The Absent Minded Professor

Today @DrewZachary made two updates to Twitter that made me sigh and shake my head (not at him…he’s lovely…at the industry of art):

"Since it’s come up, a reminder: legally, the writers on our show can’t read/hear your ideas/scripts for our show. But we still love you."

"The best advice I have for aspiring writers is go through a fellowship or get yourself represented by an agent who CAN submit your work."

This caused me, in my head, to begin reciting my new vignette: "Middle Man Me: How Social Media is Going to Change the Art Industries as We Know Them." (I am not a screenwriter- so don’t judge, this was just the format it played out in in my head):

INDUSTRY: Well, sir, we appreciate that this person has contacted you and shows immeasurable talent, but legally we need them to have an agent get in touch with us.

ARTIST: This person doesn’t have an agent. They’re take on the world is almost wholly unique and no agent in the history of man has expressed an interest in unique.

RANDOM V.O.: Agents, like Industry, are business people, not artists. What they want is to make money. Talent does not outweigh risk, the agent will always take the safe bet first, but art is about risk.

INDUSTRY: Well, that’s just too bad. We can’t help you. If we did, all our agents would get mad at us for effectively letting social media destroy their jobs, and we can’t have that.

ARTIST: We’re letting something great slip through our finger-tips. This writer is really savvy, if we don’t snatch him up now, we’ll miss the opportunity.

SMALL TIME WRITER: (Tweeting) Hey guys, my friend, The Artist, just got back to me. Industry refused to even contemplate talking to me without an agent. Looks like this is going to be indie after all. You folks still in?

SMALL TIME FRIENDS: Totally in. We begged, borrowed, stole all the necessary equipment, we’ve got YouTube queued up, between all of us our 300,000 followers have pitched in some donations for the budget, our website is built, Facebook fan page already starting to get liked. Let’s do this.

  [Insert Montage of a SMALL TIME AND CO. making a show and putting it up on the internet]

ARTIST: (watching YouTube serials created by Small Time Writer and Company online) See? Wholly unique. And a hit. (he sighs) What do we spend all our money for if we can’t get top talent to work for us because we require ten kinds of middle men?

The End.

Here’s the thing about the art industry, it runs on a system of business. And business sense does not, generally, make for good art. What is sound in a business is not sound in art. Art is about risk…business is about mitigating risk. Art is about creation, business is about structure. You get the picture.

Am I suggesting that the internet and social media are going to topple the mega-giant industries of art? Absolutely not. The reality is, for most people, money is more important to them than art (not because people are evil, though some are, but because we all need to eat and keep a roof over our heads). And if you want to make money with your art, Industry holds the keys to those big dollar deals. Also, people are still working out how to make money via releasing art on the web (I have some ideas on this, to be presented in a later blog). So, it’s not that we’ll ever see these established industry giants toppling to the ground under the weight of the internet. But…

…yes, there is a but. What we will see are some artists sometimes taking their artistic license and blazing new inroads in internet. Clearing paths and establishing way stations for people who are perhaps a little less bold. The two most commonly cited instances of this are Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and The Guild web series. There are many others, lesser known, perhaps not quite as well executed or as well backed (Joss, at least, has resources at his back that the rest of us simply can’t lay claim to), but they’re out there. And they will keep improving. And now and then someone well-connected in the industry like Joss or a plucky group of smart artists with great content like The Guild will push forward with these opportunities. And slowly, the internet will sort itself out as its own kind of medium, separate and utterly different from that of the art industry.

Over time, while I don’t think the art Industries are going to fall, they are going to have to change to accommodate this new, low-barrier sector of their business. It will impact them- not crush them, not kill them, but certainly impact them. It’s a new kind of competition, so new that even those doing it aren’t sure what it’s going to end up looking like.

Today, I tweeted that I’m a cowboy in the wild, wild west of social media. I stick to that. What will come, no one knows, but it’s going to change things. It’s already started to. And I for one, am excited. 

