One of my favorite easy read novels growing up was the Fletch series of mysteries. They’re a lot of fun and funny. So, I’m keenly interested in what Jon Hamm’s take on the character will be.
Image by EW Magazine
Apparently, he’s working on a new Fletch movie, “Confess, Fletch.” There are a lot of really great novels in the series. My personal favorite is “Fletch And The Man Who.” But all the novels are great because they’re so short you can finish them virtually in one setting and they’ve got a very wry sense of humor to them.
Of all the actors out there, I think Hamm is one of the better suited. But I think in an ideal world, a Fletch movie would be done by someone like Greta Gerwig. The movies have been a little too broad in their humor for my tastes and don’t really reflect the tone of the novels.
Let’s take a walk down memory lane, shall we? Around the time of the first Iraq War, then Secretary of State James Baker was supposed to give a speech were he articulated a “new world order” in the context of the post-Cold War world. Then, for some reason, he mysteriously canceled the speech.
Don’t get excited.
Would you believe that just because he did that, a generation or more of conspiracy theorists have thrown every possible bonkers idea at the notion of a “New World Order.” The theory is that this is some sinister concept involving the UN, black helicopters and (your kooky idea here.)
Flash forward and Biden made a reasonable and off-handed comment about the current world situation where he mentioned a new world order. Now, every MAGA New Right cocksucker worth their weight in Comet Pizza wants us to believe we’re all going to be forced to wear the Mark of the Beast soon.
Guys, we’re living in a fucking New World Order, RIGHT NOW — it’s called the post WW2 New World Order. And, if things get bad enough and we have a WW3, whatever the world looks like will, in fact, be a New World Order.
So, calm down. Smoke a cigar, make a pretty girl laugh. Have a drink and relax –you have nothing to worry about when it comes to a New World Order. It’s happened before and it will happen again.
I’m going to assume that if WW3 actually does break out that humanity, rather than completely destroy itself, might do a “Little Death” of a limited nuclear exchange. Even that would be one of the more bleak scenarios in such a situation, but it’s something to work with.
The most obvious scenario of a limited nuclear exchange happening is something like this — an Axis is formed between Russia and China at some point in the future. Then the DPRK and Iran join in and we’re going to the show. It’s the DPRK who has the means, motive and opportunity to strike the USA in such a context that would cause us to suffer the effects of H-Bombs being detonated over few major American cities.
If such a horrific thing happened, then that would definitely mark the end of the “Woke Agenda,” let me tell you. When you have no lights, no Internet and a food supply that’s running low, the least of your concerns would the pronouns you use.
Just the idea that a “city killer” would be use on a few major American cities by the DPRK is enough to make you gulp. Where things get tricky is how the US would respond to such a tragedy. Our kneejerk reaction would be to drop H-bombs on all of the DPRK, but, really, they just have their capital and even that is really close to the Chinese border. So, I assume the US would drop a H-bomb on Pyongyang and use tactical nukes on the rest of that country’s major targets.
But I think we can not really process how life in the United States would change on a practical basis if, say, NYC, LA and Washington D.C. were vaporized by DPRK H-bombs. Everything would change. Nothing would ever be the same. And, on a geopolitical basis, Canada sure would start to look enticing to America as a way to get a second chance.
Anyway, I hope we never have to thinking about any of this in the real world. I just like running scenarios.
The way we’ll know if things are changing with movies is a war movie — or just a more serious movie in general — will suddenly blow up into blockbuster status out of the blue.
If the last time there was a major war in Europe is any indication, there’s a chance that we’re in for not just a War Movie Renaissance, but a Hollywood Renaissance. A portion of the Hollywood Gold Age — as I understand it — was right around 1937 – 1946.
Or, put another way, it’s possible that we’re in the middle of an entertainment vibe shift and we just don’t know it yet. Come to think of it, there were a lot of serious movies that became popular around the time of the height of the Vietnam War.
