Current Affairs

The Bottom Line

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A reader alerted me to this "blowback" from my Hot Buttons post from last week. Vera, on her blog, thinks an interesting issue got lost in the 164 comments about fanfic the post generated.

He was reporting on a mystery writer’s knees-up and wrote some stuff
about controversial yet unspoken opinions among mystery writers such as
the inappropriately open membership of MWA (Mystery Writers of
America?) and how many mystery writers objected to fan fiction but were
too scared to ever say this to fans. What followed in comments was
mostly the expected back and forth between a reasonable pro-fan-fiction
writer and a crazy-arse anti-fan-fiction writer with some side comments
from other people.

But what interested me most of all was that no-one – NO-ONE – addressed
the issue of why the mystery writers weren’t going to bring the subject
up with fans they met at cons and signings and things. These pro
writers Lee references behave as though they believe that the people
who are writing the fan fiction are the people who buy their books, and
all the associated merchandise should they be so successful to justify
it, and that to alienate those fans is to kiss good-bye to income.  When it comes down to the line, it’s the bottom line.

So, what do you think?  Are authors afraid to speak their minds on controversial issues for fear of losing readers or awkward encounters with fans?

Don’t Hire This Spenser

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Bob Sassone reports over at TV Squad that Rykodisc is releasing the four, made-on-the-cheap-in-Canada SPENSER reunion movies  on DVD. Those crappy, flatly-directed, and exceedingly dull MOWs shouldn’t be mistaken for the underappreciated SPENSER FOR HIRE  series (and I’m not just saying that because I wrote for it).

Robert Urich and Avery Brooks were the perfect Spenser and Hawk,
the scripts were literate and intelligent, and the on
location filming in Boston added a lot of atmosphere and color. But
then the show was cancelled, and they decided to make these rather
so-so movies, and they don’t include Barbara Stock as Susan Silverman
(sorry again: Wendy Crewson and Barbara Williams just aren’t the same).
The good news? They aren’t the lame Joe Mantegna Spenser
flicks that A&E produced later, and it’s great to see Urich and
Avery together again. The bad news? It’s not the TV series.

I hope the TV series comes out on DVD soon and not just because I’d like pristine copies of my episodes. It was a very good PI series and seems to have dropped out of syndication a few years ago.

Unlike Bob Sassone, I actually liked Joe Mantegna as Spenser a lot (and I love his readings of the Parker novels on CD) …but he was teamed with lousy actors as Hawk and, once again, the movies were shot on the cheap in Toronto with bland Canadian actors. The scripts weren’t so hot, either.  I think if they’d cast Mantegna and Avery Brooks, and shot the movies in Boston, and hired better writers (like Bill Rabkin & me!), the movies might have worked…

Tom Selleck, who did a bang-up job playing Parker’s Jesse Stone on TV recently, would make a good Spenser. So would Robert Forster who, incidentally, does a great job reading the Jesse Stone novels on CD.

The Thought Police

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CBS News reports that some neanderthal lawmaker in Alabama has introduced a bill that would ban all books from public school libraries by gay authors or about gay characters. 

"I don’t look at it as censorship," says Republican State Representative
Gerald Allen.  "I look at it as protecting the hearts and souls and minds of
our children."

Books by any gay author would have to go: Tennessee
Williams, Truman Capote  and Gore Vidal. Alice Walker’s novel "The Color
Purple" has lesbian characters.

Allen originally wanted to ban even some
Shakespeare. After criticism, he  narrowed his bill to exempt the classics,
although he still can’t define what a classic is. Also exempted now
Alabama’s public and college libraries.

Librarian Donna Schremser fears
the "thought police," would be patrolling her shelves.

"And so the
idea that we would have a pristine collection that represents one  political
view, one religioius view, that’s not a library,” says Schremser.

"I
think it’s an absolutely absurd bill," says Mark Potok of the Southern 
Poverty Law Center.

First Amendment advocates say the ban clearly
does amount to censorship.

"It’s a Nazi book burning," says Potok. "You
know, it’s a remarkable piece of work."

But in book after book, Allen
reads what he calls the "homosexual agenda," and he’s alarmed.

"It’s
not healthy for America, it doesn’t fit what we stand for," says Allen. "And
they will do whatever it takes to reach their goal."

He says he sees this
as a line in the sand.

What is it about showers?

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A lot of important writing takes place in the shower. Take screenwriter Paul Guyot for instance.

So, my deadline is today. For the heist script. And I awake happy
and energized – knowing I have but two more scenes to right and I’m
done, on time.

Then in the shower, it hits me. A cavernous hole in my plot. In the
actual heist itself. A hole big enough that to repair it means a major
rewrite of about 30% of what I already have.

This happens to me all the time…and in the shower, too. What the hell is it about showers anyway?

On our first series staff job, the showrunner had a shower in his office and I
figured it was in case he ever had to pull an all-nighter on a script and had to freshen up in the morning.
It wasn’t until later I knew what it was really for… every day writing… finding plot
holes, crafting dialogue, and coming up with new stories.

I’ve got to get a shower in my office one of these days. I’d be a lot more productive.

Wasserman is Out

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LA Observed is reporting that Steve Wasserman has resigned as editor of the Book Review.

There since 1996, he informed his staff on Friday, after having a
discussion with editor John Carroll about his waning independence.
Wasserman has been known to be unhappy about the level of scrutiny he
receives from Deputy Managing Editor John Montorio and Associate Editor
of Features Tim Rutten. Some sources say the meeting with Carroll was
essentially an ultimatum, with Wasserman needing to hear that he would
be free to run the Book Review as he saw fit. He didn’t hear that, so
he resigned and reportedly has "irons in the fire," but no other job
yet.  His last day
officially is said to be May 13.

This will come as sad news to all those insomniacs who have been using the Book Review as a sure-fire sleeping pill for the last few years. Speaking of which, The Elegant Variation conducted another brilliant autopsy today of Sunday’s D.O.A. edition of the LATBR.

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Ah, the Eighties…

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Patrick Hynes reviews the first season boxed set of DYNASTY for the American Spectator.

Dynasty is commonly classified as a "primetime soap opera," but it is
indeed more like a cartoon. Most of the characters in this serial drama are
avowed Republicans. As such they are greedy, lustful, and hateful of minorities.
(Not much has changed there, eh?) The angry Middle Easterners look more like
bronzed beatniks. Most of them are played by extras with Italian last names.
And, of course, the rich lead shiftless lives of exaggerated extravagance while
the poorer characters are wholly sympathetic saints…

…In another 25 years or so there will be another television show in which all the
villains are greedy, lecherous Republicans and the heroes are simple folk with
progressive values. That much is certain, the entertainment business being what
it is. We can only hope that the story surrounding these stock characters is as
juicy as Dynasty was. And still is.

Patrick doesn’t have cable, and doesn’t watch TV at all, so he missed the docudrama DYNASTY: BEHIND THE SCENES this season.  Is it any coincidence the show came back in the midst of another oil crisis…and one trial after another of greedy CEOs? This time, though, the Middle Easterners were played by deeply tanned Canadians…

Marmaduchy

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I was doing research on the cartoon strip "Marmaduke," the huge dog, for my MONK novel (Monk loves Marmaduke), when I stumbled on this entertaining discussion of fandom at Websnark. He illustrates his ideas by describing what Marmaduke fandom might be like:

The Marmaduke fandom, on the other hand, spends a significant amount of time
on the Marmaduke forum (the Marmaduchy, let’s call it). They have many different
discussions on Marmaduke, and on things that have nothing to do with Marmaduke
— to the point that the Marmaduke forum moderators had to create a specific
topic for off-topic posts, and have to kick folks there whenever they stray.
They trade LJ icons and forum avatars based on Marmaduke art. They collect pithy
Marmaduke sayings. They affirm each other and their common love of Marmaduke,
and they find close friends through Marmaduke — friends that mean a lot to them
far beyond Marmaduke. This is what the Marmaduke Fandom has given them, and it
means everything to them.

The idea, for many of the Marmaducets and duchesses (so clever, those
Marmaduke fans — the guys naming themselves after currency and the girls making
a delightful play on Marmaduke’s name), is not so much the individual Marmaduke
strips themselves, but the zeitgeist of all that is Marmaduke. It’s the
attitude. It’s how Marmaduke makes them feel, and how much they can amplify that
feeling in the company of others. It can be terrifically empowering and it can
be terrifically satisfying. Right here, in this little community on the
internet, Marmaduke is the coolest thing around, and by showing your love for
Marmaduke, you’re cool too. And as for Marmaduke-creator Brad Anderson? The
Marmaduchy provides feedback and, more importantly, validation. It’s damn hard
to be a cartoonist — or a creator of any stripe. It takes effort and ego and
skill and talent, and you spend a huge amount of time wondering if anyone gives
a fuck. The Marmaduchy tells Anderson "yes. Yes, we give a fuck. We give many
fucks. In fact, if you want us to, several of us will in fact have sex with you
if you want, because you have brought so much pleasure to our lives that we
would dearly love to repay you."

The  dark side of fandom, he says, is Fan Entitlement, which he describes like this:

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Kill Bill, Kill Cinema

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I enjoyed KILL BILL.  Well, at least parts of it. Was it a great movie? No. Was it visually interesting and fun? Sure. That said, I think Ron Rosenbaum’s observations in The New York Observer are absolutely correct:

I don’t blame you if any or all of these made it impossible for you
to stay awake for the eyeball-squishing, that moment of cinematic
mastery, the true climax of the two-part, four-hour Tarantino
"masterpiece."

Still, it’s too bad if you missed it, because it was the perfect
epitome of and metaphor for what I would like to call "The Cinema of
Pretentious Stupidity." The eyeball-squishing represented the crushing
of vision by lead-footed pretension, the blinding of creativity by
referentiality. The idea that ceaseless tedious references to obscure
martial-arts movies known mainly by video-store geeks adds up to art.

I’ve heard so many defenses of Kill Bill that depend on the
apparently marvelous and unheard-of-before wonder of its
referentiality. Dude, just because you make a reference—or many
references—doesn’t make it meaningful or worth four hours of our time.

(Thanks to Ed Gorman for the heads-up on this!)

Scientology on the Set

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Here’s an astonishing little  snippet from Spiegel’s terrific interview with Tom Cruise. The italicized comments in brackets are mine..

SPIEGEL: We visited one of your locations near Los Angeles and were amazed to find a fully staffed tent of the Scientology organization right next to the food tents for the journalists and extras.

Cruise: What were you amazed about?
[Translation: I’m rich and powerful and I can do whatever the hell I want. Don’t you realize that?]

SPIEGEL: Why do you go so extremely public about your personal convictions?

Cruise: I believe in freedom of speech. I felt honored to have volunteer Scientology ministers on the set. They were helping the crew.
[Helping the crew with what?] When I’m working on a movie, I do anything I can to help the people I’m spending time with. I believe in communication. [I’m sure the crew was clamoring for a Scientologist on the set. Crew members often need to get in touch with their past lives while moving lights around. That’s also why you see so many ministers of other cults and religious faiths on movie sets.]

SPIEGEL: The tent of a sect at someone’s working place still seems somewhat strange to us. Mr. Spielberg, did that tent strike you as unusual?

Spielberg: I saw it as an information tent. No one was compelled to frequent it, but it was available for anybody who had an open mind and was curious about someone else’s belief system.
[So why weren’t there ‘information tents’ from other religious groups and cults on the set…or on the sets of your other movies that don’t star Tom Cruise? I didn’t realize a movie set was a religion and cult faire].

Cruise:The volunteer Scientology ministers were there to help the sick and injured. [Was it a movie…or a war zone? And what help could Scientologists provide to the sick and injured? Isn’t that why you have a nurse on the set? Or how about just calling some Paramedics?] People on the set appreciated that.  [Oh yeah, I bet.]

Imagine what would happen if I was producing a TV series and invited
some Mormons or Jews or Christians or Muslims to pitch tents on the set and minister to the "sick and injured" on my crew. There would be an uproar, and justifiably so. But I’m not Tom Cruise. I don’t make billions of dollars  for Hollywood studios.

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