Sell-Out!

Wanna hear a funny story? A horse walks into a bar...no, not that one. An Irishman, Muslim, and architect are stranded at sea...not that one, either. A guy who loves film starts writing design posts for HGTV's 'Design Happens' blog. That one. I actually have no problem writing about design even though I'm probably the last guy you'd ask for design-related advice. The extent of my home makeover experience is tilting my flat-screen television to the right while sitting at the kitchen table eating dinner. So what? It's all relative, right?

I generally contribute between two to four posts per month, so I'll try to plant the links here on this blog (how many blogs are too many?) when they go live.

My first post went up last Saturday: http://blog.hgtv.com/design/2009/03/01/from-screen-to-home/

My second goes lives tomorrow, March 11. You'll be able to find it here: http://blog.hgtv.com/design/

UPDATED: Here's my latest entry: http://blog.hgtv.com/design/2009/03/14/change-of-address/

Let me know what you think!

Shameless Self-Promotion

My awesome sister who works at the Massillon Museum in Ohio always makes me feel like an established writer rather than an aspiring writer. She reads my work, offers me helpful critques and perhaps most importantly, endless amounts of support. One of the many things she's done to help is netting me a nice little mention in the Big Read press release her team put together. Take a look below for the details - and if you happen to be in Massillon, Ohio on March 26th at 7pm, make sure to stop by the night of one-act plays and show your support for a group of talented, hard-working local actors!

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News Release: The Big Read Night of One-Acts to Star Local Thespians

On Thursday, March 26, the Massillon Museum, with the collaboration of the Massillon Public Library, and Washington High School, will present an evening of original one-act plays relating to The Big Read and this year’s book selection, The Age of Innocence. Washington High School dramatics students will perform three plays under the direction of Eric J. Myers.

The evening will begin in the Washington High School auditorium at 7:00 p.m. with period music performed by members of the Canton Symphony Orchestra. The string quartet will perform between each of the plays.

Massillon Public Library Director Camille J. Leslie—a Georgia native fascinated by foreign languages, animals, folk music, and the The New York Times—wrote “A Heavenly View” for The Big Read project. The characters, representing actual people from Massillon’s history, depict a slice of local life during which an itinerant artist/cartographer began work on the 1870 birdseye view of Massillon. Joseph Morales (Nahum Russell), Samantha Smith (Esther Russell), Rebekah Seesan (Flora Russell), Dorroh Smith (Annie Russell), Alexis Jones (cousin Lucia), Kori Baker (Mary), Daniel Murphy (Albert), and Elizabeth Remley (Dorothy) will portray a scene in the Nahum and Esther Russell home on historic Fourth Street—later the home of the McClymonds Public Library, forerunner to Massillon Public Library.

Screenwriter George Nicholis is the full-time Public Relations Coordinator for Home and Garden Television in New York City. His original one-act for the Massillon Museum’s 2008 evening of one-act plays was well-received during the community's first Big Read project. Daniel Condo and Alexandria Burch will perform the two roles in “The Ghost,” Nicholis’s new play for this year.

Brian Centrone wrote “The Gilded Strings.” An accomplished short story writer, Centrone has an MA in Novel Writing from The University of Manchester (UK). He is an Adjunct Professor of English at SUNY/Westchester Community College (New York). Jenna Brinker plays Mrs. Winterguard, Tyler Bennett plays Howard, Elizabeth Remley is Nellie, and Kathryn Leffler is Ms. Shanksman.

Admission is free and open to all. No reservations are required. Washington High School is located at One Paul Brown Drive Southeast in Massillon.

The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The NEA presents the Big Read in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with Arts Midwest. The Big Read brings together partners across the country to encourage reading for pleasure and enlightenment.

For more information about western Stark County’s Big Read project, call the Massillon Museum at 330-833-4061 or visit www.massillonmuseum.org or www.NEABigRead.org.

Omitted

I need to mention that I saw The Visitor last night, and, if it didn't mess with the flow of my Top 8 of '08 list, I would've added it. But 'Top 9 of '08' doesn't carry the same tune, does it?

I'd heard good things about The Visitor, but it fell off my radar until recently, and Richard Jenkins being nominated for a Best Actor Oscar a week ago rekindled my interest. Jenkins really pulls your strings in this coming-of-age film. His character is sort of in deep-hybernation throughout most of the running time, and it's only upon contact with a foreign couple squatting in his Manhattan apartment that he slowly starts to thaw. You really don't appreciate how good he is here until you've seen his comedic turn in Step Brothers (also released last year). In The Visitor , his character is the 'straight man' in every way. It's interesting to see how far this character-actor's range can stretch between two very different films. If you pick up the film, which I highly recommend you do, pay attention. Thomas McCarthy directed it and he also directed The Station Agent - another coming-of-age story about unlikely friendships and bonds.

