Writers-Movies, Day 7: Seven Psychopaths

Day 7 of writerly movies and our lucky number slevin is Seven Psychopaths.

Seven Psychopaths is a perfect writerly movie for me. Why? Everything said in the movie is so ridiculously over the top, but then everything comes to pass exactly as was said.

Marty: "What do we do?"
Billy: "I say we take the bad guys out to the desert and have a shoot-out."
Marty: "What do we do in real life!"

And what comes to pass? A shoot-out in the dessert, but along the way, Marty has to write the screenplay for his guaranteed blockbuster, Seven Psychopaths ...

Wait a minute! Seven Psychopaths is a movie about the making of the movie, Seven Psychopaths?

Yup. Over the top? Yup. I mean, what writer has the mm-hm to write about writing about script he's writing? Besides Charlie Kaufman, that is.

And the title: 'Seven Psychopaths'? It's a paean of a psychodrama to ultraviolence, right?

Not according to Marty. "I'm tired of all these terrible movies about death and violence. I want to do something different. I want Seven Psychopaths to be a movie about peace."

Billy is not on board with all this. "Oh, instead of calling it Seven Psychopaths, why don't we call it the Seven Women who Realize They Are Empowered to be Whoever they want to be and Two of them are Lesbians and One of them's a Black Cripple in a Wheelchair? How's that grab you for a movie title, Marty?"

Seven Psychopaths is fearless in its terror confronting the world, and, at the same time, entirely self-deprecating. It's scary writing. It's scary having a girlfriend, and pretending to her, and to everybody else, that you're normal and can hold down a job and get along with people. It's scary being married to somebody of a different race, who is dying of cancer. It's scary losing your daughter to a psychopath, and wondering why God would do this to you.

Seven Psychopaths lives in the moment. Two thugs are bored, waiting to make their hit, so they start talking about Cuba. The head boss interrogates his dog-sitter for minutes until one of his sidekicks mentions he knows a guy returning dogs around town. Minutes. Marty, Billy, and Hans spend the latter half of the movie sitting around the campfire discussing ... well, life, but each of them have no idea what life is.

And the story itself, not the movie, but the story Seven Psychopaths.

Billy: "So, how does it end?"
Marty: "I don't even know how it starts!"
Billy: "Whoops."

Isn't that the writer's experience? You stare at the blank page all day, saying: "I have to write something!" immediately followed by: "But how do I even start?"

And what happens? Seven Psychopaths is not the movie Marty planned, at all. It changed, and it grew, and the characters grew, surprising Marty, and surprising themselves. One moment they were in the movie, then the next moment, they were helping to script the movie, then the next, they were bumping into each other, across scenes. Seven Psychopaths is a movie of, as Hans calls is, layers, and the distinction between the author, the movie, life, and the construction of the movie playing out begins to blur until these distinctions disappear, reappear, then, at the very end, are shattered.

You have a plot hole in your movie script? How about a psychopath give you, the author, a ring in the real world and threaten to come find you because of it, huh? How about that? Now, do you want to leave that thread dangling in your story and disappoint your readers, seeing that in doing so you're placing your life on the line?

There is one thing that Seven Psychopaths is intolerant of, and that's one-dimensional characters, but, instead of saying to you: all our characters are certified fleshed out, Seven Psychopaths, instead, introduces these characters to you as one-dimensional, plays them to their stereotype for a while, then  – WHAM! – your expectations are subverted in the most surprising, shocking, jarring ways possible. Pretty much everybody dies in this movie, but they only die because they refuse to live their lives small. The thug is not just a thug, he's a guy who grew up under both imperialist and communist Cuba, and refuses the be an idiot thug. No, he has to be an angry, bitter, refined, thoughtful thug.

That's how much attention Seven Psychopaths gives to one of the minions who has five minutes of screen time, and then he's another statistic, but – oh! – what a glorious five minutes. His five minutes on the screen were more impactful than most actors who land a contract in their own TV series! But not only do even the bit players get loving attention from the writer, but none of the characters get a free pass, from the alcoholic writer, to the psychopathic overly-friendly friend, to Quaker hell-bent on revenge, and having to live with the consequences of God allowing him his revenge. Even the psychopaths written into story are both nuanced and flawed. A pair of psychopaths go on a serial killer killing-spree, but do they go too far? A Vietnamese survivor of Da Nang takes his revenge on a bunch of vets, burning them to reflect the Agent Orange attacks in Vietnam. Or does he do this? Layered, nuanced, flawed, this is how Seven Psychopaths sees us in the world, and, folks, it's a hell of a ride.

What has Seven Psychopaths taught me?

• Not one of these characters are perfect. Everybody has flaws, and these flaws can be niggling, but they eventually, no matter how small, lead to the character's downfall. Everybody goes down, so not only are these characters not perfect, but, further, they are irredeemable, but we love them all, because of their flaws? Nah, their flaws are annoying, so not because of their flaws, but, because, despite their flaws, each character has their own dignity and nobility.
• Everything has a purpose, and everything stated comes to pass. Seven Psychopaths packs a lot in its 110 minute runtime, but everything comes to a resolution, even (humorously (black humor, yes)) the plot holes. This movie script is tight, covering a lot of territory, but not dwelling on any particular thing overlong
• You can have it all: 'Peace, and shit' as Billy calls it, and ultraviolence, as Billy wants. In fact, Seven Psychopaths is a love letter to poor, psychopathic Billy. All he wanted was a friend, and a kick-ass movie with some guns and shit in it, and Marty gave him exactly that. And peace, love, and understanding, too. They both win, then. That's what Seven Psychopaths taught me. You can write a story that everybody wants to read with guns and shit in it, if that's how you're bend, but you don't have to sell out on who you are. You can pack a lot in there, and get it all said, and make it tight and compelling and honest, too. Seven Psychopaths is awesome that way, and your story can be that way, too.

Writers-Movies, Day 5: Paterson

There is something magical about the movie Paterson

But, then again, there's something magical about every Jim Jarmusch joint.

