Rachel Lynn Brody's Blog, page 15

Free Reads for Christmas!

Hey all!

I’m knee-deep in writing a science fiction play for a company in the UK, so this is going to be quick, but I hope you have a wonderful holiday and wanted to give you a couple of freebies to get you through the next week or two – particularly those of you with kids home from school and in need of entertainment.

If you’ve got kids, STUCK UP A TREE will be free on Amazon through December 29th.

If you like dystopian stories (and who doesn’t?) and haven’t read my play MOUSEWINGS, the next few days give you a chance for some free reading material, too.

I don’t often ask outright, but since it’s Christmas…if you think anyone in your network (including actors, drama teachers, directors…Steven Spielberg…) might enjoy either play, please pass on this blog or those links. And if, once you’re done, you feel like leaving a review? That’d be ace.

Again, both plays are free for Kindle (and associated devices/apps) through December 29th.

Merry Christmas & happy holidays!

xx

Rachel

 

PS – At time of writing, Mousewings and Stuck Up A Tree hold positions 3 and 4 on the Bestsellers list in Amazon’s free Playwriting categoy! (See below for a pic!)

“That Said…” #1 // SOMETHING SOMETHING SOMETHING SPICE GIRLS

In the midst of NaNoWriMo, my friend Matt agreed to do a recurring guest column for the blog. Called “THAT SAID…”, Matt’s column will look at the redeeming features of films wider audiences might not regard as works of “art”. In his last column, he laid out his manifesto: the guidelines he’s following for his critiques.

Now, welcome to Matt’s defense and analysis of the 1998 Girl-Band escapade  ”Spice World”.

 

THAT SAID…

by Matthew Lyons

Spice World, 1998

I want so badly to believe that everyone had better things to do with their time. I want to believe that there were a thousand other excellent projects that all, through some cosmic clusterfuck of bad cinematic karma, happened to just fall through, all at the same time, and everybody had no choice but to do the Spice Girls movie. I mean, house payments gotta get made somehow, you know? They don’t pay for themselves, and even in 1998, banks weren’t the most forgiving.

I want dearly to believe that. But, no. No, this is a movie that people chose to make. With their own money and time and talents, and (presumably) without the influence of any serious chemical dependencies. That’s the world we live in.

The ugly facts are simple: Spice Worldis your basic cult-of-personality dreck. Poorly written, poorly acted, weirdly directed, campy, ugly, silly, self-indulgent, and above else, a shameless cash-in on a well-oiled global machine that’s less about music than it is about money.

This is an objectively bad movie.

That said, it’s also way, way more fun than it has any right to be, which, in a way, makes it successful in its means. It’s a movie about The Spice Girls – “campy” was a cornerstone of their appeal. Hell, one of the members admitted to intentionally dressing like a drag queen for most of the group’s run. But you know something? They weren’t trying to make a good movie. They were trying to make a movie that their fans would enjoy.

It’s also weirdly great in certain ways – it has some really remarkable parts, like the self-awareness, the Inception-like levels of reality it puts us through, and maybe most of all, the brilliant casting.

If the movie itself feels uneven, that’s because it is. TVtropes.org describes Spice World as “a by-the-numbers ripoff of A Hard Day’s Night, a self-spoof, and a harsh satire of the Spice Girls and their culture.” I see no reason to disagree with that, but that’s fine. Spice World is supposed to kind of be a rip-off of A Hard Day’s Night. It revels in that fact. Half made up of surreal, cartoony vignettes, half of patched-together plot, starring the biggest band in the world at the time? The similarities are too obvious to not be intentional. At least it has fun with it, you know? Spice World knows that it sucks, and at least has fun with that fact (The Tower Bridge jump being the foremost example here).

It could be a joyless, humorless waste, and it would have been forgotten just as easily as it was made. That it knows exactly what it is makes it stand out. It doesn’t take itself too seriously or pretend it’s something that it’s not. Enjoy it for what it is – if it’s terrible, hey, fuck it, at least it’s having fun being terrible. What more than fun do you want from the Spice Girls movie? You want a little flash of intellect? Hey, fine, it’s got that, too.

There are like, three levels of reality at work in the world of this movie. Maybe four. Bear with me. There’s (1) we the audience watching this movie from the comfort of our couches, (2) the main narrative, there’s the (3) fictional chase scene Mark McKinney tells Richard E. Grant about at the end of the movie, and the (4) mid-credits scene where they’re shooting the movie that we just watched, and everyone is just being themselves instead of the characters they played in the movie we just saw EXCEPT FUCKING MARK MCKINNEY WHO’S STILL PLAYING THE SCREENWRITER HE PLAYS IN THE MOVIE.