While my "Top 8" list might have been somewhat preemptive, I'll notch this one under Runner Up for the time being. We'll see how it ages.

My Turn

The Academy Award nominations are in, and the only surprise is that they were actually able to scrounge together five films worthy of the Best Picture title. I don't agree with their selections. But who ever does? 2008 was the poor man's film year. It was the Diet Coke to 2007's Coke Classic. You can call it the same thing and say it's better for you, but in exchange for your hard earned cash and a little slice of your soul you know all you're really going to get is a watered down beverage that'll give you bad gas and unpleasant memories. 2008 never really had a chance. Following a year populated by the likes of There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, Zodiac and Ratatouille, I suppose we were lucky to even find a few bright spots in the night sky. And few there were. So few that writing a Top Ten List is difficult. I've had to think about it a lot. I won't cheat by placing unworthy titles into this list just to hit 10. But I promise to stick to even numbers. I don't get paid to think, but if I did this list would have made me rich. Here's where the cards would fall were I writing the dialogue:

8 BEST OF '08

1. The Wrestler
Mickey Rourke's performance is reason enough, but the ringside brutality and tracking shots where we follow Rourke's hulking, sloped shoulders into meat markets and strip clubs notch this baby at numero uno.

2. The Dark Knight
A perfect follow-up to Batman Begins, Chris Nolan was able to take every storyline that's ever worked in a Batman comic and gangster flick and blend them into a chocolate milkshake from hell. Oh, and I guess Heath Ledger's Joker was OK, too.

3. Let the Right One In
Twilight sucks this movie's...blood. Sure, kid vampires are kinda scary, but when they rip the heads off of adolescent bullies and toss them into swimming pools? Bliss.

4. Wall-E
I was choked up throughout this beautiful, touching film. The whole time filled with fuzzy warmth and the urge to hug the person sitting next to me in the theater. I did not know this person. I did not hug him.

5. Synecdoche, New York
Didn't love it when I first saw it, but the damn thing grew on me like an unexpected nose hair. Andy Kaufman being handed the keys to unleash the insanity of his mind upon the film world is like getting a call on a Sunday and finding out you never have to go to work again.

6. Transsiberian
A movie that takes place on a train running from China to Moscow, but not without a few murders and cover-ups along the way was such a cool concept. No fancy bells and whistles, just a good, edge-of-your seat thriller.

7. Milk
I was kind of annoyed by Sean Penn's performance at first, but by the end of the film he breaks your heart. Everything about the filmmaking hit me the right way. The supporting cast, especially Josh Brolin and James Franco, were top notch. I love Gus Van Sant and he didn't disappoint here.

8. Gran Torino
Say what you will about the choppy acting from the non-pro actors. I'm not an Eastwood hater, and I'm not an Eastwood apologist. I love his Man With No Name Spaghetti Western trilogy and Dirty Harry, and Eastwood in this film is Eastwood from those films. A grizzly old bad-ass who wants to sit on his front porch with a shotgun and a bottle of Jack and pick-off anyone who dares ring his doorbell. I like this film.

Sue me. I may be the only person on the planet who didn't love Slumdog Millionaire and who liked Gran Torino. I make no apologies. And for the record, I would have included Revolutionary Road in the above category because of Thomas Newman's score...but I'm not that cheap.

2008 Reading List

Butterfly in the sk...I wouldn't do that to you!

I'll always remember 2008 as the year I gave my eyes a different kind of work-out. No longer were they molested and battered by endless frames of film on a silver and plasma screen. No, 2008 brought upon the heavy reading my eyes so loathed at first. Like the morning sun spearing the eye of a sleeping vampire. And there's one man to blame. Stephen King.