Paterson is a poem; it's a love-poem to poetry, and it is actually a poem (several, in fact) being written on the screen as we watch the film.

If you've been to New Jersey (and I have been to New Jersey), the last thing you would think is 'poetry,' and if it were poetry you were thinking, it would be some industrial/manufacturing/dispossessed kind of poetry, no? But, surprise-surprise: William Carlos Williams lived in Paterson, NJ, and Paterson, the bus-driving poet, lives in Paterson, and, because it's a Jim Jarmusch joint, this little film works, and works beautifully.

Here, we have a poet that, unlike Miss Flora Post in Cold Comfort Farm who can sponge off of relatives (which we reviewed yesterday), Paterson is just a dude, so he has to have a job, and his job is being a bus-driver (so, Adam Driver being a bus-driver makes perfect Jarmuschian sense), and on his job, and walking his dog, and sitting at the bar, he gets to observe life, and record it in poems in his little poetry-journal.

Paterson is very much an observer, and the movie Paterson moves at this pace: it's unfettered by any need to rush into action and has an entirely unhurried air. Because of this freedom, the film gets to say a lot, just by watching the characters, and, not surprisingly, it packs in a lot more into this film than a blockbuster can afford to do.

It's funny: Avengers: Infinite Whatever, a film that cost one BILLION dollars to produce, has a plot that reduces to "must stop the bad guy" and has no character-development whatsoever. Paterson, however, looks like it was financed with a credit card, but we get to know not only Paterson, but his wife, his shift-manager, some friends at the bar, and even a bunch of punks in a five-four warning him about the dangers of dog-napping. And we get to learn about and to appreciate the city of Paterson, itself, so much so that it becomes a character in the movie. Paterson wasn't filmed in Paterson because it was just some j-random town they picked; no, Paterson was filmed in Paterson, because Paterson has a rich, living history. Paterson was filmed in Paterson, because it couldn't possibly be filmed anywhere else, and my hat's off to Jim Jarmusch in showing me a little town in New Jersey that, by the end of the film, I fell in love with and would love to visit, and walk about, and live there, and write poetry, and drive a bus, and listen to the conversations the locals have about ... well, anything.

And, I'll admit this: I wrote down every poem written by Paterson, and the little girl, in the movie Paterson.

Judge me.

Paterson informs my writing thus:

• Plot? What is plot? My stories are character-driven stories, but they are not plot-free. I develop my stories from a plot-perspective – beginning, middle, end – and I have that nailed before I write a word, but then, each chapter, as I write it, the characters surprise me with their own revelations, and sometimes (every time? I'm not sure) I have to abandon the plot, because the characters say: "No. We're doing this now." And they say this, not because The Plot Must Change. No, they say this because the plot is immaterial to where they are now in their lives. They're not going to jump off a cliff now because that's just not who they are. Paterson is not a plotless movie, but it is a movie where the plot is immaterial. The characters make their choices that they make every day, the same choices they made yesterday, and the 'plot' naturally falls out from that, because there is no 'The Plot,' there is simply people lives their lives.
• Settings. I research my settings. Why? I want to know where a turn in the road leads to a mountain view, or is the center of town ... empty? thriving? If it's New England, where's the Dunkin Donuts? If it's California, is it North or South California, on the coast or in the desert? I want a reader to be able to feel like they can walk in my book and breathe the air, and know what it feels like. Paterson brings the town of Paterson to life.
• Paterson is a movie of rabbit-holes: a series of journeys with no destinations in mind, so it may be considered in stark contrast to the Lord of the Rings, where there always is a destination ever before the Fellowship. Lord of the Rings is a very tiresome and anxious movie (the books I found to be quite a different experience). Paterson is the opposite: you flow along with the movie, and are delighted to find yourself talking to a little girl who writes her own poetry, or find yourself by a laundromat, of all places, listening in on a rapper honing his craft, or, lo! and behold! what is a tourist from Japan doing in Paterson, New Jersey, but to visit the town where William Carlos Williams lived! Paterson lets you explore and discover and be and at your own pace, because our man Paterson is in no hurry to get 'there,' wherever this 'there' happens to be. Even in Paterson, New Jersey, one can stop to smell the roses.

Paterson is a beautiful little love-poem to Paterson, New Jersey. Take some of your precious time to watch this movie; it is time taken you will treasure.

Writers-Movies, Day 4: Cold Comfort Farm

"... and introducing (???) Kate Beckinsale!"

And with that, we're off to a rollicking start to one of the smartest period-pieces, Cold Comfort Farm, mocking every young aspiring authoress who wants to be the Next Jane Austin, in the style of P.G. Woodhouse and Oscar Wilde!

Golly, the Brits do have it lucky, they get Shakespeare, then they get all these other smart, wry, funny, observant authors, too. To be sure, they have their Darwins and Dickens (meaning: boorish authors who put you to sleep faster than chloroform), but the richness and depth and breath of writing one can choose from the œuvre is both daunting and humbling.

Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons, tackles this conundrum head-on: if everybody else has already said everything to say, and have already said it better, then ...

... well, give up?

"... the golden orb ..." Miss Post starts again, and stops again, in her writing at this point, groaning in frustration, reading what she's written.

Sounds familiar, authors?

But the thing is, she doesn't give up, she lives her life, which isn't a Romantic Novelization filled with Drama and Ponderous Poetry, but it's a bunch of farmers, bumbling though their lives. But the thing is: their lives are filled with Drama and Poetry, ... and silliness, and from abandoning what she thinks are the Rules of Writing, and living her life and observing the characters that populate her life, she comes up with a much more interesting story to write.

Miss Flora Post actually did have to give up. She had to give up her preconceived notions of "What a Writer Is" and "How a Novel Reads." When she gave these things up, she emptied her cup, so to speak (and, being a Proper British Young Lady, of course it was a tea cup), so that living life could fill it with something fresh and original and something that was entirely hers.

