Wil Wheaton's Blog, page 32
October 25, 2017
in which we are creative (and maybe you are, too)
A few months ago, our friend, Kari, had a birthday party. She encouraged all of us who attended to come in some kind of 70s or 80s tacky prom outfit. Because most of us at the party are actors, writers, directors, or some other type of creative storyteller, we didn’t just show up in costumes … we showed up in costumes with backstories. It’s important that you know that none of these stories — or the existence of the backstories at all — was coordinated or even encouraged. It’s just a thing that happened, because when you get a bunch of creative people together and give them an excuse to let their imaginations run wild, you just strap in and feel the gees.
I don’t have a picture of Anne and me together, but our characters were the high school senior (her) and the creep who graduated three years ago, will never move out of their small town, and is dating her because he’s a total loser creep (me). She’s looking for a way out of her parents’ house, and wants to get back at her father. They’re using each other, are doomed to end badly, and we just hope that they don’t drag any children into their dysfunction. He will get drunk and throw up on her dress before the night is over.
I mean, maybe we put a little too much into it but — wait what am I saying. We put exactly the right amount into it.
While we were at the party, Anne took this picture of me (that’s below the jump). In this picture, I am a totally different character. This guy is legitimately cool, and dates women who are age appropriate. He’s going places, just as soon as he saves enough money to get out of this town. He’s an honest man in a dishonest world, doing the best that he can. And he’s a hell of a good pool player…
Click to embiggen and see the original.The outfit was a leather vest and pants, gold cuban boots, and that cotton shirt. I didn’t wear a gold chain, because I felt that would have been too much.
I know that a lot of you are incredibly creative people. So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to photoshop this into a movie poster, album cover, VHS box, or something like that. You can host the files at Imgur or whatever, and link them here. You can submit them to the Photoshop Wil Wheaton Tumblr, too, if you want, and I’ll reblog them there.
ORrrrrrrrrrrrr, if you aren’t interested in photomanipulation, you could add to his story! That could be fun.
October 24, 2017
“Memory’s fog is rising.”
I wrote this last night.
30 years ago today, John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness was released.
That means that 30 years ago tonight, I was at the AMC 10 in Burbank.
Today, that part of Burbank is filled with businesses and chain restaurants and street performers. 30 years ago, there was the theater, a parking garage, a Fuddrucker’s (that’s still there and still terrible), and not much else. It was quiet when you went outside, especially after a movie that started late.
We went to a show that started around 10 or 1030pm. The air was cool, and it was so foggy, we couldn’t see the streetlights, just their glow. I went with three of my friends, who were all older than me and could drive. We listened to Van Halen in the car.
I remember that the movie wasn’t what I wanted it to be, and I was disappointed. It wasn’t scary, and the effects seemed cheesy. I wanted it to scare me the way The Thing scared me, and it didn’t do that. But it was foggy as hell that night, which is something that doesn’t happen in Burbank very often, and that made the post-showing silence especially eerie, and worth the drive. The walk to the car was more satisfying to me than the movie was.
On the way home, we went on streets instead of the freeway, because it would take us longer to get home that way, and that’s what being out at night with your friends is about when you’re fifteen. We listened to Some Great Reward on the way home. I lamented that the girl I had a huge crush on would never know I existed, and my friend, Ryan, told me (as he always did) to go talk to her or shut up about it forever. We drove through Glendale and Montrose, and on the way up the hill to my house, we drove out of the fog. I remember looking out toward Los Angeles when we got out of the car, and seeing that blanket of fog, broken by the Verdugo mountains, glowing orange from the streetlights beneath it. I remember wishing the movie had lived up to the atmosphere. I remember wishing that I’d asked Hailey to go with me to the movie.
Tonight, it’s hot and dry outside, and I am in the home I own, that I bought with my wife. I drove my Mini today and listened to Depeche Mode. My wife is asleep in our bed. Our son is asleep in our guest room. I feel like that teenager I was thirty years ago isn’t even a real person, just a foggy memory that’s painful to visit more often than it is not.
A lot of my teens blurs together, because I worked all the time and I was so unhappy, I spent my twenties trying to forget them. But this is one of the things that I can remember pretty clearly, because of the fog.
The fog. In literary symbolism, we use fog to represent mystery, the inability to see clearly, and uncertainty. It’s interesting to me that the fog is the only reason I can remember anything about that night, thirty years ago, and that tonight I can recall so much of it so clearly.
Time is weird. Memory is weird. Life is strange.
September 28, 2017
September 25, 2017
the hilarious world of depression
I spoke with John Moe about my mental illness for his podcast, The Hilarious World of Depression:
Wil Wheaton was a child star in Stand By Me, a regular on Star Trek: The Next Generation as a teenager, and has been trying to figure out his role in show business for a long time since then. He was dealing with the pressures of fame and the fickle tastes of Hollywood, all while dealing with a chemical imbalance in his brain that made him prone to anxiety and depression. Wil’s better now thanks to medication, but despite his long IMDb page and regular work on The Big Bang Theory, his hit YouTube show, and a thriving and varied career, he sees himself primarily as a failed actor.
