How to Improve the Oscars (for me)

Gold Trophy

I used to love the Oscars. Some of my favorite memories of my life in Los Angeles involves getting together with my friends, anywhere from six to ten to fifteen of them, grabbing junk food and booze, firing up the TiVo, ordering a pizza, filling out our ballots to gamble on the winners and losers, and watching the show designed to celebrate everyone in the room’s favorite art form. We’d have a good time bullshitting, laughing at the good jokes, tearing apart the bad ones, arguing over who deserved to win what, getting real competitive over the stupid pool, and getting hammered enough that by the next morning we had already forgotten who won Best Picture.

That group of friends, though, is now scattered to the winds. Those get-togethers, at least at that scale, are a thing of the past. And every year I have enjoyed the ceremony and the show less and less. This has little to do with which films are honored. There have only been a few times when a particular film winning has elated me and a few more times when a particular film winning enraged me. In general, they pick fine films that are not always my favorites of that year, but are quality nonetheless. (With some exceptions, of course. <cough> Crash <cough> .)

My lack of enthusiasm about the Academy Awards has been created by, over the last 20 years of caring about film and chasing my Hollywood dreams, witnessing the cycle of sameness and lameness from which they seem incapable of escaping. It’s wearing thin. They do the same thing every year, make the same mistakes, and, on the rare occasion when they do something edgy, usually involving a “hip” host, a few people complain the next day and they immediately respond by at least three consecutive years of safe, uninspired hosts that offend absolutely no one because they are incapable of doing it if they tried.

Some of my friends still enjoy watching the Oscars and that’s great. I, less so. So, being a selfish, selfish, man, here is a quick list of the things I would change about them to make me like them better. Just me: a film lover, film expert, and filmmaker. Some of these things may only satisfy me, but I know some would be welcome by others as well. But I don’t care about them. This is all about me. What I’d change. For starters, I’d…

1. Dump the outdated and time-consuming “Best Song” category. This award is a remnant from the days when musicals were a viable genre and for some reason we’ve kept it going. There are two major problems with this category. Firstly, it is not about film. It is about music. And it’s often times not even about music in a film. So many of the nominated songs don’t even appear in their respective movies until the end credits. Most of the rock songs are ones not good enough to put on the respective band’s album. If they could find five songs a year that are actually used IN the movie, in a meaningful and artful way, then maybe I could see keeping it, but they never do. It’s usually two songs like that and three by famous musicians that you probably only heard if you’re one of those people who stays for the whole credits, like me.

Problem number two, of course, is that this category is a horrible time suck. Because the producers feel the need, every year, to have the nominated songs performed during the ceremony. With five songs, plus the actual giving of the award, you’re looking at maybe 20 minutes that could be cut from a 3 ½ hour show. Now, I don’t really care about the length of the show, but I’m a movie geek and I live on the West Coast. But for those in EST, that half hour is a big deal, especially since the awards are always on a school/work night.

Also, this makes “Best Song” the most important award of the night, proportionately. “Best Director” takes up maybe four minutes total, but “Best Song”? It’s 10% of the show! Seems like a lot of time wasted on something that really has nothing to do with making movies.

2. Speaking of wasting time, let’s cut the short film categories. I know this sounds harsh and rather un-filmmakery of me, but let’s be honest. No one cares about these awards except for the nominees and their loved ones. But this show is an entertainment, meant to celebrate the glamour and art of Hollywood, and, to use last night as an example, STEVE MARTIN received an honorary Oscar off-screen in a previous, untelevised ceremony while the winners of “Best Short Documentary” got to speak on TV. I know, I know. Let these folks have their moment. I get that and I understand. But, again, this show is supposed to be entertaining and I know very few people that don’t use those awards as an excuse to use the bathroom. We don’t have to cut them entirely, just lump them in with the technical awards, the ones they do earlier on that celebrate the stuff that they don’t want to bore you with on TV. That’s where they belong. Sorry.

3. Restrict the host to just… hosting. I like Ellen DeGeneres. I thought she did a pleasantly bland good job Sunday night, with a fairly decent ratio of hits to misses. Thought her opening monologue was good and safe, which is fine, and several of her interjections here and there were good for a laugh. My problem is with the sketches. Especially when we get into hours two and three. The costume changes. Going into the audience to get Meryl Streep to take a selfie or make Martin Scorsese eat pizza. It makes the show too much about the host and not about the films. And I just don’t find them funny. The pizza bit last night just made me feel uncomfortable and awkward. That far into the ceremony, sketches like that just make the whole thing seem unnecessarily longer. I want my host to have a monologue to greet us, then spend the rest of the night introducing presenters, throwing in jokes here and there to make us smile. But that’s it. I don’t give a flying fuck if they “broke Twitter” with their group photo.

4. Diversify. Apparently Oscar voters are 94% white, 76% men, with an average age of 63. And boy does it show. Both nominee Julie Delpy and my friend Bob Ray pointed this out in the last few days. Are those numbers representative of Hollywood in general? Yes, and it’s one of its great shames. And it’s nowhere more apparent than in an Oscar broadcast. It explains the same people being nominated year after year. I mean, Meryl Streep is a great actress but not every film she makes is worthy of recognition. They refuse to acknowledge the work of Andy Serkis in Lord of the Rings and Scarlet Johansson in Her as “acting”. They have one category reserved for “quirky” films, “Best Original Screenplay”. Nearly every year it is given to the year’s “weirdest” or “edgiest” film as a consolation prize, because there’s no way we’ll ever give Pulp Fiction or Lost in Translation or Her or Django Unchained or Eternal Sunshine “Best Picture.”

Two words sum up to me why the Academy needs a demographic overhaul:

Bette Midler.

I mean, what the fuck?

“Wind Beneath My Wings”?

Are you shitting me?

I’m sure some people loved it but it just showed me how out of touch these people are. You choose to honor the dead (including Phil Hoffman, who was not mentioned by anyone except for the In Memorium montage) by having her come out and sing a song that was corny as hell five minutes after it came out three hundred years ago?
Felt so lame to me. But just to me. Again, this list is all about me.

5. Drop the “Themes”. The last several years, each Oscar broadcast has chosen a theme. Last night’s theme was “Heroes”. Never mind the fact that 90% of Hollywood Films are about some sort of hero, therefore making the theme of the night “movies”, it is the reason we got three uninspired montage-tribute things that were just a bunch of shots of “heroes”. They had no narrative to them, no energy. They served no purpose other than for people to go “hey, I’ve seen that!”. I just thought they were horrible. I haven’t seen any of these “themes” really work, but this year’s was so boring and vague. Again, wasting time.

6. I know I mentioned this before but it bears repeating: Seven songs were performed and three short films were given awards, but the Lifetime Achievement awards, given to real Hollywood legends, have been pushed off the broadcast into the same purgatory as the tech awards. Wouldn’t you have rather heard Steve Martin talk than listen to Pink sing “Over the Rainbow”?

7. Have them earlier in the year. This may not be possible, but one of the bummers about the Oscars these days is that all of the major categories are decided well before the ceremony. Sunday night it felt like all four actors had already won and were just showing up to collect their trophies. There was absolutely no suspense last night until “Best Picture” and even that was only between two films. With the Globes and the Spirit awards and the countless critics’ awards, it has started to feel like the Academy awards are simply reactive. That the members vote based on what has already won other things. I think the inevitability of the awards this year was the key factor in me not being excited. They have to do something to bring in some suspense. Because there wasn’t one minute last night that I found to be compelling or surprising.

8. My last point is probably untenable and stupid but I couldn’t help thinking about it last night. I think the Oscar broadcast would be a whole lot better if it went…

Live to tape.

“Live to tape” is what shows like the “Tonight Show” and “Daily Show” do, which is record a show like it’s live, with commercial breaks and everything, but then air it later. Very little TV that look live is actually airing live.

What this does, in addition to not making the creators of these shows live like vampires, is give them the chance to make little tweaks. Ever notice on “The Daily Show” when there’s a weird cut in an interview? You notice it, it’s weird, but it means the conversation went long and they had to trim it down to get to their network mandated runtime.

But it gives them the chance to have the interview and, if it goes over, cut it down to the parts they think are most interesting.

In the age of Twitter and the internet, I don’t think this is a possibility, but I would love the Oscars to do the same. Go live to tape the afternoon of.

Think about it. Record the whole thing, including letting the damn winners give full speeches and not playing the less famous ones off in 30 seconds. Then, once it’s on tape, the producers can make decisions. “Okay. Spike Jonez’s speech went long so let’s cut the pizza bit. Oh, that montage didn’t go over to well. Let’s cut it.”

They could deliver a fat-free entertaining broadcast if they could have five hours to make some cuts. And they could get it down to 3 hours, easy.

Problem is, of course, that the winners would get out into the interwebs before the show ever aired and no one wants that. But, to be fair, for years the West Coast (where the Oscars are held) got the whole show on a tape delay every year so that it fell in primetime. It’s a recent development that it airs here live at 5:30. And we dealt with it. If you really, really care, there are ways to avoid knowing what happens.