Cold Comfort Farm is a movie filled with expectation-subversions for this young aspiring authoress:

• What writing is
• What a novel is about
• Who people are

Because, in the end, she didn't write the characters, the characters wrote themselves, but only after she opened her eyes to them as living, breathing, three-dimensional people, and not the stereotypical Seth and Reuben she dismissed with a quick sniff.

And when she did that, she did get her Romantic Ending, being swept off her feet by the dashing-yet-unassuming Charles and whisked away in his æroplane.

Both Stella Gibbon's book and John Schlesinger's movie get the humor just right. They mock both the characters and the reader at the same time but they do so gently. Why? because the humor is cheeky, to be sure, but kind, at the same time. The characters are portrayed lovingly and with understanding, but not at all blind to their follies and foibles. In fact, the authoress is abundantly aware of their shortcomings, and her own, too, and so I got the sense that she wrote Cold Comfort Farm just so. 'This is not a Jane Austen novel,' she says, 'this is just my little roman à clef. Not serious, but silly: just like you, me, and everybody else who takes their lives so seriously are.'

Cold Comfort Farm is an easy ride and a delight to watch that, surprisingly, stays with you long after the end-credits.

What did I learn from this movie (and book, as they are nigh unto one and the same):

• Abandon what I am going to write, because that just doesn't work for me. What does work for me is wind up the characters and watch the sparks fly as the collide against each other.
• It was a dark and stormy night is the exact set-up of Cold Comfort Farm, but the book and the movie showed me that the thickened fens of setting and the broody, dark characters have a surprising depth to them, and they can be funny, and they can change, and it doesn't have to be a struggle all the time, either.
• As in Topsy-Turvey (another movie in this genre), taking a break from worrying over writing to live your life can actually inspire your writing, give you a fresh start, and be the impetus to give you the get-up-and-go to write or to rewrite that novel.

Remember, kids: 🎵 The Earth will burn and we will QUIVER! 🎵 Watch Cold Comfort Farm to spit out your tea, chorkling with mirth, when you get this reference, foreshadowed so delightfully by Flora's innocent "...but why are they called the Quivering brethren?"-query.

Writers-Movies, Day 3: Blade Runner

We continue our series of blog posts on writerly/writers/writing-movies with la crème de la crème of movies: Blade Runner. 

Blade Runner isn't only the best science fiction movie of all time, it is also the best movie of all time. There never was and there never will be a movie to top Blade Runner and ...

No, wait: there's Blade Runner 2049, a rare gem of a sequel that excelled its predecessor.

Okay? Are we on the same page here? Yes? Great.

Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 are two sides of one coin that ask one question: what is it to be human? And even: what do we do to deserve our humanity? The Blade Runner movies ask us these questions. Whereas Blade Runner follows our protagonist through the movie, self-assured and comfortable in his humanity (where, in fact, he is not human, at all), Blade Runner 2049 follows our replicant protagonist through that movie, so lost and afraid, but growing into his. The irony in both these movies is that it takes the soulless replicants, striving for something they don't have, to teach us what we take for granted: our humanity.

What can be said about the Blade Runner movies that haven't been said before?

This:

The Blade Runner movies are the finest, most successful pieces of fan fiction ever to be realized.

Think about it for a moment. Philip K. Dick wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It was an entire world, with all the buildings disintegrating into 'kibbles,' people reduced to idiocy from radiation holding dead-end jobs on the pretext of keeping a society functioning: a society that had simply given up hope. So, what did people turn to? A VR religion that was a sham based upon the Sisyphean Greek myth, just so they could feel something, and a police force that had long ago (to nobody's knowledge) been taken over by the androids in their next step to take over the world. And, frankly, nobody in that story was likable, not our gum shoe, nor his wife, nor the Rachael android. They were all a selfish, indistinct, navel-gazing lot.

Ick.

So, how do you take all that in Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and put it on the big screen?

You don't.

What the screenwriters, Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, did was to re-craft the book into the story they wanted to read or to see: Blade Runner. That is to say, they wrote the best piece of fan-fiction in existence. They took the characters in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and entirely changed the story around them, then entirely changed them, leaving their most basic motivations, to re-realize (or, in Battlestar: Galactica-parlance 'reimagine') the story to what we see on the screen today. But not only the screenwriters get credit for this, but the actor who played the relicant Roy Batty, Ruger Hauer, made his own contribution that is "perhaps the most moving death-soliloquy in cinematic history." They made a movie that had it all: life, death, love and redemption.

How can you top that?

You can't. Or so I thought. Then came Blade Runner 2049. What director Denis Villeneuve did was to replicate the movie Blade Runner, and almost exactly at that, but then turn everything on its head. Instead of the replicants not knowing they were replicants (as was the case for Deckard and Rachael), our leading leads, K and Joi, knew exactly what they were and their place in the world, but then Blade Runner 2049 changed the game when the movie introduced the game-changer, a baby.

For, unto us a child is born.

So, Blade Runner 2049, a Christmas movie?

And, like the original Blade Runner, this new movie asked the question. Now that the replicants have had a baby, what is the status of this child? And, since the replicants have had a baby, what is now their status? Furthermore, what is the weight, what is the value we, as humans, place on our children? The movie shows humanity treating both humans and replicants as material, but the replicants, when they learn that there is a child among them, they place everything on this one hope. Just as Children of Men showed us the very simple message: No children; no hope. Blade Runner 2049 gave the opposite message: One child; all hope. What is the value we place on a child, on children, on people, on the person sitting across from us. Blade Runner 2049 shows people and replicants as worthless because they are valued as such, then turns everything around and says just one child can change all that.

And, at the end of the movie, a Dad whose given up on everything, including himself, gets to meet his child he's never seen, and we get to see the light of hope, of love, reignite in the eyes of a man whose heart had gone stone-cold. Blade Runner showed Deckard as a machine, moving through the world, doing his job, just because what else was there to do? Blade Runner 2049 gave Deckard his redemption. The two movies are one movie, a complete story arc that took 40 years to tell.

What did Blade Runner teach me?