It’s a good show, as they say. Go give it a listen.
September 16, 2017
Eldritch Horror on Tabletop and some other things I want you to know.
Tabletop’s Eldritch Horror Pt. 1 was released this week.
Speaking of horror, I think I mentioned that I had this idea for a 1970s-style ridiculous, bloody, Grindhouse horror film. I thought it was just a silly story exercise, but the more I thought I about it and the more I did the story work for practice, the more I wanted to do the story work to make it into a real thing. So I’ve been working on that. It isn’t on cards just yet, but it’s on the whiteboard and it has its own file of ideas and beats and characters and stuff. I don’t know if it’ll get made, but at the very least I’ll have a script to publish.
I’ve been using that idea as an excuse to watch a ton of actual 1970s ridiculous, bloody, Grindhouse horror films. I’ve thrown some classic exploitation films into the mix, and learned a lot about how those movies were made. Some of them are terribad, but most of them have a sincerity that is utterly charming and worthy of emulation in my own screenplay.
I’ve been leveling up my understanding of story and character construction with this book called The Anatomy of Story. It’s densely packed with information and examples, and it’s slow reading for me because I keep going back to review, and I’m making a ton of notes in my notebook, but I’m pulling in tons of XP with each chapter. If you’re interested in writing and want to understand how to build your story, I highly recommend it.
The Deuce is as amazing as I hoped it would be. I am hoping so hard that the series lives up to the pilot (which is a thing I never say, because pilots are generally not that great, since they have to introduce a ton of characters and information.) Franco has always turned me off (it’s not him, it’s me), but I fucking LOVE him in this show.
Blood Drive was not renewed by the network formerly known as Sci-Fi, which makes me a little sad, because Colin Cunningham and Christina Ochoa are brilliant in it (Christina should have had top billing and Colin should win awards), and I would watch them as those characters forever. But! It always felt like it should be a miniseries, and the last four episodes weren’t nearly as compelling as the first eight. I felt like they had to bail on the premise — each episode pays homage to a classic exploitation trope — to set it up for multiple seasons. There was so much great stuff in it, though, and I sincerely love that SyFy gave the project the greenlight. It was a risky project, to say the least, and it’s so cool to see a network that was profoundly risk-averse when I worked for them take the chance.
I read a bunch of short stories from Charlie Jane Anders when I was on vacation last week, and I loved them all. So I went to the bookstore yesterday to pick up All the Birds in the Sky, and while I was there, I browsed the tabletop game section. My finger is ten miles from the pulse of tabletop gaming right now, but I took pictures of some games there that looked promising to me:
Grifters
Museum Heist
Gaia
Onitama
Kanagawa
Oceanos
Have any of you played any of them? I’m just looking for fun games to add to my collection, not necessarily games that are candidates for Tabletop, as Tabletop’s future is uncertain.
Also, not that it matters, but getting Twitter off my phone and mostly out of my life has been a really great choice. It turns out that not being kicked in the face by infuriating bullshit dozens of times a day is a pretty neat idea.
So that’s a bunch of stuff I want you to know. What do you want me to know? I’m enjoying these posts, because it reminds me of the early days of my blog, when you who read it and I who wrote it would interact more than we seem to these days.
September 14, 2017
“He didn’t believe in the Force, but today, he would make an exception.”
It was an incredible honor and privilege to contribute a story to this anthology. We were given the opportunity to write a story about a minor character in the Star Wars universe, and I chose the guy who watches ships fly away from the rebel base.
My editor pointed out that one of the guys (who I call Rebel Base Bucket Guy, because that amuses me) is already named, so my Rebel Base Bucket Guy is a different guy. I have to point this out, because the Star Wars Nerds are going to force choke me if they think I renamed their canonical Rebel Base Bucket Guy.
Anyway, it was a lot of fun to write, and I titled it for my friend, Laina, who is best known for her hilarious YouTube videos.
August 30, 2017
Tabletop: CODENAMES!
Look at these fancy people!As a general rule, I do not enjoy party games. Codenames is one of those delightful games that is the exception to the rule.
Codenames is an incredibly fun communication game that can support up to around five players per team before it starts to get messy. I highly recommend it.
August 27, 2017
Five more things I want you to know
One of the things I’ve been doing when it looks like I’m not working is painting Warhammer 40K figures. I read all the advice I got when I posted about finding my way back into the hobby, and ended up buying Dark Imperium. I love the lore in the rulebook, and the models are gorgeous. I am as bad at painting as I ever was, but I’m old enough now to not let it bother me like it once did. Like, my sense of self worth isn’t tied up in how good or bad I am at every single thing I attempt, like it was when I was younger.
Friday night, Chris took me to Vegas to see Steve Martin and Martin Short. They were amazing and hilarious, and I highly recommend seeing the show when it comes to a town near you. The band that plays with them, The Steep Canyon Rangers, is so amazing, I think I may actually like bluegrass music.
