Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 232

Okay...no "Hyena" for me...

The only time I can see the movie is 9:10 pm Wednesday night. Meaning the earliest I'd get back to the hotel would be well after midnight, and I have to be at the packing job and done and out of the city by 3pm, Thursday. Dammit. Such is life in the big city.

I'm in the basement of this hotel, BTW. Surrounded by junkyards and car repair shops. I had to order Chinese food to get dinner. Tomorrow I'm eating in Manhattan, even if it's a junky little dive diner. It's better than the delivery guy asking you for a $5 tip instead of the $2.70 you gave him on top of the $8.30 tab. And that's for food I couldn't really finish eating. This is what you get for $130 a night in New York.

The room reminds me of the time I spent a summer in NYC, being an asshole. I'd been accepted to NYU's graduate school in film and stupidly said no, after I got up here, because they wanted me to go for 3 years instead of 2. Biggest mistake I ever made in my life, and I think I knew it, down deep; which may be part of the reason I turned into such a jerk.

Anyway, I was staying in a basement apartment with no windows and a subway half a block away. When the lights went out, it was pitch black. This place is a bit like that -- but with a window up high. And the train above-ground instead of below. And no roommates to drive crazy.

The drive was long, this time, partly due to this minivan having issues. It's a Chrysler and usually they're really nice, but I think the one I wound up with need serious servicing. It's short on power, even when doing the cruise control. It rides rough. And the brakes feel weird. Not squeally or grinding or anything, just...uncomfortable. Maybe a little spongy. Like there's air in the line. I'll take them to an Enterprise once I drop off the shipment, on Thursday; ask them to check the brakes. Maybe bleed them.

I had another idea of something that needs to change in MFD -- the reason Ben finally starts paying attention and realizes he's being used. I sort of hint at it -- seeing Aurelia having a fight with her father -- but it should be more overt. I think I'm being too subtle or obscure, here.

As usual.

Okay enough to polish...

I've got Marked For Death down to 102 pages, and may be able to remove another page or two. So far the ending has everything I want in it...but it feels busy instead of exciting or suspenseful. And the explanation is still long and wordy, even though I cut it up with flashbacks to show what's happening. I also think I'm missing a crucial image...but I have to think about that; I have no idea where I'd put it.

I wonder if I should show it all in one sequence, as little dialogue as possible, then return to everyone at the marina? More voice-over? More food for thought as I do another packing job in NYC. But as it currently stands, I'm not 100% on it.

Right now, I'm torn between working on Underground Guy or Carly's Kills. UG is going to be close to prurient while CK is a vicious script, but more in the vein of Faster, Pussycat, Kill, Kill than Kill Bill. Carly's not going to be some slim blond who knows martial arts better than The Karate Kid's teacher.

I kind of miss the whole exploitation series of movies that came out in the 60s and 70s. Tacky things that had no redeeming value beyond how far they were willing to push the envelope. Maybe I'll go to the Canadian Niagara Falls and have dinner and watch the water crash down to its next level and let my mind drift until it settles on something.

Won't be this weekend. Tomorrow I'm driving to NYC and staying at a hotel in The Bronx. Won't be back till Friday. Seems everyplace I wanted to stay was booked up or $500 a night; that ain't gonna happen. I have no idea how I'll be able to find a way to see Hyena, but I'm going to try. We'll see how it goes...

God, that's my favorite phrase, lately.

New ideas mean new directions...

I had a bright idea about how to get the third act into gear better, which shifted a number of aspects of the ending around. I'm down to 103 pages, now, but there are moments that don't quite fit together yet, so I may be longer...or short. Who knows?

I want to get it done and settled this weekend because I'm driving down to NYC on Tuesday for a packing job and won't be back till Friday afternoon. I can only work scripts on my desktop Mac because it has Final Draft. To put FD on my laptop, I have to buy a new version and I just don't feel the need to put the money out. I'm fighting hard enough to keep my debts under control, as it is; I don't need to buy something that may or may not be necessary. I've got a good updated version of Word for my books.

If I can, I'm going to see Hyena when I'm in NYC. It's at a theater down on 12th street, while I'll be working up near Columbia U, so it's not a definite, yet. Plus my hotel's not on an easy subway line. We'll see. I think I've made Glyde a pretty bad guy. Good and tough with everybody. Plus Ric and Aura are stronger, less innocent, and Ben's emotional arc is clearer.

And the story's even making logical sense...at least, for now.

MFD is Officially 105 pages...

And the ending is insane. It takes place at a marina by London's City Airport, which is wide open and on the seedy side. Only one way in or out. No cover. A Mexican Standoff between bad guys, cops, two innocents, and our hero, Ben Forrier. Not to mention a sneaky assassin lurking about. It's got a gunfight. Bombs. Sniper rifles. An Aston Martin convertible. And DRONES! I even threw in a kitchen sink...off the galley of a cabin cruiser moored nearby. And mixed in is Ben's explanation of what happened.