• Maybe I've internalized this lesson for so long that I needed to be reminded of this in Blade Runner, but it taught me you don't have to be a human being to be human, and, conversely, being a human being does not grant you a free-pass to your humanity. The most human characters in these movies are the replicants, struggling, striving to earn their humanity, and they do, even if they don't live to see this victory. The lost, soulless characters are the crowds and crowds of people doing their jobs, going from a to b for no reason at all.
• There is shame in being a writer of fan-fiction, and rightfully so: most fan fiction is of the Mary Sue-variety and has too many flaws for just one blog entry (and that is why I have a metric ton of blog entries addressing these errors). But what is fan fiction, at its heart? It is an homage to the source material. Good fan fiction – Blade Runner, Galaxy Quest, American Gods and (ahem) My Sister Rosalie – retell and reshape the original so that you love the original more from what you've read in the retelling. "I write fan fiction." Sure, you can be ashamed of saying that, but know this: you're in very good company.
• You have time. Both movies are 'slow' and have been criticized as being as such. But what is the payoff. You spend a lot of time with these characters, doing nothing: eating, looking at photos, walking in the rain, hanging out at a bar. Their cares become yours, and the payoff is that their lives have meaning and so do their deaths. To die here, in these movies, mean something, and, at that death, that story ends forever, and you don't get it back. These are my stories: my characters spend a lot of time with each other, talking, not understanding each other, and, finally, caring, and when a glimmer of connection appears for my characters, it means something to the readers who have invested all this time in my stories, and it means something to me. It's okay to spend the time, doing 'nothing,' in your stories when your characters matter to you, not only is it 'okay' to do this, but it's a measure of respect, and gives your characters grace that the world does not give them and does not give us.

The Blade Runner movies have shown me what humanity can be in a cold, uncaring world, and from that has shown me that writing can be something that you care about, that writing can be beautiful.

Writers-Movies, Day 2: The Man who Invented Christmas

Hello, all, day 2 of writerly-movies or writers' movies or movies that make you say 'huh!' then write.

Those kinds of movies.

Today, day 2, let's take on "The Man who Invented Christmas"

This is a movie about writing, so I loved it. It's a little frilly, sentimental, happy Christmas piece, but it does glimpse into the writer's life and experience in its ups and downs, and its authenticity? Are you looking for authenticity? Look no further

*Charles Dickens does something writerly, like isolate himself, or fly off the handle, or keep really weird hours, or stare off into space morosely.

My wife: "Uh, huh: that's what living with a writer is like."
M'gurlz: titter

What I liked about this movie is that it showed the writing process, not as we'd think it's supposed to be: plot, outlining, sitting down and writing what you planned from start to finish, but as how I've experienced it, with the long, dry, empty silences, the absolute frustration of finally starting then being interrupted just when you almost started getting going, the characters wresting the story from your grasp and reshaping it into something entirely unexpected, unwanted, and alien from what you envisioned it.

It also showed success, but not as, yay! You're published, and here's a ton of money and you lived happily ever after, but success like this.

• feeling utterly detached from the congratulations
• feeling despair that you'll never write that good again
• feeling frustrated when your readers and editors misinterpret your work, or just don't get it.

And then you're published, and you get the reviews (don't read the reviews!) and ...

... and what? Well, your life goes on, and you have bills to pay, that you can't, and you have people standing in line demanding your next work, and criticizing your last one as 'not up to par. Frankly, I expected better of him, given what's come before.'

But then you have an idea – a great idea! – but anybody can have an idea, but just try to put that down on the page and not be screaming at the page and yourself and everybody who comes within shouting range of you. The curse of the writer is that you do have an idea. Now just try to convey that to somebody – anybody – else, and not look at what you've written and scream at yourself: why! why is it not coming together! Why is this so terrible? It was a good idea when it came to me!

And then you write, and you write and you write and you write and you write and it take so agonizingly long. And nobody understands you, and why don't you do something productive with your day, spend time with the family, instead of being cooped up in your room doing nothing?

No, this is not an autobiographical blogpost, this is, honest-to-goodness, in the movie. Swearsies.

Then you've written it.

This movie did skip over the editing phase of writing, thankfully and unfortunately. Writers, unfortunately, think: "I've written it! I'm done!" when they've only just begun! The real struggle is fighting against and fighting with the editors and publishers (which they only hinted at in this movie) to get the work out there, intact, with some shred of integrity in your story remaining. Editors cut deep, sometimes they cut wrong(ly) but sometimes their cuts are good cuts. It doesn't mean that these cuts don't hurt, and some writers have to suffer rewriting their ending, or beginning, or their everything, on the advice of their editors, and, to do that? To dismember your own work because somebody else said what you just poured your heart into wasn't good enough?

The movie skipped that part, but maybe that was an editor's cut who said: "Too hard and too much. This is a Christmas movie." And, again, the editor, here, would be right.

The Man who Invented Christmas also shared the triumph we have as writers. We get to create a world. A world that never existed before until we invented it, and we get to touch lives and touch hearts and connect with people, sometimes even all over the world:

We get to read those reviews of those insightful readers that tell us things about our stories that we didn't see. We get to read those reviews of those readers who write: "You saved my life" and to know that we just did something. We just wrote that, and they can't take that away from us.

The Man who Invented Christmas ends on this high note. Charles Dickens single-handedly reshaped Christmas to what we know it to be today with A Christmas Carol. And we get to see that he saw it happen and know that what he wrote touched hearts.

This is what our writing does, it can be heartbreaking, or silly, or serious, or a flight of fancy, but it's something we wrote, ... something we wrote that touched somebody's heart like nothing else ever has nor ever will, and we did that. The Man who Invented Christmas shares this, our writers' victory.

Writers-Movies, Day 1: Unforgiven

On these five days before Christmas, let us, writers, turn our attention to happy things. What are the movies that you love and that inspire you to write? For each of these five days before Christmas, write a blog entry about a movie you find particularly ... 'something': makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you recognize yourself, makes you say: "Wow! I wish I could write like that!" makes you say: "Wow! That's a great idea!" and makes you go off and write.