When I first started this blog thing (not a diary, damnit!), I wrote about how Mr. King's part biography / part instruction manual really gave me the jump start I needed to plow into some heavy reading I'd been putting off. Because of him, this year has brought on some pretty great adventures. I'll list all the ones I read, in the order I read them, along with some ratings should anyone get curious:

STEPHEN KING: ON WRITING by Stephen King (Excellent)
RED HARVEST by Dashiell Hammett (Excellent)
THE DAIN CURSE by Dashiell Hammett (Good)
THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy (Excellent)
THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett (Very Good)
THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF CAVALIER & CLAY by Michael Chabon (Excellent)
THE BODY by Stephen King (Very Good)
WISE BLOOD by Flannery O'Connor (Good)
DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS by Walter Mosley (Excellent)
A RED DEATH by Walter Mosley (Very Good)
R.L.'S DREAM by Walter Mosley (Good)
WATCHMEN by Alan Moore (Excellent)
WHITE BUTTERLY by Walter Mosley (Very Good)

These were the books that occupied my time, my thoughts, and informed my writing this year. I read a lot of Walter Mosley to get into the mood of the script I just finished. Somewhere in the process I got hooked. The ink in his pen bleeds noir. I read a lot of Hammett for his use of crime and noir conventions. This year I'd like to add a little more Stephen King and Arthur C. Clarke to the pile. To some the above list might look slight. To me, it's a tower. Admittedly I'm a slow reader. Baby steps, people! I'll post my "2009 To Read" list soon. But in the meantime...Happy New Year!

The Coming Age of Story

Just read this really interesting article on "story", and how Hollywood still struggles with that very concept as it applies to film. Enjoy!

http://www.writersstore.com/article.php?articles_id=1004&discount=ezine&source=ezine
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The Coming Age of Story
by James Bonnet

The interest in story is greater now than it has ever been, and – putting aside for a moment the movie business, television, book publishing, other major producers of story and their consumers – that interest now extends to every facet of our society.

Heavily funded, major research projects now exist throughout government, the sciences, and the corporate world. And everywhere that interest is growing. Everyone – from stock brokers selling derivatives, lawyers trying to convince a jury, preachers trying to save our souls, and neophytes looking for employment – wants to be able to effectively tell their story – who they are, what they do, how they (or their products) fit into the scheme, and why they (or their products) are destined for great things.

In short, people everywhere have begun to realize just how important story is
and the key role it was meant to play in our lives. We are, in fact, entering the age of story and the time is not far off when knowing what stories actually are and how to create them may well be the most valuable knowledge a person can possess. In such a world, unbounded opportunities will exist for skilled storymakers and others with a profound knowledge of the art.

There is, however, a fly in the ointment. Along with this new interest, and considerable research, has come the realization that the inner workings of a great story are more elusive and profound than previously assumed – and what great stories actually are, the real purpose they serve, and the mechanics of their creation remains, for the most part, an intriguing mystery.

The three act structure, which is the most popular storymaking tool being used in Hollywood these days, it turns out, isn’t really a story structure at all. It’s a holdover from the theatre and the arbitrary division of an action into three parts, and you can’t find it in the great stories and literary masterpieces of the past. Other popular structures like those that hinge on conflict and turning points are derived from Aristotle’s classical story structure – which is important because it’s a structure of action and will appear naturally in any problem solving action that encounters resistance. But there’s much more to a story than the action. Then there’s Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey which is also important and even more sophisticated because it is grounded in the initiation rites of primitive societies and has a lot to say about our psychological development. But taken together, the Classical Structure and The Hero’s Journey still add up to just a small part of what writers and filmmakers will need to know to actually master the art form. There are huge missing pieces to the puzzle.

This, of course, is not hard to prove – when you consider that out of the hundreds of feature films that are produced each year in Hollywood, fewer than ten or fifteen are worth seeing. That’s a pretty sorry statistic. And in television it’s even worse. Mozart, Beethoven and Van Gogh (artists who understood their art forms) could do what they did every time. That’s not happening in Hollywood. If you study the credits of our top writers and directors, you’ll discover a few outstanding hits and a long list of things you never heard of. Why? Because the principles of the art form have not really been established so it’s still a hit and miss process. Which leaves us, in effect, with an entire industry manufacturing something which it doesn’t understand. Story. That leaves about six and a half billion people in this world with a desperate need for real stories which isn’t being met. So despite the nine billion dollar yearly grosses, there is a vast, untapped potential market out there – and if we can actually crack the story code, there will be, to paraphrase a line from Shakespeare in Love, “rubies in our saddlebags.”

Be that as it may, there’s a new, higher level of understanding emerging in the world of story concerning deep, hidden story structures which all great stories have in common. These hidden structures are intimately linked to our evolutionary journey and are extremely powerful. They are the reason some of these great stories defy time and remain active and relevant for thousands of years and why others became so charismatic that religions were formed around them – religions that attract millions of followers who have worshipped the revealed truths in these stories for an equally long time. These new deeper structures make clear where these extraordinary stories got their enormous power and why these hidden structures are the missing pieces of the puzzle.

