A. Lee Martinez's Blog, page 50

Movie Time

Not to get too repetitive here, but I have a Kickstarter project going on.  Feel free to check it out, if so inclined.  Spread the word.  Contribute if you like.  Or just ignore it.  It’s all up to you.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/6...

Now onto the real subject of this post.  As anyone will tell you, I am a man of distinguished tastes, and the best example of that can be found in my Netflix.  So without further ado, let’s take a quick look on what’s on A. Lee Martinez’s streaming que.

 

BUTTER

A movie about butter sculpting and its effect on the lives of various characters.  Not a documentary.  The cast is strong, and the story is quiet and thoughtful with absurdity and vulgarity sprinkled here and there.  It isn’t a big movie, but that’s it’s charm.  The characters seem genuinely likable and even the more flawed characters aren’t outright villainous.  The real star of the show is Yara Shahidi as Destiny, a young orphan girl bounced from household to household, who finds a purpose in the sculpting of butter.  She and Jennifer Garner trade voiceovers in the film, and it works surprisingly well.  Perhaps because, despite their differences, both characters are struggling to find their place in the world and dealing with things as best they can.

Special mention goes to Rob Corddry who plays the part of Destiny’s latest foster parent, a guy who seems genuinely caring and awkward at the same time.  His bonding scenes with Destiny come across as natural and endearing, and really, that was what pushed the movie into genuinely heartwarming.

Speaking of which, I really love Rob Corddry as an actor in general.  Most recently, I saw him in Warm Bodies (a truly excellent flick that I highly, highly recommend).  He plays a zombie named M in the film, and he does an incredible job of portraying the emotional journey his character has to go through, even while having to mostly shamble and grunt what little dialogue he has.  He doesn’t even get the benefit of the voiceover the protagonist, R, does, so it’s all on Corddry to make it work.  Damned if he doesn’t do a bang up job of it.  After these two films, count me among your biggest fans, Mr. Corddry.

 

INTRUDERS

I’m still working on this one.  It’s an interesting premise.  A young boy and a young girl (neither of which have anything to do with each other at the moment) are being stalked by a strange creature known as Hollowface.  It appears in the boy’s dreams, stalking him in his nightmares.  Meanwhile, the girl is being stalked in real life.  Hollowface lives in her closet.  Clive Owen plays her concerned father.

I was worried about this flick at the beginning because I don’t usually like movies where the protagonists are considered crazy by everyone else as they confront a weird horror.  This is why it was a relief when Hollowface appears to the daughter and her father, though he’s still only haunting the boy’s dreams.  Hollowface is a genuinely scary monster, a thing that seeks to steal your face, that lives in darkened corners and can’t be banished.  He is, strangely, not an invincible monster.  He can be fought, but driving him off only stalls him temporarily.

Despite the stronger horror elements of the film, the languid pacing makes some of it a bit of a chore to get through.  I haven’t even finished it yet, so I can’t recommend it too much.  And the ending might stink.  But so far, it’s interesting enough that I withhold judgment.

 

RED LIGHTS

Sigourney Weaver plays a professor who debunks psychics and claims of the paranormal.  Great cast.  Cool premise.  But, despite some solid performances, I just didn’t see where it was going or why I should care.  Didn’t finish it.  Don’t plan on it.

 

SUPERNATURAL ACTIVITY

A parody of the various found footage supernatural horror movies, there’s a few good gags here, but it can’t seem to decide on what level of parody it is going for.  The longer it goes, the more inconsistent the tone becomes.  Not terrible, but not recommended either.

 

SHAOLIN SOCCER

Wonderful film about super kung fu being used in the world of professional soccer.  It is absurd while grounded in a very real affection for its characters.  A great movie, deft and ridiculous, fun and heartfelt.  Plus, did I mention super kung fu soccer?

 

1313: BIGFOOT ISLAND

Ah here we go.  This is one absolutely dreadful movie.  Understand, I’ve seen a lot of dreadful movies.  I’ve seen a lot of so bad it’s good movies and a lot of so bad it’s bad movies and everything in-between.  It takes something special to stand out.  This movie has that in spades.

First of all, it’s supposed to be an exploitation flick aimed at a gay male audience.  This doesn’t mean that the characters are gay (as far as I can tell none of them are supposed to be) but that instead of cheesecake, we get beefcake.  Now, I am not usually inclined to criticize a movie for not having enough male exploitation, but if you’re going to do it, do it right, damn it.

Putting aside that flaw, this film has one very special feature that I have NEVER EVER seen in any movie.  EVER.

Two characters are never on screen at the same time.  EVER.

You read that right.  Not even bigfoot, who is basically killing everyone.  Most of the time he does so by watching a victim scream then cutting to a shot of bigfoot swiping at the camera.  Most of the character interaction between the humans takes place on the phone, and the few times characters are supposed to be in the same location, they’re never in the same shot.

So, yeah, apparently this movie was shot one actor at a time then edited together to make it work.  It almost does in one or two scenes, but for the most part, it creates a strange, disconnected quality to the whole thing.  This isn’t what makes the film so terrible though.

No, it’s the 20 minute hiking scene at the beginning.  The cuts to a cameraman prowling through the same darkened woods while growling sounds are added in.  The many walks that seem to go nowhere.  Cardboard characters who die off camera (except for one guy who gets whacked with a canoe).  And the repetitive shots of a girl chanting to bigfoot to “avenge his fallen maiden”, which she does over and over and over again.

It is, hands down, one of the most ridiculous movies I have ever seen.  Amateurish, dumb, and confounding.  I started another 1313 film to see if it was the same, and while so far, it takes place in the city, it has the exact same perplexing qualities.  Checking IMDB, the director made about 10 of these films in 2011, so I can only assume that shooting the actors separately allows him to crank these things out.  And they’re on Netflix, so he probably made his money back, so I can’t fault him.