I just think it would make a better show.

But it will never happen.

So those are some things that would make the Oscars more enjoyable for me. As much as I bitch, I still do love the Oscars. I will watch them next year and the year after that. But I am consistently disappointed by their resistance to change. One can mark it up as “tradition”, I suppose, but to me it’s just stale.

Signing off,

your resident grumpy old man,

chad

My Top Six Video Games of All Time

 

Skulltula

This week’s skull…the most abused creeper of all time.

I’m in my man-cave at 11-something PM. It’s raining outside. Save for the streetlamp’s flicker beyond my window and the low-key illumination of my laptop, the world is dark. I’m happy to be alone. Ecstatic, actually. If I can squeeze in about 700% more of this kind of time, I’ll die a happy man.

So then. Like video games? Me too. They’re a passion of mine, and although I seldom play them anymore, I’ll always reserve a special place in my chest cavity for them. Anyone who’s ever been in love with video games knows there are two types available for consumption. Foremost, you’ve got games that are just that: games. You blast or hack your way through this or that horde, sort colored baubles to win imaginary prizes, collect coins and 1-ups, or just generally bust the laws of physics for fun. While these kinds of games provide an excellent way of murdering several days/weeks/months of your life, they’re not the type of game I’m talking about today.

What am I talking about? The second type. The games that aren’t just games, but mood-setters, sensory-devourers, mind-benders, and experiences. A long, long time ago, I blogged a related piece  – http://tesseraguild.com/was-only-a-matter-of-time/  but this time, I’m goin’ balls deep. I’m throwing my top six games out there. These are the pixels most palatable to my grim, grey state of mind. Subconciously, I’ve no doubt that playing these six remapped entire swaths of my brain.

So let’s get started:

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#6 – Diablo (The original)

Playing Diablo for me isn’t the same as it is for other folks. Sure, I get a mild kick out of the treasure hoarding, demon slaying, and level upping, but for me Diablo is all about the mood and the music. Before I ever knew I liked to write, I’d sit in the dark at my paleolithic IBM 486 and play it until my eyes hurt. I’d wander ancient ruins with the game’s masterful 12-string guitar soundtrack thrumming in the background, the pixellated rain clattering atop dead men’s roofs. Hell, in recent weeks I’ve hunted down some of the music from the original game. If I ever move into a video game city, I’ll probably pick Tristram. It’s always cloudy there, and the mood suitable for my state of mind.

Metroid Prime

 

 

#5 – Metroid Prime

To be fair, I feel any of the Metroid games (sans the one that really sucked) fit this niche. I’ll go with Prime because if I go too far back I’ll confound the ‘what the hell is a NES?‘ crowd. Metroid for me was always more than a simple space opera. I never cared that the protagonist was a girl, nor that the villains were bland and underdeveloped. What I liked (and love) about the game is its atmosphere. One hero. Alone. Creepy music. Creepier monsters. There’s something elegant about the game’s fusion of far-out science with primeval alien mythology. I’ve always thought the game might’ve made a great movie, maybe even a killer novel. Hmmmm…

Deus Ex

 

 

 #4 – Deus Ex – Human Revolution

When I first picked up Deus Ex, I figured it’d fall in line with most other games. There’d be some cool moments, some blah, blah shooting, and a few dramatic cut scenes. I was wrong. In many instances, Deus Ex walks the line between game and art. Forget how tense and fun the action is. It’s like Blade-Runner blended  with Seven. It’s the not-too-distant future, rain-riddled and fraught with ‘What would I do if this happened to me?‘ moments. It’s fun + gorgeous to look at + elegantly dark. I. Love. It.

Witcher

 

 

#3 – The Witcher – Assassins of Kings

As far as games in the genre I prefer to muddle in, Witcher might be the best of them. The story (pariah accused of regicide) is pulled off better than in most movies. The love affairs, the rivalries, and the this-could-actually-happen feel as powerful as any fantasy novel. Heroes should be likeable and hateable. Love interests should be worthy of our affection and able to beat our asses. Villains should have believable reasons for hating the world. The Witcher has it all. If I didn’t have a three-year old kid, I’d buy the new Xbox and play the sequel.

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 #2 – Shadow of the Colossus

Never played it? Unacceptable. Set aside three rainy days and get ‘er done. If you’re not interested in video games, buy it for your girl/guyfriend and watch them play it. Yes, really. Shadow of the Colossus is not the game you think it is.  On the surface, it looks like a dude fighting huge monsters to save the world, his woman, his dog…whatever. It’s not that game. In playing Shadow of the Colossus, you’ll find out what it means to be misguided. You’re the bad guy, and you don’t even know it. You’re a murderer, a destroyer of beautiful art, a sociopath, a monster. What’s the matter with you anyway?

Zelda

 

 

 

#1 – Zelda – Twilight Princess

As if you didn’t see this coming. Those who know me will roll their eyes and say, ‘Well that was obvious.’ Now, as far as atmosphere, I’ll admit most of the Zelda series doesn’t measure up to the Witchers and Metroids of the world. The music is good, but not soul-stunning. The graphics are neat, but not particularly immersive. Why then have I put Twilight Princess at #1? It’s easy. You’ve got a beautiful world worthy of saving (Hyrule), a familiar, likeable, and best of all silent hero to save it, and a dread-inspiring evil to overcome. Twilight Princess beats the other Zelda games by virtue of its edge, its willingness to embrace adult themes, and most of all, the presence of a villain you knew was coming, but likely spent the whole game asking, ‘Where is my arch-rival? I need that guy, else life is incomplete.’

Honorable mentions:

Doom – Grim atmosphere. Pinky demons. What else do you need?

Portal – Was pissed about not getting cake…

Skyrim – Too epic not to be included, but damn so many of its characters for being cardboard.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll indulge my inner geek. I found my old Gamecube in a closet last weekend. Time to visit an old, old friend.

* * *

And if you think you know video games, take this 114 question quiz. If you score 60 or higher, you’ve got skills.

J Edward Neill

A Half-Assed and Mostly Sarcastic Plea to Congress

bad motivator

If one more person utters the phrase “SPOILER ALERT”, be it in person or in text or on a podcast (“How Did This Get Made” excluded), be it used earnestly or dripping with irony, I’m going to pop a motivator like a beat-up red astromech droid. (see above) I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know what blogger or TV writer or forum nerd coined it, but I want it to die. I don’t want someone to splatter it on my Facebook page when I make an off-hand comment about something that happened on TV three weeks ago, nor do I want it “hilariously” screamed when someone mentions the end of Old Yeller or something.

The dog gets rabies. The kid who people say looks like me has to shoot him. We all cry. The End.

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The reason I rail against this phrase and, more accurately, the thought and philosophy behind it, is simple. I love talking about movies and TV and comics and video games and books and stuff. I love waxing poetic, gushing like a fanboy, spitting vitriol, arguing, feeling smug because I know I’m right, acting smug because I know I’m wrong, changing someone’s mind on something, having mine changed, cracking jokes, tearing something down, hurling rampant hyperbole.

It’s one of the great joys of art: the shared experience. When you see a great film, you want others to see it, too. Why? Because you want them to experience it, to enjoy or not enjoy it, and then get back to you and talk about it. Did you like it? Great! Let’s talk about how great it is. Did you hate it? Great! Let’s talk about what a fucking moron you are and how I misjudged you as a person of worth!

After the final moments of “Breaking Bad” aired, I immediately called my brother so we could talk about it for hours. I always want to know who’s seen what, so we can start a discourse about it, even if it’s just a few text messages. If I were a more annoying person (not to say that I’m not already), the only thing I would say to anybody right now is “Have you seen Her yet?”. To my mom, the mailman, the guy asking me for change outside of Walgreens. “Have you seen Her yet?”. If I bumped into President Obama on the street: “Have you seen Her yet?”.

Because I loved that movie so much and want to talk about it.

We used to call this Water Cooler Entertainment. The stuff you saw the night or weekend before that you couldn’t wait to stand around with the people you worked with and yak about. Whether it was last night’s Johnny Carson or the Falcons game or the “M*A*S*H” finale or whoever got kicked off “American Idol” last night. “Lost” was the perfect water cooler show. Almost every week it delivered something, be it surprising, infuriating, terrifying, stupid, cool, or unnecessarily opaque. But it was meaty. Two or more “Lost” fans could chatter on for hours, spinning themselves in circles trying to figure out what they had just seen and unsuccessfully predicting what they would see next.

And that was the other thing about this type of entertainment: the wait. Especially with TV. What is going to happen next week? What did that cliffhanger mean? Are they ever going to pay off the Walt storyline? (The answer to that one is ‘no’.) “Who shot Mr. Burns?”. I love the wait.

But a nefarious and seductive force has come along and destroyed water cooler entertainment.

It is collectively known as On-Demand.