After the show, we got to go backstage and meet them, because Chris is a big deal. When Steve Martin shook Chris’ hand, he told Chris, “I am a huge fan of your work. It’s so nice to see you.”
I felt like I was going to cry. I’m so proud of Chris and everything he has created, and so grateful that he’s been my friend for almost 30 years. I can’t even imagine what it must feel like to meet someone who inspired you to do the work you do, someone who played a part in shaping who you became as a human, and finding out that they not only know about your work, they enjoy it and identify as a fan.
Some really funny things happened when we were there, but I’m putting them into my next live show, so you’ll have to come see me perform if you want to know about them.
I also played poker for the first time in years. It was a 1/2 NLHE game, and I played for about four hours. I lost some big pots, I won a bunch of small and medium pots (and one huge pot where I proudly outplayed a guy who I read perfectly) and when I left, I had more than when I sat down. It wasn’t a lot, but it was a lot of fun and a nice way to spend Friday afternoon. I felt good about the way I played, and left feeling like I didn’t totally suck at cards.
I’ve talked on RFB about how I want to do a horror movie in the style of the 1970s Grindhouse releases. In the last week or os, I broke a story in my head. I know all the major plot points, and have notes in my book! When I finish the first draft of the novel, I’m going to start doing cards for the movie, and figure out the details, so I can write the screenplay. I have no idea how I’ll get it made, but it’s a thing I’m doing because, like Lin-Manuel Miranda said, “Don’t wait on anyone to make your favorite thing. Make your own favorite thing. Go.”
What do you want me to know?
August 18, 2017
August 4, 2017
four things i want you to know
Progress on this novel I accidentally ended up writing has recently been a real struggle. Some days I have been getting a lot of words out, and others (like today) I just sit here and can’t put words together. I’m wondering if I painted myself into a corner yesterday, and if I have to backtrack until I get back on track. Here’s a little bit from this week’s work:
Stephen walked up to the frisbee where it had landed in the grass, and said, “Hey do you guys want to go to my house and play D&D?”
“Jerry isn’t here,” I said. One of my many skills was observing the obvious and sharing it with my friends who had already made that observation.
“It’s fine. We won’t play the campaign. You’ll just go into a dungeon and fight stuff.”
“With our regular characters?”
With exasperated, exaggerated patience, he said, “Yes. With your regular characters. We just won’t count experience and you can’t die. It’s just, like …”
“It’s like the mirror universe,” Larry said.
“Well, not exactly, Stephen said. “You’re not going to be evil … I mean, unless you really want to.”
When we played D&D, I always wanted to be a good, honorable, honest character. I was playing my idealized self. But for a moment, I imagined my Lawful Good wizard, Joral, who was sworn to stand for the safety and protection of the citizens of Flanaess, using his staff and spells to terrorize them instead, steal their gold, and reduce their villages to rubble. The opportunity to release some pent up aggression and frustration was more attractive to me than I probably would have been willing to admit.
Freed from the risks of permanent character death, Joral would charge headlong into the first group of innocents he saw, fireballs exploding from his fingertips, engulfing them in glorious flames.
I would never have admitted it out loud, but the villagers who fell in the face of Jor-al’s wrath would look a lot like Evelyn’s mother, a few of them would look like the adults in the casting office, and at least two of them would have looked like my mom and dad.
“That sounds radical,” I said. “let’s do that!”
“But if you die, you’re out. You don’t get to resurrect.”
“That’s fair,” I said.
“But we’re still alive in the campaign, right?” Larry asked.
Stephen rolled his eyes. “YES! Jeeze! Are you even listening?”
“Well I want to be sure!”
“Why would I even say that we’re playing in the mirror universe and then put you in the regular universe, without Jerry even being here?”
“Maybe it’s like a Twilight Zone thing! I don’t know! Like you make us think it’s a fake universe but it was real all the time!”
“Oh my god you are so lame,” Stephen said.
They stared each other down for a long thirty seconds or so, and I wondered if their weird (and to that point amusing) nerd fight was going to turn into a real fight.
I like this scene, because I was watching these kids play frisbee, and then I was listening to them, and then they were arguing the way kids do about nothing important, and I just transcribed the voices in my head.I’m just over 44000 words, now, and it feels like this is going to finish at around 60000 words. This is still the puke draft, where I just puke up everything I have in my head onto the page and worry about fixing it later, so there’s a good chance that this won’t end up in the final draft, but it’s at least a nice foundation to build upon later.
The series finale of @midnight airs tonight, and I’m in it. I made some jokes, and got to share the stage with brilliant people who make me feel cooler and funnier than I am. I’m going to miss the show so much.
Today, Bandcamp is donating 100% of its profits to support the Transgender Law Center. If you’ve been waiting to get any of my audiobooks or experimental music, today would be a great day to do that.
Okay, that’s what I want you to know today. What do you want me to know?
