tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51563560708600797852024-03-07T16:31:49.216-05:00ODIN'S AVIARYFor the new, post-7/2013 Aviary, please head over to:
http://www.jeffwills.net/odinsaviaryJeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.comBlogger551125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-8707638770531272082013-07-11T11:12:00.000-04:002013-07-11T11:12:05.908-04:00YOU ARE IN THE WRONG PLACEUnless you're here to read the "back-catalogue" of Jeff Wills' thoughts and memories from <a href="http://jeffwills.blogspot.com/2006/12/in-beginning.html" target="_blank">December 18, 2006</a>, through <a href="http://jeffwills.blogspot.com/2013/07/winging-away.html" target="_blank">July 10, 2013</a>. If that's why you're here, then good. You've landed. This here 'blog is exclusive to that period, and includes formatting and (some of the) images associated with the given date.<br />
<br />
HOWEVER. There is all this AND MORE here:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.jeffwills.net/odinsaviary">http://www.jeffwills.net/odinsaviary</a></span></div>
<br />
New posts. Current topics. Better writing. Please add it to your subscriptions, check with it daily, obsess to an unhealthy degree. (While you're at it, you could also add <a href="http://www.jeffwills.net/jeffwillsshows/" target="_blank">http://www.jeffwills.net/jeffwillsshows/</a> for appearance updates.) Thank you.<br />
<br />
I mean it: THANK you.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-27215773001811502382013-07-10T09:00:00.000-04:002013-07-10T09:00:00.569-04:00Winging AwayAs promised (see <a href="http://jeffwills.blogspot.com/2013/04/biding-do-change-and-itsanticipation.html">4/24/13</a>), the Aviary is moving. I had my personal and aspirational reasons for doing so, which have lately been enhanced by some intuition about how Google will be handling their online offerings over the next few years. To wit: They will consolidate. Maybe this only means Blogger will become part of the G+ fold, maybe it means it will be replaced in lieu of a quicker, lighter posting platform. It's not for me to say, but when you add this belief to the priority of gathering myself under one domain, they only choice left is to pack up and move.<br />
<br />
I'm a sentimental sort. Even something as pragmatic and insubstantial as changing a blogging platform gives me pause to reflect. We've had some times, haven't we...?<br />
<br />
[INSERT BOTTLE EPISODE HERE]<br />
<br />
...Whew! Thank goodness you happened to have a meat craving and unlatch this freezer locker, otherwise we would've frozen to death any minute now, for sure!<br />
<br />
(You've no idea how much I relish that <i>Three's Company </i>reference. Enough, shall we leave it said, to actually [if but casually] cite my reference.)<br />
<br />
Mostly I think about many of the themes expressed in my <a href="http://noyoutellit.com/" target="_blank"><i>No, YOU Tell It!</i></a> contribution (see <a href="http://jeffwills.blogspot.com/2013/04/nyti-1-personal-revisionist-history.html">4/15</a>[-22]/13). Themes such as idealism, naïveté and self-control; growth and transformation; choice and chance. I hesitated to start this here 'blog. The notion of essentially "journaling" at that particular stage of my life and in such a public fashion bothered me for several reasons. It would be revealing, it would be eventually (though hopefully not quickly) outdated, it would be time-consuming, it would be kind of permanent in a new way. In particular, I was aware it meant I couldn't hide or lie very effectively anymore.<br />
<br />
That suggests that I was some kind of flagrant and deceptive con artist, and I was not. I was, however, a young actor struggling to make it all work. So I'd say I lied as much as the next struggling young actor, trying to make it all work. My hat's off to those amongst you who found a way to struggle more honestly. I had a sheaf of ready-made lies and excuses for my work, my relationships, and of course myself. Writing it all down in a public journal would make me accountable. What I was surprised to rapidly realize was that I liked being held accountable.<br />
<br />
I am embarrassed - <i>very </i>embarrassed - by old diaries. These are documents no one can ever read but me, yet all I can see in them is shame for how naïve or blind I was. They seem like records of ignorance, like I always manage to catch myself when I'm stuck or in-between discoveries. Somehow, having an audience for my diary helped me to grow through writing it. To capture my ignorance, yes, but also the realizations and growth that came about out of that blindness. I'm quite grateful for that. It wasn't what I intended.<br />
<br />
What I intended was to grab a little corner of the Internet that I could personally impact (as opposed to my then-new, contracted website) and, out of that decision, eventually to create a record of the struggle to live a meaningful life. I suppose it was the twin goals of meaning and honesty that led me to where I am - meaning by purpose, honesty by accident.<br />
<br />
This is not the end of that process. I am not yet as honest as I could be. There's meaning yet to be found. But progress is change, and change I must.<br />
<br />
So, there will be one more post at this address - a bit of a perma-post - directing you to by all means pore over the back-catalogue, but also follow me over to the new base of operations. Who knows what we'll find there?<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VtqHGRZCXwM/Udxn-0UF5YI/AAAAAAAAIrA/qC97E1LmcnQ/s1600/tumblr_mmccwjk21R1spinnqo1_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VtqHGRZCXwM/Udxn-0UF5YI/AAAAAAAAIrA/qC97E1LmcnQ/s400/tumblr_mmccwjk21R1spinnqo1_1280.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-23473539292037920062013-04-24T17:00:00.002-04:002013-04-24T17:00:43.246-04:00Biding a Do: Change and Its...AnticipationHwæt: I am considering moving <i>Odin's Aviary</i> - which since its inception has called Blogger its home - on over to my <a href="http://www.jeffwills.net/" target="_blank">refreshed website</a>. The reasons are various and sensible; the hesitation largely ignorant and nostalgic. Yet I tarry.<br />
<br />
This week I performed, and had my writing performed, at <a href="http://noyoutellit.com/" target="_blank"><i>No, You Tell It!</i></a>, which was a much-anticipated event on my part that I used as motivation to get certain of my creative goals in order, post-initiation into fatherhood. I try occasionally to set my own deadlines, but they're never as effective as those applied to me by an outside party.<br />
<br />
Anyway, as I frenetically revised my personal narrative for April 22nd, I also finally got off my duff to re-engineer my website for April 6th, when the press for the event would start. When I passed around the new website for feedback, the ever-amazing <a href="http://www.pavartiktyler.com/" target="_blank">Pavarti</a> gave me a laundry list of "suggestions," primary of which was to get the dang <i>Aviary</i> over where I profess to call myself some kind of writer, and<i> tout de suite</i>.<br />
<br />
There is an interesting thematic overlap here, of the sort I used to often experience early in my acting career. In those days, I attributed it to rather mysterious, quasi-Jungian synergy - a sign of "following the path." Now-a-days, I tend to think of it as me trying to tell myself something, quietly yet persistently, from the background of the daily struggle and strife. Either way, it is that weird sensation of life imitating art. Or whatever whatever.<br />
<br />
I took to the revision of my website as something of a workshop in figuring out what in the hell I'd be doing as a creative person who's prioritized the support of his family over unbounded freedom to act like an actor. I took to the writing assignment for <i>No, You Tell It!</i> as a workshop in really going for effective and significant revision of my writing. We were all writing to a theme - in this case: "outdated" - and I ended up writing about becoming a parent, the life cycle of a theatre troupe and the regular yet somehow unpredictable rhythms of life itself.<br />
<br />
All of this seems very well-ordered, connected and natural. I assure you: I PLANNED NOTHING. I'M MAKING THIS UP AS I GO ALONG.<br />
<br />
As I always have. I need to surprise myself. It's at least to some extent a coping mechanism - aimed against depression, uncertainty, insecurity. There's a tension in my life - between a need for order and a need for surprise - that is mirrored in my writing process. I mean, I <i>have</i> written from an outline before. Usually it's under duress, on threat of torture by 1) a writing partner, and/or 2) an admittedly limited personal capacity for long-term memory. Generally speaking however, what I enjoy about writing is the surprises the process brings me.<br />
<br />
It's not dissimilar to improvised comedy. You have an invisible framework - threes, setup/suspension/punchline, what-you-will - and just try to make poking around in the dark as interesting and relevant as possible until you hit on the hilarious. It is all about the moment, and nothing feels quite as like magic as that discovery. It would be a shame to capture it, mold it, distort what is plainly inspiration into something staid and flat and un-prophet-able.<br />
<br />
So has gone my internal justification for not working over my own work when it comes to writing. Revision would squelch whatever was special about the original experience. Prove a dishonor to that inspiration. What an incredible excuse.<br />
<br />
So how does someone who has it built into his philosophy <u>not</u> to revise, go about revising his life?<br />
<br />
Though it seems grandiose to put it that way, it does not feel like an exaggeration. Even if becoming a parent hadn't meant sacrificing certain other creative opportunities, if I had attained a level of fiscal success that allowed me to keep acting up a storm and keep coming home by 5:00, parenthood still necessitates learning how to better order one's life. I laugh, derisively, at my younger self's occasional complaints of a lack of time or occasional boredom. Then I cry just a little bit, inside, before hitching up my (sexy) work slacks and tackling another day.<br />
<br />
I did some good work through <i>No, You Tell It!</i>, work I'm proud about, toward learning how to effectively step back and revise. And my website looks much better. I count these successes. But: I did not succeed.<br />
<br />
I did not succeed because the website, though it is pretty and more functional, still lacks direction - intention - and still emphasizes me as an actor. I did not succeed because my piece for the "outdated" event suffered in similar ways, still written in a voice aggressively eschewing an easy read, and still emphasizing exploration over communication. I still don't know what I'm doing. But I'm on the path, physically and metaphysically, which is sometimes the best you can do.<br />
<br />
So there will be more changes coming - revisions, if you will (and whether you will or won't, frankly). Among these: <i>Odin's Aviary</i> will be transplanted to live under my moniker, part of the unified-field-theory of Jeff.<br />
<br />
Perhaps somehow prescient of this, one of the live interview questions asked of me on stage at <i>No, You Tell It!</i> in prelude to my story being presented was about this here 'blog title. I explained about thought and memory, Huginn and Muninn, and how that seemed appropriate for a personal 'blog, without getting into my nigh fetishistic adoration of ravens. One interesting thing I failed to realize until just now, however, is that a primary characteristic of Odin himself is...fatherhood.<br />
<br />
There might be something to this "reviewing what we create" after all.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://odin.ele.tue.nl/wp-content/gallery/history/odin_manual_of_mythology.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="383" src="http://odin.ele.tue.nl/wp-content/gallery/history/odin_manual_of_mythology.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Found <a href="http://odin.ele.tue.nl/history-of-odin/" target="_blank">here</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-22547683934424408152013-04-22T09:15:00.000-04:002013-04-22T09:15:00.891-04:00NYTI FINAL: Pining 4 UFor context, please see the post of <a href="http://jeffwills.blogspot.com/2013/04/nyti-1-personal-revisionist-history.html" target="_blank">4/15/13</a>:<i> </i><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Pine trees are the first to grow back after a fire. Also, Euripides uses one to symbolize emasculation in <i>The Bacchae</i>."<i><br /></i></blockquote>
<i>No, YOU Tell It! - "Outdated"</i> takes place <a href="http://www.jeffwills.net/jeffwillsshows/2013/4/9/no-you-tell-it-outdated">7:00 pm TONIGHT, Y'ALL</a>,
at Jimmy's 43, and requires no ticket, nor reservation. It fills up quick, and the bar is
crowded so...you know. Hope to see you there!Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-8856498812721047492013-04-21T12:30:00.000-04:002013-04-21T12:30:01.523-04:00NYTI #7: Slap DashFor context, please see the post of <a href="http://jeffwills.blogspot.com/2013/04/nyti-1-personal-revisionist-history.html" target="_blank">4/15/13</a>:<i> </i><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I glance down at one of five insane costumes I will be rapidly tearing off and slapping back on between scenes as I transition from archetype to archetype. It is all tight, colorful stripes - vertical on the pants, horizontal on the shirt - with a vest and a bellboy’s elastic-strapped fez layered atop."</blockquote>
<i>No, YOU Tell It! - "Outdated"</i> takes place <a href="http://www.jeffwills.net/jeffwillsshows/2013/4/9/no-you-tell-it-outdated">7:00 pm Monday, April 22nd</a>,
at Jimmy's 43, and requires no ticket, nor reservation (though you may
have plenty after reading this). It fills up quick, and the bar is
crowded so...you know.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-48903220160989883272013-04-20T12:30:00.000-04:002013-04-20T12:30:00.606-04:00NYTI #6: Hang the CheeseFor context, please see the post of <a href="http://jeffwills.blogspot.com/2013/04/nyti-1-personal-revisionist-history.html" target="_blank">4/15/13</a>:<i> </i><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"By 'backstage' in this context, I of course mean behind an incredibly tall hanging of cheesecloth, suspended from clothesline."</blockquote>
<i>No, YOU Tell It! - "Outdated"</i> takes place <a href="http://www.jeffwills.net/jeffwillsshows/2013/4/9/no-you-tell-it-outdated">7:00 pm Monday, April 22nd</a>,
at Jimmy's 43, and requires no ticket, nor reservation (though you may
have plenty after reading this). It fills up quick, and the bar is
crowded so...you know.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-58837267340337203322013-04-19T09:15:00.000-04:002013-04-19T09:15:00.516-04:00NYTI #5: Cherish with CareFor context, please see the post of <a href="http://jeffwills.blogspot.com/2013/04/nyti-1-personal-revisionist-history.html" target="_blank">4/15/13</a>:<i> </i><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"She comes by her careful appreciation naturally, just like her über-organized, former-dancer-turned-archivist mother."</blockquote>
<i>No, YOU Tell It! - "Outdated"</i> takes place <a href="http://www.jeffwills.net/jeffwillsshows/2013/4/9/no-you-tell-it-outdated">7:00 pm Monday, April 22nd</a>,
at Jimmy's 43, and requires no ticket, nor reservation (though you may
have plenty after reading this). It fills up quick, and the bar is
crowded so...you know.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-25177132284525929002013-04-18T09:15:00.000-04:002013-04-18T09:15:00.179-04:00NYTI #4: Excessive Creative ForceFor context, please see the post of <a href="http://jeffwills.blogspot.com/2013/04/nyti-1-personal-revisionist-history.html" target="_blank">4/15/13</a>:<i> </i><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I’ve willingly created someone who exists to replace and exceed me."</blockquote>
<i>No, YOU Tell It! - "Outdated"</i> takes place <a href="http://www.jeffwills.net/jeffwillsshows/2013/4/9/no-you-tell-it-outdated">7:00 pm Monday, April 22nd</a>,
at Jimmy's 43, and requires no ticket, nor reservation (though you may
have plenty after reading this). It fills up quick, and the bar is
crowded so...you know.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-22547236929152933852013-04-17T09:15:00.000-04:002013-04-17T09:15:00.480-04:00NYTI #3: Falling BehindFor context, please see the post of <a href="http://jeffwills.blogspot.com/2013/04/nyti-1-personal-revisionist-history.html" target="_blank">4/15/13</a>: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I was a physical comedian - speaking of 'behind the times.'"</blockquote>
<i>No, YOU Tell It! - "Outdated"</i> takes place <a href="http://www.jeffwills.net/jeffwillsshows/2013/4/9/no-you-tell-it-outdated">7:00 pm Monday, April 22nd</a>,
at Jimmy's 43, and requires no ticket, nor reservation (though you may
have plenty after reading this). It fills up quick, and the bar is
crowded so...you know.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-36746946715235537122013-04-16T09:15:00.000-04:002013-04-16T09:15:00.490-04:00NYTI #2: Paradise LostFor context, please see the post of <a href="http://jeffwills.blogspot.com/2013/04/nyti-1-personal-revisionist-history.html" target="_blank">4/15/13</a>: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Any new parent will tell you: Thank God for streaming television. I am enjoying the hell from out of <i>Lost</i>. You know: the television show? The one with which everyone seems still to be a little angry over its ending? I haven’t seen its ending. I haven’t even seen all that far past its beginning. And, as far as I can tell, people who are pissed about its potential Purgatorial persuasion envy me that. My innocence.<i>"</i></blockquote>