On-Demand includes DVRs, Netflix, DVDs, the internet, and, yes, your cable company’s ON-Demand service. Anything that allows you to watch what you want, when you want, completely independent of theatrical releases and television scheduling. It is what gave birth to the concept of binge watching; why wait seven days between episodes when I can just spend a whole weekend shoving them down my throat like Joey Chestnut? Never mind that stops it from being TV and turns it into a 10 to 20 hour movie, the practice destroys what makes TV great. It’s a long game. Binge watching makes the bulwark of suspense, the cliffhanger, irrelevant as a storytelling device. And can one really absorb the greatness or badness of a show with no time to digest in between doses?

I love my DVR. I love my Netflix. I have binge-watched many, many times. I am not arguing against On-Demand. I take advantage of it daily. But because of it, we have become a culture of spoiler-phobes. Before, if you missed a show, you missed it. When this happened…

bobby-in-the-shower

…you either saw it or you didn’t. If you didn’t, you found out about it the next day. That simple. Appointment TV. As soon as something aired, as soon as a movie opened, it became part of the culture. But not anymore. We don’t have to watch things at a certain time, on a certain night, in a certain year. We can watch them whenever. Which is great. Except when it’s not.

I was on a plane once coming home to San Francisco when a passenger requested the pilot not make any announcements about the Giants game because he was DVRing it. I’ve genuinely upset people by referencing the ends of films like Psycho and Glory. One time I let slip something that happened in book four or five of Song of Ice and Fire and made a “Game of Thrones” TV fan look like I had just shot her rabid yellow lab.

What it really comes down to is this: “BUT I HAVEN’T WATCHED IT YET!”

I realize that there are pressing concerns in the world. We need to find a solution in Palestine, do something about climate change, and fix the voting process for the Baseball Hall of Fame, but first I think we need to tackle this:

I am calling on the US Congress, or maybe even the U.N., to decide on an official world-wide spoiler statute of limitations.

Urban Dictionary defines a spoiler thusly:

urban

Urban Dictionary? That’s not real. Okay. Here’s what Miriam-Webster has to say.

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I would like to add a time limit to these definitions. Now, we would all agree the moments depicted below are no longer “spoilers”:

imagespsycho-2fredo-kissstar_wars_episode_v_the_empire_strikes_back_1980_1200x755_67251

Even if you haven’t seen the works in question, the images and words from them have so become part of our cultural heritage that they are incapable of surprising you. Anyone today even half-aware of movies would never be shocked by the end of Psycho like audiences in 1960 were. And you may never watch that old black and white movie about that everyone says is the greatest film of all time but when pressed you probably know the name of his damn sled. These things are just…known.

But what about things a little later? Am I allowed to Tweet a reference to what’s really going between these two?

Fight_Club_1999

Or what happens after this?

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Or this big secret? Are we still not supposed to bring it up in mixed company?

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The most recent of those films is 15 years old. But if you haven’t seen it, and I told you the end, it would be a spoiler, would it not? But so many people know it, when does it stop being taboo?

“BUT I HAVEN’T WATCHED IT YET!”

And when it comes to recent stuff, it’s dangerous waters.

At what point can we openly talk about this?

GOTRW

Or how this ended?

breaking-bad-tweets-top

The biggest minefield in TV right now is “The Walking Dead”. Because of the nature of the show, every episode is a possible big episode. Someone can die at any moment, not just on season-finale night. Seems like the only person allowed to talk about “The Walking Dead” after it airs is Chris Hardwick.

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I get it. You DVR a show and don’t get to it the night it airs but still want to enjoy it. Fine. I’m with you. The week after “Breaking Bad” ended, it was only proper manners not to talk about the ending to anyone who wanted to see it who hadn’t yet. But if someone is just starting to watch it now, from the beginning, do you have to dance around them? I know Song of Ice and Fire readers feel a responsibility to not ruin anything for the viewers of the show. Because the show is great and we’re enjoying it, too, and don’t want to be a dick and tell you how it ends (not that it will ever end. Write, George, write!).

But when can we start talking about The R** W****** without first checking in on everyone in earshot? A week after it airs? A month? A year? Or do we have to wait for it to come out on home video, seeing as some people wait on HBO shows and binge-watch them?

All I’m asking for is a reasonable expiration date. Because I love talking/posting/blogging about movies and TV. Because critics have become so fearful of giving away something that they don’t really tell you anything at all about what they’re reviewing. Because I’m so sick and tired of hearing someone yell “SPOILERS!” any time you bring up something they themselves haven’t seen.

I once was waiting in line for a movie. I made a joke about Patrick Swayze dying in Ghost and the person behind me in line went, not joking, “Ugh. Spoilers. I’ve never seen that movie.” Now, never mind that the movie is called “Ghost” and that his death happens quite early in the film. The movie is nearly 25 years old. You don’t get to “spoiler” me on a film older than you.

Ghost Patrick Swayze

“BUT I HAVEN’T WATCHED IT YET!”

So, I ask Congress and the President to get on this. Do the right thing. End this nightmare. If you create a federally sanctioned definition of “spoiler”, one that has hard-and fast rules as to when that status no longer applies to a work of art, I will abide by it. But until then:

Jack freezes to death. The cripple is Keyser Söze. He was dead the whole time. Rocky loses. Rocky wins. Rocky wins again. And yet again, this time in Russia. The 54th gets slaughtered. Lincoln dies. Malcolm X dies. Gandhi dies. She’s her daughter AND her sister! They named the dog Indiana. Colonel Blake’s chopper was shot down over the Sea of Japan; there were no survivors. The maniacs, they blew it up! Damn them! God damn them all to hell! Finkle is Einhorn. Maggie shot Mr. Burns. Will has to go and see about a girl. Rick puts Ilsa and Victor on the plane and walks away. All she had to do is click her damn heels together three times. And Soylent Green is people.

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It’s just a show; I should really just relax.

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This past weekend a large chunk of geekdom as well as a the whole of the UK celebrated the 50th anniversary of one of television’s most enduring icons, the more-popular-than-ever ‘Doctor Who’. I am a big fan of modern ‘Who’ (please check out my post over at Needless Things about my relationship with The Doctor), although I stayed away from the weekend’s festivities due to having a ticket to see ‘Day of the Doctor’ in the theater last night, which was a whole lot of fun.

As great and deserving as all that hoopla was, there was another television milestone celebrated this weekend that meant far more to me than the Whoniversary:

25 years and 2 days ago, the first episode of ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ aired on the Minneapolis-St. Paul based television channel KTMA.

(I’m going to assume you know at least a little bit about ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ as I write this. I have no desire to whip up a history of the show for you. If you want to know the whole story, check the Wiki.)

I lived in Ohio then, and in Georgia starting the next year, so I never saw MST3K (which is how it is most commonly referred to now) during its original cable-access roots. But soon it moved to The Comedy Channel (quickly renamed Comedy Central) and at some point, I stumbled upon the show, in the middle of an episode. It was probably in the second or third season. I don’t remember what movie it was. I was probably 14 or 15 years old. But I do remember stumbling over it with my brother Adam and we had no damn clue what was going on.

There was a movie on TV, a shitty movie, it seemed, but there were three shadowy figures blocking part of the screen like they were sitting in the front row of a movie theater. Only one of them seemed to be human; what the others were, we hadn’t the foggiest. My brother was only ten, so I’m not sure how much he comprehended, because it sure as hell took me a good 15 minutes to figure the damn thing out.

Those guys in the front were making fun of the movie they were watching.

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We found out, in the show’s interstitials, that the human’s name was Joel and that his two companions were robots, one named Crow and the other a gumball machine named Tom Servo. They lived in a satellite of some sort and were apparently there against their will. But it was very odd and we still didn’t have a grasp.

Until, right after, they played another episode and we heard, for the first time, the theme song that I will know word for word until the day I die, one of the most perfect theme songs in history simply for its straight forward statement of the show’s conceit; it told you everything you needed to know:

It was brilliant. The entire premise of this stupid show, in 83 silly seconds.

This wasn’t an anomaly. This wasn’t some strange occurrence on a fledgling cable channel. This was a show. And there were more.

And I was going to watch it. A lot.

It was usually on late at night, which meant setting our ancient and clunky VCR to burn the magic onto six-hour long-play VHS tapes. I would wake up the next day unable to contain myself that I had a new MST3K waiting for me to watch when I got home from school. I couldn’t wait to see Joel (and later Mike) and the bots tear into another 50s or 60s piece of shit masquerading as a film. I had heard of none of them, with the exception maybe of Gamera and similar man-in-rubber-suit movies.

Most of them were science fiction because, well, the supply of extra shitty sci-fi films from the middle of last century is endless. Which was fine by me. I loved science fiction, but I also knew, even then, that most work in the genre was low-budget ridiculous pap. Not all of them had badly acted aliens and Ed Wood quality flying saucers, though. There were horror films, crime films, adventures films, and whatever the fuck Manos the Hands of Fate was.

