Posts
What are your tigers?
They come for us all at night when the light of the day is swallowed by the dying of our dreams.
How do you keep them at bay?
Many are scoffing at Anne Hathaway being able to pull off her role in Les Miserables.
Many scoff at you in your dreams to be an author. Who do you think you are?
I, for one, am a bruised dreamer wishing Anne success in her daring attempt to be all that she knows in her heart she can be.
So again I ask you:
What are your tigers?
How do you keep them at bay?
Or have you not yet found a way?
Visit Joshua's post which acted as a catalyst for this one:
http://vivelenerd.blogspot.com/2012/06/i.html
***
Monday, June 4, 2012
A CARPENTER OR A WOODPECKER? YOUR CHOICE.
I was talking with Gore Vidal ... no, he is quite alive. I talk with Roland, and he is all too alive, isn't he?
We were talking about how politicians love to dissemble with words.
Take Syrian President Bashar Assad who said:
"We will be forgiving only for those who renounce terrorism.
When a surgeon in an operating room cuts and cleans and amputates, and the wound bleeds, do we say to him,
'Your hands are stained with blood?' "
When a surgeon in an operating room cuts and cleans and amputates, and the wound bleeds, do we say to him,
'Your hands are stained with blood?' "
This after last week's massacre in Houla, where more than 100 people--many of them children--were killed.
I mentioned Roland's post about the internet craze of writing an entire novel in a month.
"Ernest, it comes down to whether one wants to be a carpenter or a woodpecker."
He scowled, "With novels, as with erecting buildings, it all comes down to design. And proper design takes time as does everything done with quality in mind."
I nodded, "Of course. Kidnap a woman's child and demand she write a novel within a month. She will write that novel."
Vidal chuckled, "Any Philistine could, but would it be a good novel? It is a truism of human nature that what one practices, one becomes.
If they practice slovenly writing, it is a certainty that they will become slovenly writers."
He smiled evilly. "Now, has Roland's penchant for geting into trouble gotten any less? And if not, do present me with the gory details."
And so I did. But Roland is a friend, so you will have to imagine the lurid tales I told Vidal.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
WHY DO I HATE BuMoWriMo? CASABLANCA is why
which sounds like you trying to ask the dentist to get his pain-inflicting fingers out of your mouth!
Ask any screenwriter.
From experience they know from their point (the start of the process)
to the film being released into cinemas, it takes about 18 months (for a decent movie at least).
The screen writing for TWILIGHT took only 6 weeks, but the filming and touching-up took roughly eight or nine months.
Yes, I know. Earlier I said it took 18 months … but that was for a decent movie, remember?
And then there is CASABLANCA:Yes, I know. Earlier I said it took 18 months … but that was for a decent movie, remember?
The start of production was on May 25.
Filming was completed on August 3, and the production cost $1,039,000 ($75,000 over budget) - above average for the time. The film was shot in sequence, mainly because only the first half of the script was ready when filming began.
Filming was completed on August 3, and the production cost $1,039,000 ($75,000 over budget) - above average for the time. The film was shot in sequence, mainly because only the first half of the script was ready when filming began.
The film was a solid, if unspectacular, success in its initial run, rushed into release to take advantage of the publicity from the Allied invasion of North Africa a few weeks earlier.
Despite a changing assortment of screenwriters frantically adapting an unstaged play and barely keeping ahead of production, and Bogart attempting his first romantic lead role,
Casablanca won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
Its characters, dialogue, and music have become iconic, and the film has grown in popularity to the point that it now consistently ranks near the top of lists of the greatest films of all time.
The uncredited Casey Robinson assisted with three weeks of rewrites, including contributing the series of meetings between Rick and Ilsa in the café.
Koch highlighted the political and melodramatic elements, while Curtiz seems to have favored the romantic parts, insisting on retaining the Paris flashbacks.
Wallis wrote the final line ("Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.") after shooting had been completed. Bogart had to be called in a month after the end of filming to dub it.
Despite the many writers, the film has what Ebert describes as a "wonderfully unified and consistent" script.
