that comic book that Marc was talking about so much when he first started this blog and hasn't mentioned in the past three months?" it's-a-coming. Buncha stuff cropped up around and after the holidays that brought production to something of a grinding halt, but now we're kinda back on track. Starting to see rough layouts—which is a pretty phenomenal experience, as anyone who's ever written a comic and seen it drawn will tell you.

But, because of the temporary work stoppage, we're probably not gonna make a 2006 release. Which makes me a tiny bit sad, but not overly so. I should still have a raft of pages to bring with me to San Diego in July and, hey, 2007 is just as good a year as any, right? It even sounds slightly more futuristic than 2006...because it is.

Where's My Money?

I'm doing this for two reasons.

1) Because I wanted to see if embedding video would work.

2) I think it's funny.

What's Your Fantasy, Baby?

Came across this in a piece Neil Gaiman wrote for The Irish Times:

“Movies now have, to all intents, an infinite special effects budget. (I was writing a script for Beowulf last year and, worried that a climactic airborne dragon battle was going a little over the top, I called the director, Robert Zemeckis, to warn him. 'Don't worry,' he said. 'There is nothing you could write that will cost me more than a million dollars a minute to film.')"

That bears repeating: There is nothing you could write that will cost more than a million dollars a minute to film.*

So why aren’t we seeing images of such detached grandeur that make everything else ever put on film pale in comparison? If you can do anything, why don’t you? Why aren’t our minds being blown on a routine basis, the way moviegoers minds were when The Wizard of Oz exploded into technicolor, or when Red 5 dipped into the trench to start his attack run, or the first time we saw wire-fu?

We now live in a world where the cinematic imagination can run free, in the same way that novelists and, yes, comic book artists’ can, unburdened with things like impossibility.

I saw Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s low-budget CG-heavy fantasy MirrorMask and, while I didn’t really respond to the material, I was flabbergasted by some of the images. They didn’t have the money to live the million-a-minute dream, but there were still sequences the likes of which I’ve never seen before.

Now, I’m sure that a certain cost-profitability matrix comes into play—a movie that costs a certain amount needs to make back a certain amount—and if you hatch something totally untethered to “reality” you’re cutting down the potential audience.

But fuck it, I go to the movies to see stuff I’ve never seen before, be it spaceships or aliens, Lawrence of Arabia or Escape from New York, The Iron Giant or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I want to see something new. I want to see the cinematic equivalent of The Lord of the Rings books: a whole-cloth story that takes place in a world I’ve never seen, showing me things I never thought possible.

Movies are, first and foremost, a medium of fantasy. Bring it.

* If that figure is legit—and I’ll give Zemeckis the benefit of the doubt—what the hell are they spending $300 million on for Superman Returns?

Flying 'United'

Saw the United 93 trailer over the weekend. Not entirely sure how I feel about it. I know how others do, as both my wife and my mother expressed the very opposite of interest: They were repulsed at the very idea of a 9/11 movie. (I didn’t have the heart to tell them that there were two coming within 6 months of each other.)

I was sort of excited by it. By the looks of it, United 93 seems to be a tale of heroes. And I’m a sucker for heroic stories. And I don’t mean superheroes, since few of them actually feature the defining characteristic of the hero’s story: choice.

One becomes a hero in the moment when they make the choice between safety and danger, when they choose to risk themselves for something else. So many so-called superheroes don’t make that choice. If Superman made that choice, it was a long time ago (and still sort of questionable since he is, for all intents and purposes, an invulnerable orphan with a secret identity, and therefore can’t actually risk anything). Batman is a psychopath, and one can’t trust the motives of the clinically insane. Wonder Woman, again, invulnerable, though her willingness to ostracize herself from her people and her home to do good works in man’s world probably tips the scales.