It probably makes absolutely no sense, right now, but so what? As Alfred Hitchcock once said, "It's just a movie." Right?

I'm digging back into The Blood of Others and finally got to a part that grabbed me. It's the last 60 pages of the book, and Paris has fallen to the Nazis. Blomart, the lead male -- one of those self-satisfied men who feigns dissatisfaction (my description, not de Beauvoir's) -- casually talks a couple of friends into setting up their own branch of resistance against the German occupation. One half-heartedly points out that if they do commit violent acts against the German soldiers, there will be reprisals. Innocent people will die. A reality that is so easily rationalized away, it left me shaken.

The Resistance in France during WW2 has been so romanticized beyond recognition or honesty, it's more like a fairy tale than something that really happened. And, of course, most Frenchmen will insist there were very few collaborators during that time. So to read this moment in a book written only a couple years after the war's end sent a chill of truth across the nape of my neck.

People die in war -- innocent and guilty, alike. Soldiers and civilians. Men, women, and children, not to mention other living creatures. Even now. It's like a tornado or earthquake or tsunami, completely without anything in the way of human concern with its aftereffects. It just is what it is. The only difference is, it's man-made instead of a natural occurrence.

You have to wonder why anyone -- anyone -- would want to have that happen. 

Let's make that "the last act..."

I'm still trying to configure the final big scene in Marked For Death...and it's expanded to where I have to rework the entire last act. I won't say I was being overly ambitious with it...I'm still fighting to keep everything in that I want...but either I expand one character's role to where it matters as to which side he's on...or I kill off another character. Which I don't want to do because that will poison my ending.

I've got a feeling this script is going to wind up being more like 105 pages than its current 100. Which isn't bad. But I'm doing this little thing where I don't overly describe fights or action bits, meaning the pages will be heavier, in those areas. And yet I'm adding a bit more dialogue. So maybe it was going to be an hour and forty-five minutes, no matter what.

I want to be done with this script so I can get on to other work. I finally heard from that Deputy DA in Riverside and he's pulling together the answers to my questions, regarding The Vanishing of Owen Taylor. Meaning I can do my last draft on it, with the reality of jurisprudence mingled in instead of what I remembered from Perry Mason, LA Law, and Law & Order.

I also want to make Carly's Kills...but haven't figured out the best way to go with it, yet. I do know what I want to do with Underground Guy; strictly book and my "hero" an asshole in need of redemption. Sort of like Curt in How To Rape A Straight Guy.

I'm also having more ideas on how to make The Alice '65 into a book. Which it should be. Adam and Casey are too complex to easily explain in a script, and I can delve deeper into the whole antiquarian book world. I may even be able to get some people I know give me input about it. I could also get back to doing Adam's facebook page. It's been sitting there for too long.

Like most of my writing.

Down to the last 12 pages...

I think I finally have a handle on making MFD a solid script ready to show. It has to do with taking everyday items and making them dangerous even as I keep building the complications. What's going to be fun is tying it all together at the end. In a marina on The Thames under the flight path of an airport in the middle of the night with no cover and a Mexican standoff happening under the glare of CCTV cameras with only one way out of the place as the cops approach and a secretive killer is out to make a hash of everyone else with two innocents and Ben caught in the middle.

Not asking for much, am I? But if I can pull this off...

What's especially interesting is how an old lady who worked at Sam Houston Book Shop in Houston, when I did, gave me the clue. Lois. She was only about five-foot tall and silver haired. Always in a dress, never pants, never a skirt and blouse, and she walked a bit like a drunken sailor. She died years ago, and I hadn't seen her since 1992, but she's locked into my brain. An old Texas woman, no guff to her, didn't take crap off nobody, working part time to bring in money because her son suffered a stroke while being audited by the IRS for his former partner's business dealings and he was living with her, on disability. Hers was a rough story.

She reminded me a bit of my Texas grandmother, though Nana was five-nine...five ten in her nursing shoes. And her hair was white and fine, and she loved to wear slacks. My youngest niece looks so much like her, it's scary.

Anyway, Lois would come to work, take care of the fiction paperbacks -- restocking, reordering, going over new book offers, returning those that didn't sell -- and make a cup of tea. In a mug. with an immersible heating coil.  I was at that store seven years and that coil worked non-stop for six of them. And that gave me the link.

I have a scene where a knife is used to torture a man...and I thought, that's typical and tedious. What could be more interesting? Hmm...burn him with an immersible heating coil. Because those suckers boil water. Fast. My scary flights of fantasy took off from there.

Do I make you nervous, now?

Flyin' high...

I just got a kick-ass review of The Lyons' Den on Saguaro Moon Reviews! The reviewer got what the story's about. I don't yap about it because I wasn't sure I succeeded; I just thought I'd had fun with it. But there it is. Maybe I do know what I'm doing...for now. I'm sure I'll drop back to self-deprecation mode in about 23 hours.