Disclaimer: If you have things to say about art vs. pop culture or my fascination with how the internet might begin making inroads to offering non-middle-man, non-big-industry ways to success for artist, feel free to say so. But be warned- I Snark for a living.

Growth and evolution are the primary driving factors in the life of a human being. No matter how hard we try, we can’t help but change as people over time. Our experiences shape us, and that fundamental truth underlies this entire book.

Calliope, in Cat’s Claw, has grown from the girl she was in Death’s Daughter. She’s garnered a bit of fame from her exploits in the previous books and isn’t really sure how she feels about it (Food for Thought: is this a bit of the author’s experience coming through in her characters?). She’s also begun to see her family in a new light. I’m reminded of that time around your early to mid-twenties when you begin to realize that those people who stick by you (whatever you may have thought of them before) probably care about you more than you realize and it wouldn’t hurt to be nicer to them.

Lastly, she begins another quest and some of the epic-ness this trilogy will cover peeks out from behind the curtain, prepping for taking center stage (I imagine, in the third and final book). In this book, Calliope is left largely to her own devices to find a missing soul for Cerberus (who’s called in his favor), try to help Daniel who’s shade has been stolen by a cat who turns out to be the Goddess Bast, figure out what’s going on with Jarvis and Clio who’ve begun behaving oddly, and somehow try to get some time with Daniel and spit out the fact that she’s, y’know, in love with him. In between, there are twists, turns, betrayals, deaths, and several men for Calliope to drool over.

Whew. If that sounds like a roller-coaster ride then you really are getting a feel for what it’s like reading this book. It’s a great adventure, and a fun read, with overtones of even more greatness to come.

You see, in the same way Calliope has grown, Ms. Benson has grown as an author as well (or has made a choice to step up her game in this book, one of the two). Cat’s Claw is the beginning of the epic feeling of this story. Sea Verge begins to take on some of the mythic qualities that the home of Death should embody. Calliope begins to discover that she perhaps has more power than she imagined. The afterlife has some real life breathed into it (sorry, I can’t resist a good pun…) and we really start to sense how it looks and feels. Back stories are slowly revealed and characters besides Calliope get fleshed out (Jarvis and Clio especially).

The only nit-pick I’d have about this book actually relates to how the trilogy has been structured. I’ll be honest, if some of this vastness of the story Ms. Benson intended to tell had been made felt in the first book, it likely would have drawn in more readers, because this one is a far more enjoyable read. I remember hearing somewhere that the original idea was to write one long book, and I suspect that when it was changed to be a trilogy not too much thought was put into how it would need to be restructured to accommodate multiple releases. Sometimes, growth and change can be messy to handle.

Regardless, this book was really a great read and am waiting anxiously for the final book. Can’t wait!

Some of my favorite tid-bits from Cat’s Claw:

"Whenever I went to Hell, I always left bloodier than I had come."

"Death 101, or How Does That Persnickety Afterlife Work?"

"…that mankind was all the same on the inside, no matter how different they seemed on the outside."

It’s true, I bought this DVD specifically because I am an Amber Benson fan. I enjoy the things she’s made (most especially her books….waiting anxiously for the third Calliope Reaper-Jones novel). I also appreciate things she’s said in interviews that I have watched (please stay tuned for my soon-to-be written article "How to be a fan without being creepy"). And I am of the school of thought that advocates buying into artists you like. Literally buying in. Put your money where your mouth is. If you’re fan, front up the cash and support your favorite folks. So, I did. And my DVD came in the mail today.

Here there be spoilers: Many spoilers ahead. You have been warned.

I have to admit to some skepticism as the movie began- it’s really hard not to when a movie opens with a rather raunchy sex scene under a desk. I also have to admit that as it progressed I became interested in the story-under-the-story.

The Recipe:
1 supremely dysfunctional family
1 affair
2 angsting youngsters
A Boatload of Cash
2 Robbers

Set up the family, affair, angsting youngsters, boatload of cash in a house. Throw in two robbers. Shake thoroughly until caricatures begin to appear in the mixture.