10_joelmikeI’ll admit I cared less about the host segments than I did the in-theater riffing. I loved Joel and Mike and Crow and Tom and Frank and Doctor Forrester but the public access level humor was usually more miss than hit for me. There were of course some very funny moments in this connective tissue, but that really is all they were to me: a break in the action to sit through before we got back to the main attraction. I know a lot of MST3K fans feel differently, but for me it was all about the movies.

‘Mystery Science Theater’ started as a cable access show and it never shook that aesthetic and attitude, even in 1996’s theatrical feature. It felt DIY because it was DIY. And it was this aspect of it, this feeling that even in its eighth season it was still being shot in someone’s basement, that made MST most special to me. Because it made it feel like my secret. It was this little, grungy, weird show and it was mine. Even if I knew other people who watched it, it still felt like it was made for me. Nobody else could understand it. Appreciate it.

It was my secret.

And it kind of was. Because not a whole lot of people knew about the show, let alone watched it. As the years have passed, it seems like everyone has at least heard of MST3K. There are probably folks who can sing the theme song even though they’ve never seen an episode. But it wasn’t like that in the early 90s. Before the internet. Before Netflix. ‘Mystery Science Theater’ was a show I watched on my own (sometimes with my brother) and I liked the solitude of it. It was like when I discovered ‘SCTV’ as a child; no other kid at school was watching it. And that was fine by me.

Over the years, the show evolved. The host changed. Behind-the-scenes folks came and went, many of whom were also on-camera talent, so we lost them, too. The voices of the robots changed. After being canceled on Comedy Central, the show went to the Sci-Fi Channel. I’ll admit I didn’t keep up with it the entire time. I know I haven’t seen all of the Sci-Fi era episodes. But I never lost my affection for the cast and crew of the Satellite of Love (and didn’t get the Lou Reed reference for many, many years).

And I’ll never forget the names behind this magic: Joel Hodgson, Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Trace Beaulieu, Jim Mallon, Bill Corbett, Frank Conniff, Mary Jo Pehl…

And this show, this bizarre cable access show about a dude and some puppets watching the worst cinema imaginable, got 11 seasons and a movie.

(Take that, ‘Community’.)

A world that allows that to happen can’t be that bad of a place, can it?

In case you haven’t seen a lot of MST, here are three of my personal favorite episodes:

CAVE DWELLERS (Season 4, Episode 1)

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This unwatchable ‘adventure’ film about cavemen features an abysmal opening credit sequence presented in the classic ‘shoebox format’, a prehistoric hang glider, and my favorite exchange in MST3K history:

Upon seeing the acting credit for a certain once and always Tarzan:

Joel: How much Keefe is in this movie, anyway?

Tom Servo: Miles O’Keefe.

Classic.

EEGAH (Season 7, Episode 6)

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Famous for starring two-time James Bond villain Richard ‘Jaws’ Kiel as a giant caveman trapped out of time (I guess I like movies about cavemen), this film is most notable to me because it is directed by Arch Hall Sr., an auteur of junk who I believe was a worse filmmaker than Ed Wood. I know this because my friend Bill was obsessed with him and made us watch several of his films. All of them starred his son, Arch Hall Jr., who is quite possibly the worst actor of all time. And yes, I’m including Sophia Coppola and the other guy from Weird Science.

SPACE MUTINY (Season 9, Episode 20)

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Whoa boy. Space Mutiny is a South African film that is basically a science-fiction retelling of Mutiny on the Bounty. It is a Star Wars / Star Trek / BattleStar Galactica rip-off from 1988 that would have felt right at home in 1956. It is maybe the worst film I have ever seen, largely because of how ambitious it is. The effects, the acting, the writing… the most talented artists in the world could not simulate its horribleness. Which of course makes it perfect fodder for Mike and the Bots. I mean… you just have to watch it. It’s on YouTube.

Do yourself a favor. Click HERE. I’ll wait.

Other great episodes that are a must-see are: Manos the Hands of Fate, Gamera, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, The Puma Man, SoulTaker, Laserblast, the Joe Don Baker masterpiece Mitchell, Teenagers from Outer Space, Touch of Satan, Jack Frost, and Alien from L.A., starring a young and dubbed Kathy Ireland. Although to be honest, nearly every episode is worth watching at least once.

Oh, and the movie they made is great, too, making fun of ‘legitimate’ science-fiction classic This Island Earth:

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Unlike ‘Doctor Who’, MST3K isn’t on the air anymore. But it’s not gone. It lives on. In Rifftrax and Cinematic Titanic, featuring members of the original show. In podcasts like Earwolf’s How Did This Get Made? In live shows, like The Doug Benson Movie Interruption.

And in my parents’ living room, every Christmas, when my brother and I flip through the channels looking for cheesy movies, the worst we can find. My favorite year involved a fabulous triple-bill of awful: Click, Little Man, and Baby Geniuses. Oh boy. Although we didn’t exactly riff on Baby Geniuses; it’s hard to crack wise when your jaw is permanently on the floor.

MST3K was and is very important to me. It helped sculpt my sense of humor. It got me through lonely and tough times as an awkward and nerdy kid. It gave me something that was mine, even if there were lots of other people watching it.

So this Thanksgiving week, I give thanks to Joel Hodgson for using those special parts to make his, and my, robot friends.

Happy 50th, ‘Doctor Who’.

Happy 25th, ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go ram my ovipositor down your throat, and lay my eggs in your chest.*

– Chad

* (But, I assure you, I am not an alien.)

Chad’s Theory of 10%

a good muffin

I apologize in advance for the brevity of this post. Sometimes the words flow out of you, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you can’t stop writing; sometimes you can’t start. In this case, sometimes you have too much to write and your weekly blog post gets shuffled to the bottom of the pile.

I am currently adapting two works into other mediums: a novel called Proxy into a treatment for a motion picture screenplay and a motion picture screenplay called Dakota Skye into the first of a series of novels.

I wrote both of those things. So that means I’m adapting myself.

And it ain’t easy.

Partially because I’ve told both of these stories before and it’s hard to get up to tell them again.

But mostly because I’m struggling to find the magic 10%. What the hell does that mean? you ask. I’ll explain.

Novels have been adapted into films since the beginning of cinema. Modern readers are often disappointed with the adaptations of their favorite books: “why did they cut that?” “she wouldn’t say that!” “where is Tom Bombadil?” “that’s not how it ends!” “what are you Hollywood morons doing to my favorite thing?!?”.

Understandable thoughts, I think. I’ve had those reactions myself. Understandable, but quite unreasonable.

You see, the major narrative mediums: fiction, drama, television, film, web series, operas, comics, and, to an extent, video games, are 90% the same. The tenants of storytelling apply across the board. Structure, pacing, conflict, character, tone. Storytelling hasn’t changed much since the days of bards and minstrels.

So, if all these mediums are so similar, if storytelling is so uniform, then what makes them different? It’s that missing 10%. That 10% (obviously just an arbitrary symbolic ratio) to me is what makes each art form its own. Every single one of those storytelling vehicles I listed above have something that the others can’t do. A great book, movie, or play takes advantage of what it does better than its peers.

I believe that you should create your work with only one medium in mind. You shouldn’t write your novel thinking about how it would make a good movie. Don’t make your comic book with visions of a video game in your head. Because that thinking limits you to that 90% and keeps you from realizing the full potential of what you’re writing. To me, that’s where you get boring books, paint-by-numbers films, and mediocre television.

I had an incident two years ago that illustrates this. I had an idea for a web series. A friend of mine has a character, an alter ego you would say, that he has created, and we were always looking for something to do with it/him. So I hit on an idea that I thought would work as a web show. I took into consideration the limitations of the form (and our wallets), but also what I thought could make it unique and interesting and funny by working within those confines. By making something that only made sense as a web series, that catered to the viewing habits of internet watchers, that made it unique.

We both loved the idea, but we thought maybe we needed to bring in a few other people to help, because we probably would need a little money. We met with an couple guys that were looking to get into producing web series. We started talking about the show; they had read the pitch already. We all thought it was a good, funny idea.

But then things went south. They started to talk about ‘opening it up’. Taking the character ‘out into the world’. Varying up the types of episodes. Making it less specific, trying to reach a broader audience. It dawned on me what they really wanted to make:

They wanted to make a mini-sitcom.

Which is a terrible fucking idea.

But what they were looking at this web series as was a means to a bigger end and to me, it was the end. They wanted to make something that could then be picked up as a regular television show if successful. So they wanted to apply many of the (outdated) rules of TV to it.

But this idea of mine, it would have been an awful, unsustainable television show.

But a great web series.

I ended up scrapping the whole thing because these guys didn’t understand new media. Had no idea. I would mention very successful web series like ‘The Guild’ and get blank stares. They had never seen a web series. They wanted to make short-form TV pilots.

They wanted to make a show that covered the 90% and ignored the 10% that would make it special. And in my experience, if you write something in one medium with another medium being your goal, you are going to create something that falls short of both.

