Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 260

Just to cut the rut...

...something that is nothing but fun...

Almost settled down...almost...

This has been me, the last few days. No writing done. No artwork done. Nothing but full scale war within my psyche. Fortunately, I live alone so no one could overhear my mutterings and ravings and have me locked up for lunacy.

Also fortunately, the verbal battles I've gotten into with people who blame Israel for the slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and don't even think of holding Hamas at least partially responsible. Israel might be overreacting to Hamas' provocations, but it's Hamas doing everything it can to cause this while using its citizens as human shields. But what I've found is, most of the people blaming Israel for everything have zero sense of the history of that region. So bringing that up and calling lots of carefully-worded names let off a nice bit of steam.

I'm finally calm enough...relatively speaking...to see what the trigger probably was for this freak out -- Speed. The movie. With Keanu at his most beautiful and Sandra Bullock at her most endearing. It's a great action film with an elegant script by Joss Whedon (fuck Graham Yost)...and it was playing as I did laundry. Starting at 1pm. And that's when I began spiraling out of control.

I'd been living in LA for just over a year when the movie came out. I was doing my first storyboarding job, out there, too -- for a short film made by a Vietnamese film grad, using a John Woo style. All very lovely...and gratis (I think I found the job in the back of Dramalogue).

And here I am, twenty years later, doing the same fucking thing. It's like I haven't progressed an inch since then. Granted, I've actually written 25 screenplays (on top of the 8 I already had), lots of short films, plays, one-acts, books, won awards for my scripts and placed nice and high in many other competitions; the time has been filled with work and experience. But I'm still in the exact same position I was the weekend I went to see Speed. No, worse, since I now live in Buffalo instead of LA.

That brought on a serious attack of "WTF is wrong with me?" I'm way over my due date and into "time to be thrown out" territory. And what's worse? I do not want to write another script. I just don't. Even the thought of it makes me ill. I hate having to cut back on aspects of the story that won't make it into any film version...according to what little I know about the industry, today. I don't want to censor my work, but to write a script, you must.

That's where the anger fired up. Why should I have to? Because some unknown twerp of a producer might cringe at the idea of a woman castrating a man who raped her sister after she fucks him with a dildo? And yes, that was in the initial draft of CK. That's how angry Carli is. I can do that in a book, but unless I hit just the right producer who doesn't mind an NC-17 rating for the project, and who knows distributors who feel the same way, it'd be taken out. On top of that, the director and actors would get to do whatever they damn well want with my characters and story. And that's after me rewriting the script into as tight as I possible can...going through draft after draft to make it work.

Well, the hell with that. I'm writing what I fucking want to -- and that means doing it in book format, and self-publishing, if I must. Which I don't mind. That way, I can follow my own style instead of this enforced shorthand scripts have to be in; nor will I have to accept the limitations and demands of anybody else, if I don't want to.

So...now let's see if tiger's really got his roar back, or if he's just got a throat made sore by too much hissing.

Tonic didn't take...

I'm sick of everything, right now. Hate it all. I did at least manage to input changes for the first scene of CK...and proceeded to decide it's a piece of crap.

I'm still trying to figure out what the hell happened, yesterday, to trigger this anger and hurt. Nothing comes to mind.

I guess I'm just schizophrenic.

"Ikiru (To Live)"

In 1952, Akira Kurosawa made a movie about a civil servant who contracts stomach cancer and has 6 months to live. The initial shock sends him into depression and self-recrimination as he realizes he's spent 30 years at a job that was so mind-numbing, he can't think of a thing he's achieved. So he sets out to build a park for some locals, but is faced with Japan's wall of bureaucracy that wants never to take responsibility for anything.

It's a long movie and a bit redundant, but to a purpose, and the last half is told in flashbacks by the hypocrites who mourn at his funeral (BIG Hollywood no-no)...but the ending is beautifully devastating in its tenderness and acceptance. I watched a documentary after the movie -- A Message From Akira Kurosawa, For Beautiful movies -- in Japanese, that takes you through all the steps he thinks important as regards making a movie. This should be standard viewing in all film schools.

I'd seen Ikiru years ago, I think while I was still in college, so I didn't remember a lot about the story. It cut deep. Kurosawa was cursed by the Academy's preference for giving actors turned directors Oscars instead of true cinematic visionaries. The fact that Sydney Pollack got Best Director for Out of Africa instead of Kurosawa for Ran scarred them, in my opinion.