I can’t recommend you watch this film, but I would recommend giving it a few minutes of your time, if only to see how bad a movie truly can be.  So the next time you feel the urge to say “That was the worst movie I’ve ever seen”, you can always stop and remind yourself that time you watched a guy hike through the woods for 20 minutes before finally getting one-punch killed by an offscreen bigfoot.

 

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Q&A Friday

Did you know I have a Kickstarter project in the works?  Of course you did because you’re a big fan of mine, right?  I’m not saying you have to contribute to it, but if you did, I’d be your best friend forever and ever and ever.  Even if you’re not interested in contributing to the project, you might want to go ahead and check it out.  It’s a pretty cool idea, and if it gets funded, you can always end up buying a copy when it comes out.  Then we’ll be best friends forever and ever and ever.

Which is a damn good offer considering how cool a friend I am.

Check it out at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/6...

Anyway, enough with the blatant self-promotion.  Let’s move onto more subtle self-promotion.  Yes, Q&A Friday is here once again, and it’s time to open the old mailbag and see what mysteries of the universe are in need of explanation:

 

I have recently fallen in love with audible.com (though few states will recognize this love) and I have really enjoyed the voices narrators have given some of your characters.  If you have given any of them a listen, have you ever been surprised (pleasantly or otherwise) by the way a character was performed?

Audio books are a strange thing.  As a novelologist, I love the chance to bring my work to a new medium.  It means more exposure, a greater revenue stream, and just more possibilities.  Yet any time an actor is reading a book, he  or she is inevitably going to add their own spin and interpretation to the narration.  This can be a good thing or a bad thing, but usually, I find it’s just a thing.

I’ve listened to the Audible.com versions of all my books (the free previews anyway), and without exception, I can say I appreciate the hard-working voice actors who bring the books to life.  I am loathe to say anything bad about any of them, but I will say that the narrator of Gil’s All Fright Diner is a little too Southern for my tastes.  Perhaps because I myself don’t have a very strong Texas accent (though I do have a little bit of one), I tend to envision most Southern characters with a more subtle accent than the narrator chose to use.  It’s not really exaggerated.  It’s just stronger than I prefer.

On the more positive side, I really love the narrator of Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain.  It wasn’t precisely what I had in mind when I envisioned Emperor, but it is great, maybe even better.   I love the Mr. Peabody quality to the acting, and it made me realize that Emperor really isn’t much different than the wise-cracking, unflappable, time-traveling genius even if Zala is a much less fawning Sherman.

 

If you could live one of your books which would it be?

I’m often asked which of my books is my favorite, and it’s never an easy question to answer.  This one, however, is far easier.

I would love to live in the retro-noir future of The Automatic Detective.  Empire City, with all its glorious mutations, flying cars, and bustling robots, calls to me in my dreams like a sweet siren’s song.  If I got to be an indestructible robot too, well, what sane man could turn that down?

None of my other stories call to me in nearly the same way.  I wouldn’t mind living in Rockwood (from Gil’s All Fright Diner), but it’s a small town and I’ve had my fill of those.  Though being a werewolf, especially the badass version that is Duke, would make it tempting.  But robot beats werewolf by a smidge.

Fort Stalwart (In the Company of Ogres) is full of carousing, roughhousing monsters, and unless I got to be an ogre myself, I’m pretty sure it’d be a short visit before something crushed me.  If I had to be Never Dead Ned, I can’t say I’d be too interested.

The world of A Nameless Witch is nice, but not really the focus of the story, so there’s not a lot special about it.  I wouldn’t mind being the witch (hey, I can handle being a woman if necessary), but she has some stuff she has to deal with.  Curses and all that.  But she also has a great extended family, and while I might not always have her patience with her demon duck familiar, I could at least tolerate the guy.

Margle’s castle (Too Many Curses) is just too damned crowded.  Also, I am far too disorganized to keep it from falling into darkness and probably destroying the world in the process.

When we move to the Orbit years, there’s pretty much nothing to get me excited about either Monster or Divine Misfortune because they’re really just our world with some magical elements, which is fun, but not different enough to warrant leaving this world behind.  Monster is a dumbass, so if I had to be him, I’d say no thanks.  And it might be fun to be Lucky or Quick in Divine Misfortune, at the end of the day, have I mentioned I’d really like to be a robot?

 

Chasing the Moon is right out because I’d be driven mad within a day.  Unless I was a cosmic monster, but then I’d probably just end up bored.

Emperor Mollusk’s Terra is a cool version of Earth, much like Empire City.   There’s a lot to like there, but being Emperor himself would be difficult to decide on.  He is undeniably brilliant, and I’d love to build some death rays or create a robot army (which is the next best thing to being a robot).  But I get bored too easily now, and I’m not nearly as smart as Emperor.  My death ray barely tickles after all these years.

The upcoming Helen and Troy’s Epic Road Quest is an alternate version of our world where questing is real.  I wouldn’t mind being either Helen, the seven foot tall minotaur, or Troy, the all-around perfect guy.  Minotaur is up there on the list of things I wouldn’t mind becoming, but once again, I find that robot reigns at the top of that list.  About the only thing cooler would be a robot minotaur who changes into a dinosaur.

Hey, I should write that story so I have a new answer the next time someone asks this question.

 

Emperor Mollusk – live action or animated movie if you could pick?

Easy question.  I’d much prefer animated.  Not just for Emperor Mollusk either.  I think all my books would make better animated features than live action.  Some, like Monster or Divine Misfortune, are more suited for live action than others, but even then, they have weird characters and monsters.  There’s nothing like animation for creating unreal universes that have their own vibrant personalities and reality.

It occurred to me when I was watching Megamind that I don’t understand why we even make live action superhero flicks anymore.  Avengers was great, but it would’ve been just as great animated (and if you don’t believe me, check out the awesome new series, especially the brilliant and fun first season, streaming on Netflix).  The fact of the matter is that the more outrageous a universe is, the more able animation is to make it seem real and accessible.  The Incredibles remains the best superhero flick ever, and it does so because it’s world is far more real than any other superhero film ever made.  (Oh, and the amazing direction, animation, acting, writing, etc., etc., etc.)