Koch later claimed it was the tension between his own approach and Curtiz's which accounted for this: "Surprisingly, these disparate approaches somehow meshed,
and perhaps it was partly this tug of war between Curtiz and me that gave the film a certain balance."
Julius Epstein would later note the screenplay contained "more corn than in the states of Kansas and Iowa combined. But when corn works, there's nothing better.”
My point?
All the writers CARED. Yes, they needed to hit a WORD QUOTA but THEY CARED about the quality of those words.
Quotations from Casablanca (1942)
Senor Ferrari: Might as well be
frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you out of Casablanca, and the
Germans have outlawed miracles.
Captain Renault: I've often speculated why you don't return to America. Did you abscond with the church funds? Run off with a senator's wife? I like to think you killed a man. It's the Romantic in me.
Rick: It was a combination of all three.
[Ugarte sells exit visas]
Ugarte: You despise me, don't you?
Rick Blaine: If I gave you any thought I probably would.
Ugarte: Rick, think of all the poor devils who can't meet Renault's price. I get it for them for half. Is that so ... parasitic?
Rick Blaine: I don't mind a parasite. I object to a cut-rate one.
Renault: If Rick has the letters, he's much too smart to let you find them there.
Strasser: You give him credit for too much cleverness. My impression was that he's just another blundering American.
Renault: You mustn't underestimate American blundering. I was with them when they "blundered" into Berlin in 1918.
Renault: Carl, see that Major Strasser gets a good table, one close to the ladies.
Carl: I have already given him the best, knowing he is German and would take it anyway.
[Renault has ordered that Rick's close immediately]
Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Renault: I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.
Employee of Rick's: [hands Renault money] Your winnings, sir.
Renault: Oh, thank you, very much. Everybody out at once!
Yvonne: Where were you last night?
Rick Blaine: That's so long ago, I don't remember.
Yvonne: Will I see you tonight?
Rick Blaine: I never make plans that far ahead.
Rick: Don't you sometimes wonder if it's worth all this? I mean what you're fighting for.
Victor Laszlo: You might as well question why we breathe. If we stop breathing, we'll die. If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die.
Rick: Well, what of it? It'll be out of its misery.
Victor Laszlo: You know how you sound, Mr. Blaine? Like a man who's trying to convince himself of something he doesn't
believe in his heart.
Major Strasser: What is your nationality?
Rick Blaine: I'm a drunkard.
Capt. Louis Renault: That makes Rick a citizen of the world.
[Of Victor Lazlo, who wants to escape from Casablanca]
Capt. Louis Renault: No matter how clever he is, he still needs an exit visa . . . or should I say two?
Rick Blaine: Why two?
Capt. Louis Renault: He is traveling with a lady.
Rick Blaine: He'll take one.
Capt. Louis Renault: I think not. I have seen the lady.
Capt. Louis Renault: My dear Ricky, you overestimate the influence of the Gestapo. I don't interfere with them and they don't interfere with me. In Casablanca I am master of my fate! I am . . .
Police Officer: Major Strasser is here, sir!
Rick Blaine: You were saying?
Capt. Louis Renault: Excuse me.
Rick Blaine: I congratulate you.
Victor Lazlo: What for?
Rick Blaine: . . . your work.
Victor Lazlo: I try my best.
Rick Blaine: We all try. You succeed.
[When Sam doesn't want to play "As Time Goes By"]
Rick Blaine: Play it!
Rick Blaine to Ilsa: Who are you really? And what were you before? And what did you do? And what did you think?
Rick Blaine: Here's looking at you, kid.
[After observing the gambling tables at Rick's]
Customer: Are you sure this place is honest?
Carl: Honest? As honest as the day is long!
[As he goes to hand Renault a bribe]
Jay Brandel: Capt. Renault ... may I?
Capt. Louis Renault: Oh no! Not here please! Come to my office tomorrow morning. We'll do everything businesslike.
Jay Brandel: We'll be there at six!
Capt. Louis Renault: I'll be there at ten.
Rick Blaine: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Capt. Louis Renault: I'm shocked ... shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.