They finally gave him an honorary one in 1990, and about damned time --
I wish the clip showed something of a cross-section of his work, but it's till worthwhile. And he went on to make even more movies, well into his 80s.

I needed this, today. I had a bad moment of futility crash in on me while filling in the storyboards I'd done for CK, and I needed something to chase it away. The beauty of Kurosawa's work always does work wonders on my psyche.

Now if I could just do something about my psychoses...

Storyboarding changes stuff...

I have the first scene of Carli's Kills -- where Carli picks up Grady in the bar -- roughed out...and as I began thinking like a visual storyteller, aspects of the script changed. It was still a bit bland on the page, but hyping their little pool game into a scene of sexual foreplay made it a lot more fun. Changed the dialogue, too. So now there are 40 setups for 2.5 pages (which is a lot) but many are cutaways to balls getting hit and clicking into pockets.

What's funny is, it also set up a scene, later in the script, where Carli thinks she's got control but suddenly doesn't. Which does a better setup for when she meets Zeke the next time...and on and on. I once thought, facetiously, about storyboarding all my scripts just to get an idea of how they worked...and now I'm thinking that might have actually helped me see how to better translate the action to the page.

Too bad it took me this long to accept that.

Mankind is stupid

I'm rather preoccupied with the Malaysian jet that was shot down by what appears to be pro-Russian rebels in the Ukraine, using Russian anti-aircraft missiles. 298 people killed by idiots who thought they were shooting at a military jet, and who are now scrambling to blame everyone but themselves for the disaster. Their leader has gone so far as to say it was all a set-up, with dead bodies put on the plane, that was then blown up, all to discredit their revolution. Even Vladimir Putin is blaming the Ukraine for fighting to keep herself together instead of letting the pro-Russian side just walk away.

For some reason, this reminds me of the sinking of the Lusitania, in 1915. She was a British luxury liner traveling between NY and Liverpool when a German U-boat torpedoed her off the southern coast of Ireland. She sank in 18 minutes and 1,198 people died, including 128 Americans.

In the aftermath, the German government made all sorts of excuses as to why it was okay to sink a ship carrying nearly 2,000 civilians -- including that the ship was carrying munitions (which was later revealed to be true, despite American and British denials). They also pointed out that Germany and England were at war, and they had even put an ad in a news paper warning people against traveling on a British ship.

Still, the slaughter of nearly 1,200 non-combatants turned the tide against Germany, and 2 years later the US declared war. A year after that, Germany was in ruins. Did Germany learn a lesson? Nope. Twenty years later, Germany was headed straight for disaster, again, and 7 years after that, the country lay in ruins, once more.

The combined total of dead from those two world wars is thought to be close to 100 million.

So now what do we have? A jetliner from a country that has nothing to do with the situation in the Ukraine carrying mainly European citizens is shot down by idiots, to whom Russia had handed weapons they had no idea how to handle. Putin shot himself in the foot, doing that. Some people think he'll be gone within a year, thanks to this. I doubt it, but you never know.

However, I could see this being the spark that brings on another world war. Nobody cares about Moslems killing each other in Syria and Egypt and Iraq and Libya and Lebanon, not really. They barely cared about the Muslims being slaughtered in Bosnia and various other Baltic countries, 20 years ago. Nor do they honestly care about the fight between Israel and the Palestinians. It's just something to excuse their usual Jew-bashing.

But you kill hundreds of Europeans en route to holidays or an AIDS conference? Well, that's different. Now the politicians will HAVE to do something about Russian meddling in The Ukraine...and that won't be pretty. More economic sanctions will hurt Putin's base even more, despite his approval ratings being sky-high in Russia. Who knows -- maybe he'll get as dumb as the rebels, nuke someplace to remind people of just how powerful Russia still is, and set off Armageddon.

So, the end of the world could begin in the Crimea -- what a ludicrous story.

Storyboarding...

I'm doing boards for Carli's Kills, nicer and more precise. Got 5 frames for 3 set-ups done...and I'm back to thinking I should keep the opening, with Anastasia hurling to her death. It cuts so nicely into Carli doing a break on the pool table. And using Derwent pencils makes me feel real, again.