What interests me is the idea of trying to divine what made those people on board United Flight 93 decide not to go gently into that good night, and not give up without a fight. Is it the fact that they were able to face their mortality, in a very real way, and knowing they were already dead, had nothing to lose? Perhaps, though there were still people who stayed in their seats, rather than storm the cockpit and by so doing save thousands of lives. And that’s heroism: choosing to do that which you ordinarily wouldn’t for the sake of someone else.

(I know this'll get me in trouble in lots of quarters, but I don't think the firefighters and police officers who rushed into the smoking Towers should be considered "heroes." They were doing their jobs. Same with Secret Service officers who jump in front of bullets. It's right there in the job description and they are expected to do as such. No, their heroic moments came when they took the entrance exams.)

It is probably too soon for a 9/11 movie, but, still, I really do hope United 93 is good. Because, if nothing else, those people deserve a good movie.

Crash Landing

I know, it’s probably some sort of job-related crime, working where I work, that I hadn’t seen the Best Picture winner until a week or so after the Oscars. But, I finally caught up with it, and I’ve got a theory:

Race is the new Holocaust.

To clarify: For years, if there was a film about the Holocaust in any given category, it was going to win the Oscar. Period. That’s just the way it went. And that’s fine. Many of them were good, they were all worth making—it was a corner of history that lay unilluminated for far too long. But some of them also got by on the sheer emotional impact of the Holocaust without doing the filmmaking heavy-lifting required to actually be a good movie.

And now, I think race relations in this country is starting to be examined in much the same way. (And, I firmly believe, if someone ever manages to make a film, a great film, about the Middle Passage, it’ll change lives, much in the way that Roots did.)

So Crash won the Oscar. And it’s not a good film. Well-intentioned, I suppose, but still not good. It’s a movie populated by complex cariactures that do and say things that defy reality. To wit:

• Don Cheadle’s detective has enough of a relationship with his hottie partner to not only bring her to the coroner to identify his brother’s body, but to sleep with her. Then, he calls her, essentially, a dirty Mexican (knowing, as one who must’ve spent hundreds of hours in a squad car with her, that she’s Puerto Rican). But he’s a good guy, because he buys his junkie mom groceries.
• An employee of the Los Angeles DA’s office says to Cheadle’s detective (who, by the way, he needs something from), “That’s what’s wrong with you black people.” Who the hell says that? Out loud? Outside of a Klan rally?
• It’s not enough for Matt Dillon’s character to be a racist sexual offender, but he’s also gotta be a saint who rescues a woman from a burning car…and helps his dad piss at night.
• Terrence Howard’s TV director tries to make up for being emasculated at the hands of the LAPD by leading two squad cars on a high-speed pursuit and then, taking the gun from his would-be carjacker, trying to goad them into shooting him. Why? Because, apparently, he just got incredibly, mysteriously stupid.

The plot holes are just as bad. The Persian shopkeeper who, by his own admission, can’t read, tracks the hispanic locksmith back to his home…through the phone book. Sandra Bullock, a rich woman who probably had her very expensive hardwood flooring buffed to within a millimeter of weapons-grade optics, doesn’t know better than to walk through her house with socks on…just so she can take a tumble down the stairs.

And the insistence that every character, in some fashion or another, be intricately connected to every other character smacks of bad romantic comedy. Remember Serendipity, when John Cusack never hooks up with Kate Beckinsale because he keeps missing her in elevators and taxis and planes? Turning an incredibly lazy plot device on its ear doesn’t make it better, just different.

There’s some decent acting in Crash, especially from Ludacris and Larenz Tate, but it’s real problem is its abject failure to resemble reality. A film about a topic as real as race that exists in a concocted fantasy version of reality teaches no lessons, imparts no wisdom, forces no one to examine themselves and their own feelings. It does little but, conversely, allow people to feel safe in the knowledge that They Are Not As Bad As Matt Dillon.

And that doesn’t do anyone any good.

Living for the City

I am built for cities. I have lived in or around New York City for my whole life and I never really feel as comfortable as I do when I’m in Manhattan.