The core narrative of this movie is at least three, or as many as four levels of reality removed from the audience. Christopher Nolan can suck it; Bob Spiers had him beat by TWELVE YEARS. So what if it doesn’t make sense? That’s the magic of Girl Power, broseph.

For a movie that so caters to the twelve year olds and the youths and whatnot, there’s a surprising amount of metatextual meat in here. The movie’s narrative itself isn’t the reality, and our reality isn’t reality, either – capital-R-Reality is that third-or-fourth-reality when the Spice Girls start talking to the camera, and the bomb glued to the underneath of their bus from the chase scene goes off, off-screen, that’s the accepted really-real Reality. Capital-R Reality. The one that frames the rest of all of it. This level of reality takes us out of the narrative only to change gears and pull a U-turn back into crazyland. The goddamn Spice Girls, temporal wizards that they are, are sending us through recursive realities, and no one notices. As the movie closes, they seem to take us to some clever behind-the-scenes footage, only to reveal that the guy that WE recognize as Mark McKinney from Kids in the Hall is really still actually a screenwriter in Spice World (the world, not the movie Spice World, try to keep up here) named Graydon, and the Spice Girls recognize the audience themselves (ourselves?), therefore confirming their existence in a sort of perpetually-1998 super-reality, seeing across all realities. This is the place where someone makes a SPICECEPTION joke.

Do you see what has happened? By acknowledging the camera, by pulling us into their super-reality as part of the entertainment, the Spice Girls have folded reality over onto itself, and now up is down and black is white and Cool Britannia holds sway over all. How has no one explored the implications of this?

In the meta-reality of Spice World, celebrities are at once their characters and their real selves. The lines between fiction and fact begin to blur. The world smudges and you’ll never know what exactly fits where, ever again. Whatever theory of Spiceception or Spiceality (oh, jesus, someone please help me) you adhere to, there’s no denying that it’s a world filled to the brim with People, capital P.

There are an astounding amount of People in this movie, People that anyone – anyone - watching the movie is guaranteed to recognize and enjoy in some way or another. Sure, sure, there’s the unnecessary and inexplicable cameo from Elton John, everyone knows about that. But that only scratches the very surface of the movie.

When this came out in theaters, the kids were here to see the Spice Girls, but their parents would have recognized Meat Loaf, Elvis Costello, Richard O’Brien, Bob Hoskins, Stephen Fry & Hugh Laurie, Jennifer Saunders, Mark McKinney, Richard E. Grant, Roger Moore, George Wendt, and on and on and on. Now, everybody, parents and former kids alike who watch this movie for the first time in a long time (or ever) is guaranteed to say “Hey!!” at least once when a familiar face pops up on screen. Who knows what happened for them to show up in this movie at any given point, but I’m glad they’re here.

And they’re here for one of two reasons: One, because the filmmakers behind this masterpiece secretly have unimpeachable taste, or two, because the filmmakers obviously drove a dump truck of money up to their houses so they could make the movie more palatable for the adults in the audience. Either way, it doesn’t really matter. The reasoning matters so much less than the benefit of having them there, in the movie, talking to Mel and Mel and Victoria and the blonde one and the slutty one.

Spice World is retroactively brilliant in its casting, too – there are early appearances by Alan Cumming, Dominic West (Jimmy McNulty from The Wire, the sleazy scumbag douche from 300, etc.), Jason Flemyng (Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for some reason) and Naoko Mori, who, ten or so years later, would be introduced as the smart-yet-conflicted Toshiko Sato on Torchwood. Hell, even Mr. Gibbs from most (? I didn’t see the fourth one, so who knows) of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies shows up as a cop for no apparent reason at one point. Well-cast, or at least, intricately-cast to the point of being somewhat prophetic of the A- and B-actor lists yet to come.

Look, like I said, this isn’t a good movie. Anyone could tell you that as soon as you tell them “It’s the Spice Girls movie.” Whoop-de-fucking-do. Point is, it’s worth watching. It’s fun, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, it plays with reality when you’re not expecting it, and the people in it are kind of fucking brilliant. Just don’t go into it wanting more than it gives you. But that’s the great part: it gives you more than you expect.

Side Notes:

- I laughed at the Meat Loaf “I’d do anything for love” throwaway joke, I don’t even give a shit what you think.