<i>No, YOU Tell It! - "Outdated"</i> takes place <a href="http://www.jeffwills.net/jeffwillsshows/2013/4/9/no-you-tell-it-outdated">7:00 pm Monday, April 22nd</a>,
at Jimmy's 43, and requires no ticket, nor reservation (though you may
have plenty after reading this). It fills up quick, and the bar is
crowded so...you know.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-83888704893236097612013-04-15T10:38:00.000-04:002013-04-15T10:38:08.742-04:00NYTI #1: Personal (Revisionist) History<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnhr28nCZVyxGue5jzdp0qzR0NsbVB_Y8QCFvK51vgM_LIYDNEpkSlw4zHP21a_DQk2q3ibxXu038htV2r3BmOJzwOPCt5mi4VlzdvZfEmlXtXMhE8VogHlmj7AZwd-FsMzyxUR6FA7oE/s1600/tumblr_mka6u8cPYb1rcn58ko1_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnhr28nCZVyxGue5jzdp0qzR0NsbVB_Y8QCFvK51vgM_LIYDNEpkSlw4zHP21a_DQk2q3ibxXu038htV2r3BmOJzwOPCt5mi4VlzdvZfEmlXtXMhE8VogHlmj7AZwd-FsMzyxUR6FA7oE/s200/tumblr_mka6u8cPYb1rcn58ko1_1280.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image (redacted) by<br />
<a href="http://sartzandesign.webs.com/" target="_blank">Sha-Nee Williams</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In about a week, I'll be performing on stage again. Twice, in a way. Once performing a reading of someone else's personal narrative. The same night, that person will be performing my own - and I will be sitting on stage while he or she does so (just as they will for my recitation). Of the two, I'm far more nervous for the latter, because I'm not sure I got my story right.<br />
<br />
<i><a href="http://noyoutellit.com/" target="_blank">No, YOU Tell It!</a></i> is a great "switched-up storytelling" event that I came to by way of <a href="http://jeffwills.blogspot.com/2012/10/in-league-with-liars-storytelling-and.html" target="_blank">my participation in <i>Liars' League NYC</i> a few months ago</a>. It combines the experiences of storytelling and story-writing in interesting work, providing a venue not only for hearing your words performed by someone else, but one in which you workshop those words with your fellow performers, a couple of directors, and the <i>NYTI</i> organizers. Accordingly, for the past few weeks I've met with a group of collaborators to hammer out my written contribution to the evening. It's been an ideal situation in which to work on something I generally try to avoid - revision.<br />
<br />
<i>But how much revision can possibly be required of a personal narrative, in which the events are all a matter of historical record?</i> I thought gamely to myself, imagining perhaps that I was getting away with a kind of self-congratulatory "discipline." Turns out: <strike>A lot.</strike> A whole lot.<br />
<br />
I believe you cannot call yourself a writer if you don't thoroughly revise. Part of the beauty of writing is that one has absolute control, and can benefit from applying perspective broadened by almost limitless time and objectivity to a single moment of the audience's experience. So why do I avoid it? Frankly, it's painful. I've known writers who enjoy the process, who in fact struggle through the blank page and cranking out letter after letter just in the hopes of reaching the stage of the chisel. All they want is to refine, and cut away the excess. Weirdos.<br />
<br />
Every error stings. Without getting too analytical: I think my pain has something to do with a need to be right, smart, and - as you might be inclined to infer - right smart. It is an indubitable personal flaw. Particularly when coupled with my propensity for excessive verbiage and high-falutin' vocabulary. And is it not truly intelligent to apply attention to turning out a finished and considered product? Ah, well. I am an convoluted conundrum wrapped in a non-redacted riddle.<br />
<br />
I viewed this <i>No, You Tell It!</i> experience as a unique opportunity to challenge the pain and 1) write a first draft heedless of polish, and 2) revise it, cut it and "kill my darlings" all to heck-and-back. I even revised <a href="http://www.jeffwills.net/" target="_blank">my website</a> in the process, which was long overdue, and may soon be moving this here 'blog over to there. Consolidation is <strike>the </strike>key <strike>to an awesome thing</strike>.<br />
<br />
But I had somehow to mitigate the pain of censoring my unbound, inspired genius (IRONY). So I collected the longer or more inspired cuts (read: I hoarded every last deletion) and will present one daily - without any particular context - leading up to next Monday's premiere of my personal narrative: <i>Lost Track.</i> And so, without further ado, I present to you the first in a series of excerpts not good enough for a final product:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Theatre, you know, is widely considered to be behind-the-times. But it takes a particular appreciation to specialize in a form of theatre that had its heyday in fourteenth-century Italy. That means that when people ask you what you do, you not only have to hope they accept your willingness to invest time and energy into a medium that pays nothing and nobody seems to especially want around, but A SUBSET OF that medium that seems for all intents and purposes to be dead and gone."</blockquote>
<i>No, YOU Tell It! - "Outdated"</i> takes place <a href="http://www.jeffwills.net/jeffwillsshows/2013/4/9/no-you-tell-it-outdated">7:00 pm Monday, April 22nd</a>, at Jimmy's 43, and requires no ticket, nor reservation (though you may have plenty after reading this). It fills up quick, and the bar is crowded so...you know.<br />
<br />Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-39975783038265522652013-01-30T11:41:00.000-05:002013-01-30T11:41:55.367-05:00Tethered: Cell Phones and Perception<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://katarinatualemoso.com/images/IPHONE_IN_RICE_11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="214" src="http://katarinatualemoso.com/images/IPHONE_IN_RICE_11.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Found <a href="http://katarinatualemoso.com/" target="_blank">here</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
When I leaned over the toilet to pick up my glasses from the back of it, the stupid, hipster, sideways breast pocket of my hoodie released my iPhone into the drink. Without hesitation (but not without some yelling) I plunged my hand into the toilet, pulled out my phone and plunged it into a jar of rice in the kitchen that had been sitting there almost as if it was prepared for just such an occasion. The Internet - though as-yet lacking in reliable and cohesive commedia dell'arte research material - is awfully good at keeping one informed of the restorative properties of monocot seeds vis-à-vis drowned status symbols.<br />
<br />
I won't go into the state of the toilet's bowl when the dive and dunk took place. And you're welcome.<br />
<br />
And so now, and in fact for the past >48 hours, my phone has sat idly in a soon-to-be-disposed-of jar of rice on my counter. Wednesday night, or perhaps Thursday morning, I will retrieve it, pick the grains from out its orifices, charge it and see what happens and what will never happen again once it is turned on. It's like an amazing game of chance that I did not wish to play, thrust upon me by eccentric fashion choices and erratic podcast-listening habits.<br />
<br />
I'm hardly the first to write about being phone-less for a time, and my experience is not new. I've felt a phantom limb in my right trouser pocket, some wisp of a weighty wafer that occasionally buzzes against my thigh, and then is not there when I go to pat it quiet. I've felt lost, and been nearly literally lost in search of a particular coffee place on my lunch break. I've contacted my nearest and dearest in an email out of which I could not quite keep a semi-panicked tone, alerting them of how they could contact me, and of course all of my Facebook influence has gone into making sure my 600+ "friends" aren't confused by the sudden drop-off in visual media in my timestream.<br />
<br />
I've also been reminded of something good, now thirteen years gone.<br />
<br />
When I first moved to New York, I bought a pager. This was a half-and-half decision. Half was for want of liquid assets. The other half of my reasoning, however (bolstered as so many of my decisions at the time were by the friction of my then-girlfriend's opposite opinion), was that a cell phone would tie me down and make me a servant to its interruptions. This was, mind you, prior to email push notifications and in-plan SMS messaging, though <i>not</i> prior to the screening delights of caller I.D. It was just the notion of being called to which I objected.<br />
<br />
In under three months, I closed my pager account and upgraded to a cell phone. I have never been without one since.<br />
<br />
Those of you who have or do not live in an urban environment may not have a full appreciation of my relationship to my cell phone. I've written a little bit before (see <a href="http://jeffwills.blogspot.com/2012/06/be-hero.html">6/19/12</a>) about the metamorphic effects that portable media devices have had on society. We could go on all day about the myriad ways in which these glorious, seductive machines have helped us carve out private space in an environment that would rob us of every inch of personal boundary. We'd need another day for how many ways the same tools have connected us with others regardless of differences in time, geography and even language. Just about anyone, anywhere, who has even the most basic mobile phone can at least appreciate the altered landscape of situations of emergency and plain ol' personal agency. For example, pre-info-phone I used to call my friends with desk jobs and ask them to look things up for me when I was on the go. People with flip phones still do that.<br />
<br />
What I forgot, and that of which being phoneless has reminded me, is how it feels to be free. I know that's corny. I fully acknowledge that freedom is too abstract to properly define, much less describe as an emotion or sensation, and that anyway what I'm writing about here is little more than a personal perception. What's definitive, and what shocks me, is that I forgot.<br />
<br />
I forgot this feeling, this sensation of being untethered, of stepping out the door - any door - and simply not knowing what might happen. Even happily (well: semi-happily) plugged into my blaring iPod shuffle, I am instinctively more alert, aware from a subconscious place that at any moment I will be called upon to be resourceful for myself. That makes it sound a bit panicked, and I admit to a mild thrill, but what the sensation is more akin to is that of arriving in a new country. Maybe even one in which you don't speak the language. All is slightly more interesting, slightly fuller with possibility.<br />
<br />
An example: On my lunch break, I wanted to find a small side table for our nursery (finding Mud coffee was a little side-mission I tacked on to this). This table had to fit some very specific dimensions and criteria, and I wasn't sure where to look, and I didn't think of it while I was set at my computer and had Google at my fingertips. So I walked. I walked a lot, at a good clip, and past and through a variety of places, only half of them planned. I didn't find the table. Instead, I learned about options, narrowed my criteria and had new ideas about how to solve a mundane issue. Most significant - I wasn't bored. Nor was I anxious. I was engaged.<br />
<br />
It's ironic how much discussion of engagement is involved when we discuss Internet media and marketing. Subconsciously, I've come to think of "engagement" as a kind of rapt attention, a push-button-get-pellet reflex, as whatever twitch has kept me comin' on back to build a quirky little empire in my <a href="http://battlenations.com/" target="_blank">Battle Nations</a> app. But real engagement is something different, something more owned than possessing of us, and the ultimate irony is that real engagement has been my artistic focus for over a decade and I FORGOT what it FEELS LIKE.<br />
<br />
My argument for the theatre as a relevant - in fact necessary - form of expression in contemporary society is: It is the most accessible one for carrying us from a virtual-experience comfort zone through to actual experience. Like it or not, we experience the majority of our entertainment (and an rapidly increasing portion of our life) through a window. We are protected, anonymous, insulated, with planned and recorded media for which we choose the time and place, brilliantly lit in a clean frame. Live theatre is uniquely designed to utilize this frame - this proscenium - to transport audiences from twitchy, push-button catharsis to actual engagement with stories, issues and communities.<br />
<br />
I am not going to give up on-the-go Internet access. Much as I have flirted with quitting Facebook, I don't see that happening any time soon either (though really: gang: we can do all that stuff <i>without</i> their privacy and proprietary bullcrap: I'm just sayin'). What I may do, once this respite from personal technology has passed, is occasionally leave my cell phone at home. I may head out the door to where I do not know.<br />
<br />
Many people I know can nurture that sense of freedom and engagement on a daily basis with full access to their technology. (These are often the same people who have no sense of shame about keeping me waiting for ten or more minutes, and who are way more fun at parties.) I can not. I'd suggest you test yourself - wherever you may think you fall on the scale - and see what being untethered teaches you.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-39320700846182324402013-01-16T22:12:00.000-05:002013-01-16T22:12:06.210-05:00All Hail the King: Walter White as Tragic Hero<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"This is the first day of the rest of your life, but what kind of life will it be, huh? Will it be a life of fear, of 'Oh, no no no I can't do this'? Of never once believing in yourself?"<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
-Walter White,<i> Breaking Bad</i>, Season 1, Episode 7: <i>A No-Rough-Stuff Type Deal</i></div>
</blockquote>
For as long as I can remember, <i>Hamlet</i> has been my favorite classical play. At times, it has been my favorite all-around play. I have a personal theory (which I have absolutely no interest in proving) that a significant factor in <i>Hamlet</i>'s continuing popularity is that it hits so many young men at just the right time in their lives for identifying with angst, indecision, patricide, and so much else. It is a truly great work of literature, and it's a great play - though that latter is as much for flaunting the rules as for any decent playcraft.<br />
<br />
What I find extremely interesting about people's responses to the play, however, is something that I believe they tend to neglect in their interpretation of it. That is, the concept of divine order (or justice) that permeated Shakespeare's life at the time he wrote it. Very few people question the morality of Hamlet's actions in the course of avenging his father's death, apart from perhaps having some qualms about how it all works out for poor Ophelia. Yet the play is mercilessly just. In his pursuit of a murderer, Hamlet becomes a murderer, and is thus killed himself.<br />
<br />
When <i>Breaking Bad</i> first premiered, the concept was so bizarre I and Wife Megan felt we had to give it a shot. AMC was just transitioning into its phase of incredible original programming, and that as much as the critical buzz and series conceit was so strange we just had to see what it was all about. Embarrassingly, I don't believe we made it through the first episode. I found it too bleak by half. Maybe if I had lasted the 45 minutes or so, I would've clued in to what makes the show so amazing but - as it is - I chose to leave it to the critics and cynics.<br />
<br />
I'll admit I was wrong. I enjoy knowing when I'm wrong, even when admitting it is difficult. In this case, the admission is easy as pie. <i>Breaking Bad</i> is an exceptional example of drama and cinema, even outside of its television milieu, and I was a fool to wait as long as I have to catch up on its four seasons available to me. I'm now contemplating renting the first half of season 5, just to get caught up and experience the final episodes in real time - something I have never been compelled to do before.<br />
<br />
I have another theory, one specific to <i>Breaking Bad</i> and its writers, and one that I've been debating a bit with a few people lately. This theory represents my personal hook into the series, which means I have a ready bias about it. If I'm wrong, I lose interest in the series or - worse yet - whenever the series finale rolls its way around I am bound for horrific disappointment in its story-telling. My bias is of course what leads me into debate about it. I need to test my theory against others' perceptions, to learn if I'm fooling myself.<br />
<br />
It is so easy to fool oneself. You need only pay attention to yourself above all others.<br />
<br />
My theory is this: Walter White is a character cast in the mould of the classic tragic hero. Furthermore, the writers know it, and use tragedy as their guiding principle for their tremendous, unified story arcs.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://rugarated.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/breaking-bad-season-five-all-hail-the-king.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://rugarated.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/breaking-bad-season-five-all-hail-the-king.jpg" width="271" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Found <a href="http://rugarated.wordpress.com/tag/walter-white/" target="_blank">here</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Boring as it may be for a way to begin, I feel the urge (rising, UNSTOPPABLE) to define some terms. Many of the disagreements I have had with people on this theory have I believe sprung from one word: Villain. People seem very invested in the idea of Walter as a gradually developing villain, and when I call him a "hero," they take umbrage. They take it all the way to Mexico and back.<br />
