E.R. Torre's Blog, page 126

Homage…or rip off? Live and Let Die (1973) versus Smokey and the Bandit (1977)

A few days back I noted how I felt the Fringe TV show episode Brown Betty appeared, to my eyes and based on the fact that my The Dark Fringe comic book trade paperback was floating around the Hollywood offices responsible for the show in and around that time, at the very least inspired the look of that particular episode (you can read the whole thing here).

Interestingly, last night my wife and I were clicking around the TV stations and I happened to stumble upon the first starring James Bond film, 1973’s Live and Let Die.

Now, the film has its fans (I’m one of them) and detractors.  There are those who simply don’t like Roger Moore as James Bond and who am I to convince them otherwise.  There are also those who feel this movie’s plot, which featured what was essentially an updating of the “yellow peril”/Fu Manchu evil empire, but transplanted to African Americans, bordered on being racist.

If you can get past either element, I would maintain the film is a great piece of action/adventure pulp, but that’s not why I’m writing about it.

No, when I clicked on the movie, it was in the middle of the (again, IMHO) suspenseful yet cheeky boat chase sequence.  Here is a part of it:

The thing that worked for me about the sequence was that it was a clever permutation of what was very popular in movies at the time: A suspenseful car chase.  Instead of a car chase, however, the movie’s creators presented a speed boat chase and, to my mind, it remains one of the best ever put to film.

It works because as viewers we’re dealing with a clever mix of both suspense (the people after Bond intend to kill him) and humor, some of which you can see in the above clip provided by as the very rednecky Sheriff Pepper, who is featured throughout the speedboat chase, up to its end, to provide comic relief.  (Again, some would disagree and felt Mr. James’ performance was both stereotypical and not funny at all…what can I say, it worked for me well here, although I felt the return of his character in the next Bond film, The Man With The Golden Gun, was indeed, along with the entire movie, terrible).

As my wife and I watched the speedboat chase, I was surprised that she hadn’t seen it before.

“You’ve never seen Live and Let Die?” I asked her.

“Nope,” she said.

We watched on and, after a few minutes -and after experiencing plenty of Sheriff Pepper- she said:

“They ripped off Smokey and the Bandit, didn’t they?”

Words cannot describe how stunned I was by this statement.

Sheriff Pepper, as presented in Live and Let Die, is essentially the same humorous redneck hound-dog who won’t give up pursuing his prey (in this case, James Bond) as Sheriff Buford T. Justice, as portrayed by Jackie Gleason, was in Smokey and the Bandit.  The similarities are beyond obvious, yet I never realized them until that very moment when my wife pointed them out!

Understand: I’m a HUGE fan of Smokey and the Bandit.  I’m also a HUGE fan of Live and Let Die…and I never connected the redneck Sheriffs with each other until my wife noticed.

At all.

Here’s the kicker: My wife wasn’t quite correct, at least in one regard: Live and Let Die was released in 1973.  Smokey and the Bandit, on the other hand, was released in 1977.

So if anything, Live and Let Die “inspired” Smokey and the Bandit, and especially Jackie Gleason’s Sheriff role.

Here you have the conclusion of the boat chase.  Pay particular attention to Sheriff Peper’s final appearance in the movie, which begins at the 2:14 mark…

Sheriff Pepper’s final appearance essentially mirrors Jackie Gleason’s at the end of Smokey and the Bandit.  Both Sheriffs’ cars are demolished and barely moving and both are exasperated by pursuing -and failing to capture- their prey…

I remain blown away that I never saw the similarities.

Wild, wild stuff.

Blue Ruin (2014) a (moderately) belated review

There comes a time when you see a film and, on an intellectual level, you acknowledge everything about it is quite good.  The acting, the directing, the story, the cinematography.

You acknowledge the film is a fine work, especially given the fact that it has an obviously very low budget and yet…

…and yet, on an emotional level the film simply fails to engage you.

So it is with Blue Ruin, a 2013 release written and directed by  and featuring as Dwight, a man who at the start of the film appears a homeless, aimless derelict.  This all changes when a kindly police officer picks him up and tells him someone is about to be released from prison.

The someone turns out to be Wade Cleland Jr., and over the course of the movie’s opening minutes we realize this individual was sent to jail for killing Dwight’s father and mother.  But things aren’t quite what they seem and Dwight’s act of revenge leads to further revelations…and repercussions.

Again, this film is clearly a skilled piece of work yet for whatever reason I never felt fully engaged with what I was seeing.  In fact, after the first half hour or so I even considered turning the movie off yet stuck with it.