The same thing happened when I was working on a comic book with a creator/artist who could not shut up about how much money he could make with the toys and movie rights. I kind of wish he had spent less time dreaming about being Todd MacFarlane and more time actually making the fucking comic because it’s been several years since my departure from it and the book has yet to see the light of day.

When I wrote the screenplay for Dakota Skye, I only ever thought of it as a film. Even though it’s talky, I still tried to think visually, using the language of cinema to tell the story. Film stories are flimsy things; there is not a lot of depth to them based on the limitations of running time. You have to do things, like create a love story, in brief and broad strokes. Luckily, a single image can convey what a novelist would need 5000 words to evoke. The image is at least 75% of film’s 10%.

(Getting tired of the arbitrary percentages yet? Sorry. There will be more.)

So now I’m sitting down to turn this screenplay into a novel and whoa boy. I learned on Proxy that a book requires many more words than a screenplay (a script page is mostly blank space). A lot more writing. Adapting Dakota Skye is reinforcing that bit of knowledge with a vengeance. I sat down to write the first chapter, based on the first couple scenes of the script, and just wrote what was in the script. Didn’t add any dialogue, just included very simple descriptions of what was happening and didn’t go too far into the characters’ thoughts. I did a very faithful version of the scenes that people know from the movie and script.

When I was done I had about a page and a half.

So what I’m doing now while I’m writing the book is searching for that 10%. I’ve taken away the things that make the movie a movie: the ability to convey information with imagery alone, characters coming to life through the use of actors, the ability to augment pace and emotion with things like editing and music. So, what do I replace those things with to make Dakota Skye: The Novel into an actual novel in the way Dakota Skye: The Movie was a movie?

It hasn’t been easy, but it mostly involves adding a fuck-ton more words.

At the same time, a few producers have expressed interest in considering thinking about the idea of my novel Proxy as a film. Before they can even see that, though, they need a treatment (a short prose description of the film, usually written before the screenplay) and eventually a script. So I’ve been working on that at the same time as the new novel and am facing the same challenge: the 10%.

In the case of going from the novel to the screen, the specialness you’re losing is the depth. The ability to dive into a character’s mind, to go off of tangents that may or may not enhance the narrative, to take characters on long, complex journeys step-by-step without having to use shorthand, to build robust worlds for your characters to inhabit.

The main thing you lose is the characters’ internal lives, especially with a first-person novel like Proxy. In a film, you can’t describe what a character is thinking: you need to show it. You can’t meander in and out of the world you’ve created: there’s no time. A characters thoughts, emotions, beliefs, motives, they all have to be on the screen. Sure, you can use voice-over (I did in Dakota Skye) but that’s very easy to do wrong and even when it’s done right (like in Dakota Skye) you have to use it sparingly.

No, film truly is ‘show don’t tell’.

So now I have to take this book I wrote, this book that was the center of my world for over a year, strip it down, simplify it, find ways to convey complex information in broad strokes, get rid of the asides and deviations, and mostly ignore the world I’ve built, and in addition serve certain non-diegetic concerns such as commercial viability, budget, and casting.

What do I get in return for these sacrifices? I get the things I’m having to lose from Dakota Skye. The image. The edit. The visceral experience that a book cannot provide. Do you know what will be better in a film version of Proxy than in the book? Fights. Chases. Sex. Things that you can do fine on paper but that movies excel at. Finding the ways you can take what you’ve done and make them visual filmic is difficult and rewarding. Sometimes you add things; sometimes things have to go.

So remember that the next time you see some stupid filmmaker fuck up your favorite book. A book is not a movie; a movie is not a book. That 10% is 100% the difference.

Taking a book and making a word-for-word film version would not just make a thirty-hour movie, it would be impossible.

Taking a screenplay and making a word-for-word novel version would not just leave you with a 45-page book, it would be impossible.

So, anyway. that’s where I am now. This crisscross of adaptation. I’m not going to lie and say it isn’t difficult, but I am determined to find each project’s special 10% that will help it make the transition properly.

This was going to be a blog post about how I didn’t have time to write a blog post. I ended up writing one anyway. I’m a big fat liar like that. There’s at least a 62% chance that I’ll have something substantial next week as opposed to this unorganized rant about how busy I am and my 10% philosophy, one of my many annoying and I’m sure incorrect ideas about writing and art (I’m sure I’ll inflict more of those on you at another point).

Anyway. Gotta go. My other projects are calling me.

Now, should I work on the adaptation…

or the adaptation?

The Biggest Fish: Smallville

At some point the following tale has become my own Big Fish story. Or perhaps it just has that sort of potential. I can only relay the events as they are currently in my mind… somewhat dulled by the time and distance from the original events. What you do with this information is completely up to you.

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I cast my mind back to sometime in 2002 where I had joined up with a group of like-minded aspiring writers in the back of the Dragon’s Horde comic shop in Stone Mountain, Georgia. I like to think of this time as the beginning of Phase 1 of my writing career (Phase 2 came in 2010). The beginning of working with others on various projects, and the beginning of having someone read something I had put to paper (up to this point writing was this distant thing in the back of my mind, but I either lacked the willpower or the knowledge to even know where to begin).

Anyway, one of the group members (we called ourselves WriteClub… possibly not the most clever of names, but it got the point across) told us he had a connection through his sister that could walk a potential script into the Smallville offices. We just needed a script.

Smallville-Logo

Of course the first question after “How exactly is this going to work?” and “Really? No BS?” was how were we going to do this? There were 6 of us in our little group and this could be something we all focused on. A true collaboration. So we sat around one Sunday and talked about the show, and if we were going to do a script what plot points should we hit? I want to say after that one afternoon we had a rough outline and plot points, but it may have been a couple of meetings before that happened. And I don’t remember all the specifics of those meetings, but I do recall the FUN of it all. This was our chance, no matter how small, and we were all ready to give it a shot. No idea was off limits at first, and then we slowly began to circle around the true idea… the one that would serve as our story for this script.

That story was roughly as follows:

Green Arrow would make his first appearance on the show. (What nerve we had to even think this way. I mean not only were we going to immediately get this script sold, but we’d also be the first to really bring in a non-Superman hero. Like no one in their writer’s room had thought of that.)

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He would meet/come into contact with Chloe (she was the sorta Lois character before Lois showed up on the TV Show) and there would be some definite sparks that would fly between the two of them. (While I think this is a fairly obvious thing to do, I actually still like the idea of trying to introduce another person into the Lana/Clark/Chloe triangle. And there would be someone else for Chloe to add to the Wall of Weird.)

He would need something from Lex. And to get that something would require breaking into Lex’s home. (I believe this was one of those things that would initially bring our heroes into conflict as suddenly Clark is really stuck between possibly covering up a misdeed of Lex or letting a thief get away with something that could hurt his friend… a pseudo gray area for the Man of Steel).

And at the end, Green Arrow would get the heck out of town with some aspect of the information he was after (courtesy of Chloe), but with the feel as if he could be back.

Again there was more to it than that, but this was the basics as we settled on them. Now the only question was: Who wanted to bang out this script?

And the table went silent. I’m not sure if it was because none of us really had a clue what we were doing and didn’t want to be called out on it or what, but for whatever reason I found myself saying the words: “I’ll do it.”

Looking back, this was a huge step for me. What in the world was I thinking? What if they hated it? What if I was exposed as a fraud? Hell, I barely understood the way a script was supposed to be formatted at this point. And still I raised my hand and volunteered. I rushed home with Final Draft ready to be installed on my computer and began to type, my fingers a blur as the ideas and the dialogue flowed from me. I did my best to develop scenes and made sure to hit all the high points. By the end of the night (probably more likely very early in the morning), I had the roughest of rough drafts finished. A masterpiece of American Television waiting to be unleashed upon Hollywood.

It was 29 pages.

Now, what I did not know at the time was that in script terms for movies and TV 1 page equals (roughly) 1 minute of filming. Smallville had a running time without commercials of around 42 minutes. Which meant I should have something around 42 pages.

And I had 29.

No problem, though. I was excited to have that much written up. And when I found out about the discrepancy, well that was why I was a part of the group. We tossed more ideas around and I believe we got the script up towards 40 pages (I might be wrong on this, but as I said above, this is my Big Fish and it weighs…). But we weren’t done. We did a table read. We brought in a couple of females to read the women’s lines to help make sure nothing was too out of whack. And at the end of that follow-up meeting I took the notes and compiled that final version.

We sent it off to the sister.

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And waited.

And waited.

And then heard back from her that she read it and really liked it! It was on its way as she’d pass it along to her contacts over at Warner Bros.

And then nothing. Nothing came of it. In my mind, I constructed an elaborate Twilight Zone style scenario where the script was on the desk of the man (or woman) who was the final arbiter and somehow it had fallen behind the desk, just out of sight. Because that was the only reason our phones had not been ringing off the hook (back when phones did that and didn’t just vibrate in your pant’s pocket).