Emperor Mollusk features a space squid as the protagonist.  The story takes place in a slightly alternate earth full of aliens, giant robots, and spaceship battles.  It is such an unreal place that any film or TV show trying to portray it would be relying mostly on animation anyway with live action only there to make it seem more mature.  Considering at one point our hero fights the giant radioactive brain of Madame Curie, I think maturity is beside the point.

Well, actually, I think the story has a lot of maturity, but most people will just see the robots and mutant dinosaurs and think it’s silly.  So why bother trying to convince them by shoving a few living actors in front of the camera?

If nothing else, Emperor himself is such an inhuman character in form that, even if everything else was live action, he’d still have to be an animated character.  Unless they decided to change him so completely as to make him almost unrecognizable visually.  I’m not against that if someone was willing to option it and give it a shot, but it wouldn’t be my first choice.

 

How did you get to be so cool, anyway?

That would be telling, but here’s a hint.

Drink more Ovaltine.

 

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

The Crowd

So I’m laying the groundwork for a short story anthology to be funded on Kickstarter.  It seems like a good project and a good way of dipping my toe into the Kickstarter pool.  It should be up and running in a few days, and we’ll see what happens.

Kickstarter is an incredibly cool idea, and while I don’t know if the idea itself is sustainable over the long run, I love the possibilities it offers.  As a board game fan, I’ve bought several great games funded through Kickstarter.  The notion of skipping corporate funding and going directly to the audience has such promise that it’s hard not to see it as the future of media.  Instead of having to convince a handful of powerful people that an idea is worth pursuing, you really only need to convince a few hundred people to give you a few bucks, offering them rewards for doing so.

The problem with Kickstarter though is that, without the corporate gatekeepers, how does a project stand out?  More importantly, how does my (or his or hers or theirs) project stand out?  Right now, there’s really no reliable substitute for the exposure you can get working with established publicity structures.  If you don’t believe me, ask yourself when was the last time a hit movie genuinely “came out of nowhere”?  And books, while not quite as slavishly devoted to instant return on investment, still are built upon getting noticed.  We might argue whether or not the Twlight Saga is great literature, but what isn’t up for debate is its near ubiquitous exposure.  That, more than any other factor, is what made it the hit it is, and that’s not meant as a criticism.  It’s just an undeniable factor.

If my anthology (working title: Robots & Slime Monsters) succeeds at all, it will do so because of the years I’ve been building an audience.  That audience is not purely of my own making, but of the behind the scenes people at my publisher who have helped me stand out on the shelves.  Even then, I’m mostly obscure.  Yet I am less obscure than many an established writer working even now.

The companion to Kickstarter will be websites devoted to expanding an audience.  I don’t know if such sites exist, and I’m not sure how they could possibly function.  If they were paid sites, the creator loses precious resources to fund them, which is kind of the opposite of what Kickstarter is all about.  Plus, once someone is making money, it’s only a short skip and a jump until the all-consuming desire for higher profits makes it less appealing to the average creator.  And with money comes preferred treatment, which is pretty much the same system we have now.

But a free publicity site isn’t a solution either.  Any site that takes anyone is bound to be too crowded to be useful.  Sad to say, a world where everyone gets equal access to publicity neutralizes much of the value of publicity.

Kickstarter gets around that by being a site designed to fund projects.  There is no better way to get people invested in something than to have them give money to it.  It’s an old cliche that when you’re good at something you should never do it for free.  And it is, I believe, largely true.  We aren’t programmed by our instincts to appreciate things we get for free.  We take those things for granted.  Just see how often we get mad at the commercials in broadcast television (which for decades paid for the free entertainment we got out of our TVs).  And satellite radio is a business model built on the principle that people will gladly pay for stuff they could get for free.  Granted, satellite radio figured out that it could offer stuff that regular radio couldn’t or wouldn’t, where it’s real value is to be found.  And it’s had some trouble in recent years competing with free radio in the long run, but that’s mostly because of a weak economy, not a bad business model as far as I can tell.

So the question of this hypothetical publicity site I imagine is how does it get people invested in a project without being a paid service and without letting everyone through the gate?  I have no idea, and I’m not sure we’d end up with anything different than we currently have, just a new media version of it.

The real future of publicity will have to be found, just as with Kickstarter, in the enthusiasm of the audience.  Optimistically, I see a possible future where advertisement dollars don’t determine what we like, but a well-informed audience that takes the time to search out what it likes.  The difficulty of this though is that the audience isn’t always that bright, if I may be honest.  Given a choice, the audience often chooses what it already likes.  This is why we have four Spider-Man movies, are still making Star Trek, Star Wars, nine hour Hobbit movies.

In my ideal tomorrow, the audience will be both informed and eager for something new.  Such an audience, empowered by an open internet, could create a world where skill and originality determine what’s hot.  Not nostalgia, focus groups, and multi-million dollar advertisement campaigns.  To be sure, such a future would have its own unique problems, but it might very well be a revolution in how we create as a society.

Meanwhile my cynical side says that the fault lies not with our media models, but with ourselves.  There will never be a way of countering millions of dollars spent on advertising, and that, for all our complaints about a system that sees us mostly as exploitable demographics, we are exactly what they expect us to be.  The current model isn’t an accident or a corruption.  It’s a system perfectly evolved to give us what we want and get our money in exchange.  And we’re just fooling ourselves to think otherwise.

Even if that’s true though it isn’t such a bad thing.  Despite the nature of our marketing driven world, we still manage to make new movies, new books, new stories.  And some of those stories even manage to garner attention and success.  So it’s not all gray clouds or silver linings.

Either way, we’re all on this ride to the future together.  I’ll hold your hand if you hold mine.  Just try not to scream too loudly.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Q&A Thursday

So this Friday, I’ll be traveling.  Rather than leave you with all your unanswered questions for another week, I thought I’d move Q&A Friday up a day because I care.

