And on it Goes

I had had a job interview last week that I thought went well. Not only was I happy with just having an interview, but having one that I thought went well and was for a job I could actually care about was a much needed breath of fresh air. But the problem with fresh air is that stale, polluted air always tastes that much worse afterward. I didn't get the job.

So the job search goes on. When I told my mother that the company had gone with someone else, she just shrugged her shoulders and said, "Oh, ok." Either, she already knew, because my aunt had most likely told her. Or, she knows that it is never easy. I had made the mistake of putting more faith in getting the job than I probably should have, but doing that lifted my spirits in what sometimes seems like a soul-crushing job hunt. In a way, the near miss, while pissing me off, also gave me a temporary reprieve from sending out resumes to recharge my batteries and jump back on the proverbial horse. In an odd way, not getting the job gave me the boost to keep applying (though, obviously, had I gotten the job, that would have been better).

Also, the writing goes on. The League is about to have its first meeting, in about a week. One of the things that will be read there, I hope, will be the first draft of the first act of my play. I'm not going to kid myself into thinking that it is very good, but first drafts aren't usually. LoKor wrote earlier about needing to finish a draft he knew he wasn't going to use in order to lay the foundation. That's what I'm doing. I'm hoping to be able to use more of my first draft than LoKor does, but it's the same thing. Foundation.

It took me a long time to realize that aiming for perfection is not always wise. Yes, in the end, the point of writing dozens of drafts is to have the best possible screenplay, play, novel, comic book, or porn script possible. But none of us are going to hit gold the first go around. And even if we seem to, we can't think we will. Or nothing will ever get written. I used to spend so much time trying to one up each line, getting cleverer and smarter and deeper with each next sentence that I'd write myself out. I would burn out two pages in because I was not bothering to just write; I was trying to do the impossible. I was sacrificing the plot for words that, in a film at least, would get twisted by the actors anyway. So now I aim lower. If people understand the action, get what I'm trying to say, don't feel I've wasted the past four years, and stay awake through the whole thing, then I think that I've gotten the first draft to do what it basically needed to do.

It took me even longer to realize that I need to write every day. Not everyone does. I think that most of us do, however. But for me, it's more than a discipline. It's more than just getting work done. I actually feel better when I write every day. The sun seems a bit brighter, the sky is a bit bluer, and I notice an extra bounce in my step. When I don't write every day, as I haven't yesterday or today, I tend to feel... dark inside. Like there's black tar slowing me down, pulling me down, trying to drown out the life. It's surprising what a difference a day can make for me, but I really do feel as if something is wrong when I don't write. I feel like the day's been wasted and I'm heading down a spiraling path, which I know is not going to be a fun ride.

So I try to write. Every day. To keep the sun bright and the sky blue and the storm at bay. And it usually helps. Especially if I'm letting the writing come without trying to be perfect.

The Worst Movies Ever

Because awful movies never get old...

Congrats Grads

To all League members who graduated this year, a big congrats. It seems to have taken my entire college career, but I now finally feel that I've found the long-term college friends that everyone seems to hold on to, no matter how old they are.

And to everyone else who is graduating school this spring, congrats and best of luck.

World, be ready. It's our turn now.

I Think Spring Is Usually Like This...

As the vertical cursor blinks against the plain white screen of whatever word-processing program I happen to have open at the time, the same thought keeps coming to me as I stare into the abyss of possibility that is a blank document. I like to type out it out, just to see how it looks. There is something about the physicality of words that gives thought a sense of legitimacy. To me anyway.

I usually put it in quotes and precede it with an ellipsis. It has a quality of being being spoken after a long, full pause.

"...so where do we go from here?"

