Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 126

MFSOB...

I am so fucking pissed at myself. I spent days trying to get this one frame of A65's right...coloring it, adding details, adjusting, erasing, shadowing, deepening to the point of overdoing it, staring at it trying to understand what was wrong...and it stayed wrong. It was all fucking wrong. It's not the layout of the image and what I've done with it that's wrong...it's the feel of it. It's like I'm putting distance between Adam and the reader.

My initial sketch for this bit focused more on Adam, but cut back and forth between him in another cityscape and him seeing the college and that wasn't right, either. Then I found the perfect look for Merryton College and went all squirrel and lost sight of how he's the center of the story. The whole book is from his POV and I wanted to keep that sense, even in these minimal sketches.

I checked through and everywhere else I did keep his POV, fortunately, so it was just this frame flipping me off. Now I need to come up with a better layout for it after wasting so damn much time on it. One that will add to the moment instead of simply reflect it.

I do like the castle I used as the model for Merryton. I may keep the gate. But my idea, now, is to have Adam approaching and show where he's going from over his right shoulder. Include the entrance to the chapel...maybe just beyond the gate. Add some buildings and students or something...if there's room. I dunno.

But there goes my Saturday.

Bathroom book...

I'm reading the Taschen Book on Film Noir, edited by Paul Duncan and Juergen Mueller...and it is the perfect thing to pick up while you're taking a shit. Short descriptions of movies they consider to be Noir films, lugubrious discussion of what they mean in the scheme of things, all so very self-important in a way only German scholars can be, who think they've discovered something that's only been around for 75 years.

And it's so full of mistakes, I'm having more fun picking them out than actually reading about the films I've enjoyed. Like how they claim Brigid O'Shaughnessy baited Kasper Gutman and Joel Cairo into helping her get The Maltese Falcon, when she was the one hired by Gutman. And how they claim Walter Neff is being held at gunpoint by Keyes, in Double Indemnity, as he makes his confession...when actually he's doing it because the whole thing's blown up in his face; Keyes doesn't arrive on that scene until the end of the film and just watches Neff, devastated at the betrayal. Ludicrous!

What's funniest is how they include Rebecca and Gaslight as Film Noir, as well as Rear Window, Vertigo and Psycho. That's crazy. Out of the Past, The Killers, Killer's Kiss, Asphalt Jungle, yeah...all those are great Noir Films; including other movies just because they have the same basic look is nearly insulting to the genre.
I'm part of a group on Facebook called Classic Film Noir (1940-1958) and they qualify noir as the following:  Originally suggested by Randy Sadewater in his film class. ~
1. An investigator, a man of relative integrity
2. A Criminal
3. A Femme Fatale
4. A bland but good woman
5. An “everyman” - normal person caught up in the events
6. European emigre director
7. Stolen valuable
8. Use of lighting/angles/composition
   A. Chiaroscuro - high contrast - no fill light, long shadows
   B. Asymetrical, imbalanced composition
   C. Deep focus, giving background equal importance
   D. Reflections/mirrors
   E. Camera position, extreme high and low angles
   F. Extreme close-ups, heightened intensity
9. Script based on American Pulp Fiction
10. Heavy smoking and drinking
11. An obsession with something of the past
   A. Flashbacks
   B. Voiceover
12. Complex plot
13. Urban location
14. Bleak view of humanity
15. Fast paced/poetic dialogue
16. Events that control the outcome as much or more than the characters
17. Downbeat ending, not happily after
18. The story must be contemporary to the time the film was made.
They left out sense of doom or inevitability, something I consider very important. And this book ignores most of the depth and sensibility that makes a film a Noir piece in favor of the surface elements. For example, I can't even begin to see Peeping Tom as a piece of Noir...but it's in this thing.
However...it is a great read as you're sitting on the toilet.

Life intrudes on life...

Got two jobs coming up, starting a week from Wednesday, both fairly intense. One's in Kansas City, the other in Chicago, both under tight time constraints. Not my happiest way to work. What's more, there's one dangling in the background in Seattle that might happen...or might not...and would slap onto the end of these two and entail me doing a redeye to Philadelphia. Le sigh...

