Feeling rather sheepish about this. Rather than talking about this change, I should keep it to myself. But, alas, I have no friends and no one likes me — and I’m 100% extroverted! — so, lulz, here we are.
So, the newest version of this first novel in what I hope will be a five novel series has me go back to what I had before — a female protagonist who in my imagination looks a lot like Olivia Munn. I really need to stop doing this. I really need to, like, finish the first novel so I can, if nothing else, try to get to the next step in the process — have beta readers.
But here I am, starting all over again.
And, yet, at least I’m starting from scratch for a reason. I hope to do some reading — and development — before I start writing again so when I do I’m going to knock what I do write out of the park.
That, at least is the vision.
And, yada, yada, yada, I sell the novel or novels, the series a huge success and Olivia Munn plays the heroine of these first few novels in the series. You gotta dream, man. Dreaming is free.
It is possible that the Russo-Ukrainian War may evoke a rather abrupt “vibe shift” in American popular entertainment. It could be that the next few years will see the rise of War Movies becoming popular again.
We could see movies set during the various wars the United States has been a part of over the years. And, sadly, we might see more than a few movies set in WW3. So, here’s my pitch for a movie like The Day After.
Act 1
A series of people from all walks of life are seen getting onto a plane in NYC for a cross-country trip to LA. In between their farewells (which would establish each character) we hear bits and pieces of an escalating war somewhere off in some distant land.
Inciting Incident: Now, while they’re up in the air, there’s some sort of emergency. They have to make an emergency somewhere in the midwest.
While there on the ground for what is meant to be a short amount of time, WW3 breaks out and everyone across the US EMPs zap electronics. So they’re stuck in, say, Iowa somewhere. Act 2
So, the first part of the second act would be the different people on the plane making new friends and realizing that suddenly everything is existential. They now have to figure out what to do. A small group, maybe four or five people, are now a group and they head out of the Iowa city they’re in (chaos is beginning to take over.)
Midpoint: they finally find a small town in the middle of nowhere that will take them.
The latter part of the second is about how this diverse group of people begin to deal with their lives are changed forever. This is when one of the people on the plan begins to grow power hungry and becomes a Trump-like demagogy.
The end of the second act is when people start to realize that Nuclear Winter is here for a while and there’s a chance that they’re all going to die. The power hungry fromer passenger begins to kill people and our small group of goodguys from the plane have to figure out what to do. End Things appear to get better when American troops from a part of the country that hasn’t been struck by a H-bomb try to come to save the day. But they come too late — some of the passengers we’ve been focused on have been captured and are set to be killed.
The climax is a Zero Dark Thirty type attack on the villian’s lair.
Our core group of people are saved and the move ends with them heading west to safety and the continue struggle of living in post- limited nuclear exchange America.
Things are going really well with these five novels I’m working on. I’m still struggling with the first novel, ugh, but I do have five solid novel concepts. But in the back of my mind, I have this really, really great screenplay that is about the implications of global climate change.
I have a beginning and an ending, but there’s a huge void where the middle part should be.
And, yet, there is a part of me that always occasionally wants to use this global climate change-themed screenplay as my “second creative track.” Some of the people I’ve told the general story to were rather enthralled by what I’ve come up with.
But I love these five novels too much. Though, I will admit the practical aspects of developing and writing five novels have me stumped at the moment. Should I just focus on the first book and use it as a calling card for the other five novels, or should I make at least an attempt to do one run through through the all five novels on a first-draft basis?
At this point, I just don’t know.
The thing about this screenplay percolating in my mind is so much better than Don’t Look Up. It addresses the implications of Global Climate Change in a way that is far more clean on a storytelling basis. None of the bonkers, scrambled storytelling of Don’t Look Up that I found so grating.
Though, one element that is interesting about the characters I’ve come up with is I like how it kind of switches the gender roles of the Hero With A Thousand Faces trope we’re so used to.
Anyway.
What I think is going to happen is I’m going to really focus on the first book of this five book series, then if I get a literary agent and sell it, I’ll use that foot in the door to sell the other four novels in the series. And, then, maybe, I can figure out a way to sell my far-better interpretation of Don’t Look Up.
So, I walked out of The Batman. Now, let me be clear — I did this not because I didn’t like the movie, it’s just from a storytelling point of view it wasn’t doing much for me. (I must also note that there were some guys in the theatre who were creeping me out and I was being paranoid that they were going to jump me in the parking lot once the movie was over tonight.)
