Proper Credits for Transformers

I have noticed some web articles and posts referring to me as "the" screenwriter of Transformers. This is patently wrong, and I wish to correct it as soon as possible.

I am "one of the screenwriters of Transformers." I wrote the first draft, and Alex and Bob came in and did the heavy production lifting with Michael Bay (they worked with him on The Island, before). My job was to be first guy on -- the geek who broke a thirty year franchise mythos into a comprehensible 110 page plot, cook up characters and character relationships (Sam and Bumblebee friendship, etc.), and do the geek stuff like coming up with a chunk of spiffy fights/images. One draft, I then buggered off back to Shibumi.

Alex and Bob are responsible for pretty much all the dialogue, introduced a whackload of original characters involved in the plots I didn't come up with, as well as re-fit my guys into what wound up being their finished story. They're responsible for feel and pacing of the finished movie, and they did a helluva job. They were on-set, and did hand in-hand development with the director all the way through post. They had to turn my unfilmable -- and it was simply unfilmable unless you spent $250 million on production -- draft into one shootable at $150 million. This grueling work is why they have a "screenplay" and "story by" credit, while I have a "story by" credit.

I always get pissed when I'm pegged as "the screenwriter of Catwoman" when I was one of about ten. So it's not fair to correct that one to shift blame and let this mistake, which may inadvertently take credit from two very hard-working guys, stand.

Once the weekend is over, we can have a nice general chat -- without going into contract-breaking details -- about what some of the differences in the story are, and how they were executed, and put this process in context for the spec monkeys. Overall, though, I will say that working for the fine folk at Dreamworks on this project was as pleasant as every other experience I've had there.

Bible Fight

A free in-browser Flash-based arcade game where characters from the Bible battle Mortal Kombat style? Yes, please.

Astonishing Adventures Magazine

Carlucci and others have started up a new Pulp Magazine, Astonishing Adventures. It will be web-only and free for now -- however, this is a place to get your pulp on and your stuff read. Build a base of readers for if/when you expand your work into other magazines or even novels. (Did you read Mike Nelson's on-line novel Dingo, like I told you? Get to it. Noir with a ... twist.) You've got 25 days to get your space alien/evil Nazi/geneticaly modified ape with a gun story into their in-box for consideration. Bill Cunningham has an excellent overview here. Bill, by the way has been doing a much better job on his website at what I thought I'd be doing on this website than I ever could. I need to find a new approach. Or start shamelessly cribbing his.

"Pulp" as a genre seems to have really gripped writers my age. The idea of accomplishing characterization and big-theme story-telling through high action and high emotion stories -- it's as if mannered structure to science fiction, or more appropriately what we probably mistake science fiction to be, is eroding away. Or more likely 40 is when you stop worrying about making a fool of yourself.

I myself may start a separate blog to do chapter postings of what is affectionately called "the doomed pulp novel." I told the idea to Cory Doctorow and Geoff Thorne and nobody put a mercy bullet in its brain, so I edge ever forward. The fact that the fictional world would be shared/Creative Commons is the interesting bit ...

But what is pulp? Star Wars, of course, is pulp, not science fiction (Star Trek always stays in sci fi), as is Doctor Who. 24 is pulp. Farscape was best when it was pulp. Transmetropolitan, which you MUST READ, is scifi-journo-hero pulp. Heroes is not pulp, and Lost is sometimes pulp, depending on who's writing it.

Any time the heroes resolve a complex situation by running down a corridor as shit explodes around them and completely over-the-top implacable enemies scream imprecations through rising flames and our guys pause just long enough to say something somehow simultaneously smart and corny and heart-achingly true, then start running again because the clock is ticking and nobody saw this twist coming and they're making it up as they go along -- pulp.

Hey, Libertas!

I hate to rain on your "Transformers is a great conservative, Republican movie" parade...

The films politics are decidedly pro-American, pro-military, and even *gasp* pro-freedom. Bay’s affection for the American military is obvious in every scene they’re in. They are uniformly portrayed as heroic, extremely competent, selfless, and even kind to Arab children. The theme of the film is spoken out loud more than once: No sacrifice, no victory. And the Autobots have come to liberate us from the terrorist Decepticons because the Autobots believe freedom is the right of everyone. Yes, there is a gentle, somewhat affectionate jab at Bush, but Jon Voight’s Secretary of Defense makes it clear at every turn that the President is running the show.