- No tour bus looks like that on the inside, I don’t give a shit if it’s a double-decker or not. Did they steal a fucking TARDIS or something? I’d say that was a clever reference that the movie made, but that’d be giving it WAY TOO MUCH credit. Which I clearly am not in the business of doing. Not with a movie like Spice World, no. #pleaseletMelBbeatimelordplease

- Does anyone else think that it’s nice to see Richard E. Grant not play a horrible, villainous dickhole for once? I mean, what was the last movie he was in before this? Was it Hudson Hawk? I think it was Hudson Hawk. So he doesn’t have the best track record with quality, but at least he’s not orgasmic over his own evil machinations this time. Wait, I should totally do a re-review of Hudson Hawk – Rachel, add that one to the list.

- “Melvin B, Melvin C,” … “Howtie and the Blowfish,” ha!

- I love how all the Spice Girls character traits seemed shoehorned in (Sporty is… uh… sporty, Baby is infantile, Ginger is secretly a nerd and certainly not just the one in drag with red hair) except for Posh, who just gets to act like a catty, elitist, obstreperous hosebeast like all the time. Not a lot of imagination required for that one, eh?

- Nicola is, what, their secretary or something? No room for Pregnant Spice on Spice Force Five? She adds nothing to the story, she just fucking shows up from time to time, being pregnant all over the place and that’s about it, and when the girls come together to show her a good time out on the town, it takes them a grand total of twelve seconds to abandon her on the balcony so they can go downstairs and Spice Girl it up while their own music plays on the club stereo. I’m going to say that again. They abandon their pregnant friend to go dance to their own music.

- Am I the only one who noticed the SUPER RACIST lyric in the performance of “Spice Up Your Life”? “Yellow man in Timbuktu/Colour for both me and you/Kung fu fighting” Uhh… what?

- Did you know there’s a Spice Girls song called “Viva Forever”? Yeah, I didn’t either, but it’s definitely a thing, I’m not even kidding.

- Holy shit, I just realized that the “Wannabe” video is all done in one take.

Boiled Hippos & Beat Women

My dad loaned me the book AND THE HIPPOS WERE BOILED IN THEIR TANKS, by Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. This was just before Sare and I started working on our novels, so late October, and at the time what was interesting to me was that the same way she and I were going to swap off books, Burroughs and Kerouac swapped off writing chapters. In HIPPOS, I mean. The whole book is a fictionalization of a true-life crime their social circle experienced. I enjoyed IN COLD BLOOD. Why not give this one a try?

I had never read ON THE ROAD or other Beat literature, though over the years Dad’s given me a bio on Allen Ginsberg and one on Kerouac, both of which are currently sitting unread on my bookshelf (Sorry, Dad).

As I read through HIPPOS, I enjoyed it. The writing had a clear, frank style that was appealing. I also realized this was a really masculine eye on the time period. Hyper-masculine, in some ways, even given the twists and turns of the plots, in that the women in the story exist only for moments as they intersect with the book’s narrators.

Enter Google.

From Wikipedia’s entry on the Beat Generation:

“Notable Beat Generation women who have been published include Edie Parker; Joyce Johnson; Carolyn Cassady; Hettie Jones; Joanne Kyger; Harriet Sohmers Zwerling; Diane DiPrima; and Ruth Weiss, who also made films. PoetElise Cowen took her life in 1963. Anne Waldman was less influenced by the Beats than by Allen Ginsberg’s later turn to Buddhism. Later, women emerged who claimed to be strongly influenced by the Beats, including Janine Pommy Vega in the 1960s, Patti Smith in the 1970s, and Hedwig Gorski in the 1980s.[35][36]“

Seeing that this line led exactly where I expected it to – Patti Smith and the punk scene – I’m really, really excited about taking a dive into this subject at some point in the future.

Anyways, back to HIPPOS. The book was interesting to me because of how the voices of the characters overlapped, in part, and because of the subject matter’s factual beginnings. It reminded me of a blog I read the other day, an excerpt from a nonfiction book. I’d been interacting with its author for a few weeks on Twitter, and had expected her book of essays and other writings to be more…essayish, I guess. Just – a reminder of how important it is to play with the form one works in. Which, in turn, reminds me of the book another friend bought me once, THE PENELOPIAD. (Was that by Margaret Atwood?)

The same as reading experimental literature from the past helps remind you that words and literary forms are plastic and subjectable to manipulation, reading experimental literature from the present helps remind you that while brand-yourself and death-of-the-title culture are at a forefront in today’s writing, writers need to remember that pushing form is just as important as practicing craft, and that the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Yes, it’s important to make sure you can write those words, craft those plots and flesh out those characters… but once you can do those things, applying them to experimental forms is also critical to the growth of writing and literature as a whole.

