Stephen Graham Jones's Blog, page 247

Werewolves Out in the World, Part XVIII

An lo, did we come unto installment number eighteen already. And, let’s just do this to link to the others: Prior Wolves one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen Then let’s start in Johannesburg, South Africa:     My kind of library display:     “Theory?” Ahem.      See how those two kids are running from the werewolf? It’s a species-level instinct:     I’m cool with impressed:     Thank you, thank you:     Hm. Idea for the sequel . . . (related: I have no real idea what’s going on with, in, or around this tweet):     So cool to be on this list:     Yeah, in Missoula. We’re telling dog stories, I think:   Wow, thank you:     These are is from the Lovecraft Arts & Sciences Council bookstore:   And, over the last couple years, I’ve sold more than a few Sandman Slims—it’s required reading for a lot of my students:     Rock, thank you. And, I should definitely be spelling my middle name your way:     Was a fun interview:     I like how Litsy lets you throw up the horns in celebration:     Wow, thanks—Twitter and Litsy:     Was a cool bookstore. Guessing it still is:     Y’know, I checked with William Morrow, and, surprisingly? They’re actually in favor of people doing just this—they’re not worried about running out of copies or anything:     Until next time—breathe  . . . → → →

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Today’s Westerns

What I think about after peeling back through all those years of the Western movie, it’s the western now. As in, why was all the cool stuff back when? Is the myth of the Old West not as vital anymore? Are we telling ourselves different stories today? And how has the Western movie changed? Did Rustler’s Rhapsody effectively redirect the whole genre? Not saying I can answer all or even any of that, necessarily. But, what I do notice is that, where in the old old Westerns, the Indians were usually pretty disposable, in the now-Westerns, we’re just kind of invisible/erased/not dealt with all that much. Which I think is supposed to be a step forward. And, much as I can see how being invisible’s not just all that different from being shot dead off the back of a horse, still, they are kind of more easy to watch. And, no, I’m not forgetting Chavez y Chavez, of course. Who ever could:   We (“we,” yeah) even kept him alive for Young Guns II, which I consider that rare sequel that lives up to the original—the narrative frame was beautiful (never mind that Chavez is kind of Pocahontas’d at the end of it). There was no version of him in Tombstone, however. But still. Christmas 1993, I was in a packed theater in Midland, Texas, and Tombstone flat blew me away. When Wyatt Earp goes on his screamyfaced revenge sequence? Man:     However, I think something had happened between Young Guns and Tombstone, something more than City  . . . → → →

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The First Gif

So important, I made a little movie of it:

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Mongrels werewolf on Bitten

Third ep of season 3, a newly longhaired Clay and an about-to-shift teen werewolf:

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Couple Weeks’ of Westerns

I think I fell into a tailspin of rewatching—and watching for the first time, in some cases—Westerns over August because of a couple of things, that happened right close to each other: I read Joe R. Lansdale’s Paradise Sky, which was and is amazing, and I rented Forsaken, which is also really, really good. Anyway, instead of trying to thumbnail-review each, I’ll put covers of what of them I can remember below, here. The two standouts for me are The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and the original 3:10 to Yuma—but this reminds me: the real reason I guess I watched these. It was research. I needed to know a lot about John Wayne movies, for a big thing I was writing (done with now). So I watched way too many John Waynes. Can’t remember them all, quite. What I found? I still so, so hate The Searchers. How can a movie that ends with just riding through an Indian encampment and plugging Indians be at the core of American pop culture? He said ironically. And, Shane. It’s kind of good innocent fun—do I remember correctly that it was the first movie to use wires to simulate the effects of gunshots?—but what’s especially revealing to me, it’s the dynamic between the free-range, ‘old’/original ranchers and the homesteaders. We’re of course supposed to side with the homesteaders, as they’re wholesome and underdogs and have cute kids and nice dinners and all that. But, those old ranchers, who are resorting to underhanded ways to keep their ranges  . . . → → →

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The Lone Changer

Art based on Mongrels, by the talented and cool Jolyon Yates: For more Mongrels-y art, here’s the click.

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How to Mount a Horse

if you’re just super cool, and have been hired on this movie (3:10 to Yuma, 1957) probably expressly for some trick-riding. But, man: this is something you don’t see anymore, right? I mean, both that running mount followed by just beating it across the road and the needless showmanship—the kind of celebration of an art that’s not in the public eye so much anymore. This would be an indulgement in today’s westerns. But back then, it was, I suspect, a pretty big part of the reason people might go to a western. Anyway, 3:10 is a beautifully-written, wonderfully-produced, excellently-acted (I was running out of adverbs) film, no doubt. But right here’s where I stopped and, were it a VHS, risked stretching the tape, just from how many times I cued ahead and then backed up, cued ahead and backed up. In wonder:

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Werewolves Out in the World, Part XVII

Is seventeen a prime number? I can’t think of anything that divides happily into it, anyway. Well, except the sixteen before: I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI And let’s start this time with a couple snapshots in words of Mongrels:   And here’s the yellow book in my kind-of homeland of Lubbock, Texas. Cool to be up there still with Keene and Hill and Hendrix:   And, wow, thank you, John:     Happy to come in behind Bird Box:     Happy too for the library bar codes—cool for Mongrels to be circulating:     Thanks, Rich:     And, wow, man, a dead man’s hand of books, sort of:       Y’all all read Molly, right? Right:     Here‘s a link to what she’d tuned into. And, wow, what an honor:     Thanks for the write-up, Matt:     And a cool write-up it was, thanks:     Another father-daughter read? So, so cool. And, Monica Drake: also so, so cool—very good writer, and, near as I know her, a pretty good human, too:       It is all we’ve got:     Was cool, doing an interview where I couldn’t answer in/with a paragraph. Had to scrunch everything down, like. That should always be the case:     And here’s a rare pic I snapped, of the last signed copy (Boulder Bookstore the other night—I forget what I was picking up, but something wonderful and perfect, surely):    . . . → → →

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Blair Witch

I have to share my favorite #BlairWitch anecdote since the (really good) sequel is coming soon. pic.twitter.com/rsOBAsEf1O — BenDavid Grabinski (@realbdgrabinski) July 29, 2016

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Stranger Things

Dug it, of course. How not to? Just done with it a couple nights ago, I guess (binge-watching: not for me), and am now peeling through all the links I’d saved back for when spoilers didn’t matter. Was going to write something about what worked, what didn’t—very little didn’t—but then Chuck Wendig did hisTerrible Minds thing and scooped us all: “Ten Things Stranger Things Taught Me About Storytelling.” And here’s some of the other Stranger Things things I can now finally get to clicking on: Stranger Things featurette: Winona Ryder takes you behind the scenes Stranger Things creators on mixing Spielberg, Carpenter and King How the New Movie Adaptation of Stephen King’s ‘It’ Is Responsible for ‘Stranger Things’ Stranger Things was rejected by 15 to 20 networks before landing on Netflix And, it’s way past my pay-grade or web-IQ, figuring out why those third and fourth links won’t indent like the first two, and why one of them auto-sized bigger than the rest. And I’ve got to get to writing anyway . . . But, before I’m gone into storyland: what excites me most about Stranger Things, it’s that now we can maybe expect a lot of fish maturing very quickly in that pond-becoming-a-lake-becoming-a-sea, now that there’s more food possible at the surface . Meaning, not just more like this, but more that are trying to innovate past this. And that’s how magic happens: many failing and failing hard to clone the success, but one fish just closing its eyes and flopping past the bank altogether, and becoming  . . . → → →

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