I like working in soft graphite. It's easy to change and has a nice feel to it. My next favorite style is colored pencil. That's what I did these in...each frame taking a couple of hours. I've sometimes thought about doing a graphic novel of one of my scripts, using this style...and may, yet...but it'll take years to complete.

I'm still pissed that Marvel is turning Thor into a woman. It's one thing to be PC; it's quite another to rewrite facts and history to suit yourself. I despise people who do that, be it on the left or the right.

Two prime examples -- Republicans saying Democrats are the party of racism because most Southerners were Democrats. That ignores the fact that when the Democratic party said it would no longer tolerate racism and pushed through the Civil Rights Act in 1965, all those Democrats became Republicans...and now many are Tea Partiers out to control the GOP and crush anything that benefits minorities, making them the party of racism, not Democrats.

On the left, it's the ludicrous casting of Audra MacDonald as the Mother Superior in the remake of The Sound of Music. The play is set in Austria in 1938. Miss MacDonald is amazingly gifted in so many ways, but the very idea of a black Mother Superior in that time is so insane, it kills the story. It's rewriting history to suit today's mores.

And that is all I have to say on the subject...until my next rant.

It's on...

I got the news, today -- I'll be in Los Angeles, starting on August 18th. I've got my ticket to fly in on the 16th, and I'll be staying by LAX. Gonna be there 3 weeks on someone else's dime. Woohoo!

Makes up for Page Awards flipping me off on both Return to Darian's Point and 5 Dates. Both are damn good scripts and hit all the points needed for a story, but I didn't even make the first cut. I think it has to do with their "feedback service." If you go through that and write the scripts the way they want you to, and it turns out half-assed decent, you make the Quarterfinals. Otherwise, you have to be amazingly good to get into that group. Blood Angel made it on its own, a few years back...which is meaning more and more to me, now.

I still have half a dozen others to hear from, two of which are just now ending their final extended last chance to enter deadlines that might be extended, again. It'll be interesting to see what happens with them. I like the idea of script competitions, and if RDP, 5D or A65 get anywhere in another one (to join with my Indie Gathering win, which won't be official until August 17th when the awards are handed out) I'll start crowing loud about it to agents and managers.

But reality is, they are very hit and miss. I used to enter the Nicholl every year, thinking my latest best script would win me a fellowship. Obviously, that didn't happen. I finally went to their library and read some of the winning scripts and had a massive WTF moment. Trite dialogue. Surface storylines. Cliched characters. Barely following screenplay format. Someone (I don't remember who, maybe in my writing workshop) told me they have a certain agenda that shifts from year to year, depending on who's coordinating the competition. If you happen to hit it right, you get it.

Same for Sundance Screenplay Workshops. I applied there several times, then learned all but 2 of the slots were quietly handed out to writers or directors already known to the coordinators, so thousands of people are vying for 2 openings while thinking they're trying out for 5 times more. Granted, the odds aren't all that much better, so you're still trying for something next to impossible...but the whole facade of them being for developing new writers and pretending they're doing so much more than they are irritates me. That said, I'm also one of those blind fools who think, "This time it will be different," and who is proof, positive, that such thoughts are a form of insanity.

Color my ass crazy.

Thor is a woman, now?

[image error] Seriously? What idiot thought this up? It's spitting on Norse Mythology and History.

It's madness...madness...[image error]

Chaos is okay...for a while...

I'm looking around at my apartment and wondering how the hell it got into such a mess...only I know why. When I write...or try to...I lose focus on simple things like vacuuming and dusting and sorting out paperwork and making sense of my disorder. And then I get to where I need time from the project I'm working on and realize I'm surrounded by chaos. Books on their sides. Dust everywhere. Crap lying all over. You'd think I came down off a three-week drunk.

This came about because I need some space from CK to get my head straight about the story, again. I'm still having ideas on how to make it work better, but I started writing them into the hard copy and found myself hating what I'd written. Meaning I'm too close. Better to let it sit.

Didn't help that today we had new computers installed at work with Windows 8. I now officially cannot find ANYthing. Supposedly all the files I worked on last week are there. Somewhere. But I'm gonna need a map. Of course, we're handling a small bookfair in Melbourne and today's the day of picking up the clients and shipping them out, and I had no access to the server or files, or even e-mail, except on my phone. That's not easy to deal with. I did a lot of typing and faxing.

I think I'll let CK sit till Saturday. I don't know.

Screw it, let's have more of Darcy Oake.