[A croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Capt. Louis Renault: Oh, thank you ... very much. Everybody out at once!
Rick Blaine: Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.
Ilsa Lund: Kiss me. Kiss me as if it were the last time.
Rick Blaine: And remember, this gun is pointed right at your heart.
Capt. Louis Renault: That is my least vulnerable spot.
[After he watches Rick do the shooting, Renault gives orders to his police]
Capt. Louis Renault: Major Strasser has been shot. Round up the usual suspects.
[Last line]
Rick Blaine: Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
ZOMBIES AS THERAPY!
Why are we attracted to monsters?
No, I’m not talking about our love life. Ah, maybe I am. But that’s another post entirely.
We are drawn to monsters in our entertainment. Hannibal Lector. Dexter. Edward of TWILIGHT infamy, sparkles and all.
It is the allure of the forbidden. Hence the cover of the first TWILIGHT : outstretched hands holding a bright red apple. The eternal battle : “What I knew was right” vs. “What I wanted.”
We search for the humanity in the attractive monster : yes, he does terrible things, but never to me.
Samuel McCord chides the ghoul, Alice Wentworth, that Victor is basically a Walking Happy Meal to her. Bella is the same thing to Edward.
Should she have chosen Jacob, she would have had to walk on eggshells never to make him angry to escape the scars another mortal woman received who had the misfortune to love a werewolf.
Sure, vampires are sexy. And what a compliment that a sexy man wants your company when he could just as easily have you for dinner.
Our attraction to sexy vampires can be understood.
A vampire Megan Fox would be hard to refuse a nibble on the neck, if sips were all she planned to take. But the ghoul, Megan Fox, is hardly sexy when she develops an appetite for bad, and ultimately, good boys in JENNIFER’S BODY.
Vampires are the ultimate Bad Boy in many urban fantasies today.
Many women want to believe that the right woman could tame even a blood-thirsty monster … at least enough to be the ultimate protector, provider, and lover.
As a former counselor, I cannot stress enough how unrealistic and dangerous that is.
But it sells books.
It just isn’t true to the male nature. But it is a wish that is understandable since most of those novels are written by women –
Who have to guess at the nature of males as men have to with the nature of females.
But then there is our puzzling fascination with zombies.
Zombies embody an “all consuming evil” (pun intended.) A malevolent evil with no mercy, regard, or compassion … only hunger.
Worse.
If you are only infected instead of ingested, you become one of the hungry dead yourself! No sense of family, friend, or even of yourself.
And you develop terrible table manners!
Zombies are not unlike a force of Nature … and Nature has become unsettlingly dangerous these past months as we remember Japan, New Zealand, and Katrina.
So perhaps we are drawn to the zombie movie because the zombie reflects the all-too-real terrors in our newspaper headlines. Just as you cannot reason with a zombie, threaten its family or its further living … the same can be said of a terrorist.
Terrorists keep on coming until you kill them. The same can be said for the deranged killer who stalks into a schoolroom and begins to open fire with automatic weapons.
Zombies provide similar evils … but non-threatening since they could never exist. We can work out our fears of terrorists, muggers, and insane gunmen in the dark of the movie theater.
We can ask ourselves what would we do in a Zombie Apocalypse, who would we take with us, what we would take, and where would we go. In the unspoken thoughts of our minds, we translate that into a Nuclear War/Natural Disaster Apocalypse.
We identify with the survivors in the zombie movies. We want to believe that we would survive in such a crucible. And deep down that supports our fearful hope that we would survive should Nature, Nuclear War, or terrorism reign over our landscape.
Who would have thought it?
Zombies as therapy!
No, I’m not talking about our love life. Ah, maybe I am. But that’s another post entirely.
We are drawn to monsters in our entertainment. Hannibal Lector. Dexter. Edward of TWILIGHT infamy, sparkles and all.
It is the allure of the forbidden. Hence the cover of the first TWILIGHT : outstretched hands holding a bright red apple. The eternal battle : “What I knew was right” vs. “What I wanted.”
We search for the humanity in the attractive monster : yes, he does terrible things, but never to me.