<br />
My use of the term "hero" in this sense is not strictly speaking the inverse of "villain." I mean a hero in the sense of a "protagonist." I'm not sure why the term "tragic protagonist" has never caught on - it has lovely consonance. Perhaps it's a preference for the inferred irony of some of literature's most villainous tragic heroes. And therein is the crux of the semantic difficulty - a tragic hero can be a real dickhead.<br />
<br />
(Perhaps it's for another post, but I take umbrage [all the way to Umbria and back] with the misuse of the term "anti-hero." People seem to think they understand what an anti-hero is based on the concept of a hero as a swell, stand-up guy. Ergo, to them an "anti-hero" is someone imperfect or not nice. But that's rather missing the point, or at least beside it. Grrr. Anyway...)<br />
<br />
So why is the definition of hero-protagonist (<i>Snow Crash</i> fans, amirite? Hello? Is this thing on...?) so critical? Well, to begin with, the dramaturgical definition of a hero is simply more useful than "a righteous dude." And to conclude: That definition supports my argument.<br />
<br />
According to literature both literate and dramatic, a hero is:<br />
<ul>
<li>Chosen, rather than choosing of his fate.</li>
<li>Reactionary, usually reacting to antagonist characters, but sometimes just to such forces.</li>
<li>On a journey, in which he will learn and gain things and eventually apply these winnings to the world from which he comes.</li>
</ul>
And that's about it, as far as commonalities go. Mythological heroes may be transformed, comicbook heroes may operate from super-natural abilities, and Scoob and the gang may always catch their criminal, but none of those factors define them as heroes. Heroes are our connection to a story of learning and change, our guides, and there are no promises either the story or the hero will end happily.<br />
<br />
Enter tragedy. It's another much-maligned term, in that people tend to take the colloquial usage and apply it to fiction. It is of course tragic when six nuns die in a horrific and sudden bus accident, and still more tragic when sixteen newly ordained nuns on their way to give cookies to quadriplegic blind orphans die in a horrific and sudden bus accident, one that could've been prevented by the driver simply using Google Maps instead of Apple ones. But it is a travesty rather than a tragedy, in the dramaturgical sense. <br />
<br />
In fiction, a tragedy has a specific form. It is not enough for things to end badly for all involved. If it were, you could have a hysterically funny play that in its last ten minutes kills every character you care for (Paging Martin McDonagh [Just kidding! {Really kidding - you don't care for his characters one bit!}]). Much as we might enjoy such a play or movie now, it doesn't qualify as a tragedy, because a tragedy has to do with inevitability. In a tragedy, we feel the end coming, and know 1) nothing will ever be the same afterward, and 2) there is <b>nothing</b> we can do about it.<br />
<br />
So when I call Walter White a tragic hero, here's what I'm saying:<br />
<br />
<b>He is on a journey through strange territory, from which he is returning with things he applies to his origins.</b> Hardly anyone would argue with this, I think. A good portion of the humor in the show has to do with Walter applying skills associated with his hard-earned "street cred" to his increasingly shaky suburban life. Whether it's carrying a second cell phone or learning how to get the drop on a thug, Mr. White has been on one darkly heroic cycle.<br />
<br />
<b>He reacts to antagonists.</b> This is an easy one to get tripped up on. After all, Walt expends so much of his effort in maintaining or regaining control, and in the long run (to date) he's been very successful. He adopts little pretense by the end of season 4 - he is IN CHARGE, and "the one who knocks." It's also difficult to cite an antagonist to Walt when we first meet him. Who's got it out for him when he's a mild-mannered chemistry teacher? Certainly not his overbearing boss at the car wash? Nope.<br />
<br />
No, it's cancer.<br />
<br />
An antagonist isn't defined solely by being in opposition to the protagonist. Something very important is accomplished by the antagonist - the inciting action. The thing that gets the ball rolling on the plot, for the hero to react off of. It can seem counter-intuitive at first; we'd like to believe that we are good, and that good is active, but consider for a moment some incredibly heroic story (in the "heroism" sense). Odds are you'll see Superman doesn't appear until some schmuck falls off a skyscraper, and Beowulf can't get decisive until Grendel rends a few limbs himself.<br />
<br />
Cancer incites Walter to his new lifestyle, and is what threatens to prevent him from achieving his aim of providing enough support for his family once he's gone. It does so directly, by occasionally crippling him when he has to cook meth or kill a dealer, and indirectly, by threatening to end his life before he can pull through enough business to make his gamble worthwhile. The antagonism passes hands (not to Tuco - that's a period during which the plot frankly frays) to Gus just about as systematically as possible. In the beginning, Gus is literally impelling Walt to return to cooking, and Walt's cancer even abates in conjunction with his increasing fear for his life under the threat of Gus's rule.<br />
<br />
<b>He has a fatal flaw that will prove his downfall.</b> This is some of that inevitability I referred to earlier. Beyond the vague sense that this series of events can't possibly work out in Walter's favor, he has to evince some seed of failure or lack of insight that will eventually destroy him. Oedipus had his figurative (eventually literal) blindness about his parents, Macbeth his ambition, Lear his prideful vanity. Pride is a classic.<br />
<br />
Hubris - overbearing pride or presumption. Mr. White has it in spades. It could be argued to be his characteristic trait. It prevents him from getting out of his dangerous business, from accepting financial help from an old colleague and flame, and drives him to improve and protect his product. So prideful is he, in fact, that Walt may have allowed Hank to find him out as "Heisenberg" rather than allow someone otherwise uninvolved in his affairs to believe he <i>wasn't</i> responsible for that magically pure meth. It remains to be seen if that moment of pure hubris will prove his tragic flaw. Walt's ever-shifting momentum and position make for some taut suspense on that count.<br />
<br />
<b>He is a noble/every-man, brought low for the gratification of the masses.</b> With <i>Death of a Salesman</i>, Arthur Miller very specifically made a tragedy of someone who was <i>not</i> a king, thereby implanting the idea of a tragic everyman as something of a contemporary American take on tragedy. We can certainly argue for Walter being an everyman like Willy Loman - an imperfect working man simultaneously sacrificing all for, yet undermining his family - but I'd also argue he can be perceived as something of the knighted class. He represents white, middle-class America, and though he's hardly well-off he also stands in stark contrast of benefit to the meth addicts and pushers with whom he comes to consort.<br />
<br />
For a time, at least.<br />
<br />
<b>Walter White is chosen.</b> This may be the toughest point to argue, and brings us back around to the beginning of the story of <i>Breaking Bad</i>. Walt proving a predominantly reactive character does not of itself indicate that he is chosen, merely that he is subject to much circumstance (which is of itself a rather Shakespearean tragic-hero trait; but never mind). No amount of strange conjunction (like the grief-addled father of his partner's deceased girlfriend crashing a couple of planes over his house at just the right time) or unique portents (such as a roving stuffed bear's eye) or elaborate subsurface camera angles proves W.W. to be the chosen one. The question to answer is, "Why must it be him?"<br />
<br />
This is where kings have it all worked out. They are ordained by God, generally speaking, and the land suffers as they do. It's hard to get more chosen than that. It's difficult to say whether or not there is a God in the world in which <i>Breaking Bad</i>'s story is told (and here again we have a whole other dissertation) but if there is, he or she seems to be pretty far from the crime scene, so to speak. Still, there's another divine factor that we contemporary audiences are somehow less reticent to accept as a part of our stories. I'm speaking of course of fate.<br />
<br />
If you rewatch the first episode of <i>Breaking Bad</i>, it's hard not to feel as though forces are aligning to send Walt down his eventual path. Every incident gives a subtle, necessary nudge to him, from how his diagnosis is delivered to his being along for a scouting mission on a meth lab a former student happens to be involved in. In the hands of lesser talent, this would read simply as weak writing, but the trend of <i>Breaking Bad</i> has been to continue to make excellent use of far-reaching and interwoven influences. In fact, the structure of whole episodes and even seasons involves setting up a quixotic moment ahead of the story, in the future, making the action of the story a steady march to that inevitable conclusion. As though it's delivered to us by a soothsayer - we don't know what to make of the brief portent of what's to come when we receive it and once it becomes clear ... it's too late.<br />
<br />
Walter White was destined to his fate, and it could be none other than him. All that remains is to see where that fate ultimately lands him.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://criticsunknown.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/heisenberg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://criticsunknown.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/heisenberg.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Found <a href="http://criticsunknown.com/10-greatest-villains-of-all-time/" target="_blank">here</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<u>How I Will Know That I'm Right:</u></div>
<ul>
<li>There will be an antagonist in season 5.</li>
<li>Walt will die - preferably as a direct result of his hubris.</li>
<li>There is a God. Or at least a sense of divine order.</li>
<li>You'll tell me.</li>
</ul>
I have plans (SECRET WAYS) to see what's been aired of season 5 soon enough, though I frankly expect it to seem to refute my argument. At least, if I were the writers breaking (har har) a fresh season at the midway point, I would probably raise my protagonist up pretty high. All in preparation for one very tragic fall.<ul>
</ul>
Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-9667414325906796622012-12-21T10:16:00.000-05:002012-12-21T10:16:30.689-05:00Is Nigh / Is Not Nigh<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://kimissecret.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/nigh-i-tell-you-nigh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://kimissecret.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/nigh-i-tell-you-nigh.jpg" width="146" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Found <a href="http://kimissecret.wordpress.com/2012/05/13/crow-poem-competition-the-end-is-nigh/" target="_blank">here</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The world's always just about to end in New York City. It's not just a staple of our cinema, but a strange background noise to all the on-going construction and planning for the future. We traded in our "THE END IS NIGH" wearable placards a long time ago for ones that read things like "CASH 4 GOLD" and "<i>Flashdancers</i> - 2 4 1!" Because we're used to the idea. So much so, that when this date finally rolled around, we just hoped it'd be something interesting, like a giant creature or zombie plague, rather than the plain ol' typhoons and militant citizenry.<br />
<br />
I've entertained an apocalyptic fantasy or two in my time. <a href="http://www.johnhodgman.com/" target="_blank">John Hodgman</a> sums up this type of fantasy pretty succinctly when he describes it as one in which we envision ourselves not only as survivors, but special survivors - the ones too wily to wilt in the face of Armageddon.<br />
<br />
I honor today's date over at one of the Tumblr 'blogs I oversee with Friend <a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/100046451775234566271" target="_blank">+Dave Younce</a> - Post-Apocalyptic Fashion - with the kind of pragmatically light-hearted look that comes natural to a naturalized New Yorker: <a href="http://postapocalypticfashion.tumblr.com/post/38460646580/a-very-merry-end-o-the-world-to-you" target="_blank"><i>A Very Merry End-o-the-World to You!</i></a> Please enjoy, and if you've gotta go - go out with some style...Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-3957486472585561992012-12-13T15:22:00.002-05:002012-12-13T15:24:26.790-05:00How To<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEievzVWAjiph1A2Fa6SRTugR43jJnyHFwv-3UiEin-R0dBx3EETVRAygdZi6-S7cD_jErRgUh-O33QpioQWOsBivPVWfS25OK8Q1r0rtS33k8qGwVvgEb2rqPik9GlgzbBTPNa-xslTEH8/s1600/headersmaller_edited-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="80" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEievzVWAjiph1A2Fa6SRTugR43jJnyHFwv-3UiEin-R0dBx3EETVRAygdZi6-S7cD_jErRgUh-O33QpioQWOsBivPVWfS25OK8Q1r0rtS33k8qGwVvgEb2rqPik9GlgzbBTPNa-xslTEH8/s400/headersmaller_edited-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
These words are not mine. Well, <i>these</i> words are, sure, of course. But the ones below? The ones in quotes? Those ain't. They're very, very good words of advice about 1. sustaining an organization (an arts organization, in particular), and 2. integrating with a community in a meaningful way. These words, this "How To," if you will, come from <a href="https://www.facebook.com/nataliebrown5" target="_blank">Ms. Natalie Brown</a> of <a href="http://www.alternacirque.com/" target="_blank">Alternacirque</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Delirium-Tribal-Bellydance-Company/121354414611395" target="_blank">Delirium Tribal Bellydance</a> fame.<br />
<br />
I first became aware of Natalie and Anternacirque when high school chum Kate Fox noticed she had two friends (at least) through Facebook who posted pictures of themselves doing things in crazy circus contexts. Since that time I've watched Alternacirque flourish, so much so that it's made me wish I lived a little closer. Today, Natalie was inspired to leave a lengthy post on Facebook about their success, and graciously permitted me to quote it.<br />
<br />
This is it, in its entirety, with no editing on my part. Down with form letters, emails and phone calls...<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">"I seem to be having the same conversation over and over with various people about Alternacirque, Delirium, and our success among the muggle population. And it's pretty basic stuff, really: go invest in your community and they will invest in you.<br /><br />"And I don't mean send out a bunch of form newsletters or emails or phone calls. Go out and actually shake their hands and put your business cards in them. Go see art gallery openings. Go see shows. Go attend festivals as a spectator and strike up conversations with people holding clipboards or badges. Go to mayoral political debates (especially if they're having one centered around the arts), stick around for the rope line, and then go have a drink with everyone around you to analyze the candidates. Know what your legislators look like, so when you pass them on the street, or they come through your line at the coffee shop, or you're standing behind them in line at the coffee shop, you can tell them what you think or what you need. Know their right and left hand henchpeople, too. When you meet them, get their cellphone numbers. Ask to go to lunch and pick people's brains. Go hang out where other artists, producers, entrepreneurs and people with power and resources drink, and drink with them. Go see the ballet, and local theater, and take the playbill home and friend every single name in it on facebook, from the cast to the stage crew to the marketing department down to the interns. Know the name of everyone working at your local arts council and state arts commission. Do enough research to know which of those organizations are fairly useless and which actually care. Keep up enough to know when things turn over and they might start being useful. Talk about your art passionately. Listen equally as passionately about their projects. And don't stick with your people. Don't talk to just dancers, or just weirdos, or just artists. Talk to restaurateurs and tech people and the organic/urban food movement in your areas. Share advice and resources as often as you ask for it. Make friends. If your community isn't close-knit, see what you can do to encourage it to be so. As you grow and figure things out, reach down to the kids coming along behind you, and see if you can't make their struggle easier.<br /><br />"Don't be afraid that people will think you're a freak. A few will. But really, you're probably the most interesting and fascinating person in the room. People would rather hear about what it's like to be a bellydancer than about spreadsheets and conference calls.<br /><br />"Everyone's town is going to have a different pulse, heartbeat, radio frequency. It's your job to figure out how it functions, and join the flow. You can't do that from your living room. It's much more interesting out there, anyway."</span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Alternacirque: <a href="http://alternacirque.com/bloggyblogblog/">http://alternacirque.com/bloggyblogblog/</a></span></div>
Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-53692645185311844602012-11-02T10:19:00.001-04:002012-11-16T12:42:42.560-05:00New York, NYHurricanes are threatening to become passé. Last year we had one, plus an earthquake. Of course, we're now hearing that Hurricane Sandy may be followed up by a nor'easter (which, in my head, is already named Annie - as in, lil' orphan). Just imagine if that proves to be a repeat of "Snowpocalypse," the storm that rocked the whole of the east coast not that long ago. At this rate, weather systems seem increasingly likely to cause another enormous blackout, like the one we had back in 2003. And even if they don't, with the pressure they've been under lately I suppose it's also possible we just might have another transit workers' strike before the end of 2013. But I don't mean to be pessimistic! Over the past decade or so, our police force has successfully foiled under a dozen proven terrorism attempts. Sure, they also clashed with our own citizenry over the Occupy Wall Street protests, but.... Hey! At least no one's flown any planes into any buildings here, lately!<br />
<br />
I'm not aiming to make light of any of this. I'm just tired.<br />
<br />
I used to consider it a cliché, the way that movies concerned with monumental American events (including, of course, disasters) so frequently feature New York as a landscape. After living here for over a dozen years myself, it seems more apt than anything else. Even when we set aside the iconography so necessary in film, wherein a subset represents the larger culture, the fact is that a lot befalls our fine 'burgh. Manhattan is set on some ley line intersection of fortune and desperate fate.<br />
<br />
This event-riddled lifestyle of living amongst "the five boroughs" used to be a way of life I relished. As a kid, I used to run outside when it was windy. I wanted the world to be an exciting place, dramatic and narrative, swirling and swift. I still do. I still entertain survivalist fantasies and pursue the occasional unnecessary speed. It's just that last Monday night, as I prepared to huddle up for the night with Darling Wife and Tempestuous Twelve-Week-Old on an air mattress in the most central room of our railroad apartment, bags packed and boots by the makeshift bedside in case of a sudden evacuation, it all seemed suddenly a bit too ... well: disastrous.<br />
<br />
And not a moment later, it seemed too familiar. I'm tired.<br />
<br />
We've fared among the best of all the locations where Sandy laid down her land legs. We're in central Astoria, and though not five miles hence our friends in Long Island City have a quasi-war-zone on their hands when they step outside, here plenty of people are having food delivered and getting far more drunk than they generally would on a weekday. Personally, the storm has had the following effects:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>A paid week off from work, for the most part (OK: I have worked, but from home, and as the email server went down so did the list of tasks I could reasonably accomplish);</li>
<li>Hours upon hours of more time with my family than I could've otherwise expected;</li>
<li>Clean laundry and apartment; and</li>
<li>More Facebook, Google Reader and Tumblr than any one man ought to have thrust upon him.</li>
</ul>
There are people whose lives are at risk, and those who've lost their lives already over this latest storm. I have nothing to complain about. The spookiest thing about our Halloween was that we're hardly exercising enough these days to justify some peanut-butter cups. Instead of power failures or looting, we've had to confront the fact that we were just too baby-encumbered to do anything adventurous for our four-year anniversary last night. We're incredibly fortunate, and I'm very grateful.<br />
<br />
And I'm tired. Tired of the risk, the threat, the struggle of living here. I'll always love New York, and always miss it once we've had enough and moved on. I'm sad even now, with no special deadline for leaving, at the thought of no longer living here. I have been sad for years - when I happen to think of it - years over which the option of leaving NYC for greener (but NOT by definition more lovely) pastures has grown increasingly practical. I've been subliminally preparing myself for the day, because in the midst of the uncertainty involved in calling this city my home I've had complete certainty about how I will look back on it: with little else but longing.<br />
<br />
But just maybe we should get going before the Mayan calendar ends. After all, we've already got our "go bags" packed.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-94MIvawS9sk/UJPWNixj9xI/AAAAAAAAHzk/Wh8cPJXUYHM/s1600/hurricane_sandy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="165" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-94MIvawS9sk/UJPWNixj9xI/AAAAAAAAHzk/Wh8cPJXUYHM/s400/hurricane_sandy.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-83510978888075501122012-10-10T09:29:00.000-04:002012-10-10T09:29:00.711-04:00In League with Liars: Storytelling and the Actor<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXj4g6jP0QIfRlhTHavGCJbRqgrlYHiYQMV2e1p4booDiLx6_hwcw597viT4L_9WPQOMZ62E6_sNHEXBC3i2XEo2qWrYlIhj9ChXrmbMpD511GAw42zBFEUDHHLAegwnXBKLD8n8yMJmA/s1600/6a016760b7f57e970b017ee3f7941a970d-500wi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXj4g6jP0QIfRlhTHavGCJbRqgrlYHiYQMV2e1p4booDiLx6_hwcw597viT4L_9WPQOMZ62E6_sNHEXBC3i2XEo2qWrYlIhj9ChXrmbMpD511GAw42zBFEUDHHLAegwnXBKLD8n8yMJmA/s320/6a016760b7f57e970b017ee3f7941a970d-500wi.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://twitter.com/MrLloydJones" target="_blank"><span class="il">Andrew</span> Lloyd-Jones</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Last Wednesday, I was a bad husband and father. Well, maybe not a <i>bad</i> husband and father, but an absentee one. But only for a few hours. But it was in the evening. But it was for a cultural event. But it was at a bar. With a bunch of professed liars. And it <i>was</i> my daughter's nine-week birthday.<br />
<br />
I am the lowest of the low, and have done little-to-nothing to earn the understanding of my wife.<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.liarsleaguenyc.com/" target="_blank">Liar's League</a> is a very cool organization that specializes in public readings of short fiction. Their motto: "Writers write. Actors read. Audience listens. Everyone wins." It is, in my opinion, the perfect venue for someone of my stripe - thirty-something, recent father, pragmatic (somewhat) actor who nonetheless occasionally needs to stretch his performing legs. This, too, is how I justify my flagrant negligence of wife and child. The household's psyche is better off for my occasional jaunt back to the boards. Plus: the venue is relaxed, the work of high quality, and the time commitment is very reasonable. <br />
<br />
I was introduced to the Liars by Friend <a href="http://www.nataliazubko.com/main.html" target="_blank">Natalia Zubko</a> back in July, mere weeks before Daughter J. would enter the world. Natalia was prescient enough to realize the perfection of the League's match with my new time and mental-space restraints, and when we attended their <a href="http://www.liarsleaguenyc.com/blog/2012/07/on-stage-tonight-at-liars-league-nyc.html" target="_blank">Public & Private</a> themed reading she took it upon herself to introduce me to the organizers. We enjoyed the evening, and an interesting discussion began about finding the balance - as a performer - between presentation and representation. Or: telling the story versus embodying the moments.<br />
<br />
This is a classic conundrum for an actor, in large part because it has so much to do with that horrid convention of casting - the audition monologue. Most audition pieces list toward storytelling, having as they generally ought a beginning, middle and end. Conversely, the point of an audition piece is not actually to tell an effective story (though that can only help) but rather to demonstrate an active, intentioned character who is experiencing things in the present. It is most important that the actor know who they're supposedly talking to - their invisible scene partner - and that said actor is trying clearly and convincingly to persuade their opposite of something. The story if there is one is actually what's happening in the room, not the narration it may involve.<br />
<br />
I've a long-held fondness for actual storytelling. That and stand-up comedy were my first real performance opportunities as a kid. Along with reveling in what John Ritter could do with a long phone cord, I spent many an early-eightes Saturday morning watching this one storytelling series on UHF channel 50 (the name of which is long-lost to the annals [ew] of my gray matter). Just a guy with that distinctly awful grooming of the time talking to some kids in a carpeted "activity room," with the occasional prop or puppet. I ate it up, and continue to admire people who are adept at unwinding a good story at cocktail parties and the like.<br />
<br />
Fortunately for me I had good, written material on Wednesday last. <a href="http://www.liarsleaguenyc.com/blog/2012/10/don-delillo-by-cd-rose.html" target="_blank"><i>Don DeLillo</i></a>, by C.D. Rose, is a slightly abstracted, but generally straight-forward story of a romantic couple who may - or may not - fall apart over certain personal failings; not the least of which might be the fellow's intellectual insecurity. I love the story and the writing, and felt like I could uniquely identify with its narrator in a way that would help the performance. (One of my favorite little things about of the approach of the League is that when they emailed me to ask if I was interested, they attached the story; it should not be as rare as it is to be offered the opportunity to survey the material when someone is asking something of you as a performer.) But here I was, presented in fact with the formerly hypothetical problem I discussed so idly with Natalia months before. To embody, or not to embody?<br />
<br />
The answer is of course: To embody. Everyone wants some in-the-moment transportation, even from a cocktail anecdote. If only it were an on/off gradation, however. The difficulty is in choosing the right timing and intensity for capturing the moment. It's a balancing act. Keep both eyes straight ahead. That way, at least if you fall you might be aware of it for a few seconds fewer than you otherwise would.<br />
<br />
I'll save some suspense and report - and this is after a week's time, feedback and listening to my own recording on <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/liars-league-nyc/id550698185" target="_blank">the League's podcast</a> (possibly several times [possibly not solely for critique purposes {how's this for allaying suspense?}]) - that I believe I did OK-fine. I'd say I was in the neighborhood of 75% on-target. That's safe, I'd say. I'm saying. I said.<br />
<br />
It's <i>tricky</i>. It takes precision, and it's a precision that can't even be complete after months of rehearsal, because the final information comes from the audience and how they're responding to particular moments. This can be said of acting in any live respect, but the consideration takes on such a unique dimension when it's a little more layered as it is with storytelling, involving a kind of meta-balance of story and moment. As an actor in a play, you generally have this rule to guide you: Believe in it, no matter what, and live there. As a storyteller, you're something of an actor/director, steering as much as riding, based on the charts you sketched out in your rehearsal. And you can get lost.<br />
<br />
I got a little lost, I must admit. It was disorienting; a new medium. I never lost my place in the words, but there were certainly moments in which I thought <i>well I'm not sure where we are just now I think this moment needs a little examination no? no we have to keep going? all right then we're going and I guess hey when did I last inhale...?</i> My tendency, and it shouldn't have surprised me (but it did), was to revert to being the actor, feeling the moment. If anything, I over-did on that side. Somewhat. My priority was to serve the writing, which kept me from going overboard outright, but my tendency was to be an actor. Interesting conflict, that.<br />
<br />
Also interesting, coming from my experience, was just how effective it was to detach from the material at the right moments. Perhaps it was the audience, who were made up severally of writers, but there were several times when I reported something written and the words did the work better than I could have with any special interpretation. And - in spite of what Mamet may posit - this is not the general rule.<br />
<br />
Also fun was the audience interaction. In this milieu there's a blend between what an actor does, and what a stand-up or orator can do. Even before I learned about the commedia dell'arté, I was obsessed with effective moments of breaking the fourth wall, and at one particular moment toward the beginning of my tale I got to do that with a facial expression in response to an audience member's applause. It was a moment in which none of us could be sure I was in character. My reaction was appropriate to the voice of the story, but obviously there was no <i>[Pause for silent response to audience.]</i> written there. It doesn't carry over on the recording, having been visual, and I rather savor that. A gentle nod toward the ephemeral nature of live entertainment.<br />
<br />
I think serving the words as best one can is probably the closest thing to advice we can offer an actor stepping into the storytelling arena, at least when it comes to scripted storytelling. (Perhaps aptly enough, this is also popular advice for performing Shakespeare.) That's subjective as all get-out, but getting much more specific risks hampering the unique abilities an actor can bring to the story. I might rephrase it, though, to give it a little more impact for types such as myself:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The story is for you, but not about you, and similar to something as unique and rare as a piece in a museum the story is to be shared. You are the one who gets to share the story with the rest of the world. Be sure to be moved by it, be sure to explore it to the breadth and depth it merits. Do not drape or gild it, though. Let it speak for itself, through you.</blockquote>
Something like that. It really is a precious thing. Fun too! But precious. If they'll have me, I think I'll be back. <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijtoAq0gzt4AxmwEbAGO5ozj72_-3x_0juxECpfFBjvHVCTkqo9kpdp6Idv323LbwrcCMFZLyT2eBvl3ViMnXARkP02V3pcqJmleNZTL0eqOY2Y3QTXs9HWJ5Y7rHK8Yb8LySLAOCa6Kc/s1600/6a016760b7f57e970b017ee3f79f10970d-500wi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijtoAq0gzt4AxmwEbAGO5ozj72_-3x_0juxECpfFBjvHVCTkqo9kpdp6Idv323LbwrcCMFZLyT2eBvl3ViMnXARkP02V3pcqJmleNZTL0eqOY2Y3QTXs9HWJ5Y7rHK8Yb8LySLAOCa6Kc/s400/6a016760b7f57e970b017ee3f79f10970d-500wi.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photos & layout by <a href="https://twitter.com/MrLloydJones" target="_blank"><span class="il">Andrew</span> Lloyd-Jones</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com9KGB Bar40.7264169 -73.989933340.7249129 -73.9924008 40.727920899999994 -73.98746580000001tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-43400296144115650142012-09-24T09:30:00.000-04:002012-09-24T10:03:38.654-04:00Bang! Pow! Zwounds!: Richard III as "Graphic Novel"<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Editor's Note: Once again, I'm adapting personal email into 'blog posts. I </i>shall <i>mutlti-task, and you </i>shall <i>dig it. This comes out of a discussion with a director friend of mine who was tasked with considering a production of </i>Richard III <i>based on a graphic-novel approach.</i> </span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://02varvara.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/00-unknown-artist-a-portrait-of-king-richard-iii-late-15th-c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://02varvara.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/00-unknown-artist-a-portrait-of-king-richard-iii-late-15th-c.jpg" width="228" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Found <a href="http://02varvara.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/richard-iiis-remains-may-be-under-car-park/" target="_blank">here</a>. Grisly remains <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-19561018">found here?</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: small;">So: "a pre-1700's graphic novel story," eh? First of all: Do we mean a graphic
novel written and drawn in the "pre-1700s"? A graphic novel <i>set </i>in
the "pre-1700s"? And why the "pre-1700s"? Do we set Richard the Three in 1699, or Roman-occupied Ireland, or dare
we make it 1485? {<i>Ed.: I've since learned that the particular audience in discussion rejects any Shakespeare set later than that as being too much a departure from historical accuracy. Hilarious.</i>}<i> </i><br /><br />But my greater confusion here is what on earth we mean by "graphic
novel." That's a little bit like saying, "Let's produce a Richard the
Third like a pre-1700s movie story." Graphic novels are a medium about
as varied as cinema.