These five movies (one a day): they can be about writing, or they can be particularly well-written, or they can be just so bad, but the actors inhabit the characters so well, that they transcend the original material (ahem! To Have and Have Not)

These movies can be great, and serious, and well-respected, but they don't have to be (ahem, Deadpool). What these movies are are movies that you like and have influenced your writing.

I'll go first. A writerly movie I love is in the Clint Eastwood-genre: Unforgiven.

Unforgiven is a reconstruction of a deconstructionist movie. It tears apart everything that a Western is, but then reassembles all these pieces into something new and whole and, in the end, good. What do I like about this movie?

It's brutal and it's real.

Watching Westerns (except Blazing Saddles) is painful. The acting is stilted, the dialog non-sensical, and the fight-scenes, such as they are, are totally unrealistic. Unforgiven's fight scenes don't allow this detachment from reality. In an Unforgiven fight-scene, you are put into it, yourself, and not only do you feel the blow, being punched, or whipped, or shot, but you feel these blows as you're delivering them. Throwing a punch hurts, and it's tiring! If you don't believe me, get into the ring with me for three rounds. You won't believe the feeling, just three rounds, of how exhausting that is! Unforgiven reintroduces the audience how hard life was there, and they don't tell you life is hard, they show you. Riding, drinking, shooting, fighting, everything takes a toll, and you feel it, every inch of the way through this movie.

It has no heroes.

What? No heroes? Yet another deconstruction. The sheriff isn't the bad guy (although he's shown unsympathetically), he's just the toughest guy in town who also is trying to settle down, build his house, and keep the peace in the town, that's all! The 'bad guys' are just a bunch of fools enticed by a large reward to kill two guys, who already paid their dues, who bumble into town, thinking they have a straightforward job to execute. The ... in fact, nobody is bad here. They are all doing what they can, given the circumstance they are in. That's not right! Right?

But, because there are no bad guys, you get to see the innate goodness in every character on screen. Sure, they are all have a role to play and they find themselves stuck in these roles, but we get to see, for example, hookers, just trying to save a little money and do the laundry and get some justice for one of their own, all cut up. We get to see a bunch of guys pull together and defend a couple of cowboys and see the utter futility of what they are doing, and the absolute boredom of it, too. We see an Indian wife see her man ride off, knowing she'll never see him again, and she was right. We see a young kid take out his gun and kill a man, and see he get to feel the cost of that. Which brings me to my next point.

It has no justice.

There is no justice in this movie. There is no right nor wrong, nor morality, nor anything. There is just the West, in all its natural brutality, and the men and the women living there, and their sense of justice being betrayed at every turn. The whores want justice for a little, young girl all cut up, so they start the wheels of this movie in motion, but the sheriff gave them justice already: three ponies and a whipping. The sheriff wants justice so he beats people senseless, just for riding into town. The assassins want justice, and the money, but they're on a noble quest to right a wrong, but they compound wrong with wrongs, so one of them leaves, and he's the one that's beat to death. There is no justice and no fairness here, and:

It has no happy ending.

In fact, every bit of happiness is drained from this movie. The young whore just wants to feel a little bit of love, but William Munny turns her down, politely, not because she's been cut up, but because he's faithful to his wife ... the memory of his wife. Or that's his excuse. Maybe he doesn't want to hurt this young woman, knowing he's too bad for her, or for anybody, but he only ends up desolating her heart. "Justice" is served with William cleans house, but now a bunch of men are dead, and those left in the town have to clean up, and he has to go back across the prairie and explain what he's done and why his friend is dead. The sheriff gets his justice, being killed in cold blood, but now he's waiting in Hell for William Munny, just to say: "See? I told you so!" And, in the end, we see William Munny ride, not off into the sunset

but into the pouring rain, with the poor girl looking after him, knowing his heroic heart, knowing she should be with him, but staying, why? Because she belongs here? No! Because she belongs with him, but how can she say that?

In the end Unforgiven is a 'writerly'-movie in not what it says, or what that it tells us, and especially not in satisfying our expectations and hopes, but in what it doesn't say, and in what it doesn't give us. It is a Western with no justice, no right and wrong, and no happy ending. It is a story where each of the characters is a fully-realized person, each of the characters is (deeply) flawed, and each of the characters is immediately relatable, and if not relatable, then at least understood. You know why each character is doing what they are doing, you know that each of the characters is doing the wrong thing, and you know how you can fix them. But they aren't fixed, they are all broken, and it's heartbreaking, watching them all be swept away by both the events but also by their choices. They are all caught in a trap of being themselves, they can walk out, but they don't.

Unforgiven has informed my writing in several ways:

• A character not only can be flawed, but is flawed, and unfixably so at that, and by choice, but that doesn't make them unlikeable. In fact, their flaws are what makes them them.
• A good story doesn't explain everything to you. In fact, a good story leaves out the explanation. It doesn't tell you what's going on and why: it shows you.
• There isn't a happy ending. There's people coming into conflict with each other, with themselves, and with nature, and they always lose, that's the gritty reality of it, and that's what makes a good story.

Unforgiven is directed by Clint Eastwood, himself, and written by David Peoples, the screen writer for Blade Runner.

Movie review/first impressions of "Warm Bodies"

Awwww! (geophf wipes away a romantic tear)

Or as R says: "Nailed it."

So, the difference between the movie "Twilight" and the movie "Warm Bodies" is that Summit grew up a little bit. Also, the fan base, albeit slavish, I suppose, was NOT twenty-two million screaming fangirls demanding their Edward be this and their Bella do that. I think, knowing that Warm Bodies didn't have such a huge fan-base is maybe what saved this film from descending from something that's purely rote (which it was: rote and predictable), to something that's a chore to watch.

R's movie also had the advantage of a sure hand behind the camera, that is: the crew. In Twilight, ... I mean, props to the director (who was: Catherine Hardwicke who CO-WROTE Thirteen with Nikki Reed) for taking on this behemoth, but a behemoth it was, and it was formulaic because why? Because every girl reading Twilight had to reexperience what she felt reading the book when she went to see the film, and so, anticipating that she wouldn't (because she wouldn't), she screamed her head off throughout the entire production of the movie, blaming any and all targets for her anticipated grief.