I don't really know what it means. Who is "we?" Where is "here?" I have no idea, but it's become reflective a crossroads, a blank state, a sense of disarray. There's a short story in my head, one that begins with a young man waking up and smoking a cigarette out the window of his Parisian hotel room while a beautiful, naked woman steals a few more moments of rest. There is one major decision about my protagonist's backstory that's holding me back from diving into a second draft of my screenplay. There's another one that I've been wanting to begin since January, but haven't quite worked out the details. None of this includes a few collaborations, and while I don't think there's too much on my plate, I do suspect that it's all so damn distracting.

With so many directions, can things be said about me when I make a choice to commit the time to one or another or all? Can I afford to put things on the back burner, perhaps to never resurface for months? Where does it go, indeed.

There may be something deeper, as there usually is, but in going through this plenty of times, it almost always works out that when I'm writing, everything else feels infinitely better.

***

I guess I should throw in my two-cents about Spider-Man 3, although what hasn't been said? I could certainly pinpoint why, but suffice it to say that while I had a great time seeing the first two installments of the franchise, I actually did not enjoy myself watching Spider-Man 3. Maybe the assholes sitting behind me that didn't stop talking/snickering the entire film played a part in it. Maybe it was because I had to go to the bathroom for the first half of the film (the minute Peter Parker sat down at the piano, I literally clapped my hands, turned to Megan and said, "Well, I'm going to the bathroom."). I just wasn't engaged. The pacing was off, the writing was to coincidental and formulaic, and I was really surprised to see Tobey Maguire give what must have been his worst acting performance in years. He's too talented to sit back and rely on his big baby-blues and readily accessible tears. It came off as showy, a mailed-in performance, totally lacking the true emotional depth that he's showed before.

It didn't suck, but I do have to take back just about everything I said on Friday about the NY Times review. It turned out to be pretty dead-on.

(I won't, however, forgive Manohla Dargis for her Superman Returns review. Ever.)

Write on....


P.S. With Cake Man graduating this week, don't hold your breath waiting on a comic. We'll be back up and running at full speed next week.

Web of Tears

I saw Spider-Man 3 last night after building up my excitement for the picture over the past few weeks. The film had a lot of promise, going by, if nothing else, the track records of the previous two films in the franchise. The villains were some of Spider-Man's oldest and most interesting, there were a lot of unresolved issues between Harry and Peter, and the whole MJ thing just started going well for Peter. (I'll refrain from spoilers as best I can. Suffice it to say, if I feel like I'm about to give something away, I'll warn you, but that shouldn't be the case.) So what was my take on the third installment?

"Oh... Huh."

I was not impressed. I'm a fan of comic books, so it's annoying that there's little way I can phrase my following thought without seemingly coming down on comic books, but within the first ten minutes of the film, I kept thinking to myself, "This is just so much more comic-booky than the other two, in a bad way." By that, I think I mean that where I felt the first two films tried not only to be good superhero/comic book movies, but also good movie movies, this one was just going for comic book film success. The script seemed nowhere near as strong as did the ones for the first two movies. Every plot point was so driven by the writer, it was as if I could sense that, well, "it's time for a plot point, so here comes the incredibly ridiculous coincidence."

I acknowledge the fact that a lot of what happened in the film, well, some of it at least, occurred as it did in comic books. Coincidences are comic books. Things don't really happen to normal people in comic books. By that, I mean that once a normal person becomes a super person for whatever reason, every other cosmic event or random happening seems to happen to him or her only. And that's ok. But in Spider-Man 3, everything just seemed too easy.

I remember writing a scene for my own comic book movie where the love interest of the protagonist is kidnapped by a villain, without the villain's knowledge that she had anything to do with the hero. In fact, the hero's rescuing her was the impetus for the relationship. I got a note form a classmate (and fellow Leaguer) that he could see that coming from a mile away. While the teacher agreed it was somewhat predictable, he conceded that I had done my job well, and that it didn't read as though I had twisted fate within my script to create an impossible situation for the benefit of my plot.

But in Spider-Man 3, that's exactly how I felt. A few times. If I had brought that script into class, my teacher would have smacked me across the face with it. Everything was so driven by the writers that nothing seemed to flow naturally from the story. That was my biggest problem with the film.