Samuel McCord chides the ghoul, Alice Wentworth, that Victor is basically a Walking Happy Meal to her. Bella is the same thing to Edward.
Should she have chosen Jacob, she would have had to walk on eggshells never to make him angry to escape the scars another mortal woman received who had the misfortune to love a werewolf.
Sure, vampires are sexy. And what a compliment that a sexy man wants your company when he could just as easily have you for dinner.
Our attraction to sexy vampires can be understood.
A vampire Megan Fox would be hard to refuse a nibble on the neck, if sips were all she planned to take. But the ghoul, Megan Fox, is hardly sexy when she develops an appetite for bad, and ultimately, good boys in JENNIFER’S BODY.
Vampires are the ultimate Bad Boy in many urban fantasies today.
Many women want to believe that the right woman could tame even a blood-thirsty monster … at least enough to be the ultimate protector, provider, and lover.
As a former counselor, I cannot stress enough how unrealistic and dangerous that is.
But it sells books.
It just isn’t true to the male nature. But it is a wish that is understandable since most of those novels are written by women –
Who have to guess at the nature of males as men have to with the nature of females.
But then there is our puzzling fascination with zombies.
Zombies embody an “all consuming evil” (pun intended.) A malevolent evil with no mercy, regard, or compassion … only hunger.
Worse.
If you are only infected instead of ingested, you become one of the hungry dead yourself! No sense of family, friend, or even of yourself.
And you develop terrible table manners!
Zombies are not unlike a force of Nature … and Nature has become unsettlingly dangerous these past months as we remember Japan, New Zealand, and Katrina.
So perhaps we are drawn to the zombie movie because the zombie reflects the all-too-real terrors in our newspaper headlines. Just as you cannot reason with a zombie, threaten its family or its further living … the same can be said of a terrorist.
Terrorists keep on coming until you kill them. The same can be said for the deranged killer who stalks into a schoolroom and begins to open fire with automatic weapons.
Zombies provide similar evils … but non-threatening since they could never exist. We can work out our fears of terrorists, muggers, and insane gunmen in the dark of the movie theater.
We can ask ourselves what would we do in a Zombie Apocalypse, who would we take with us, what we would take, and where would we go. In the unspoken thoughts of our minds, we translate that into a Nuclear War/Natural Disaster Apocalypse.
We identify with the survivors in the zombie movies. We want to believe that we would survive in such a crucible. And deep down that supports our fearful hope that we would survive should Nature, Nuclear War, or terrorism reign over our landscape.
Who would have thought it?
Zombies as therapy!
***
Saturday, June 2, 2012
WANT A ROBERT DOWNEY, JR. AUTOGRAPH?
DO YOU WANT A ROBERT DOWNEY, JR. AUTOGRAPH?
HOW ABOUT MICHAEL WHELAN'S ON HIS OWN ARTBOOK?
Sure you do. How do you get either one? Both worth well over $200 each.
Will it take the end of the world? Ah, yes. The END OF DAYS to be exact.
Write a post or an Amazon review of my AVENGERS-style epic fantasy, END OF DAYS,
and you will be entered into the drawing.
Come JULY 4th, my best friend, Sandra, will draw two names. The first will get to choose which prize she or he wants. The 2nd will get the other.
Right now, there are only TWO names in the drawing. Gee, I wonder who is going to win?
But if enough people do posts or write reviews of END OF DAYS,
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0082ZJD08
Sandra will draw a THIRD name to get an ALEXANDER SKARSGARD'S AUTOGRAPHED PHOTO!!
Sandra will draw a THIRD name to get an ALEXANDER SKARSGARD'S AUTOGRAPHED PHOTO!!
***
Friday, June 1, 2012
ZOMBIES AMONG US!
Let me channel Lydia Kang here:1.) Half of the world's population is already infected ...
with toxoplasmosa gondii
a parasite that seems to devote its entire existence to being terrifying.
This bug infects rats, but can only breed inside the intestines of a cat. The parasite knows it needs to get the rat inside the cat
so the parasite takes over the rat's brain, and
intentionally makes it scurry toward where the cats hang out. The rat is being programmed to get itself eaten, and it doesn't even know it.