Months passed and the script became almost an urban legend in the group. We’d mention it in passing like someone who had taken a grainy picture of Bigfoot or Loch Ness. The thought was occasionally passed around that we might be able to resubmit via another connection (we may or may not have done that, I can’t remember). I took the last printed copy and stored it away for safe-keeping. Eventually, like most legends it slipped completely from our consciousness.

Fast forward to October 20, 2004. I settled in to watch Smallville for the evening as the episode “Run” appeared. It was to feature a non-Superman hero: The Flash.

For those of you that don’t know my two favorite superheroes are Spiderman and The Flash… but I’ll talk about that in another post. So to say I was glued to my seat would be an accurate statement.

This version of the Flash flirts with Chloe, steals something from Lex, which causes him to come into conflict with Clark.

Watching the episode was a bit surreal. Little things here and there seemed familiar, big things seemed close…

And when I was done I felt a warmness spread throughout me. We were on the right track with our script.  This episode felt so much like ours that it only reinforced that thought in my mind. The next day I talked to one of the group. His first words were:

“I liked the episode of Smallville you wrote, John.”

Now do I know if anyone in the Warner Bros’ offices actually ever saw our script? No. Heck, I’m 100% (well more like 99.999 – with a lot more 9s, but we’ll round up) that they did not. I’m not accusing anyone of anything unsorted.

I just think we tapped into that common Idea Space that is out there, that so many creative people seem to be able to harness. That same reason that multiple movies come out about the same subject (of course the other reason for that is because the studio sees an opportunity to beat an opponent at the same game, but I digress).

This was an example of that. That’s how close it was/felt to what we had done. That’s how close we were to getting a shot at the big leagues.

But above everything else, that project gave me some measure of confidence in my abilities. Writing that script in the first place and then watching as the others read it I felt like a team with others, but more than anything I felt like I could be one of the heavy hitters for that team. My future in writing was going to be big and bright.

I mean, I’d written an episode of Smallville after all.

Chad’s (Insignificant) Hollywood Tales : “Too Sci-Fi”

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There used to be this thing called the Sci-Fi Channel. It had great potential, but it never really applied itself. It had a few brilliant moments, one in particular, where it showed itself to be the entity it should have been. But mostly it just ran away from its destiny, tried desperately to get people to like it, and struggled with its identity to the point of changing its name, forsaking its heritage. As it stands now, it is a joke to most people, only known for its most outlandish and ridiculous of efforts.

This is a quick story about my brush with the Sci-Fi Channel.

Several years ago I had a colleague (and friend) whose father was a very, very powerful man in the history of television, a near-god in the NBC-Universal family. This friend was an aspiring producer who I worked with on several projects that never got off the ground, unfortunately, although he did option a screenplay of mine once, for real money, and that was something I’ll never forget. We talked about doing this, about doing that. He almost hired me to write a script for him, but it fell apart. We were going to do a series of shorts for FunnyOrDie, but they never materialized.

One day he calls me and asks “Do you have ideas for shows we can pitch at the Sci-Fi channel?”

Hells yes, I do, let’s fucking do this, I want to do this so damn bad, it’s about time we got into something like this, woo-hoo! I thought. “I’ll jot down a few things,” I said.

So over the next couple weeks I worked on several ideas in which I thought the Sci-Fi channel might show interest and presented my list to the producer. After talking a bit, he fell in love with one idea in particular, which also happened to be my favorite of the bunch.

“That’s the one,” he said. “Let’s get cracking on fleshing it out and I’ll set up the meeting.”

I’m not going to say what the concept was because I still think it’s a very viable idea and have plans to resurrect it. So I can’t give it away for free. But I will say… it’s pretty great.

So while I was putting together my pitch -figuring out the pilot, plotting out the first season arcs, creating the cast of characters, coming up with a half-dozen sample episodes, putting down a rough idea of what future seasons would bring- I learned that we would not be meeting with some low-level exec over at Sci-Fi. Oh no. We would be meeting with the VP in charge of original programming.

In charge. Of original programming.

Meaning, if he liked the show, he could probably green light it himself.

That upped the stakes, so I upped my game.

We went into the meeting with what I think was a solid, entertaining pitch. We also had a back-up project, something that I had tried to get off the ground in several mediums (film, comics) but had never followed through on. It was a back pocket pitch, only to be used in case we got the dreaded “what else do you got?” question after the exec was unmoved by our marquee concept.

I was nervous as hell. It wasn’t my first pitch meeting but it was, at that time, my biggest. And I knew that the only reason I was going to be pitching to someone that high up was because of the man walking in the door next to me, and mostly because of his last name. Because Sci-Fi is an NBC-Universal channel and the name that he carries can probably get him through any door that falls under that massive umbrella of media.

I got to the meeting early and hung out outside the massive skyscraper in Century City. I met my producer in the courtyard, and we went over some things. The way pitches usually work for me is simple: I need a straight man. Someone to keep the conversation, the presentation, on track. Then, when we need to inject energy, ideas, and just the creative thrust of the thing, it’s my turn to talk. If you know me and are reading this, you know I talk too much. And I ramble, repeat myself. Especially if the subject excites me. So I always need a baseline yin to my erratic yang.

So my producer would yin while I yanged. No problem.

bsg-number-sixNow, at the time, the Sci-Fi channel’s sole artistic triumph was nearing its end. ‘Battlestar Galactica’ had its problems, especially towards the end, but it’s impossible to deny that it was a good show and, at the very least, considering what had come before, a great science-fiction show. It was the type of program we had all hoped the Sci-Fi channel would be bringing us since the beginning. And, with its critical (but not ratings, that’s important) success, I think a lot of us were excited for a new era where this channel, that claimed to specialize in a genre we loved, was about to break through in an HBO/AMC/FX sort of way.

But BSG was expensive. And not enough people watched it.

So it was going away. To the channel’s credit, most people would have pulled the plug after the first two seasons (and by ‘people’ I mean ‘networks’) but they stuck with it. But it never found enough of a mainstream audience to justify the amount of money they were spending.

And, at the same time, Sci-Fi had a new show, a very different show, that was doing much better in the ratings. More on that in a bit.

So we go into the very nice office of this very powerful man and I’m sure my voice shook for the first ten minutes or so. He was very nice, this exec, as was his assistant, who also sat in on the meeting.

After a few platitudes, I went about pitching my television show.

And it went really well.

I talked for a while, describing the premise, the characters, the show. What drew me to the material. What passions of mine were wrapped up in its conceit. While I was doing this, my producer was chiming in on logistical things, comparing it to other successful shows and films, trying to stress why letting this babbling (although in that case, effectively babbling) guy that had no right being in that room create a show would not be a terrible business decision.

One of the ways you can tell a pitch is going well is if it gets interactive. A rule of these types of meetings is to never bring in any of your ideas on paper. I wrote up tons of stuff for this idea, did research, plotted out stories, but brought none of it with me. Because when you’re in the room, what you want in the exec to get engaged. To start chiming in with his own ideas. You also want to be able to read what’s working and what’s not and cater your pitch, improv if you will, to appeal to the pitch-ee. The goal is to have, at the end of the meeting, sold the producer a show that he or she wants, not a show you want.

So you never leave behind a document that lays out what you came in there with, because most likely you have had to change some things to appease your audience and the last thing you want them to do afterwards is read a synopsis or treatment that is not exactly the show you just pitched them.

It is a hard and fast rule for pitching: never leave behind a document. If they want one, go home, revise what you’ve got, then send it in. But never leave it in the room.

Anyway. I got what I wanted out of this guy. He was engaged. After responding very favorably to the main conceit, he started asking questions and it turned out he and I had a lot of similar interests. He started adding things, suggesting episode ideas, tweaks to the story, different angles on things. The show had a large ‘alternate history’ element, which is a very hardcore sci-fi subgenre, but the real history I was riffing off of ending up behind something this exec was a huge fan of. Actually, he knew more about it than me and I had to work hard to keep up with him.

At the end, we had laid out what I think would have been a fantastic science fiction television show, a worthy successor to Battlestar Galactica.

“Chad,” the exec said, “I love it. Love the concept. I think it’s original, smart, and if done right, could be really great.”

Yes yes yes!

“And if that show was on TV, I would watch it every week.”

Oh no oh no oh no…

“But it’s just too sci-fi for us.”

It’s too what now?

Looking back, it feels like I stared at him dumbstruck for at least a minute, although it was probably only ten seconds. I do know, though, that I looked up to the big Sci-Fi channel logo up on his wall and then back to him, and that he noticed that. I tried to play cool.

Too sci-fi?”

He went on to explain that they were looking for things with broader appeal and that my idea was a little too hardcore for general audiences. That they needed shows that were more user-friendly, that my mom or someone would want to watch.

eureka-tv“Like what?” I asked, seething inside.

“Well, we’re looking for more shows like ‘Eureka’.”