And by you, obviously, I mean me.

End story? Dad was right, and HIPPOS was well worth reading. 

 

When the brain says “I Don’t Wanna!”

Coming out of NaNoWriMo and launching straight into writing a play for a company in the UK has meant that I haven’t had quite as much time to put my thoughts in order as I’d have liked to regarding NaNoWriMo and the process I engaged in around it.

Here was the process:

Meetings with my co-writer to plan out the basic beats of each of our stories
Outlined them separately
Wrote drafts separately with occasional touching of bases to make sure some kind of vague continuity was being established
Wrote possibly the worst climax and finale of any story I’ve ever written ever but soldiered through it because First Draft and also reasons.
Eventual edit-fest

Of course, I don’t normally write a 50K novel draft in a month, and this meant a lot of other things fell by the wayside or didn’t get the attention I’d liked to have given them. I was fairly isolated over the course of the month, and towards the end of November and beginning of December that isolation started taking a real toll. Some of the decisions that had to be made as I worked towards the end of the draft were hard, with repercussions that echo down the road, and it was hard to make those kinds of calls when both me and my cowriter were so busy trying to juggle our word commitments and our life commitments every day. And I slipped on a lot of the stuff I try to keep balanced: my mental health in particular has been rough for the last few weeks, and that’s been something I’ve become more and more aware of. Happily, I now have a strategy in place to try and improve things over the next couple of weeks.

All that said, overall, I think NaNoWriMo was a positive experience for me. The novel I have now, the one that didn’t exist thirty days ago, aside from it’s holy-god-that-needs-a-rewrite conclusion, is one that I’m more or less happy with. There were challenges in character development and I was really hard on myself to make this a plot-driven, rather than primarily plot-driven story – typically I get very wrapped up in characters and less wrapped up in making sure things happen, because characters are fun and interesting and offer plenty of ground to explore, while things happening is kind of, you know, how one makes a plot.

So, Hook, Line & Sinker – which may actually wind up being its real title, because as I got closer to the end and figured out the answer to the question, “What did they all fall for?” – because that’s the other half of that saying, ykno? – and wrapped it all up with a bow.

And then it was time to move into writing what I’m currently referring to as Ingenius, because that’s the name of the theater company I’m writing it for, and because I don’t have a clue what the title ought to be.  Ideally, this is going to be a one-hour play about women in space and it will also be funny. I’m really, really excited because it seems to be rolling along pretty well, the lessons of NaNoWriMo carrying me through the process of writing again. I made an informal promise to the director to have a draft ready by the end of the month, and a friend of mine who is basically literally a rocket scientist and has worked on lots of space missions agreed that she’d read what I have in January.

January. Oh man, I can’t wait till January.  When all my drafts are finished and I have three weeks before the edit-fest on Hook, Line & Sinker begins.

At that point, one of the things I want to do is sit down and work out what the hell is going on with my AI Anthology. You may remember reading about this on this blog for a while. I have most of the stories started and in various stages of complete-draft-ness, and need to buckle down, because while I’m sure it won’t be ready for robot week this year, I do want it to be ready for next year’s Christmas.

Oh, that’s another thing. Other than the post I put on John Scalzi’s blog, I’ve lost the will to market this Holiday season.  I work in advertising and marketing by day, and this is our busy season because retail, and so I just. Don’t. Have it. In me.

And that’s okay.  Next year, I’ll set aside some time to get my marketing up to snuff, but I feel like having the AI Anthology out and also getting Hook, Line & Sinker and its companion book to print is going to be a big part of having something  worth marketing hard next year.

But for now, I’m going to forgive myself for not having the will to write press releases, blog advertisements, guest blogs and more, and get on with the business of finishing my play and enjoying the holidays. If you want to invite me to do any of those things, or talk about my work on your podcast, or otherwise help you get the word out about my stuff, that’s ace, just let me know – but this choo-choo train won’t be self-powered on that front again till the new year. And that’s okay.

Marketing stuff. (AKA John Scalzi is awesome.)

Once a year, John Scalzi (head of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America and a pretty freaking ace individual, from what I’ve seen of him online) opens his blog to those who have something they want to put on peoples’ Christmas lists. Writers, in other words (and artists, and other people who make things and sell them, too). Kind of like yours truly.

As long as last year’s requirements don’t change, here’s what I’m planning to post when he opens the guide to non-traditionally published authors tomorrow morning.