Steven Spielberg and Bay both exec produced, but make no mistake about it, this is a Michael Bay film all the way; from the booming score to the editing and camera shots. It’s not smart (why does Sam have to save the world by getting that cube to the top of a building when an Autobot could do it in two seconds?), it’s far from perfect, but you’ll have a great time and more than a few hearty laughs despite the lulls. And after all the relativist junk we’ve been suffering through, it does mean something to watch the fight for freedom portrayed with valor, good and evil distinguished, and the dreaded-until-needed military industrial complex save the day.

Am I complimenting the film’s politics because I agree with them? Maybe. Regardless, the world view presented in Tranformers is more than just one that I happen agree with, it’s also new, refreshing, daring, and counter-culture — which counts for something in storytelling.

but ...

Hi there. It's me.

All this reveals is two thing -- first, this sort of culture score-carding is idiotic. It's way, way beyond wet-brained. The Variety review, for example, pointed out how Optimus Prime sounded like Bush when he said "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings." What the reviewer plainly does not know is that is the Big Guy's catchphrase, and if I'd left it out of the first draft a mob of people in cardboard transforming costumes, led by Seth Green and his now full-sized and deadly Robot Chickens, would have gibbed me. I didn't sit there and say "You know what, I should use this movie as a way to express the righteousness of an international crusade of liberation and nation-building." And although I can't speak for Kurtzman and Orci, I don't think that was their gig either.

Second, hopefully this may slooooowly spin you around to the idea that being "pro-American, pro-military and even *gasp* pro-freedom" are not just conservative values. Progressives are also pro-American, pro-military -- in my first draft, the Army guys actually have bigger role, although they're a little grungier and working-class than all shiny and model-y -- and *gasp* pro-freedom. We just believe you serve these values in different ways. Demonizing each other is a way the Bastards in Suits try to jkeep the game going, and keep their little scams in place, so we don't suddenly notice that we're all on the same side, we all support the troops. we all rather like each other, and despite our many disagreements maybe we'd like all the professional hate-mongers to bugger off now, please.

In the spirit of such communality, feel free to kick in $5 for Fisher House using the button to the right. Details here, but short version: Don Murphy, the movie's producer, and I will match your patriotic freedom dollars with filthy liberal sodomite Hollywood monies, effectively tripling your contributions!

I would be remiss not to point out that on our last two American Fundraisers, it was the decidedly conservative blogger Gaijin Biker who was the top donor both times. For the last Fisher House fund-raiser he actually sold one of his motorcycles, I believe. Because that is how we roll in the Kung Fu Monkey House.

All the Time in the World ...

The speculative fiction magazine Strange Horizons has a list up of sc-fi stories they would rather not read again. For the ten thousandth time.

1. Someone calls technical support; wacky hijinx ensue.
   1. Someone calls technical support for a magical item.
   2. Someone calls technical support for a piece of advanced technology.
   3. The title of the story is 1-800-SOMETHING-CUTE.
2. Scientist uses himself or herself as test subject.
3. Evil unethical doctor performs medical experiments on unsuspecting patient.
4. Office life turns out to be soul-deadening, literally or metaphorically.
5. In the future, criminals are punished much more harshly than they are today.
   1. In the future, the punishment always fits the crime.
   2. The author is apparently unaware of the American constitutional amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment, and so postulates that in the future, American punishment will be extra-cruel in some unusual way.
6. White protagonist is given wise and mystical advice by Holy Simple Native Folk.
7. Story is based in whole or part on a D&D game or world.
   1. A party of D&D characters (usually including a fighter, a magic-user, and a thief, one of whom is a half-elf and one a dwarf) enters a dungeon (or the wilderness, or a town, or a tavern) and fights monsters (usually including orcs).
   2. Story is the origin story of a D&D character, culminating in their hooking up with a party of adventurers.
   3. A group of real-world humans who like roleplaying find themselves transported to D&D world.
8. An alien observes and comments on the peculiar habits of humans, for allegedly comic effect.
   1. The alien is fluent in English and completely familiar with various English idioms, but is completely unfamiliar with human biology and/or with such concepts as sex or violence and/or with certain specific extremely common English words (such as "cat").
   2. The alien takes everything literally.
   3. Instead of an alien, it's people in the future commenting on the ridiculous things (usually including internal combustion engines) that people used to use in the unenlightened past.

The horror list is here.

This via Alex Epstein, who has written a crackerjack supernatural horror flick that he and his producers were nice enough to ask me to be story editor on.

Story editor? On a movie? That was my response. Apparently it's a Canadian thing.