And it’s not because I haven’t left it: I’ve done my share of travel, both at home and abroad. I’ve driven across the United States, letting my stomach choose the route (hence, the stops in Memphis, New Orleans, and Austin). I’ve been to Boston and Seattle and San Francisco and Philadelphia and San Diego and Los Angeles (not really a city because you can’t walk in it, but every rule needs an exception). I’ve been to London and Paris and Rome and Venice (my overseas favorite because it’s so damned stupid). I’ve been to Port-au-Prince, which is worth braving the risks to see; poverty is a defining characteristic of the urban condition, and no place is poorer than Haiti.

But my first true love is Manhattan, introduced to me in all her grandeur by my grandmother, who insisted that we take a Circle Line tour around the Island when I was 7. And I love this city because it scares me.

I’m not scared of being mugged, or shot, or harassed, or molested. My fear is not a physical one. It’s not even an emotional one. I was here, on the ground, during 9/11. I caught the last train into the city, able to see the smoking first tower right before we entered the tunnel. I walked down a Broadway completely devoid of car traffic to get to Penn Station to catch a train home that night. I had my shoes hosed off by the fire department, just in case I was carrying any carcinogenic dust into my New Jersey suburb. I didn’t lose anyone that day, but I still felt the loss. But I still come into Manhattan every day, willingly and gladly.

No, what scares me—and in turn, captivates me—is that there’s just so much I don’t know about this place. Walk down almost any block and you’ll pass, literally, hundreds of doors, all leading somewhere. And there are thousands of such doors. What goes on behind them?

I once passed a door, maybe on West 54th, perfectly maintained, totally non-descript, save the words “Manhattan Nautical Club” stenciled in gold lettering on the glass. And it was nowhere near the water. Where did it lead, who was inside, and what were they doing?

This city is a hive of mystery, and that’s what I love about it. What scares me is that I’m not really the kind of bloke who cares to solve them.

I Needed a Hero, Part V: The Manager Strikes Back

Where were we? Ah, December 2004. I had a manager, one who was excited about my script, but who was forced upon me through contractual obligation. He wanted me to rewrite it a little—add a little story beat here, streamline a little there—but he was excited to spec it.

So I rewrote. I agreed with some of their notes, and disagreed with others…and since no one had paid me for it yet, it was still mine and I wasn’t gonna sabotage my own work unless someone backed up the money truck first. In January 2005, I went to LA on weekly- entertainment-magazine business (inasmuch as it’s “business” when I travel: I was covering a crappy Martial Arts Expo that neither Wesley Snipes, Chuck Norris, nor Steven Seagal—all invited guests, mind you—bothered to show for) so I met the Manager, dropped off the rewrite, soaked up some of the “totally stoked to be in the Marc Bernardin business” love, and went home.

A week later, the Manager dropped me as a client.

As it was explained to me, while my rewrite fixed what little there was to be fixed (his words, not mine), he had a very abrupt change of heart regarding Hero Unlimited’s prospects. He just didn’t think he could sell it. And because he couldn’t sell it, he wanted nothing to do with me.

Now, I knew that Hero probably wouldn’t sell. Because it’s a hard thing for a studio executive to wrap their minds’ around. Hero is funny, but it’s not a comedy; the cast eventually travels on a spaceship, but it’s not the future; it’s science fiction, but without any lasers. And it would be expensive (though not as expensive as they’d think). I was under no illusions that I’d wake up and be Shane Black, cashing seven-figure checks and becoming the darling of Hollywood. I was in it for the meetings.

When a script hits the town, and people seem to have some genuinely positive response to it, whether it sells or not, the development execs will want to meet you. Because that’s what they do: have meetings. Meetings for D-girls and boys are like billable hours for lawyers: It’s how they prove they’re doing their jobs.