As always, if you should have any questions, feel free to leave them here in the comments section, send them to me via Twitter (@ALeeMartinez) or Facebook (A. Lee Martinez), or at Hipstercthulhu@hotmail.com.  So send me those questions and / or comments because one day, I’ll be too famous to bother with the little people.  That’s the plan anyway.

This week’s questions are:

 

Ever thought about making any of your books animated movies?  Gil’s might be a good one.  Still adult-centric, though.

Great question, but I’m afraid it’s the wrong question.  If it were up to me, I’d already have adapted something into an animated film.  It is, however, not really up to me.  Movies are big, expensive productions, and even a lower budget film requires expertise in a field I don’t know very much about.  Novelology is my field of expertise.  I have done a little screenwriting and treatment stuff, and I have thoroughly enjoyed it.  But for now, novels are where I make my money.

I am too very much a novelologist.  I love movies, but I don’t write stories to become movies.  I write stories that are intended to be books, and if they should happen to become movies and / or TV shows, I wouldn’t mind one bit.  It’d be good for my career, which is always my primary concern, but also a cool experience.  Even if the adaptation wasn’t very good, it would still be a huge boost to getting my name out there.  And, who knows, it might even be good.

But, as I said, this isn’t really my call to make.  I’ve had movie folks interested in various stories, and so far, it’s been a rewarding experience, both creatively and financially, but it hasn’t panned out beyond that.  I’m always eager to explore a new frontier, and with some luck, it’ll happen one day.  So we’ll see.

But if you buy a lot more books, maybe it’ll convince some producer out there to take that big scary leap.  Just a suggestion from a shameless capitalist.

 

Here’s one for you!  How do you estimate the word count of a novel in progress?  I’m revising one right now, and I’m stumped.

I’m assuming you’re asking me how I figure out the potential word count to a story I’m not finished yet.  If you want an actual word count, most word processing programs can tell you how many words you have written down on a manuscript.  And, push comes to shove, you can always estimate every page averages about 250 words, so simple multiplication can do the trick.  You can even use a calculator.  Nobody is going to hold it against you.

If you’re asking how to predict the length of a finished story before you’ve actually finished it, I’m not sure how to get that.  If you’ve finished a story or two, you probably have a good idea of what word count you hit on a regular basis.  For me, it’s a pretty standard number, and every story I write tends to hit that range.

My question is how important is it to know the word count before you’ve finished the story?  If you’re trying to sell a story before you’ve finished it, good luck with that.  I prefer finishing a story before submitting, though I don’t always have that luxury.  In which case, just figure out a good word count you’re aiming for and do what you can to make the story hit that.  It’s not always easy, and depending on how you write, you might end up having to add stuff or remove with judicious editing.  (FYI: I always have to add.)

Hope this answers the question.  If not, let me know.

 

Who would win in a fight: Robo-Ghandi or a unicorn with rocket launcher legs?

Tough call.  I’m assuming Robo-Ghandi would have trouble violating his non-violence directive.  On the other hand, unicorns are pretty lame.  Even cyborg unicorns.  I mean, it’s just a horse with a horn on its head.  Oh, yeah, and goat hooves or something.  Which is kind of like a mythical whale with the head of an orca and the tale of a beluga.  Not exactly anything to get excited about.

So, assuming Robo-Ghandi is rocket-proof (which I feel is a pretty safe assumption) and given the lameness of unicorns, I’m going with Robo-Ghandi.  But we’ll just have to wait for science to give us the real answer one day.

 

If you had to write in another genre what would it be?

Tough question.  I write fantasy and science fiction mostly because I love making stuff up and if I decide Dracula can fly through space and shoot lasers out of his fangs, no one can really argue with me about it.

The real question is how do we define what my genre is to begin with?  I write about monsters, but it’s not exactly horror.  I write with humor, but it’s not exactly satire.  I write about planets blowing up, but it’s not strictly adventure.  So if I said Horror or Space Opera, would I still be writing in the same genre?

Let’s just remove all fantasy and science fiction elements from the equation to be safe.  In that case, I’d be writing Crime Noir.  One of the reasons I wrote The Automatic Detective was a chance to write all that snappy patter and tough guy scenes that classic Crime Noir offers, but with a robot fighting a slime monster at the climax, which, we can all agree, is freakin’ awesome.

But even without the robot and slime monster, I do enjoy Noir quite a bit.  So while I don’t know if I could write it as well, Crime Noir would be my alternate of choice.  Though I do enjoy it more with wise-cracking robots and talking apes.

 

Does this smell funny to you?

Alas, while I am an incredibly gifted individual, I do have one weakness.  My sense of smell is almost completely useless, and it’s even worse across the internet.

But I’d say throw it out, just to be on the safe side.

 

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

It Conquered the Media Property!

The monopolistic nature of media is what worries me the most about the future.

J.J. Abrams is now going to be put in charge of two powerful science fiction dynasties.  One man will control both Star Trek and Star Wars.  Meanwhile, Disney defacto owns 90 percent of our fairy tale characters, Marvel Comics, the Muppets, and Star Wars.

That’s an awful lot of power for one corporation to have.

Make no mistake.  It is power too.  Real power.  You don’t have to control what people think to control the culture.  You can just as easily control what they consume because our entertainment defines us as surely as our political views and the cloths we put on our back.  There is no clear demarcation between who we are and what we watch, read, etc.

Putting aside any sinister thoughts though, I can’t help but feel we’re being stifled in a new and unique way.  Our stories and ideas are more and more pre-packaged.  Star Wars, Star Trek, Spider-Man, Lone Ranger, etc., etc..  Each is now created with a sales pitch in mind and a story second.  This is nothing new.  It’s the way they used to do classic monster movies like It Conquered the World and The Monolith Monsters.  Create something that looks great on a poster with a catchy title and figure out the movie afterward.  The difference is that those old classics were low-budget affairs meant to intrigue passers by.  The new stuff feels more and more like cynical marketeers.