Oh, good grief!

The thing is, without Twilight, there wouldn't have been this Warm Bodies. Summit took a (pretty assured) huge gamble in bank-rolling, not the movie Twilight, but bank-rolling all the anticipated grief associated with producing this movie. And it paid off.

It paid off in this movie.

And Twilight was the first go for Summit to see what it's like. Breaking Dawn, which I did not see, was universally panned, and why? Because they wanted to get it right.

A movie (of this calibre) is not for getting right. A movie is to go to watch, and watch the dude be stunned into silence by the cute, sweet girl, and for the girl to be cute and sweet. THAT's what these movies are for, people who are producing these movies.

I mean, look at your metrics. Look at your target audience. Your target audience does not want to see a bunch of posers pretending to be serious, your target audience (which is (pre)teen girls) wants to see the guy eat the boyfriend's brains and then hold hands with the girl afterward when she makes ga-ga eyes at him and then strips down to her bra and panties because the only time it rains the entire movie is right before they have to go upstairs to go to bed!

Am I right or am I right!

Now "Warm Bodies" WAS (pretty) faithful to the source material (fortunately dropping the dialogue between R and the guy who REALLY should've been the zombie, but there ain't no justice) (and, okay, WHY was Julie hanging out with this loser? was it because he was the last air-breather on the planet? STILL not a good enough reason in my book), but it did what good movies do (Blade Runner/Ridley Scott, Sense and Sensibility/Emma Thompson/Ang Lee), it DROPPED the stuff that was unnecessarily demotivating (de = un, motivate = moving ... and a MOVie needs to MOVE!), and RUBBED our faces in the stuff that CONNECTED us to the movie and to the characters, whereas Twilight rubbed our faces in what was demotivating (Edward: "We shouldn't be friends" as he presses his mug into the camera) and skimped on the stuff that would connect us to the characters and the film (which was ... what, again?).

Which was ... what, again? Warm Bodies had some source material that Twilight didn't have. And that was: strong, unconflicted characters. Julie knew what she liked and what she didn't (her bf, the jerk), and R did, too. AND R was guilty as hell ... of being a zombie with his pet human, but he was trying harder than any other living person out there to be the best he could for Julie.

Not that she deserved it, from a zombie point of view, because she kept trying to escape, and kept getting into trouble.

But look at in from her point of view: you're in zombie-infested waters. Wouldn't it be prudent to get the hell out once your captor left to get you some food? So she may not have been all 'aww, shucks!' for R (and she was all aww, shucks for him), but she was a consistent character and a strong one at that, who knew she was a charmer, and used those charms (the make-up scene: foundation and blush, ... a classic!), and knew she was a tough girl, and could kick ass, and save R right back from the bonies and stand up to her totalitarianistic dad, of all people.

Two good, strong leads (one zombie, one human), two very credible side-kicks (one zombie (M), one human), and some gun-play, some running, some driving in a little red Z and you have yourself a movie that was just the right length with just the right amount of feel-good fun.

And that's what we want in a movie, right, folks?

After all, if we want anger, shouting, tears, erudition, and deep thoughts, we'd be reading "My Sister Rosalie" right now, wouldn't we.

geophf, with "Warm Bodies" movie review, signing off.

... oh, and p.s.: you did get it, right? "R and 'Julie" ... that is to say: "R" as in "Romeo," and "Julie" short for "Juliet"? Like I said: an "awww" movie

Canon and the New Moon Volturi Fight Scene

So, my story MSR is character study of the canonical characters in a different setting.

There seems to be this distinction in fan-fiction: the canon line. It seems that canonical stories are to be treated with more respect than the AU ("alternate universe") ones. One measure of a story is how strictly it adheres to the canon.

Is that necessarily a good thing?

Yes, I argue that it is. But, on the other hand ("there are five fingers"), there is much that can be learned of the canon by AU exploration, and I do that, too, in MSR.

Why the preamble?

Do you like the movies?

It seems that a measure of the worth of a movie adaptation is how closely it follows the books.

Is that necessarily a good thing?

No, I argue that, necessarily, it is not a good thing. A book and a movie are different media, and one can say things in one that saying in another is clumsy or awkward.

And then there's the whole Jane Austen thing.

Jane Austen is this pretty good writer; she has her fans and her moments in her writing.

But ...

But she always, doesn't she, she always-always-always has to have the moment in the light for the ne'er-do-well. "Oh, Wickham isn't all that bad because of this!" "Oh, Willoughby is actually caught in the middle because of that!" "Oh, ..."

Oh, please.

The Jane Austen movies these days are improvements on the originals because they make the wise decisions to cut out that unnecessary and unhelpful exposition.

Silence of the Lambs was an improvement on the original because ... well, you can't have all this internal monologue in a movie (Adaptation notwithstanding) ... and it was Hannibal and Hannibal and Clarice that was compelling, not the whole drama of our FBI director back home.

Blade Runner is an improvement on "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" because it improves on ... well, everything. Phillip Dick was certainly visionary but he was a little too paranoid/fanatically religious in his writings for his own good.

What do all these improvements teach us?

Do they worship the source material?

Yes, they are loving adaptations.

But no: they look at their sources with a practical, pragmatic eye, and cut what needs to be cut.

Let's look at the purely canonical movies of Twilight and Harry Potter (the first one).

Are they canonical? Yes.
Are they loving adaptations? Yes.

But these are not the "failings" of these movies (can a vehicle that spawns an industry of more than one hundred million USD be considered a "failure"?). These movies do not fail because they are canonical. No, they fail because they adore their sources. Cutting something, anything, is anathema, and the directors where told their jobs (the directors were "directed" ... that must be really hard when somebody tells you what to do and how to do it when you are at the top of your field): Keep it Faithful.

Harry Potter and Twilight were not movies: they were holocausts ... "whole burnt offerings of worship to G-d." I mean, really, how many full-on sepia-toned close ups of our leading lads and ladies looking reverential must we stomach?