Of course, there is the risk that the exact opposite will happen — people, seeing how horrible reality is, run away into silliness and comedy. But even that would be better than the now overwrought and self-indulgent superhero movies.
And there are some caveats — because of the changes in showbiz, it could very well be the big streamers that reap the rewards of whatever vibe shift we may be about to undergo. It won’t be like the good olde days — it’s not like we’re going to leave home to go see a very good God Father 4 in the theatres.
Please give us movies that aren’t superhero movies.
The industry has changed so much that there might be a significant lag time between when it becomes clear that audience want something different than superhero movies and when Hollywood actually does anything about it. So, it could be just about when the “Great Reset” or “Fourth Turning” of 2024 – 2025 happens that we get to have a series of great movies to watch again.
All of this is very speculative. But one of my favorite quotes about Hollywood is, “Nobody knows nothing.”
My pause in writing continues to provide benefits. Things are getting a lot better with the latter part of the first novel in this planned five novel project. There’s going to come a point when I’m going to use this pause to work again on developing the other novels.
I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed by this project, but that’s what I wanted. And, yet, I have to manage my expectations. There are so many things that could still go wrong. And I have to be realistic — I can’t very well will five novels into existence, and sell them, if I can’t even finish a first draft of the first novel.
I’m hoping this is my third hat trick. My first hat trick was at the VPA. My second was while I was in Seoul. I figure I can manage a third. I just have to buckle down and actually do the work.
And “doing the work” involves doing a lot of reading and re-reading. I’ve done some reading already, but I have to keep at it. I hate how fast time goes when you’re 39 and holding.
What a curious state of affairs. Not only is rock dead, but it seems as though snark is, too. I occasionally look at Undead Gawker and am taken aback. That’s it? Undead Gawker is extremely boring. It doesn’t have any of the spunk (or punk) of the living Gawker.
Oh well.
It makes me wonder if This Is It. No matter how many vibe shifts we may have, because of modern sensibilities — and technology — we’re just never going to have what I thought we would always have — a snarky publication of some sort that comments on the day’s events.
It could be that if it happens, it will happen in the Metaverse. Now isn’t that going to be something. I have a feeling us Poors don’t appreciate how much Silicon Valley is sitting on its hands when it comes to investments as it waits for the kinks to get out of the Metaverse.
So, here we are.
No new Late Night With David Letterman. No new Spy magazine. And no new Gawker. We just have to wait until, maybe, until we’re all being snarking virtually with no legs.
It’s all very disheartening. Even more so when I know that I have the vision to pull off a new, real reboot of Gawker, but for, well, waves hand. Everything else in my life besides vision.
I’m taking a little bit of a pause in writing — a few days — and I’m already beginning to see results. It reminds me of how I was inspired all the time when I was in Seoul. But, then, of course, I was pretty unstable because of the pressure from being A Public Figure in the minds of my fellow expats.
The late Annie Shapiro and me back when I was a man on fire in Seoul.
But, anyway, it has occured to me that I have not really thought out the latter half of this first novel very well. It’s just not very dramatic. Things just…kind of happen. Things are wrapped up way too easily. There isn’t the necessary sturm and drang that a thriller climax deserves.
So, lulz, back to the drawing board.
I think I may have come up with a solution. It’s such a great solution, too. It not only raises the stakes, but makes the story’s climax far, far more dramatic. And, in a sense, things make a lot more sense. As it stands, the reader goes through the trouble of buying the first novel, reads all these words and then…meh? Everything is just wrapped up with no boom or bang.
Develop, develop, write, write, write
Now, at least, I have something to work with. The ending now potentially not only is far more climatic, it sets the stage for the opening scene of the next novel in the series.
I’m really going to have to stretch my writing ability, though. I will note that I’ve always wanted to be a popular writer, not a good writer. Wink.
If the above tweet is accurate, then Putin has decided to go the Novorossiya route. He wants to carve out a puppet client state from Ukraine in the general area of has historically been called Novorossiya. Below is what the political boundaries of such a client state might look like.
Anyway, doing this would make a lot of sense from the Russian point of view. But it’s extremely doubtful the Russians could pull it off. What’s more likely to happen is either Putin redfines victory and leaves Ukraine, or he escalates and we have something akin to WW3.
Let me be clear — I fucking hate the MAGA New Right with a white hot rage. And think of the following as gentle advice to people I otherwise agree with. I’m far more anti-MAGA than I am liberal, progressive or Leftist. But I’m willing to make common cause with liberals, progressives and fuck, even Leftists if that’s what I have to do to destroy the MAGA New Right as an American political movement.
But we have to talk about how corrosive the “woke” agenda is to American politics. It’s corrosive because it’s being used as a political bludgeon by the fucking fascists to destroy any chance that Traditionalists will ever do what is necessary to save American democracy — make common cause with anti-MAGA forces.
In fact, in a way, I fear that ship has sailed. The MAGA New Right is ascendant and dominate when it comes to the hard power of passing laws. As it stands, in real terms, woke people are just annoying. But we have to address that a lot of well meaning Traditionalists feel that because of the “woke agenda” they risk being “canceled” — having their lives ruined — simply because they’re conservative.
This is a real concern on a personal basis for the conservative Traditionalists in my family. The idea of something they say or do being recorded then going viral and they having their lives destroyed is constantly at the forefront of their minds. This ever-present terror is one of the central reasons why they will never, ever make common cause with Anti-MAGA forces.
So, in a sense, we’re fucked. Fucked. Fucked. Fucked.
The two sides haven hardened their stances to the point that either we become an autocracy or we have a civil war. In either stance, I suspect the whole “woke agenda” will drift out of existence and into the aether. Being woke is a luxury of peace, prosperity and a properly functioning Western democracy with a civil society.
If you’re too busy either evading ICE or bombs, well, quibbling over your pronouns isn’t something that’s as at the front of your mind. Twitter is to blame for this cluckerfuck, to some extent.
Twitter always takes the most extreme position of any issue and then people on either side have that have to fight over it. I just don’t see any “normal” ending to all of this.
Things are going to get bumpy, staring the moment Republicans take the House and Senate in January 2023.
I’m just daydreaming here, but I often find myself thinking about the marketing of these five novels and how that should change the novels themselves. One issue is, as it stands, the Olivia Munn-type character is the protagonist of only two of the novels. Then her son is the protagonist for two novels and then my Lisbeth Salander-type person is the hero of the last book.
This works, at least from a creative standpoint because I see the first three novels as a trilogy and the last two novels as the beginning a new series based around my personal interpolation of the Lisbeth Salander trope.
And, yet, at the heart of these five novels is the relationship between the Olivia Munn-type character and my Lisbeth Salander type character. But I sometimes find myself struggling with how all of this would be marketed. People want a character they know they’re going to come back to once they grow familiar with it and I wonder how marketing would deal with the shift in focus over the course of the series.
I personally think I’m overthinking things. The point is to tell a series of great stories that have an overall theme to them. I can’t get too worked up about the marketing of the stories if I do a good to great job telling the individual stories. And it’s not like people’s favorite character — if she becomes one — will be missing. She’ll still be there, it’s just the focus will be on her son, and, then, later a fucked up woman about Lisbeth Salander’s age in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Imagine Olivia Munn playing this type of character (to some extent) and that would be the protagonist two novels in this series and the series’ overall heart.
And, I want to be clear, my interpolation of the Lisbeth Salander trope is a variation on a theme. The two characters are dramatically different, to the point that, again, only for marketing purposes might their similarities be enough to highlight.
Anyway, I have a long ways to go before I have to worry about such things in real terms. I have to fucking finish an actual first draft, for Christ’s sake. But every time I get closer to a serious first draft, I get closer to not embarrassing myself.
It’s just taken much, much, much longer than I expected because apparently my storying telling ability sucked a lot more than I realized when I began this process a few years ago.
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