 

Thanks, John, for doing this again – and thanks everyone else for checking the comments! Here’s what I have to offer: an anthology of speculative fiction, which I edited, and 2 plays in e-book form (one fun for kids, the other dystopian for adults).

HOT MESS: speculative fiction about climate change.

Anthology. 6 short stories on the theme of climate change, ranging from realism to satire to fantasy. Top 20 Bestseller. Nominee, Best Anthology, 2013 eFestival of Words Award. Reviews

at Goodreads and Amazon. Notes from other readers. Buy the e-book today (Dec. 3rd) from Smashwords and take 50% off at! (COUPON CODE: VA69H). Print version available from CreateSpace and Amazon. Amazon print edition includes Kindle edition via Amazon Matchbook.

STUCK UP A TREE

Children’s play, ages 4-7. Runtime: 75 min. When a 2-headed traveler meets a baby bird at a fork in a road, it’s time for stories of friendship, adventure, love, loss and coming-of-age to inspire the bird to fly south for the winter. “Inventive and whimsical without being overwhelming and truly age-appropriate.” More reviews on Amazon.

MOUSEWINGS: a post-apocayptic urban fairy tale

Dystopian one-act play. Runtime: 50 min. Civilization has come to a gory, infectious end. Haunted by the ghost of her lover, a cancer researcher hides in her home — then it’s invaded by marauding hooligans. When it comes to survival, no one is what they seem. Reviews on Amazon.

For more information on my work, you can check out my blog at www.rlbrody.com, or check out my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/RachelLynnBrody. Enjoy, thank you again, and happy holidays!

 

Anybody want to give me a hand in punching this up for tomorrow morning? Or do you think it’s good to go?

And before I forget – happy holidays to all my readers, too!

Featured image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

 

Edit: Getting the name of the association he’s head of would be a good start, self. (Sorry about that, sigh. Fixed now.)

 

Na More, Na Less, NaNoWriMo

I’m more or less finished with my first NaNoWriMo. Over the weekend, I came to the end of the story I’d started out to tell (even if I hadn’t realized what it was when I started, and even if it was quite different to what me and Sare talked about during our brainstorming back in August and September.

And oh my goodness, does it need work.

But it’s there – start to finish, opening to closing image, and that there are places in the middle where vast tracts of words are going to get swept out of the way, that’s okay. The original goal for this project was 30K, after all.

Next up is editing. Since I technically still have a few days left in November, I’m working on taking stock of my book as a whole, but the majority of the editing step is scheduled to take place in late January and beyond.

Actually, that’s not quite true. The next thing I have scheduled is a draft of a play for Ingenius Theatre Company, a sci fi piece about women in space. I’ve been thinking about it for a while now and will probably start writing an actual draft soon. That’s the other thing I’m using my “found days” for. Getting ready for a month of playwriting. I’m glad I had NaNoWriMo as a sort of template for process, because it gives me a better idea of how to approach figuring out a set of fairly complex ideas in my head.

But the next you’ll probably hear about my NaNo Novel will probably come a ways down the line.

Thank you to Sheilah and Matt for their help in keeping new content coming while I was working on the novel.

And PS – I just found out that Hot Mess: speculative fiction about climate change was nominated for Best Anthology in an indie publishing award that ran over the summer.

Wherein I Acquire a Regular Guest Movie Reviewer, and MANIFESTO ’13.

Fourteen days into NaNoWriMo 2013, I’m just under 25,000 words into the first draft of a novel. It’s the first in a series I’m writing with Sare Liz Gordy. A couple of friends have agreed to do guest posts while I’m pounding out this work of supposed genius, and today I’d like to introduce you to a new occasional guest blogger, my friend & coworker Matthew Lyons. Matt will be writing movie reviews.

After a conversation at work where it was suggested his love of defending indefensibly bad films be translated to a column called “That Said…” , we got to talking about movies people like or don’t like, I started going on about my love of Von Trier, and Matt came up with the idea of creating a set of guiding principles – a manifesto, if you would - that would guide his critical journey. Today, I present that manifesto. Sit back, strap in, and enjoy the ride.

PROFANITY 2013: “Most Movies Are Probably A Little Better Than You Thought”

A vague guideline to the movies you probably forgot or maybe just wanted to forget, what the hell, I don’t know how you live your life or the choices you’ve made thus far, we’re just talking about movies here, okay?

By Matthew Lyons

I think that we can all agree that there are more bad movies released every year than good ones. That’s not news, and it’s not a revolutionary concept. The good movies out there, and even rarer than that, the great movies Hollywood has to offer are few and far between. The average, mediocre and the-why-in-the-jesus-h-tapdancing-christ-did-I-waste-two-hours-of-my-life-on-that-pile-of-dogshit-anyway flicks tend to rule the roost, since they tend to be the money-mills, the Big macs of the movie world. I get that.