So: the scene were Bella is to be murdered and Edward and Alice fight with the guard. Not canonical. Not by a long shot. Not even realistic, given the Volturi's might and our Cullen representatives' lack.

But that's not why I don't like this scene.

I don't like this scene because it shows it hasn't gotten over the adoration phase of the books.

You know what I think that needs to happen?

Thanks for asking me that.

What needs to happen is about fifty or so years need to pass, and then somebody needs to do a movie of the sources, so the movies can be adapted worshipfully, yes, but with a good, healthy, respectful distance of years that mortals in time seem to rely on o-so-much.

My story has canonical characters ... goody for me and pat me on the back. The new New Moon Volturi fight scene is not canonical ... boo on them, but not just because of the departure from canon.

Yes, bought the DVD

... at midnight.

... actually bought two of them. My cara spoza knows why I bought the second one.

Question: can the vampire baseball game go to 14 innings on the DVD please?

Yes, you won't be hearing from me in a while.

kthxbai

Låt den rätte komma in

... or, "Things to do while waiting for your Twilight movie DVD order to come through".

Here's the story. It's a love story. In a town where the sun is forever obscured, a brunette girl moves into town and meets a pale, unearthly boy. Girl gives her heart to boy. Girl shouldn't give her heart to the boy, of course.

Sounds familiar so far?

But in this case, Låt den rätte komma in ("Let the Right (one) (Come) In"), the girl, Eli, is the vampire ("12 years old, more or less" ... more or less by about 200 years), and the boy, Oskar, is just a boy.

And, unlike Twilight, the "standard" vampire rules apply. You know: sunlight being deadly, vamps needing an invitation to komma in your home, etc.

Here's what's compelling about this movie: everything! Eli and Oskar have that sincerely 12-year-old love. They love each other. They love each other. But they don't know it. They're 12-years-old, more or less, so they don't know what "love" is, right? They don't know what "love" feels like. It just feels nice and scary and weird. You know, that feeling, right? It's exactly the feeling you have, being in love.

But they'd do anything for each other.

They love each other.

And, unlike Twilight, Låt den rätte komma in does not flinch from the bald consequences of being a vampire. Eli's thirsty; Eli needs to drink. People die — either on the edge of a knife wielded by her bumbling but earnest father-figure assistant or by her own hands and teeth — people die, that is, ... if they are lucky.

And Oskar has his own troubles. Yes, at school, but his home life, like Bella's, is that of a broken family. But, even though his parents try their best, they are no Renée and Charlie.

Bella was very, very lucky, compared to Oskar. And Oskar's parents are loving and well-intentioned, too.

The horror of this movie is not Eli being a vampire. The horror of this movie is ...

Well, what are you doing? Why are you still reading this entry? Why aren't you at Best Buy buying the DVD or Blockbuster renting it? Just buy or rent the thing: it's money well-invested. Just watch the thing (again, in my case): it's time well-invested.

It's almost an insult to call Låt den rätte komma in a "vampire" movie, because it asks the fundamental questions: what is life? What is love? If it takes a vampire to see you as alive, as a person, to love you completely for what and who you are — unlike all your school "mates" — is she not, then, worthy of your love in return? If she needs you so much that she's willing to kill for you, yes, but she's also willing to die for you, putting her life in your hands, time and again, would you turn away from her, just because she's something she can't help being? But, not only die for you, but do anything: like eat a sweet you bought for her? Even though she knows how very sick she'll get by doing it? Or run away from you when you cut yourself? Or apologize for being so cold as she holds you, because she's forgotten how to be warm?

And why does Eli love you, Oskar? Maybe because you are worthy of being loved? Maybe because you are a nice boy, after all? Sweet, kind, caring, funny ... smart? Thoughtful and alone, but reaching out for something ... for somebody to love? In short, everything the world despises and belittles ... everything beautiful. Everything Eli sees in you, and loves.

Låt den rätte komma in could not have a better title. For Eli and Oskar, two outcasts in a world that's lost its way, have let the right one come in. Eli and Oskar let each other in ... into their hearts.

10 Things I Hate about the Twilight Movie

10. I hate that every day I go to see the movie, I must see the movie again right away. I have a life, you know: I don't have 4 hours and 4 minutes to spare for each day I see this thing, for crying out loud.
    
    And I hate that the movie is 3 hours too short — 2 hours and 2 minutes are not enough to convey the intensity and depth of Edward and Bella's (careful) courtship. I'd talk about the injustice of cutting the scenes in Twilight and Midnight Sun (draft on the author's site), but those are other hated reasons.
    
    Yes. I realize I'm holding the exact opposite positions in this reason. This is called creative use of irony — deal.


9. I hate that the movie stayed resolutely true to the spirit of the book, very true to the flow of the book, but did not have that saccharine worshipfulness that another first movie of a certain book series about paranormals involving (pre)teens and magic had.
   
   I also hate that this movie refused to stoop to the belief that movie goers are mindless cattle. It refused to explain every little detail like other blockbusters: "Look", it refused to explain in voice-over, "I'm a defenseless human girl leading what I know to be a vampire into a secluded forest patch so he can have his way with me. I'm putting myself in danger." Nope, no explanation. Or, that they kept the onion root cell division scene from the book nearly intact. It is at least a misdemeanor to mention not only the word "prophase" but also to follow it up with "metaphase" and "anaphase" is moving into felony territory. Also, I have always answered the statement "I have a question" with "1.77i" for the last twenty-five years (I always assume the asker's question is "What is the square root of negative π?"), so I have prior claim to the copyright.
   
   I hate the layering of every scene. Mega-blockbusters are supposed have only one camera angle: the close-up. But, no. Nearly every scene in this movie has important things transpiring between at least two major characters (with emotion and reaction in a subtle interplay) but then, out of focus, the minor characters are also communicating important thoughts and feelings and advancing the story and require strict attention to capture. Look, I'm only human, I can only concentrate on a few things at a time. Watching this movie is a strain to my complacency!
   
