Podcast Archive: Creativity and Patrick Swayze

Episode 60 - Creativity

The Irony meter's little red needle was twitching healthily this week. Bereft of a topic idea we duly broke the glass on the "Emergency Podcast Filler" and out topped 9 minutes of audio cut from Episode 44 along with a note from us in the past saying: "These spoken words have been cut for time and relevance from it's show of origin but that discussion was lively and if at any time in the future we should be at a lose end we should 'PLAY IT' and discuss."

Much to the Irony meter's excitement the offered subject gifted to us to cover our lack of ideas was 'Creativity'. Leo is a writer, we know this from his never ending ambition nay compulsion to perform this task over and over again and his drive to be better at it. Justin is an Artist, a real one who actually illustrates for a living and has done so for companies you've actual heard of. Also Ian who ... erm ... Well ... he can use a word document and doodles on the back of what he prints out.

Regardless we do in fact have a small pool of genuinely creative people who love talking about themselves. So come join us as me muse on being all creative and how it might, maybe, one day, if you're both good and lucky ... turn a small profit.
Incidental music by Kevin Macleod of incompetech.com



Direct Link: https://archive.org/download/060Creativity/060%20-%20Creativity.mp3

Episode 61 - The Ultimate Patrick Swayze Retrospective

In some ways it might seem like Patrick Swayze couldn't get a break. He was a versatile actor with a varied CV who never seemed to impinge upon the public consciousness beyond his turns in Dirty Dancing and Ghost. Although, when prompted many people also remember him for Red Dawn, Road House, Point Break and his seemingly idiosyncratic moment in Donnie Darko. But there was so much more to Mr. Swayze than this and the 80s kids are here to tell you all about those Swayze gems you may have missed.

As it happens they have missed many of them too. Justin, at one point, admits to having been puzzled that we should wish to take this extended look at the career of one of Hollywood's B-List actors. Well, much apart from the fact that "the Swayz" was an 80s icon, and we are the 80s Kids the career of the only man who could lend much in the way of credibility to a mullet is a far more textured and interesting thing than many of his contemporaries.

Maybe you weren't a member of the fan club before but by the end of this show we'll guarantee that you won't ever want to leave Patrick in the corner again.

Incidental music by Kevin Macleod of incompetech.com



Direct Link: https://archive.org/download/061TheUltimatePatrickSwayzeRetrospective/061-The-Ultimate-Patrick-Swayze-Retrospective.mp3

Podcast: The 70s Part 1: Cartoons, Space Jockeys, Madness and Chop Socky

Episode 4 already!



Direct Link: https://archive.org/download/004The70sPtOne/004-The_70s-PtOne.mp3

Beware The Monkey

For even more Monkey I've started writing for pop culture site Beware The Spaceman. It's not a paid gig but the site has a much bigger reach than my little corner of the internets so I'm happy to get some face time up there. They're really enthusiastic and supportive so that's pretty cool.

My first piece for them is called "Real or Recall" and, in honour of the recent remake of Total Recall takes a retrospective of the relationship between Philip K Dick and the world of cinema. All the favourites are referenced: Blade Runner, Minority Report and The Adjustment Bureau but I also detour into the lesser known adaptations like Screamers.

When I started looking at the article I didn't actually realise the number of SF cinema tropes that could be connected back to PKD. I mention a few of the films that show the clear influences but there are loads that I Just couldn't fit in but almost every SF film since Blade Runner shows at least some preoccupation with the themes that Dick liked to explore.

One of the big things that I made passing reference to was how similar the themes of Cronenberg's movies were, I'm not sure if that was conscious on Cronenberg's part or not. eXistenZ is the one that shows the clearest connections but the adaptation of Naked Lunch, Videodrome and even The Fly all share the same themes.

Interesting stuff, I think you'll agree.

The Avatar Effect

Crikey, two comments, on topic on one of my posts. It must have been my crack about having no readers!

So in answer to the comments. Yeah, it was very pretty. But I'm one of those people who says "mmmm, pretty, but what does it *do*?" Also, while we're on the topic most reviews that swiftly descend into pontification on nature vs. tech begin by drooling verbally all over the visuals. It's pretty, I get it. But it's like someone blew umpteen million dollars on a script written by a pissy, horny, morbid fifteen year old boy. I'm sorry but that just starts to look like a waste of time from where I'm sitting.