Humans and rats aren't all that different; thats why they use them to test our drugs.
All it takes is a more evolved version of toxoplasmosa, one that could to do us what it does to the rats.
So, imagine if half the world suddenly had no instinct for self-preservation or rational thought.
Oh, we call that adolescence.
2.) Mad Cow Disease:
It attacks the cow's spinal cord and brain, turning it into a stumbling, mindless attack cow.
And, when humans eat the meat ...
How it can result in zombies:
When Mad Cow gets in humans, they call it Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Check out the symptoms:
•Changes in gait (walking)
•Hallucinations
•Lack of coordination (for example, stumbling and falling)
•Muscle twitching
•Myoclonic jerks or seizures
•Rapidly developing delirium or dementia.
How many members of Congress does that describe?
So, imagine such an evolved disease, which we'll call Super Mad Cow getting a foothold through the food supply.
Say this disease spreads through blood-on-blood contact, or saliva-on-blood contact. Now you have a Rage-type virus that can be transmitted with a bite.
Just like the movies. With one bite, you're suddenly the worst kind of zombie:
A fast zombie.
3.) Neurogenesis.
As seen in ...
Laboratories around the world.
What is it?
You know all that conversy out there about stem cell research?
Well, the whole thing with stem cells is that they can basically be used to re-generate dead cells.
Particularly of interest to zombologists like ourselves is neurogenesis, the method by which they can re-grow dead brain tissue.
You can see where this is going.
Science is already able to re-grow the brains of comatose head trauma patients until they wake up and walk around again.
Couple that with the new ability to keep a dead body in a state of suspended animation
so that it can be brought back to life later, and soon we'll be able to bring back the dead, as long as we get to them quickly enough.
That sounds great, right?
Well, this lab dedicated to "reanimation research" (yes, that's what they call it) explains how the process of "reanimating" a person creates a problem.
It causes the brain to die off from the outside in. The outside being the cortex, the nice part of you that makes humans human.
That just leaves the part that controls basic motor function and primitive instincts behind.
So, you take a brain dead patient, use these techniques to re-grow the brain stem, and you now have a mindless body shambling around,
no thoughts and no personality, nothing but a cloud of base instincts and impulses.
Think about it. Under every legal system in the world,
all rights and responsibilities are terminated at death.
All it takes is someone with resources and a need for a mindless workforce of totally obedient slave labor.
How long until somebody tries this? We're betting somebody in the world, maybe North Korea, will have a working zombie by Christmas.
For further scientific scariness:
http://www.cracked.com/article_15643_5-scientific-reasons-zombie-apocalypse-could-actually-happen_p4.html
See 7 year old Victor Standish versus zombies in a Detroit infested with them!
http://www.amazon.com/THE-RIVAL-chapter-STANDISH-ebook/dp/B007JOUJ60
WHEN IN DOUBT, TRY NOT TO DIE_FRIDAY'S ROMANTIC CHALLENGE
Denise and Donna are doing another ROMANTIC FRIDAY CHALLENGE:
http://romanticfridaywriters.blogspot.com/
It is about wavering in coming to a decision and the consequences. My entry is from END OF DAYS.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0082ZJD08
Alice Wentworth and the spectral Victor Standish are the only "survivors"
in a violent quest to save the planet from an extra-dimensional invasion by beings much older than Earth.
Now, with all of Earth's champions dead, the way is clear for the fae High Queen, Oyggia, to lead her forces to conquer the mortal plane.
“I can see where you would have to know before you died.”
http://romanticfridaywriters.blogspot.com/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0082ZJD08
Alice Wentworth and the spectral Victor Standish are the only "survivors"
in a violent quest to save the planet from an extra-dimensional invasion by beings much older than Earth.
Now, with all of Earth's champions dead, the way is clear for the fae High Queen, Oyggia, to lead her forces to conquer the mortal plane.
Victor shook his head.
“We saved your realm. And unless you want to show your elite killers by your lack of gratitude how little you think of your realm, you owe us a debt.