But just because something is bad for forgettable or just plain “Eh…” doesn’t automatically disqualify it from having good parts. After all, Wings was a fucking terrible band, but it had Paul McCartney. Point is, bad things can be made with good parts, and those good parts, as a rule, don’t get nearly enough credit as they should. Nowhere is this more apparent than in movies. That’s what this series of guest blogs is about, revisiting the good parts of objectively bad or low-average movies. That, and I get to watch a lot of movies. That’s a big part of it, too.

I suppose that I should lay out some guidelines here (rules are so stringent, and I’d just end up breaking them, anyway) to help outline what movies I’m going to watch and how I’m subsequently going to babble about ‘em. Bear with me:

1. Unanimity of reception is as boring as watching shit dry

Yes, we get it, everybody loved Anchorman and Super Troopers. I did too – still do. They’re awesome movies. But that’s exactly the problem. If there’s a widely-accepted consensus on a movie, there’s no debate. That means most award winners (Oscars and Razzies alike) are out, as are most cult films – one of my friends shrilly insisted, like three goddamn times, that I review Paul Verhoeven’s seminal campy dogshit-a-thon Showgirls. My response was a resounding “Hell Naw.” All the film school dickheads in the world have already made their minds up about it. I get about as close to “cult classic” as I’m going to with the very first review, just so I can get about as far away from “cult” as fast as I can. I’m here to maybe tip the review scales on underwatched or underappreciated flicks a little closer to the positive.

2. Genre? Never heard of it

I don’t think I should have to explain too much that genre is not necessarily going to be a mitigating factor in what or how I watch something, but people will bitch about anything these days. I like movies of all stripes, so I’m kind of going to watch whatever the hell I want. Movies are movies are movies, and like Ebert said, It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it’s about it.

3. I Hope Jeffrey Lyons Dies, or, Who cares what some dick movie reviewer has to say? …Hey, wait a minute…

This one’s really a two-parter: (1) I’m going to keep external opinions about the movies I watch to a bare minimum, pre-screening. Most movie reviewers are self-aggrandizing jagholes looking to kick the director in the sack so they can be The Infamous Guy, You Know, He Of The Cruelly Negative Reviews, and I’m not interested in having something awful sticking in my craw while I try and find stuff to love. (2) I’ll probably regularly go after what’s critically wrong with the movie, however briefly, and only to throw the good stuff into perspective. I’m about examining the good parts, not pointing and laughing at the bad stuff. There are plenty of other bloggers who do that, so if that’s what you’re looking for, go read them and leave me the fuck alone to love these movies without irony.

4. Film school can blow me

This is not some pretentious, sweatervest-wearing dickhead dissection of the cinematic techniques present in any movie. Fuck your dutch angles and deep focus. This is not a debate of the symbolism in the cinematography. This is about stuff that almost anybody can love about movies that got none. For the casual viewer as well as the movie geek. Movies are for everybody, you know? Why try to force them into some silly little exclusive box? Doing that’s more about the reviewer’s ego than the movie itself, anyway. And my ego’s already doing awesome, thank you.

5. The film stops when I say it stops

A.k.a., The Playfair Principle. It’s like this: everything related to the movie is fair game for inclusion. Soundtrack, promotional material, interviews the stars gave, shit, even action figures or stickers, whatever the movie’s got to offer. I’m sure there are going to be movies where the best thing I can say about it is “I really liked that Dinosaur Junior song on the soundtrack!” and that’s just fine. You stamp it with the movie’s brand, it’s a part of the movie’s world. That easy.

6. Fuck you, I’ll play favorites if I like

Of course, I’m not going to watch nothing but movies I haven’t seen before – I’m going to watch some lame movies that I love anyway, because I love them, and I want to write about them so other people will love them, too. I never claimed to be objective, and I’m not going to sit here and fucking lie to you like an asshole. Actually, that’s a pretty good one…

7. I never claimed to be objective, and I’m not going to sit here and fucking lie to you like an asshole

Another one that should probably be obvious, but what the hell: I reserve the right to call “uncle” if a movie has no redemptive value whatsoever. I’ll still write about it, but I imagine those entries will probably be a little different than my regular fare.

8. I curse a lot.

You’ve probably figured that out already. Hope that’s cool, that’s probably going to make this a lot easier for the both of us.

