a curious moment

a curious moment

So I just remembered this strange moment I had a few years back.

I was at college, and was in my fedora-wearing-stage. Also, I rode my bike everywhere.

It was late at night, and I was trying to find a party. Or something-- maybe I was trying to find the way home.

And I suddenly found myself in a terrible neighborhood. Poor, and the sort that typically you don't want to find yourself in after dark.

As I'm riding, a group of young black men -- I'd say about 6 or 7 of them -- appear on a doorstep off in the distance. Here I am on my bike, and I'm not the sort of person who goes, "Oh, black men. How menacing." But knowing that the area was not the sort of area one would want to find oneself in, if just speaking statistically, I started to speed up.

And then I heard it.

"Duh, duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh...."

Menacing. And then I realized the fedora on my head. And me, skinny skinny me, riding my awkward looking bike in the dark. ""Duh duh duh duh duh duh DUH!!!

"Inspector Gadget!!!"

They were all singing the Inspector Gadget theme song.



I've been having a lot of days like this lately.

Read more »

the ending, or how not to know it

the ending, or how not to know it

If you've been following this blog for a while -- or more likely, you've talked to me at any length -- you probably know I've been working on a script for a good long time; a lot longer than any script should feasibly take. This is due to many reasons: constant evolution of the story line, changes in presentation, and a general change in who I am that is reflected in my storytelling voice. Simply put, I'm not the same person who started with this idea.

This could be a good thing; I would be confident in saying that I'm a stronger person with a more highly developed view of ideas and principles. I've gone through my own share of personal battles, demons, and triumphs, and these have all had their own impact on what I'm writing.

Of course, any reasonable screenwriter would tell you that you shouldn't spend the sort of time on a singular script that you'd change so much between the beginning pages and the ending ones that you're over-arching ideas become entirely new ones. That's not good business; how could you ever expect to put out consistent product when your assembly line is constantly being redesigned?

So here I am, about 3 or 4 years after starting this project, and I'm finally at a point where I can foresee an ending coming to the writing of it. My problem now is in what that ending will be.

As a writer, I've been primarily plot-based, narrative based. This goes against good story-telling concepts of writing around a "character based" story; the most basic distillation of this idea coming down to the story evolving naturally from the characters.

I’ve never been one to entirely agree with that: modern story telling is the sort where the "hook" is what gets people, the hook being the gimmick or essence of the plot: the high-concept. I've evolved enough as a writer beyond "teens get transported to the future as adults" stories that I've been accused of some of my plots being a bit too far from the high-concept. A couple of friends have gone so far as to accuse me of not being interested in stories if I can't put in my own thoughts on the nature of man, mortality, morality, or society in them.

However, I still believe that plot is what people come for, and plot can say a lot. I think this is because I’m so immersed with genre entertainment – horror, sci-fi, comedy – that when it comes to my own work, even outside of “genre” work, I like that consistency that having a “point” to the story can provide.

My problem is a real one: I'm writing a story for which I have no ending. As a writer whose prior work all revolved around the story's outline and structure being completely thought out beforehand, this scares me and excites me all at once. I'm trying to understand what I'm writing about, but, as I just mentioned, I'm prone to getting high-minded about concepts. Unfortunately, I'm not always the best one to understand them.

That's why I write, though. I'm trying to understand these ideas. I'm struggling with them. I wonder if my ending will suffer if I'm not entirely certain of what's going to happen while I'm writing everything else. So much of writing is like weaving just the right sort of quilt so that, by the end, there's a singular thread through it all. It’s interesting to me to see how many recent television shows have dealt with this same issue, to varying degrees of success: Battlestar Galactica, The Shield, and soon, Lost. Can you write an ending to a show like this that ties everything together without an ending planned at stage one? Alternatively, do you have to know at all where you’re going to end up at to avoid leaving the reader or viewer feeling “cheated”?

I’m not sure if I can pull it off. Honestly, I’m proud of the work I’ve put in to this script thus far, but with all that I’m put down in Acts 1 and 2, how do I follow up with Act 3 without leaving the viewer/reader with something of a let down? I like the way the Coen brothers left No Country for Old Men – they denied you the pleasure of seeing the final shoot out. Or the ending of There Will Be Blood, which has Day-Lewis’s character face Dano’s in the ultimate display of their insanity. I like to see that audiences were pretty divided in their appraisals of both those endings: two amazing movies that ended very decisively not where anyone wanted them to end.

And here’s the thing: Audiences expect you to end your movie in very specific ways. I’m not even talking about the “happy ending” fallacy. The idea that “all Hollywood wants is happy endings” hasn’t really been true since the sixties; works with strong vision have rarely struggled much with getting dark endings out there. Usually, the "happy ending" is happily supplied by the writer’s themselves, and that’s because the movie’s evolution demands a different sort of ending.

No, I’m not afraid to kill my main character(s). For this sort of work, though, I think that’d be predictable, yawn-inducing stuff. It needs to be different, and end in a way that would be as individualistic as the rest of the film that precedes it.

But you try coming up with something that’s never been thought of before. It’s not kid’s play, that’s for sure. Outlines are the typical remedy, but I've outlined to death. Now its a matter of having something naturally evolve from those final pages, and trust my characters and my intuition to where things are supposed to be -- and hope that whatever sort of "writer's gut" I might have points me in the right direction.

So here I am, just pressing forward with what I know, struggling without an ending. Typical, huh?

Read more »

Goals.

Goals.

Goals For Life:
1. Eat more.
2. Read more.
3. Write more.
4. Work out a bit.

Seems so simple. Why can't I get this down??


img via zazzle. I wants me this, hint hint.

Read more »

"I don't want to just change someone's life. I want to revolutionize it."

"I don't want to just change someone's life. I want to revolutionize it."

So you may have noticed that I've changed the place up a bit. Probably not, considering the only visitors I ever get here are people looking for "blodey porn." But that's OK. At least, it's OK so long as you're not searching for blodey porn. The rest of you: you're not finding it here. Perverts.

So it's a new coat of paint to hopefully bring some new life to this place. It has been a long time since the last real series of posts. Hell, I've never been terribly good at this blog; I've had much better consistency with one or two others. But I've kept this one around probably longer than all the others, save for an old Geocities site that only got the occasional update.

I can't say what it is I'm bringing back, honestly. Or maybe that is it precisely: honesty. I like to write and we all experience troubles in life, so maybe the two things will cross over from time to time here. More likely I'll continue to use the place for snarky comments.

I've never really commented on the title of BGW; when it existed as primarily my commentary of films -- horror in particular -- it sort of seemed self-explanatory. But it was always also a bit of a rip on the whole bloody-heart-on-the-sleeve of so many blog posts out there, my own included. So hopefully I'll keep that in mind before I post anything too excruciatingly personal next time. I'm in the midst of what I'm considering a period of personal improvement -- at least, during the times I'm not watching Lost, damn you, Alfonso. So perhaps some of that will show up here as well. I can't be sure.

But if you're out there and it's been a while, I'm glad to see you again. If this is your first time, settle in and get comfy, and I promise I'll try to keep my comments about your mom to myself.

Read more »

rain on the horizon, sun on my face

rain on the horizon, sun on my face

"Like rainclouds you hold me up. Like water. Like earth. Like blood. Like the lilies of the field. Like sunlight. Like pavement. Like the birds above us."


(picture via flickr / A guy with A camera)

Read more »