   I also hate that the minor characters are treated with respect and given time to develop — what? development of minor characters? — This is a mega-blockbuster: minor characters must be at most one-dimensional! Put it this way, if one were to role the additional material on James, Victoria and Laurent back into the book, there would be at least another 50 pages for us to read. And that's not a bad thing ...
   
   You may accuse me of listing more than one reason in this one reason, but I'm really not. It all boils down to my anger that this mega-blockbuster has the daring feel of an indie. Put contrapositively, this indie has the refined slickness of a mega-blockbuster. This movie takes the best of both sides of the tracks with an assured élan.
   
   Show-off.


8. I hate that the baseball game only showed 4 at bats. That game was so good I demand my 9 innings. No, that's not correct: I require the game be tied at 9 innings so that I could have my extra 5 innings for the tie-break, just as in the 2004 ALCS. — Yes, I went there.


7. I hate that some of the scenes in the movie were — deep breath — better than the book. Look, only Blade Runner is allowed to do that.
   
   To wit: the expanded relationship between Bella and Charlie, the expanded (long-distance) relationship between Renée and Bella, Bella's more creditable escape from Jasper and Alice into the arms of James, Esme acting as a more believable mother during the Cullen kitchen scene ("Clean this up, now."), or Bella hurting Charlie as she fled James ("Like what? Watch baseball on the flat screen and have steak and cobbler at the diner? That's you, Dad, it's not me." "Bella, I just got you back." "Yeah. If I don't leave now, I'm going to be stuck here, just like Mom." Darn it, I'm tearing up again just writing those lines!). Then there was the angst in the cafeteria: Eric's claim ("my girl, Bella"), then Mike's counterclaim ("your girl?") then Tyler's peck ("Sorry, Mike!") and Mike's ensuing chase, this scene played out rapid-fire and true to teenage kids in school, and, yes, better than the book's description of the boy's rivalry as glowering looks. The icing on the cake? Jessica: "Omygod!" Bubble-bubble, "this is, like, first grade all over again, and you're the shiny new toy!"
   
   I'm forgetting the other better scenes because it's been 12 hours since I last saw the movie. Stupid fading human memories. Now I have to take notes the next time I watch the movie.


6. I hate that they cut Emmett fighting the bear and the following discussion between Emmett and Edward about the ramifications and consequences of love. Go Team Emmett!
   
   I hate that they cut the Blood Typing chapter. There was no greater irony in Twilight/Midnight Sun that not only Bella reacted (badly) to the sight of blood, but that she was (impossibly) vampirically hyper-aware in every one of her senses to it.
   
   In fact, I hate that they cut anything. What? Didn't they have 150M USD to play with? We all know this movie had waaaaay more than 30M USD, because that amount of money is just the catering bill for mega-blockbusters flicks, like this one.


5. I hate that the movie didn't go AU ("Alternate Universe"). I so wanted to see Bella set Edward in his place two days sooner after his unpardonable behavior that first day at school in Biology and the administrative office. After all, what's the problem of gracefully ignoring the siren call of Bella's blood? Get over it, Edward, and show the girl some of that gentlemanly courtesy that you so pride yourself for.
   
   But then! I hate the lump in my throat when the confrontation did arrive the next week that all she could manage was an heartbreaking "You were gone." I blame you, Catherine Hardwicke: you cannot be human, for no human could make me believe so completely the strength of that devotion after Bella and Edward spent only one uncomfortable hour together a week before.


4. I hate that his movie was a "Chick Flick" in a real sense of the phrase: all the women were "strong, independent" women: Bella, not Jacob, was the sun around which every other, um, person circled. Gravity moves, indeed! Rosalie was sincere anger in the strength of her protectiveness of her family. Jessica was pure bubbly fun with just the right edge when it came to Mike. And Victoria, ah! Victoria, was the last to withdraw from the crouch and twice as dangerous, devious and menacing as all the other vampires on that baseball field put together.
   
   A chick flick that appeals to a Twilight Dad. That's just not fair.


3. I hate how Edward introduced himself with a confidence of a vampire over 100 years old: "Hello, I'm sorry I didn't introduce myself last week. I'm Edward Cullen. You must be Bella." However, at the same time his voice quavered with the uncertainty of the 17-year-old body in which he is forever trapped.
   
   And I hated how Bella responded with a gasp of an infatuated teenager but with the insight of timeless wisdom (that betrayed her true age(lessness)) to Edward's prying niceties: "You're asking me about the weather?"
   
   And I hated Edward's self-knowing smirk of a response — she caught me — "Yes, I guess I am."
   
   In fact, I hated that whole exchange, how that Edward so desperately was trying to figure Bella out only to be confounded and befuddled by Bella's insights into his character. "I'm sorry for being forward: I'm just trying to figure you out. You are very difficult person to read." "Hey," Bella interjected, "did you get contacts?" "No." "It's just that last week your eyes were black, and now they're a golden-brown color." Edward swallowing, "Yeah, its the florescence ..." making a hasty and embarrassed escape.
   
   I hated that it was so good.


2. I hate how that every scene made this movie Bella's: how we couldn't hear the thoughts that Edward read, but we knew that he could from his expressions that she saw, how the camera's focus, as was her focus, was on Edward when Mike was asking her to the prom, how the conflict of her pure impatient want warred with her desire to be a good girl to ease the pain of Edward's blood lust radiated from her body in expectation of her first kiss, how disappointment lanced from her angry eyes as she commanded Edward to follow her into the forest ("Not mentioning you were a vampire? — that's a rather big secret to keep from a friend, you know.") and how her courage facing the impending change turned to the shock of disappointment then tightly controlled fury when Edward placed a gentle, cautious, and hesitant kiss on her neck at prom, and how she instantly swallowed that fury to show him that she did love him and did forgive him enough ... for now.


1. I hate that now I am compelled to watch the movie again. Today. And that I am compelled to reread the Twilight/Midnight Sun story. Again. C'mon, people, I have a life ... and I have fanfiction to write. Jeez!