So what am I doing instead of artwork or writing? Gorging on Sense8. It's available on Netflix and I just finished episode 12 of 24. It's fascinating what the Wachowskis got away with in the program. Full-frontal male nudity. Serious lesbian sex. Nine different women giving birth in graphic detail, including the moment when the baby's head crowns out of her vagina. And the usual conspiracy stuff.

Shit, and I though Porno Manifesto was a middle finger to the industry. It only has 2 gay bashing, 5 male rapes and 1 imaginary, and the usual system of justice ain't doin' it's job crap, all done in a way that doesn't need to be graphic if the director don't want. I now feel like an incontinent wuss in comparison to S8. But this is what comes from not keeping up with the latest in entertainment availability. What's out there for you is behind the times for others.

I do like the program. A couple of the guys are cute (I especially like Max Riemelt as Wolfgang [brown shirt and black jacket] and Alfonso Herrera as Hernando [not one of the main cast]), and I feel for them. But a couple of the actors can't act very well (Brian J Smith as Will Gorsky is pretty but not deep and Jaime Clayton as Nomi Marks has an irritating monotone of a voice). Sometimes the timeline takes second place to adding complexity and having flashbacks in the story in ways that are distracting...like Riley talking about going to her father's concert that's supposed to be tomorrow night bet feels like it takes days to get there, then going through a long, loooooong remembrance it triggers. It also lingers a bit long and occasionally is very predictable...but I'll watch the rest of it.

However, it really is just a version of The Matrix but without the cool SFX and a bit more emotional connection. It was not cheap to make, either. Shot in Korea, Iceland, Germany, England, India, Kenya, and Mexico, as well as Chicago and San Francisco in the US. With some major crowd scenes, some massive fights, and the actors bouncing back and forth between each country with each of their compatriots.

Hell, that last bit, alone, would keep me watching just to see how well they keep it up.

Kurosawa nails it...

This is mainly advice on writing screenplays, but it's good for any kind of writing. I know. I've taken it to heart and once a story's dug itself into me, I keep at it, no matter how long it takes. It's only the ones I get no connection to that I leave behind...and the way I can tell I didn't connect with them is they just don't work. Something's off between me and the characters, and I can't force it to happen.

So after working on A65's panels, today (I got 1.75 colored in), I started watching Sense8. I got through 3 episodes...and now I want to read that script, because it is all over the place and yet under complete control...and I'd love to do something like that in my work.

The only one of Faulkner's books I really liked was The Sound and the Fury, especially the Benjy section, because it was everywhere and yet inside the mind of a mentally disabled man. I've been too unsure of myself to try it to any real extent in my work, and the few times I did something like that in a script I got ripped for it.

I'm still learning to let go of the fear of criticism...and acceptance...

No more whining...

This is what I did, today, and damn near screwed it up, I was so focused on not doing so. Paranoia and fear will mess with you, like that...but so will being overly precise. I was shadowing in Adam's chin...and shadowing and riffing and using brown then terra cotta then peach then flesh then brown, all nice and light...and it got to be too dark; looked like a beard that was half shaved off, so I erased it and all that did was smudge everything and freak me out.
 So I took a walk and came back and erased some more and recolored it and it turned out all right. It's still on the light side, image-wise, but it's workable.

I'm not spraying fixative on any of the images till I'm done with them all, because I'm finding little changes to make in each frame that helps tell the moment better as I go along...like adding a book to every one of them, somewhere. But it means I have to be careful with them so I don't smudge the graphite pencil I'm using to outline and shadow with. And that stuff does love to smudge.

Adam also needs to stand out a bit more. Or maybe not. I'll decide later. I do know I need to do something to separate his satchel from his mackintosh; darker brown don't make much difference against brown. And the old lady's too washed out. She looks more like a Victorian ghost than Adam's boss, Vincent, does.