All I wanted was to get in the room with people and let them see my face, get to know, in 30 minutes, that I’m not a schmuck. And the Manager didn’t even want to get me those meetings. He didn’t really want to develop me as a client, he just wanted to sell my script and get his 10%. Which I understand, but was still disappointed by.

So we parted ways. I was free of any contractual mumbo jumbo. And, in the span of a month, I went from having two literary managers trying to represent me to having none.

Luckily, Circle of Confusion meant it when they said they wanted to be in "the Marc Bernardin business." They took me back and, after another rewrite, sent the script out...and got me the meetings. (No, it didn't sell. I know this because I'm not driving a Boxster.)

I spent a week shuttling from studio lot to studio lot, meeting, greeting, and doing lots of valuable market research. It was explained to me, very early on during Meeting Week, that no one was gonna buy a pitch from me, an unproduced, untested writer, unless it was the idea equivalent of sliced bread...that also gave blow jobs. But they would listen to those ideas, and I should use that time to see which ones got the best response and use that info to help decide what to write next.

(A little aside: The best moment of Meeting Week was on the Universal lot. I was sitting in my car, a little early for my meeting with a DreamWorks exec, when I saw the Universal Tour tram come rolling by. And, as they were passing the production company bungalows, the Tour Guide said, over the loud speakers, "Thousands of screenplays come to Universal every year. Of them, only about a hundred are bought. And of those, only 10 get made into motion pictures. I wouldn't want those odds... Am I right?" Nothing like a little reality-shot-to-the-nads to warm you up before a pitch meeting.)

So, that's what we did, Adam and I. Collated our notes, settled on the idea that got the best response in the room, and went to work. For three weeks, and then put it on the back-burner so we could devote three months to writing a comic book.

And that's the end of the Hero journey. I've still got it, sitting on my hard drive, waiting for the adventurous studio exec to take a chance. But, I've gotta tell you, I wouldn't have written it had John Rogers not dangled the Global Frequency carrot. So, for that, I am eternally grateful. He'll get a shout-out when I win an Oscar. Or a Razzie.

The Matrix...Explained

Found this on John August's site and it is, indeed, interesting. An explanation, written by an engineer, of what the hell the machines' grand design was for humanity, free of any Wachowskian philosophical hooey. What were the Architect and the Oracle doing, and why did they need Neo and Agent Smith to do it?

Be forewarned: Reading it won't make Reloaded or Revolutions not suck.

I Needed A Hero, Part IV: A New Hope

If you know anything about either Global Frequency or me, personally, you already know that the show didn’t happen. The pilot was finished, it tested well, and had the support of both the studio and the network. That is, until the president of The WB was replaced. The new guy wanted nothing to do with anything the old guy had a hand in and so Global Frequency was doomed. (For more, check out John Rogers’ excellent blog and this post in particular.)

So I was left with a lot of time and money invested in trying to write for a show that now didn’t exist. But I had this spec script. I liked it. My friends liked it. Even John liked it. Might as well try and do something with it.

I bought a book called Writer’s Guide to Hollywood Producers, Directors, and Screenwriter’s Agents and combed through the appendix, which listed hundreds of different production companies and agencies, their contact information, as well as whether they were looking for new clients and willing to take a flier on unproduced writers. I made my list, checked it twice, and started emailing. (Like a high school student applying to colleges, I had my dream get: Circle of Confusion, the management firm that represents, among other folks, the Wachowski brothers. They were NY-based, very science-fiction friendly, and willing to work with rookies.)

I got a few pings back, thanks to a relatively funny query letter; three to be specific: one from a production company and two from literary managers. And, yes, one of them was from Circle of Confusion. They all wanted to read the script. One of the management firms had a release that needed to be signed before they’d read it. Fine. Whatever it takes to get it in front of the right eyes. (Famous last words.)

The production company passes. They liked it, but had no experience with sci-fi and didn’t want to start with Hero. But Circle called, and totally dug it. They think it’s completely sellable and want to run with it.

