This! This is what I want my writing to do!

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Andrew

Every time I watch this video, it makes me cry.

The question I ask myself, I suppose, is why.  What is it about the broken-up timeline that makes the video so effective?  Why would it not be as effective if told in a straightforward fashion?

I think the answer has to do with our ideas of narrative.  The truth is that even in a situation like theDead Island trailer, even when the timeline is broken, we (i.e. viewers & readers & well, just human beings) can’t help seeing a narrative.  We can’t help seeing each segment in the order its given to us and making that into a coherent story.

Look at it this way, if the trickery with time was taken out, strictly, for the whole mini-movie what you would see are a few shots of the family as they arrive (what happens at the very end of the video), then the daughter running from zombies, the parents trying to save her, the daughter turning, attacking the father, and everyone overrun with the final shot being the zombified daughter falling to the ground.  What would that leave us with?  The futility of life?  A short story replaying events we’ve seen nigh a thousand times in zombie narratives?  What’s theactual story?

But the way that the movie plays out now, there’s a clear story, a clear focus.  Sure, zombie stories pretty much always end the same way (excepting outliers like Shaun of the Dead): everyone dies.  This is no surprise.  But what the trailer highlights is the humanity we watch zombie movies for — the struggle against the inevitable, and the love (and humanity) that drives that struggle forward.  What’s the last shot?  Where are both timelines coming together?  The father and the daughter reaching out for one another, in hope and love.

Most of my stories (and novels) don’t have what you (or I, for that matter) would call happy endings.  That’s because I don’t care about the ending.  The ending doesn’t matter.  What matters is what happens along the way, both the struggle to overcome and the struggle to hold onto our humanity while doing so.

But horror is only interesting to me for the beauty it reveals.  And beauty is only as interesting as the world it stands out against.

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Kickstarting the Kickstarter (which just brings to mind Firestarter)

Posted on June 18, 2012 by Andrew

which is a song and a video I am not going to link to here.

Instead, I will link to this: The Postcard Story.  It’s a combination (pizza hut/taco bell) photography and fiction project that my friend Ashley MacLean and I are trying to fund via Kickstarter.  See, I like to write flash fiction and Ashley likes to take photographs and we both enjoy getting our work before an audience and so we thought:Postcards!

That’s the picture for the first postcard, which a section of the story that begins: “Each performance lasted ten minutes and ended with an explosion.”

I supposed I was thinking of “Harrison Bergeron” when I came up with that line… though, really, I have no idea what I was thinking as that was one of those lines that came to me while I was trying to go to sleep, the words repeating themselves in my head until I either fought myself into amnesiac sleep or, admitting defeat, wrote them down.

So I wrote them down, and the words that followed, and now the story (led on by the domineering opening sentence) has decided it wants out.  IT WANTS OUT!  And the only way out for words is publishing, and the words thought that instead of normal publishing, they wanted to be ingested directly into the eyes of their next victims.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Last night I sent our Kickstarter project into the great wilds of the crowd-sourcing internet, afraid that it would get lost in the forest (for the trees) or eaten by the grues that lie in wait in the shadows.  We trained it as well as we could, giving it language and logic.  We provided the weapons of rewards and the shield of video (deftly provided by Megan Goode).  We gave it a map, and a month to get where it needed to go.

Amazingly, it’s almost already found its way there.  In just a day, the project has been three-fourths funded (a phrasing I used simply because it was alliterative, obviously).  Soon, our little project will be a fledgling now longer.  It’ll have its own friends.  It won’t answer our calls.  It won’t come home to visit.

But that’s okay.  No, really, we love our little The Postcard Story, but we understand that everyone has to grow up sometime, and that babies only stay babies forever in extremely creepy (if you think about it) cartoons.

And we’re using this as a springboard toward greater things! (As are all things in life, right?) (Don’t answer that.) (Really.) This was thought of as a project that Ashley and I wanted to do but also as a test case.  If this project grows wings and flies, avoids the sun, and makes it safe away from the maze, then what other projects might be flung into the air?

And, on that note, I lied.  Here’s the video your mother warned you about:

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The Madness of Tim Curry (and other theatricals)

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Andrew

The madness of Tim Curry (see title) is a special kind of insanity.  It’s the true actor’s gift — the ability to be fully invested in whatever scene and character you are performing at the time.  For example, watch this:

Um… yes.  Thank you, Tim Curry.

I watch this video (which, by the way, was the inspiration for Harry Potter) and I think of writing theater and writing scripts (as I do) that verge on (or wholly embrace) the absurd.  In these scripts, though the story and the world of the play may be absurd, the characters themselves are not meant to be.  The actors must take the roles and perform them with utter sincerity for the play (and the humor of the play) to work.

I make it sound like this way of writing plays was the plan from the beginning.  If it were, it might make the writing of them (and producing of them) much easier.  What happened is that I fell in love with writers like Durang and Ionesco and Stoppard and their sensibilities bled into my own, absurdity through osmosis, absurdity that — even though inane and clearly unreal — will be effective and affecting because, even in this absurd world, the emotions are real.

