Writing and Stuff by Anthony Chatfield

In the beginning there was NaNoWriMo, and then there were a bunch of half finished novels that I didn’t get around to writing. Now, there is a semi-similar production known as Script Frenzy, which starts on Friday and carries through the month of June. Like any good aspiring writer, I’m going to step to the plate and give it a shot. There are a few things to mention though:

First off: I have never written a script, either for the stage or the screen. I have no idea how and every time I’ve come up with an idea or two, I’ve spent more time thinking of how something would look than actually expounding on that idea.

Second off: My current idea basis is a bit fuzzy. I have a good starting point, using a small sample I wrote for a class last year, but I don’t know if it will look good in the long run. And once again, that’s the important thing – looking good.

Finally: I hate doing these things on my own. For NaNo I had people doing it with me. This time around, there are very few people willing to write a script (shoot, I’m barely willing to give it a shot). So, stepping up is a lonely job.

I’ll probably drop a few updates over the next five weeks, but I don’t know that I’d expect anything more fancy than an outline and a few half-way interesting lines of dialog. It’s a project, and it’s an experiment, and it’s a way to fill a few posts every week.

For those looking to get into the action, here’s a sample plotline from the Script Frenzy Plot Machine:

A hairstylist with a missing finger unknowingly arrives at a nudist colony in a remote jungle in Brazil…

Go.

Freelance Lifestyle

Television these days is getting slightly more complicated than it used to, which to me is generally a good thing. By giving shows a slew of interesting characters and exciting new storylines with halfway decent writers, the television execs have finally started to drift from the reality television and brainless sitcom plague of the 90s and early 21^st century. It will never be “good” by any means, but at least it occasionally tries.

Which is why a show like Law and Order is so intriguing – with its familiar plotlines, static characters, and crimes ripped from the headlines. Law and Order is a demonstration of what so many shows do wrong these days, on both sides of the spectrum. Reality television is over saturating and ridiculous and character dramas become melodramatic and uninteresting after a couple of seasons. Law and Order lasted because it’s all about the crime.

I love Law and Order. Everyone loves Law and Order. They have to. Otherwise, why would it be on every channel for at least 6 of the 24 program hours each day? You cannot flip through your channel guide without running into Law and Order at least once. Last week, or maybe last month (more likely, it was both), TNT aired a 24 hour Law and Order marathon. I watched a couple of episodes, went to bed, woke up and my roommate was still watching it.

I retreated to my room for a few hours to work and came back out….and it was still on. And yet I sat and watched it each time. And by the grace of more than two dozen seasons and 500 episodes between all three shows, you’re going to stand a decent chance of catching a new one fairly often. New episodes aside though, Law and Order is the same show with different crimes. Why is it so compelling?

First off, they always take stuff from the news. Almost every episode is based on something that happened in the world and thus people are automatically invested. They throw in a couple of extra murders, and now we’re gossip mongers….”ooh, what if?”

Then they use the exact same formula for the show every time. You might think this would kill the suspense. But no, it’s a trick. It’s really their way of getting you to think that the show is predictable, that you can tag along with the detectives and help them out. For you to yell at the defense attorney, “Bail?! Your client doesn’t deserve no stinking bail!” in one of the least important but always present scenes in the show.

It’s Law and Order being very orderly and yet opening itself up to break rules and surprise everyone when it does. Most of all, it makes every episode about the crime. It’s not about the detectives, or the lawyers, the writers, or the director of the show. You could train a monkey to direct an episode of Law and Order. No, it’s about the crime and the solving of that crime.

If you go back to the pulp, crime mysteries of the 20s and on, that’s all you get. The literary tradition that grew from those simple slim volumes is intriguing to say the least, but the same formula worked for decades and people would read all 33 books written by a pulp writer because they knew that this particular pulp writer did his job very well. Law and Order’s writers are not very different from those early 20^th century scions of a new sort of popular fiction. They take stories that make people feel involved, throw in a couple of twists and turns and a familiar detective and let the crime play out.

When the show goes so far as to stray from the formula, people are shocked. It doesn’t happen very often, which gives the network something monumental to work with. If they announce ever five minutes in promos that the show will be a bit different for an episode, more people will watch right? Well, not so much anymore apparently. The plague of syndication has seeped its way into the collective Law and Order faithful and when a new episode airs, no one really cares anymore. They’re on all the time and there is little to no difference beWhcitween episodes, save the guest stars and crime, so why go out of our ways to watch a Friday night crime drama that will be on USA next week?

Law and Order is a staple of any good couch potato, TV dwelling 20-something. Even if it only lasts another year or so, I imagine I’ll spend the next ten years seeing episodes I hadn’t seen before on reruns. Which returns me to my original point. Television doesn’t need to be different or exciting to be engaging. It just needs to be entertaining. If I find a formula that works and makes me feel better about my hours on the couch, why change it? And NBC’s stuck with that credo for almost two decades now. Here’s to a few more years.