The Dance of Joy was danced and danced well. And long.

Then the other management firm calls. They had the script evaluated by their own readers and it got some pretty fantastic scores. They, too, want to represent it.

An embarassment of riches. A very high-class problem to have, two different managers wanting to take you to the prom. But I chose Circle, since, A) they got back to me first and B) they’re really who I wanted to be in business with.

The Other Manager respected that decision, but informed me that, buried in that release I signed was a clause that said, essentially, If They Liked the Submitted Script, They Could Exercise the Right to Exclusively Represent It, Regardless of What I Think.

They exercised that right. And, legally, there was little I could do about it. I told Circle about the development and, while a little ticked, they took being kicked to the curb with good spirits and said they hoped we could work again in the future.

So, somehow, I found myself represented by a manager who loved the script and would only take on material he knew he could sell...and pissed off at the same time.

Not so much dancing.

Next time: It all comes full Circle.

EDIT: So we're all on the same page, and for those of you coming in late, the events detailed above took place in fall of 2004. We're all good now, ja?

Galactica: Coda

I will say this, and then not another word on Battlestar Galactica until October: It takes balls the size of armadillos to end a season like that, to totally twist your TV show on its axis and send it in a completely different direction. To quote my man Bill Cunningham: “What’s a war without a prison camp?”

I don’t know where it’s going, but I know that trying to write a spec episode of Galactica would be a pointless endeavor. I mean, how do you even try and tell a story that would fit in with the rest of the series when the series keeps changing?

Man, it’s gonna be a long seven months.

Galactica

I have a teenage-girl crush on Battlestar Galactica. I love this show so much that I actually have trouble writing about it. The lead review I wrote for the magazine was the hardest review I've ever done. (For me, it is always harder to write about something I love than something I hate. The venom just flies easier. It's like Spock said, "It has always been easier to destroy than to create.")

So, while I would like nothing more than to explain, in detail, the many and varied ways I admire Galactica, I won't, for it would read like the rambling love letter you sent to that little red-haired girl in homeroom before she crushed your burgeoning ego by frenching that stupid jock wrestler under the bleachers.

What I will say is that the Galactica podcasts are pure gold. For every episode, executive producer Ronald D. Moore records a showrunner's commentary track and releases it as a podcast through the Sci-Fi channel website (easily shunted into iTunes). If you're both a fan and, like me, a writer, it's bursting with insight into what is, easily, the best, most complex show on TV.

And here's the thing: I have never listened to the podcast while watching the corresponding episode. While some of Moore's comments are loosely scene-specific, the experience isn't tarnished by not having the scenes in front of you. Instead, you just get to just roll around inside a showrunner's head, learning how things went right and, more importantly, where they went wrong. (One of my favorite tracks was for an episode called "Black Market," which Moore felt failed on a fundamental level and then candidly dissected, fully shouldering the blame.)

These podcasts are an invaluable learning tool for any writer who's even casually thinking about serial storytelling, be it TV or comics. The fact that they're free is just icing on the cake.

Here's an idea that I'll just give away: Why don't the studios release feature film commentary tracks as podcasts? They're already recorded and, while won't be nearly as popular as an episode of The Office, would be like crack for cinephiles. It'd be great to have them for nothing, like most podcasts, but I'd drop 99 cents to listen to James Cameron on Aliens, or Martin Scorsese on Goodfellas, or Arnold Schwarzenegger and John Milius on Conan (seriously, one of the most entertaining tracks I've ever heard) on my commute into The City.

Look at that: an untapped revenue stream derived from material already produced and just lying around that wouldn't cannibalize from DVD sales in the slightest.

My gift to you...the magnificent seven of you who read this.

Oscars

Don't really care anymore. I mean, professionally, I have to "care," since it's prime feed for the weekly entertainment magazine that cuts my checks. But I don't, personally, care...not the way I used to when I was in my early 20s, staying up late and watching all the Billy Crystal-shepherded bidness go down, giddy with the idea that at some point I could be there, accepting my own statuette. I know better now. (It may still happen, but giving a toss over what happens during the Oscars won't get me there any faster.)