I’m glad I did because the later half of the film proved stronger than the first half and the ultimate resolution had echoes to famous Greek tragedies (which, I have to imagine, the writer/director of the film was clearly aiming for).

But…

I still can’t say the film “grabbed me”.

In the end, I suppose you have to take Blue Ruin for what it is: A good first attempt, on a shoe-string budget, of creating a suspense film.  While I can’t outright recommend the film based on my own reaction to it, I would be lying if I weren’t interested in seeing writer/director Saulnier’s follow up film, Green Room.

I think there’s certainly talent and skill on display within the movie.  I just wish the presentation had grabbed me more.

Corrosive Knights, a 9/7/16 update

Whew.

Just finished the last pages of the 10th revision of the latest Corrosive Knights novel, Book #6 (I’m keeping the title a secret for just a bit longer)…

Unlike the previous drafts, this one was very significant in that after getting it done, I now have a much stronger idea of how close I am to finishing it.  Or, to put it another way, I can now very distinctly see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Before getting too excited, however, the book isn’t quite done yet.  However, over 1/2 of it is completely fine.  The book clocks in at 101,000 words, give or take, with this draft and, in my opinion, its an incredible (pardon the language) mind-fuck of a novel.  When it is finally released, I think readers will be surprised and shocked and intrigued by what I’ve presented.

At least I hope!

So what’s left to do?  I no longer need to revise the entire book but will instead focus on the sections I feel still need work.  In that respect the latest revisions have moved the ball forward tremendously and I suspect I’ll give those pages two quick revisions (I don’t think it should take more than three or so weeks) before going over the entire novel one last time and then…ta da!…releasing it.

While its still hard to predict a solid release date, suffice to say we are just about there and I couldn’t be more excited.

It goes on…and on…

I never would have thought it.  Seriously.

After 3 weeks at #1 and hauling in, to date, a massive $300 million plus from American audiences and a total worldwide haul, excluding China which didn’t allow the film to be screened there, of around $637 million, its fair to say Suicide Squad is a success.  (More information about the film’s box office can be found here)

Not bad for a film many predicted -before its release and immediately after all the terrible reviews came in- would crash and burn.

I wrote a few weeks back about how Suicide Squad seemed to be following Batman v Superman’s trajectory almost to a tee. (you can read that posting here)

The folks over at Warner Brothers/DC Comics must be exhaling and celebrating.  The fact is that despite so much rancor, they’ve had themselves a very profitable summer and both BvS and Suicide Squad have proven a hit with audiences…if not all of them and certainly not with most critics.

I’ve said again and again that I really like BvS and, now that the director’s cut is available, like the film even more.  I would even go so far as to state it is now one of my favorite superhero films, though it doesn’t quite reach the level of my two favorite superhero works, the original Superman and Captain America: Winter Soldier.

Yes, I consider BvS on the level (in some ways better, in others not) with the Christopher Nolan Batman films.

But Suicide Squad?

That’s a whole ‘nuther story.  When I finally saw it and reviewed it (you can read that here), I found the film enjoyable enough but recognized it was a Frankenstein’s monster of a film.  Suicide Squad was clearly a rushed work that featured last minute re-shoots and, based on further reports, a melding of two different “cuts” of the film.

And it showed.

Again, I enjoyed myself while watching it but, unlike BvS, the flaws were such that I simply couldn’t recommend the film in that form.  Like BvS, I suspect the folks at Warners/DC will release the two alternate cuts of the film and make themselves a whole bunch of money in the process.

They’ll certainly have my money.  I’m most curious to see the director’s version of the film, reportedly a “darker” work that features much less humor.

But that’s what’s to come.

In the meantime and despite their success, I wonder how the folks at Marvel feel about these developments.  Yes, Captain America: Civil War made more money overall than either BvS or Suicide Squad but I wonder if maybe they’re starting to worry -at least a little- about how well the folks at DC have succeeded despite all those major obstacles thrown their way in the form of critical panning and online criticism.  Further, with summer all but gone it seems very few people are talking about the Captain America film yet there remains considerable discussion regarding BvS and Suicide Squad, a sure sign both films remain a hot topic, for better or ill.

What’s most encouraging about these successes (and, the bottom line is that all these films, DC and Marvel, succeeded) is my hope they encourage each other to produce better and better works.

I’m a firm believer in the notion that competition leads to better products, whether it be music, books, movies, cell phones, cars, etc. etc. etc.

When a company sees another succeed, it can’t help but make them work all that much harder in creating something better.  In the end, the ones who most benefit from such competition are the fans.

Let’s hope, anyway!