“We saved your realm. And unless you want to show your elite killers by your lack of gratitude how little you think of your realm, you owe us a debt.
And you will pay up, bitch!”
Her words were a throbbing husk, “I do not owe you your lives, whelp!”
He made a face. “Ah, actually you do.”
He held up a restraining hand at her outraged face. “But we won’t act like you’re sane or anything like that and open to simple reason.”
Oyggia rasped, “For what are you asking, Standish?”
Victor snorted, “Oh, I’m not asking you for anything. But a last dance with Alice would be a nice touch to the end of the tales told of this night, don’t you think, Sinend?”
Sinend turned to her liege. “What harm could granting them a last dance do, Your Majesty?”
Her winter frost eyes grew contemplative. “None. And there actually may be profit for me in it.”
Victor snorted, “Well, we’ll dance anyway.”
“How, Victor?” I husked. “We cannot touch and there is no music.”
He winked. “No music? With me in your head, au contraire.”
A melodic, bitter-sweet waltz sang in my head with the sighing of violins, and I knew it was echoed in Victor’s as well.
“And touching?” I asked. “What shall we do about that?”
He smiled as sad as the tune in our heads. “What we’ve done since we first met, Alice. We mirror one another, moving in sync one with the other, heart to heart, movement for movement.”
He held out his hand. I placed my hand above his misty one. We began to dance slowly and gracefully. Hot tears blinded me and hid his face from me.
And yet, they did not, for I had his eyes ever before me, whether awake or asleep. As the Sidhe watched on, we danced. Some were openly grieved. Most were bored, ready to slay us at their queen’s command.
And yet, they did not, for I had his eyes ever before me, whether awake or asleep. As the Sidhe watched on, we danced. Some were openly grieved. Most were bored, ready to slay us at their queen’s command.
Our last dance was much like our whole love affair. We were so close, yet so far apart. Mirroring each other in step and heart, but forever separated by our very natures. Still, we moved as one, fluid and sweeping. The melancholy tune tugged at me soul-deep.
“What is this beautiful tune?”
Victor smiled, “It’s from a movie, BROTHER’S KEEPER. I thought it fit me since I am Death’s son.”
“How so?”
“With Death as my mother, isn’t everyone my brother and sister in a way? And didn’t you bleed and suffer for the whole world, Alice?”
“I fought for those I loved. To die for an abstraction is beyond me, Victor.”
We danced in sweeping steps that took us all along the circle of hilt-clenching warriors. Victor ignored them.
He studied me as if trying to memorize each gesture I made, every word I spoke. We whirled and twirled in a dance of love unlike the one of death Skeggjold and I had taken but moments before.
He murmured,“I love you, Alice.”
I smiled evilly. “I know.”
He winced. “Does that make me Han Solo or Princess Leia?”
“Oh, the dashing Han Solo, of course.”
I fought the urge to nuzzle my head on his shoulder. Oh, it was so hard to dance like this. But then had not our whole love been an affair of maddening abstinence?
“Victor, do tell me what is the name of this tune done so hauntingly by these violins?”
He smiled wickedly. “It’s called COWS ON THE HILL.”
“You jest! Whatever made you think of this as the music for our last dance?”
He winked. “As we waltz this tune, the transformed Queen Meropis is grazing contentedly in the Elysian Fields.”
I giggled,“Even now, with the rest of our lives measured in but heartbeats, still you can make me laugh.”
I drew in a breath I did not need as I swung in circles in our last waltz. “Are you dead? Are you a ghost? Oh, I must know, Victor, what are you?”
“In love with you, Alice. Leave it at that.”
“No, I simply cannot die without knowing.”
His wavering form kept dancing but his face grew grim. “You will weep bitter tears at the price of knowing, Alice. Do you still want me to tell you?”
“Yes! I will not die without knowing just how you come to be dancing with me, to have helped me these past days though all say you are dead.”
He and I danced as one, our feet seemingly floating above the still smoldering grass. He brushed my lips with his. They tingled. There were tears of farewell in his eyes.
“I can see where you would have to know before you died.”
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