I'm having yet another Mugatu moment as people debate the politics of this movie as if the whole thing weren't utterly ridiculous. What really burns me is that people have the nerve to criticise the story. As many have pointed out the story is an old one. That means that it should work, I think Cameron probably chose to do a rendition of this "Dances With Wolves" type story for precisely that reason.

When you get down to it the execution of the story was so ham-fisted it reached George Lucas levels of error. At one point I was actually wanting to get hold of a copy of the DVD when it comes out just to do a commentary that goes toe to toe with all the ridiculous BS in the script. That way at least you could get an attractive slide show to accompany a deconstruction of why the film suckety suck sucked.

Aside: Went to see Holmes despite reservations both grave and deep (in the end it was RD Jnr's current renaissance that convinced me) and it was awesome. The action sequences were far less obtrusive than I'd feared, the script was actually very... er... Sherlock Holmes-y to such an extent that it's one of the few films for which genuine spoilers exist so I'll shut up now.

Back to Avatar. If truth be told I really enjoyed the movie up to the moment where Colonel McScarryHead approached Mr. Avatar to propose a little military style double dealing.

For a lover of the narrative arts many movies are like slowly expiring disappointments. If the film gets off to a good start it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to get all the way to the finish line without breaking its ankle in a plot-hole pothole.

For me, that was the moment. You see, to identify with the protagonist in a movie I tend to listen to what the characters around him are saying and wonder if I'd ever react the same way. I was down with the Avatar right up until McScarryHead made his pitch because nothing I'd seen so far backed up the main character's reaction to the offer. The Colonel had never acted like he might not be a looney, Mr. Avatar had shown a love for legs but had never been given a reason to trust that McScarryHead could, in good faith, arrange an incredibly expensive spinal operation to restore the use of Mr. Avatar's legs.

I mean sure it was possible but I didn't feel it was any more probable than any of the other characters being able to wangle him a new set of knees. If we're going on pure spending power the Acme Corporate Greaseball character seemed to be the best connected for such purposes.

From there onwards I lost sympathy and it became a firework display.

Anyhow. I've been blogging more regularly for a month now. I think I'm hitting my stride. I think two or three a week might be the happy medium I've been striving for. I think staying away from X Factor and committing to the geek-athon might also be appropriate as people are commenting on the latter but seem not to care about the former (even though I get quite geeky about X Factor).

This blog, like all blog's exists to be a dialogue. That's my aim for it in 2010. See you all next year!

The Madness of Avatar

So yesterday myself and the Mrs bought ourselves the right to an opinion about James Cameron's eco-epic. We eschewed 3D gimmickry and went for a much more aesthetically pleasing panavision 2D viewing. Maybe this coloured our opinion of the work but honestly? I mean... honestly?

There has been much written about the contradictions inherent in the evil corporate entities that make up the movie business making this hippy dippy wonderland fairy tale but I don't really buy into the dialog about anti-military this and that or anti-corporate whatever when the actual storytelling is just so piss poor it kind of renders the discussion pointless.

In fact most commentary sub-consciously acknowledges this by saying Avatar in the first sentence and then moving on to a discussion of tech vs. nature which has little to do with the ramshackle set up of the movie world.

I'm boggled that people have the stomach for this argument when the characters, human and alien alike, in Avatar behave in incomprehensible ways that betray the set-up that we're being asked to buy into.

Not the least of the questions is why the humans have such a huge chip on their shoulder about the aboriginal aliens anyway. I kept waiting for an explanation that never came. The statuesque, beautiful aliens seem to have no guile and a pretty laissez faire attitude towards the humans as long as the humans don't muck around near their world tree.

These Navi are the most reactive creatures I think I could imagine. They show no curiosity about the midgety pink things that have brought all their metal to a nonsensical base camp on the surface of this moon, Pandora. They are happy to exist knowing nothing of these invaders and they only rise to warfare when the aliens turn up in a flying napalm factory and fell their world tree in painful flame and fire.