Tech thursday…

Was doing my usual web surfing and, though I don’t usually point out these things, I was intrigued by this, the upcoming Acer Predator 21 X.  Though the machine is still in a “mock up” stage (ie, not functional), this article by Vlad Savov and James Vincent and present on theverge.com offers an idea of what this machine will do…

Acer’s Predator 21 X puts a curved screen and dual GTX 1080s in a laptop

Yes, you read the above right: Its a laptop with a curved screen.  Its clearly designed for gaming and, frankly, the thing looks like a monster.

There was a video included which presented the machine (again, its a mock up model so the reviewer can only judge the looks/weight of it at this point) but it is intriguing.,,

Mind you, perhaps not intriguing enough to actually want to buy it (I love video games as much as everyone but I primarily play games, at least nowadays and when I can find a few seconds to do so, on my XBox).

Still, this is an interesting looking machine…should you be the one interested in it!

Inspiration and wild timing

Earlier this morning -at 10:17 A.M. to be precise- I posted the following blog entry regarding zeppelins (you can read the post here).  The upshot of my entry was that I was turned on, via reddit, to a great photograph from 1931 of a zeppelin flying over a pyramid at Giza and that, in turn, made me wax nostalgic for my love of zeppelins in general, which had me noting how I used them extensively in my first published work, the retro-futuristic noir mystery graphic novel The Dark Fringe.

Not 45 minutes later and posted on i09 I find the following article by Katharine Trendacosta:

The 10 Best Times TV Shows Completely Swapped Genres

Although it wasn’t presented among Ms. Trendacosta’s top 10, I wasn’t terribly surprised to find the Fringe second season episode Brown Betty listed among the comments as another example of a show using a different genre within its run.  For those unfamiliar with the episode, here’s the trailer to Brown Betty:

Interesting stuff, no?

So what the heck does that have to do with my similarly titled The Dark Fringe?

I strongly suspect my book, originally released in 1996 (Fringe first aired in 2008 and some ten plus years after my book’s original release and Brown Betty in particular first aired on April 29, 2010), was at least a partial inspiration for that particular episode.

Now, before you think I’m one of those creative types who screams “they ripped me off!” every time some work comes with some vague similarity to my own, take that thought from your head.  I don’t and I’m not making this claim regarding Brown Betty.

As I said, I strongly suspect my book INSPIRED that particular episode.  Not in its story, however, but in the setting/visuals they used.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

As I said before, I published the four issues of The Dark Fringe in the mid-1990’s and collected and published a Trade paperback (TPB) of the run in 2003.  The TPB caught the eye of one Scott Rosenburg at Platinum Studios.  He had brought the Men In Black comic book to the big screen (I believe he originally had a hand in its creation as a comic book) and founded Platinum Studios to promote other comic book stories/concepts for the movies.

Anyway, he found and read The Dark Fringe at the time the TPB was released and offered to present the book to the movie studios.  I agreed and he did.  During that time, he also managed to get another of his properties, Cowboys and Aliens, off the ground and made into a feature film and I know he presented my book to the people behind that movie.  And among that movie’s creative staff were some of the same people behind a little TV series which would soon appeared entitled, you guessed it, Fringe.

Was the Fringe inspired, at least by its title, by my The Dark Fringe?  I don’t know and it is irrelevant.  As it originally appeared, the Fringe TV show was clearly inspired by The X-Files rather than anything remotely similar to what was in my series.

However, when Brown Betty appeared in season 2 and my wife and I watched it, I distinctly recall turning to her not ten minutes into the episode and after seeing its film noir setting along with zeppelins and old-fashioned radio/computer hybrids, and saying: “Looks like someone on the show’s read The Dark Fringe!”

My wife was incensed.  “How could they rip you off like this?!” she said.

I wasn’t as bothered.  As I’ve already noted, the story presented in Brown Betty was nothing remotely like what I wrote for The Dark Fringe.  However, back in 2010 and to the best of my memory there wasn’t anything quite like the Zeppelin heavy retrofuturistic film noir setting that I presented in my book and which I now saw in that episode.

So while Brown Betty had nothing like my story within it, I to this day believe someone on the show’s staff (perhaps several someones) were at the very least inspired by my book’s “look” and emulated it for this episode.

This was not an unusual thing, either.  Several episodes in that second season of Fringe were clearly inspired by other comic books, including the season’s two part conclusion which liberally used DC’s multiverse concept.

So there you have it, for what its worth.  Whether inspired by my work or not, I enjoyed Fringe and I enjoyed Brown Betty.  Maybe moreso because they maybe, possibly, could have, might’ve drawn some inspiration by one of my own humble works.