In this new series of articles, I will attempt to reveal the significance of these
new deep structures and why it is critical for every writer and storymaker to know. This is what’s coming in the age of story, and this is what we will need to know, if we are going to become masters of the craft.

By far the most important revelation contained in these new deeper structures has to do with the source of our creativity. And this is absolutely where the search for the truth about story must begin.

When we work with the creative process, the creative decisions we make are governed by positive and negative intuitive feelings. That’s how we know what works - by how we feel about our ideas.

Well, what’s behind those feelings? Where do those feelings come from? Carl Jung called the source of those feelings the collective unconscious. Others call it the muse, the psyche, the holy spirit, or the God within. George Lucas called the positive aspect The Force and the negative aspect The Dark Side. I call it the creative unconscious, the hidden truth or the self. You can call it anything you like.

My own take on it is this. We traveled an evolutionary path. A record of this path has been kept and is buried deep in the unconscious like a treasure. This treasure is probably stored in the DNA. It may be a manifestation of the DNA itself. Whatever it is, or whatever you call it doesn’t matter, it is the source of all of the higher intelligence and hidden wisdom we possess. It plays a major role in our lives and it plays a major role in storymaking. And when we’re creating stories, it helps to be aware of it.

Great stories, especially those created in oral traditions, bring this creative unconscious wisdom to consciousness. The information contained in great stories
is all about this hidden wisdom and how we can use it to achieve higher states of being and awareness.

And how do great stories do this? With the use of metaphors.

Metaphors are the symbolic language of great stories. This hidden, creative unconscious energy is translated into the visual images and intricate structures of story. These metaphors are made of real things that have been taken apart and artistically rearranged to represent these hidden truths. The unique combination of these real things when brought together creates the characters, gods, Shangri-las, haunted houses, and real people, etc. which expresses different attributes and dimensions of the hidden energies. The natural world is taken apart and rearranged to reveal the supernatural, unconscious, hidden world. And this is what makes a psychological connection. When these visual images correspond to this hidden energy, you get a story of extraordinary power.

In any event, if you analyze hundreds of great stories, the patterns hidden in these deeper structures begin to emerge. These patterns are called archetypes, and you can use these archetypal patterns to create models of this hidden truth. These models reveal some amazing secrets, not the least of which is a dynamic model of the human psyche, all of the life cycles we experience from birth to death, and all of the archetypes and passages that can lead us to higher states of being and success. You can use these models not only to analyze and create great stories, you can use them to fathom your own psychology and analyze important events in the real world. In fact, you can use them in every aspect of your life.

And why is all of this important to writers and filmmakers? Because the patterns hidden in the deep structures of these great stories have enormous power, and if you utilize these patterns in your stories, you can create super powerful stories that have a significant impact on the world. And, if that isn’t enough, there are enormous psychological benefits to be gained from a creative storymaking process that engages and collaborates with the creative unconscious self (the source of our creativity) using our intuitive feelings.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

I love it when the theme of a movie or book is posed in the form of a question. Aside from its brilliance, it's a great alternative to pitching a concept as "Star Wars meets Showgirls", or "a cross between Sisterhood of the Travelling Panties and Godzilla, with a dash of Daddy Day Camp thrown in for good measure." That's no good. 'Who Watches the Watchmen?' MUCH better!

I've gotten into the habit lately of reading certain books before their film adaptations are released. I've done it with No Country for Old Men, The Road and now Watchmen. Sure, it can ruin the element of surprise (depending on the faithfulness of the adaptation), but it can also save the story in case the movie is dreck. Who would want to read a great novel right after a shitty movie adaptation has plagued theatres? I'd much rather read the book first and THEN sit in a theatre, knuckles cracking in anticipation. Another upside is having a cast already assigned to their roles, so while reading I could easily tack Jackie Earl Haley's gravelly, Marlboro-fucked voice onto Rorschach, Jeffrey Dean Morgan's onto The Comedian, etc.

The comic itself is excellent. Filled to the brim with noirish twists, turns and clues. Jam-packed with exposition. Everything you'd want from a proper whodunit. I'll spare the details so as not to spoil the fun. And yes, I'm probably the last geek on the surface of the planet to have read it. But I'm glad I have. I can now say, I'm VERY eager to see what Zach Snyder does with Watchmen. The look of the film in the trailers thus far is arresting, painterly. It looks like he's captured the essense and tone of the comic book, and cooked up a visual feast that will teleport the characters from paper panels to silver screen. As long as they include the flashback scene where a young Rorschach chews the face off of a pesky bully, I'll be happy.