Here's something weird -- as I'm writing this, I'm finding grammar-check is handing out wrong information.  When I wrote the old lady's too washed out it told me too should be to, and that's completely incorrect. It also gets it's and its confused all the time. If I wasn't sure about my use of conjugations and basic English grammar, I'd be making changes that made no sense.

So...my thought is -- AI is fucking with us...

Creation is hard...

Like anyone ever thought it was easy. I can't think of a single artist who's worth a damn who believed creating their work was simple or straightforward. It's a fucking pain in the ass. Scary. Demanding. Capricious. You name it...if you want to do something worthwhile. And even if you don't.

I don't necessarily mean that everything created is worth the turmoil it causes. There's some shit out there that people worked their asses off to make that is garbage. I know I've slaved to make a couple scripts great that never got beyond the basic OK stage...if that good. And some of my artwork is ludicrously amateurish.

But then...I've never thought of myself as the next Van Gogh or Picasso. I tried to be like de Kooning...

...but couldn't get into the chaos he seemed to need to paint. Same for Jackson Pollack and, conversely, Mark Rothko.

I couldn't...or wouldn't...dig as deep into myself to bring out art, like they did. I don't think I had nearly as much talent. I do okay in a cartoonish way, but that's not the same thing.
I like Tom of Finland's drawings...especially his faces...but he's still more of a caricaturist than a fine artist, even though his work now hangs in museums. Of course, half the reason for that is his sociological meaning to the gay community...

...And I'm just rambling because I'm not happy with the feel of what I'm doing for A65's slide show. I'm not catching the feel of the book, as if I was trying to make every frame deep and meaningful and worthy of hanging on a wall.

Which I am. Which is why I'm unhappy. And why I'm whining about creating being a pain...

Creation is fucking hard...

Kicking self in ass can be good, when it works...

I managed to make myself go through the sketches I've done up and fill in one shade of brown...which used up damn near all the pencil, thanks to the room Adam works in. And his hair, since the first layer is brown. Now it will be built upon. It wasn't easy getting going, but I managed to get myself out of my rut and just do it.

Maybe I should be the next Nike ad.

It helped that instead of getting lost in Twitter and FaceBook I slammed on Metropolis and Brave New Rave on KCRW, two programs that have interesting music that isn't typical, like rap and hip-hop and today's overwrought folk songs can be. Their Morning Becomes Eclectic program can get songs on like that, banal, insipid, overwrought emotion. I prefer instrumental over lyrics because I'm finding too damn many songwriters are lazy with that part of the writing.

Their songs have lovely melodies but then it seems like they spent 10 minutes writing the words to go with them, and figured they were talented enough to slam any phrase into any beat. Not everyone can phrase well enough to overcome a lyric that doesn't match the melody. I started noticing this when I listened to Florence and the Machine's Dog Days Are Over. Parts of that song are so fucking amazing while other parts are inept, at best.

I love the opening line -- Happiness hit her like a train on a track. But then the following line loses the rhythm because the words used are awkward...and it's back and forth like that through the rest of the song, with the phrasing inconsistent -- sometimes brilliant, sometimes amateurish. Same for other songs by that group. And other performers, too...like Muse, who can be just as sloppy, and even Red Hot Chili Peppers, who can be very insipid.

I got to wondering if it was deliberate, but I can't see anything that adds to the music canon by doing that. I don't need perfect rhymes or consistent intent with the lyrics, but I do think when you come up with a lovely melody you should honor it, not try to subvert it.

It's the same way I deal with my writing...once a story and characters as established, if I don't work with them or try to change them just to make someone else happy, it all falls apart. Messes everything up. I learned that the hard way by killing a couple of scripts I was working on...and by being stupid, once, and allowing others tell me what to put in my script...which only wound up making it bland and very Syd Field.

Maybe that's why I don't like much of today's music.

I'm back to whining...

I've been in a nasty funk for the last few days. Headaches and eye strain and apathy and too goddamn much laziness mixed in to get anything more than the minimum done, each night after work. I don't know where it came from...but here it is. And I'm having a bitch of a time getting past it.