Here’s the thing about Lovers, Liars, and Lunatics: it’s clearly meant to be a bit of a lark (one of my favorite scenes: Christine Estabrook with a towel over her head, pounding on a window with a toilet bowl brush). People are supposed to laugh, and I did. There was a lot of down-and-dirty humor, which I’ll admit appeals to the thirteen-year-old boy in me.

It’s also a farce. No really, it’s caricatures of people, played well over the top, and while I have no idea if that was the intent, it’s what endeared the film to me. Everyone is a sort of over-the-top reflection of real things, so much so you almost don’t want to look at them…makes one uncomfortable to see those real roles in any family taken to such extremes. It reminds me of looking at a photo where the film has been over-exposed, and it makes things that are real appear fake.

I have some critiques (of course I do, it’s in my nature):

1. I would have liked to see Justine and Louis a little more "normal" (or as normal as you can be when you’re a pair of robbers) and then get sucked into this family-crazy-vortex that sort of causes them to get a little crazy too. I think connecting to them before they become the would-be villains would have leant more weight to the way in which they get sucked into this family’s issues.

I also have some loves:

1. Ryan Spahn (who plays Julian)- I’ve never seen him before, but he was phenomenal. I’ll be keeping an eye out for other things he’s in.
2. Experimentation: There are some lovely scenes experimenting with how the story is told (my favorite is the scene that revolves around a glass of water rather than the movements of a single character). Makes me happy to see things that challenge how a movie typically behaves, it’s why I like indie films.

All told, while it’s noticeable this is an effort by an amateur group on a low budget, that doesn’t stop them from making some really great film. A lot of great laughs, an occasional need to avert my eyes ("What’s this film rated again?"), and some scenes where I forgot completely that I was watching a film-full-o’-whimsy (it is actually heart-breaking when Julian is freaking out over Justine’s body) all left me with a slightly breathless confusion, unable to figure out if I was supposed to be amused, touched, or disturbed. I settled on all three at once. It was a new experience for me. And for that, I can’t say thanks enough to everyone who worked on it.

Note: I make no money off of this, but if you’re looking to find a copy of this film you can purchase them direct at The Lovers, Liars, and Lunatics Website

The Trailer:

This is my story of the adventure of going to see it. Click here to jump straight to my review:

I went and saw Inception last night. It was a bit of an adventure. The first theater I went to was sold out of tickets for the last showing they had at 8:45pm. After staring contemplatively at the clock in my car I decided I would brave the crowds at the Moolah (the local "cool" movie theater) in an effort to see the 10:00pm showing that I had originally planned to avoid due to the length of the film. Hey, you only live once, right?

I arrived near the Moolah at 9:00pm, hunted down some parking (I had to beat up a little old lady, but I got a space) and was in line by 9:15pm. Commence my thirty minute wait in a sweltering hot stairwell in order to get a seat to this movie. Luckily, people watching is a favorite activity of mine and I didn’t lack for entertainment. Did you know, you can pick out the couples who are having problems by how they orient themselves around each other? It’s all about angles when analyzing people’s lives from afar…but I digress. Thirty minutes of fascinatedly analyzing people later, the doors finally opened and with a gusty sigh of relief the crowd, as one, filed into the theatre which was blessedly cooler than the oven the stairwell had become.

I was fortunate to sit next to a chatterer. She wasn’t one of those annoying people who yammer your ear off, but chill and with her own bit of wit about her. Don’t know how her date felt about our few minutes of banter, but I had fun while waiting for the movie to start. And then, the lights dimmed and I prepared to give myself over to the ever enjoyable task of watching a new movie.

[insert two and a half hours of time here]

As the credits rolled, my brain was pumping (preparing, believe it or not, to write this very post) and the witty buddy I had made turned to me and said: "What did you think?" After a moment of thought, I replied, "Y’know, it was good, but I like a little more mind-fuck in my mind-fuck movies."

That pretty much sums up my reaction to Inception. All told I found it…well, a little average. Perhaps I was expecting too much, but to be honest, I was anticipating more of a complex mind-warping experience and this movie just didn’t quite live up to it. There weren’t really any twists that I couldn’t anticipate coming, and Leo’s performance was a bit flat for my tastes. A man who is living tortured with guilt and pain should be more…overwrought, in my opinion. Sad just doesn’t quite cut it, if you ask me.

Truthfully, I would have preferred a little less action and a little more emotion in a film about dreams and ideas. Not that I don’t like action as much as the next guy, but I think if they had spent as much time on developing the characters stories as they did on the bad-ass fight scenes (particularly the ones with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, great stuff in the second level of the dream) they’d have ended up with a much more well-rounded movie.

Now, for the best part of the film: Ellen Page was absolutely stellar as the architect Ariadne (oh, be still my geeky heart…an architect named Ariande…does it get any better? She builds MAZES!). Besides wit, charm, and dry humor she always manages to bring just the right amount of innocent vulnerability to a role, and this one was no exception. In the midst of a plethora of jaded, cold characters (and even in the face of DiCaprio’s flat affect) Ariadne is the warm, beating heart behind it all. It was also indisputably appropriate that she is the Architect of the dreams…literally building the structure which people are filling up with their subconscious "projections".

I rate the movie an overall B-Plus for a brilliant premise and some great work by the supporting cast. Go see it, but don’t set your sights too high.

Highlights:

Best Acting Goes To: Ellen Page (obviously)

Best Fight Goes To: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, fighting some guards as gravity goes wonky on him (nice to see a guy generally styled as a geek being a hard-core badass).

Best Over All Scene Goes To: Ellen Page and Joseph Gordon-Levitt:
   Arthur: "Quick, kiss me." (they kiss)
    Ariadne: "They’re still staring at us."
    Arthur: (shrugs) "Well, it was worth a shot."
    They exchange a look that speaks volumes, and smile.

That’s all from me on Inception. Have you seen it? Did you like? Tell us in the comments!

There’s not much in the way of updates for the next little while. I have a new website I’m working on, so that takes precedence right now. Lots of behind the scenes work this weekend, and hopefully in a week or two it will be ready for “The Great Unveiling”. Meanwhile, not much in the way of writing going on, but I’ll try to get some tidbits out here for you folks relatively regularly. Tonight’s tidbit:

Did you ever wonder what would have happened if you’d stayed?
just hunkered down,
just hung in through the night ’til day?
Did you ever wonder where you’d be
If you weren’t here?

I’m not generally a what-if-er. It’s not in my nature to think that I should have taken a different path, or done things a different way, because I really do believe that all our experiences shape us, and therefore there’s really no such thing as “the wrong path”. Still, tonight I find myself contemplating where I would be if I weren’t here. What my life would have been like had I known then what I know now.

What a time waster…wondering about about lives-that-might-have-been. Alas, it’s all I got this late at night.

Random Note: Q10 typewriter sound effects while writing + music playing= trying to type in rhythm with the music. So trying that again some night when I’m not really tired. I think I should write music reviews that way…

Part one is located: here

It wasn’t what I had anticipated. As I crossed from the murky, dim depths of the water into the blackest night of the corridor I suddenly felt a rush of water slam down on my head from above and then I was landing heavily on cold, hard stone, my breath (so unnecessary earlier) rushing out of me with a huff.

“Ow,” my voice echoed in what I could imagine was a cavern, but given the deep black surrounding me, there was really no telling. It was then it dawned on me that I wasn’t wearing any clothes. I rolled onto my side and curled in on myself, wrapping my arms around my knees and huddled there for an untold time, my testicles practically crawling back inside my body in an effort to keep me in the baby-making business if I ever got out of this god-forsaken mess. Mother Nature takes care of her own, this thought made me laugh, and if there was an edge of hysteria to it I chose to ignore it. Not like there was anyone there to hear it anyway. I have no idea how long I lay there, shivering as the water evaporated off my body.

You can’t stay here, I thought to myself. “Get up, you can’t stay here,” I mumbled to myself, clenching my teeth in an effort to stop their chattering. I said it aloud to make it seem more real, more urgent. I knew, in some inner part of my being, that this moment was one of those moments where you get to decide if you live or die. Somehow, I had to overcome this lethargy that was slowly consuming me, trying to kill me….

*****

Flashes of light were exploding against my retinas as I struggled against the weight pinning me to the ground. I clawed at the fingers that were clamped around my neck….trying to kill me….

*****

With a gasp, I came back to myself, breathing heavily, sprawled on my back in the inky black cavern, still shivering.  What the hell?! I struggled to reconcile what I’d seen (felt?) with my current predicament. Was it a memory? A dream? I couldn’t tell. Whatever it was, it gave me the willies. So, I sat up. Hey, that’s progress I thought. I stretched my legs out, testing each body part to be sure I was still in one piece. Legs, arms, scapula…all seemed to be in their proper place. Satisfied, I slowly climbed to my feet, the chill of the stone beneath them soaking through to my very bones. Now what? I can’t see and god knows what’s down in this bleeding cavern.

I could hear rushing water behind me. Slowly I did an about face in a carefully precise fashion (it would be too easy to lose all sense of direction in the absolute blackness) and stretched out my right hand toward the sound. All I encountered was emptiness…one…two…steps forward and rushing water wet the tips of my fingers. I took another step, reaching through what felt like a waterfall, and jammed my middle finger against a rock wall. “Fuck!” I jerked my hand back, cradling it close to my chest and hopped around in pain a bit. So much for maintaining my sense of direction.

I forced myself to stillness, taking deep breaths to stave off the hysterical laugh building in my chest. “Ok, easy, Danny, just…think for a minute,” I told myself. I closed my eyes (they weren’t doing me much good anyway) and stood there in all my birthday-suited glory. Talking to myself—great, because insanity is the best way to deal with this situation…what IS the best way to deal with this situation? Find help. For crying out loud, I’m just a… I didn’t know what I was. I didn’t know who I was. Now, just hang on, I’m Danny, Danny Davis (for which, I will hate my parents for all eternity). Right, I know who I am. I come from…I come from…that was it. All I had. Just a stupid name and the knowledge that I’d always hate my parents for gifting me with a moniker that abbreviates to “Double D”. I tried to reach back into my memory and call up more information, but it was like when I’d stretched my hand out into the blackest dark of this stupid cavern…just emptiness. I could sense there were edges, feel the negative space of my memory as a distant idea, but the memories themselves appeared to be gone. 

Disclaimer: This is a rant…a snotty, aggravated ranty type rant. Not recommended for sensitive types. Consider yourself forewarned.

*shudder* Just came across those kinds of folks that disturb me (and are the reason I avoided the title “Fan” for so many years). For the record, if I’m ever a Fan of someone, it’s because of what they’ve got from the neck up, not what they’ve got from the neck down. For me to take up that torch and intentionally invest both personally (by drawing inspiration from the person behind the art) and monetarily (by paying whatever it takes get to see said art) you’ve got to be far, far more than just someone nice to look at. That said, it makes me sad when people devalue those people I’ve chosen to be a Fan of by implying that the greatest thing they have to offer is being nice to look at. Not that there is anything wrong with being pretty….but c’mon folks, there’s so much more to life.

I’m just sayin’….

I can’t breathe, I thought to myself.   You don’t need to. I wasn’t sure where the response had come from, maybe inside my own head. But, with my biggest concern resolved my mind was freed to take in my surroundings. It was dark, murky beneath the depths of the water. I could hear, distantly, waves crashing on the shore. Or maybe it was my heartbeat thudding in my ears. A shadow moved past my right hand, raising goosebumps on my arms. I squinted, trying to see what it was, but all I could see were shadows and vague out-lines. Turning my head the other direction, I caught a glimpse of what looked like a building. A building under the ocean? Somehow, it didn’t seem as odd as it should. Peering around one more time, I slowly moved my arms and kicked my feet, making my way toward the vague shape in the distance. My eyes must have been adjusting to the darkness, because I could see things suddenly, all black and white monochrome: plants, undulating eels, and far, far in the distance (thank god), what I thought looked like I shark.

Just as I tasted the bitterness on my tongue that presaged fear-induced nausea I was startled to discover I had arrived in front of the silvery, shadowy building without realizing it. In fact, I was certain I hadn’t been swimming long enough to get all the way to what had been a distant shape not so long ago. Odd. Then things got much, much stranger: the sea of kelp to my left slowly parted down the middle, revealing a tunnel in the sandy ocean bottom. Terror should have taken me, I should have bolted in the other direction… I should need to breathe, my mind screamed. But none of that happened (not even the need to breathe). Instead, I began the slow swim into the pitch black corridor. I didn’t know how long it was, but I was going to find out what was on the other side…

Words are cheap…but finding your voice- that costs you. In fact, it costs years of your life, laughter, tears, hate, and love. Finding your voice requires something to say… that something has been lived (well known secret: writers mostly use what they’ve lived as the initial seed of a story).

I’ve wondered at my recent silence. No voice, no words. Just an empty page. I’ve stared at it, I’ve rambled my way through pages and pages of ideas (jotted down usually in the middle of the night over the years), but nothing comes. I just find myself staring, contemplating how easy it used to be, grasping at shadows.

I remember as a teenager writing these sort of beautifully macabre tales about bats and ravens, wolves in the night guiding children through copses of trees inhabited by corpses. My “little stories” (jotted down in nearly illegible hand-writing in spiral notebooks) were speckled with grief and death…the things I lived when I was younger. The isolation I chose after those experiences, though, seems to have largely silenced any voice I once had. Is this what happens when you grow up and move away?

I used to live in the thick of things. I used to walk the ocean paths at night and listen to waves crashing on the shore and wonder about what lived in the dark under the surface of the water. What I wouldn’t give for the sound of the ocean tonight.

I know that a lot of folks have written that they disliked this book because the main character, who’s head we live in (as it is written in the first person), is kind of annoying. I must admit, I liked that about Calliope. She’s flawed, and silly, and she whines about bad situations, and has a crush on just about every boy she meets. And this makes her immensely human in my eyes- ironic, considering said book places an emphasis on her non-humanness. It has occurred to me while reading it, that was perhaps Miss Benson’s very intention. That for all Calliope’s lack of humanity, for all that she is Death’s Daughter and being faced with seemingly insurmountable tasks she must complete, even as she walks casually through Hell and discusses favors and payment with everyone from Cerberus to Gods she is still, in every moment, just a person: a flawed, silly person, who makes mistakes and sticks her foot places it doesn’t belong while trying her very best in a bad situation. How can one not relate?

That said, I enjoyed this book immensely. Honestly, more than I expected to (I have to admit, I’m skeptical of actors who take up writing). It’s a fun read, and while for the most part what one would call fluff, it had some deeper undertones that struck a chord in me. Moments where the greatness of the mythology involved and the story being told (usually masked behind Calliope’s urban sarcasm, and silliness) peeks out at you and says something profound that you weren’t expecting.

The only small critique I might send the author’s way is that she seems a most up-front kind of individual and the story might benefit from a bit of subterfuge…it’s told in a very straight-forward style, leaving little to the reader’s imagination, and while Miss Benson’s engaging speaking style comes through and makes the effect fairly pleasant (like hearing a story related by an old friend), I think the tale might have more impact in some places if some details were left to the reader’s imagination.

A solidly enjoyable read, that I certainly recommend. I have Cat’s Claw to get started on next, so more reviews to come.