True, that might be hard to claim about the clip above.  What are the emotions of a wizard/warlock overseeing the Halloween flight of a school of witches?  Apparently, madness, which is not so much an emotion as an oh-god-keep-that-crazy-man-away-from-me.

In my writing (the process itself, not the finished product), language begets language.  In plays, dialogue begets dialogue, and the characters are both led by and lead the dialogue (and therefore the play) forward.  But the only way this can work is through actors who are convinced that, whenever they speak, what they’re saying is true.

Even if it’s a lie.

Which it often is.

Or is it?

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Why I love Jim Henson

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Andrew

It’s not because he has a beard.

It’s not because he’s goofy.

It’s because, despite the mythology surrounding Sesame Street that paints him as an uber-nice guy (which he might well be), he’s complicated and crass and commercial.  I submit to you the following:

Yes, that was the original pitch for The Muppet Show and it shows all the wit and craziness, all the astute observation of society and plainspoken challenge of that society, all the refusal to sell out while gleefully and joyously selling out, all of that which makes Henson and his creations great.  They aren’t simply one thing or the other — children’s entertainment or adult satire — and Henson doesn’t fit into either the idealistic artist or the canny capitalist category, either.

That video is an example of what I want to be when I grow up: i.e., I want to be paid for what I’m creating, and paid well enough for it that I can do that only, as my full-time job.  There’s something so charming about the video, how it nakedly lays out the reasons for why the network should take on the show, and those reasons are aimed squarely at the ego and the pocketbook, but the way that the pitch does it, that’s the key.

Hilarity, hilarity, hilarity.  With a touch of bitterness.

Posted in Television and Movies, Writing | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Look What My Girlfriend Did!

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Andrew

Which is not to say, by way of exclamation point, that such things as will be shown below are rare.  The truth is that Megan is pretty amazing and creative and stylin’.

Also, I am not biased at all.

As my loyal readers know, I was in Wyoming recently for a month, exiled there to work on poems and stories and a novel.  Why was I so punished?  It is better not to ask, lest you be subject to the same dictatorial powers yourself.  Suffice it to say that I wrote enough that my Literary Masters saw fit to free me at the end of the month and I am now safely ensconced again in Houston, free to experiment with my own devices.

But while I was there in Wyoming (O Beautiful Countryside!) I sometimes fell prey to doubt and self-dissension (O Wind-Torn Landscape!).  In order to talk to Megan (see subject of this post), or anyone at all besides my fellow prisoners or our illustrious captors, I was forced to trudge up a hill to the only phone box in the area, quarters weighing down my pockets (since it was twenty-five cents a minute to call persons you wished to speak to; free otherwise), which made for great exercise, but little else.

And don’t get me wrong, I actually treasured this loneliness.  It was amazing to be in the midst of so much land and space and be able to see so far in any direction and yet see no other living soul.  Or dead one, for that matter.  Wyoming is known for its ghosts.

But some days, depression sat on me like an elephant.  I looked at my writing, and  saw no good in it.  I looked at my books, and saw no life in them.  One of these times I sent Megan an e-mail (quicker — or at least less tiring — than a slog up the hill) asking for her to send me some good vibes, because I needed them, and I believe in airborne transference (and diseases).  Also, knowing she had just seen Vincent Price (O Dramatic O’er-Master) in Dr. Phibes I said that I needed no vibes from that man-monster.

This is what she sent in return.

Oh, but I do.  I do! (i.e. It is never wise to refuse Dr. Phibes.)

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Live-Blogging Le Grande Experiment!

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Andrew

I don’t speak French, so I don’t know what the equivalent of experiment is (Exupéry?) and you’ll simply have to imagine me saying the above title in a bad French accent, as though you are watching a B-movie which, at any time, could spin out of control, which it can, and perhaps should.

What is the experiment, you ask?  Well, I’m glad you did.  No, really, because otherwise I’d be sitting here for the next twenty-four hours waiting for that very question.

The experiment is this: Stay up for 24 hours in my studio at Jentel and… well, that’s about it.  Not much more to it, other than staying up and in the studio and seeing what happens.  In fact, this experiment isn’t even very scientific: there’s no control, there are no predictions, hell, there isn’t even a placebo, not a single goddam one!

I’ve always been infatuated with the idea of structured production in a limited amount of time (such as those plays written, directed, and performed all within a day) and sometime in the distant past (Hey there, seventeen-year-old me!) I wrote a play in a weekend and some playwriting programs (Brown?  I’m looking at you.) have every student write a play over the summer including the same set number of items/characters/dialogue (okay, not time-constrained, really, but still an inspiration) and here I am, in the middle of nowhere (is the edge of nowhere farther away from anywhere?) with no restrictions on my time and, darn it (I thought)

I WILL DO THIS.

So, there.  It’s begun, and it’s 8:44 so only 1426 minutes to go!

Check back in as the day goes on, as I’ll update progress, or lack there of.  The only major work I have to accomplish is a commission from Megan titled “The Trouble-Men”.  If you have any other ideas for what I should be doing, let me know comment-wise.

Bahn vonage!

10:56 am

Finished one postcard (Hi, Laura E.!) and about seventy or so pages in the James Merrill omnibus that someone gave me during my MFA and that I have yet to finish, but might (will?) today.  So far, the day has grown normally, but that’s too be expected (I suspect), the goal to keep the normality up for twenty-four hours rather than the normal four or five.

I’ve been hearing planes a lot in Wyoming (they only cross overhead four times a day), but yesterday when Yaminay went to release her beast (a Frankenstein tumbleweed spraypainted orange) into the wild, a jeep passed by that sounded exactly like a puddle-jumping prop plane.

12:30 pm

Finished a commission that Megan is responsible for.  She sent me a photocopy of a picture she found in the Museum of Fine Art’s library and told me to do something with it.  Apparently, that something is a horror story called “The Trouble-Men.”

I’m almost done with my second cup of coffee, almost about to eat an apple, almost ready to finish a postcard (Hi, Laura C.!), almost eager to jump out to the mailbox, almost desperate to go to the bathroom, and almost ready to start something new.

By the way, one of the people responsible for this mess I’ve gotten myself into (and you are witness to) is Sean Wills, a writer who has done several of these marathon events (complete with live-blogging) in the past.

4:43 pm

A talk with the girlfriend (Hi, Megan!) and a nap, along with much reading of James Merrill whose collected poems I am almost finished with.

Box Elder Bugs are having a threesome on my window.

Found a Merrill-translated fragment from Apollinaire that sends curious thoughts through my brain:

And I hear my steps return
Along the paths that no one
Has traveled I hear my steps
All day they go by there
Slow or swift they come or go

6:14 pm

I finished a poem entitled (which is so much better than simply “titled”) “Ode to the Male Honeybee.”  So you can play along at home, here is the Hugh Raffles (via Insectopedia) quote the poem sprung from:

…and the few hundred fat male drones with big eyes whose sole purpose – so far as we know – is to have sex with the queen on her single mating flight and who, ultimately, as winter approaches and food resources dwindle, will be dragged from the hive by the workers, expelled to starve or, if resistant, stung to their death.

Also, here is a picture of some music I am not listening to.

I especially like Mr. Creepy from 98 Degrees checking her out on the sly.

9:35 pm

Okay, here’s where it gets hard.

Is anyone out there?

No, that’s not the hard part.  The hard part is looking out this window in front of me and seeing nothing.  No wide-open landscape.  No sun glorifying the ground.  No thing.  Nada.  In fact, what I can see is myself, and darkness.  And you can’t really see darkness, so I guess it’s just me.  And sometimes a moth.

I finished Merrill’s Collected Poems and continued liking poems he made until the very end.  His punnish and honest “Rhapsody on Czech Themes” really took my fancy and locked it away in a hope chest I won’t be seeing for a long time.  He took it with him.  So much of Merrill’s poetry seems wrapped up in a sort of senseless description, the worst poems (to my taste) abstractions writ large.  But his best are delvings into his mind as he confronts and interprets the world around him.  And they are glorious.

11:35 pm

Hitting a wall of some sort.  Here in Whyoming, this is normally when my brain decides to shut down.  Took a break for crosswords, but I don’t think that was the right thing to do, six letters down two words.  Working on a play that was imagined two years ago but nothing since.  The imagining?  The title:

“Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo”

That does not look like a real word.

2:57 am

Quits, I am calling it.  I spent the last hour or so asleep in the studio-provided recliner (there for probably just that reason) but though I am awake at the moment, my usefulness has declined.  I am aware enough to write this, but little else.

Brave little toaster, toast your bread.

Oh go, just go to bed.

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Everyone Has a Summer They Want to Remember

Posted on March 25, 2012 by Andrew

Animal-less tail

Though, for this animal, it is probably not this summer, unless it wants simply to remember (i.e. be alive) (which it probably is not).

Wyoming is so empty, but it is not the emptiness of the desert or of the ocean. It’s not the emptiness of West Texas that stretches on for miles, barren and baking land.

Here there is the appearance of life. Grass and brush cover the hills and copses of trees stand their (mostly leafless) guard. There’s water running in a creek nearby, and frogs that are calling out their name, rank, and serial numbers after months of hibernation. Right around the Jentel homestead there’s a pimpernel of robins (they don’t yet have a group name, and so I claim the right of naming for myself. Hereversoafter a group of robins will be called a pimpernel. At least by me.) and some sandhill cranes are roosting somewhere in the area. They, too, you can hear murmuring in the distance.

But for the most part, you can walk for half-an-hour or more and see no other animals. On the dirt county road you won’t be passed by a truck (invariably a truck) and you won’t see deer (mule or white-tailed) or antelope or geese or magpies or marmots. You’ll find yourself talking to the just-now-rebudding trees or dead whatever-the-hell-this-is.

My only friend

Banner, Wyoming (and Wyoming, perhaps, in general) is a place where you can see for miles around you. The air is so clear that I can pick out (large, admittedly) details on the top of a mountain thirty miles away. But when I’m on a walk, I can see the entire landscape around me, and it seems like I’m the only living thing in it.

Besides the vegetation.

Sorry for being a kingdomist.

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