I did not watch ‘Eureka’ so I don’t have an opinion on it either way. I know several people that watched it and one of the writers, Eric Wallace, is a friend of a friend of a friend who I also once sat on a writing panel with. But I do know the concept of ‘Eureka’ and I know what kind of show it was. And I have nothing against it. But…

“You already have a ‘Eureka’,” I said.

But they wanted another. Why? Because it was doing well. Because their numbers showed that people who normally didn’t stop on their channel were tuning in for it and only it. It was the crossover hit they’d been looking for.

“I would love to make your show, Chad. I would. But I just can’t.”

The rest of the meeting was cordial. We pitched our backup idea, which they responded to and we promised we’d send pages but we were never able to break that concept. I’ve pretty much scratched it. It sounds good on paper but I’ve never figured out a way to make it work.

At the end of the meeting, I think I asked if they still planned on making any more ‘silly monster movies’, because I played D&D and I could lock myself up for a month with my Monsters Manual and write them like four of those.

He said they were trying to move away from those.

Guess no one else got the memo:

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I walked away feeling good about the meeting and shitty about the outcome.

“Too sci-fi”?

“TOO SCI-FI”?

In the days that followed I had one of those “man I wish I would have said this” moments where a speech popped into my head that if I would have actually said in the room, I would have blown the meeting entirely:

“WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN ‘TOO SCI-FI’?!? This is the Sci-Fi Channel. Let me break this down for you. My mom is NEVER going to stop on your channel while surfing. NEVER. I don’t watch hockey and have never once flipped to the NHL channel. You don’t see them trying to crossover to more popular sports: “Tonight on the NHL Network…the 1998 Home Run Derby!”. No. They are niche. What they do is in their name. NHL. That’s it. You are the fucking SCI-FI channel. Stop being ashamed of the genre that you are named after. Because there are millions and millions of TV viewers that aren’t going to check you out simply because of that phrase: sci-fi. Deal. With. It. Embrace it. Because you know what? Science-fiction fans are LOYAL. Geeks are LOYAL. If you give them good genre shows, they will flock to you. BSG should be your model. Was it too expensive? Okay. Fine. You can do something cheaper. Is ‘Eureka’ sci-fi? Absolutely. Keep it. But you have the corner on this: you are the only Sci-Fi Network. We WANT you to succeed. We WANT you to be viable. We also want you to live up to the promise you made when you chose that name. ‘TOO SCI-FI?’ FUCK YOU!”

Saying that would have been dumb beyond belief, but that’s how I felt.

So, a few years after my meeting at Sci-Fi, they did indeed address this problem. Did they unveil a slate of awesome-looking genre shows? Um. No.

They changed their name to SyFy.

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Which, of course, means nothing. But at least it’s not promising science-fiction anymore.

So stupid and cowardly. And meaningless.

Because my mom still doesn’t tune in.

Looking today at SyFy’s programming for today I see: 11 hours of ‘Face Off (a reality show), a shitty horror movie for Halloween (The Ninth Gate…ugh), and an episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’ (can’t fault them on that).

And I’m sure this weekend they’ll treat us to the tale of some sort of aquatic predator crossed with some sort of dinosaur chasing and eating people during some sort of natural disaster, starring has-been TV actors and other Hollywood cast-offs.

Man, that’s some good SyFy.

This post isn’t about bitterness. It’s a lament. Not for my own career, but for a cable channel that I really wanted to succeed. But it’s now a joke, only known now for its stupid, stupid new name and its even stupider schlocky monster movies. A junk channel, traitor to its conceit like Discovery and History. What a waste.

For all its faults, failures, and foibles, the one thing you can never accuse SyFy of is being…

Too Sci-Fi.

More ‘Man’, Less ‘Child’

 

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Here are some things that I like lots: comic books, Star Wars, the Muppets, Chuck Taylors, video games, porn, Star Wars, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, pop culture T-shirts, sports, technology, angsty music, white tube socks and Star Wars.

Here are some things that I actively dislike: neckties, hiking, auto repair, guns, mornings, cheap scotch, fine scotch, neckties, most sitcoms, plumbing, meetings, sushi, yard work, trying to understand my health insurance, keeping track of my finances, and neckties.

I am rapidly coming up on 40 years old.

I state these things up front so that if anything I say after this comes across as hostile, recriminating, or insulting, you know that I’m one of the injured parties. I am of two minds about all of this. So that when I say something like…

My generation needs to grow the fuck up…

…That I’m talking to myself.

There’s nothing shameful about being an adult (I can no longer dodge that title) who likes any of those things that I like. Except maybe the porn. And the last decade of popular entertainment has provided me with plenty of content to satisfy said list: a seemingly endless barrage of superhero films, a good many of them quality, featuring A-List talent, a new Muppet movie made by someone with genuine affection for those little felt pieces of happiness, games like Bioshock: Infinite and The Last of Us that take video games into realms I never would have dreamed while playing Yar’s Revenge and Tempest as a kid, the MLB Network, dark chocolate peanut butter cups, white chocolate peanut butter cups, Big Cup peanut butter cups, mini peanut butter cups, and, the asshole of them all, the Reester Bunny, a sword-and-sorcery adult fantasy television show with mainstream appeal that doesn’t betray its genre roots, and a man winning an Oscar for playing the Joker.

When I was younger, the things I like came in these forms:

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And now, they look like this:

now

It’s been great to be a ‘geek’.

But this recent slate of Summer films as culture in general have got me questioning whether all of this is a good thing. As I write this I’m still angry at Man of Steel, a film that feels like it’s made by a bunch of teenagers trying to be ‘dark’ and ‘edgy’ and ‘adult’. But that’s a rant for another day, another time, another blog post.

I am most familiar with film; it is my first love and the medium in which I am most well versed. So I will use it most heavily to illustrate my point.

Oh, and I’m just talking American film here. To travel to foreign soil would make this already too-long piece way too-fucking-long.

In the 1960’s, the Hollywood studio system collapsed. The result was, in the 1970’s, the greatest decade of film so far in the history of the medium. Not knowing what to do, they threw their doors open and let the first batch of film school graduates and their peers, the ‘film brats’, take over Hollywood. It is commonly said that in the 70’s, they let the lunatics (and they were indeed lunatics. Brilliant, ballsy, genius, visionary lunatics) take over the asylum. This time is known as The Hollywood Renaissance.

The lunatics in question? Scorsese, Coppola, Ashby, Altman, Kubrick, Allen, Malick, Friedkin, Frankenheimer, Lumet, Spielberg, Lucas, Bogdonavich, Cinimo, Pollack, Polanski, De Palma, Penn. Not to mention the numerous producers, cinematographers, and writers behind the scenes. The actors of that generation are among film’s finest: DeNiro, Pacino, Hackman, Keaton, Gould, Hopper, Hoffman, Keitel, Nicholson, Streep, Foster, Burstyn, Sheen, Walken, Duvall, Rowlands, Spacek, and two personal favorites and underappreciated icons: John Cazale and Warren Oates.

taxi-driver-taxi-driver-06-1976-08-02-1976-8-gThese folks found inspiration in every film made before them, from the silents to John Ford westerns to John Cassavetes to, most prominently in some cases, the amazing work being done in France, Italy, and Japan in the post WWII era, and they created a New Hollywood that transcended the starry-eyed golden age of movies and turned the form into a true art. They (for the most part) made serious films about serious things. Uncompromising looks at life the way it really was, not how they wanted it to be. They were the perfect people to come along and create film for the Vietnam generation.

And the fact that they appeared together makes the me the most impressive collection of American revolutionaries since America’s actual revolutionaries.

Their reign lasted 13 years.

pulp_fiction_uma_thurman_jack_rabbit_slimsIn the 1990’s we got a new wave of fascinating moviemakers, inspired by the work of the New Hollywood movement. It seemed a new Renassiance was upon us. Tarantino, Smith, two men named Anderson, Fincher, Linklater, Payne, Rodriquez, Jackson (okay, not American but English language), Russell, Soderbergh, Egoyan (yeah, also not American). The Coen Brothers came into their own. A lot of these men were associated with the independent boom of the 90’s. I would call them the Miramax Generation. They breathed new life into film, pushing past the entertaining but someone stale cinema of the 80’s. They wore their influences on their sleeves. They pushed limits when it came to violence, language, and just what constituted a ‘film’. Some of them reveled in the profane and immature, but they had something to say, most of them, and made great films that stand the test of time. Several are still making great, relevant films, twenty years later. This is the generation that inspired me to become a filmmaker.

Their reign lasted, by my estimation, about 8 years.

Who are the hot-shot, super-star filmmakers of today? The ones that get the most attention, the ones the studio hands the biggest budgets, the most coveted properties?

Zach Snyder. Chris Nolan. Guillermo Del Toro. Marc Webb. Rian Johnson. Duncan Jones. Joss Whedon. Edgar Wright. Peter Berg. Jon Favreau. James Gunn.