</span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br />But not everyone knows that, and were I to assume (thereby making an
ass out of you and ume) a thing or two, I might assume we mean a sort
of highbrow comicbook approach. Somehow. Which is still about as clear
as the mud from which one might need a horse in order to extricate
oneself.
</span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br />My assumption however is based on the following facts:
</span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<ul style="font-family: inherit;">
<li><span style="font-size: small;">The
most commercially viable and well-known printed graphical storytelling
of the prior and current centuries has been "comic books"; and</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">"Graphic novels" is a popular term
for comic books when you're trying to lend them prestige, or raise
people's opinions of them from out of the pulp.</span></li>
</ul>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The
term "graphic novels" also frequently refers to works that have a
little more length or over-arcing story to them than some, but that usage is a
little reductive as it implies all "graphic novels" were written in one go
(like a novel) when in fact the majority were originally published in a serial manner. Comic books, in other words,
then collected into the so-called graphic novel.<br />
</span><span style="font-size: small;"><br />So what are we to do with a concept based on highbrow comicbooks? In short (HA HA HA) there are too many different kinds of
graphic novels to know what we mean when we use that ill-defined term, and the
differences traverse everything from art to layout to content. A few varietals: </span></div>
<ul style="font-family: inherit;">
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=ASajL1zsziAC&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank"><i>Maus</i></a>
- seminal in raising the reputation of comicbooks; it casts mice as
Jews and cats as Nazis in a true story of one family's experience of the
Holocaust</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Knight_Returns" target="_blank">The Dark Knight Returns</a> </i></span><span style="font-size: small;">and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmen" target="_blank"><i>Watchmen</i></a>
- in a fit of zeitgeist, Frank Miller and Alan Moore both
eschew/satirize the bubblegum aesthetic of superhero comics; Miller by
taking a classic hero and giving him hard-boiled moral ambiguity, and
Moore by taking superhero archetypes and subjecting them to a dystopian
environment and socio-political realities</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=rR0OvaKQU58C&lpg=PP1&ots=1rAklyQfhI&dq=%22from%20hell%22%20moore&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=%22from%20hell%22%20moore&f=false" target="_blank"><i>From Hell</i></a>
</span><span style="font-size: small;">
- Alan Moore here again, this time writing an exhaustively long
"graphic novel" that delves into one possible explanation for the
identity of Jack the Ripper</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sandman_%28Vertigo%29" target="_blank"><i>Sandman</i></a>
</span><span style="font-size: small;">
- what began as a pitch by Neil Gaiman to revitalize some of DC Comics'
forgotten characters evolved into an epic story with a beginning,
middle and end that chronicles the king of dreams (and his family:
Death, Desire, Despair, Destiny, Destruction and Delirium [formerly
Delight]) whilst tying in extensive details from the world's mythology, literature
and religion</span></li>
</ul>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Richard_III_at_the_Battle_of_Bosworth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Richard_III_at_the_Battle_of_Bosworth.jpg" width="231" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ma' humps, ma' humps...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">And those are fairly conventional examples, as far as just form
goes.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br />I suppose the thing I can't quite wrap my mind around yet is why
exactly to apply <b>this </b>concept to <b>this</b> particular work of Shakespeare's. As I
see it, there are other plays of his - even other Histories - that might
be better fits.
</span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Henry V</i> is a pretty good <i>Superman</i>/superhero<i> </i>analogue. Hell, the <i>Henry VI</i>s have those constant turn-overs that would make pretty interesting structure for exploring "serialized" storytelling on stage. <i>Richard III</i> may be episodic enough for serialized storytelling, if that's the angle, but I can't quite make it work without adding layers.<br /><br />Recently it has been tremendously popular to adapt graphic novels into movies and, even more recently, television.
</span><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://youtu.be/R1v0uFms68U" target="_blank"><i>The Walking Dead</i></a>, for example, is an on-going serialized story that's perfect for television. But they also adapted <a href="http://youtu.be/R3orQKBxiEg" target="_blank"><i>Watchmen</i></a>
into a film, which tried to do too much and with so much flash that the vital humanity of the story was lost. Even Ang Lee made a
superhero movie with the first <a href="http://youtu.be/K8SyqH3fjfA" target="_blank"><i>Hulk</i></a>
Hollywood blockbuster, which in my opinion is practically a lesson in what elements
NOT to take from graphic storytelling when adapting from it.</span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFxZqtv0CvUmbAb6emb2So8euhvukv5UrebYp8as2KXJ5doAmwWzRmesO2FtHIPcTriQ6uCTvM2kthYn1vOpe0_7ys9XQWnJu6BDY0tH_WNJVCH75-0HZxyojxNVqEi4ZI3J-KDUYKAhSH/s1600/Understanding-Comics_00.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFxZqtv0CvUmbAb6emb2So8euhvukv5UrebYp8as2KXJ5doAmwWzRmesO2FtHIPcTriQ6uCTvM2kthYn1vOpe0_7ys9XQWnJu6BDY0tH_WNJVCH75-0HZxyojxNVqEi4ZI3J-KDUYKAhSH/s200/Understanding-Comics_00.jpg" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Is there a better reference? <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Comics-The-Invisible-Art/dp/006097625X">Nope.</a></td></tr>
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<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">When they go
wrong, what many adaptions have done is adhered too closely either to
the content or the form of graphic storytelling (or both). When a graphic-novel story is transported
cross-media, it's an injustice not to re-conceive at least a little. Two Frank Miller comics have been adapted into what most consider to be quite successful movies - his <a href="http://youtu.be/IwIlEu7o9ZM" target="_blank"><i>Sin City</i></a> and <a href="http://youtu.be/7RQm37K-clg" target="_blank"><i>300</i></a> - and both with a keen eye on staying loyal to the aesthetic of the source material. I would argue, however, that as graphically similar as these movies are to the artwork from which they came, they are in fact very thoroughly re-imagined into a cinematic landscape. Miller went on to direct his version of <a href="http://youtu.be/oV7GydS4d80" target="_blank"><i>The Spirit</i></a>, which copped <i>Sin City</i>'s look and failed miserably, lacking the originality of the other two adaptations.<br /><br /><span id="goog_741552341"></span><span id="goog_741552342"></span>Graphic novels, or comicbooks, work because of the spaces between
the panels and how our minds fill those in. They give you some of the
interpretive freedom of books or radio, with more of the visual
fireworks of TV or film. It takes a certain amount of mental coding to
read them, but that can be learned intuitively, and when a good unity
between the words, layout and illustrations can be achieved, the
story-telling is enhanced.
</span><span style="font-size: small;">Simply sliding that on top of a film, the languages do not converse. Movies are all about seeing change, seeing it very closely. Just because one of the steps to creating them involves story-boarding doesn't mean that a medium that utilizes frames and composition will automatically translate. You're still filling in the white spaces. You're still animating the iconic.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />When it comes to adapting a live show into a "graphic novel" context, there are a few examples from which to pull, but most of them take a fairly satirical (or lightly tongue-in-cheek) slant and have more to do with traditional superhero comics than more varied graphic storytelling. I was in a production of <i>Stand-Up Tragedy</i> in college for which the director brought the main character's comicbook imagination somewhat to life on stage with enormous puppet cut-outs, but that was for one sequence only and functioned rather more as a simple staging element than as anything functional. <a href="http://www.vampirecowboys.com/">Vampire Cowboys</a> here in New York have done many a popular show using comicbook tropes, but these are largely original productions and focus on the combat elements (not a bad notion at least by the end of <i>Richard III</i>). I don't know of any examples specific to only the medium itself - not the characters within them, for example.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">So anyway: why Richard III in this context? Perhaps we are thinking of him as a character similar to superheroes like Marvel's
</span><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutant_%28Marvel_Comics%29">X-Men mutants</a>, who are ostracized and persecuted for being different, said
difference being what makes them special and powerful? Perhaps Richard's
story is episodic enough to remind of serialized story-telling - there
is a strong procession of scenes of mounting ambition and stakes.
Perhaps we're thinking aesthetically of something that utilizes
iconography, or stained-glass windows, both of which comic books owe
something to.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Yet in discussing all this, what I'm struck by is a very different idea.