The line has never been very clear.  Comic book superheroes used to love putting crazy stuff on comic book covers to make the reader pause and buy a comic if only to see why Superman has a lion head or why Batman is dressed like a clown this issue.  But, again, these were smaller mediums trying to stand out.  They might be publicity stunts, but they were the underdog trying to get noticed.

Now they’re just the standard business model.

This is why, among other reasons, I’m excited about Pacific Rim.  Some might argue that it looks like a silly giant robot movie, but I would argue that it’s a giant robot movie NOT based on anything else.  It wasn’t created because someone wanted to monetize an already successful property.  It wasn’t formulated because an executive thought he could trade on nostalgia.  It was created because someone wanted to make an ORIGINAL giant robot movie.  And that’s so rare this day and age, I’d support it even if it didn’t have rocket punch attacks.  Though rocket punch attacks certainly don’t hurt anything.

The problem is that, for all our complaints about how empty these market driven films can be, they are what we really want.  We might argue whether JJ Abrams is the right guy to direct a new Star Wars film, but we never argue whether Star Wars itself is worth continuing.  We’ll complain about Spider-Man reboots, but we’ll never question whether Spider-Man has anything new to offer us as a culture.

Yes, I know it’s a radical idea. It certainly won’t get much traction for the die hard fans.  But if you think about it, the more nitpicky and obsessive a community becomes about a franchise, a series, whatever, the more obvious it becomes to me that the media becomes less important than the culture surrounding it.  Right now, Star Wars is less about the actual stories being told than it is about who is directing it, its relation to the other stories told, whether it’ll ignore or adhere to expanded universe, and so on.  But the actual question of whether or not Star Wars has an interesting story to tell . . . nobody asks that.  It’s just sort of assumed to be true because it once was.

I do think Star Wars has plenty of room for interesting new stories, but the problem is, if you’re creating a Star Wars story, even with the best of intentions, you probably don’t want to tell those stories.  I would be intrigued by the notion of a non-Jedi Star Wars film.  Such a film will never happen.  I would love a Star Trek film from a Klingon perspective, without an Enterprise crewmen in sight.  I would relish the chance to read a Spider-Man story where he grows up a little, stops feeling so bad about himself, and maybe gets his act together.  No story like that will ever be written.

Instead, we get reboots and re-imaginings which take old, tired stories and make them look new without actually making them new.  I didn’t mind the new Trek film.  But, take away the slick presentation, and we’re just back to Kirk, Spock, and the gang fighting someone in space to protect The Federation.

And how many times do I have to watch Peter Parker learn about responsibility?

This is why I get the popularity of Firefly.  It really didn’t get a chance to earn its devoted fanbase.  It’s a promising show that never really got off the ground.  But at least it was its own show, its own universe.  It wasn’t a reboot.  It was distinctly Firefly in a way that media (and particularly science fiction) rarely is.  Heck, I can totally relate.  I love Space Rangers, a show that lasted only two or three episodes and nobody even remembers, but that left a great impression on me.

Whether we like it or not, we have been conditioned to go to the movies, buy books, watch TV for nearly every reason other than the media itself.  It was an intentional move by the companies in charge of such things, and it makes sense from a financial perspective.  There’s probably no going back because in order for anything to be popular at this point, it needs to have that machine behind it.  And the machine works best when it’s running on ideas that have already been sold to us that we buy without thinking about it.

None of this means there’s no hope for the future.  Nor does it mean that new stuff can’t come along occasionally.  And no media conglomerate can control everything.  Not yet anyway.  But in a world where, more and more, taking chances is seen as unnecessary (perhaps rightly so), it’s important for the consumer to seek out new ideas, new characters, new worlds.  Those new stories might not always be great, but at least they’re worth chasing if only for the chance to experience something genuinely new and not just a variation of something old with younger actors and a different director.

And that, long answer, is why I haven’t written a sequel yet.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Q&A Friday

So here we are with another Q&A Friday where I, famous novelologist and all around neat guy, answer your questions.  Before I get to that though, I’ll take a second to plug myself on Youtube, where I’m uploading cool videos of me talking about games and writing and whatever else crosses my mind.  Look me up under the name Emperor Mollusk.

If you have any questions you’d like me to answer here (or maybe even in a video if the stars align properly) you can either leave them in the comments section here, reach me on Twitter (@aleemartinez), find me on Facebook (A. Lee Martinez), or, if you prefer a more personal approach, contact me via e-mail at Hipstercthulhu@hotmail.com.

But onto the questions:

 

What does the a stand for?

Awesome.

 

Listening to music while writing – yay or nay? If so: What are your go-to tunes?

Yay.

Now, I am not a big music fan.  I know that admitting such a thing is a bit weird, but music is something I like but not nearly as much as I like other stuff.  Recently, my radio in my car stopped working, and I discovered I’m perfectly fine driving in silence, which kind of strikes even me as a bit strange.  But we are who we are.

Usually, I have Pandora running in the background while writing, and right now, Pandora has decided I like Journey, Adele, Bon Jovi, and Bowling for Soup.  And who am I to argue with the internet?  I think that’s against the law or something, right?

 

Will there be a part two of Too Many Curses? Please say yes.

I’ll give the standard “Will there be a sequel to X?” answer.

No current plans.  Maybe one day.

I’ve covered this in the past (a lot) and will probably continue to cover it in the future (a lot).  I love that people are so excited by one of my stories that they’d love to read more about the characters and setting.  But I also love exploring new ideas, new concepts, and new worlds.  That said, it’s not strictly up to me.  If my publisher was motivated enough to pay me a hefty sum for a sequel, I’d definitely be more open to the idea.  But the only way that happens is if you, the people, buy as many copies as you can to encourage them to do so.  After all, this is a business, folks.  Everybody’s gotta make a living.

