Month: February 2007

Lady in the Hollywoodland

Writer guy

Rented 2 DVD’s this weekend, films that I skipped purposely in the theater, because they were better suited for an in home viewing. First up: Lady in the Water.

Admittedly, I am a M. Night Shyamalan admirer, one who wanted to like this movie, because his previous 4 films ranged between quite good and excellent, and I enjoyed each on a multiplex screen. Enough peers warned me off this flick, so I passed, and waited for the DVD. I watched it carefully, and will make only one observation. The real problem with this movie was the form; it needed to be a book. Interesting characters, a workable situation and a reasonable paced plot, Lady could have been a great read. A classic fairy tale, even. Some imagery plays well mentally, yet translate those same ideas for screen, and it falls short. Also, because the medium lacks the depth to bounce between a number of characters thoughts, complicated story arcs get lost, or dampened. Both compromises happened here. Chalk it to an extremely ambitious concept executed with the right intentions, but unfortunately in the wrong media.

Hollywoodland suffers from a different–and oh so similar–problem. This concept was the stuff of a made for television movie, twenty years too late. As a twelve-year-old, I might have liked this one as the Sunday Afternoon Million Dollar Movie. Alas, it surfaced in 2006, fifty years after George blew–or someone blew–his brains out across his bedroom wall. Ben Affleck did better than I expected, and Adrien Brody is a talent of note, but otherwise this could have been done for a lot less scratch, and for similar results. The storyline offered countless possible explanations for the former Superman’s death, yet very few reasons to care about the characters, why someone might want to kill him, or why he wanted to die.

Verdict: Lady, rentable; Hollywoodland, flushable.

Prodigal

Writer guy

First day back to writing after roughly two weeks off, which followed two–endless, oh so endless–weeks of ten hour plus days at work. The technical needs of a school are highly cyclical, and swing from the doldrums of summer, where crickets keep me upright, to the first months of a new term, where by the time I fix the seven problems waiting for my arrival on campus, three more emergencies beckon, one possibly tragic.

In the past few weeks, I discovered I don’t mind submitting my work, a task never pursued seriously or with any specific method until now. Very consciously I elected to get the product as right as I could manage, before investing any energy into selling it. Now that the “package” is together, talking it up is less difficult than I expected. And I don’t mind the waiting part, knowing full well I’ll never hear back on some queries, and other responses might take months–or years–more. There’s a reason for a query burst, a break to allow responses to filter back, and then a reload.

Far, far more difficult was not writing at all, a movement that rests on my actions alone. The longer I avoid it, the bigger pain I become. When I start taking nonsense personally, and the beer in the house seems to disappear, that’s a good indicator a “pause” stretched into the danger zone.

A place I prefer not to visit.

Update

Writer guy

Tomorrow I receive suggestions from a woman who used to work for a top shelf literary agent.

Here’s a snippet regarding her impressions:

“…I think you have the right attitude about all of this. The bottom line is that you need your readers to enjoy and participate in your work. So I’m going to go back over my markups, to hopefully make them as clear as possible, before I give them to ( –redacted by Sam– ) to give to you. Please don’t hesitate to write me back with questions after you’ve looked things over…”

Now interestingly, her tastes are serious literary fiction. Of which The Last Track is not. Needless to say, I’m very, very grateful she’s making time to read and comment on a piece–even in part–that burrows wide of her personal preferences.

See, right there, that’s one of them there signs. Like M. Night style.

Must keep listening to the voices.