So these dumb, fairly placid, aloof creatures are somehow turned into a threat with no actual evidence even fabricated. In Starship Troopers the overt storyline is that the insect aliens for no reason bomb earth with meteorites and occasion a war against humanity. You can understand humanity's position even if the implied secondary storyline is that the humans wandered into insect central with guns, assuming the insects were giant but not sentient and then learned that the stupid alien opponents were not so stupid.

You can understand how the conflict arose intuitively, even if it does make humanity look like a bunch of callous, shallow, territorial meatheads. Those bugs were dangerous and the political spin of their actions make you understand why meatheads like Johnny Rico would sign up for a tour of duty intutively. Sure, humanity might be wrong but it feels right.

In Avatar, on the other hand, I never ever felt that I understood why the majority of the humans would just naturally want to shoot at these aliens who clearly are intelligent and have their own culture and language. This coupled with the fact that even after we've torched their habitat the best they can resist with seems to be bows, arrows and giant birds and most people have got to come out feeling that there has to be another way.

I learned a few bits and pieces of backstory from the surrounding commentary on the movie, like apparently the earth is dying and apparently this stuff the corporation are mining "unobtanium" will solve humanity's problems somehow. Not only did I not get that unobtanium was supposed to be a room temperature superconductor, or any sense of earth's dire plight, but I couldn't really see how having the superconductor would help out with this plight in any event (talk about a phantom menace!).

Even given that I had received a full lesson in how humanity was suffering back on earth, pictures in 3D using the latest technological advances would have been nice, and how the use of room-temperature superconductors would solve this I still have a problem. If I'm a brain surgeon in need of a kidney transplant and the only acceptable donor is a high-school dropout with only one working kidney it is still not my right to commandeer that kidney to the dropout's detriment.

Even if some shenanigans had been arranged in the movie for the massacre of a few hundred blue aliens to be made somehow "legal" I think the resulting action would have had a polarising effect between those who believe humanity must be saved at any cost and those who believe some prices are just too high. Now that would have been an interesting movie.

As it is every stage of the story is telegraphed and all the characters even bemoan the fact that the endgame seemed inevitable. This is cold comfort when you know that depite apparently being opposed to the route taken every step of the way the characters all just did what they were told until the moment at which the plot told them to do the opposite. All sympathy lost. You can't understand why anyone's doing anything they're doing at any stage.

The movie also does an excellent job of kneecapping itself at some points. For example the time frame of the events in the movie are roughly three to four months. If the characters had been given more time, if the situation had dragged on, epically, for years then that would have just made the finer points of the storytelling a bit sloppy. As it was it just seemed utterly insane.

I could nitpick over the rights and wrongs of it for weeks but it comes down to this. I never understood why the "bad" guys were being so mean. I never understood why the "good" guys were being so passive. Therefore the whole thing just looked like pointlessly mean guys try to hand stupidly passive guys their ass and implausibly lose for reasons of plot.

I don't sympathise with anyone, I don't empathise with anyone, I find myself wondering about the wider implications of the plot and I start to realise my bottom hurts from sitting in the movie seat too long.

Suffice to say I won't be one of those who queues up to see this movie six or more times. I hope never to see it again. I don't understand how people can watch this and excuse it's glaring flaws and then say the Matrix Trilogy was overall irretrievably flawed and irredeemably terrible. I am of exactly the reverse opinion, Avatar is just dreck whereas the Matrix trilogy is hidelously flawed but has its heart in the right place. This is the right way to think about things and if you disagree with me you are wrong.

The luxury of having no readers.

An Author's Fear

What if I write something so bad that that you could make a 70 minute documentary about how badly it was written and constructed.

The Campbell Effect

It's going to be an old-fashioned story post today mostly inspired by news that Neill Blomkamp isn't the only filmmaker from a country not traditionally known for its film industry who can attract the Hollywood buck with a showreel. The BBC carries an item about a Uruguayan filmmaker, Fede Alvarez, who has been courted by Hollywood after posting his SF short Ataque de Pánico! (Panic Attack!) on YouTube.

What's got my story senses tingling is not so much the news that the internet is putting people in touch with one another in ways hitherto unimaginable; after all Blomkamp's story tells us that. What's baking my noodle today is the number of people who've been complaining about its lack of a story.

