Month: October 2004

What I’ve Learned from the Fanfic Debate

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I’ve found this passionate discussion about fanfic fascinating and informative. And I have to say that some of your well-considered, heartfelt arguments have made me seriously reconsider some of my long-held views on the subject.

In particular, a comment yesterday from “Morgul” really got me thinking…

“Would you be so offended if, in one of your episodes one of the characters died of cancer, a fanwriter chose, instead of writing the Slash and MPreg you are so fond of mentioning, to write about that person when they realised that they were going to die? Or perhaps go AU and make that person live a year longer, exploring what that character would chose to do with that time?

Because, if you had an episode in which a character died of cancer, you’d get truly Godawful stories that would tell how true love will conquer all and be boring, but you would also get some amazing stories about how the character’s family coped with that loss, or even how the nurses and doctors that looked after the character reacted. You may have to sift through dirt, but there are gems out there.

That’s what we’re trying to get across to you here. The people who are taking the time to tell you what they think are the people that truly care about their fandoms and would never desecrate them like the people who use fanfiction as a form of masturbation.”

I think he’s right. I think my exposure to the fanfiction community – first with Seaquest and later with DM fanfic – didn’t show the field, or its writers, in the best light, establishing and strengthening my negative views.

I went back today and found that GUNSMOKE fanfiction I stumbled on some time ago… and yes, it’s very good and, as a GUNSMOKE fan, I enjoyed reading it very much.

In retrospect, I believe I have made some unfair generalizations about fanfic and the people who write it. But that’s not to say I don’t still have some strong objections to fanfic.

Defending fanfic on the basis that it’s not copyright infringement is silly. It is infringement, and it violates the intellectual property rights of the author/creator. You know it. I know it. Any reasonable person knows it. While the issue of copyright infringement/violation of intellectual property has strong ethical and artistic importance to me, it’s obviously a meaningless issue to those who write fanfic, so I won’t try to argue that any longer. We’ll have to agree to disagree on that score.

We can debate, however, the other arguments/defenses for fanfic, for which there is no clear-cut right-or-wrong —

a)it’s a way to learn how to write, a stepping stone to writing your own, original work.

The arguments here have persuaded me can be… but I still believe it’s a mistake for an aspiring writer to spend too much time and effort on fanfic… that they are better off, and will learn more, and will develop their own voice, by putting that effort into original work. It might be a useful exercise for a 12-year-old, but I think anybody, particularly an adult, serious about becoming a professional writer should concentrate their efforts on original work. That is the only way you will truly develop the skills you need to succeed (and, I believe, any aspiring or professional writer should respect the intellectual property rights of their fellow authors).

b) it’s the only way to get real feedback of your writing from a wide audience of people.

I’m unpersuaded. Personally, I don’t think this is a valid argument at all. There are many, many ways to get feedback on your writing without having to do fanfic.

c) it’s a way to explore aspects of the shows/novels/movies that the film-makers/authors don’t.

This was something I didn’t fully appreciate until Morgul’s post. My view has been far too influenced by all the slash/mpreg/hurt-comfort/etc. sludge out there and by strident fans who think their fanfic is the canon the TV writer/producers should be following. But his post opened my eyes.

d) it’s a way to celebrate and enjoy shows/novels/movies that you love with other fans.

I can see the point. .. though I think you can enjoy & celebrate a show/book/movie without writing and disseminating stories based on them.

e) it’s an expression of appreciation to the film-makers/authors

I suppose it is when you’re doing the things “Morgul” was talking about. But not when you pervert the authors intentions with garbage like mpreg, slash, hurt-comfort, etc. That isn’t flattery or appreciation. It’s aggressively offensive.

f)it’s self-policing…when fanficers violate the canon and write out-of-character stuff (mpreg, slash, etc), they get slammed for it.

I’m not persuaded… there’s far too much of the swill out there to believe “self-policing” is at all effective.

g)it’s harmless fun, give us a break.

On this, I have to say… you’re right. I’m a schmuck.

h)It’s a challenge to the ‘business model’ and thereby a political act.

This is a popular rationalization among all kinds of copyright infringers and product pirates and I simply don’t buy it.

The Road to Sequels

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The prolific and charming Max Alan Collins is a remarkable writer… effortlessly moving between mediums… graphic novels, comic strips (he wrote “Dick Tracy” for years), mystery novels, movie novelisations, and TV tie-ins (he authors the “CSI” books now), among other things. He wrote the original graphic novel “Road to Perdition,” which became the Tom Hanks movie… and then he wrote the screenplay novelization of the movie based on his graphic novel. I don’t think that has ever been done before. Now he’s taking the idea of the sequel to a whole new level.

Collins has announced that “Road to Purgatory” (hardcover novel, Morrow, a book publishing group of Harper-Collins) and “Road to Perdition 2: On the Road” (graphic novel, DC Comics trade paperback) should begin hitting stores by late November and no later than Dec. 1.

“I don’t believe two sequels to the same work in two different mediums, by the same creator, has ever been done,” said DC Comics vice president Dan DiDio.

“I knew there’d be demand for a sequel,” Collins said.

But he debated as to what form to pursue — prose or graphic novel, a comics style form for which Collins has become nationally recognized. He decided to use both. “Road to Purgatory” follows the son of hitman Michael O’Sullivan into adulthood on his journey to a showdown with Al Capone, whom O’Sullivan’s son blames for the death of his own gangster father. “Road to Perdition 2: On the Road” is a new narrative that takes place within the structure of the original story.

Collins said that it’s too early to tell if there will be a film sequel to “Perdition.” However, he said DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox have expressed “strong interest.”

In TV, Imitation is the Sincerest form of Desperation

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Variety reports that the surprise success of ABC’s DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES has the networks scrambling to develop “housewife” shows of their own.

In the race to come up with the next big procedural hit (a la “CSI” and “Law & Order”), no one saw the mega-openings of ABC’s new drama hits “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost” coming.

Now, just as they were about to finish buying scripts for next season, drama execs have made a U-turn and added a few more quirky female dramas and big-concept thrillers to the development mix.

“There’s always that Oct. 1 curveball that comes in, when everybody suddenly looks for the opposite of what they had been after,” says 20th Century Fox TV drama chief Jennifer Nicholson Salke.

By October, of course, development execs finally have a chance to digest what’s hot and what’s not. And although procedurals are by no means cold, webheads can’t help but take into account the excitement over “Housewives” and “Lost.”

As a result, nets and studios are taking a second look at projects they may have passed on earlier in the year, hoping to capture some of what made “Housewives” so appealing.

NBC and 20th took it one step further, redeveloping the 7-year-old Todd Holland/John Riggi script “Five Houses,” a single-camera comedy about families living in a Los Angeles cul-de-sac.

The success of LOST hasn’t been, um, lost on them either…

“The word right now is ‘eventize,’ ” says ICM’s Matt Solo. “People want pitches and projects that can be turned into events, and promoted as being really different.”

ABC Entertainment exec VP Francie Calfo says it’s clear everyone is now looking for the next show in the vein of “Lost” — even her own net.

No Funny Bone

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As some of you may recall, I had a freak accident back in April and broke both of my arms. My left arm healed fine, but my right was badly damaged and had to be rebuilt with titanium (which you can see in the x-ray to the left and click on for a larger image). Sadly, I have very limited range of motion in my right arm and will soon be undergoing surgery, most likely in early November, to remove the implants and some scar tissue. Myarmxray
While I am in the hospital and recuperating, I’ve been thinking of handing over my blog for a week or so to a "guest blogger," like my brother Tod or my writing partner Bill Rabkin, or perhaps both of them.

My question to you… would you prefer I "go dark" during that period, or would you prefer the guest bloggers?

What David Montgomery Has Learned About Fanfic

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David Montgomery has posted an interesting essay on his blog about what he’s learned about fanfic from the debate that has raged here the last few days:

1) Most FanFic is a violation of the copyrights of the original creators. (The main exception to this is works in the public domain, which are free for all.)

2) This violation doesn’t really amount to much and is probably not actionable in most cases.

2a) Most writers of FanFic are unaware (or don’t care) that they are violating copyrights.

2b) They aren’t making any money off it anyway.

3) There is no essential difference between writing FanFic involving Huckleberry Finn or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, other than the copyright concerns.

4) Writing FanFic is a diverting hobby for some people.

5) Writing FanFic might be of some use to its creator as a learning tool, but the writer would be a lot better off creating his/her own works, if they can.

6) Presumably FanFic is fun for some peple to read, although hardly anyone seems to be making this point. (I get the impression that FanFic has many writers, but few readers.)

7) Most FanFic is crap (Sturgeon’s Law in action), but some of it’s pretty good.

8) The sexually-oriented FanFic (slash, mpreg, etc.) is downright creepy — and there’s quite a bit of it out there.

9) One will never convince FanFic writers that they’d be better off pursuing works of their own — and they’ll get mad if you try.

And, perhaps, most importantly…

10) FanFic is not a serious thing, nor an important one, so there’s no point in treating it as such. It’s fun for those who practice it, largely harmless, probably pointless, and the discussion of it has occupied too much of my time the past couple days.

I think I’ve learned a few of the same things. I may follow his lead and post my own list in the next day or two…

Lawrence Sanders

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I went to the anniversary party at The Mystery Bookstore today, and a few of us authors started talking about ghostwriters. One of the interesting issues that came up is the story of Lawrence Sanders and Vincent Lardo.

You may recall, some years ago a reader sued a publisher after discovering the “McNally” book he bought by Sanders was actually written by Vincent Lardo after Sanders’ death. The reader, as I recall, won the case and the publisher had to give refunds to anyone who bought a book. From that point forward, all the “MCNally” books had to be credited to Vincent Lardo.

Now here’s the fascinating twist. The publisher is going to be reissuing the early Sanders “McNally” novels… and it turns out the ALL the McNally novels, even when Sanders as alive, were actually written by Lardo. In other words, they were ghostwritten from the start! So now, under the terms of the lawsuit, the early McNally novels now have to say “By Vincent Lardo writing as Lawrence Sanders.”

So the whole lawsuit was a pointless and more than a little bit ironic.

Tod Goldberg on Fanfic

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As you may have noticed, the fanfic debate is raging here once again… so I thought I’d post some excerpts from my brother Tod Goldberg’s article on the subject, which appears as one of his weekly columns in the Las Vegas Mercury.

Among his many other wise and witty comments, he had this to say:

For those of you not in the know, fan fiction is when people not involved in the actual creation of a show, book, movie or a celebrity’s actual life create stories about them. It is one of the greatest and most wildly entertaining forms of copyright infringement this side of Kazaa. So, to say I was excited to read the fanfic about this particular star would be a vast understatement. I gravitated to the one where the star gets involved in a prison riot. It came with a helpful dictionary of terms used in the story, including "turn out," "shank" and "keep it real." Our hero was almost gang-raped by some convicts, but, alas, escaped with his anal hymen intact.

I clicked through the rest of the stories and killed a plate of leftover ham in the process. The stories were uniformly…uh…well…bad. All of them were written by women, which I found somewhat surprising, but then I thought about the correlation between Teen Beat and Tiger Beat and fan clubs in general and it seemed to make some sense.

Now I was all fired up to read more fan fiction about bad actors, minor celebrities and long-forgotten TV shows and movies. Forgoing the usual and known–anything involving Spock, Buffy and Elvis, basically–I fired up the Google and got searching. I started with a rather tender story revolving around Face and Murdock from "The A-Team." On the day of his wedding, Face takes a little time from the usual pro-forma screwing of hookers to reflect on the life he and Murdock have shared.

In my quest to read fan fiction about Corey Haim, or inspired by his wonderful life, I discovered a Lost Boys fan fiction site that contained a disclaimer warning others not to "steal my original characters or my ideas…go and get your own characters and ideas; have a little faith in yourself! But don’t steal from me!" I searched the entire story the woman had written and not one mention of the word "paradox" was found.

Still More TV Revivals

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Not only are HAWAII 5-0, MIAMI VICE, KOLCHAK movies on the way, but now Variety reports that DALLAS is going to the big-screen, too.

Regency Enterprises has struck a deal with "Legally Blonde" helmer Robert Luketic to helm an update of the wildly popular Eye web skein "Dallas," which aired from 1978-91. Set in a post-Enron world, with the conniving J.R. Ewing now the head of the most powerful energy company in the world, the film will feature the plottings and backstabbings of many of the original "Dallas" characters. Script is from Robert Harling ("The First Wives Club," "Steel Magnolias"); series creator David Jacobs is producing the film with former Sony Pictures exec VP of production-turned-producer Michael Costigan.

Speaking of TV shows-turned-to-movies, Variety Reports that Burt Reynolds has just signed to be Boss Hogg in the movie version of DUKES OF HAZARD. Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxvilel play Bo and Luke Duke, Jessica Simpson is Daisy Duke.

Adaptation will be set in the present day but the General Lee, the duo’s 1969 Dodge Charger, is expected to be the same iconic orange car seen in the series. Pic is being directed by Jay ChandrasekharJay Chandrasekhar of the Broken Lizards comedy troupe, who co-wrote the script