That said...I'm finding my way down to a meaning for Marked For Death. I've bounced a number off the back of my brain, but as I was going through a hardcopy of what I've got, so far, a new idea began to build.

The first one to come up was, "The sins of the father are visited on the son." Which I didn't really go for; Ben's got a great relationship with his parents, so that doesn't fit such a narrative. I thought maybe I could have it turn out that Forrier is NOT such a great guy, that it's all in Ben's memory of him. But that bothers me...not so much because of the reversal and betrayal behind it all, but because then Ben would be seen as backing away from wanting to die because he's lost respect for his father. And that is just wrong for him. He needs to make the decision without external forces forcing him into it.

So another one  popped up, "You cannot run away from yourself." Which is a bit too New-Age-y-Pop-Psych for my taste. Besides, Ben's not running away; he's confronted the reality of his life and wants to die...just not without meaning.

I think what it's boiling down to is..."Where there's hope, there's life." A quote from Anne Frank, but it fits Ben's case. He feels dead and wants to end the last vestiges of awareness...until he meets Aurelia. It came out of something he says to her, near the end of act 2 -- "In you, I see life, again." Not love. Not desire. Not even hope, really. He senses what could be a future...and even, maybe, some happiness. A reason to keep on going, even while still remembering...

Hmm...is that what it really is all about?

Kinetic Sand...too damn cool...

This is a magical interactive glass sphere installation...

Sable cinetique -- bonus jonglage dans le Palais de la Découverte
Tres, tres cool et tres, tres chic...

"Hyena"

This is a British crime film from last year, supposedly in the vein of Bad Lieutenant, that I think I need to see. About a semi-crooked cop and the Albanian/Turk criminals he's trying to bring down...if they don't get him, first. It's just getting released in the US, and I doubt it'll go much outside LA and NYC...so when I can get it, I will. I think it'll help me with Marked For Death.

I've begun to wonder if MFD is too soft, story-wise. It's Ben's story and he's out for revenge, but I don't think I've taken it quite as far as it need to go. The way it is, now, he's dealing with a drug kingpin...and that seems trite. But it got me to wondering what the story's about...and I honestly can't say.

There's my usual "revenge destroys the innocent as well as the guilty" part to it, but that's not the core of the story. There's the idea that the sins of the father are visited on the son, but that doesn't fit in with Ben and his Da. I could change that, but then what's it about?

An idea that's beginning to wriggle its way out of the dirt is, something to do with redemption. But what that is or how it fits in, I have no idea. So far, I'm just having fun with drones and posturing. Not the best way to build a movie...especially when it takes nearly 6 pages to explain everything at the end. Doesn't matter how much you cut it up, that's deadly boring.

Of course, I could be overdoing the self-criticism and holding the story to a ludicrous standard. I've done that before...way more than once. So what's the story's story, Kyle? What're you trying to say?

Damned if I know.

The greatest brain ever...

(Belonged to) John von Neumann (December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) ... a Hungarian and later American pure and applied mathematician, physicist, inventor,polymath, and polyglot. He made major contributions to a number of fields,[3] including mathematics (foundations of mathematics, functional analysis, ergodic theory,geometry, topology, and numerical analysis), physics (quantum mechanics, hydrodynamics, and fluid dynamics), economics (game theory), computing (Von Neumann architecture, linear programming, self-replicating machines, stochastic computing), and statistics.[4] He was a pioneer of the application of operator theory to quantum mechanics, in the development of functional analysis, a principal member of the Manhattan Project and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (as one of the few originally appointed), and a key figure in the development of game theory[3][5] and the concepts of cellular automata,[3] the universal constructor, and the digital computer.

Von Neumann's mathematical analysis of the structure of self-replication preceded the discovery of the structure of DNA.[6] In a short list of facts about his life he submitted to the National Academy of Sciences, he stated "The part of my work I consider most essential is that on quantum mechanics, which developed in Göttingen in 1926, and subsequently in Berlin in 1927–1929. Also, my work on various forms of operator theory, Berlin 1930 and Princeton 1935–1939; on the ergodic theorem, Princeton, 1931–1932." Along with Hungarian-born American theoretical physicist Edward Teller and Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, von Neumann worked out key steps in the nuclear physics involved in thermonuclear reactions and the hydrogen bomb.

Von Neumann wrote 150 published papers in his life; 60 in pure mathematics, 20 in physics, and 60 in applied mathematics. His last work, an unfinished manuscript written while in the hospital and later published in book form as The Computer and the Brain, gives an indication of the direction of his interests at the time of his death.
There's a lot more to this, and if you link to Wikipedia you'll see I stole these three paragraphs and the photo from them. But this is just too fascinating not to share. I'd never even heard of him, before, but someone said he probably had the greatest brain since Da Vinci, if not greater, and off I went in research.
A gentle thought to end the week...