</span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Richard III</i>
reminds me of nothing so much as the trend in television over the last
five years or so for highly successful, critically acclaimed shows to
feature a main character who is morally flawed. Don Draper of <i>Mad Men</i> is a philanderer, Walter White of <i>Breaking Bad</i> is someone we've watched become (or simply come into being) a ruthless criminal, <i>Dexter</i> is a fracking serial killer, and a host of other shows have followed suit - <i>Damages</i>, <i>Boss</i>, etc. In other words, tragedy makes for great television. In terms of a contemporary hook for <i>RIII</i>,
that's where my mind goes. Those shows are incredibly effective, and we
root for some of the worst characters in them the hardest. Did this begin with Tony Soprano, or Richard the III?</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I have no ideas, however, about how to invite those influences on a production. That's an entirely other conversation. One we should have soon!</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span>
Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-88536187164715860672012-09-18T09:30:00.000-04:002012-12-13T10:49:53.916-05:00Chewing the Fat<br />
<i>Editor's Note: The following is expanded from a recent, personal email exchange that triggered some specifying thought on my part. I've left it in direct-address form because it's a personal subject, and I believe it will resonate with many more people than I may even have in mind.</i><br />
<br />
You're not fat.<br />
<br />
The trouble with the word "fat" is that it inevitably implies certain things about lifestyle, be it laziness, genetic permanence, social status or what-have-you. It's self-limiting, even when said with loving kindness. So, while some may insist it's just bluntly accurate, to my mind the word is way too laden with bias and implication (not to mention far too unspecific) to be of much use as a description. Heck: it's not even a description - it's a state of being, reducing a person to just the actual, biological element: fat.<br />
<br />
I have seen things (<i>I have seen such things!!!</i>) in Italy that have convinced me that the difference between a hot person and an ugly one has way more to do with carriage and knowing yourself than it does with fitting a so-called standard of beauty. My personal adviser in all things Italian used to tell me this - that the Italians just knew how to carry themselves - and I assumed he was simply enamored of them in general (and so he is). But once I went there myself, I saw what he meant.<br />
<br />
The old, the infirm, the pre-adolescent - nearly everyone there seemed to look me straight in the eye, and present themselves with a complete lack of shame. Even when we say "lack of shame" here in the U.S. of A., we're implying shamelessness. As in - that's a bad thing. Why do we value shame {ahem<i>Puritans</i>} {ahem<i>1950s</i>} {ahem<i>FEARBASEDOBEDIENCE</i>}? Shame is very ugly and insidious. It's a message too many of us carry around and broadcast: Do not give me what I want; I am unworthy; anything good I receive is a miracle. Ugh. Presenting it as a virtue is one efficacied-up thing about this country, for sure.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc1PHVPrws6exl6LGuPmN4LmcZUlTvL9JUFZ0L7G5l4YOaTwsecHzZcAbR7klkXNm5oyxRUeue0FhzRMww2N_Gn-bn2pxXY3bW5KP2P6kwYtRrP5GjNUYLlPfzow9bFpVauTRBQSnRESE/s984/CIMG4219.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc1PHVPrws6exl6LGuPmN4LmcZUlTvL9JUFZ0L7G5l4YOaTwsecHzZcAbR7klkXNm5oyxRUeue0FhzRMww2N_Gn-bn2pxXY3bW5KP2P6kwYtRrP5GjNUYLlPfzow9bFpVauTRBQSnRESE/s320/CIMG4219.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by THIS GUY HERE.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The Italians (generalizing here, I realize, but:) The Italians somehow learn to work what they've got, to believe that there are people who will want what they've got, and perhaps they'll never find those people if they don't put it out there all the time. Not showily, and not with tremendous effort - just as a way of being. You don't walk into a room. You WALK INTO a room. A public square isn't something to be gotten across. It's someplace YOU are CROSSING.<br />
<br />
We way-Westerners reduce this to saying that sex appeal is about confidence, but that doesn't cover it. A) It's not just confidence, but a larger perspective, and B) it's not only sex appeal! That's just what we put on it! It's bearing, man. It's your moment-to-moment engagement and communication with the world at large.<br />
<br />
This is a radical idea for me, in spite of what people who've only known me in my adult life may assume. Sure, maybe a positive attitude and outgoing approach should be easier for me, with my hair/weight/sex/uality. But it isn't. And it isn't easy in part because I can still feel my 14-year-old belly folding around my jeans waist, or rubbing against my gym shirt during "running" the mile, as though it was this morning. The abject shame of that lives, one of those insidious ideas that once imagined can't be entirely eradicated. Should I just get over myself? Yes. Sure I should. I'd love to. And in some moments, I do, and those are awesome moments.<br />
<br />
Perhaps the idea would seem less radical, or my feelings would be less inextricably entwined, if it was only the angst of my youth that gave me my perspective. Maybe if it had only been that elementary-aged kid following me as I walked home from high school, daring me to respond by laying every fatness adjective across my soft back that he could think of, maybe if the bullying was all, then I could embrace this release of shame after all. But I also have a mother, who has struggled with herself over her weight her entire life. Who, in photos from her youth was certainly somewhat full-figured, but also <i>beautiful</i>. Who sacrificed her body utterly for the sake of bringing me and my sister into the world, and never gave up trying to "improve" that body afterward through senseless diets. Who detached from her body, and its sensations and responses, so thoroughly that she was amazed in middle age to discover that it had some important information to communicate with her brain about her mood, and her health, and her overall being.<br />
<br />
Now too I have watched my wife throw her body on the circumstance of motherhood, watched it transform itself and be wrenched about by doctors, watch it knitting itself back together and watch her work at accepting where it is, where she wants it to be, and where it may not be able to go. I see much more work and will, not to mention intelligence, go into those transformations than ever I was capable of in my small struggles. And I see the grief endured by both women that I love more than almost any other, as the rest of the world casually maligns them, assuming a standard imposed on it by wish fulfillment and power fantasies. People will call them by this word, "fat." I see this, and I see my baby daughter, and I want so much to be so different. Right away, right now.<br />
<br />
Maybe we'll all just move to Italy once our lease is up. <i>Ci vediamo</i>!<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uXyWFfBCXhw/UFdOIknyL5I/AAAAAAAAHUE/w9bKNQ2kj_U/s1600/Mona_Lisa_Duckface-259x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uXyWFfBCXhw/UFdOIknyL5I/AAAAAAAAHUE/w9bKNQ2kj_U/s200/Mona_Lisa_Duckface-259x300.jpg" width="172" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Found <a href="http://www.rubberduckface.com/" target="_blank">here</a>, which is just...wow.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
So, where does that leave you and I, in our wonderings about body image and making sexy duck faces in Facebook photos? I take all that baggage and the stunning Mediterranean example, and just try to present myself with a little pride, while keeping my self-perception as accurate as possible. That's not the same thing as our "Italian" ideal, but it's the closest I can come so far. When we were in our circus days, training regularly, I used to comfort myself with regard to my physique with the mantra, "It's not about how you look, but what you can do." As I've gotten older, that's no less true, but frustrating at times - because age, dang it, makes me have to work harder to be able to do the same things.<br />
<br />
So my suggestion is that you boost what you already occasionally do, depending on circumstances - take an unapologetic approach to presenting yourself to people day-to-day. In fact, I think that's the concerning part for me - hearing you fret over anyone else's perception. Try to let go of your concern about how some one person preconceives your physique. Own it. Focus on your attributes positively, sans B.S. You can't do a thing about what this or any person likes. Like yourself.<br />
<br />
Sometimes that's about losing some weight or gaining some strength, so you feel good. But it's always about how you feel, and perceive yourself.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-40838773087203654692012-09-12T08:30:00.000-04:002012-11-27T16:48:24.615-05:00Gotham's Reckoning: My Own Personal "Return of the Jedi"<i>Editor's Note: I started this response to TDKR two months ago, and then I had a baby. So anyways...</i> <br />
<br />
There were two opinions from the time of my childhood that I was shocked to learn late in life: first, that not everyone loved President Reagan; second, that many people considered <i>Return of the Jedi</i> to be the worst of the Star Wars movies. Living in an affluent suburb and having (at the time) a fairly conservative father and teachers, I thought Ronald Reagan was the cat's pajamas - charismatic, reassuring, grandfatherly. I was 8 in the 80s, so political discourse was for the most part a long, long way away from me. So too was any narrative criteria from my movie-going experience. Certain facts had a stronger influence on me than the storytelling in <i>Return of the Jedi</i>. For example, that it had debuted in my accessible memory, and included such bad-assery as a black-clad Luke and enormous set pieces. <br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x5Lo1Q4vm2U/UE9wSMJFQRI/AAAAAAAAHTQ/ilFpnBWVKKs/s1600/Ronald_Reagan_DarkKnight1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="181" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x5Lo1Q4vm2U/UE9wSMJFQRI/AAAAAAAAHTQ/ilFpnBWVKKs/s200/Ronald_Reagan_DarkKnight1.jpg" width="200" /></a>My perspective on these weighty issues changed, but not simply as a result of growing up. I also had to hear from other people, and experience other cultural influences. I didn't read Frank Miller's seminal comicbook, <i>The Dark Knight Returns</i>, until I was eighteen, and even then I was a little shocked to see someone so openly satirizing two of my long-assumed heroes: Superman and Ronald Reagan. It probably wasn't until I had worked at a few theaters that I connected the dots to realize that Reagan was a republican, and that typically I wasn't terribly aligned with that side of the aisle's perspective. Then of course I read more about his term in office, and found a better understanding of why his love of jelly beans didn't have a tremendous influence on the opinion of people who hated his civil and economic policies.<br />
<br />
I should probably be more ashamed to admit that my grounding realization about the relative quality of the second of the Star Wars sequels took even longer. I don't think it was until on the cusp of my 30s that I managed to see those movies with a fresh pair of eyes and realize - all personal bias aside - that <i>Return of the Jedi</i> was a weak successor. I don't hate it; how could I? If there are any bitter feelings toward a film, they are 1) a result of misplaced priorities, and 2) usually a response to the supposed promise of its predecessors. And make no mistake: No one promised us as an audience anything but to do their best to entertain us for a couple of hours.<br />
<br />
Or two hours and forty-five minutes, as the case may be.<br />
<br />
So, I do not hate <i>The Dark Knight Rises</i>. In fact, there is much that I appreciate about it. I saw it a couple of months ago (not in IMAX, which I understand is the preferred format this time around) and, fortunately for me, with a friend. So the moments that would have been crushing were instead fun, their misery shared. Because, in confession: I believed in Harvey Dent, and I believed in the promise that I interpreted in <i>The Dark Knight</i> for its sequel.<br />
<br />
In summary, I think the movie wanted to be big, enormous, but with too little at stake creatively to justify its excesses. The seeds of its downfall were sown in <i>Batman Begins</i> and <i>The Dark Knight</i>, but they found better balance in those movies, not blossoming fully until the budget got bigger than the impetus to make the movies. But I'll flesh out this argument after some nerdery. Skip to the final paragraph if you are of low nerd tolerance.<br />
<br />
Some break-down, with MASSIVELY SPOILY SPOILERS. LET IT BE SPOILED THAT THE FOLLOWING WILL SPOIL ELEMENTS OF <i>THE DARK KNIGHT RISES</i> FOR YOU, BECAUSE IT CONTAINS INFORMATION THAT SPOILS THE SURPRISE OF THE STORY - INFORMATION COMMONLY DESIGNATED BY THE FORESHORTENED TERM: "SPOILERS."<br />
<br />
<b>Likes:</b><br />
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<ul><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pmPde8ob53E/UE9wRhSlToI/AAAAAAAAHTI/uarMcAs-358/s1600/BatmanEMP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="147" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pmPde8ob53E/UE9wRhSlToI/AAAAAAAAHTI/uarMcAs-358/s200/BatmanEMP.jpg" width="200" /></a>
<li><u>The acting.</u> This may seem a silly point, but dang it if this ensemble isn't amazing. I'm not even in love with Bale's interpretation of his character(s), but I'm impressed as hell with his consistency and how well he's heeded a character arc through three epic and vastly different movies. <i>TDKR</i> would have been truly unbearable if it didn't have such an engaging and serious cast. Loved Hathaway's approach, and thought Hardy did all he could; and maybe then-some. I believed his unwavering love for Talia at the end - and God knows Nolan's style isn't exactly conducive to empathy.</li>
<li><u>The design and cinematography.</u> I mean: Come on. That's plainly a big priority for every Nolan movie. It was visually beautiful, with some genuinely inspired moments, such as the use of a stepwell for the base of the pit (there's something about water imagery in the movie - haven't quite put my finger on it yet) or the way the camera enhanced Batman's weakness and Bane's dominance in their first fight. These movies always feel nice and tangible, thanks in no small part to a careful aesthetic balance between form and function.</li>
<li><u>John Blake.</u> It might've been very easy for me to hate this character, yet I didn't. Even leaving his surprise identity aside for a moment, he functioned nicely as a person who represented the next generation of Gothamites, someone whom Batman literally inspired through his example. His arc, too, was a satisfying journey through the moral ambiguities of Batman's world. I loved watching his response to shooting a couple of baddies (insane ricochet shots aside) and thinking to myself, "Uhp. He'll never do <i>that</i> again."</li>
<li><u>The eight-year gap.</u> This was a good - if not great - idea, in spite of what the fanboys may complain. It made complete sense for the character as the movies have developed him (even if it means he was only a fully-formed Batman for maybe six-months-to-a-year before "retiring"). I wanted to see Batman fighting cops as badly as the next guy, but this choice was dramatically interesting, bold and surprising, and in keeping with the battered, traumatized, overly-selfless man we left in <i>TDK</i>. Plus it has the bonus of meeting the audience halfway in our wait for the movie and our need to join with Batman on his struggle to return.</li>
<li><u>The grandiose civil unrest.</u> I thought it would play out somewhat differently, but overall basing the story on <i>A Tale of Two Cities</i> was bold, thematically appropriate to the entire trilogy, and weirdly, wildly relevant. There's something very observant going on in these scripts, and it's important to remember that the Nolans are observing America from the outside. The panicked crowd in the narrows in <i>Batman Begins</i> were not unlike we terrorized, war-hungry citizens of the time, and in addition to providing a crisp clue about Harvey Dent, the ferry-boat paradox of <i>The Dark Knight</i> was awfully reminiscent of a country defined by intense ideological dichotomy. In addition to echoing the Occupy Movement, civil unrest was a great backdrop for a vigilante who is ostensibly trying to save the people he's fighting. Problems arise (har har) with the unrest used specifically as a <i>backdrop</i>, but those are for the next section.</li>
<li><u>Bat "EMP."</u> How apt is it to give your billionaire creature-of-the-night vigilante a device that enshrouds him in a radial darkness? Science be damned! That was a cool idea.</li>
<li><u>Strategic, explosive concrete.</u> Science be damned, I say! Effective, because it visually (and blockbusterly) echoed the notion of the rebellion coming from the very infrastructure of the city, or society. Maybe Ra's al Ghul was right. Maybe Gotham wants to be destroyed.</li>
<li><u>The dénouement.</u> Yes, okay, it was the super-happy ending, with fairly predictable "twist" fodder. Still. I can pretend Alfred's encounter was a cinematic suggestion of what he wanted to see, not what happened, and if I do that the rest of it's pretty fantastic for this fan boy. Good graveside scene. Nice idea about what Bruce's legacy would be, plus I love the implication that someone else can and will take up the mantle. Even if it is ersatz Robin. I can get down with a Robin (or Nightwing?) starting as an adult. Plus, that gives us our only ultimately satisfying character story in this movie, really - Blake's whole progress leads him to belonging in the Batcave.</li>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aNs4MY3JQDw/UE9wX4OAQeI/AAAAAAAAHTo/UhnfB7vUrFA/s1600/blakebat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aNs4MY3JQDw/UE9wX4OAQeI/AAAAAAAAHTo/UhnfB7vUrFA/s200/blakebat.jpg" width="148" /></a><b> </b><br />
<b>Gripes:</b><br />
<ul>
<li><u>Disregard of Unity.</u> Wholly insubstantial narrative, Batman. If you dislike Nolan's films in general, this is a standard reason. They very much play with the rules of narrative unity. But see, I <b>like</b> that. I get and dig it. I am just that <b>meta </b>and<b> po-mo</b>, and I still found this film to be a hot mess of time and space. <i>Batman Begins</i> was well-served in its anachronistic unrolling, keeping us off-kilter even as it laid out an insistently linear plot. <i>The Dark Knight</i> was all about chaos and uncontrollable momentum - what we did not know - and the editing and plotting worked together to make the whole experience herky-jerky in a synchronous way. This editing style does not translate to broad-spectrum plots such as the one in <i>TDKR</i>, especially when it's only being used for the purpose of cramming in as much stuff as possible. Add to that a few incomprehensible story fractures (Batman falls <i>how</i> many times before he learns to pick himself back up? Your constant need to remind us that five months are going to transpire doesn't give you just a little hint that maybe you need to rethink that particular choice?) and you have got one anti-Aristotelian gumbo on your hands.</li>
<li><u>The grandiose civil unrest...as backdrop.</u> IF your story is going to address economic disparity and civil rebellion, it would be wise to have something to say about it. It might also be wise to clearly delineate the specifics of that something to say. It might also be wise to avoid muddying the issues so God-blessed thoroughly that at the climax we seriously have to wonder if we actually care about anyone involved. The cops, who are established to be corrupt throughout all three movies, said corruption reinforced by some callous conversation in this movie's introduction? The civilians who embrace Bane and a puppet court? The civilians who hide in their apartments and do nothing? The wealthy? The bad wealthy? Who profit from the powerless and but wait, then stick around in a building, not fleeing...because they're helping? Or they can't flee? Or, aurghh, GUHHHHHH. All that, plus it's all incidental to what is essentially just a hostage plot. Completely incidental.</li>
<li><u>The ol' switcheroo.</u> Do we ever trust Miranda Tate? Certainly not. And when the protagonist hands a weapon to someone with instructions to guard his or her back, and we are not granted even a single shot of that person's face in that moment (do we even see her HAND?), do we come to expect a reversal? Why, yes. It is called the <b>ol'</b> switcheroo for a reason, and we are tired of it. Especially when it happens at a point at which there is no mystery, and nothing critical to the story about the impending revelation.</li>
<li><u>So much murder.</u> I had enough difficulty with the line in the first film, "I won't kill you. But I don't have to save you." Yeah, OK Hollywood, we'll keep your morality tropes in place, since you gave us such a nice Batman movie this time around. But in <i>TDKR</i>, I lost track of how many times Batman slaps Catwoman (sorry: Selina Kyle) on the wrist for the murdering she does. But, listen: Maybe the murder thing is just not a big deal, you know? Maybe it just tends to get a little played up, what with the very genesis of Bruce Wayne's quest and fractured, obsessive personality resulting from the gun-murder of his parents in front of his little eight-year-old face. So I have to imagine that the excessively dangerous and punishing hand-to-hand combat in which he constantly engages is mostly for bravado's sake. 'Cuz he has guns on ALL his vehicles. And when Ca-, er, Selina Kyle not only straight-up cannons Bane to death with one, but is glib about it, Bruce decides he'd like to take her on a Mediterranean trip. So, to recap: Gun violence and murders - not a big deal to Batman, at all.</li>
<li><u>And hey, on the issue of guns:</u> What, the trapped police officers went underground unarmed? They spent all their bullets hunting rats? They didn't want to use them on civilians, despite being faced with a couple of tanks? But logic clearly has no place in this movie, and I really do hate when people lean on that in their criticisms of superhero movies. Even if said movies are claiming to be "grounded" ones.</li>
<li><u>Orphans.</u> Jeebus Cripes. Really? Okay. But really? A bit on-the-nosey, Nolan. Maybe more forgivable, had they not been used for our sole emotional hook in the climax (did not work, BTW). Oh and hey: Why were they the only people on the only bridge that wasn't blown in this epic conclusion? And why was there a bridge not blown? And if so, why hadn't the military...sorry. See above. (Sorry.)</li>
<li><u>Energy source "solutions."</u> I don't care. In the movies, I really don't care. Let this hot-button issue go, Hollywood. It is terrible, and I would rather have a Maltese Falcon, please and thank you.</li>
<li><u>This:</u></li>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tLnJ5_zvPPk/UBGxLZkuzcI/AAAAAAAAG8s/_jv96ALrGaY/s1600/539114_468958156449453_1341046963_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tLnJ5_zvPPk/UBGxLZkuzcI/AAAAAAAAG8s/_jv96ALrGaY/s320/539114_468958156449453_1341046963_n.jpg" width="251" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Thanks to Midtown Comics.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<ul>
<li><u>Aerial shots of New York.</u> Don't do that. Just...don't. Automatic not-Gotham.</li>
</ul>
But enough already. I have gone on too long about the details. There are more. (Oh, are there more.) But listen: I didn't hate it. It was just the <i>Return of the Jedi</i> of the series. Most well-funded and anticipated, most lacking in innovation or fulfillment.<br />
<br />
If you'll bear with me for a very fan-boy summing up, I have an observation about how an element of these movies neatly parallels their various strengths and weaknesses. That element is the vehicles. Observe.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<u><i>Batman Begins</i></u></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Vehicle: Batmobile (the Tumbler)</i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yvZcRfylpHk/UE9wXJ0TITI/AAAAAAAAHTg/gTpS_Wl9iwc/s1600/batman_Tumbler_2010-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="174" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yvZcRfylpHk/UE9wXJ0TITI/AAAAAAAAHTg/gTpS_Wl9iwc/s320/batman_Tumbler_2010-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Here is a movie that does a remarkable job revamping and intricately reconnecting us with a well-worn story. It takes identifiable elements and, with the influence of all the innovative comicbooks in recent memory, updates them with an eye on keeping them connected to tangible reality. The movie itself is good as a movie, not just a "superhero" movie, and arguably does its best work when it leaves well enough alone to focus on character and plot. When it gets into action, or set pieces, it quickly becomes overwrought. It's not excessive all the time, and you can forgive some excess because it's grounded in the character work and often for the sake of something really cool. And the Tumbler is great! It takes the tank concept from Miller's <i>Dark Knight Returns</i>, but tones it into a rather viable street vehicle. They casually justify the signature jet engine, there's a really cool yet accessible notion of the seat adjusting for combat mode, and they even own it enough to call it something unique from the comics. It just, you know, occasionally does something like driving over what looks to be century-old rooftops, off of a jump with no ramp. But, I can forgive it that, just like I can forgive the movie its overwrought elevated train climax. Because it's a good vehicle.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<u><i>The Dark Knight</i></u></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Vehicle: Batcycle (the Batpod)</i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-P7-bpJLWmi4/UE9wZBkjzRI/AAAAAAAAHTw/Wa0aNvUuCtE/s1600/the-batpod.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-P7-bpJLWmi4/UE9wZBkjzRI/AAAAAAAAHTw/Wa0aNvUuCtE/s320/the-batpod.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>The Dark Knight</i> surprised just about everyone by turning out to be a vastly superior sequel to a movie that had already been widely enjoyed and rather well reviewed. It came out of nowhere, in a way, writing a check for its follow-up even as it played encores in the fall after its release. Gotham itself went from elaborate, ornately Gothic, to stripped-down, recognizably urban even as the story presented itself more like a Michael Mann thriller than a comicbook stock play. Everything in the movie seemed to interconnect with less effort than the first, and this included connecting the characters to the action. So when the Tumbler is seemingly destroyed, only to burst forth with a vulnerable, but fast and agile-as-hell motorcycle that the rider hugs close, similar to the posture he has in the car's combat mode...well. You may laugh at how it all goes, but you'll also cheer, and part of your laughter will come out of how complete it all is. By creating something simpler and more connected to the character, the designers made a vehicle that was in many ways more unique and self-sustaining than its source inspiration.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<u><i>The Dark Knight Rises</i></u></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Vehicle: Batgyro (the Bat)</i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gfbKkZE69B4/UE9wTfPY4iI/AAAAAAAAHTY/_C55l5TXha4/s1600/The_Dark_Knight_Rises_-_The_Bat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="159" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gfbKkZE69B4/UE9wTfPY4iI/AAAAAAAAHTY/_C55l5TXha4/s320/The_Dark_Knight_Rises_-_The_Bat.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Well, perhaps I've gone on enough about the problems with this movie, and I should just focus on the vehicle. The connections may be clear enough. It <i>should</i> be a fantastic creation. It's the next logical escalation of transport, pragmatically connected with Batman's return to Wayne Manor and his need for utter mobility. The designers created something technically very unique, opting for a sort of inverted, militaristic design based on one of the very earliest elaborate vehicles from the comics. It's possible that the fans (no pun intended [swear]) would have complained if they hadn't gotten what they asked for for Bat-Christmas. However: "the Bat" is emblematic of creating something huge and technically gratifying, but without any true originality or expressive urgency. Even the name - presumably aiming for simplicity - comes out simplistic instead. It's not even that the vehicle is hard to believe (it is), it's that it's unsatisfying, for all its wizardry. It creates a hero who is distant, removed, over-equipped and uninteresting in action. Someone should have the good sense to ground that bat. Perhaps, say, with a comically over-sized revolver.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ajptaWB0upI/UE9wQtOojXI/AAAAAAAAHTA/svJ4CTA-KP4/s1600/Batgyro_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="146" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ajptaWB0upI/UE9wQtOojXI/AAAAAAAAHTA/svJ4CTA-KP4/s200/Batgyro_01.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
My mantra with regard to the first movie of this series was that it wasn't the movie I was hoping for, but in this context few movies could have been. <i>The Dark Knight</i> was that movie, improbably, and I can not complain about having gotten what I wanted out of one in a trilogy. Plus, you know I'll be buying <i>The Dark Knight Rises</i> - but perhaps that money will go toward a return-to-form for Mr. Nolan. I hope so. I don't believe his heart was in this movie. And that's okay! That's okay.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
So long as he doesn't go back and add CGI to <i>Memento</i>. </div>
Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-68472237468729672402012-07-25T15:20:00.000-04:002012-07-25T15:20:37.604-04:00TodayI've been waiting for you. <i>We've</i> been waiting for you, of course, for months, weeks and weeks and with rampant research, speculation and apprehensive love. But I've been waiting for you too. I've wondered about you most of my life, imagined you in a thousand ways and continually checked in with myself about whether I'm ready for you. I can't wait to meet you. Literally - I'm failing at waiting, which feels awkward as all hell, given that there's close-to-nothing I can do to speed your arrival. And today's the day.<br />
<br />
Well. Today isn't actually the day. Not necessarily. I've made a lot of jokes in discussing your arrival - jokes about being punctual and taking after your parents, and jokes about you getting an early start on your teenage rebellion. (Ok, so really: Two jokes. But I've made them many, many times now.) In actuality, today is just another today. I've gone to work. Your mother's working at home - lucky her - and it's a rather beautiful summer day in New York.<br />
<br />
Tomorrow they're predicting storms and a heat index of 103°. So we also expect you exactly then.<br />
<br />
Here is another line I've laid out a lot with regards to the experience of you: Childbirth is an ongoing lesson in unpredictability. And: ...And probably will for the next eighteen years. As in: "She's making her mom really nauseous tonight...and probably will for the next eighteen years." We've had to learn a lot about flexibility of expectations over the past several months, from when we yelped in surprise upon hearing you were a girl (subliminally and separately, we had decided otherwise) to our uncertainty about how much room we thought we made in the apartment, versus how much stuff we drove up from the baby shower.<br />
<br />
So all I can really do is ask. Throw myself on the mercy of my daughter. Please come out soon. I'm dying to meet you.<br />
<br />
I've never really considered it before, but I knew I wanted to meet you before I knew much else that I wanted, before even I was aware that I wanted to act. It didn't take me long, either, to realize that I wanted this for myself; not for the expectations of my family or society, for example. So for nearly my entire life, I've pondered you, hoped for you, imagined you. You've been some pretty wild permutations of a person in my mind over the years, let me tell you. That narrows somewhat once you actually find the mother of your child, but I'm certain you'll still surprise us somehow. Like, as in, say, just for example: By starting this entrance-to-the-world thing right on time.<br />
<br />
Some things you should know about me up front:<br />
<ul>
<li>I'm bad with planning, math, organized sports, making the bed and colors. (Your mother more than makes up for the first one and the last two, at least.)</li>
<li>I'm decent with words, emotions, imagination and organization. (So's your mom, but somehow in almost opposite ways.)</li>
<li>I'm the one who cooks. I've no reason to expect this to change within my lifetime.</li>
<li>I am a very deep sleeper, and very irrational when I get much fewer than seven hours. So: apologies in advance for my personality during at least the first two years of your life.</li>
<li>I'm a performer, try as I might to occasionally fight it. My best hope is that we can take turns as audience for one another.</li>
<li>I am, rather by default, rather high-strung - but I have developed numerous feints and coping mechanisms over the years!</li>
<li>None of those feints or coping mechanisms are working for me today.</li>
</ul>
So you can count all that as fair warning. I am sure you will have your fair share of quirks and idiosyncrasies to share. Hopefully you will not have inherited too many of mine ... though actually, go ahead and take the sleeping thing. That's good for all concerned, ultimately.<br />
<br />
As my day ticks on, I come more and more to accept the notion that perhaps after all I will not meet you in a matter of hours. You'll learn that as you mature, that awful skill of dampening your hopes and excitement a little at a time to avoid cataclysmic crashes of disappointment. Just remember that the hope is always there, no matter how successful a dampener you may prove to be. The excitement is up to you to protect, so don't get carried away.<br />
<br />
Today there's little danger of my over-diluting the excitement. The promise of you is too great, too inevitable. So I'll wait. And you'll arrive. If not today, then the next today.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-47841539782594685602012-07-20T12:27:00.000-04:002012-07-20T12:29:00.111-04:00To All the Jokers Out ThereI don't yet know if it was a killing in any way inspired by the content of the series. It's too early in the news cycle at this point for us to be sure of anything related to the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/us/police-say-14-are-killed-in-shooting-at-colorado-mall.html?_r=1" target="_blank">gunning down of 12 people</a> at a midnight premier of <i>The Dark Knight Rises</i> in Colorado. As of this writing, it could be religiously motivated terrorism, it could be indiscriminate or a crime of passion. What's difficult to ignore (for those of us millions who know the movies, and the tens of thousands of them who know the comicbooks that contributed to those movies) is that a man took it upon himself to murder an audience for a story that's laced with issues of copycat vigilantism, violence, morality and ethics. Not to mention: Justice.<br />
<br />
I can't effectively weigh-in through one post on any of these topics individually (heck: I can barely suss out the distinction between morality and ethics without a self-conscious Google or two) much less the lot of them, entwined. I mean, does justice even <i>exist</i>? Or is it, rather like "honor," one of those old-fashioned ideals that seems a little too black-and-white to a contemporary society? Are our societal ideals rife with concepts that just appeal to our baser natures? Or are they ideals, in earnest, and we just need to keep striving to conceive of them in a truer sense?<br />
<br />
There is one thing about which I do have something unique to contribute. Maybe it's wrong-headed, or too soon, but every so often we each and all have a reaction to something going on in our society that we need to work to process. This definitely falls under that category for me.<br />
<br />
I was in college by the time Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on their spree in Colorado, but freshly so, and the crime held eerie echoes for me. In early high school, with certain friends, I planned crimes all the time. Those plans never involved murder, but were closely related to new feelings of rage that I didn't know how to handle. I played, and loved, the video game <i>Doom</i>. On the birthday before my freshman year of high school, my mom took me out to get me the black trench-coat I so desperately desired, and I wore it regularly - even in terribly inappropriate climates - right into college.<br />
<br />
I also possessed an obsessive love of Batman, the character. I described him as my idol. That may seem unconnected, especially when you hear my rationale for this idolization: That he represents someone who not only survived trauma, but turned it into powerful motivation to excel and strive to make things right. That was an earnest rationale. It just leaves out that I also idolized the character because he could and did powerfully destroy other human beings with his bare (all right: gloved) hands. Is Batman's moral (or ideal) that he take no human life justification enough for his methods of achieving "justice"?<br />
<br />
One thing I greatly appreciate about the recent trilogy of Batman movies is that the writers and director seem to be aware of the moral ambiguity of one person deciding what is right, and using violence to achieve that determination. They utilize and glorify that for our entertainment, but I appreciate the awareness nonetheless. After the first film, the media was already drawing comparisons between this Batman and American foreign policy in general, George W. Bush in particular - "You tried to kill my daddy, I'ma come out there with all my wealth and might and end your reign. Means and United Nations be damned." And in <i>The Dark Knight</i>, Batman <b>literally</b> eschews international extradition law. The writers then up the ante in the film's climax, showing our hero as a hunter willing to massively violate the rights of citizens in order to catch his prey. It seems to me they know that this is what they are doing, and that they want us to experience ambiguous feelings about it.<br />
<br />
I suppose the great dichotomy between the iconic hero and villain of these stories - Batman and the Joker - can be a confusing one. Both are vigilantes, both rely on fear to achieve their ends, and both are flamboyant as all get-out. One is supposedly moral, the other amoral, but I've already pointed out that their ethics are not nearly as easily distinguished from one another. That leaves us with order versus chaos.<br />
<br />
Who doesn't love a little chaos? I suppose for me it's been something of an acquired taste, but it's one I've definitely acquired as a performer and an audience member. Chaos can seem more sincere, frankly. Life does not readily present us with reasons - much less reason - and particularly in the contemporary age there seems little justification for a belief in a greater purpose, much less power. Purpose itself seems a hollow construction, under these circumstances. So, there are those of us who embrace a character bold enough to take that notion to the logical absurdity. There are some who just want to watch the world burn.<br />
<br />
I'm not implying that the man who committed these murders was in any way inspired by the character of the Joker. Lord knows, we're likely to have more than one piece of unoriginal news coverage in the coming weeks that points out connections between this criminal and Joker's callousness, or Bane's <a href="http://whatculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/bane-mask.jpg" target="_blank">paraphernalia</a> (never mind that the cosplay an opening night inspires is a perfect cover for someone who already has destructive designs). What I am saying is that these characters have come to represent certain perspectives and behaviors of contemporary Americans, the same way the character of Batman has, or any ongoing archetype. The causation of it can not be sussed out with a few Googles, and odds are that culture in general exists as it has for all of human history: a sort of feedback loop between how we are, and how we portray ourselves in media.<br />
<br />
So, causation aside, who has the right idea? Are human beings meant more for order, or chaos? Is it all so meaningless that the only true justification for action is how it affects the individual, the self? I acknowledge the possibility. Maybe we're all just too frightened of it to face it.<br />
<br />
Maybe. But I'm disgusted, both by the incident early this morning, and the notion in the abstract. What utter selfishness. What a nauseating disregard for or ignorance of anything outside of one's own perception. Little wonder that we are eager to ascribe part of the cause for such actions to youth and/or mental illness - these are the two handiest explanations for such inward-obsessed, disconnected personalities. Regardless of the cause, and even regardless of the question of chaos versus order, even the Jokers of the world must admit that theirs are essentially selfish acts.<br />
<br />
I have one argument to make to such people in such a debate, one thing to suggest that they're fools beyond even the kind of fool their worldview suggests they ought to be. If none of it matters, if life is indeed as meaningless and people as insignificant as in your philosophy, why do you have a purpose? Why must you do what you do, be it for personal gratification or illuminating the rest of us to your perspective?<br />
<br />
You might just consider the possibility that your commitment to nihilism is best expressed in the same direction as your attention is. On yourself.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-27580701171678275372012-06-26T09:15:00.000-04:002012-06-26T09:15:00.575-04:00Guys On Film<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDjA-xUjgCYsyeLA7wbVhIScLOfBjuQzhLgbDUlBSR6wDfXNkeBW0atpduX3pateDIlgsm6EJ2okrWhrF_SwVrc3dbS8Znw-xUi9xV19PIrqW114NJVhYN_gJQMaeM4HUP8wvZ6eEpk7c/s1600/226527_10150196502931301_7815222_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDjA-xUjgCYsyeLA7wbVhIScLOfBjuQzhLgbDUlBSR6wDfXNkeBW0atpduX3pateDIlgsm6EJ2okrWhrF_SwVrc3dbS8Znw-xUi9xV19PIrqW114NJVhYN_gJQMaeM4HUP8wvZ6eEpk7c/s640/226527_10150196502931301_7815222_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by Libby Csulik.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Or rather: guy. Or rather: me. Last Sunday I attended, in a little bar in Williamsburg, the screening of <i>Android Insurrection</i>. You may recall my experience filming <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2385001/" target="_blank"><i>Android Insurrection</i></a> a little over a year ago (see <a href="http://jeffwills.blogspot.com/2011/05/in-world.html" target="_blank">5/11/11</a>). In that time the director has dropped us completed acts here and there through Vimeo, and the whole thing was off to the presses (They use presses still, right?) in the spring, but this was my first time really seeing the fruit of our labors. This was in fact my first time seeing myself die on screen.<br />
<br />
Actors often mention in interviews that they are loathe to see their own performances. The reasoning is often offered that all we can see is the mistakes, but I think it goes a layer or two deeper than that. There's a dissonance between what we perceive of ourselves, and what is objectively observable by a camera. It's similar to the response most people have when they hear their recorded voice. The view from the inside is just too subjective to immediately match with what other people perceive.<br />
<br />
So there was a lot of that. I did, I have to admit, come out of the screening vowing never, ever to have my mouth open in performance again unless I was speaking. There was also a more positive response, here and there. I may not have a face that sucks one in, but neither is it loathed by the camera (if only I could slice out this weird, Willsian slope to my neck/chin [my nin; my check] area) and once or twice during filming, I fancy I managed to contribute something useful to the storytelling with my eyes.<br />
<br />
There was also the more introspective consideration, as I sipped my vodka tonics and laughed at the sheer balls-ery of some of the movie's moments. I was watching myself of a year ago run around a warehouse in new Jersey, before I acted in <a href="http://jeffwills.blogspot.com/2011/06/sacred-ground.html" target="_blank"><i>Sacred Ground</i></a>, before I had been to Seattle, before I had this new job and a baby girl on the way. The idea that you can never step into the same river twice felt very real indeed during this experience, which proverb stands as a lovely contrast to such lines as, "I only care about you and me making it out of here alive. Me, because I only care about me. And you, because I'm gonna kill you once we get out."<br />
<br />
And the movie? Well, there's one word that describes this movie, and that word is: Art. Pure art. Which would of course be two words, so you can choose either - "art," or "pure." One of them is the only one to describe <i>Android Insurrection</i>. Well, also "movie," I suppose. I mean, if you want to be technical about it, there are probably several words that can, together or of a piece, describe my cinematic debut. At some point soon, I may have a private screening for a select few adjective-makers, and leave them to label it.<br />
<br />
The thing that's great for me about doing this movie is that it fulfilled something for me, a childhood fantasy, and it not only did so but it did so with a positivity and lightness of which I consider myself very lucky to have been a part. When the screening was over, Friends Nat and Virginia and I, and eventually Joe and Libby, enjoyed one another's company for as far as we could manage on the trips to our respective homes. It was a fitting reward for a job...well: fun.<br />
<br />
Sadly, in spite of having acquired an American distributor, <i>Android Insurrection </i>is not yet for sale in these United States, and so I can't link to it for you. If you'd like a copy dubbed into Thai, I understand that may be possible at this time using something called an "Internet." Happily, there <b>is</b> the "party video," edited by the inimitable Maduka Steady. I emphatically encourage you to enjoy:<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/44401041" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe> <br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/44401041">Android Insurrection Party Video</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user450271">Andrew Bellware</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-25388113190779932532012-06-19T17:24:00.000-04:002012-11-16T12:47:18.750-05:00Be a HeroWhen I was in high school, one of the first stories I wrote - the one that started the creative-writing ball for me in earnest, as a matter of fact - was one set in a not-too-distant future. Now-a-days the half-finished story would be an easy fit into the all-too popular "dystopian" niche, but at the time I wasn't thinking of it as such. I just imagined a world in which priorities had aligned a bit differently. It was about a reporter who goes to live amongst a secret leper colony, established on an island off the eastern seaboard, but the thing that sticks with me the most these years later was an idea I had about the culture of the city from which he came.<br />
<br />
The idea was that everybody smoked. <i>Everybody</i> smoked, indoors and out, and they did so because the popular opinion was that air pollution had gotten so bad that it was safer to inhale through a cigarette's filter. Something like: the smoke conditioned one's lungs to handle the much-worse stuff in the air, and inhaling through the filter helped keep the majority of that worser stuff out. I justified it by suggesting the "doctor recommended" smoking ads of the '50s had won out, but it worked for me as the storyteller by making everyone a little distant, a little coarse and plenty short-sighted.<br />
<br />
Now occasionally I wonder if I just got the wrong orifice. Ray Bradbury, may he rest in peace, in 1953 imagined these far-fetched tiny "seashells" the folks wore in their ears to hear entertainment anywhere. These were all a part of an imagined, self-isolating technology that we were irresistibly drawn to, which included wall-sized television screens and self-prescribed medication, and I'm ashamed to admit that I willingly use so-called "ear-buds" as such every single day. Nothing's so good an excuse to avoid survey-takers and the homeless - heck, even normal people! - as those handy, dandy ear-buds. And just look at how pocket computers help with eye contact!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/inspect-a-gadget/Smartphone-Overtime-584.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="196" src="http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/inspect-a-gadget/Smartphone-Overtime-584.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Found <a href="http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/inspect-a-gadget/2012/02/the-smartphone-dos-and-donts-in-the-office.html" target="_blank">here</a>. See how happy they are not to see you?</td></tr>
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I indulge in this side-effect willingly. I'm grateful for it. Thank God, say I, for my iDevice, and its music and pod-casts and games and even occasionally sometimes if I can be reminded of it connectivity to productive tasks. Furthermore, I'm not writing here to lament this turn in human interaction. True, there are plenty of trade-offs. Yes, I fantasize about a badminton racket reserved solely for knocking the device from the hand of anyone trying to walk and tweet simultaneously. Yes, I'm reading less and have a shorter attention span. And, yes, I want more people than just the local lunatics to hear me if I scream for help. But also: Music! Games! Blocking out the God-awful continuous hammering of street construction! I am fervently all-for the critical resource of my mobile device.<br />
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However. There is a finer point of urban etiquette for which I make exception to my electronic enthusiasm. It has to do with a naturally artificial social situation we call The Subway.<br />
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I am not going to tell you to turn down your salsa music. Blare it out of the vibrations of your skull! I am not going to tell you to stop hugging the pole to maintain balance while playing Draw Something. Get that palate enormous, and three coins for Gryffindor! I am not even going to tell you to start taking your seashells from out your ears. Leave your seashells in. You are a beautiful mer-maid/man, and you glisten with the rapture of this week's <a href="http://www.epicmealtime.com/" target="_blank">Epic Meal Time</a>.<br />
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I am going to tell you this: Open your eyes. And one more thing: Especially if you are fortunate enough to have a seat.<br />
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The Subway is a miserable solution to a miserable problem. No one - apart from the aberrant tourist - is pleased to be there when they're on The Subway. The best solution, the only and final solution, is to zone right the heck on out. ZONE, SON. You can get miles away, especially if you have those magic ear-shells. And maybe you are on there at five in the morning, and your hour-long commute is going to make the napping difference between a good day and an impossible one. And maybe you are coming off a fourteen-hour nursing shift, and the only thing that makes sense is bending your legs, just for a few minutes. And maybe it's just the stress (God, the stress) that makes you want to hold yourself and rock during the one period of your day when no one expects anything from you. I get it, and I'm with you, and I'm in the ZONE.<br />
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But open your eyes. This isn't the zombie apocalypse, despite what you've heard on the news lately, and the dog-eat-dog world isn't applicable to mass, underground transportation. Here is where the humanity is needed most. Here is where you can toss a token (so much more poetic than a MetroCard) and it will be quickly caught by someone looking longingly at something about the bounty of your position. Because we're all lucky to have what we have, and we're all here for one another. It shouldn't take a catastrophe to remind us of that - just a little gratitude, held in your heart for these moments when you have a chance to help.<br />
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So, please: Keep your eyes open. For the nurse, if you're a napper. For the napper, if you're a caffeine addict like me. For the guy on crutches, who'll argue with you for a little while about it. For the lady in heels (maybe she <i>has</i> to wear them for some reason). For the elderly. For the family. That makes you a hero, for the littlest while. But who knows? It may also help you reconnect a bit before you go back to conquering the world on your cell phone.<br />
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And just one final and specific point I'd like to make in closing. Some might argue that it is the entire purpose of my meandering exposition, and some of those same may accuse me of out-dated modes of thinking, but I will have my point made regardless. If you are male, between the ages of 13 and 60, and of reasonable fitness, and have the benefit of a seat when a pregnant woman enters the subway car, give up your seat. Right. The fuck. Now.<br />
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Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5156356070860079785.post-40874322579403980202012-05-03T08:30:00.000-04:002012-05-03T08:30:00.151-04:00I AM IRON MAN on Fighting Monkey Press<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZnmh9qZAOb6SFyIPpa6Jly3aBMmm2V2wqkETW1dVIizLU1KPzKOHX2TTRUzpvZJpRp4bNiZsZmYzgcXK3aCV8joMPO42QHSHmuPOGPvJj4Q0DiV68qcDOnGEvbdpKiuhE_1fueQACgZw/s1600/ironjeff2iv8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZnmh9qZAOb6SFyIPpa6Jly3aBMmm2V2wqkETW1dVIizLU1KPzKOHX2TTRUzpvZJpRp4bNiZsZmYzgcXK3aCV8joMPO42QHSHmuPOGPvJj4Q0DiV68qcDOnGEvbdpKiuhE_1fueQACgZw/s200/ironjeff2iv8.jpg" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by Jimmi Kilduff.<br />Image by Dave Youmans.</td></tr>
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Yesterday the second of my guest posts appeared on Pavarti's site. This one is significantly less spiritual in content, but still speaks to my heart and holds a connection to the debut of Pav's novel, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0983876908/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=pavarti-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0983876908" target="_blank">Shadow on the Wall</a></i>. She invited anyone who was willing to ruminate on superheroes to write up a bit of an argument for the supremacy of a particular one, and initially assumed I'd contribute something about my dear Batman.<br />
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What no one (I mean - no one) knows is that the first superhero comic I owned was actually an Iron Man one. I thought it would be interesting to make an argument not for Bats, but for the closest thing Marvel has as an analogue to him. A bit of my case for Tony Stark:<br />
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"On his own, Tony Stark is the power fantasy even without his miraculous suit – rich, brilliant and irresponsible. Robert Downey Jr.’s irrepressible id in a nutshell. Ah, but that shell! The added armor of Iron Man actually strips some of that power away, even as it introduces the ability to fly and repel bullets. It turns Tony into so much the archetype of a man, it’s astonishing that we tolerate such blatant analogy, much less hunger for more."</blockquote>
You can read the full, but brief, argument here: <i><a href="http://www.fightingmonkeypress.com/i-am-iron-man-by-jeff-wills/" target="_blank">I am Iron Man</a></i>. While you're there, check out the other arguments thus far for the likes of Wonder Woman, Wolverine and, yes, the Batman himself.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02728223817801458234noreply@blogger.com0