Anyway, those are what I’ve got right now. I might come back to work on it a little later, but it’ll do for now. Still with me? Awesome.

Let’s go.

Matt’s first review for the blog: a look at 1998′s SPICE WORLD – will be up soon.

 

 

 

Today I’m a Cat In a Hurricane (Blog, NaNoWriMo 2013)

This NaNo thing is hard.

I write every day, so it’s not just the act of sitting and churning out 1600 words (give or take) a day that’s proving to be rough. It’s the doing it all on the same project, and retaining faith in that project as I go on, and doing so despite all the other things going on in life, that are turning out to be the month’s real challenges.

I never thought this would be the hard part. I write every day: blog posts, short stories, full-length plays — and in between those, dozens of ideas for new onws – and I’ve gone through long, arduous projects that made me want to scream or kick them or abandon them and run away. But there’s something about living with a nascent idea of a book, day in and day out, for a month (shut up, it’s only been ten days, I know, shut up) that’s a very different animal from what I’m used to. I have an outline to work from and I know that it’s just a matter of sitting down, every day, doing the words, and eventually I’ll come to the end of the month and the end of the book and then holy crap I’ll have a whole book and – well, all those lovely things that come after.

Unlike most participants, I’m not even in this alone. I have my trusted friend & project collaborator, Sare Liz Gordy working with me – well, parallel to me, on the second book in the series we’ve planned – so unlike plenty of other people who have taken on NaNo this month, I have someone to bounce ideas off of, talk things over with, and generally remind me that this pile of words I’m steadily piecing together is worth it and will work when it’s done and all those other things we writers like to know as we sew the firings of our neurons into the tapestry of a story. (Shut up, shut up, leave me alone, all my clever metaphors are going into the book.)

And then there’s the Brain Chemistry. Caps, because it’s my brain, you know? And at some point between Friday and today, my brain chemistry went wonky, and right now, I hate everything. Not just the clothes I yank out of my closet in pathetically mismatched combinations, not just the fact that the leak over my apartment radiator is still dripping and the intercom speaker still doesn’t work, but everything. A coworker and I sat at lunch together today, talking about this, and he suggested if I wasn’t getting joy from what I was doing then maybe I ought to pull the plug. And I realized that the problem with making an assessment – any assessment based on liking anything – when I’m having the Brain Chemistry is that until things right themselves it’s not going to be a rational decision. (Which is NOT to say that at any point the idea of quitting NaNo has been one that’s come to mind, just that my friend asked why I didn’t and I had to explain why not.) Picture a cat, soaking wet in a hurricane, clinging with all its claws to a telephone pole while the wind rattles and howls around it. Right now, le chat c’est moi.

And anyways, when I’m capable of liking something I like this story a lot. Right now, I think the code for my mental “like” button is going through some kind of DDOS attack, so I have to just keep working blind until tech support can come in and debug whatever’s going wrong. (Leave me alone, all my good metaphors are going into the NaNo.)

So I get home from work and sit on the edge of my bed for a minute just to catch my breath, and the next thing I know I’ve been napping for three hours and I have to figure out something to do for dinner because when I feel like this eating healthy is one of the best things I can do for myself, and I use my cast-iron skillet to fry a piece of bacon and a whole bunch of vegetables I picked up in Chinatown and I sit at my computer and I stare at the Drive document that holds the outline I’ve put together, and I fire up Open Office and I take a deep breath and I stare and then I jump in.

Even if I don’t make the full quotient of words for today, at least I know I’m still going. Having something to sit down and chip away at is exhausting – Sare aptly compared writing these books to running a marathon, and ten days out of thirty in, I’m at a pace that’s more or less comfortable and I like what the characters are doing and the turns the tale is taking – but keeping it up is hard work.

“I don’t mind working hard, I just mind working stupid,” a friend of mine says, and at least I know that I’m working smart: an outline, a plan, a support structure, a clear goal. So that’s okay. I’ll just keep going, a cat in a hurricane with my claws dug into a telephone pole, hanging on for dear life and wondering where the hell did I put my pen and can I swat at the keyboard without flying off into the wind.

I’ll get there. It’ll take about twenty more days, but I’ll get there, and I’ll look back and read this and wonder what made it seem so hard.

Until then, I’m off to write another bunch of words. I’ll forgive myself if I only hit five hundred today – that’s the whole point of working ahead of oneself, when one can – because anything is still progress, and progress of some kind is what counts.

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For those who came expecting cats: when you search for “cat in a hurricane” on Google, this is the first cat picture that comes up. Today, I am this cat.

THEATER REVIEW: “Evil Dead: The Musical” at the Randolph Theatre in Toronto, CA

A Note From Rachel: Earlier this week, while I was prepping for the opening of NaNoWriMo 2013, my friend Sheilah O’Connor went to the opening night of Toronto’s latest run of Evil Dead: The Musical. Here’s her review of the current production of this cult hit.

 

Evil Dead: The Musical. Ryan Ward and Laura Tremblay. Photo by David Hou.

Evil Dead: The Musical

The Randolph Theatre, Toronto, Canada

Reviewed by Sheilah O’Connor

When Thomas Wolfe said you can’t go home again, he clearly was not thinking of Evil Dead: the Musical which has returned for the third time to the city in which it was created. Toronto also welcomed back Ryan Ward who originated the role of Ash, and cowriter/director Christopher Bond.

I didn’t know much about Evil Dead: the Musical beyond the fact that it was based on movies and has a “splatter zone”. It turns out, that didn’t much matter. While there were a few moments that were clearly set up for fans of the Evil Dead franchise, the musical was very accessible to anyone who appreciates a lively, corny romp.

Evil Dead: The Musical – Laura Tremblay, Alison Smyth, Ryan Ward, Margaret Thompson, Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll. Photo by David Hou.

The actors are all excellent in their roles, able to act, sing and dance. While Ryan Ward is a natural, given his long history with the production, Alyson Smyth is a standout, able to move easily from annoying younger sister to evil punning demon. Daniel Williston was an unexpected surprise. Much lighter on his feet than seems likely when he first appears, his song Good Old Reliable Jake was a clear homage to Meatloaf in The Rocky Horror Picture Show and his ballet moves later brought down the house.

In fact, many things brought down the house. The audience cheered as the production began and frequently thereafter. The beer that could be brought to the seats perhaps played a small part in that but this was a crowd ready to have a good time and the actors clearly fed off the excitement.

It was a relatively small stage so good use is made of lighting and the occasional backdrop. The infamous “Splatter Zone” where audience members get coated in blood was, I’m told, expanded and to ensure that everyone got their fair share, blood rained down from the ceiling as well as from the stage.

With so many things done right, it was disappointing that the music so often drowned out the singing unless the actors were facing the audience. Since the music runs from tangos to 1950’s do-wop, it’s crucial to get the full effect, and we didn’t. This was opening night though. Now that they have a theatre full of bodies to test the sound with, I expect it will improve quickly.

Evil Dead: The Musical runs through Dec. 22, 2013 at the Randolph Theatre in Toronto before moving on to other cities. The cast recording is available on Spotify. Photos courtesy of rockitpromo. 

 

Getting Things Done: Projects, Guest Posts & Doorbells

For the last six months, my doorbell hasn’t been working. Those of you who don’t live in apartment buildings may not immediately realize what a pain that is, and how much it’s impacted my life here in New York City. I don’t remember the last time I ordered delivery, because without a functioning buzzer I have to explain how the guy bringing my pizza and lo mein (and, not or, don’t judge me) that he has to call me from downstairs then stand there and wait while I come down to let him in and…it’s just too aggravating. Also, I’m trying to eat healthy.

But I digress. Today, my super showed up to try and fix the intercom for my apartment. Which means I’m sitting around waiting while he works; now he’s replaced the speaker in my room but it looks like the issues go further than that.

Getting things done is a process. You make a plan, you reach out for help, you encounter setbacks, you overcome them. You accomplish things.

For me, the next few months are going to be all about accomplishing things. Two things, to be exact, with a third thing looming on the horizon.

Which brings me to kind of an exciting announcement: I’m going to be lining up some guest posts over the next couple months. So far I have a friend who’ll be sending in a theater review for Evil Dead: The Musical (about to open in Toronto) and another who’s going to be doing some in-depth looks at the redeeming features of less-than-Oscar-worthy films.

I made a plan: to write two first drafts – for two very different pieces – in two months. I’ve reached out to friends who’ll be helping me keep rlbrody.com ticking over with new pieces while I’m hard at work. So far, all the setbacks on the pieces in question have been structural and overcome with liberal application of my fancy MFA in Dramatic Writing and a few tools I picked up along the way to where I am now.

Hopefully, in two months, I’ll have accomplished my plan.

Wish me luck – more luck than my super, at least, who just announced that while the speaker in my apartment has now been replaced, it’s still not working because of an issue with the buzzer downstairs.

On second thought, wish my super luck on the doorbell issue, too. Getting food delivered in the next couple months will definitely help me accomplish my goals.