Zeppelins

Indulge me here for a moment…

Waaaaaaay back in 1984 there appeared a “new” and, at that time, most restored version of Fritz Lang’s classic 1927 movie Metropolis.  While some didn’t like the use of then popular music to accompany the colorized film, I was blown away…

So much so that I started working on what would be my first complete and eventually published (though nearly ten years later and in graphic novel form) story The Dark Fringe.

When I first produced this book, steampunk didn’t exist except in the works of Jules Verne and when he wrote his science fiction, it was just that.  Along with my head-spinning amazement at Metropolis, I was also intrigued with the original Tim Burton directed Batman movie.  It came out a few years later and introduced what would eventually be termed “retrofuturistic” fiction.

Not to toot my own horn, but when The Dark Fringe was finally released back in the mid-1990’s, it was among the first books to combine the 1940’s look of a film noir mystery with a retrofuturistic ideal (1982’s Blade Runner clearly merged sci-fi with film noir, but it wasn’t “retrofuturistic” in nature).  In effect, I was trying to create a work that melded The Big Sleep or The Maltese Falcon or Kiss Me Deadly with a setting that shared technologies like those found in the forward thinking of 1927’s Metropolis.  And one of the instructions I kept giving John Kissee, the incredibly talented penciller of that series, was to always show a zeppelin or two in the sky.  I was -and remain- crazy about zeppelins and this was, along with the clunky computers and villains with metal hands, a short-hand way of telling people this setting, while clearly looking old and featuring technologies that were for the most part older (I did have him design computers for the book as if they were second cousins to the old radios of the 1940’s) was a reality divorced from any “real” past.

While I haven’t pursued the world of The Dark Fringe for a while now (who knows, I may circle back to it eventually), I remain intrigued with zeppelins.

Which is why when I was on reddit this morning I was delighted to find this photograph:

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that’s a zeppelin flying over one of the Pyramids at Giza, circa 1931.  Seeing the picture intrigued me and reminded me there are a wealth of fascinating photographs of zeppelins out there.  A quick google search revealed the following beauties:

First, the Graf Zeppelin over Montevideo, circa 1930…

Over Buenos Aires…

A few others:

[image error]

And of course there’s this one, perhaps the most iconic photograph(s) involving the best known -and for all the wrong reasons- zeppelin ever.  In 1937 the German airship The Hindenburg was on its way to land in New York…

It horrifically exploded while attempting to dock.  This tragedy ended the era of the zeppelins…

This photograph, which shows the Hindenburg already hitting the ground and half gone, is also quite iconic:

What was intriguing was finding some other photographs of this tragedy which I hadn’t seen.  Such as this one, which takes place seconds before the first, most iconic image above:

And this…

And this…

And, the end…

A Hindenburg movie was made in 1975 (I don’t recommend it) and the legend of the Hindenburg, and questions about what exactly happened to it, remain to this day although many feel the glue used to put the airship’s out shell together was the likely chief culprit in this tragedy.

Anyway, nothing much to add to this.  Zeppelins were a fascinating part of a fascinating era.  The idea of lazily flying on a zeppelin across the ocean has, to me anyway, a romantic appeal.  Perhaps one day we may again see something like them in the air and used for actual tourism instead of for sporting events.

On writing…re-writing

Rainy days have a way of making me reflect on my life and passions and one of the biggest ones is writing.

As of today, I’m knee deep in my 10th (!) draft of the latest Corrosive Knights novel and as of this month, its been two full years since I first began writing it.  The fact that I’ve been working on this material as long as I have and remain as laser focused on getting this book cleaned up and released is proof of my love for this work and my love, in general for writing.

After this book is released?

I’ll do like I usually do, take a day or two to pat myself on the back and admire the fact that the bookshelf devoted to my works has filled up just a little bit more.  After that day or two is over, I return to my computer and begin writing my next novel.

Getting back to the topic on hand, my guess is it takes approximately three months (give or take) for me to write the first draft of a novel but, obviously, much, much more time revising and rewriting it before I feel its ready for release,

I’m not the only one.  While googling the topic of rewriting, I was struck by many of the quotes I found.  For instance,

“I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.” Vladimir Nabokov

Another one:

“Writing a first draft is like groping one’s way into a dark room, or overhearing a faint conversation, or telling a joke whose punchline you’ve forgotten. As someone said, one writes mainly to rewrite, for rewriting and revising are how one’s mind comes to inhabit the material fully.”  Ted Solotaroff

Perhaps the most succinct and to the point quote I found regarding this topic comes from author Truman Capote:

Good writing is re-writing.