 

Freelancing

I saw this post over at Scarecrow yesterday, talking about how little money they make off of their obscure films that so obsessively collect. This is one of the reasons I spend so much of my time there and love the place so much. Granted, the employees can be a bit off at times, but they have almost 100,000 movies and hundreds of obscure random stuff if I’m ever in the mood to be particularly goofy on a movie night.  Check out below for a short review of Scarecrow I wrote for a local hotel blog a few weeks back.

Even if you’re just stopping by the city for a couple of days, one of the most interesting, diverse places you can visit is Scarecrow Video in the University District, on Roosevelt off of 52nd. The “world’s largest video store” is a testament to all things film lovers.

Upon first entering you’ll find the outside windows littered with posters and advertisements for the upcoming films and festivals in the area (of which there are many). The inside wall is lined with films for sale and if you turn around an entire alcove is devoted to old movies being sold. The counter is as long as the store and in glass cases you’ll find old rare films, Criterion DVDs and behind them all shelves full of imports and rarities.

Now it’s time to look at the collection. The bottom floor consists of three things. You’ve got a wall that wraps around the entire bottom floor filled with world cinema offerings separated alphabetically by country. From Algeria to Korea, Britain to South Africa, if a country’s made a film, it’s probably on that wall. On the other side of that wall is a zig zag labyrinth of director’s alphabetically separated and given their own space if they’ve become eponymous enough to deserve it. The greats of world cinema, shock cinema, and just plain Hollywood gold line these shelves with every offering a given director has ever made (if it’s possible to own it).

The corners are filled with new releases, thousands of new releases which include the actual new releases out hollywood as well as any new film they’ve just imported from another country, television shows fresh to DVD or an old film just now being released. The possibilities are endless and I’ve spent more than a couple hours just looking through the new releases, which are shuffled out and reset weekly as every week sees a huge chunk of new films coming in.

Upstairs is your genre rooms. Adventure, Action, Comedy – the usuals are there. But you’ll also find literary adaptations for all you Shakespeare buffs, an entire alcove of music on film, with rock operas, actual operas and video collections. There’s an animation room, mostly filled with anime, as well as some world wide offerings from other master animators. There’s a science fiction and horror section chock full of the old films you never thought you’d find on dvd, and in the far corner even a fairly well stocked adults only section.

Scarecrow boasts almost 100,000 titles in their catalog, and I wonder if it’s much bigger than that, though there’s absolutely no room left in that building to house any more movies. It’s literally bursting at the seams, and if you’re even a casual movie fan, you owe it to yourself to stop in and see a collection that world famous directors have stood in awe of.

Cool Stuff

I’ve been in the midst of the Summer Movie scene for the past three weeks or so now. Since the Spiderman 3 reality finally hit and we bought our tickets on Fandango and set aside a three hour chunk of a certain Friday night, it was underway. Let’s just say I’m not impressed thus far. Unlike last year’s disappointment with the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel, everyone agrees with me this run through as well, so there’s no argument with the clan over what exactly is wrong with a film.

No, this year’s films are just plain bad thus far. Ironically, the only two good films I’ve seen this spring so far are from the UK (well, it’s not so ironic if you consider the quality of Hollywood fare these days). I’m not going to babble on at length on why Spiderman failed so miserably though or why Shrek 3 turned out to be everything that the first two Shrek films set out to satirize.

I’m actually stuck up on one of the good films I saw. In between Spiderman and Shrek there was yet another sequel that very few people watched hailing from the UK (one of those good films I mentioned). The second film in the once single shot series of 28 Days Later films was actually a fairly well made horror film, if a bit unbalanced.

I don’t go to watch a lot of horror films. The joke is old by now. Once you’ve seen one horror film skewering popular conventions of realistic violence, you’ve seen them all and there’s no purpose to wasting yet another $9 on more of them. However, 28 Days Later was the best modern horror film I’ve seen and so the sequel and its premise looked enticing to me.

It didn’t disappoint either. Though the second half of the film devolved into a bit of Hollywood thriller-esque, run and gun adrenaline junkie-ism, the film as a whole was quite entertaining and the intensity was welcome. What makes the 28 Days films good is that they don’t presuppose some ridiculous premise that is impossible to suspend disbelief over. Instead of zombies attacking, a genre I actually rather enjoy because of the thousands of different scenarios you can explore with it, undead creatures hell bent on eating your brain, the films assume there is a man made disease that reverts human cognition to animalistic rage turning human beings into blood thirsty cannibals.

The result is truly horrifying in the way only a film that you think “might” be feasible can be. Few horror movies are able to tap human fear in such a manner and I enjoy them for that very ability. However, the one thing horror films all do that I’ve long since grown tired of and honestly don’t believe is necessary anymore is the thirty second sequel pandering ending they’ll often ruin a film with.

You’ve seen it a hundred times and it’s the only reason they could make 10 Friday the 13^th films. Every time you think Jason is finally, frozen, dismembered, sent to hell, and dead – oh dear god let him be gone – dead, he raises a hand or the rubble rolls around. It’s as simple as that. There’s no need for explanation or context, just a quick shot of a hint of his virility and the film series continues.

What this does of course is kill any credibility the film has. Granted, most people don’t put much stock in the film itself. It’s mindless entertainment with a gratuitous plot and premise that doesn’t need to make sense for people to enjoy. But, when I see a film like 28 Weeks Later that actually tries and does a decent job of transcending typical slasher film antics, I expect the ending to be inclusive, or at least open ended to a degree of purpose.

The first film did just that. After a thoroughly terrifying premise in which the filmmaker actually managed to craft a ghost town out of London and send his protagonists across a wasteland of Rage-infected humanity to a military base and eventually a possible rescue by the river, the film merely ends. There are no infected running rampant through the trees or a helicopter smoking as it flies away. The film just ended. The glimmer of hope that a film like this can offer at the end is all that is left and it worked magnificently.

28 Weeks Later had that ending and then ruined it in the span of 30 seconds of unneeded footage. It took only one scene to ruin everything the film did and I’m absolutely disgusted that they gave in so easily. I don’t care if they make a new film in two years (which they will now) or that the entire world is likely infected. It’s the writers’ prerogative. However, the purpose of the film was a sort of inevitability corner-stoned by hope and human love. People are surely willing to believe that there is some sort of hope at the end of the tunnel. And in this film there quite literally was not hope beyond the tunnel.

No self-respecting novelist would end their book with the deaths of millions merely so they could have another book in which they talked about those deaths. I don’t want to attack this film too thoroughly. It had one of the best introductions and emotional attachments of any film I’ve seen this year (by far beyond the sequels Hollywood has thrown at me thus far) and it’s the only film other than Hot Fuzz and Pan’s Labyrinth that I’ve seen this year and been happy with. That’s a whole lot of American films failing me.

I just want to make sure to voice my opinion on the matter of commercializing the ending of a well made film for the sake of making more money later. It’s irresponsible and disrespectful to the movie goers. If I watch a thoroughly engrossing film, I want to be rocked back to reality by the light of the sun when I exit the theater, not the petty sequel peddling of a film executive before the credits even roll.

This applies to every film that’s been released this year, though it is more or less expected from the Hollywood slop. Despite the fact that Spiderman and Shrek gave me much more to be disappointed by, 28 Weeks Later was actually a good film until those final seconds. It’s a man made disease all its own, the spread of commercial minded art. Let us find a cure together.

Uncategorized

I’ve been looking around here the last few days and it seems as though I’m just randomly posting things for the sake of posting things of late. I’m not intent on reorganizing the entire website or anything. That would be a bit unorthodox and probably a bit too much work when all is said and done, but I am thinking of trying to find a line at which I stop just regurgitating other posts from other sites and actually write fresh content. That’s all I suppose. Check back later for more similarly deep and profound posts from myself.

Observations and Thoughts

This day and age, the world of Epic Fantasy has lost a bit of the punch that it once had. Falling victim to one of two categories – either the Tolkien imitators or the Rowling imitators – it doesn’t do anything new or interesting anymore. It’s all the same tired clichés, medieval double speak, and shallow stories of intrigue and secrecy. It’s almost as bad as the cloud of DaVinci Code clones that hit the stores a few years back and are just now (finally) starting to subside. But, with Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind, there is finally a somewhat new and different approach to the tired old formula.

Essentially, Rothfuss has a very organized approach to his epic. Instead of a drawn out, open ended debut that eventually leads to a dozen less and less interesting volumes in an epic storyline that should have been told in three books, he started out with a closed, simple story idea. His character, Kvothe is the center of everything. A very simple tale of revenge starts everything and it builds out from there. There is no universal calling to greatness or special powers bestowed from a long dead warrior in rebirth. The magic is simple and scientific and the other characters see him as human, no matter how impressive he might be.

The novel starts in a small village with Kvothe as the anonymous owner of a small inn with the assistance of his Fae-born assistant, Bast. When a villager arrives to the inn with a wound, a dead horse, and a small spider-like demon, the story begins and Kvothe takes matters into his own hands. While he is dealing with the spider-demons, Chronicler arrives, looking for the man who was once known as Kingkiller and asks for his story.