It would be easy to rant about how this is a filmmaker's technical reel, not a story-based submission and in fact many have on YouTube and also on snarker's paradise Slashdot. However such a swift rebuttal fails to account for one important thing. People are showing, in a mystic, hippie, "wisdom of crowds" kind of a way that they're becoming fed up to the back teeth with hollow spectacle or narrative pretensions. They want the two combined.

The basic reason the two often fail to go hand in hand is that the more money goes into making a film the less experimental the producers feel like being with the story. Also, it seems, if a director is tagged as an "effects" director then a decent enough story and/or dialogue is seen as a bonus rather than something to shoot for.

The holy trinity of narrative, dialogue and effects rarely come together to the extent that when they do, such as in feature films like the original Matrix, it changes the way people even view the art of cinema. The best reviewers routinely look at the three together. Even movies like Pulp Fiction change the landscape because what I've lazily classified as "effects" really adds up to "visual language" which may or may not require the addition of special effects.

The sad fact is that examples of movies like Pulp Fiction and The Matrix are too few and far between and even then they always leave something to be desired. Some people find Pulp Fiction's dialogue to be too mannered. Some people find The Matrix's dialogue too much like a sophomoric philosophy essay. One thing seems to be agreed upon: Narrative can survive a lack of visual language or top notch dialogue for many but without coherent and satisfying narrative the other two elements are left out in the cold.

The big problem here for Hollywood is something I'm going to dub the Campbell effect, which I only wish was a reference to Bruce Campbell. The Campbell effect refers to anthropologist Joseph Campbell's Monomyth, the basis for all movies since Star Wars changed the game in the 70s.

What defeated conventional wisdom then was that Star Wars came across to someone with an ear for dialogue like a generic firework display, yet it captured the imagination of a generation. Harrison Ford was not alone in feeling Lucas could write dialogue, but it might be best not to subsequently attempt to perform that dialogue as speech spoken by a coherent sentient being. The surprise success of Star Wars in spite of hideous dialogue made Alec Guiness bitter and has been a constant irritation to writers of natural language from that day until The Phantom Menace nose-dived in the popular imagination and labelled the Star Wars saga a disappointment that had once held much promise.

So what's the issue? I don't know if I'm qualified to answer that question. Only two or three people on the planet have ever experienced my best narrative work to date and it isn't even finished yet. I think it's really good, not in an egotistical way, I'm surprised I wrote such a great narrative myself. I don't know that it's great, though. The writing needs more work and then, once finished I need people to read it and love it in order to know that I've hit the nail on the head.

So my opinion remains that of a consumer rather than a producer of content, and it is simply this: I think that in order to write an effective narrative you need more than a basic understanding of some 12 step plan for making "every great story ever written". What you need  is an emotional depth enough to recognise what it is that qualifies as a sympathetic fulfilment of each of those steps in turn.

It's not enough to produce the convincing facade of a battle with the guardian of the threshhold between the known and the unknown. You need to understand the emotional landscape of your protagonist enough to tease out the true antagonist who stands at the threshhold of their internal landscape. You need to make the encounter happen in terms pregnant with meaning for that character. You need to make all parts of the story parts of the story's protagonist on an essential level.

That's not an easy job. It's the product of years of writing practice and not stylistic practice at that, it's a discipline of structural practice that is often suggested but rarely attempted. It also requires that the teacher of such practices has the emotional depth to recognise when a writer has missed that most vital of points. A reader can be such a teacher, I am proud enough to believe that the Mrs is actually such a reader, such an analyst of story that she can home in on emotional dithering and falsity and hold it to account. She would never claim to be a writer but she is the nemesis of the lazy storyteller.

That's why, to be truthful, I am so proud of Starfall. It's because she loves it so and she loves very few narratives to that degree. Her analysis always has the ring of truth and yet, after the fact, always seems so obvious.

In other news Rage are losing ground to Robojoe in such an elegantly narrated fashion that it shows up the publicity stunt that this whole staged "battle" really has been.

Until Monday make mine a robot destroying Uruguay whilst consuming a delicious Sunday roast with all the trimmings, all, of course, smothered in delicious chocolate.

P.S. Tweeter  ElPared says Avatar "was like a koala crapped a rainbow in my brain!!!" best commentary evar!