It is also, needless to say, a lot of work and someone like me, as passionate as I am about writing, would find it far harder to work on a novel if I still had to use a typewriter as opposed to a computer.

Mind you, I have used both.

When I was much younger and computers and word processing programs didn’t yet exist, I wrote a few stories (none good, trust me!) and found it an incredibly frustrating process.  The process of writing those works on a typewriter was slowed considerably every time you hit the wrong key or realized, mid sentence or mid-paragraph or mid-thought, you could write whatever it is you were writing a lot better better if you did this or that.  With a typewriter, you’re stuck.  You could either tear the page out or draw a line through the “bad” sentence/paragraph or you could keep going and make a note on the page that when you re-wrote it, you needed to change x or w or z.

Regardless, if I were using a typewriter today rather than a computer my latest novel, now two years in the making, would easily take twice as long if not more to finish off.

And I would have done it.

Mind you, it would not have been easy and my level of frustration would be far greater but I would have done it.

I love writing that much.

Why point all this out?

As the cliche goes, the best thing in the world is to find your passion and make something positive out of it.

Having said that, one should look oneself in the mirror and see if their passions, whatever they may be, are something that can be realized.

If your great passion is to be an Olympic swimmer but you have neither the long, lean body, the physical strength, and/or patience to spend hour after hour in a pool exercising, then chances are you’ll never accomplish that which you desire.

Similarly, if you want to be a writer and have this extraordinary idea you think would make for a great book yet day after day put off writing that book to spend time watching TV shows or playing video games or taking a walk, then chances are you’ll never get that book done.

Put in the work.  The sad fact is that even if you work extremely hard, nothing may come of it.

However, if you’re anything like me and the day comes for you to look back on your life and your accomplishments, you’ll find yourself thankful for many things.  For me, I’ll be thankful for my family.  I’ll be thankful for the friends I found along the way.  I’ll remember the good times and try hard not to dwell on the bad.

For me, I’ll look at that bookshelf which houses my works.  By then, I hope it’ll be full of wonderful works I can be proud of.  They may not make me rich and famous but their existence sure fills me with satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment.

Have fun at it.

Always.

The future is creeping up on us…part deux

I’ve posted frequently about self-driving vehicles.  It is my belief they’ll be here very, very soon and with their arrival, society will inevitably change.

The very bad news is that many people who have jobs driving vehicles, from taxis to Ubers to public buses to trucks, etc. etc. will find themselves out of those jobs.

This is sadly inevitable.

On the plus side: Vehicular accidents will drop, injuries and deaths will drop, traffic jams might become a thing of the past (self-driving cars, I’m assuming, won’t rubber neck), and people will have more money to use on other things.

About that last item I listed: With the arrival of self-driving vehicles, I envision a future where people won’t need to buy cars.  Instead, they will use an app on their phones (or whatever) and summon a self-driving vehicle to take them to wherever they want to go and, once they’re finished at the place they were taken to (their job, the mall, etc.), they again summon a self-driving car to take them back.  They will obviously pay for the use of the self-driving vehicles but I suspect the price will be quite low given the self-driving vehicles look to be small and very efficient.

With no need to buy a car, you obviously don’t need to spend money on insurance or fuel or car service (from oil changing to fixing a flat/replacing a tire, etc. etc.).

So, what’s keeping us from this future?

Regulation.

As with almost all new technologies, especially those that could potentially cause a person’s injury/death, the government has to look in on the matter and determine it is safe and reliable.

Already there are self-driving vehicles being tested all across the country and it is well known the Tesla electric cars have self-driving features people use even today.

The United States, however, isn’t the only country investing in self-driving vehicles.  The below article, written by Annabelle Liang and Dee-Ann Durbin for AP, notes…

World’s first self-driving taxis debut in Singapore

It would appear each passing day edges us closer and closer to this big technological shift.  What I found most fascinating in the article were these quotes, from Olivia Seow, who tested one of these vehicles:

“It felt like there was a ghost or something,” (Ms. Seow) said.

But she quickly grew more comfortable. The ride was smooth and controlled, she said, and she was relieved to see that the car recognized even small obstacles like birds and motorcycles parked in the distance.

“I couldn’t see them with my human eye, but the car could, so I knew that I could trust the car,” she said. She said she is excited because the technology could free up her time during commutes or help her father by driving him around as he grows older.”

Soon, people, soon.

Star Wars (1977) special effects…

Found this fascinating set of photographs showing the filming of the original 1977’s Star War’s assault on the Death Star…

Star Wars before the green screen

I won’t post all the items present on the above (there are a total of 10 photographs presented), but this one -the very first presented- I thought was really cool: