FIVE YEARS AGO:
John: "I think you're a great match for Mage."
Young Director: "I love it. I'm a huge comic book fan."
John: "That helps."
Young Director: "I just optioned Frank Miller's 300."
John: "Who bought it for you?"
Young Director: "No, I did. Bought the rights with my own money -- basically harassed Miller into giving it to me. Just wouldn't leave him alone. I have a vision, and I'm going to do it. "
John: (chuckling) "Zack, Zack ... 300 is unfilmable."
Commence pointing and mocking now.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Saturday, March 10, 2007
The Host
Is it less than three hours driving time to the only theater playing The Host?
Drive it.
People were screaming. Some people backed up so fast in their seats from the monster charging the screen they nearly came over the top of their chairs. People cried. People cheered. For the final thirty minutes, all critical faculties of my brain shut down and I was, Lord bless it, just an audience member for the first time in a very, very long while. After seeing this, there are very famous directors in Hollywood who claim to be able to direct action who should snap their own necks in shame at even coming within ten feet of a lens.
I will buy it. I may make finger puppets and form little clubs wherein we re-enact crucial moments of the film.
I trust I've made myself clear. This thing is pure movie. Plot development and character that would never escape intact from the Hollywood development process. Go.
Go go go go.
Drive it.
People were screaming. Some people backed up so fast in their seats from the monster charging the screen they nearly came over the top of their chairs. People cried. People cheered. For the final thirty minutes, all critical faculties of my brain shut down and I was, Lord bless it, just an audience member for the first time in a very, very long while. After seeing this, there are very famous directors in Hollywood who claim to be able to direct action who should snap their own necks in shame at even coming within ten feet of a lens.
I will buy it. I may make finger puppets and form little clubs wherein we re-enact crucial moments of the film.
I trust I've made myself clear. This thing is pure movie. Plot development and character that would never escape intact from the Hollywood development process. Go.
Go go go go.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Jargon in Action
For those of you looking for a concrete example of "the idiot ball", please see Locke comma John on this week's Lost.
And yet somehow the Hurley/Jin/Sawyer triumvirate becomes even MORE entertaining, and I thought the bus bit was the topper. (Weren't there documents on that bus WASN'T THERE A MAP? For the luvva...) More of them doing cool stuff, please.
And yet somehow the Hurley/Jin/Sawyer triumvirate becomes even MORE entertaining, and I thought the bus bit was the topper. (Weren't there documents on that bus WASN'T THERE A MAP? For the luvva...) More of them doing cool stuff, please.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Moving moving moving
You see , the thing is, I don't like linkslutting around too much. And I hardly think I can just drop a sentence or two like "Dick Cheney may well prove to be the most ineptly dangerous/dangerously inept man in American political history" without some supporting arguments. Which he is. Was. Whatever.
Also. my editor will also kill me if she sees another 1000 word blog post before she gets BB #14 in. I'm pinned.
So in short, some quick observations:
1.) Don't lie to grand juries or the FBI. That's a crime, whether you like it or not.
2.) "Government" is not a problem. The "government" is the focused will of the people. Specific Administrations within governments are the problem.
3.) The Taliban and Al-qaida are building training camps and fielding battalion-sized forces. New rule -- one land war in Asia at a time.
4.) Please remember -- when you bomb people for their own good, they rarely take the point in the way you hoped. Empathy is our friend. When America was attacked, its population became incredibly nationalistic, and rallied wildly behind a leader who was of mediocre popularity beforehand. Assume other countries are also populated by human beings. (EDIT: Ezra also reminds us that President Ahmadinejad is not Hitler, primarily because unlike Hitler, he doesn't actually run anything. If you're going to argue that Iran s dangerous, then you have to start with the idea that you're talking about the Islamic Supreme Council going batshit nuts and signing their own death warrants, and move on from there. At least that will be a factually accurate discussion.)
5.) What Guliani's popularity proves is that the right wing of this country doesn't really care about so much are religious principles, but a big Daddy figure, the more authoritarian and Daddy-ish the better. Trading Bush in for Guliani is like going from strong-talking but secretly not very competent Daddy to mean smart Daddy who knows how to balance a checkbook.
Maybe we need to stop looking to the President to be our Daddy. Just saying.
6.)When wounded soldiers lay in their own urine at Walter Reed, we're sending units to Iraq without appropriate training or appropriate equipment (AGAIN or STILL, depending on my rage levels) --
-- and even the Joint Chiefs of Staff say the Army is close to breaking -- then I can no longer remind you that "supporting the troops" is not the same as "agreeing with absolutely everything certain bastards in suits say." They are two distinct phrases with two distinct meanings. If you cannot see the difference between the job of soldiers and the job of sending soldiers to do things that have not been properly thought out -- I can no longer even attempt to engage. I am exhausted, sir. I will merely file your name in a tiny notebook, which sits in my desk, waiting until the day the Puke Gun is finally perfected. Then, my friends, then you had best bib the fuck up. Lobster bibs, improvised napkin bibs, whatever, and you scrabble on over to the linoleum because I will not leave until you have Krauthammered all over yourself and your loved ones.
7.) The Ask a Ninja DVD is out today. That is a good thing.
8.) And this was what I was working on last year
The producers on it are filthily cool, and I hope they'll let me talk about the process a bit for your illumination. All this, of course, assuming somebody doesn't come along and rewrite the script after me. Which does happen, you know. Or so I've heard.
Also. my editor will also kill me if she sees another 1000 word blog post before she gets BB #14 in. I'm pinned.
So in short, some quick observations:
1.) Don't lie to grand juries or the FBI. That's a crime, whether you like it or not.
2.) "Government" is not a problem. The "government" is the focused will of the people. Specific Administrations within governments are the problem.
3.) The Taliban and Al-qaida are building training camps and fielding battalion-sized forces. New rule -- one land war in Asia at a time.
4.) Please remember -- when you bomb people for their own good, they rarely take the point in the way you hoped. Empathy is our friend. When America was attacked, its population became incredibly nationalistic, and rallied wildly behind a leader who was of mediocre popularity beforehand. Assume other countries are also populated by human beings. (EDIT: Ezra also reminds us that President Ahmadinejad is not Hitler, primarily because unlike Hitler, he doesn't actually run anything. If you're going to argue that Iran s dangerous, then you have to start with the idea that you're talking about the Islamic Supreme Council going batshit nuts and signing their own death warrants, and move on from there. At least that will be a factually accurate discussion.)
5.) What Guliani's popularity proves is that the right wing of this country doesn't really care about so much are religious principles, but a big Daddy figure, the more authoritarian and Daddy-ish the better. Trading Bush in for Guliani is like going from strong-talking but secretly not very competent Daddy to mean smart Daddy who knows how to balance a checkbook.
Maybe we need to stop looking to the President to be our Daddy. Just saying.
6.)When wounded soldiers lay in their own urine at Walter Reed, we're sending units to Iraq without appropriate training or appropriate equipment (AGAIN or STILL, depending on my rage levels) --
Guard Units Short on Vital Equipment. Maj. Gen. Harry M. Wyatt III, commander of the Oklahoma National Guard, said in an interview that one-third of his soldiers lacked the M-4 rifles preferred by active-duty soldiers and that there were also shortfalls in night vision goggles and other equipment. If his unit is going to be sent to Iraq next year, he said, “We expect the Army to resource the Guard at the same level as active-duty units.” Capt. Christopher Heathscott, a spokesman for the Arkansas National Guard, said the state’s 39th Brigade Combat Team was 600 rifles short for it’s 3,500 soldiers and also lacked its full arsenal of mortars and howitzers. [New York Times, 2/22/07]
-- and even the Joint Chiefs of Staff say the Army is close to breaking -- then I can no longer remind you that "supporting the troops" is not the same as "agreeing with absolutely everything certain bastards in suits say." They are two distinct phrases with two distinct meanings. If you cannot see the difference between the job of soldiers and the job of sending soldiers to do things that have not been properly thought out -- I can no longer even attempt to engage. I am exhausted, sir. I will merely file your name in a tiny notebook, which sits in my desk, waiting until the day the Puke Gun is finally perfected. Then, my friends, then you had best bib the fuck up. Lobster bibs, improvised napkin bibs, whatever, and you scrabble on over to the linoleum because I will not leave until you have Krauthammered all over yourself and your loved ones.
7.) The Ask a Ninja DVD is out today. That is a good thing.
8.) And this was what I was working on last year
Brosnan takes the job while preparing a sequel to "The Thomas Crown Affair," which John Rogers scripted and Brosnan is producing under his Irish DreamTime banner. A director will be set shortly and production will begin before year's end.
The producers on it are filthily cool, and I hope they'll let me talk about the process a bit for your illumination. All this, of course, assuming somebody doesn't come along and rewrite the script after me. Which does happen, you know. Or so I've heard.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Comicbloc Love
A very nice "You Should be Reading .. Blue Beetle" write up at comicbloc. Thanks, Doug.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Kosher Delis on OA
Moving house downtime, and I set my next post as a book review -- which I want to do right, so it'll be a while. A few random thoughts to fill the space.
1.) Last night's HEROES was a fine piece of televisioning. Just boom baby, plenty of revelations, all leading to deeper mysteries and re-arrangements of character dynamics. Some nice acting, to boot. Color me impressed.
2.) Paperback edition of Misquoting Jesus is out, and is my favorite book of the week. Regardless of where you fall on the church policy, this is a fascinating, beginner-level guide to how the actual ancient writings that became our Bible are examined and parsed out. Exactly the sort of detail-obsessive work I would have fallen into if I hadn't discovered a career of booze and cash payments, so I dig it.
2.) Blue Beetle #12 is out this Wednesday. The folks who built Jaime's sci fi bug suit show up, and are very angry. Leads into the year long invasion arc, with lots of DC guest stars showing up.
Also, if you're a comic book fan and a Mark Waid fan (which, are of course, synonymous), some notes on his new BRAVE & THE BOLD series:
Come, buy #12 and join the love train for comic's most famous teen Hispanic superhero based in El Paso!
3.) In researching BB #14, I discovered that the Guardians of the Universe, the dudes who run the Green Lanterns -- their appearance is based on Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.
That means, in the DCU, the Jews just don't control the media, they control the UNIVERSE. Discuss.
1.) Last night's HEROES was a fine piece of televisioning. Just boom baby, plenty of revelations, all leading to deeper mysteries and re-arrangements of character dynamics. Some nice acting, to boot. Color me impressed.
2.) Paperback edition of Misquoting Jesus is out, and is my favorite book of the week. Regardless of where you fall on the church policy, this is a fascinating, beginner-level guide to how the actual ancient writings that became our Bible are examined and parsed out. Exactly the sort of detail-obsessive work I would have fallen into if I hadn't discovered a career of booze and cash payments, so I dig it.
2.) Blue Beetle #12 is out this Wednesday. The folks who built Jaime's sci fi bug suit show up, and are very angry. Leads into the year long invasion arc, with lots of DC guest stars showing up.
Also, if you're a comic book fan and a Mark Waid fan (which, are of course, synonymous), some notes on his new BRAVE & THE BOLD series:
WIZARD: So now that you are almost done with your first arc, what has been the most surprisingly fun team-up to write?
WAID: I think Batman and Blue Beetle have an amazing relationship as defined by Keith Giffen and John Rogers, mostly John. Their relationship is great. It’s unlike any relationship Batman has with anybody, and it’s so much fun to write because Beetle has the same weird, “creeped out by Batman” fear that everybody does, but Batman actually likes Jamie. He likes the Beetle. He’s not all warm and fuzzy around him, but there’s a nice scene in issue #3 where Beetle is just weirded out because Batman is being pretty forthcoming and not doing the whole creature of the night schtick with Beetle. There’s no need to. They’re on their way somewhere, but Beetle’s freaked out because this is not the Batman he’s heard so much about. So Batman says, “You want to see that? All right.” And we slam cut to an alleyway where Batman’s in full, raging creature of the night mode putting the fear of God into a mugger to get some information. And Beetle’s like, “Okay! That’s the Batman I know!”
There’s something fun about their relationship because they’re not buddies and they don’t banter, but you really get the sense in the dialogue and the actions that Batman has the same relationship to Beetle as he had to Dick Grayson. Unlike the relationship he had with Jason [Todd], unlike the relationship he has with Tim [Drake], this is a lot more reminiscent of him and Dick. That’s been the most fun to write so far.
WIZARD: That seems to fall in line with the idea that came out after Infinite Crisis where you writers kept saying, “Let’s lighten things up a bit and let the characters out of their shells.”
WAID: Yeah! Every issue of Brave & the Bold—despite the fact that the first six are a big arc and that there’s huge stuff going on with a bunch of characters—every issue at its core is based on a relationship between two of the characters. The first one defines the relationship between Batman and Green Lantern. The second one defines the relationship between Green Lantern and Supergirl. The third one is really based on the relationship between Batman and Blue Beetle, and that’s the story. It’s not the plot, but at its heart, that’s the story. I want you to come out of every one of these with an understanding of how these characters relate to each other in this sort of post-Infinite Crisis world.
Come, buy #12 and join the love train for comic's most famous teen Hispanic superhero based in El Paso!
3.) In researching BB #14, I discovered that the Guardians of the Universe, the dudes who run the Green Lanterns -- their appearance is based on Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.
That means, in the DCU, the Jews just don't control the media, they control the UNIVERSE. Discuss.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
The Abandoned
This movie, opening Feb. 23, is pretty great and deserves mention. I caught it during the LA Horrorfest. The Horrorfest was advertised as "Movies too disturbing to be shown to mainstream audiences", which I quickly discovered meant "Movies that do not yet have a distributor, kinda, and frankly are pretty so-so", with this exception. It's very streamlined, a wee master's class in building genuine tension and suspense in a contained setting. Low budget, but it doesn't need to have more money -- it's fine just the way it is.
A woman returns home to the Russian countryside to solve the mystery of her mother's death. Complications ensue. It accomplishes something Americans films don't tend to do well -- creeeeepy.
A woman returns home to the Russian countryside to solve the mystery of her mother's death. Complications ensue. It accomplishes something Americans films don't tend to do well -- creeeeepy.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Lunch Discussions #781: "... and the Aliens' Version Was Funnier."
John: Caught any of the clips from the Fox Daily Show ripoff, The 1/2 Hour News Hour?
Tyrone: ... you are kidding me. No. How is it?
John: Please. Watch.
John: It's as if aliens tried to decipher humor from radiated cable television waves and then constructed a "comedy" show with a poor translation algorithm. It is un-joke. You could put it in a chamber with a knock-knock joke and use the resultant explosion to power a starship.
Tyrone: That Rush bit -- it starts as the standard "My fellow Americans" bit, then Coulter comes in, then there are phone calls ... it's as if they don't know how sketches work.
John: I love how it opens with Rush slamming Howard Dean as too crazy to run in 2008. Which is literally a four year old joke used against a guy who absolutely will not be running for President a year in the future. Not only did they launch the show with a hack joke, they launched it with a hack joke that doesn't even make sense.
Tyrone: That beat the Marion Barry joke, which is fifteen years old. There are premises, plenty of joke premises, or even joke structures that don't land on the best punchline ...
John: I'm not sure they've employed any actual television comedy writers. They spent two full minutes on a "B.O." joke about Barack Obama. That's the A-game for the opening show. The sort of name-joke that the jocks stick on a kid in freshman year, then guffaw and punch each other every time they say it. So I guess that's what the show's message is: "If you're the type of schoolyard bully who would call a kid 'B.O.' and think that is HI-LARIOUS, you're our target audience."
Tyrone: Such people are out there, John. And they vote. Who's running this thing?
John: Joel Surnow.
Tyrone: ... wait. The 24 guy?
John: Yep.
Tyrone: Has he ever worked in comedy before?
John: Nope.
Tyrone: Would you put Dick Wolf in charge of a comedy show? On what planet did that make sense?
John: I've become fascinated by Surnow's narrative. Did you read the New Yorker article on him? It mentions how his rightward political turn was influenced by his friend Cyrus Nowrasteh, the guy who wrote the very bad and relentlessly incorrect Path to 9/11 mini-series.
Tyrone: Didn't you actually defend Nowrasteh?