Kvothe’s story itself is where the actual narrative arrives. Despite more than 80 pages having passed, the actual narrative of the story is in the recollections of Kvothe. Starting with his youth and following him as he learns from a traveling Arcanist in his family’s troupe and his years in the streets of Tarbean and later his first year in the University, the novel is about the younger days of our future hero and the bits and pieces that make him who he is.

Without ever giving over to the details the reader surely wants (those big battles and epic nicknames he’s acquired) the novel is a pure character analysis, giving 650 pages of exposition and history told in a familiar, first person narrative. It rarely feels like a standard fantasy novel and the sheer detail and attention given to Kvothe’s childhood and experiences make it all the more intriguing.

Instead of those quick two chapter overviews of amazing feats and skills learned in youth, Rothfuss gives us a full novel of youthful experience and motivation, introducing dozens of characters, numerous settings and scenario specific motivation and a perfect character with just the right amount of innate ability to make sense, without a third person narrative making him the next messiah. As a reader of all genres, a good solid character driven novel makes me that much happier to read fantasy.

There are no outlandish scenarios or cookie cutter characters who I’ll forget in a few weeks. This is a character to truly love and stick with throughout the years. And when, in two years or so, when the new novel is released, I will be more than happy to continue the adventures of Kvothe. A splendidly unique debut fantasy novel that catapults him immediately to the pinnacle of today’s young fantasy writers and reminds everyone why some of yesterday’s big writers are just not that great anymore.

Media Reviews

I’m a bit of computer nerd; I’ll admit it. It’s been a few years since I last got obsessed with or had the temarity to throw away my energy on so many hours of gaming, but Starcraft is one of those games that took up so much of my time that I can only think fondly on it in retrospect. Along with Diablo and Warcraft, Starcraft is one of the Blizzard big three. Yesterday, they announced the long….looooong awaited sequel in Starcraft 2. Their quasi-sequel shooter was finally cancelled last year, but the new release looks pretty damn good. I’m sure it’s still at least a year or two away from release, knowing the quality of Blizzard release schedules, but I’m still looking forward to it. PC and Mac only, it appears.

Cool Stuff

Fresh back from yet another disappointing summer movie sequel, I have to say that I’m not quite sure what it is Hollywood thinks it’s doing these days. Not only did Spiderman 3 take a perfectly good formula and F it up by trying to do more, so did Shrek 3. In fact, Shrek 3 just plain did less. As a franchise that always relied on its laurels of tongue-in cheek, adult oriented universal fairy tale satire, there isn’t a whole lot of any of those adjectives left. Sure it’s got the fairy tale part down and it tries to hit up the adult oriented part, but very rarely does it succeed in any of the rest. Basically, what you’re left with is a film that looks like a three part Nickelodeon special. When we left the theater, the first thing we said was “I’m trying to remember what the funniest part of the movie was….I can’t” and that just about says it all, don’t you think? I can’t begin to start on how weak this film was, rife with stereotyped character models, tired cliches in the supporting cast, and a Eddie Murphy voiced side kick who has just about lost all of the funny you can pack into a talking donkey.

Media Reviews

By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard of the Nintendo Wii and the potency of its get up and go, moving about gaming style. It’s a different kind of game console. Over at Wii Weight Loss Plan, one man’s quest to lose weight with nothing more than less calories and the Nintendo Wii, with special focus on Wii Sports. Strapping on some wrist weights and playing Wii Tennis against yourself sounds like quite possibly the funniest, most entertaining way to lose weight since Atkins said to eat the burger without a bun. I love the idea that when I get up from here and play a little Wii Bowling, I’m burning calories…ah sweet Nintendo.

Cool Stuff

So I cleaned up the house today and did some digging through my books and closet and whatnot and realized that I had a few dozen different books sitting around that I haven’t read yet but was really excited about in the first place:

There are too many books on the shelf right now, including all of the major releases I’ve been waiting on since late last year, which I purchased and now need to read. I did finish the new Paul Auster book, but I have the new Murakami, Palahniuk, and Chabon sitting around, among a dozen other newbies that I’m flipping through every now and then.

Anyways, I recently finished Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind, a new fantasy entry that reads more like an epic character study in a far off land than a fantasy novel. It was rather good and probably the best fantasy/science fiction novel I’ve read in the last five years…in fact it is. I’ll just say that it is, and I can’t wait for the next two books to be released for the sake of finishing Kvothe’s story. I don’t read a lot of this genre anymore; it’s usually rather simple, repetitive stuff, but I’m glad I picked up Rothfuss’s first.

I’ll give it a shot, stopping by with the reviews of the best of the bunch in time. Michael Chabon was actually in town tonight at Elliot Bay Books, but I was unable to get down there (mainly because I wasn’t watching the clock and there was a Mariner game on) and everything I’ve ready about his newest is amazing, so I’m going to sink my teeth into it next.

Media Reviews, Writers and Authors