Anyway, The Batman was a good movie, just not good enough to keep me in my seat.
I think some of this had to do with me not being the intended audience. I’ve grown very, very tired of comic book movies. I’ve come to believe that particular market has “matured” to the point that it needs to be sent off to pasture so some other genre can, thankfully, replace it at last.
But another problem I had was I just didn’t really see the point of Yet Another Batman Movie. I just didn’t care. I didn’t care about the characters and I didn’t care about the plot. It was pretty to look — especially Zoe Kravitz — but the whole thing left me feeling rather meh.
And, yet, I’m not saying what I saw was “bad.” It wasn’t all that bad. Just kind of hum-drum. I wish we could get a solid reboot of the Alien or Terminator franchises. I think good scifi should make a comeback.
I feel like someone who has lived in South Korea as an expat is digging into experiences I’ve gone through and it’s making me nervous. The above picture from “I Want You Back” is a prime example — that could be me and Annie Shapiro way back when.
The two protagonists are drinking soju (straight from the bottle!) and OB, both of which are fixtures of expat life in South Korea. I think maybe the characters are doing this in LA’s Koreatown — that would make the most sense — but it is eerie.
Then there’s THIS picture. It took me a double take to make sure it wasn’t set at Nori in Seoul.
Could it be that someone was an expat in Seoul (or somewhere in South Korea) then decided to interpolate those experiences in LA’s Koreatown? Spooky, spooky, spooky.
The only reason why I know the above ISN’T at Nori is the layout of the women’s bathroom is all wrong.
Anyway. We’ll see, I guess.
I just wish someone in my family genuinely cared about MY creative aspirations and didn’t just give them lip service so they didn’t feel bad for not caring about me.
Apparently, there is a Civil War movie being produced. Here’s how I would lay out the plot of such a movie.
Act 1 In the background of a conversation between a liberal mom and a conservative son is an announcement that the post-Election Day debate is growing tense.
Inciting Incident: Rather abruptly, things collapse across the United States as there is a huge debate about who POTUS is
The Heroine gets separated from her son in the chaos. Second Act
Midpoint: the Heroine gets captured by Red forces
We see that tactical nukes have been used across the United States and the lights go out. Third Act The chaos of all of this allows her to get out her imprisonment.
The moment of truth is when she’s about to get murdered by Red forces — she’s saved by her son, who is now the leader of Red forces.
The more I learn about Ye’s new muse Julia Fox, the more I find her intriguing. She seems rather…wide open…about her life, but unlike Kim Kardashian, she seems to actually have some discernible talent.
Fox seems like an actual person worth becoming a stan of, unlike most of the Kardashian clan that seems to simply fill a cultural niche because…they fill a cultural niche. (I exclude Kendall from this evaluation because she is actually gorgeous enough to be a model.)
I’m impressed that Ye would pick Fox, of all people, to be his muse. As a creative person myself, I could definitely see where she might inspire art. (Especially dat ass — holy shit.)
But she’s more than a pretty face and thicc ass, she genuinely seems like an interesting person unto herself. I honestly barely know anything about her, but the information I’ve passively learned about her in dribs and drabs has been compelling.
I look forward to her coming unto her own in the 2020s. Maybe, if things like Fox continue to bubble up to the cultural surface, not everything will be a dystopian hellscape of civil war or autocracy.
I’m a nobody in the rural part of a fly over state. I don’t know anything about anything. But in my travels around the world over the years, I have noticed that people from Perth, Australia are some of the most unique in the world. They’re very interesting, creative people.
So, whenever my mind wander into what might happen to some of the deeper Blue portions of America like Hollywood, I think of Perth. If the movie industry were to, en mass flee autocratic America, they would do worse than to go to Perth. Now, Perth is in the middle of nowhere. It’s pretty much a long ways away from everywhere.
But the weather is decent and it would be a great place for all the Deep Blue Hollywood types to live once Hollywood is finally consumed by Immersive Media. I have to note, in passing how annoyed I am at how many center-Left people already have one foot out the door when it comes to the United States. I mean, come on, people, you don’t have the gumption to stand and fight for the freedoms that have made you so wealthy?
Ugh. Fuck that and fuck them.