John: I was more making the point that an agenda-driven piece of writing almost always fails. But I certainly held no grudge. The odd thing is, all the recent media mentions of Nowrasteh drop the fact, like a little biographical tidbit, that he's the son of a "deposed advisor to the Shah of Iran." And no one seems to mention that this is Very. Fucked. Up. We have been living with the Ayatollahs as the bad guys so long, we've forgotten that the Shah was not the good guy. His secret police, Savak, carried out thousands of tortures and assassinations. This is like being the son of a Pinochet advisor. This is like being the son of a Saddam Hussein advisor. I personally would not throw this on my CV.
Tyrone: Maybe his dad was a dissenting voice. Maybe he was the anti-torture advisor.
John: Of course. The Shah, like all autocratic dictators, hated "yes-men." He liked to mix it up in the council chambers. Get a free exchange of ideas going.
Tyrone: Like House. "All of you, give me your opinions. Now shut up and do what I say."
John: ... yes. The Shah of Iran was the House of the Middle East.
Tyrone: Or is House the Shah of medicine? Hmmm?
John: At the very least, I'd like to see Fox promote the show with that logline.
At this point we drifted to other topics. But if I may, there's another interesting Surnow quote about his new comedy show:
That's just fascinating. If that's true, he hasn't been watching The Daily Show, which mocked the ineffectiveness of the Democratic candidates in 2004, and is now hitting the new Democratic candidates with equal aplomb. He also hasn't seen ... every other late-night comedy show. (My favorite joke of the cycle goes to Amy Poehler: ""Earlier today, Senator Barack Obama announced his candidacy for president. Upon hearing the news, Hillary Clinton punched a pillow so hard it turned into a diamond.") I hate to keep explaining this, but if it seems like the Republicans have been suffering the comedic brunt for the last six years, this is because they have been in power, and comedy's job is to kick power in the junk.
More revealing is the idea of using "talking points" in a comedy show. This is obviously someone who's never worked a real comedy writer's room. For topical runs, you start with "okay, what happened today," and you look at everything. Everything. This is because comedy has maybe a 10% success rate on the pitch, and that's just for joke-like objects, never mind actual functioning funny jokes. To fill a show with a couple dozen funny jokes, you don't have the time or luxury to stick to talking points. You need to find the funny. Unless you're not worrying about funny -- in which case, you get the 1/2 Hour News Hour.
On a deeper level, this is about how you cannot make humor, you find humor. And you find humor in truth. As Tyrone pointed out to me later in the conversation, often Stewart does nothing but play the tape of a politician's actual words, and then do a reaction. A joke only works -- although every comic has a theory on this -- if there's some underlying bit of truth to it. Either truth unrecognized before now, eliciting surprised laughter in response, or recognized and appreciated, the so-called "sympathy laugh." (see Simpson, Homer: "It's funny because it's true!" which in context is damn near a three-level meta-joke.) This is why jokes about Bush not being bright work -- because we've all heard him speak, and he does not come across as a bright man. This is why jokes about Bill Clinton being a horndog work -- because Billy-boy's a horndog. You could not do a joke about Bush being, say, an adulterer, even if that were your "talking point." It just wouldn't work, because it doesn't ring true.
This, by the way, is the underpinning of the situation comedy, or nearly all scripted comedy: an ordinary person is put in a ridiculous situation, and his truthful response is amusing; or a ridiculous person is put in an ordinary situation and his truthful response is amusing.
Comedy is truth, truth is reality, and if "Reality has a well-known liberal bias" for now, anyway, you just have to suck that up if your job is the funny. One party has boring, earnest junior Senators with competing health plans running for President. The other party has the guy in charge of fighting child pornography online soliciting minors online, a Senator who talked about "man on dog" action, a State Representative who doesn't believe the Earth revolves around the Sun, and a Vice-President who won on an anti-gay platform with a gay daughter who's pregnant with another woman's child, which may be why he shot a dude in the face. Nobody's fault Fate dealt one player the "goofy" cards for the last few hands.
Don't worry, soon the Democrats will be completely back in power, the scales will tip back, and we can go back to mocking universal health care and adultery.
There's a further point to be made about the general level of emotional retardation aong Hollywood writers and executives (both liberal and conservative), combined with a stunning level of ignorance of history and politics, but hey, I need to work in this town.
Tyrone: ... you are kidding me. No. How is it?
John: Please. Watch.
John: It's as if aliens tried to decipher humor from radiated cable television waves and then constructed a "comedy" show with a poor translation algorithm. It is un-joke. You could put it in a chamber with a knock-knock joke and use the resultant explosion to power a starship.
Tyrone: That Rush bit -- it starts as the standard "My fellow Americans" bit, then Coulter comes in, then there are phone calls ... it's as if they don't know how sketches work.
John: I love how it opens with Rush slamming Howard Dean as too crazy to run in 2008. Which is literally a four year old joke used against a guy who absolutely will not be running for President a year in the future. Not only did they launch the show with a hack joke, they launched it with a hack joke that doesn't even make sense.
Tyrone: That beat the Marion Barry joke, which is fifteen years old. There are premises, plenty of joke premises, or even joke structures that don't land on the best punchline ...
John: I'm not sure they've employed any actual television comedy writers. They spent two full minutes on a "B.O." joke about Barack Obama. That's the A-game for the opening show. The sort of name-joke that the jocks stick on a kid in freshman year, then guffaw and punch each other every time they say it. So I guess that's what the show's message is: "If you're the type of schoolyard bully who would call a kid 'B.O.' and think that is HI-LARIOUS, you're our target audience."
Tyrone: Such people are out there, John. And they vote. Who's running this thing?
John: Joel Surnow.
Tyrone: ... wait. The 24 guy?
John: Yep.
Tyrone: Has he ever worked in comedy before?
John: Nope.
Tyrone: Would you put Dick Wolf in charge of a comedy show? On what planet did that make sense?
John: I've become fascinated by Surnow's narrative. Did you read the New Yorker article on him? It mentions how his rightward political turn was influenced by his friend Cyrus Nowrasteh, the guy who wrote the very bad and relentlessly incorrect Path to 9/11 mini-series.
Tyrone: Didn't you actually defend Nowrasteh?
John: I was more making the point that an agenda-driven piece of writing almost always fails. But I certainly held no grudge. The odd thing is, all the recent media mentions of Nowrasteh drop the fact, like a little biographical tidbit, that he's the son of a "deposed advisor to the Shah of Iran." And no one seems to mention that this is Very. Fucked. Up. We have been living with the Ayatollahs as the bad guys so long, we've forgotten that the Shah was not the good guy. His secret police, Savak, carried out thousands of tortures and assassinations. This is like being the son of a Pinochet advisor. This is like being the son of a Saddam Hussein advisor. I personally would not throw this on my CV.
Tyrone: Maybe his dad was a dissenting voice. Maybe he was the anti-torture advisor.
John: Of course. The Shah, like all autocratic dictators, hated "yes-men." He liked to mix it up in the council chambers. Get a free exchange of ideas going.
Tyrone: Like House. "All of you, give me your opinions. Now shut up and do what I say."
John: ... yes. The Shah of Iran was the House of the Middle East.
Tyrone: Or is House the Shah of medicine? Hmmm?
John: At the very least, I'd like to see Fox promote the show with that logline.
At this point we drifted to other topics. But if I may, there's another interesting Surnow quote about his new comedy show:
"Almost every comedy show or satire show I see uses the same talking points against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney," Surnow tells Variety. "The other side hasn’t been skewered in a fair and balanced way"....
That's just fascinating. If that's true, he hasn't been watching The Daily Show, which mocked the ineffectiveness of the Democratic candidates in 2004, and is now hitting the new Democratic candidates with equal aplomb. He also hasn't seen ... every other late-night comedy show. (My favorite joke of the cycle goes to Amy Poehler: ""Earlier today, Senator Barack Obama announced his candidacy for president. Upon hearing the news, Hillary Clinton punched a pillow so hard it turned into a diamond.") I hate to keep explaining this, but if it seems like the Republicans have been suffering the comedic brunt for the last six years, this is because they have been in power, and comedy's job is to kick power in the junk.
More revealing is the idea of using "talking points" in a comedy show. This is obviously someone who's never worked a real comedy writer's room. For topical runs, you start with "okay, what happened today," and you look at everything. Everything. This is because comedy has maybe a 10% success rate on the pitch, and that's just for joke-like objects, never mind actual functioning funny jokes. To fill a show with a couple dozen funny jokes, you don't have the time or luxury to stick to talking points. You need to find the funny. Unless you're not worrying about funny -- in which case, you get the 1/2 Hour News Hour.
On a deeper level, this is about how you cannot make humor, you find humor. And you find humor in truth. As Tyrone pointed out to me later in the conversation, often Stewart does nothing but play the tape of a politician's actual words, and then do a reaction. A joke only works -- although every comic has a theory on this -- if there's some underlying bit of truth to it. Either truth unrecognized before now, eliciting surprised laughter in response, or recognized and appreciated, the so-called "sympathy laugh." (see Simpson, Homer: "It's funny because it's true!" which in context is damn near a three-level meta-joke.) This is why jokes about Bush not being bright work -- because we've all heard him speak, and he does not come across as a bright man. This is why jokes about Bill Clinton being a horndog work -- because Billy-boy's a horndog. You could not do a joke about Bush being, say, an adulterer, even if that were your "talking point." It just wouldn't work, because it doesn't ring true.
This, by the way, is the underpinning of the situation comedy, or nearly all scripted comedy: an ordinary person is put in a ridiculous situation, and his truthful response is amusing; or a ridiculous person is put in an ordinary situation and his truthful response is amusing.
Comedy is truth, truth is reality, and if "Reality has a well-known liberal bias" for now, anyway, you just have to suck that up if your job is the funny. One party has boring, earnest junior Senators with competing health plans running for President. The other party has the guy in charge of fighting child pornography online soliciting minors online, a Senator who talked about "man on dog" action, a State Representative who doesn't believe the Earth revolves around the Sun, and a Vice-President who won on an anti-gay platform with a gay daughter who's pregnant with another woman's child, which may be why he shot a dude in the face. Nobody's fault Fate dealt one player the "goofy" cards for the last few hands.
Don't worry, soon the Democrats will be completely back in power, the scales will tip back, and we can go back to mocking universal health care and adultery.
There's a further point to be made about the general level of emotional retardation aong Hollywood writers and executives (both liberal and conservative), combined with a stunning level of ignorance of history and politics, but hey, I need to work in this town.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Mouth, Meet Money. Money, Meet Mouth.
Well, that's out a bit earlier than I expected. From today's Variety:
Hopefully I'll be able to toss you some interesting insights into the process along the way. Light a candle.StudioCanal's other trio of remakes are "Honor Among Thieves," based on Alain Delon-starrer "Adieu Lami"; "Max," based on Claude Sautet's "Max et les Ferrailleurs"; and "The Prone Gunman," adapted from a novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette, which inspired "Le Choc," starring Delon and Catherine Deneuve.
First into production is likely to be "Thieves," a scam-cum-heist story being written by John Rogers ("Transformers") with a view to Rogers helming and Woo mentoring.
Budget will exceed $10 million and production will likely take place in Canada. Halpern is overseeing the development of screenplays and will attach Asian helmers to the other two.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Following the North Star ...
... which, is why things have been -- and will be -- a bit slow on the blog. I've hit the point in my career where I don't have to be in LA all the time, AND there are some cool projects to be done up in Canada, so it's back North I go. I'll be back and forth to LA regularly, but for now, it's time to return to the land of pubs, pints and poutine. The move is cumbersome, however, hence the slowdown.
Rumors that I am timing this in order to leave before the bombing war with Iran, and the subsequent economic meltdown of the US, are completely unfounded. I am certainly not establishing a safe house/compound powered by alternative energy sources and funded by World of Warcraft gold farming, creating a haven for like-minded friends.
(Tyrone: initiate Code Alpha Seven Tubman. GO!)
On the other hand, much coolness afoot, so when I do return we should have fresh insights for the screenwriting readers, and fresh snark for the politicos.
Rumors that I am timing this in order to leave before the bombing war with Iran, and the subsequent economic meltdown of the US, are completely unfounded. I am certainly not establishing a safe house/compound powered by alternative energy sources and funded by World of Warcraft gold farming, creating a haven for like-minded friends.
(Tyrone: initiate Code Alpha Seven Tubman. GO!)
On the other hand, much coolness afoot, so when I do return we should have fresh insights for the screenwriting readers, and fresh snark for the politicos.
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