Maybe I'm just jaded. Or, more likely, bored. Because it is still, regardless of what they change each year, a horribly programmed show, far too beholden to tradition to be genuinely interesting and far too reliant on the attendance of the beautiful people to be remotely real.

So, until I or someone I know gets nominated, I'm not gonna care. (Sorta came close this year; what with one of my bosses mis-IDed as Eric Roth because he was sitting next to his husband, Tony Kushner, nominated for cowriting Munich. But I've never met Tony, so doesn't count.)

Don't ask, don't care. Too busy nursing this stupid cold I got from one of my offspring in lieu of gratitude for caring for them solo (while my wife went skiing). Too busy trying not to cough an eyeball out.

Shit. Okay, nobody move.

I Needed a Hero, Part III

Where were we? Ah, yes. I was the schmuck who didn’t drop off his writing sample spec to the showrunner of Global Frequency when he had the chance. Luckily, Mr. Rogers was swell enough to make good on his invitation to the set when they shot the pilot.

So, off I flew to Vancouver, a city with all the beauty of the Pacific northwest and all the grime of an urban slum, both at the same time. I was going to stay for just one full day, since I was paying for this out of my own pocket. (Most of my trips to the West Coast end up being on the company dime…and the company dime will get you into some rather nice hotels. My dime? Something else entirely.) I would’ve opted to stay at the Canuck equivalent of a Red Roof Inn, but the GF production was headquartered at the way more upscale Sutton Place Hotel. Apparently, every production is headquartered there. Don’t know if there’s a dearth of decent hotels in Vancouver, but this is the one.

Flew in, met John and a colleague for dinner, had a quick drink in the hotel bar — where I saw the entire friggin’ cast of The L Word gathered to celebrate the arrival of the director of the next episode, Ernest Dickerson — and went to sleep early for what was surely going to be a busy tomorrow. I should’ve known better: I would be spending the day on the set and, as I’ve said here before — and others have said better elsewhere — a day on a set is a mind-numbingly boring affair.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m a huge fan of the comic, and was totally impressed by John’s script for the pilot. (Some of you may have seen the finished product, oh, somewhere on the internet.) So it was kinda cool being there, hanging out in video village (the pavilion of playback monitors), meeting the cast, watching director Nelson McCormick plan his shots like a military operation (and with good reason; apparently, he was a combat photographer), and shooting the shit with GF creator Warren Ellis, who planted a phrase in my head that I still haven’t been able to shake free (“Godzilla bukkake”).

But being on a set is a lot of waiting: waiting for the lighting crew to swivel their gear around, waiting for the camera crew to get their focal lengths right with the stand-ins, waiting for any one of a thousand things that have to happen before a single frame of film could be shot. And, not being intimately involved with what was going on, no one asked me any questions. So I sat and watched and, like everyone else, waited. Waited to talk to John about my chances of actually writing for the show. Finally, grabbed a couple of minutes before dinner and he gave me the low-down: he’d be happy to have me come in and pitch, when the time is right, when they wrap the pilot and start filling out the stories for the first season.

Sweet. A very expensive tentative “yes,” but a yes nonetheless. (The lesson I drew from this: Chase down every lead, so long as you can afford it, and even if you can’t. It cost me almost a grand to fly out there to get five minutes of John’s time…and it was worth every penny.)

Before I left the set that night — where they started shooting the very cool opening scene, on a “San Francisco Chinatown” street — I tucked a copy of Hero Unlimited into John’s briefcase. No way I was not doing that again.

On the flight home, I scribbled down eight ideas for Global Frequency episodes. That’s how jazzed I was.

Next time: The conclusion of my Global trek and why even real-world endings should leave room for a sequel.