But anyway, the issue is — we all have to prepare for some severe turbulence in the United States between now and no later than January 2025. Everyone is going to have to pick a side based on what they believe. It’s just sad that so many Twitter liberals who could otherwise help the cause of saving freedom and democracy in the United States are cowards and would rather run away than help defend the idea that the America really is the land of the free, home of the brave.
Or put another way — just because Trump was too stupid and lazy to “not lose” the 2020 election, doesn’t mean he won’t be able to “not lose” the 2024 election. We’re totally fucked no matter what. We’re just not going to muddle through this crisis like we have with other major events in our history in the past.
The years 2024 – 2025 will be the biggest political crisis in American domestic history since the secession crisis of 1860 – 1861. Either you’re prepared for it when it happens, or you’re not.
Well, if nothing else, I have a stable first few lines of the first novel in this series. It’s really, really good. Everything else the last few days, however ,has been in a severe amount of flux. I’ve rearranged the order of the first act a dozen times in the last 48 hours.
My literary hero.
What’s more, after making such a huge deal of how I was making the chronology of events tighter, tonight I turned around and made it exactly what it was to begin with. But at least I have a reason for doing so — I’ve realized that if I’m going to do bad things to character, I probably need to give them enough page time so you like, actually care about what happens to them.
That’s a huge flaw in a lot of thrillers — they open with a dead body and the reader hasn’t even had time to take their figurative coat off in the figurative theatre yet. So, my first act now gives a lot more page time to two characters that are going to have something bad happen to them.
My struggle for me as the writer is to make you character about these characters in a way that is interesting enough that you’ll keep reading even though in real terms Nothing Is Happening. (I’m being a little harsh on myself — a lot is going on, but if you had no emotional attachment to the novel going into it I could see you thinking that in some respect.)
I’m supposed to get my cast off tomorrow, so that will be something of a New Era for me. As such, I’m pretending to myself that I’ll stop fucking with the outline and actually get back to writing one a second draft. I’ve really, rearranged things. The story flows a lot better now and there’s a lot more room for character development.
But there comes a point when I’ve got to stop fucking around and get back to writing. Breaking my ankle has definitely reminded me that I have a limited time on this earth and death be no proud, as they say.
Anyway, I’m really, really pleased — with the first novel’s beginning, if nothing else. I’ve got to power through and wrap up this second draft as soon as possible. I think I’m going to continue to use the weekends to read and develop the other novels in this series.
I just have to keep an eye on the calendar. If I don’t get more serious, it will be year from now and I’ll still be struggling with the second draft of the first book. Ugh.
Now, this may all happen in the context of America pulling itself out of the ruble of a Second American Civil War, but Hollywood is ripe for a massive series of reboots of existing IP.
I say this because all of the major franchises at the moment are pretty much dead in the water. They’ve been strip mined to the point that audiences — or at least the audiences that grew up with them, are worn out. As such, there is going to come a tipping point when studio execs realize that there is a whole generation or two ripe to re-introduce franchise after franchise to.
Our new Ripley?
There will be much waling and gnashing of teeth by Baby Boomers and GenX, but in the end, we’re all going to see ourselves throwing down $20 at a streamer showing us a start-from-scratch reboot of Alien, Blade Runner, Die Hard, The Terminator and maybe even The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Just take Alien, for instance. I could very easily see Zendaya play a totally new Ripley in a totally new version of Alien that would start the whole franchise fresh. Give her a three picture deal and finally sort that particular franchise clusterfuck out once and for all. You get a hip horror director a three picture deal as well when you do this and you’ve just made yourself half a billion dollars.
What’s interesting is the James Bond franchise is, as of this moment, doing fairly well. It seems to me Henry Cavill — despite some unsettling blind items that allegedly are about him — would be the perfect new James Bond. He’s definitely who I think of when I think of “James Bond for the 2020s.” He’s got the Right Stuff for the role.
James Bond For the 2020s.
Anyway, I guess what I’m pointing out is, we’re just about to see a generational changing of the guard. This happens every once in a while, when people too young to remember The Good Olde Days, discover The Beatles, or whatever. This time, it will be Hollywood and it’s going to be pretty lit. A lot of the strip minding errors of Hollywood’s past should be fixed (I hope) because the studios know they have great IP on their hands and all they have to do is give the new versions of these beloved franchises some forethought before they roll them out to Xennials.
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