John: Hey, I'd love to work with you guys ...
Teza (producer): Great!
John: But to be honest, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do as story editor on a movie.
Teza: As a more experienced writer, you get together with the producers and screenwriter, talk about the movie, places it can be punched up, suggestions for character beats and plot pacing.
John: Oh, we have that in Los Angeles.
Teza: What's it called?
John: Lunch.

The roundtable/lunch is a common ritual in LA. The Thomas Crown sequel will owe no small debt to mystery writer and all 'round cool guy Greg Hurwitz and others, who helped me with some heisty ideas while we ate lunch at Il Campinile. In point of fact, the opening of the flick comes from criminally under-rated director Karyn Kusama, who casually -- I believe she had a mouthful of bread at the time -- reminded me of a quote from the first movie which neatly, beautifully tied up the entire theme of the first fifteen pages. The only appropriate response at that moment is a mix of hatred and gratitude only other writers can comprehend.

On the other hand, if socialized Canadian entertainment wants to pay me for such services, I say onward comrades!

Charity of the Month: Fisher House

We're driving a bit more traffic than usual here thanks to Transformers coming out, and a few of the more recent scribblings. Time to harness some of the Geek energy.

Charity of the month is Fisher House. As you can see on the web page, they provide homes for families so they can be close to to their wounded servicemen and women while they take the often months-long, grueling road to recovery after an injury received in combat or any other hospitalization. From their web page:

"Because members of the military and their families are stationed worldwide and must often travel great distances for specialized medical care, Fisher House™ Foundation donates "comfort homes," built on the grounds of major military and VA medical centers. These homes enable family members to be close to a loved one at the most stressful times - during the hospitalization for an unexpected illness, disease, or injury.

There is at least one Fisher House™ at every major military medical center to assist families in need and to ensure that they are provided with the comforts of home in a supportive environment. Annually, the Fisher House™ program serves more than 8,500 families, and have made available more than two million days of lodging to family members since the program originated in 1990. Based on a comparison of fees at a Fisher House™ (the average charge is less than $10 per family per day, with many locations offering rooms at no cost) with commercial lodging facilities in the same area, it is estimated that families have saved more than $60 million by staying at a Fisher House™ since the program began."

These men and women are getting shot up so we don't have to. With somewhere in the vicinity of 30,000 troops wounded so far in Iraq, this service is needed now more than ever. And frankly, I don't care where you stand on the ideological spectrum -- helping service families be together during such a tough time is righteous.

For those of you new to the Kung Fu Monkey Charity of the Month, it works this way: if you donate using the button to the left, it dumps into the Kung Fu Monkey PayPal account, which allows me to track the amount we raise for the month. End of the month, I match it. If you fel hinky tossing money into a PayPal account of some random web dude, you can instead donate directly to Fisher House here. Just e-mail me and let me know you did so. I'll take your word on it, and match those donations too.

Here's the cool bit. Don Murphy, friend and Transformers producer, has agreed to hop in too. So your donation to Fisher House is not just doubled, but tripled. Toss in five bucks, it turns into $15. Toss in $10 equal to some popcorn and sodas at the big-ass robot movie, and you just donated $30.

We are a geek-powered force-multiplier here at KFM.

That's not all. I'm currently contacting some other Hollywood friends -- by the end of the month, your dollar will be flipped at least once or twice more.

So if you find anything insightful, amusing, or even just entertainingly annoying here at KFM, please donate to Fisher House through the button at the right, or directly to them here. And if you HATE my writing, then donate more -- bankrupt me of my filthy Hollywood monies! Bankrupt me with your HATE!

Thanks for reading, and thanks for giving.

L33T Justice

According to the Dictionary of Video Game Theory, an "exploit" is --

... an exploit can be defined as a case where a player knowingly uses a flaw in a game to gain an unfair advantage. In many concrete cases, it can be difficult to distinguish between cheats, exploits, and players who optimize their strategies for playing.

I'd been working on this post vis a vis the Gonzales situation. The DoJ situation, in it's own way, magnificent. They're averaging a DoJ resignation a week over the attorney scandal. The Attorney General himself appears like a clueless mall -based ambulance chaser every time he appears in front of Congress ...



... that's "I Don't Recall" 74 times. He appears either drunk, pathetic, inept or corrupt. Yet he's still in there. Plugging away. He's a walking joke, but he's still the top law enforcement official in America.

Then Scooter gets his sentence commuted. Oh, and just to make sure we're clear on where I stand here, let me paraphrase Glenn Greenwald --

" The Libby prosecution clearly was the dirty work of the leftist anti-war movement in this country, just as Cohen describes. After all, the reason Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed to investigate this matter was because a left-wing government agency (known as the "Central Intelligence Agency") filed a criminal referral with the Justice Department, as the MoveOn-sympathizer CIA officials were apparently unhappy about the public unmasking of one of their covert agents.