But for now and the near future, it is unlikely.

 

How tired are you of being compared to Terry Pratchett, on a scale from one to Gangnam Style?

This is a difficult question.  On the one hand, being compared to one of the current giants of fantasy (especially in a positive light) is a good thing.  On the other, like most artists, I strive to create my own identity and signature.  I don’t want to be “The American Terry Pratchett” or any variation of that.  I want to be A. Lee Martinez.

As I’ve said before, I don’t think Pratchett and I are very similar at all.  We both write fantasy stories.  We both have humor in our stories.  But Pratchett is a satirist, often using fantasy as a way to metaphorically explore and dissect topics and ideas that might be taboo in other forms.  Whereas I consider myself primarily an modern pulp adventure writer with some humorous elements.  The chief difference is that if you remove the satire from Pratchett stories they lose a lot of their energy while I think my stories could be written straighter with less humor and still hold up, even if they might lose much of their signature style.

This is why I tend to dislike being categorized as a “funny” writer to begin with.  I’m never trying to write funny.  I just write and put some funny stuff in because it feels appropriate.  This is why most of my stories have “not funny” parts that inevitably strike some readers as confusing.  Am I a humorist?  Is it a serious story?

The short answer is yes to both.

Granted, most funny writers, such as Pratchett, have serious moments in their stories.  Discworld is full of characters given plenty of life, who are more than just jokes.  But even in most of their serious moments, they have a certain light banter to the narration that usually disappears at points in my stories.

The problem isn’t just a question of narrative style either.  I’m writing about space squid supervillains, robots detectives, country vampires, and so on and so on.  The subject matter itself puts most people in mind of goofy silliness, and while I’m all for extremely goofy stuff in general (I am the guy who put mutant laser pterodactyls and a giant radioactive brain robot in the same story), I am never intending for these elements to be just stupid.  I’m just not interested in trying to make the fantastic “believable” in some misguided attempt to make it seem more legitimate.

And that’s really what else separates me from many fantasy / sci fi writers in general.  I’m not writing stories about raccoon gods and kobold housekeepers as metaphor.  And I’m not interested in coming up with plausible explanations for how giant robots or time travel would work in real life.  I’m a fan of fantasy for its own sake, and believe the only justification fantasy needs is that it (first) can tell a good story and (second) is something cool to write about.  That doesn’t mean there aren’t metaphors and real-life parallels in the stories.  It just means they happen naturally, not as a deliberate design on my part.  (For the most part.)

To get back to the original question, I would love it if the comparisons stopped, but only if it meant I’d succeeded in establishing my own identity.  Otherwise, I’m very happy to sit in the shadows of giants if it convinces people to give my books a shot.  I certainly don’t resent Pratchett or anyone for being more successful than me and through that success, defining the art of storytelling for the average person.  I just hope that with a little luck, I’ll be one of them someday.

 

I’ve had a frozen container of Cool Whip in my freezer for 8 months.  Is it still good?

My gut instinct says yes.  Whether or not you want to trust your gut to mine is entirely a different question.

 

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Armstronged

I don’t follow sports.  I couldn’t give two damns about cycling, football, curling, or pro bowling.  So maybe I’m not invested in this as some other people, but I have to admit this whole Lance Armstrong backlash confuses me.  I understand people, especially fans, being disappointed in Armstrong.

Except I don’t think this has much to do with that.  I think it’s about facing our own limitations, our own disillusionment.  We love our heroes as much as for what they represent as who they are.  There is, it seems, an animal instinct in us to venerate the strong and powerful.  We call them athletes, and we love them.

But can we honestly say we’re surprised that Armstrong was using enhancement options that aren’t strictly allowed?  The competition is fierce, and the drive to win is what makes these athletes into champions in the first place.  We adore their accomplishments.  We hold them up as ideals.  And then, when they do what it takes to meet those ideals, we turn on them as if they’ve betrayed us.

I’m not trying to justify Armstrong’s choices.  At the same time, we’re only talking about those choices because they made him popular and famous in the first place.  Before Armstrong, how often did American’s even hear about professional cycling?  It’s the athlete’s paradox.  We really only care about them if they’re great, but if they do what it takes to be great, we shake our heads and act shocked.  Let’s face it.  There are limits to what humans can accomplish.  But we don’t want to stop.  We want our athletes to be faster, stronger, tougher.  We want them to break records.  We love it.  And we really don’t care how they do it until they get caught.

If Armstrong was using performance enhancing drugs, are we supposed to believe he was an exception, not the rule?  Are we supposed to believe the guy who came in second isn’t doing the same?  It’s like expecting a guy to fight the Hulk without the benefits of gamma-induced superstrength.

It’s like a great big lie we all know isn’t true but is simply too appealing to resist.  I’m not endorsing such tactics, but we should be honest about it.  We shouldn’t pretend as if an awful lot of athletes aren’t doing exactly this, and that they have to because other athletes are doing it.  And because we demand it.

Folks cheered Armstrong on.  Now they hate him for his perceived weakness.

And maybe that’s his real crime.  Lance Armstrong isn’t a hero.  He’s just a dude.  Fallible, weak, prone to bad decisions, eager for glory, willing to do dumb things to get what he wants.  His crime is that he’s human, and that’s probably the worst thing any athlete can be.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Inside the Netflix Que

Hey, here’s a thing I thought of doing.  How about I browse my Netflix streaming que, see what I’ve watched recently, and give you some thoughts on it?  Sounds like fun for the whole family, doesn’t it?

So here we go:

Murder, She Wrote

It might seem strange that I’ve been watching this show lately because I didn’t watch it when it was originally on.  True, I wasn’t the intended demographic at the time, but still, in all these years, I’ve never watched Murder, She Wrote.  But then it popped up on my recommended list, and I figured I couldn’t argue with Netflix, could I?

Turns out, I rather like Murder, She Wrote.  Angela Landsbury is absolutely delightful as Jessica Fletcher, murder mystery writer / amateur detective, and it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that I enjoy the show considering how much I love Columbo.  So if you’re looking to kill a little time with a charming bit of classic 80′s TV, you really can’t go wrong here.  I just finished season one tonight.

FACT OR FAKED: PARANORMAL FILES

I admit it.  I have a problem.  I find myself drawn to these pseudoscience shows against my will.  It’s true I never watch them with my full attention, usually just having them playing while I’m doing something else.  But watch them I do, and I find them endlessly fascinating.

Fact or Faked is a typical exercise in pseudoscience.  The team of investigators builds flimsy conclusions based on even flimsier assumptions.  They don’t even have a token “skeptic” on the team, which is discouraging but unsurprising.  In the end, their greatest talent is an ability to be incredulous at the slightest inexplicable moment.  All I see is how humans will take any explanation at all over none.  And maybe that’s where ghosts, aliens, and the paranormal come from in the end.

PARANORMAL WITNESS

Take what I said about Fact or Faked and double it.  At least Paranormal Witness is “based on eyewitness accounts” which allows it to tell scarier stories in its reenactments.  No one has explained to my satisfaction why ghosts are always so much more obvious and entertaining when cameras aren’t around.  They’ll do all kinds of awesome stuff on Witness but as soon as we go to a show like Ghost Hunters, they get all coy.

Perhaps ghosts, bigfoot, etc. are all just really, really shy.  If so, it would explain the difference between the ghosts that throw stuff around and scream in the middle of the night on this show and the phantoms that can barely show up on camera as little balls of light that are more probably floating dust.

THE ADVENTURES OF THUNDERSTORM: THE RETURN OF THOR

This is one super duper low budget flick.  That isn’t meant to be a criticism.  I enjoy a good Z movie as much as the next guy.  (Actually, I probably enjoy them a little more than the next guy.)  But this is such a flawed film that I only got about fifteen minutes into it before giving up.

To begin with, the movie has an interminable text crawl prologue at the beginning.  Imagine the beginning of Star Wars if it lasted four minutes.  I didn’t actually time it, but it sure went on a hell of a lot time, giving us the backstory of the film.  And then, we have a few scenes with real actors and while they aren’t the most talented bunch, they’re decent enough.  And I was even beginning to kind of enjoy it.

Then we go to Asgard, home of the gods, where we get another long scene of nothing but backstory, where the gods are portrayed as blurry faces against a blurry background.  And even more unfortunately, they proceed to tell us the exact same backstory we just had to sit through at the beginning of the film.

At one point, there looks to be a supersuit in the background of one scene, but by then, I was checked out.

THE RIG

This is another low budget entry on the list, though it is significantly better than The Adventures of Thunderstorm in terms of storytelling, acting, etc.  It’s a monster flick about a creature that comes from the ocean depths to attack the workers on an oil rig.  It is, sad to say, not very good though I wouldn’t say it was bad.

William Forsythe has a part in it, which is pretty cool, but he’s killed off pretty quickly (uh . . . spoiler alert).  The monster isn’t bad as rubber suit monsters go, and once the action starts, it has some good pacing.  But it’s got an ending that drags on for another ten minutes, which is just bizarre, and one of the characters simply disappears at the end without any reason.  I think they had a film that was too short and added a character and storyline, but it isn’t integrated very well and just comes across as padding.

Not the worst B monster movie I’ve seen, but not something I can really recommend.

SLUGS

Ah, but to end on a positive note, we have this classic film from 1988.  Okay, so maybe not everyone would consider it a classic, but it is, in my estimation, one of the finest killer slugs movies ever made.  A mutant variety of slugs attacks a town and end up killing a bunch of people.

As monsters go, the slugs are pretty gruesome.  If push comes to shove, I’d much rather be killed by the mutant humanoid of The Rig than these little bastards.  The FX aren’t bad, and a few of the bloody scenes are pretty damn horrific.  There’s a scene in a restaurant where a guy’s face . . . well, it isn’t pretty.

As a fan of killer animal movies, I have to say Slugs stands up.  If you’re looking for a good 80′s movie about man versus invertebrate, you can’t go wrong here.

And that’s all, folks.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Q&A Friday

It’s Q&A Friday.  I don’t know if that’s going to be a regular thing or not, but we’ll throw it against the wall and see if it sticks.  So if I don’t answer your question today, feel free to send them to me and I’ll answer them next week.  You can tweet me, reach me on Facebook, or, for the personal touch, e-mail me at hipstercthulhu@hotmail.com.  I’m here to offer wisdom.  All you need to do is ask.

Here are today’s questions:

 

What would you do if you were suddenly unable to write?

A bit vague here.  I’m assuming you mean I suddenly came down with a terrible case of writer’s block and wasn’t being prevented from writing by evil alien mind control.

First of all, if I couldn’t write, I’d be in pretty bad shape.  I have no other marketable skills, no real job experience, no higher education.  I’m a smart guy, sure, but nothing that would help me find a job.  I’d probably go back to loading boxes at UPS, if I could.  It’s hard work, but it’s a good job.  There was a lot I liked about it.

If I had my druthers though, I’d probably pursue other artistic endeavors.  I’m a fair cartoonist and given enough time, I wouldn’t mind pursuing that.  And I considered, very briefly, being a juggler, though I never got good enough to really do that.  But if I had the luxury of a little bit of time, I’d definitely consider it.

But ideally, if I had to find another job, it would be in the field of behavioral economics.  I absolutely love behavioral economics.  Almost as much as I love dinobots.  And if you’ve been paying attention, that’s an awful lot.

 

Why are you such a shameless capitalist?

Honestly, I’m only on the internet to get people excited about my books.  I wouldn’t have a blog if I didn’t think it helped my writing career.  I have great ideas and am endlessly engaging, but there are tons of people like that on the internet, so it’s not like I’m anything unique.

Being a novelologist is a bit weird because I need lots of people to get excited about what I do to have any kind of career.  When I was loading boxes in the back of trucks, all I had to do was keep my boss happy.  But I don’t have just one boss anymore.  I have lots and lots of bosses, and I have to sell myself to a lot of people.  I have to raise my visibility.  I have to convince the general public that in an age when we are overwhelmed with media choices, I have something worthwhile to offer.

I wouldn’t consider it shameless.  I just consider it the truth.  I’m glad if you like me.  I’m happier if you buy my books.  I’ve got bills to pay, and my only career choices outside of writing are juggling and cartooning.  So it’s not like I’ve got a lot of options.

 

After completing a manuscript have publishers made you change anything? Also is being an author a stress free life?

To answer the second part first, is any life stress free?  The life of a professional novelologist might look glamorous on the outside, but I have my trials and tribulations.  Like the other day, my solid gold robot butler ran amok and kicked a peasant.  That’s probably going to be a lawsuit.  And, despite the millions of dollars I’ve sunk into research, I still don’t have laser vision.  So it’s not all rainbows and puppy kisses.

As to the first part, I’ve never had an editor change a manuscript.  Not without my permission anyway.  But I’ve had editorial suggestions offered, and they have resulted (with my collaboration) in changes in the manuscript.  It’s how the business works, and I appreciate what publishers do.  I wouldn’t be where I am without the hard-working people at the publishing companies, my agent, and dozens of other people I haven’t even met.

I’m assuming this question is also about the notion that a publisher’s unwanted feedback and the damage it might do to a book.  I’m not biting though because I just don’t believe it’s true.  At least, not for me.  In the end, even with the changes made during the editorial process, I am happy with the way all my books came out.  If you don’t like the writing within those pages, it rests almost entirely on my shoulders.

I’m not one of those writers who thinks every word is sacred.  I don’t consider the editor my enemy.  And everyone writes better with a good editor beside them.  Yes, even me, as hard as that might be to believe.

 

When has a villain taken things too far?

For me, a malicious villain is an uninteresting villain.  I can tolerate ruthless bad guys who nuke planets, but if they stop to kick a puppy along the way, I immediately don’t care.  They stop being characters and start being caricatures.

I know it’s true that there are such depraved souls out there, but it’s an ugly truth and unless I’m reading a horror story, I’m not interested in experiencing it.  Even then, I prefer my horror more brutal and efficient.  Jason Vorhees might kill you, but he doesn’t do so out of malice.  He’s just made to kill.  And the xenomorphs are much the same.  Even the predator alien is merciless but not sadistic.

Also, villains who cry…gah, I hate that.  Especially if it’s a shallow attempt to make them more sympathetic.

But worst of all is probably a villain who is too far ahead of everyone that he basically becomes a living deus ex machina that allows the writer to justify the most ridiculous story elements.  This is one of my biggest complaints about The Dark Knight.  The Joker can do anything and everything, and it is past absurd.  I find such villains ridiculous and unworthy of my time because they basically can do whatever the hell they want to advance the story without any justification.

A good bad guy needs to make mistakes.  I don’t care how smart he or she is.  You always hear complaints about how boring an invincible hero is, but an invincible bad guy is just as boring.

So that’s all for this Q&A Friday.  Catch you next time, folks.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

A. LEE MARTINEZ APPRECIATION DAY!!

Happy A. LEE MARTINEZ APPRECIATION DAY!!, folks.

Yes, that wonderful day is upon us once again, and just to recap for those new to this awesome holiday, there are three basic things you need to do to celebrate.

WATCH A MONSTER / SUPERHERO / ROBOT MOVIE:

Robot movies are a new category, but after an appeal to the secret world government: holiday division, it has been approved for the general public.

For superhero flicks, as always, you can’t go wrong with The Incredibles, the superhero with the official A. Lee Martinez seal of approval.  You can also go with Avengers.

If you elect a robot film, Wall-E is at the top of the list, but there’s also Short Circuit and Forbidden Planet (with the added bonus of being a pretty fantastic monster movie as well).  Real Steel is also the best boxing robot movie ever made, I feel pretty confident saying.

As for monsters, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest the underrated werewolf movie Bad Moon.  It’s obscure, but any movie that features a dog as the protagonist is always worth checking out in my book.  Or, if you’d rather go kaiju, I would highly recommend Gamera: Guardian of the Universe, Gamera: Attack of Legion, or Gamera: Revenge of Iris.

But what’s best about A. LEE MARTINEZ APPRECIATION DAY!! is that you’re free to pick any movie you like.  While The Dark Knight or any of the Spidey films don’t make the recommended list, neither I or the secret world government will hold it against you.

Did I mention The Shaft?  Hands down, the finest killer elevator movie ever made.  And it’s even sort of a robot movie too!

PLAY A GAME:

Video games do count, but board or card games are preferred.  I plan on having some friends over to play Clash of Cultures by Z-Man Games, but if you have more pedestrian tastes, there’s nothing wrong with Risk or Monopoly.  The Mighty Robot King doesn’t judge, and neither shall I.

HELP A BROTHER OUT

The final part of the tradition is most self-serving, and for that, I do apologize.  But a guy’s gotta make a living, right?

So if you’ve been on the fence about buying an A. Lee Martinez story, go ahead and give yourself that final nudge.

And / Or if you have a friend who you think needs to be introduced to my work, feel free to either buy or lend them a copy of one of my books.

And, if you’re not feeling particularly industrious, you can go ahead and just mention my name to a friend or family member or just a stranger you happen to strike up a conversation with.

Once you have done these three things (especially the last thing) you have completed your duty.  I can’t tell you what benefits will come to you, and I certainly can’t promise that your name will be placed on the secret scroll hidden in a secret base under Nevada that will get you aboard the rocketship to evacuate the planet when the swarm of alien locusts arrive in 2017.

But it certainly couldn’t hurt.

Happy A. LEE MARTINEZ APPRECIATION DAY!!

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee