Month: December 2005

Comment Spam

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Because I have been swamped with porn spam over the last few days, I am reluctantly forced into delaying the posting of comments pending review.  Have no fear — I will continue to allow posts that harshly criticize me, my opinions, and my general lack of talent. I’m only going to delete the spam.

Hopefully, Typepad will soon upgrade their "comments" feature to better filter out the spambots (though I understand that people posting comments through AOL hit a Typepad security filter).

For Those Who Think Being a Novelist is Glamorous

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My brother Tod’s Fucktards of the Year" list includes this:

5. The Various Fucktards Who Scheduled Book Signings For Me In Their
Stores And Then, You Know, Forgot To Order My Books, Put Up Signs Or Advertise
My Event.

This should not be confused with the stores who simply had
distribution issues when my book went into a second printing and copies simply
were not available. That sort of thing happens when you’re wildly successful,
so, you know, how the cookie crumbles and all that. No, I mean the people who
actually booked events for me, confirmed them, confirmed that they had plenty of
books and promoted the event and that signs were "already up" and "the writing
group can’t wait for you to get to the store" and "I really loved your book,"
and who, actually, "Oh, gosh, I didn’t know you were coming. Did we speak?"

"Yes. Three times. Including yesterday."

"Well, I looked and all your books are out of print. Are you self
published or something?"

"No, all of my books are in print — in several printings, in fact —
and I just had a signing in your store across town and they had all of my books.
All of them."

"I don’t know what happened then."

I know what happened. You’re a fucktard.

Sadly, he isn’t making this stuff up. I was at one those signings. Okay, two of them.

Do I Write Scripts or Advertising Copy?

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More and more commercials are creeping into the narrative of TV shows. Here’s an example mentioned in Wired magazine:

The use of product placements has increased 84 percent on television in the last
year, according to the WGA’s call for regulations. "There is no clear line
separating a TV show from an advertisement anymore," said Carrie McLaren, editor
of Stay Free
magazine.

In a recent episode of the NBC series Medium, writers had to
work the movie Memoirs of a Geisha into the dialogue three times
because of a deal the network made with Sony earlier in the season. They even
had the characters go on a date to an early screening of the movie and bump into
friends who had just viewed Geisha to tell them how good it was.

It’s one thing to have James Bond drive a BMW  (or, going back a few decades, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. drive a new Ford around D.C. landmarks each season during the end credits of THE FBI), or Monk using a particular brand of disinfectant wipe, but it’s quite another to create whole scenes purely for the purpose of pushing a particular product. The MEDIUM example strike me as particular egregious…and something a writer should be additionally compensated for.

Sweet Dreams

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A screenwriter in Finland dreamed about me last night.

Lee Goldberg was a
performing magician and was giving a show at a stage somewhere. It was a big
outdoor stage and there was quite a big audience. I was his apprentice. Lee
Goldberg said he was going to do a big trick, but it required the presence of
President George W. Bush.

At least I wasn’t naked… and it didn’t involve me helping the President discover the joys of hot hunky man love.

The Bright Purple Interview

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Mystery File has posted Ed Gorman’s 1980s interview with John D. MacDonald. Here’s one of MacDonald’s quotes:

"Professionally, I do not recall any particularly bad memories.  The book which
just won’t jell.  The editor who gets fired when you have half a book in his
shop.  The clown who was taking my old pulp stories and changing the point of
view and selling them to Manhunt.  I
began to learn my trade in late 1945.  Had I begun ten years later, I would
never have had the chance to earn while learning.  The short-story market was
sliding into the pits.  Luck is being born at the right time.  I had an agent
who kept me out of Hollywood despite some pretty offers.  I was lucky to have a
man so wise.  I decided against doing a series character in 1952.  I had no good
reason.  It was just a gut feeling.  I didn’t start McGee until 1964.  By then I
could avoid being trapped in the series.  Saying no was the purest kind of luck."

Simon Remembers Pryor

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Screenwriter Roger Simon remembers Richard Pryor and the movie they did together, BUSTIN LOOSE.

Some time in 1979, shortly after I had done The Big Fix for
Universal, the studio called to ask if I would like to write a movie
for Richard Pryor. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Pryor was
at the top of his game then, acknowledged by many to be possibly the
greatest standup comic of all time. Not only that, he was a cultural
icon of extraordinary proportions, the very voice of black America,
"Daddy Rich." What more could a Jewish white boy who grew up on Miles
Davis want than to work with this man?

Star Trek – The New Voyages

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2n2_1I’m  astonished and impressed. I just watched the two, fan-made, original STAR TREK "episodes" that were written about in this month’s issue of WIRED magazine:

Just like the original series, each New Voyages episode
lasts 51 minutes and is structured in five acts (act breaks are where
the commercials would go, if there were any). Like the original, New Voyages begins with that ethereal theremin score. Like the original, New Voyages favors bold primary colors, velour uniforms, and leggy women in miniskirts.

The acting and writing are cringe-inducing but everything else is amazing. I can’t believe what these imaginative and extremely talented film-makers were able to accomplish on a shoe-string budget (though it helps to have the FX pros from STAR TREK ENTERPRISE over-seeing the effects). 

The STAR TREK: NEW VOYAGES episodes, made with the permission of Paramount and with the cooperation of the Roddenberrys, succeed brilliantly at capturing the feel,  sound and look of the original series, more so than STAR TREK ENTERPRISE was able to do in their clunky, fourth season two-parter. 

The first two STAR TREK: THE NEW VOYAGES episodes are available free for download (including a DVD version that looks surprisingly good on a big-screen TV).  They are worth a look. The third episode promises to be even more polished:

Each New Voyages episode is produced with the help of a growing network of Star Trek professionals. The makeup supervisor for the new episode, for example, is Kevin Haney, who worked on one of the many Trek TV series spun off from the original (and won an Oscar for makeup in Driving Miss Daisy). The script is by D. C. Fontana, a story editor for the original Star Trek series and author of some of its most beloved episodes. (Who can forget the one where Kirk steers the Enterprise
into the Neutral Zone, near Romulan territory? Or the one that
introduces Spock’s parents?) And it will star Walter Koenig, the actor
who played navigator Pavel Chekov in the original series and seven of
the 10 films. The fact that Trek pros are taking part in this fan
project is something new in the world of filmmaking, the cinematic
equivalent of semi-pro ball.

…The value of the labor donated to New Voyages by Star Trek
professionals far exceeds any out-of-pocket expenses. Makeup supervisor
Kevin Haney directed a team whose bill would have come to tens of
thousands of dollars. The show’s special effects are supplied by
Cawley’s friend Max Rem (the professional CG f/x creator uses a
pseudonym to protect his day job). Rem worked on Star Trek for more than a decade, and he has worked on New Voyages since its inception in 2003. For the second New Voyages episode, Rem created more than 200 effects shots – from the Enterprise flying through space to backgrounds for greenscreen shots – all of which would have cost more than $1 million if he had billed New Voyages.

Watching the first two episodes of NEW VOYAGES makes you realize what ENTERPRISE should have been:  a return to the STAR TREK we all fell in love with. Note to Paramount: It’s not too late.