I was able to make myself color in some greens and browns on the frames for A65, and I did some pushing of my books on a couple of sites. I also sent a copy of A65 to Powell's Books, in Portland OR, to see if they'd stock it on their shelves. But nothing more. I sit at my laptop and grow despondent over the shit-show in Washington, thanks not only to the rabid GOP but Democrats who put politics over country.

William Barr's testimony before the Senate, today, is my breaking point. If he is not removed from being AG and that POS in the White House impeached, we are dead as a country...and I hold Pelosi and Schumer just as responsible as the criminals in the Republican Party for this, along with the media for not calling him out before it was too late.

But it's not just them. When an obviously evil man like Czar Snowflake has a 43% approval rating, at this late date, it means too goddamn many people in the US are just as fucked up and corrupt as him. No country can survive that. No democracy can. I think I'm seeing the end of America in my lifetime.

Maybe that's where my apathy comes from -- the understanding that a proven criminal who's looting the treasury for himself and his friends as he destroys everything great about us is still seen as doing something good. He's never done a goddamn thing for anybody but himself in his entire life, but they worship him. He's spawn of the devil but they treat him like God.

So maybe I do know where my funk came from. Maybe this is why I'm thinking, "Why bother?" It's the end of civilization and I'm spinning my wheels thinking my writing will be worth anything in the new Dark Age.

But then again...I have been able to wander past the bleakness and make a couple decisions. I'm taking August off from work and spending the month slamming through APoS. I was going to travel, but it's silly for me to do that when I still have so much to get done and am finally seeing a solid dent in my debt. Besides, I need some dental work done and to have a cyst that's giving me a little horn removed from the top of my head.

Hmm...or maybe I should keep it and pretend I'm a unicorn...

First stage of coloring in A65's frames...

I've decided to focus on one specific aspect of the artwork all the way through and color that in. Like Adam's suits and the copy of Ariosto's Orlando furioso. Here's what I've got laid out --























22 frames, all the way through. I added the next to the last one, today. This is just the first layering; I'll be doing more as it progresses so the suit's coloring is more consistent, and I'll be paying closer attention to Adam's face throughout...

But it's coming together...

I got my book signed...

I slammed into LA, did the packing job...which turned out to be harder than I'd expected...and came home, all on schedule...and I haven't been able to focus, since. My mind's been on vacation the last few days, and I'm pretty pissed it didn't bother to let me know till it was gone.

I also read a friend's screenplay, on this trip, and proofed it so he can send it to the Nicholl (I never mentioned I had also entered), which also took longer than I expected. Seems like that's how it's been for the last few weeks -- everything takes longer.

BUT...I had a first edition of City of Night and John Rechy signed it for me. He was part of the gay scene in the 50s in NYC, LA, Chicago and New Orleans...an actual hustler and his book was about that life. Some of the people he met along the way...two really stand out. One, a guy named Pete who was gay for pay but really wanted a connection...only he can't handle it when he finally makes the attempt with John. Second, an unnamed man in Santa Monica on vacation from his family, who wavers on the brink of allowing himself to be gay only to pull back for the sake of his family.

John's a lovely man who's managed to live 88 years and is working on a new book. What made it even better is, he shared a story with me about the copy I have -- it's very rare. Seems the publisher was printing it with one word wrong in the description on the flyleaf. He stopped the printing and had them change it...but a couple got sent out with the wrong dust jacket and I have one of those.

I can't believe it. It's almost a parroting of what happened with John Tenniel and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In a vague way. I didn't tell him any of that; I felt like it would be taking away from his moment, because he was so pleased he could tell me about this...tell me I had a true first edition, not the followup. I'm keeping that little beast safe.

Regarding the script -- it's one I worked on years ago for this writer in Chicago, and I don't think I did a very good job on it. He worked it into something interesting, even though the story is still pretty much the same, so all I did was check grammar and consistency...but it still took a lot of work. He has a new version of Final Draft and I can't open that file on my old FD program, so I pdf'd it and went through and then wrote out the changes by page number to send to him.

I do wish him luck on it.