In response, Bush's left-wing anti-war Attorney General, John Ashcroft, judged the matter serious enough to recuse himself, leading Bush's left-wing anti-war Deputy Attorney General, James Comey, to conclude that a Special Prosecutor was needed. In turn, Comey appointed Fitzgerald, the left-wing anti-war Republican Prosecutor and Bush appointee, who secured a conviction of Libby, in response to which left-wing anti-war Bush appointee Judge Reggie Walton imposed Libby's sentence."

-- there.

The commutation, rather than being some canny half-measure some are calling it, is actually worse than a pardon. The President's saying "Fine, fine, I agree a jury of his peers found him guilty of multiple counts of perjury and obstruction of justice, but I don't think he should be punished for that." He's not even saying that he believes Scooter's innocent. He just doesn't think people like Scooter should have to suffer just because they're guilty.

What? What's that from the trolls? "Oh, but no, he'll be punished! He just won't do any jail time! He still has to pay the fine ..."

... which will be paid by rich conservative friends ...

"... and his conviction stays on the books, damaging his reputation."

... yes. yes. I'm sure the Think Tank or University posts he was counting on for future employment will suddenly drop him, as they have a strict policy against hiring felons. Maybe Cheney will loan him a tie for his appointment with the nice Catholic social worker who'll send him off to the car wash or janitorial placement agency. Despair for Thug-Life Libby.

Not to be a foul-mouthed blogger, but blow me.

Scooter Libby pays no fine, he suffers no damage to his employment prospects or his reputation among people he cares about. Jail was the only thing that would be any sort of payment for lying to a grand jury and obstructing justice. Now it's gone. I don't care how conservative you are -- that's just wrong. If you're down with this, you are way, way deep in the Crazification Factor.

This just hammers home my realization of what the Cheney Administration -- and yes, damn you this is the first time I've indulged in that neologism, and the first time I think it perfectly appropriate -- what the Cheney Administration has discovered. They have found the "exploit" within the United States Government. As I watched Congressmen and Senators stumble and fumble and thrash, unable to bring to heel men and women who were plainly lying to them under oath, unable to eject from public office toadies of a boot-licking expertise unseen since Versailles, it struck me. The sheer, simple elegance of it. The "exploit".

The exploit is shame.

Our representatives -- and to a great degree we as a culture -- are completely buffaloed by shamelessness. You reveal a man's corrupt, or lying, or incompetent, and what does he do? He resigns. He attempts to escape attention, often to aid in his escape of legal pursuit. Public shame has up to now been the silver bullet of American political life. But people who are willing to just do the wrong thing and wait you out, to be publicly guilty ... dammmnnnn.

We are faced with utterly shameless men. Cheney and the rest are looking our representatives right in the eye and saying "You don't have the balls to take down a government. You don't have the sheer testicular fortitude to call us lying sonuvabitches when we lie, to stop us from kicking the rule of law and the Constitution in the ass. You just don't. What's beyond that abyss -- what that would do to our government and our identity as a nation -- terrifies you too much. So get the fuck out of our way."

And to a great degree, the White House is right. You peel this back, and you reveal that the greatest country in the world has been run, for the last six and a half years, by men who do not give a shit about the Constitution, or fair play, or honesty. No, not just run by corrupt men, or bribe-takers, or adulterers or whatever, we could handle that --no we'd be admitting It Went Wrong.

There is a sizeable population in America that just does not, cannot wrap their head around the fact that the President may be a Bad Man who does Bad Things. He's President of America. We're Americans. We're the good guys. Remember, the Nixon mythos in America is that the system worked. "See, in America, even the President is not above the law."

These Suited Bastards know the fragile shell of American exceptionalism is all that's keeping a whole lot of people from processing that they're working too many hours for not enough money, and they either believe real reeaaaalll hard that they're living in the Shining City on the Hill or admit their lives are shit and they've been chumped.

Who ya gonna believe, me or your lyin' Congress?

I cannot help but think that as Nixon walked to the chopper, somewhere in the darkened hallways of the White House Dick Cheney shook his head, spit, and whispered: "Pussy."








(NOTE: This post is driving a fair bit of traffic. If you find anything interesting or amusing here at KFM, please consider donating to our Charity of the Month, Fisher House. You can read more details on how to help out wounded servicemen and their families here.)