But not my only one. Problem 2) the crying. So much crying. I don't know why Spider-Man didn't just cry on Sandman to kill him, it would have been more effective than anything else he was doing. Everyone was crying in the movie. Peter. MJ. Harry sort of. Aunt May. Uncle Ben (in flashback). The Sandman... somehow. Gwen Stacey. A bunch of extras. The usher in the theater, because apparently in Spider-Man world, crying is contagious.

Problem 3) Venom... er, the lack of Venom. Venom, who I understand to be Spider-Man's foil and arch-nemesis, the anti-Spider-Man, was barely in the film. He was introduced just to be defeated about ten minutes later. He was like Bane in Batman and Robin, completely under used and kind of dumb looking, a great villain turned into a temporary, fleeting threat. Way to go, Marvel.

Problem 4) -and this is where you might want to skip if you're concerned about spoilers- The Sandman/Uncle Ben stuff. Sandman was cool, but he was completely gratuitous. Unnecessary. The only reason Sandman was in there was so that there could be a double team fight at the end, which could have been done any number of ways sans Sandman, albeit not as a two-on-two brawl. Sandman looked cool, but there was no way, in the film, that Spider-Man was going to be able to beat him, and his presence added about a half hour of useless plot. What irked me the most was how, because of Sandman and the need to tie him personally to Peter, the filmmakers decided to change Uncle Ben's death to put it on Sandman's hands. (Um... remember those really coincidental coincidences I was talking about?) So most of Sandman's screen time was dedicated to rewriting how Uncle Ben died, which we didn't need. If they still wanted to make a 2 and a half hour movie, Avi Arad and co. should have cut Sandman and decided to focus more on Venom, who was almost lost in the picture.

Problem 5) Emo Peter. Um... yeah. I wonder if we'll get an Emo Spider-Man action figure that cries when you squeeze it. Or at least dances really badly.

Bruce Campbell was good in the film, but that's because, well, when is he not? But other than him, I was actually pretty disappointed. Marvel seems to have a habit of making lukewarm first installments of a trilogy, nailing the second completely, and just crapping out on the third. That's how the X-Men films went. That's how many people feel about the Blade series. That's certainly what happened in Spider-Man's case. And, if trailers for the second Fantastic Four are any indication, that's how that trilogy is going, as well. (Of course, with FF, there's been no real talk about the third yet, but the first wasn't great, and the second looks better, so we'll see.) I really wish that someone had stepped in and done something about Spider-Man 3. But, then again, when you're guaranteed to make almost 150 million your first weekend, if not more (just a ballpark figure I threw out) why even bother trying? So, yeah, I'm glad I eagerly waited for that one.

Oh, and P.S. In response to LoKor's post about the absence of any word about Venom in the NY Times review, I think I know why that was. He was barely in the film.

Compromises

(Click to enlarge image)

Missing: an Extra Villain

So...

The NY Times has their review of Spider-Man 3 out today...only it doesn't mention Venom...at all...in any way. There's also no mention as to whether or not the movie ties things up, completes the package set up by the other two films...so...did Manohla Dargis even see the whole thing before writing her review?

My guess? Nope.

Manohla Dargis is probably my least favorite film reviewer...on the planet. She makes no attempt to hide that she brings her own agenda to her reviews (see Superman Returns or even X-Men 3), and when it's all said and done, after she gets off her fucking soap box, I have no understanding, really, what the movie is even about let alone why a normal person who doesn't think that movies necessarily need to make grand statements about society would or would not want to see it. I'm not asking for a synopsis and a thumbs-up-or-down, I would just like to see her, you know, address the matter at hand. Save the analyzing for the inevitable book that will flood (and collect dust on) book shelves everywhere.

Dear New York Times: please let A.O. Scott review a superhero movie. Just once. PLEASE.