Many talented men in there. (Yes, men. I lament that there is only one major American female film director right now. I do. But it is a fact. One I’d love to see altered. But you want to see a boys’ club? Look no further than Hollywood.) I am a fan of many of them in one way or another. Some, like Whedon and Wright and Jones, I adore.

But this is a filmmaking generation of man-children.

I’m not a person who laments the current state of film often, but looking at the Summer we just came out of, I am forced to. I’m not going to go film by film but I will use one particular film to make my point:

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Pacific Rim.

I like Guillermo Del Toro. As a person. He’s ‘one of us’. A real geek. As a filmmaker, for me, he’s hit and miss. I think the less money he has, the better. His projects with considerable budgets, namely the two Hellboy films, have been lifeless, poorly told stories with good effects, even if the Hellboy II creatures seemed to be cast-offs from the overrated Pan’s Labyrinth. He is one of those filmmakers, like Tim Burton before him, who is much better at the visual and the concept than the story and the characters. Which would be fine, if he wasn’t making narrative films. But he is. He is telling stories. And if he isn’t bad at it, he is at the very least lazy.

Pacific Rim is no exception.

I know I’m supposed to love Pacific Rim. I love Gorjira and Robotech, why shouldn’t I love this? Like my beloved peanut butter cups. Two great tastes that blah blah blah.

But I didn’t. Because it felt like it was made by a twelve year old. Watching it all I could think of was a little fat kid in Mexico, sitting in his sandbox, bashing his Godzilla toy into his Optimus Prime toy and imagining the epic battles they would have.

Every generation of filmmakers is influenced by (read: steals from) the generations before, but his is different. These guys aren’t ingesting what came before, gestating it in their minds, then making something completely new and original. They’re regurgitating. Pacific Rim, if you ignore the monsters and robots (a conceit, while cool on the surface, doesn’t hold up to one moment of critical thinking; more later), is just one tired ass action movie trope after another tired ass action movie trope that, when strung together, Del Toro thinks constitutes a story.

It is Top Gun. It is Independence Day. It is Gojira. It is “Voltron” and Gundam. Thrown into a blender and called a Summer blockbuster.

It is not a work by a man with any original thoughts or anything to say.

Sorry.

(I also know why it failed. Geeks may have had super-duper hard-ons for it, but I asked a few guys, guys who go to the movies on a regular basis, who had seen Iron Man 3 and Star Trek and Fast 6, about Pacific Rim and they said “it looks dumb and loud”. That is why it didn’t connect with the mainstream audience. It looked dumb and loud.)

I walked out of Pacific Rim slightly entertained but unsatisfied, then, two days later, after the smidge of enjoyment it gave me wore off, I realized that it’s a bad movie. Just another case of something that has plagued not only film of the last decade, but art in general.

The 70’s were the New Hollywood Generation. The 90’s, the Miramax Generation.

This is the Karaoke Generation.

karaoke girls

Some people mistake Tarantino for a mimic, but I disagree wholeheartedly. Pulp Fiction is, behind the surface, about three killers who find themselves saving a life. It is about redemption: that’s what’s in the briefcase for me.

That may not be super deep, but what is Looper about? Other than Johnson showing us a bunch of shit that he likes. 12 Monkeys. The Omen. Back to the Future. Blade Runner. I have no problem with wearing your influences on your sleeve, but, for God’s sake, try to come up with something of your own. Stop singing the words scrolling by on the monitor and write your own song.

Two of the bigger films of the year made two mind-boggling choices that I am still trying to figure out.

JJ Abrams’s first Star Trek was, for me, great. Fresh, entertaining. It told its own story and, while respecting the decades of Trek behind it, started its own timeline. That encouraged me. Opened up the idea of brand new Trek stories not beholden to all that canon. So, what did they do for their next tale, Into Darkness?

tumblr_lxclsysdu01qixaveo1_1280Cumberbatch-Star-Trek

They brought back Khan.

Man of Steel was a disaster in almost every aspect, but again. Starting over. Fresh slate. Retelling the origin. Redefining the relationships. Trying to paint a new Clark (one who is a borderline sociopath, but whatever). New look. New feel. New everything. And who was the villain in this re-imagining of one of America’s most enduring fictional characters?

terence-stamp-general-zod-supermanjpg-68906cfa3ba7dee8michael-shannon-brand-new-zod

They brought back Zod.

In both cases the filmmakers, in acts of inane laziness, pilfered the most famous and effective parts of previous films and “reimagined” them into their own. This is especially egregious in Star Trek, which not only recycled Khan, but the entire last act of the film. With, you know, a “twist”.

All the money in the world they can spend. Any writer in Hollywood they can employ. With effects the way they are now, anything you want to show, you can show. Any world you want to build, creature you want to birth. The possibilities are literally endless.

Nope. Khan and Zod. Cool, right?

HPIM5002No. Not cool. Nostalgia isn’t storytelling. Just sit down, have a beer, and wait for the MC to call you up so you can emote your way through “Don’t Stop Believin'” one more time.

Children, playing with the toys of their youth, with no original ideas of their own.

Like I said above, I love science fiction and comic books and nearly all things geek. Hell, I finally crossed over my final nerd threshold, the thing I said I would never do, which was Doctor Who, and it turns out I love it. But come on, guys. Isn’t it time to grow up, just a little?

That may be why I liked The World’s End so much. Despite its robot/alien subplot (which was really the least interesting part of the film), there was an adult story there. About addiction, about the disappointments of life, about the bonds of friendship, and, yes, about growing the fuck up.

Maybe I’m just an old man, but I do miss the filmmaking of the 90’s. Much like “The Love Boat”, it felt exciting and new (which, oddly, was a show that never felt exciting or new). But now, the only films I get excited for are the ones made by people from previous generations: Scorsese, the Andersons, Fincher, The Coens, Ridley Scott, Tarantino, Payne, Russell.

They are the only ones making films for adults. I think we have embraced the man-child, but have done no service to the ‘man’ half of that hyphenate.

G.I. Joe. Transformers. Batman. Superman. Spiderman. The A-Team. The always-rumored Thundercats and He-Man films. New Star Wars films directed by a Star Wars geek. The Muppets. There is no mistaking the age range of today’s most popular filmmakers. They’re my age. But, unlike them it seems, I didn’t stop watching film and television after I turned twelve.

battleship-movie-image-02I mean, come on. Battleship? FUCKING BATTLESHIP?!? Bad enough to make a movie based on a children’s board game (again with the nostalgia), but to make it a Transformers rip-off in the process? This is what studios think people want. FUCKING BATTLESHIP.

What I’m trying to say here is, while the ‘geek revolution’ has pleased me greatly, I’m starting to turn on it. I’m tired of films made by grown men who think they’re teenage boys. And I’m one of those men. But I have another side to me, the side that has accepted the fact that I am also an adult that yearns for mature entertainment and art. These guys live in a perpetual state of adolescence and get paid millions of dollars to do so.

This doesn’t just apply to film. The only books anyone seems to read nowadays are Young Adult fiction. Potter. Twilight. Hunger Games. Mortal Instruments. These are adults reading these books. I have read a few myself (Potter and Hunger Games) but that is all some people read. Do you know more people that have read Harry Potter or The Sound and the Fury? Twilight or The Count of Monte Cristo? Hunger Games or Naked Lunch?

Don’t get me started on music. Have you heard that new Katy Perry song, ‘Roar’? The most asinine and hacky lyrics I have heard in a long time, no matter how catchy the track may be. Plus, she rips off Survivor of all things. You can’t drop an ‘eye of the tiger’ into a song. That phrase is taken, lady. It is only acceptable during a corny 80’s training montage. Lady Gaga literally karaoke’d Madonna’s “Express Yourself” for her “Born this Way.” (Or maybe she Weird Al’ed it).

I’m just tired. Tired of being disappointed by artists who I think should know better. Tired of seeing the same things over and over and over again. Much of the hype about Pacific Rim was that it was a ‘new property’ (that’s what we call our films now: properties), but when I saw it, was just a bunch of things I’d seen before strung together with some big, loud, CG things hitting each other.

voltron-775596(About that: why do they hit each other? they have missiles and plasma cannons. there is no reason not to start a fight with those things instead of charging headfirst into a fistfight. any military strategist will tell you: ranged attacks first. has been that way since the bow and arrow. and the sword? we get 75% of the way through the movie and we reveal that the things have swords that can cleave the monsters in half with one slash? either Del Toro watched too much or too little “Voltron” to understand how little sense this makes. form the blazing sword right away, you morons. it works every time. sigh.)

I worry about the state of film going forward, and film is something I hold very dear. It is a great art form that is still in its infancy. We have yet to see a Beethoven or Van Gogh come along. I don’t know what those guys, their films, will look like, but I hope to see them in my life. But as of the moment, the art of filmmaking is in a state of arrested development.

Much like the men making them.

Did I say ‘men’?

I meant ‘boys’.

Oh, and just to show that I’m not just making fun of the guy up top in the Batman hoodie, here is me in my Boba Fett hoodie. I’m part of this, too.

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